Search Results for: Korean Teachers' Union

August 7, 2006

Fifth Column Watch

Conspiracy theories always labor against a presumption of neurotic inspiration, but even paranoid people have real enemies, and some conspirators make the error of supporting such theories with their own words. (In the conspiracy business, Rule Number One is, “Be discreet.”) Recently, I finally got around to compiling some of the public statements by leaders of South Korean labor unions and political groups that would support a reasonable inference that those groups were either willing servants of the North Korean...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
July 26, 2006

Reading, Writing, Rodong

One reason I don’t think the North Koreans would invade South Korea is the simple fact that their infiltration of the South has been so successful as to render war unnecessarily strenuous. Now, the powerful and well funded Korean Teachers’ Union — remember them? — is caught in the act of flogging juche to its members. The ultimate recipients would have been South Korean kids. Although the KTU didn’t disclose the source of its information, this should have been a...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Education/Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
June 30, 2006

Collaborators, You Say?

I’m certainly no expert on those who collaborated to enslave their brothers under fascist tyranny six decades ago. Some may have done genuinely awful things; others may have been “mere” profiteers. Some may have acted more voluntarily than others. The passage of six decades certainly complicates such questions. That’s why there are statutes of limitations. On the other hand, I can’t help but note the absence of any official list with more contemporary application, so here’s my effort at a...

Categories Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column
May 17, 2006

The UniFiction Church Choir

Progress at Last! The last seven years of the Sunshine policy have finally secured a legacy Roh can campaign on. Goodbye “sea of fire,” hello, “deluge of fire!” I’d like to see those neocon skeptics deny that “deluge” beats “sea” any day of the week! This from the lovable North Korean site “Within Our Race” (a rough translation). ================ Who Stopped My Peace Train? My money is on this not being the last obstacle that bars the path of Kim...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Europe/Human Rights/Humor/Satire/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Education/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Unintended Humor/WTF?
May 9, 2006

In a Word, ‘Predictable’

Who haven’t we heard from yet? The Korean Teachers’ Union, which infamously celebrated 9/11 in [a] video for Busan schoolkids before the last APEC summit. I can hardly wait. — The Korea Liberator, April 10, 2006 “Hollywood movies like “˜Spider-Man’ and “˜Batman’ will dominate our movie industry and we will be brainwashed by American ideology.” — Actor Choi Man-Shik, brainwashing public high school kids at a KTU-sponsored harangue. The reception, overall, was mixed.

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Society/NK Economics/Uncategorized/Unintended Humor/WTF?
April 10, 2006

The FTA Debate Is Turning Ugly

FTA negotiations will likely magnify “anti-American” sentiments in the short run and unleash a backlash in America. — Balbina Hwang, March 2, 2006 There are really three premises to this post, all of them leading to one conclusion: First, a Korean-American free trade agreement would be a good thing for both countries, but particularly for Korea. Second, despite that being demonstrably the case, the usual suspects see the FTA as an opportunity to ride to power on the shoulders of...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Korean Education/Korean Politics/Media Criticism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
January 9, 2006

Competition for the KTU?

The America-hating, 9/11-celebrating Korean Teachers’ Union is about to get some competition: A new teachers’ union opposing the Korean Teachers and Education Worker`s Union (KTU) will be launched in March. It announced that it would engage in an education campaign that practices free democracy based on the Korean constitution and respects the rights of students, and that it would develop into an organization that will replace the KTU. In other words, it announced that it would become a rational organization...

Categories Uncategorized
November 1, 2005

Minister of Historical Amnesia

Updated again Nov. 3; thanks to reader usinkorea for the hat tip; thanks to the Marmot for linking and to his readers for stopping by. Once again, anti-Unification Minister Chung Dong Young has opened his mouth, and once again, nothing good came out of it. The latest nominal justification for giving Chung a supply of ink so far out of proportion to his intellect is the 55th anniversary of the Korea Times. Chung’s first sentence, however, makes it apparent that...

Categories Uncategorized
November 28, 2017

The crocodiles of Pyongyang: A remembrance of Zimbabwe & thoughts on the fall of tyrants

The man who terminated the 37-year misrule of Robert Mugabe last week and then took his job is a general named Emmerson Mnangagwa with a history as ominous as his nickname: “the Crocodile.” Long one of Mugabe’s most ruthless cronies, Mnangagwa’s resume includes leading Zimbabwe’s feared Central Intelligence Organization and dispatching the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to Matabeleland in the early 1980s to wage a pogrom that killed up to 20,000 members of the minority Ndebele tribe. He draws support...

Categories Africa/Regime Change
June 22, 2017

Moon Chung-In’s visit was a fiasco. Moon Jae-In’s summit with Trump might be the next one.

Next week, South Korean President Moon Jae-In will arrive in Washington for his first meeting with President Trump. North Korea policy is certain to be at the top of their agenda. Months ago, I predicted that the combination of Moon Jae-In and Donald Trump would be a uniquely volatile one, and all the indications so far are bearing this prediction out. Volumes of august and cerebral analysis may soon be nullified by 140 characters. This is partially (but only partially)...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
April 26, 2017

How Moon Jae-in rode a wave of violent anti-Americanism from obscurity to power

Like Roh Moo-hyun, the President he served, Moon Jae-in’s ideological origins are found within the leftist lawyers’ group Minbyun (which has since become Pyongyang’s instrument for intimidating North Korean refugees in the South). As lawyers defending left-wing radicals and pro-democracy activists alike against the right-wing dictatorship, Moon and Roh became close friends and law partners in Pusan. Moon went on to become the legal advisor to the Pusan branch of the Korea Teachers’ and Educational Workers’ Union, a radicalized union...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
June 8, 2015

Guerrilla Engagement: A strategy for regime replacement and reconstruction in North Korea

~ 1 ~ One day, either this President or the next one will awaken to the realization that the regime in Pyongyang is collapsing, and that he has just inherited the costliest, messiest, and riskiest nation-building project since the Marshall Plan. The collapse of North Korea will present South Korea – and by extension, its principal treaty ally, the United States – with a nation-building challenge unlike any in recent history. After all, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria all had some...

Categories Capitalism/Reconstruction/Regime Change/Resistance/Subversion
July 11, 2014

Open Sources, July 11, 2014

~   1   ~ I SUSPECT THAT SOMEONE LIKE KURT CAMPBELL would have been a better man for the job, but I wish John Kerry the best of luck in his discussions with the Chinese: “China shares the same strategic goal, and we discussed the importance of enforcing U.N. Security Council resolutions that impose sanctions on North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile program,” Kerry said. However, Kerry said China needs to do more in reining in its...

Categories Anju Links
January 14, 2011

Open Sources

I’ve been looking forward to Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard’s new book on North Korea, refugees, and public opinion for a long time now. I don’t have a copy of my own yet (ahum! – not that I’d find the time to read it these days). But thankfully, Evan Ramstad interviews Noland at the WSJ’s indispensable Korea Real Time. __________________________________ It’s a diplomatic breakthrough: The Onion reports. Love those jackets. __________________________________ A Different Kind of Different Kind of War: Uriminzokkiri,...

Categories Anju Links
June 16, 2010

A Nation in Denial: On South Korea’s Mid-Terms

I’ve taken a good long while to chew on the results of South Korea’s recent election, and while I’m ready to offer some unscientific speculation about what it didn’t mean, I really wish that I had some good, reliable polling numbers to give me a more concrete idea of what motivated people to vote, and what didn’t. With that said, my main interest in the results (below the fold for the winners) is the media consensus that it was rebuke...

Categories Cheonan Incident/Korean Politics
March 26, 2010

Don’t Know Much About History

Just the latest example of historical myopia from the kids in South Korea. As the university was announcing the plans, the Chosun Ilbo reported a Gallup poll in Korea that showed 62.9 percent of teens and 58.2 percent in their 20s did not know when the Korean War broke out. Also, only 43.9 percent of those surveyed said North Korea is to blame for starting the Korean War, with the figure among teenagers 38 percent and 36 percent for 20-somethings....

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Education/Korean History/Korean War/U.S. & Korea
May 28, 2009

Memories of an African Student Forced to Study in North Korea During the 1980s

Aliou Niane was born in Guinea West Africa, but due to decisions he had no control over, he found himself in North Korea from 1982-87. He is currently writing his memoir in French about the years he spent there and generously agreed to an email interview. Niane’s story is interesting, if not for the insider’s look he can give into what life was like for a foreigner living in North Korea during the 1980s, but also for the information he...

Categories Africa/Inside NK
February 4, 2009

New Reports Accuse N. Korea of Starving and Exploiting Kids

Barring a few privileged exceptions, the lives of children are dirt cheap north of the DMZ. Last year, UNICEF and the World Food Program reported that 40% of North Korea’s children are chronically malnourished. The children in this video are mostly orphans; they’re homless kids known as “kotjaebi.” They began to appear on the streets of North Korean cities after the Great Famine killed or displaced many of their parents. They live by begging, stealing, foraging on trash, or getting...

Categories Uncategorized