Archive for November 2008

Video of the Pleasure Squad?

November 24, 2008 Kim Jong Il 5 comments

So suggest the Japanese broadcasters of this video. While I’m not personally persuaded of its authenticity, you may find that it has some measure of aesthetic appeal.

Kenji Fujimoto, who was Kim Jong Il’s exclusive sushi chef before escaping to write a book about it, claimed that Kim kept girls who danced for his entertainment, but who were not to be touched by anyone (even including Kim himself?).

In his book “Rogue Regime,” Jasper Becker explains that there were actually several “pleasure squads” of both the vertical and the horizontal kind. He even claims to have spotted a group of stunning German and Swedish blondes at one of the mass games events there years ago.

Monthly Chosun: ROK Intelligence Intercepted Kim Jong Il’s Brain Scan

November 23, 2008 Kim Jong Il 2 comments

No, I am not making this up. There’s no permlink to the story, but if you read Korean, you can read it here.

The Monthly Chosun, quoting the South Korean intel leak ticker, is claiming that the Korean National Intelligence service, while doing electronic eavesdropping on North Korea last August, intercepted several encrypted electronic files being transmitted from Pyongyang to one Doctor Francois-Xavier Roux in France. It took three days to crack the encryption, at which point the intelligence officers realized that the files showed MRI and tomography scans of a brain showing stroke damage and partial paralysis. The Monthly Chosun’s source believes that the images are of the warped and clotted cerebellum of His Porcine Majesty.

The source did not specify what leads him to believe the scan images are of Kim Jong Il’s brain, or why all of the data files were named “Abby Someone.”

The brain scans suggest that Kim Jong Il has no more than five years left, which ought to make for some ferocious office politics in the National Defense Commission. I won’t give you the entire translation, but I thought you’d like this quote:

[Reporter:] Do you mean Kim Jong Il has five years to live or five years to govern?

[Anonymous Intelligence Officer:] Those two are very closely related.

For several weeks, since reports first emerged that Kim Jong Il had had a stroke, the foreign press has swirled with stories based on speculation, anonymous sources, and quite possibly disinformation. This story is probably the latest of them.

The source also told the Monthly Chosun that the ridiculous reporting in September that Kim Jong Il was now able to brush his own teeth misquoted South Korean doctors, who had hypothesized that Kim would probably be able to brush his own teeth based on their reading of the reports of his condition. Glad to have cleared that up for you.

Some Human Rights Updates

November 23, 2008 China & Korea, Refugees, U.S. Politics No comments

The Korea Times reports that a joint committee of the U.S. Congress has recommended that the government establish a special task force aimed at persuading the Chinese to stop repatriating North Korean refugees. On the less hopeful side, we still don’t have a clear idea of how much priority the executive branch is going to give this issue, and to phrase this gently, I don’t expect Hillary Clinton’s policies to be unduly influenced by sentimental considerations.

The commission recommends appropriating funds to offset the costs that China would incur from a more humane treatment of the refugees, but who really believes that China’s inhumanity here is about money (as opposed to keeping Korea divided into two states, one a vassal and one a neutral)? And since I’m on the topic of China’s brutality, this video is a fine illustration of that:

Members of the bipartisan commission include such stalwarts as Rep. Ed Royce and Sen. Sam Brownback, so there’s reason to have confidence in its motives.

The KT also reports that a U.N. panel has recommended approval of a resolution calling on North Korea to make its human rights record less abysmal. Positive: South Korea was a proponent of the resolution. Negative: America wasn’t, and the U.N. is irrelevant anyway.

The Power of Truth

November 22, 2008 Abductions, Activism, Defectors, Deprogramming, Human Rights, Human Trafficking 3 comments

Freedom rises over Korea, into the air over the most oppressed and darkened place on earth. The video clips that follow are from the BBC, Al Jazzeera, the Voice of America, and New Tang Dynasty Television.

bbc-img.jpg

The people who are launching these balloons are, in large part, North Koreans who could not live — or stand living — in their homeland, and who can find no other means to connect with those they left behind. Others are South Koreans whose loved ones were stolen from them by North Korean abductors. How emotionally stunted must one be not to consider, for an instant, the sorrow these people must feel? Who could fail to understand their need to somehow connect with those they love, but with whom ordinary means of communication could, if they were possible at all, be a death sentence for them?

The balloons are being launched from South Korean territory, and from South Korean waters — from a country that thousands of Americans soldiers who helped to defend it were told was free. The balloons also contain money that hungry people might use to buy food and seed a nascent underground economy, and that economy might feed even more people Kim Jong Il won’t by drawing smuggled food from across the Chinese border. The leaflets are non-violent expression. They could not possibly do harm to anything worth preserving. They do not so much as resemble anything harmful or dangerous, either to the eye or on a radar scope. For the starving and oppressed, these leaflets could carry the hope to live on, to fight on, and to stand for a future worth living in.

Someone please explain the downside of this. How easy and shallow a thing for those with something to live for to deny a future to those who have nothing.

But we must preserve relations with the North Koreans! (Which really means, with one of them.) And to what end? After billions in aid over more than a decade, engaging Kim Jong Il’s regime had accomplished what, exactly? Where is the measurable transformation of North Korea’s totalitarian system? How many North Koreans have seen their lives improved? Are there fewer North Korean guns pointed at South Korean cities? Is its system of government kinder, gentler, or more transparent? Is North Korea less of a nuclear danger to South Korea and the rest of the world? Have North Korea’s “expendable” people ceased to starve and die? Has the North reformed its economy? Can anyone point to a single tangible benefit the world has gained by prolonging this wretched regime, much less some benefit that outweighs all of the misery millions have experienced as it was prolonged?

Ah, but there are those lucky hand-picked 30,000 at the Kaesong Industrial Park. Though their wages were stolen by their oppressors and exchanged for short rations of food and goods, their exploiters would say that the lives of their rented slaves were at least a little better than those of their neighbors for a while. By this logic, a foreign pedophile who flies to Cambodia should be commended as long as he buys his victim a hot breakfast. In the unlikely event the leaflet balloons have played some part in ending this vile, regime-sustaining exploitation, all the better.

To support the balloon leaflet launches, please join me in contributing to the North Korean Freedom Coalition.

Update: Here’s a photo essay of the balloon launches. More here and here at the BBC.

You Don’t Say

November 21, 2008 Proliferation, WMD One comment

The U.N. is beginning to suspect that those Syrians and North Koreans may have been up to something suspicious after all.

“It cannot be excluded” that the Syrian facility “was intended for non-nuclear use,” the IAEA report says.However, it continues, “The features of the building . . . along with the connectivity of the site to adequate pumping capacity of cooling water, are similar to what may be found in connection with a reactor site.”

Pre-attack photographs show a “containment structure (that) appears to have been similar in dimension and layout to that required for a biological shield for nuclear reactors, and the overall size of the building was sufficient to house the equipment needed for a nuclear reactor of the type alleged” by the United States , the report says.

It also says that dirt samples taken from the site by IAEA inspectors who visited in June contained “a significant number of natural uranium particles.”

An analysis of the particles found that they were “produced as a result of chemical processing,” the report says.  [McClatchy]

In 2005, we learned that the North Koreans had sold uranium hexafluoride to Libya.  If North Korea supplied uranium to the Syrians, it would mean that in addition to the technology transfer, they had supplied a fellow rogue state with nuclear material yet again.  Syrian stonewalling still prevents us from knowing where the uranium came from.
And naturally, the IAEA’s report condemned the Israelis for putting a stop to this through “the unilateral use of force.”  Of course, whatever Syria and North Korea were up to, it was by definition bilateral and therefore nothing to be unduly excited about.  After all, just look how brilliantly the IAEA is handling Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Obama Cabinet Looking Surprisingly Centrist and Responsible

November 21, 2008 Appeasement, Diplomacy, U.S. & Korea, U.S. Politics 4 comments

The L.A. Times reports that Obama is seriously considering either Hillary Clinton or Richard Holbrooke for State and retaining the effective Robert Gates at Defense.  We are already hearing the first sorrowful wailing from those for whom the highest form of patriotism is the emotional investment in America’s defeat and dimunition, in a way that is only coincidentally similar to the patriotism of its enemies.  At least one of them had the deficiency of judgment to actually believe that Dennis Kucinich would not only make a fine Secretary of State, but would actually be selected for the position.

There are plenty of good things to say about the selection of either Clinton or Holbrooke.  For the very reasons that many of us feared a Clinton presidency, the right people may well fear her as Secretary of State.  She is not Warren Christopher.  She is full of fire, spite, and intrigue.  She is no babe in the woods (or in any other venue, for that matter).  We could at least hope that she would be able to stare down Putin.  Holbrooke would be a better selection, despite some of his recent rhetorical excesses on Iraq.  While stationed in Korea a few years ago, I read his book, “To End a War,” and saw that Holbrooke understood (a) the importance of backing negotiation with force, and (b) that American leadership is necessary to solving international crises, because the European Union and the U.N. sure as hell won’t provide any.

Best of all, neither of them is “Kim Jong” Bill Richardson.

Obama’s policy statements on North Korea are have been both inconsistent and generally meaningless:  “tough and direct diplomacy,” for example, means what in practice?  The appointments to key positions will tell us more.  At least three of those personalities who have talked the talk (or better) on human rights issues are likely to rise.  The obvious one is Frank Jannuzi, who in this conversation told me more than I’m permitted to write here, most of it encouraging.  Gordon Flake was an early Obama supporter, but long before that, he sat down for an OFK interview here.  A quote:

If [the North Koreans'] anticipation is that a Democratic Congress or a Democratic Administration is likely to be significantly softer in its approach, particularly after a nuclear test, they are likely to be sorely disssapointed.

One of the axioms of international politics in Washington is that only Nixon can go to China.  Nixon had the anti-Communist credentials that Kennedy  or Johnson didn’t have.  The modern equivalent of this is that only Bush can ignore North Korea.  Over the last 5 years, he’s talked a tough game — “evil,” “pygmy,” “loathe,” and so on. Â But in terms of action, he’s done almost nothing.  Every North Korean crossing of “red lines” met with yawns and promises to solve the problem through diplomacy or the six-party talks. Â I’m not sure a Democratic president or Congress would have as much leeway not to respond to such provocations.

Later, Flake advocated reimposing sanctions on North Korea in response to its nuclear test, which took place roughly a week before that interview.  The Bush Administration’s reaction was to send John Bolton to the U.N. to secure a very tough resolution, and then fail to implement it effectively.

Gordon is affable, brilliant, a fluent Korean speaker, and sincerely interested in easing the oppression of the North Korean people.  He is now an Obama advisor and, by inference, a candidate for some influential role.  Gordon and I sat side by side when I testified in a 2006 congressional hearing where former Republican Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa presided.  Leach was a paradox in many ways — another long-time advocate for human rights in North Korea, Leach is a liberal Republican who supports a fairly dovish foreign policy in other ways.  He was later defeated for reelection two months after that hearing, and later defected to the Obama camp.  He recently met with Lee Myung Bak on Obama’s behalf.

Obama advisors are already saying, off the record, that Bush’s concessions to North Korea have gone too far.  The latest such concession is Chris Hill’s “agreement” with the North Koreans that we’ll defer any nuclear sampling for another day (whether you call this masturbatory diplomacy or diplomatic onanism, it’s painful to watch Bush negotiate against himself and declare each new concession a breakthrough).  Unfortunately, with all of the political appointees leaving town or packing, Hill and the East Asia Bureau will have several months both before and after the inauguration to do pretty much what they want with no restraint from the elected branches.  I’m sure they’re counting on exactly that.

Obama’s sensible nominations are great news for the country.  They are also terrible news for Republicans, because Obama recognizes that this year’s election was not an embrace of the left but a rejection of George W. Bush, and even as a sudden economic gust blew Obama’s way, it was probably doubts about his experience and judgment that held him to just 52%.  A seasoned cabinet that pursues generally centrist policies may help Obama dissipate those doubts in the next four years.  That sets the rudderless Republicans up for the same kind of prolonged irrelevance that gripped the British Conservative Party after Tony Blair’s election.

In the longer term, permanent one-party domination would be exceptionally bad for America — it would erode our system of checks and balances, and that danger is never greater when the press wholly abandons its impartial role as critic and watchdog and becomes a secular clergy that leads its audience in the adoration and worship of a country’s leader (I have never seen this happen voluntarily before).

To claw their way back and restore competitiveness to American politics, the Republicans will need three things to happen:

First, their luck will have to improve.  Just look at the timing of the mid-September meltdown in the credit market, something I’d privately predicted to my wife since we first went house-hunting in late 2003 (sky-high prices + low interest rates + interest-only loans with balloon payments + buyers who clearly could not afford said payments = wave of defaults, foreclosures, and bank failures).  Republicans and Democrats were both responsible for pushing the easy credit that created this mess, but it happened six weeks before a presidential election on an unpopular Republican incumbent’s watch. Of course, things will continue to go wrong, and the party in power will still be blamed for them, which isn’t fair.  And?

Second, the Republicans will need to coalesce around a few coherent themes on foreign, economic, and social policy.  Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” was really just a mirror image of Bill Clinton’s “triangulation,” that is, a shift toward the center.  It was a dilution of principle rather than a realignment of it, and Bush’s Korea policy was an excellent illustration of the gridlock, paralysis, and ultimate absence of direction that resulted.

Third, the Republicans will have to learn to communicate their message even as most of the media unabashedly worship the ruling party.  Hatred of Obama will not work and is unworthy of a loyal opposition party.  The left’s hatred of Bush often crossed the line to the irresponsible and unpatriotic, as did its indifference toward (or open desire for) defeat in Iraq despite the disastrous consequences of this.  They will need to work hardest on building an opposition-oriented press to communicate a unitary vision on war policy, dealing with rogue states, America’s role in the world, economic recovery, homeland security, and increasingly contentious social issues.  Today, George W. Bush bequeaths Republicans neither a vision to communicate nor the means to communicate it.

The Safety Dance

November 20, 2008 Activism, Censorship, Deprogramming 3 comments

In my scrapbook from my Army days in Korea, I still have a leaflet, courtesy of “the protector of our race’s destiny,” declaring that “North and South shall bask together in the glow of General Kim Jong Il’s embrace.”  That leaflet was given to me by a sergeant in my unit, who found it outside Gate 7 of Yongsan Garrison in Seoul found one day after morning PT formation.  Where in the Armistice agreement does it say that only one side gets to drop leaflets on the other’s territory?

My possession of this small scrap of paper is a useful illustration of North Korea’s audacious hypocrisy in theatening to turn Seoul into “debris” over a few leaflets being floated into its territory, in large part by South Koreans whose family members the North Koreans stole from them in their own country or its waters.

Yet rather than demand the return of these hostages or stand up to the North’s terrorism, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak is going forward with plans to find some legal basis — whatever it may be — to legally bar activists from launching leaflet balloons into North Korea.  If this is the best basis they can find, they really need to find better lawyers:

He said the government is seeking legal grounds since the leaflets “are harming inter-Korean relations. It is apparently investigating whether it can prevent the civic groups on charges of violating gas safety laws — the leaflets are typically attached to hydrogen balloons and then float across the border. But experts say the law should not apply to those involved in sending the propaganda leaflets since it only temporarily prohibits use of high-pressure gas when it is feared it might cause damage. [Chosun Ilbo]

Here’s what still makes no sense to me:  surely thousands of North Koreans must be able to hear Open Radio and Radio Free NK, to say nothing of the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.  What about these leaflets — whatever small number of them are actually found and read by North Koreans, that is — could be more subversive, destabilizing, or offensive than the content of those broadcasts?  If the answer is “nothing,” it’s reasonable to suspect that the true reasons for North Korea’s present tantrum are (a) the convenience of the timing, because they have other reasons for wanting to scale back relations with the South, and (b) this is a test, and they will soon ask the South Koreans to ban other kinds of speech that threaten their totalitarian rule.

Odder still is Lee’s motive for betraying principle this way:  he seeks to preserve the privilege of pouring South Korean won into the money pit called Pyongyang, despite knowing that much of that money will assuredly be used to build deadlier weapons to terrorize his country.

Park Sang-hak, head of the Fighters for Free North Korea, said, “We’ve been sending leaflets to the North since the Roh Moo-hyun administration. It’s strange that they said nothing at the time but suddenly made an issue of it today. And it’s also strange that the Lee Myung-bak administration, which is advocating human rights for North Koreans, is trying to ban us from doing it.”

I’m not so simplistic as to suggest that all speech is worth the risk of lives in every circumstance — for example, the busing of missionaries, who turned out not to want to be martyrs after all, to the middle of Talibanistan.  Some reasonable weighing of risks and rewards must be done.  The rewards here are hard to argue with.  If the leaflets really have managed to shut down Kaesong and deprive the regime of a multi-billion-dollar source of South Korean money — though I admit to having some doubts about this — one can say that these balloons have been more effective than a few dozen J-DAMS.  (Send your tax-deductible contributions to the North Korean Freedom Coalition!)  The activists have also brought much publicity to their cause.

Lee’s actions, on the other hand, are a disgraceful and preemptive surrender of South Koreans’ freedom to speak in the face of terroristic yet patently empty threats.  But if South Korea is unwilling to defend the freedom of its citizens to speak and to engage with the North Korean people, he’s surrendering principles for which many good men ostensibly fought and died.

It won’t end with leaflets, either.  The precedent this sets won’t have to extend far before North Korea demands the end of defector radio broadcasts, too.  As the brilliant and insightful Brian R. Myers reminds us, the North Koreans long ago managed, through Kim Dae Jung, to get South Korean TV anchors to refer to His Porcine Majesty as “National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong Il.“  Who believes that this regime will be satisfied at keeping free speech from the eyes and ears of its subjects, when it claims South Korea as its territory, too?

How should the activists react to this?  By seizing on the opportunity this creates.  I admit to having my reservations about launching these leaflets from the sea when the Pueblo incident taught us all how creatively North Korea interprets the limits of its territorial waters.  A North Korean seizure of a leaflet boat won’t endear those activists to South Koreans and would probably result in a ransom demand.  A safer and more effective answer would be to start launching these things from South Korea itself, inviting reporters to clandestine launches and playing a well publicized cat-and-mouse game with the South Korean police.  That would have the advantage of making Lee pay a political price for his cowardice.  If activists were arrested and put on trial, the activists would have another venue to generate publicity for their cause.

A few leaflets, after all, aren’t going to overthrow the rule of the Cult.  They may, however, modify the behavior of governments through humiliation, help derail policies that amount to appeasement, and capture the attention of the press — and the publc — through imagination.

Can we finally dispense with the whole “no gay in Korea” myth … ?

November 19, 2008 Korean Law, Korean Society, ROK Military One comment

… now that the Korean Supreme Court is considering the case of a certain “Sergeant A?”

A sergeant identified only as “A” was initially booked on a charge of making a sexual attack on a private in a platoon that he led, but the suit against him was dropped with the victim’s consent. However, the sergeant has been newly charged for violation of Clause 92 of military criminal law.  [Joongang Ilbo]

In the American system, cases very rarely become “test cases” unless there is (a) a live case or controversy and (b) an error of law asserted by one of the parties.  The case of an accused barracks rapist would seem a poor choice for a test case by gay rights advocates, who may well lack the legal sophistication of their American counterparts.  Here, however, it appears that the military court itself sent this up to the Supreme Court for review, which may reveal yet another way in which the Korean system differs from ours.  I had to wince at this dubious citation of authority:

The military court argued that considering today’s currents, it seems excessive to sentence those engaged in consensual sex to prison.

“Not only in foreign countries, but also in Korea, the national consciousness about homosexuality is changing [to be more open] as films, plays and novels dealing with homosexuality earn publicity and social gatherings of homosexuals increase in number,” the court said in its ruling.

Right.  And as authority for our new landmark decision, we cite “The King and the Clown,” scene six.  With that sort of logic, it’s not hard to imagine a judge citing “The Host,” the completely fictionalized film “No Gun Ri,” or taking judicial notice of the equally fictionalized U.S. beef controversy to support a conviction or enhanced penalties for an American tried in a Korean court.  In a country as polarized and volatile as Korea, taking the measure of “today’s currents” seems an exceptionally imprecise and undemocratic way to interpret a constitution.

Related:  The Korean Supreme Court has ruled in favor of granting refugee status to a Chinese democracy activist, reversing a 2005 decision that would have allowed the repatriation of the activist and two family members.  For all of his claims to liberalism, Roh was always more deferential toward the rights of dictatorships to oppress than to the rights of individuals to express themselves. Technically, the Korean judiciary is supposed to be independent, but I’ve noticed a suspicious alignment between court decisions and the views of the elected branches.  I guess the ability to cite “today’s currents” gives you all the flexibility you need for that.

Who Needs a Contingency Plan? Everyone Near North Korea

November 18, 2008 Reconstruction, Regime Change 17 comments

The most persuasive evidence I’ve yet seen that there is a real danger of instability in North Korea comes from the people who probably have the best intelligence about events in Pyongyang:

The Chinese military has boosted troop numbers along the border with North Korea since September amid mounting concerns about the health of Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, according to US officials.

Beijing has declined to discuss contingency plans with Washington, but the US officials said the Peoples’ Liberation Army has stationed more soldiers on the border to prepare for any possible influx of refugees due to instability, or regime change, in North Korea.  [....]
One official cautioned that the increase in Chinese troops was not “dramatic”, but he said China was also constructing more fences and installations at key border outposts. Wang Baodong, the Chinese embassy spokesman in Washington, said he was unaware of any increased deployments.  [Financial Times, Demetri Sevastopulo and Song Jung-a]

With fuel prices high and given the likely high cost of deploying the military to Tibetan regions recently, I doubt the Chinese would move those troops without the support of reliable intelligence.  I don’t doubt that China has plans which it updates frequently.  That’s a great deal easier when you don’t have to cooperate with other governments.
And what of the Americans?  We had a contingency plan once, and it was known as Oplan 5029.  The plan, written in the Cold War days before North Korea descended into economic and social collapse, is overdue for an update.  Former President Roh Moo Hyun ended South Korea’s participation in 5029 planning out of fear that he’d give offense to the very people who reduced North Korea to a sooty, barren, diseased prison.

If the details of 5029 need revisiting, so does the big picture — especially the question of who will occupy and rebuild the North.  Robert Kaplan, and later, Capt. Jonathon Stafford, have been warning us about the changed circumstances surrounding that question for a while now.  It took Lee Myung Bak’s election and reports of Kim Jong Il’s incapacitation to awaken a few minds from their slumber.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has thrown his weight behind renewed calls from the U.S. to turn a conceptual scheme to deal with sudden contingencies in North Korea into a concrete action plan. Conplan 5029, long on the shelves because the previous South Korean government felt it interfered with sovereignty issues, is once again on the cusp of being turned into an operational plan.

A government source on Tuesday said Gates’ call came at the 40th bilateral Security Consultative Meeting in Washington on Oct. 17 to Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee. [Chosun Ilbo]

A Financial Times editorial calling for contingency planning notably includes China in the states to be involved in the planning, which raises the possibility of some fairly unrealistic expectations.  China neither means us well nor shares our interests in the region.  It won’t participate in a spirit of cooperation or collegiality, and it will probably do its utmost to frustrate the goal of a unified and democratic Korea.  But China doesn’t want war any more than we do, which is why I hope that our diplomats are working on some quiet understandings with the Chinese about whose forces will enter Korea in the event of internecine fighting or outright collapse.

The best solution for China, the United States, and Korea would be a secret agreement that Koreans alone should occupy and rebuild North Korea.

Freedom Isn’t Free

November 17, 2008 An Alliance?, U.S. & Korea One comment

USFK has announced that a battalion of Apache attack helicopters, comprising some 24 aircraft and half of USFK’s Apache strength, will leave Korea for Ft. Carson.  The choppers are expected to redeploy to Afghanistan and Iraq later on.

Washington had in the past tried to redeploy some of its Apache helicopters from Korea, but such moves were often met with strong opposition from the government in Seoul, which feared a possible reduction of U.S. strength here.

“The situation we are facing today is that there is only a certain number of Apache helicopters the Army has and the Army is struggling to meet their requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the source said of Washington’s need to redeploy the attack helicopters from Korea.  [Joongang Ilbo]

Not to worry, says the USFK — it will send over a dozen A-10 attack aircraft … but only temporarily.  The Chosun Ilbo wonders what will replace the A-10′s.  Personally, I nominate Korea’s new miracle helicopter, which was supposed to be a cornerstone of that whole “independent defense” concept, which in practice meant that Korea would cut its own defense spending, rely more than ever on American soldiers and taxpayers, and simultaneously undermine U.S. interests and declare itself neutral in any potential conflict in the region.  The other option under consideration, which I recommend on behalf of all U.S. taxpayers, is for the ROK government to purchase 36 of our certified pre-owned Apaches.

Last April, the USFK announced that a squadron of 20 F-16′s would also be leaving.

Korea’s new president may have reconsidered the wisdom of Roh’s neutrality stance and defense cuts, but he’s been no more reasonable than his predecessor on cost sharing.  Naturally, this leads me to wonder whether there’s any linkage between this sudden announcement and South Korea’s pigheaded refusal to kick in more than 43% of the cost of its own defense, even as United States is fighting two wars with negligible Korean assistance:

“The U.S. claims the total annual spending for the troops reaches $5 billion. It demands South Korea share the burden for half of the non-personnel stationing costs, excluding $2 billion in wages for U.S. soldiers,” the official said on condition of anonymity. The two nations ended the fourth round of talks over how much Seoul should pay for the presence of U.S. troops the day before.

South Korea provided the U.S. with 725.5 billion won in cash last year and is expected to pay the same amount this year with an adjustment for inflation under the Special Measures Agreement (SMA). When the deal was reached in late 2006, one dollar was worth about 950 won. The exchange rate now hovers at around 1,400 won against the greenback.

Seoul pays the share in won instead of dollars as the money is largely used to pay wages for Korean employees at U.S. military bases and to construct facilities here.  “South Korea’s annual contributions to the non-personnel stationing costs comprises direct cash aid and indirect assistance, such as rent for military bases, public fees, and tax breaks, namely fixed costs,” the official said.  [Yonhap]

Meaning that South Korea is careful to make sure that its contributions to USFK, such as they are, go straight back into the Korean economy.  The two nations had disagreed on what percentage of USFK’s upkeep Seoul really was paying, in part because of exchange rates and the U.S. desire to factor in the cost of relocating the Second Infantry Division to Camp Humphreys, which the Koreans were resisting.  Talks on some of these “contentious” issues were to reconvene later this month.

My favorite South Korean proposal on cost sharing was the brilliant idea of paying USFK in kind with various Korean-made goods, from Lee Myung Bak’s favorite vendors, no doubt.  Amazingly, there might actually have been a way to do this legally, but Korea’s insistence that its “burden sharing” funds go to pay the salaries of Korean nationals has already gotten USFK into hot water.  This recent DOD IG report dinged USFK for using burden sharing funds to pay for Non-Appropriated Fund instrumentalities, such as the Dragon Hill Lodge.  In other words, Korean restrictions on the use of the funds it contributes means those funds are less of a contribution to Korea’s own defense than they appear to be.  The IG report may well have been a last straw for some of the folks in the Pentagon.

Good to see that the process of weaning the ROK from The National Tit continues.  Everyone, raise your cups or glasses to James Shinn, the able successor to cost-sharing hawk Richard Lawless. 

I wonder where those stubborn Korean negotiators were when their government summarily forked over a $20 million ransom to the Taliban.  I still wonder how many Americans and Afghans that ransom money killed.

Correction: In an earlier version of this post, I incorrectly stated that Shinn was of Korean ancestry. My apologies for the error.

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