Search Results for: Lee Seok fifth column

Fifth Column Watch

The arrest of Lee Seok-Ki and his merry band of fifth column plotters is also uncovering a lot of the United Progressive Party’s publicly funded rackets: The ministry cited the Suwon Self-Support Community Center as an example. The center’s job is to support people receiving government welfare; it received 1.7 billion won ($1.6 million) from the city government this year. But this center also urged its clients to join the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) and demanded that workers at the center...

National Assembly approves arrest of Lee Seok-Gi

South Korea’s National Assembly has voted to revoke leftist fringe party lawmaker Lee Seok-Gi’s parliamentary immunity and allow his arrest for sedition and “praising North Korea.” This makes it all sound like something a banana republic would charge an opponent with, but in fact, Lee really stands accused of leading something called the Revolutionary Organization and “conspir[ing] to storm firearms depots to secure weapons, destroy oil-storage and communication facilities and assassinate unspecified figures.” The leadership of the main left-opposition Democratic...

Fifth Column Watch

I haven’t really had time to follow the story of the United Progressive Party as carefully as I’d have liked; South Koreans who are avowedly pro-North are a constant source of fascination to me. In South Korea, political parties break up, re-form, and re-brand every election season. During the most recent National Assembly election, the far left was represented by the UPP, which occupies approximately the same position as the former Democratic Labor Party. The largest UPP faction is openly...

S. Korean Spymaster Resigns; Fifth Column Scandal Widens

Here, as foreshadowed in Update 6 to this post.   Like Lee, NIS  Chief Kim Seung-Kyu  must be  resigning to celebrate the success of his tenure. Following Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, who expressed his wish to quit in mid-November to prepare for his new job as the U.N. secretary-general, Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung and Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok offered to resign earlier this week, holding themselves responsible for “confused” policies on the North Korean nuclear crisis and the Seoul-Washington military alliance....

New head of S. Korea’s ruling party once said North’s abuses were “not something other countries can intervene in”

ON SATURDAY, SOUTH KOREA’S RULING “DEMOCRATIC” PARTY PICKED LEE HAE-CHAN as its new Chairman. Lee, who previously served as Prime Minister under Roh Moo-hyun, promised “unwavering efforts toward … inter-Korean peace.” The Joongang Ilbo calls him “a staunch liberal.” Lee replaces Choo Mi-ae, another “liberal” who was fond of making public threats to sue opposition politicians for criminal libel. In South Korea, the term is also broad enough to include the President’s Chief of Staff, Im Jong-seok, who as far...

Korean War II: A Hypothesis Explained, and a Fisking (Annotated)

(Update, May 2018: A hypothesis should to be tested by its predictive record. I’ve now watched, with growing alarm, how events since the publication of this post have validated it as a predictive model. I’ve recently gone back and embedded footnotes throughout, to indicate which specific predictions have been validated, or not.) In the last several months, as Pyongyang has revealed its progress toward acquiring the capacity to destroy an American city, the North Korea commentariat has cleaved into two...

Convicted N. Korean spy now protesting against sanctions in front of the Pentagon

Years before the Democratic Labor Party lawmaker Lee Seok-ki was recorded on a wiretap plotting violent attacks in support of a proposed North Korean invasion, the DLP was rocked by another North Korean fifth column scandal — the alleged Il Shim Hue spy ring. On October 24th, 2006, South Korea’s state intelligence agency, the NIS, arrested three men: Michael Jang, former Democratic Labor Party (DLP) central committee member Lee Jeong Hun, and the head of a private education institute, Son Jeong...

Breaking: Leftist S. Korean lawmaker gets 12-year sentence for pro-N. Korean sabotage plot

Yonhap is just reporting that a court in Suwon has handed down a 12-year sentence against leftist fringe lawmaker Lee Seok-Ki. Ouch. That’s a very tough sentence for South Korea, whose judicial system compensates for its loose rules of evidence (and the error rate that implies) with light and fluffy sentencing. When I was an Army Judge Advocate serving in Korea, I saw people get less than that for murder. On the other hand, prison conditions in South Korea are, shall...

In South Korea, a political realignment

When President Park speaks of reunification as a “jackpot,” she is seizing an issue that the left had “owned” for at least a dozen years. Ten years ago, the left could draw crowds of candle-carrying thirty-somethings to swoon about reunification, at least in the abstract. The dream was qualified, complicated, and hopelessly unrealistic, but it intoxicated them. The DMZ would have become a “peace park,”* the disputed waters of the Yellow Sea would have become a “peace zone,” and both...

Open Sources, November 14, 2013

 ~ 1 ~ KAESONG FAILWATCH:  A new report from the Daily NK, containing an interview with an employee of a South Korean company that manufactures textiles in Kaesong, largely validates my post from last week. The bottom line: companies are hiding how much operations suffered from the five-month shutdown to prevent further damage to their business, such as the loss of customers who may seek more reliable suppliers. This, of course, is my cue to publicize the fact that while...

Open Sources, October 2, 2013

~          1          ~ THREE CHEERS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST: Ever since Blaine Harden, Chico Harlan, and Max Fisher have covered the story, the Post‘s North Korea coverage has been leagues beyond that of any competitor, especially The New York Times. What’s really commendable is that the Post‘s editorial board draws the necessary conclusions from what its journalists are reporting: A COMMON illusion held by dictators is that they need only to shut the borders, turn...

Open Sources, Sept. 7, 2013

PRAISE BE TO ZEUS, I DON’T HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THAT IMBECILE DENNIS RODMAN again, because Sung Yoon Lee has already done it so much better than I could. It’s not an easy thing to write a fat joke with the subtlety a respected academic must use to get invited back on the PBS News Hour to (polemically speaking) deflower those paired with him–or to the Oval Office. Lee not only manages this, he begins with a silly-yet-tragic story about...

Leftist South Korean lawmaker sought for pro-North insurgency plot

No, as a matter of fact, it would not surprise me in the least if leftist fringe National Assemblyman and alleged Chosun Workers’ Party member Lee Seok-Gi was actively plotting to support a North Korean invasion by organizing violent fifth-column attacks in South Korea. Duh, he’s already been featured in a “fifth column watch” post. The UPP members allegedly had a plan to blow up infrastructure in the country, including communication networks, a district court official said, quoting court-issued warrants...

KCTU Politburo Resigns Over Rape Cover-Up

The executive board of the radical Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a violent organization with strong links to the pro-North Korean fifth column in South Korea, has resigned to atone for trying to cover up the attempted rape of a female union member by a “senior” union official: The Korea Confederation of Trade Unions says its entire executive board is stepping down to account for a sexual assault scandal. In a press briefing the KCTU said the leadership is resigning...

Next UniFiction Minister Was Convicted in 2002 Bribery Scheme; Still Under Suspended Prison Sentence Later Pardoned by Roh

Update:   According to this, Roh pardoned  Lee last year —  which, of course, changes everything except the appeanance of cronyism, whitewashing, back-scratching, and corruption. Funny, I don’t recall anyone mentioning that Lee Jae-Joung is a con. Lee taught at the Sung Kong Hoe University in Seoul and served as the university president from 1994 to 2000 when he joined the then-ruling Millennium Democratic Party to become a member of the 16th National Assembly. He helped found the governing Uri...

Roh’s New Cabinet Appointments Eschew Experience for Ideology

The Blue House has announced the new appointments for the Foreign, Defense, and UniFiction ministries, plus the new head of the National Intelligence Service. With the exception of Defense — to be filled by the Army Chief of Staff — the appointees look like a bunch of political hacks. I’ll update as I find out more. This post is adapted and updated from previous posts, including the scorecard I presented the other day. UniFiction