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Republican Congressmen to Visit S. Korea

Regular readers of this blog and OFK before it have seen some very direct expressions of displeasure coming from Representative Henry Hyde to the South Korean government, or whizzing past its ears on the way to North Korea, often scanned in in their original and complete form (here, here, here, here, here, here). So when Yonhap reports that Hyde, the outgoing Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, is on his way to Seoul to visit President Roh Moo Hyun, you can impute some understatement to predictions that Hyde may have “candid and timely” advice for Roh. Nor would you have to crawl out on a long limb to discern the future (or lack thereof) of the U.S.-Korea alliance will come up, now that rumors of a drastic downsizing are swirling faster than I can blog them. What I wouldn’t give to be in that room with a laptop.

Hyde will visit as part of a delegation of GOP congressmen. Another will be Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, formerly a rumored candidate to succeed Hyde as Chairman, will meet with North Korean refugees in Seoul. This may signal an interest by Rohrabacher in taking a more public role in this issue, or perhaps in the Subcommittee Chairmanship now held by Rep. James Leach of Iowa.

4 Responses

  1. hello. i briefed rohrabacher until late last night on the issue, and as we speak the delegation is meeting with the blue house. they are going to bring up nkhr, refugees and other issues related very strongly.

  3. Let’s hope that they conclude the alliance is dead and useless so that US troops are removed quickly!

  4. Joshua can probably answer the question I’ll have in this comment.

    It will be sad to see Hyde go, because he seemed to actually pay attention to South Korea and get the big picture.

    When he goes, who is left?

    I quit faxing Hyde articles and links when important things were popping up in South Korea that the American media wasn’t getting, because I often found he already knew and was saying something about it. It usually happened about every 6 months or so.

    Who do I fax now? Who are the people on the key committees who actually have an ear? Who will actually listen or would want to listen to what it is actually like?