Monthly Archive: August, 2005

Original Post: “Seoul Asks Pyongyang to Confirm Fate of POWs.” Well, at least they’re finally asking. Update: James Chen e-mails a link to this must-read James Brooke report in the NY Times. Until recently, the former Southern soldiers, bent with age and hard labor in Northern coal mines, were forgotten human footnotes in a deeply divided peninsula. After the end of the Korea War, North Korea tried to ease a labor shortage by secretly holding back thousands of South Korean...

Do Pat Robertson and I actually agree on something? Not yet. Hugo Chavez is clearly a thug, an anachronism, a supporter of terrorists (principally, in Colombia), and a first-class S.O.B. This fall, Gordon Cucullu will publish a book alleging that Chavez is retailing North Korean heroin. That said, I see a vast gulf between how our government should deal with elected leaders and unelected ones. If there is a sanctifying event at which a government becomes legitimate, it’s called “election.”...

Roh will visit Central America in early September, after which he will head North to address the U.N. General Assembly Summit in New York. LiNK will be waiting for him: PROTEST! Roh Moo Hyun and South Korea’s official policy of negligence and silence on North Korea’s vast human rights abuses! South Korea’s President Roh Moo Hyun will be attending a special dinner with President George HW Bush (41) here in New York City. Let’s show the Korean government we do...

Michael Yon’s blog is of greater value in understanding what’s going on in the Iraq battlefield than the aggregate of all other news sources combined. The same goes for my level of interest in his reports and photos, versus the ground-up, churned-out, salted-down press releases that pass for news elsewhere: But then, without even giving the leaders at Deuce Four a head’s up, a typically entralling military press release went out to major, mainstream, media outlets. We all learned of...

Yesterday, a scant five days before his third birthday, my son made a first fateful step that can only lead to a life of elbow-patched tweed jackets, gently used Volvo wagons, and NPR tote bags. ewwwww. Me, to my wife: There’s a mosquito the room. My son, to me: I don’t yike mosquitoes. Me, to my son: I don’t like them either. They bite. My son, to me: I don’t yike mosquito bite. Me, to my son: I’m going to...

NK Siezes Chinese Fishing Boat? Sure, it could be as reported. Then again, there have already been two sea-borne defections near Baekyrong Island this year.

Here’s an amusing interlude to the gallant ride of the VANKyries. They’ve been hacked! Just as an aside, “East Sea” is directly east of one unnaturally divided country (plus a mostly-deserted stretch of Siberian coastline), while there’s only one large sea next to Japan’s home islands. Which is just one more reason why the VANKers should be seen for what they are: small, narrow, hissy minds with too much time on their hands. Update: I wonder how many more cheap...

So much for trying to set a positive atmosphere. According to the report, the United States raised the issue going into the latest round of talks, while South Korea (say it with me) questioned the report. Again, it’s always hard to say what’s going on up North, but any emissions from a chimney at Yongbyon is surely calculated to provoke. All of which shows how unserious the North is here. HT to Won Joon Choe.

Drug addicts in North Korea? So says the DailyNK.

Turnout was almost exactly 100, including media, but not including five of the District’s finest. Most of those present were members of Korean churches in Virginia. The pastors contributed most of the speaking talent there, and some where indeed very talented speakers. Several congressmen contributed statements which were read by various activists in attendance. As with the April protest, I doubt that our efforts inspired a flurry of urgent cables to Comrade Hu. On the other hand, we outnumbered the...

The other big news is that the White House, as expected, waited for a “decent interval” between negotiating sessions with North Korea to appoint Jay Lefkowitz as its Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea. The Washington Post printed a Reuters piece, which benefits from actually taking the trouble to contact the people who were behind the NKHRA in the first place: But U.S. officials said the appointment, announced by the White House, had been in the works for...

I just recently finished Jasper Becker’s Rogue Regime, and consider it the best North Korea book I’ve read yet. I haven’t read Bradley Martin’s book with the very long title yet, so I’m not in a position to compare the two, but the New Yorker is. They’ve published a superb side-by-side review of both books. You can tell Nick Kristof didn’t write this one. I echo The Marmot–it’s a must-read, and a good introduction to the kind of information you’ll...

When I interviewed Nick Eberstadt last week, I asked him how patient the United States was willing to be. Now, Chris Hill has told us. North Korea may well interpret this as obviating any compelling need to make progress before then. In the same article, Hill refused to comment on Chung Dong-Young’s latest diplomatic masterstroke, while repeating his insistence that the U.S. won’t accept any “peaceful” North Korean nuclear programs.

The GNP seems to have a fairly definite position on Roh Moo-Hyun’s invitation to form a coalition government. It might be difficult, however, to find a compromise point over the presidential suggestion, as GNP Chairwoman Park Geun-hye had dismissed the idea, saying, “[Discussion of a coalition government] is over. There is no reason for further negotiations as the GNP has already clarified its position. Any questions? I’d like a Korean perspective on this. I suspect that to Americans in particular,...

The UNHCR has a new representative in Seoul. Given that I didn’t even know the previous one even existed, she need not worry about the stress of meeting high expectations.

Have a look at this cryptic little graf: Following a meeting of its directors yesterday, Hyundai Asan Corp., a Hyundai Group subsidiary that handles business projects in North Korea, announced that Kim Yoon-kyu had been removed from his post as its chief executive amid allegations that he had engaged in unspecified questionable activities. “As a business manager, Mr. Kim behaved in a way that he shouldn’t have,” said a Hyundai Group official. “In doing so, he has put into question...

Six nations are currently in talks over the nuclear weapons possessed by one of them. North Korea, whose recent acquisition of nuclear weapons has raised such a ruckus probably acquired them during the 1990s. The acquistion was years in the making. It began with the procurement of a small amount of plutonium from the Soviet Union, with the North assuring the latter of its exclusively peaceful intentions. Later, after it had built a reactor in which to use and enrich...

Sometimes, I suspect that the South Korean press would declare a “watershed” if Kim Jong Il flushed a urinal: A poll conducted on Thursday by the JoongAng Ilbo found that South Korean politicians and the public have a more favorable perception of North Korea following this week’s joint inter-Korean Liberation Day celebrations, which took place in Seoul. The paper conducted a nationwide telephone survey of 811 men and women over 20 years of age. The margin of error was plus...