Monthly Archive: October, 2005

Korea-bashing is officially a bi-partisan sport: A newly hawkish U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday chastised South Korea for what she claimed was a fog of “historical amnesia” clouding its relationship with Washington. She said the alliance was at a “critical juncture. Clinton’s comments came during the confirmation hearing for Gen. Burwell Bell, President Bush’s nominee to command USFK. Clinton said the U.S. role in bringing about South Korea’s remarkable economic success since the Korean War was significant, but...

The New York Times, quoting high-level administration sources, is making the connection between U.S. law enforcement measures, the PSI, and diplomacy you’ve only seen here up to now: MOSCOW, Oct. 23 – The Bush administration is expanding what it calls “defensive measures” against North Korea, urging nations from China to the former Soviet states to deny overflight rights to aircraft that the United States says are carrying weapons technology, according to two senior administration officials. At the same time, the...

The New York Times, quoting high-level administration sources, is making the connection between U.S. law enforcement measures, the PSI, and diplomacy you’ve only seen here up to now: MOSCOW, Oct. 23 – The Bush administration is expanding what it calls “defensive measures” against North Korea, urging nations from China to the former Soviet states to deny overflight rights to aircraft that the United States says are carrying weapons technology, according to two senior administration officials. At the same time, the...

This weekend, I was reading one of the old National Geographics that litter my house, and started reading “Albanians: A People Undone,” in the February 2000 issue. At the time, NATO had just moved into Kosovo, and Albania proper was emerging from the legacy of 40 nightmarishly oppressive years under dictator Enver Hoxha. In the late 1980’s, Hoxha and Kim Il Sung were two of the last leaders on earth commonly termed “Stalinist,” although regimes’ secular state religions drew heavily...

I am ready to pronounce a partial reversal of my view on North Korea’s Arirang Festival. For the little trifle that the North Korean regime hoped to earn from curious westerners or sympathetic South Koreans, they certainly did not expect to turn a profit. The real motives were domestic consumption and foreign propaganda–to show the world that North Korea is unified, stable, happy, and dangerous to any foe. If that was the motive, the resulting coverage fell dramatically short of...

This weekend, I was reading one of the old National Geographics that litter my house, and started reading “Albanians: A People Undone,” in the February 2000 issue. At the time, NATO had just moved into Kosovo, and Albania proper was emerging from the legacy of 40 nightmarishly oppressive years under dictator Enver Hoxha. In the late 1980’s, Hoxha and Kim Il Sung were two of the last leaders on earth commonly termed “Stalinist,” although regimes’ secular state religions drew heavily...

I am ready to pronounce a partial reversal of my view on North Korea’s Arirang Festival. For the little trifle that the North Korean regime hoped to earn from curious westerners or sympathetic South Koreans, they certainly did not expect to turn a profit. The real motives were domestic consumption and foreign propaganda–to show the world that North Korea is unified, stable, happy, and dangerous to any foe. If that was the motive, the resulting coverage fell dramatically short of...

The Guardian, via SMH, reports that the North Korean excecution video, which you can now see with English narration, courtesy of The Korean Mediator, was the product of an organized North Korean resistance movement: The footage, secretly filmed in March, is evidence of a resistance network. “If he [the cameraman] had been caught, the punishment would almost certainly have been death,” said Jung-Eun Kim, an American-Korean journalist who has spent seven years monitoring the growth of the resistance movement. The...

The New York Times describes how the Mongolians put Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld into something of a fix by presenting him with a horse that didn’t exactly fit onto his airborne command center. Rumsfeld, echoing my own observation about the similarity of Mongolia’s countryside to God’s Country, called the young buckskin “Montana” (on the grand scale of the American West, my home town is right next door). “Buckskin,” by the way, is a term used by us simple country folk,...

Until now, I’ve usually been in the “overhaul dramatically” camp, as opposed to the “scrap now” camp, when it comes to the United Nations. But if Syria gets away with the murder of the former Prime Minister of Lebanon with facing serious international sanctions, I’ll be ready to declare the whole institution to be completely incompetent (as opposed to almost completely incompetent) as the arbiter of world affairs it seeks to become. As usual, John Bolton adds needed clarity (via...

The U.S. government has not taken a public position on Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s most recent visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, but the Chairman of the House International Relations Committee has: WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 (Yonhap) — A senior U.S. congressman formally expressed his regret to Japan over Tokyo officials’ controversial visits to a shrine honoring war criminals. In a letter to Japanese Ambassador to Washington Ryozo Kato, a copy of which was obtained by Yonhap News Agency on Saturday,...

The Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow was calling for U.S. forces to leave Korea before that became the majority view among Washington think tanks. This time, the reaction in the Korean papers promises to be a real hoot. What we’re less likely to get is the State Department’s candid reaction. The U.S. State Department has never met an alliance, treaty, or aid program that it doesn’t like. As a result, the list of Washington’s foreign policy welfare queens is long. The...

A Good Harvest. Some of the more hard-line readers may not approve, but I think this was inspired. When will it ever end, you ask? It will end when we strip the affair of its propaganda value. This is a brilliant way to begin doing that. It’s about time we got creative and proactive, for once. SGT Ray, if you’re reading, I’d be particularly interested in your reaction.

The Race for Mayor of Seoul. The Joongang Ilbo has it covered. I don’t know much more about Park Jin than the fact that he’s a hard-liner on North Korea, but I like that much about him. I suppose Oranckay will now tell us that he used to break kneecaps for Chun Doo Hwan.

The sordid life of Charles Robert Jenkins. Give the North Koreans credit for one thing–carrying out a far more effective punishment than the UCMJ would have provided. That’s still true, even with the conjugal privileges.

More Fun with the KFA. Do yourself a favor and go here, then click the link between the second and third pictures. Charles Robert who? Update: I wondered why KFA member Jason LeBouyer looked so familiar. Well, mystery solved.

Bill Richardson is the Governor of New Mexico, a former Secretary of Energy, a suspected presidential aspirant, and the latest of a series of highly intelligent men to make jaw-droppingly stupid pronouncements of diplomatic–and even humanitarian–optimism about North Korea. Richardson may well be a perfectly fine governor, but reasonable success at governance and bureaucracy in a society of laws and compromises does not necessarily qualify one to go eyeball-to-eyeball with bloody-minded sociopaths with nukes. Only in the foreign policy vacuum...

The New York Times: During his news conference, Mr. Rumsfeld was pressed for a response to recent public opinion polls that indicate a sense among some South Koreans that the United States is a greater threat to peace on the peninsula than North Korea. Mr. Rumsfeld took an uncharacteristically long pause, and then reminded his audience of the vibrancy of South Korea’s democracy, economy and lifestyle — and said they had been purchased, to a great extent, by American sacrifice...