Monthly Archive: September, 2005

Another Setback for Ethnic Purity: “U.S. Envoy to Woo Young Koreans.”

From the Korea Times: Assets, totaling $31.7 million, of the Choson Mining Trade Company, Choson Ryonbong General Company and Danchong Commercial Bank have been frozen since July 1 when Executive Order 13382 came into effect, the ministry said in a report to Rep. Kim Won-wung of the ruling Uri Party. The three companies were allegedly responsible for importing and exporting the missile parts. The amount of North Korean assets are the fourth largest to be frozen, following $1.24 billion from...

I just knew this would happen. If you haven’t seen my analysis of why North Korea’s recent statements are in direct conflict with the terms to which it agreed at the last session of six-party talks, you can read it here. To summarize it, the North agreed to rejoin the NPT “at and early date,” which would require it to let in inspectors, reveal its uranium enrichment program, and hand over its nuclear weapons. The other parties agreed to “consider”...

No wonder South Korea’s leftist thugs are trying to shut down Radio Free NK (as the South Korean police seemingly do as little as possible about it). It has published what it purports to be pictures and video of North Korean border guards abusing a female prisoner. Obviously, there is no way to confirm the pictures’ authenticity, and I must admit to some skepticism that anyone would have dared to take video like this. Still, the treatment is relatively mild...

You will not believe who is coming to South Korea “at last. Read the article and tell me if you think those words are as pregnant with trouble as I think they are. Personally, I think the entire Ohno spectacle was divine justice for every time some ajjumma or ajjashi has shoved me aside on the subway, but I fear this will get very, very ugly. Thanks to a reader for the tip.

What’s Odd About These Pictures? I’m not even Christian, and I still loved this report about North Korean defectors sending cheap rubber “Bible balloons” into North Korea. Something about the joyful futility of it appeals to me. Since no one won the cookie last week, who else notices something about these North Koreans that’s noticeably different from other North Koreas you see in pictures?

It’s time to add another entry to Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-Bak’s dossier. His government appears to have had an extraordinary financial relationship with Korea’s second-largest trade union organization, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions: According to the petition, [FKTU Seoul branch chairman Lee Hui-Sang] used 470 million won ($450,000) of subsidies from the Seoul Metropolitan Government for his own purposes. The city government has subsidized the Seoul branch of the federation to the tune of 1.1 billion won “• an...

Other News of the Sordid: Everything you ever wanted to know about Kim Jong-Il’s harem (yes, except for video . . . perv!) is in the Daily NK. Authentication of these stories certainly presents some problems, but the accounts here are consistent with those in Jasper Becker’s Rogue Regime.

Thanks to the reader who forwarded this. I’ll simply print this letter from the British Ambassador to Korea to the Chosun Ilbo in its entirety. Dear Sir, I have been saddened to read that a group of protestors attacked and called for the removal of the statue of the U.S. general MacArthur in Incheon. The statue was erected to commemorate the Incheon Landing, which he led, and which was one of the most decisive interventions of the Korean War. British...

He walked from North Korea to Thailand on the stumps where his feet once were. Explain to me again why the people of North Korea are programmed robots who lack the will to resist tyranny.

One theory of the unravelling of the six-party statement is that it’s a translation problem. Behind that theory roars the powerful propulsive force of wishful thinking. Although the North Koreans themselves were responsible for any translations that announced the repudiation of the agreed terms, this piece suggests, and plausibly, that there was plenty of ambiguity–much of it deliberate–when it came to finer points such as “dismantle” versus “abandon.” Is the ambiguity studied? Perhaps. On the one hand, this was never...

South Korea’s Ambassador to the United States, Hong Seok-Hyun, has finally left office.

Their coverage of Middle Eastern affairs may be distorted and venemous, but the BBC’s coverage of the next Great Famine is a public service to the world: North Korea has formally told the UN it no longer needs food aid, despite reports of malnutrition in the country. . . . Top UN relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland said an “abrupt” end to food aid would harm North Korea’s most vulnerable. . . . Analysts say North Korea might be worried that...

I simply don’t have the time to give this New York Times op-ed by Jason Lim a careful reading and thorough comment, but it suggests that the World Food Program has either backed down from or reversed its accomodation of North Korea’s no-strings “development aid” demands (or that original reports were not accurate). If so, kudos for the WFP. More later, when I have more time. Update: OK, read it. No, it doesn’t appear that the WFP has changed its...

The Chosun Ilbo discusses some of the obstacles–insurmountable, in my view–to an agreement on denuclearizing North Korea. And of course, reaching an agreement is one thing; making it stick is another. There’s a category four moral equivalency alert near the end of the piece, where it suggests that U.S. and North Korean “hard-liners” are to peace what Scylla and Charibdis are to ancient Greek shipping: [N]egotiations could equally run into problems if U.S. neoconservatives raise the North’s human rights record...

Congress’s Korea reading for the day. What does this tell me? That congressional Republicans and some of their key staffers are livid at Roh and his party, and the fact that he treats the red-vests like they’re his base. Triangulation won’t work this time. Roh will have to denounce the red-vests and their violent methods or face more of the open congressional hostility we saw here. Chung Dong-Young in particular would be well advised to remember who appropriates the funds...

Updated; scroll down. We are now four months from the next Great North Korean Famine, and rather than making the urgent and public appeals that could stop it, the United Nations is issuing a permit. Just one month after the World Food Program issued an urgent appeal stating that 6.5 million North Koreans depend on its food aid for their survival, it has capitulated to North Korea’s demand to cease delivering food aid in favor of “development aid” that will...

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