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Monthly Archive: January, 2007

January 20, 2007

Court Order Extends Uri’s Life Support

It’s a setback for Comrade Chung and Kim Geun Tae* The Seoul district court yesterday dealt a crucial blow to the Uri Party leadership by ruling that its revision of party regulations is invalid, accepting arguments in a petition filed by party members associated with President Roh Moo-hyun. The ruling effectively invalidates the plans of the party leadership, who had been gearing up to launch a new party, whereas pro-Roh members want to stay under the Uri Party umbrella. Eleven...

Categories Korean Politics
January 19, 2007

The UN’s Latest North Korea Scandal

I’ve often criticized the UN World Food Program (WFP)  for the inadequate monitoring  of its food aid program in North Korea, but as it turns out, there was something I didn’t know then:  compared to the UN Development Program’s (UNDP)  operations there, the  WFP’s  were a paragon of accountability.  Ever since the days when the disgraced team of Maurice Strong  and Tongsun Park began advising and representing Kofi Annan on North Korea, the UNDP has been funneling millions of dollars...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
January 19, 2007

One POW’s Repatriated Wife Already Reported Dead

She apparently was in ill health and froze to death in police custody, according to Yonhap. I’ll have a link and more details later.  [Update:   here:] One of the nine, who was the wife of a South Korean prisoner of war, apparently froze to death one month ago while she was being questioned by North Korean security authorities after they were deported to the North, a source familiar with North Korean affairs said. The woman, the source said he...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/China & Korea/Human Rights/Korean War
January 19, 2007

The Death of an Alliance, Part 64: Thank You, Secretary Obvious!

The first Democratic-controlled hearing of the International Relations Foreign Affairs Committee has met.  No bold intiatives, brilliant proposals, or clear theme  emerged.  Instead, it was  a dizzying variety of views and  partisan mutual cancellation  that rendered the entire excercise inconclusive and confusing.  One could expect little else:  both parties are advocating more talks  backed by threats that North Korea does not fear.  Both sides fail to grasp,  or at  least to admit,  that North Korea will not disarm  for  any...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
January 19, 2007

Three Minutes for Lieutenant Mark Daily

Lieutenant Mark Daily gave you his life; will you give him three minutes?   Knowing what he was getting himself into, Mark Daily sat down to write what he knew could be his epitaph.   It is composed with the poetic zen that so few writers can manage, the  expression of complex ideas in clear prose.   It is the  eloquence of a man who applied courage to his compassion and principle: Maybe the reality of politics makes all political action inherently crude...

Categories Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Military
January 18, 2007

Things Not to Say in North Korea

 Ju Tong-il, minister of power and coal industries, was fired late last year by the leaders of the impoverished Communist state, the evening edition of the Mainichi Shimbun daily said in a story from Beijing.  “Our country’s energy situation is extremely severe,” Ju told a meeting of energy-related officials last spring, according to the daily, quoting unnamed sources close to the North Korean government.  “Or better yet, why don’t we get back electricity fed to the guesthouses of our general?”...

Categories Inside NK/Kremlinology
January 18, 2007

Caught on Tape: Drug Smuggling in North Korea

The footage also captured the North Korean drug dealers sniffing the drugs as well as the dealers talking about the transaction. Of the dealers, one person was a worker managing the level of humidity at a manufacturing factory and seemingly the intermediary supplier who obtained the drugs. It seems that the 3~4 people sitting in a circle are personally testing the quality of the drugs before purchase. Although the dealer’s child has entered the room, the buyers continue to inhale...

Categories Drugs & N Korea/Inside NK
January 18, 2007

Teachers Arrested for Posting N. Korean Propaganda On-Line

Two middle school teachers who allegedly posted pro-North Korean propaganda on Web sites have been arrested, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said yesterday, for violating the National Security Law. The teachers, whom police did not identify, allegedly posted North Korean photos and captions reading, for example, “Long Live the Great Victory of the Military-First Politics.   They are both members of the left-leaning Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union [link to other OFK posts]. Both teachers have also served as...

Categories Korean Education/The Fifth Column
January 18, 2007

I’m Kim Jong Il, and I Approve This Message!

The message is, “if you elect  the Grand National Party, I’ll nuke you!”  “South Koreans are well aware that if the GNP takes power, it will destroy North-South relations and leave them only with the calamity of nuclear war,” wrote the Rodong Shinmun, the North Korean Workers’ Party daily. “The GNP and their puppets stand to be destroyed.” The daily again denied the GNP’s charge that the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, in similar remarks on Jan....

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics/WMD/WTF?
January 17, 2007

Sorry ‘Bout That: How a South Korean Consulate Helped Doom Nine Family Members of Its POWs

[Scroll down for updates.]   Thirty-one years after the North Koreans kidnapped him from his fishing boat, 67 year-old Choi Uk Il is back in South Korea with the wife who never lost faith in him, and after his own government’s Shenyang consulate nearly turned him away.  You can’t help but admire the ferocious loyalty of his wife, who raised their children on a cleaning lady’s salary, kept faith with her husband, and then cowed the faithless Ministry of Foreign...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees
January 17, 2007

Kumgang Update

Update:   More here.   Whenever you read about the Kumgang Tourism Project, which South Korea likes to tout as an initiative to reduce tensions,  consider those assertions in the context of  well-sourced suspicions that North Korea uses the proceeds for its WMD programs.  Thus, we should celebrate stories like this one from Yonhap, documenting its failure in extensive detail.  The best news is that enough people have a conscience to impede the project’s success.

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
January 17, 2007

NGO: No New Year’s Rations in N. Korea This Year, Except in Pyongyang

More evidence that things are worse this year than they were last year.  North Korea has failed to deliver on its promise to distribute food rations across the communist country on the occasion of the New Year, a civic aid group said Wednesday. “Except for Pyongyang, no special New Year food rations were issued,” Good Friends, a Seoul-based civic relief organization, said in its latest monthly newsletter. The group said that North Korean authorities had planned to provide food rations...

Categories Deprogramming/Famine & Food Aid
January 17, 2007

Wendy Cutler for President

At this point, I oppose the FTA  because Korea does not seem to be serious about opening its markets fundamentally.  Nor do  I  believe that  Korea should be rewarded for  doing so much to demagogue anti-Americanism, or to  undermine U.S. national security interests or  the humanitarian imperatives of the North Korean people.  Those are the reasons I don’t buy things made in Korea these days, and I know that the FTA would  instead reward Korea’s worst politicians and labor unions...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Korean Politics/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
January 17, 2007

Ministry of Empty Promises

Ban Ki Moon tells us how he’ll make the United Nations relevant again: “I pledge my best efforts to help the Iraqi people in their quest for a more stable and prosperous Iraq,” he said. “On North Korea, I will try my best to facilitate the smooth process of the six-party process, and encourage in any way I can the work for a denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” He said he wanted to see substantive progress on the Millennium Development...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/WMD
January 16, 2007

Dispulitzated

Holy Mother of Pearl — GI Korea’s dismantling of AP Reporter Charles Hanley (Part 2,  Part 1)  is one  for the ages.  Please remind me to learn from the pile of cinders that was once Charles Hanley and never mess with GI Korea.  On the other hand, Hanley’s own comment on GI Korea’s blog may be the most damning condemnation of his objectivity and professionalism.  I responded directly to Hanley there.

Categories Blogs & Blogging/Korean War/Media Criticism
January 16, 2007

Few Donors Contribute to N. Korean Army Mess Halls

A tally as of Sunday showed the relief agency received slightly more than US$16.25 million in assistance from donor nations, up from $12.7 million in November. But the total accounts for only 15.9 percent of the $102 million the WFP says it needs for its protracted relief and recovery operation (PRRO) in North Korea. [link] The missing context here is that the World Food Program had already dramatically scaled back its feeding operations from 6.5 million recipients, to just 1.9...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
January 16, 2007

China Calls on North Korea to Return Abductees

Some interesting statements emerged from a trilateral summit in Cebu: The leaders of Japan, China and South Korea urged North Korea Sunday to scrap its nuclear weapons and to respond to international humanitarian concerns. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun made the plea in a joint statement after the first summit between the three nations in two years. It is rare for China publicly to raise humanitarian concerns about North Korea....

Categories Abductions/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Human Rights/WMD