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Category: Japan & Korea

January 1, 2018

How Kim Jong-un, China & the autumn gales set a death trap for North Korea’s fishermen

By now, you’ve probably seen the ghastly reports of boats from North Korea washing up against the Japanese coastline with the desiccated or skeletal remains of their crews. You’ve probably also read reports speculating about why. This post will sift through dozens of those reports, discard the theories that the evidence refutes, and assemble the more plausible ones into a coherent explanation that the evidence supports. As it turns out, most of what you’ve read about North Korea’s ghost ships...

Categories Capitalism/China & Korea/Class Warfare/Japan & Korea/Resistance
March 8, 2017

China is waging economic war against S. Korea. We must stand by our ally.

Less than two years ago, I wrote of the coming Korea missile crisis. That crisis has now arrived. As I’ve documented at this site, that crisis is, in large part, a crisis of China’s making. North Korean missiles are made in part from Chinese technology, in large part from components purchased in or smuggled through China, and that are almost always procured by North Korean agents who operate more-or-less openly on Chinese soil. North Korea’s missiles ride on Chinese trucks....

Categories An Alliance?/China/China & Korea/Japan & Korea
February 2, 2016

Of the North’s crimes against humanity, the world will ask, “Where was South Korea?”

South Korea’s political left, which has long been divided over whether to be violently pro-North Korean, ideologically pro-North Korean, or merely anti-anti-North Korean, has again blocked a vote in South Korea’s National Assembly on a North Korean human rights law that’s been languishing there since 2005. The law itself is weak bori-cha. It had been watered down until it did little more than fund NGOs seeking direct engagement with the North Korean people. But even as a symbolic gesture, as a...

Categories Human Rights/Japan & Korea/Korean Law/Korean Politics/North-South
August 29, 2014

The WaPo has noticed how Korean-Americans’ political power

… in northern Virginia has grown dramatically in recent years, and accuses politicians of “pandering” to them. To that, I’d ask you to name any well-organized constituency that can’t make a politician pander now and then, and I’ll show you a constituency that isn’t organized at all. We have the worst political system there is, except for all of the others, and in our political system, constituencies matter very much. The WaPo dwells on what it doesn’t like about the...

Categories History/Japan & Korea/U.S. Politics
August 3, 2014

U.S. urges Japan to rejoin coalition against N. Korea

When Japan’s ransom deal with North Korea threatened to fracture the regional coalition pressuring Pyongyang to end its nuclear programs, I was critical of the Obama Administration for failing to use its influence to prevent Japan’s defection. As leaks to the Japanese press have since confirmed, however, someone in the White House subsequently arrived a similar conclusion. Soon thereafter, the administration began some desperate behind-the-scenes diplomacy to press Japan to get back on the team: A senior White House official said the...

Categories Abductions/Japan & Korea
December 12, 2009

Once Again, More Slowly: Isolating the North Korean People Only Helps Kim Jong Il

Now it’s a Japanese government minister suggesting that Japan shouldn’t grant visas to North Korean athletes. I fear an important distinction is being lost here. On the one hand, I strongly agree with the need to isolate the North Korean regime financially — to do no harm, to refuse to sustain or legitimize an evil system of government. On the other hand, I recognize that maintaining the isolation of the North Korean people actually helps sustain that system. Because the...

Categories Deprogramming/Japan & Korea
November 6, 2009

So Far, Few Hints that Japan’s N. Korea Policy Will Shift

Sure, there’s been plenty of cross-Pacific bitching about U.S.-Japan alliance and basing issues, but there’s no sign that Prime Minister Hatoyama will shift Japan’s North Korea policy yet.  Japan is showing off its ability to shoot down North Korean missiles, and for now, Japan’s government is adhering to a hard line on North Korea and discouraging America from departing from one. The abduction issue is highly emotional in Japan, and Hatoyama probably couldn’t provide aid, loosen trade restrictions, or open...

Categories Japan & Korea
March 4, 2009

Japan Threatens to Shoot Down North Korean Missile

I wonder how this would play on the Korean street, North and South: The Japanese government could deploy two arsenal ships equipped with the latest Aegis radar system and interceptor Standard Missile in the East Sea if North Korea continues to prepare for a missile test, the Kyodo news agency reported Tuesday citing a senior official at the Japanese Ministry of Defense…. Tokyo warned North Korea it would intercept not only missiles but also a satellite launched by the communist...

Categories Japan/Japan & Korea
February 26, 2009

Japanese Human Rights Group Launches Spam Fax Campaign Against N. Korea

The Japanese NGO ReACH, which advocates for the return of abducted Japanese citizens and for human rights in North Korea, has assembled a long list of known North Korean fax numbers, which I’ve published here for all the world to see, below the fold. REACH is calling on Japan’s massive community of netizens (and you, too!) to send spam faxes to these numbers, and offers some recommendations to maximize the subversive/disruptive effect if you decide to join the fun: –...

Categories Abductions/Activism/Japan & Korea
September 1, 2008

Get a Load of This Aso.

The tepid and unpopular Yasuo Fukuda, who showed signs of softening Japan’s policies toward North Korea, is out, and Foreign Minister Taro Aso looks like the front-runner to replace him.  Fukuda recently installed former Foreign Minister Taro Aso as secretary-general of the ruling party. Aso has kept a low profile during nearly all of Fukuda’s term and could be seen as offering a fresh start for the party.  [AP] Is this good news or bad news?  The answer is “yes!” ...

Categories Japan/Japan & Korea
July 30, 2008

Tokdo: Now Officially the Dumbest International Crisis in History

… thus supplanting all of that Seige of Troy unpleasantness. I cannot say that South Korea would be much the worse for having dismissed Ambassador Lee Tae Shik from his post, but that is incidental to the skull-smacking stupidity of why: The government on Monday decided to call Korean Ambassador to the U.S. Lee Tae-shik to account if it is found that the embassy did not react promptly to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names listing Dokdo under “undesignated sovereignty.”...

Categories An Alliance?/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/Korean Society
July 1, 2008

Oops, We Changed the Wrong Regime

People can differ about the merits of overthrowing noxious regimes and the various ways that can be pursued, but I’m guessing this is one item Condoleezza Rice wasn’t pursuing for her legacy showcase: Rice’s sudden turnabout on de-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism may soon plunge the Japanese government into crisis. Japan must now decide whether to join the United States in providing aid to a country that kidnaps and refuses to account for unknown numbers of...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks
June 1, 2008

Two More Japanese Escape from N. Korea

The Asahi Shimbun reported on the 26th that a Japanese woman and her 40-year-old son, both of whom defected from North Korea, are being sheltered by the authorities in Jilin, China. The 73-year-old woman, from Sendai in Japan, migrated to North Korea after her husband joined the Chongryon (General Association of North Korean Residents in Japan) in 1967, and defected from North Korea, reportedly due to the famine, across the Tumen River this spring. According to the Japanese newspaper, while...

Categories Abductions/Japan & Korea
May 29, 2008

NK Hints More Japanese Abductees May Be Freed

The Japanese NGO ReACH, which advocates on behalf of the families of Japanese abducted by the North Korean regime, is active in Washington D.C. and sometimes sends me e-mails with interesting information.  Today, they inform me that the award-winning “Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story” will air on the PBS program Independent Lens on Tuesday, June 19th, at 10 p.m. Eastern.  (If anyone can find links for listings in their local areas, I’d appreciate it if you’d post them in the...

Categories Abductions/Japan & Korea
May 28, 2008

Equality, Fraternity, Atrocity

A group of lawmakers plans to submit a bill to the Diet mandating government financial compensation for Korean and Taiwanese former Class B and Class C war criminals and their surviving families.  The move, led by Kenta Izumi, a Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) Lower House member, could come as early as the current Diet session. At issue are those who worked as guards of POWs for the Imperial Japanese military during World War II. The non-Japanese were later denied...

Categories History/Japan/Japan & Korea