Search Results for: Il Shim Hue

The Daily NK looks back on the Il Shim Hue scandal, the investigation of which …

stopped suddenly when it reached the door of Roh Moo Hyun’s Blue House. See also my post from the time of the conviction, and follow the links if you care to read more. I heard somewhere that Michael Jang, the group’s convicted ringleader and a former USFK soldier, has completed his sentence and is now a “unification” activist in L.A. Can anyone confirm that?

Il Shim Hue Members Convicted, Sentenced, and Probably Confused

Somewhere, Kafka’s spirit is smiling. A South Korean court and has handed down guilty verdicts to five members of the Il Shim Hue spy ring individuals who had coincidentally all possessed similar loyalty oaths to the Lodestar of the Great Korean Race and received their pay and instructions at a safe house at 3089 Dongxuhuayuan, 18 Shuangqiaodong-lu, Zahoyang-qu, on the outskirts of Beijing. Bailiff! Read the verdict! A Seoul court convicted five people, including a Korean-American businessman, of spying for...

Il Shim Hue Member Planned Violent Attacks

A member of the Democratic Labor Party who was arrested Oct. 24 on charges of spying for North Korea reportedly told investigators he drew up plans for terror attacks against conservatives and influential government figures in the 1990s. What the report doesn’t clarify is just what methods were put into those plans, although investigators claim that the suspect, a DLP member named Park, tried to buy a gun. Any plan involving a deadly weapon would clearly be terrorism. MBN-TV reports...

Ex-NIS Chief Hints of Political Pressure in Il Shim Hue Investigation

The Chosun Ilbo spoke with  Kim Seong-Kew, who  just resigned as Chief of the National Intelligence Service. Read this and see what you make of it: Asked who will succeed him, Kim told the Chosun Ilbo it was “very important” who becomes the next NIS chief. “Some of the candidates are unsuitable due to concerns that they tend to do what [politicians] want them to do. Considering the presidential election next year and the operations of the NIS, the right...

South Korea’s illiberal left: authoritarians in the service of totalitarians

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. [Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19] In America, we have grown accustomed to a political polarity in which we associate “left” with “liberal.” Whatever the merits of that correlation here, it’s useless to any understanding of politics in South Korea, where very few people...

The Stillbirth of Sunshine Lite

SO PARK GEUN-HYE HASN’T EVEN BEEN INAUGURATED YET, and her plans to engage North Korea — she called them “trustpolitik” — are turning out just as I’d predicted they would, and just how Sung Yoon Lee predicted in the opening paragraphs of this piece — they’re being overcome by North Korea’s own plans: Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, has ordered his top military and party officials to take “substantial and high-profile important state measures” to retaliate against American-led United Nations sanctions on the country, the North’s...

Kim Jong Il Has a Vote, Too

It’s election day in South Korea. The South has retreated, for the moment, from its plans to use psyops to influence public opinion in North Korea, but the converse certainly isn’t true. North Korea has a well developed, firmly rooted cadre of sympathizers, fifth columnists, , and the occasional hit team in South Korea, and the National Intelligence Service thinks they were actively campaigning on election day: A South Korean intelligence officer on Tuesday said Pyongyang is posting articles on...

3 April 2009

THE WIFE AND CHILDREN OF NORTH KOREA’S TRADE REPRESENTATIVE in Shanghai have defected to the South: The woman, identified only as Ri, arrived in Seoul in early March through the South Korean Embassy in Singapore and is now going though questioning like other North Korean defectors, North Korean sources said. Ri reportedly sought protection at the embassy in Singapore in January while her husband was in Pyongyang for a meeting. She decided to defect to South Korea after a troubling...

Experts predict Lee Myung Bak’s behavior; Still no comment from Miss Cleo, Nostradamus, or KCNA

My “what to expect from Lee MB” updates have outgrown and seceded from this post. As for what we should expect from a Lee presidency, any prediction rows into some pretty treacherous water. Lee strikes me as a guy who begins with dry cost-benefit analysis, but one with an autocratic streak as wide as that asinine canal he’s proposing to build. Lee’s history and my gut suggest a term punctuated by emotional, stubborn, and vindictive behavior, which means that national...

FTA Agreement Reached FTA Talks Near Failure: The Death of an Alliance, Part 66

[Update 2: Well, as it turns out, the two sides did reach an agreement, although it’s not clear how comprehensive. Both sides — mainly us — made major last-minute concessions. Talks were ongoing until minutes before the legal deadline. Beef tariffs will be phased out over 15 years, which is a long time. (We’ll see if the Koreans actually accept the next shipment.) Korea also gets to protect its rice market. There’s really only one bright spot I can see:...

Cindy Sheehan, Kim Jong Il, and Me

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. — Martin Luther King, Jr. I will restrain the expression of  views on  Cindy Sheehan herself.  I’m one who makes allowances for the fact that she’s traumatized by her son’s death, an event that quite obviously and understandably blew a few of her circuits.  And while I’m sure that Casey  Sheehan  wouldn’t appreciate his mother’s hard work to render his sacrifice meaningless, I’m just as sure...

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...

Koreas agree to fight another day

They came, they talked, and they signed, but they solved nothing. Plus or minus one piece of paper, three severed legs, and an implicit promise of payment, we are where we were on the morning of August 4th, when Staff Sergeant Kim Jung-Won and Sergeant Ha Jae-Heon embarked on their fateful patrol. As I predicted hours before the deal was announced, Pyongyang didn’t apologize, and Seoul will continue to pay. The loudspeakers will be switched off. There will not be...

Unusual Suspects (1)

Update:  I see Robert had pretty much the same reaction. Maybe all that hand-wringing  about a Lee Myung Bak dictatorship isn’t so exaggerated after all:  Oh Se-cheol, a professor emeritus of Yonsei University and prominent leftwing academic, was arrested on Tuesday on charges of breaching the National Security Law. Oh’s arrest is seen as a start of a government crackdown on leftwing organizations which grew and expanded their realm of activities under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations. Seoul...

Anju Links for 29 Jan 08

BRING OUT YOUR  NOT-QUITE-DEAD:  “UN agency to conduct its first census since famine killed millions.”  If things don’t quite add up, try looking here. NOT LOOKING GOOD  FOR KEVIN G. HALL:  A reader e-mails a detailed article — co-written by Bradley K. Martin,  no less –that  drives a few 3-inch  sheetrock screws into the coffin of Hall’s piece of work.  If you’re not yet saying “enough already” to all of this, the updated post is  here. DAVID ALBRIGHT, CALL YOUR...

The Death of an Alliance, Part 67

[Update: As I had figured, only video really does it justice. Just watch the body language and Bush’s expression. And for that matter, Roh’s. Roh certainly has used his presidency to perfect a sublime aura of idiocy. It’s hard for me to imagine that South Korean voters will be impressed if their media ever decide to cover this story. There definitely isn’t much love in that room. Click the image. Update 1 continued below, with an AP report that does...

Nice Town. It’d Be a Shame If Something Happened to It.

If you thought North Korea bought its South Korean supporters, you underestimated just how unnatural this intercourse really is. We know the going rates for the various Il Shim Hue operatives were cheap, but South Korea’s violent far-left unions are actually helping to keep Korigula’s palaces stocked with Hennessey. South Korea’s unions, particularly the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, have a history of trashing public property during their demonstrations, so when they make extortionate demands for city funds to celebrate...

Eum, Yang, and Korean Diplomatic Courtesy

A few days ago, Occidentalism posted this absolutely priceless flowchart that is too telling by half about how some Koreans tend to scapegoat their way through real problems. I suppose the temptation to pin blame on others is human nature; that temptation is at its greatest when a solution to the underlying problem seems beyond reach. Witness the finger-pointing that followed last October’s nuke test (and the notable absence of constructive proposals accompanying it). I shouldn’t miss this opportunity to...