Even at the risk of their lives, still they come.

Thirteen North Koreans sought refuge in a Korean school in Qingdao, China on Thursday and are asking South Korea for asylum. On Oct. 11, eight North Korean refugees entered the same school and were safely handed over to the South Korean consulate.

A Foreign Ministry official said 13 defectors — nine women and four men — entered the Qingdao Ewha International School at around 11:30 a.m. saying they wanted to go to South Korea. The official said Seoul was negotiating with Beijing to move them to the consulate and then on to South Korea.

Realignment of U.S. Forces in Japan Proceeds in Relative Calm:

The United States and Japan agreed on a plan today to relocate a major American air base on the southern island of Okinawa, removing the biggest obstacle to talks on the redeployment of American troops across the country.

According to the plan, the Futenma Marine Corps air base, located in the city of Ginowan, will move to an existing United States base, Camp Schwab, in a less-populated area of the main Okinawa island.

The agreement will allow United States and Japanese officials to go ahead with broader talks this weekend in Washington over the realignment of American troops in Japan. Both sides are hoping to reach an overall agreement on the reorganization of United States forces before a visit to Japan by President Bush in mid-November.

Japan to Host U.S. Nuclear Carrier:

The United States will base a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in Japan for the first time starting in 2008, the United States Navy said Thursday, after Japan, the only country ever hit with atomic bombs, dropped long-standing resistance to the move.

First, I strongly recommend Andy Jackson’s district-by-district rundown of this week’s bi-elections at The Marmot’s Hole, although I could summarize by saying that, the Uri and DLP lost everywhere they should have won, and also lost everywhere else.

Here’s a breakdown of the composition of the new National Assembly:

144 Uri Party (leftist)
127 Grand National Party (conservative)
11 Democratic Party (fmr. Millenium Democratic Party, center-left)
9 Democratic Labor Party (stark-raving pinkos)
3 United Liberal Democrats
5 Independents
———————————————————————-
150 Needed for a Majority
299 Total Seats

Among those defeated was a former close aide of Roh himself, and Lee Sang Joo, whom the Korea Herald described as “a veteran politician.”

In the wake of this latest loss, disgruntled parliamentarians forced four of Uri’s top leaders to resign. The move came despite the entreaties of President Roh Moo Hyun.

Their resignation followed a post-mortem meeting where rank-and-file lawmakers blasted President Roh Moo-hun and Cheong Wa Dae for “arrogance” in telling them how to react to the rout. Roh said Thursday the defeat was a verdict on his government and asked the party not to be shaken but focus on the parliamentary session ahead.

“Why did the presidential office give guidelines to the party?” Rep. Yoo Seung-hee demanded. Lawmakers resoundingly rejected the president’s implicit request to maintain the current leadership under Moon for the time being.

Of all the things Roh can be accused of–hypocrisy, weakness, and soft-headedness come to mind–arrogance isn’t among them:

“I accept the results of the by-elections as an evaluation of the president’s state management,” he was quoted as telling his chief of staff, Lee Byung-wan. “I hope the Uri Party will not get engaged in an internal feud and, instead, focus on the ongoing Assembly session.”

Roh is obviously worried about intraparty chaos:

“Even though there may be personal opinions and objections, I hope they do not grow into conflict within the party that would worry the people. . . .”

The president had not issued any kind of statement after the even more embarrassing defeat in by-elections in April, when Uri lost six contests for vacant seats, five to the Grand Nationals and one to an independent candidate.

Asked about the change of strategy, Mr. Kim said, “The president was stressing that the Assembly session is the most important job for the governing party at the moment, with pending bills on real estate policies, more rice imports, national security reforms and so on.”

Thus, Roh’s influence over his own party is now insufficient for him to retain control over it, and not for the first time. South Korean partisan politics are a highly unstable affair in any event, but once the jockeying for a big election year begins, they’re like old, sweaty dynamite.

With Roh’s position weakened, the vultures are circling:

Another was more specific, saying that Chung Dong-young, the [anti-] unification minister, and Kim Keun-tae, the health minister, would probably go back to party leadership positions. Both are considered strong contenders for the party’s presidential nomination in 2007.

Chung, whose pact with Satan became public last year, was not immediately available for comment.

Why did this happen? The Korea Herald speculates that it was a voter rejection of Roh’s intiative–which followed yet another recent electoral disaster–to form a coalition government with the opposition Grand National Party. It also suggests that there has been a voter backlash against some of the recent antics of Korea’s extreme left, about which the ruling party, itself a lefty outfit, has been noticeably ambivalent. The young voters who put Roh in office in 2002 and who have dominated the national debate ever since didn’t show up, despite the government’s lowering of the voting age to 19 for the first time. Overall turnout was fairly high, mainly among older, more conservative voters.

The other enjoyable misery of the week is that of the Trotskyites in the Democratic Labor Party. The Korea Times suggests that recent union corruption scandals played a part. DLP activists sounded as if they were recriminating over unfinished power struggles:

“We should have paid more attention to the livelihood of non-regular workers and low-income earners in Ulsan, instead of focusing too much on the unionized workers of the big plant,” said Rep. Sim Sang-jung, vice floor leader of the DLP.

“Something unimaginable just took place in Ulsan, which is practically the land of laborers,” a DLP official said. “The defeat is feared to seriously hurt the party and its leadership.”

As a result of the by-elections, the DLP has nine seats in the 299-member unicameral legislature. Except for Rep. Kwon Young-ghil, who was elected in Changwon, South Kyongsang Province, eight other DLP legislators were elected under the proportional representation system in April last year.

A political party is required to maintain at least 10 parliamentary seats in order to submit its own bill to the Assembly.

Guess the little ones will have to wait another year for their red neckerchiefs. Dee-lish.

This is where I become ambivalent about it all. Sure, I have schadenfreude to spare for Baron von Harkonnen here and his Uri boys losing seats, but at at time when the GNP has been at its Old Right worst, it will now find reinforcement for its bad behavior. Based on what I’ve read, it wasn’t anything the GNP did that led to these results; this was a backlash against what Uri and its imputed supporters have been doing. In fact, I have little grasp of what Park Geun-Hye actually stands for. It’s entirely possible to care very little for the GNP and still despise Uri. Take me as a case in point, in fact. I’m not a Korean, but I read the same papers they do.

What is the GNP then, except the un-Uri? It’s probably easier to find the answer by the process of elimination. What I’m not seeing is the emergence of a genuinely liberal wing within the GNP”“I use that term in the classic John Stuart Mill sense”“at least soon enough for the 2007 election. What I forecast instead is a bloody fight between two GNP candidates, the bootylicious (but unprincipled) Park Geun Hye and Lee “Bulldozer” Myung-Bak, a contest that promises much heat and little light. Both are ideological heirs to Park Chung-Hee, leaving genetics out of it for the moment. The result will be an Old Right vs. New Left contest in 2007. For the GNP, that’s a demographic recipe for disaster, because Koreans who still think fondly of Park’s rule (or Kim Young Sam’s, for that matter) are dying off. Neither Park nor Lee really has a coherent or visionary message about how to achieve unification or keep Korea out of the Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere. Even if, as Norbert Vollertsen reports, the Old Right is starting to adopt the human rights cause, it lacks the charisma, credibility, and principle to bring it off.

If this happened, it will cost people their lives. If it was intentional, the person did it should be shot:

The personal information of thousands of North Korean defectors living in South Korea has been revealed, hurting their remaining family members in the North, according to a petition filed at the National Human Rights Commission of South Korea.

The commission announced on October 27 that Han Chang Gwon (44), the executive director of the Gyorye Missionary Society (a North Korean defectors group in South Korea), petitioned the commission against the National Police Agency release of the personal information of 4,000 members of Sung Ui Dongjihoe, the biggest North Korean defectors group in South Korea.

What an absolutely splendid way to keep North Koreans from defecting to South Korea. Even more effective than this. Who me? Cynical?

Donga Ilbo on the American Backlash: You’ve read it all here before, but just in case you’re wondering if anyone in Korea has noticed, here is your answer:

There are signs of anti-Korean sentiment among Washington D.C. intellectuals. Unprecedented mockery and criticism against Korea has appeared, and anti-Korean sentiment, usually seen among Republicans, is showing signs of spreading to Democrats as well. Even pro-Korean people do not deny the recent spread of anti-Korean sentiment in Washington.

I see Hillary Clinton as an American Park Geun-Hye. The Fact that she’s saying this kind of thing means she thinks it has political traction with centrist “swing” voters. That’s an extraordinarily bad sign for those who’d hoped the American subsidy of South Korea’s defense would be a perpetual entitlement. I’ll say it again: a Korea whose defense isn’t utterly dependent on America will be a more mature, more secure, and less anti-American Korea.

As Carlos Mencia would ask, “Why the F*ck Is this News?” Perhaps because this ranks as one of the most significant measurable accomplishments of eight years of appeasing North Korea:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 (Yonhap) — A group of South and North Korean diplomats had a rare meeting at a restaurant in Washington on Thursday, according to sources.
. . . .
The diplomats from the two Koreas agreed to make joint efforts for the peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis, but they used much of the meeting to exchange personal views, the embassy official said.

No word on who picked up the check. Not all is sunshine and lollipops, however:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 (Yonhap) — A South Korean activist protesting against North Korea said he was called a “son of a [bitch]” after he whispered to a North Korean diplomat that his leader Kim Jong-il must be overthrown.

Kim Sung-min, director of Free North Korea [link], said he told Han Song-ryol, deputy chief of North Korea’s mission to the United Nations, that the only way for the North to survive was to overthrow Kim’s regime.

Kim said Han cursed at him and asked, “Do you want to die?”

Ladies and gentleman, I give you diplomacy. Oh, and did you hear that the agenda at the six-party talks has just expanded?

Another congressman asked about Han’s views on handling the U.S. military presence in South Korea, according to Lim. The North Korean diplomat answered he wants the issue addressed at an appropriate venue such as the six-party talks where bilateral and multilateral negotiations take place.

Kim Sung Min–I was present when the North Korea Freedom Coalition presented his fledgling station with a nice, fat check, courtesy of a private donor–will have the chance to make his views on Kim Jong Il better known next February, when one of his associates tells me they will expand from Internet-based broadcasting to radio broadcasts directly into North Korea. A variety of dissident and religious groups are expected to join in the plan. Their goal is to have their first broadcast before Kim Jong Il’s birthday, February 16th. Nice touch.

Hu Jintao is in North Korea, along with his Foreign Minister.