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Monthly Archive: January, 2007

January 16, 2007

Eum, Yang, and Korean Diplomatic Courtesy

A few days ago, Occidentalism posted this absolutely priceless flowchart that is too telling by half about how some Koreans tend to scapegoat their way through real problems. I suppose the temptation to pin blame on others is human nature; that temptation is at its greatest when a solution to the underlying problem seems beyond reach. Witness the finger-pointing that followed last October’s nuke test (and the notable absence of constructive proposals accompanying it). I shouldn’t miss this opportunity to...

Categories Anti-Americanism/China & Korea/Diplomacy/History/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
January 16, 2007

Pandemic Strikes Chongjin, North Korea’s Fourth-Largest City

Previous posts on the spreading pandemic here, beginning last October.  Yonhap, quoting unnamed sources and the NGO Good Friends, tells us that things have gotten worse, and that the largest city in North Korea’s northeast faces outbreaks of several deadly diseases: Four infectious diseases have stricken a North Korean city on the east coast, affecting up to 4,000 people, a source claimed Monday. “Chongjin is overrun by scarlet fever, typhoid, typhus and paratyphoid. About 3,000 to 4,000 are suffering from...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK
January 16, 2007

Segye Ilbo: Goh Kun Will Not Run

At a press conference tomorrow, Goh will supposedly make it official.  [Update:  he made it official.] First, Goh was Korea’s too-short vacation in what seemed a lot like reality.  Later, for exactly 15 minutes, Goh was the Paris Hilton of Korean politics:  arousing to a desperate, lonely few, whose adoration couldn’t quite mask the fact that he was just more of the same talentless, plasticky pap  we’ve seen so many times before.  As with Hilton, a merciful God will allow...

Categories Korean Politics
January 16, 2007

Sounds Like a Job for ‘The Dog’

But this time, they mean business: An international energy consortium has asked impoverished North Korea for nearly US$1.9 billion in compensation for its defunct project to build two nuclear power plants in the North under the 1994 nuclear agreement on the North’s freezing of its nuclear activities, diplomatic sources here said Tuesday. North Korea, however, has yet to respond to the claim, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Analysts also said the North is unlikely to respond favorably,...

Categories Diplomacy/NK Economics/WMD
January 15, 2007

The China Veto

[Updated below]   For those who still doubt that the South Korean government would bow to another government’s sensitivities to cancel an artistic performance — witness the debate and denial over the censorship of “Yoduk Story” — I suppose we can now put those doubts to rest. On January 7, several major South Korean media published editorials that criticized the Korean government for kowtowing to the Chinese communist regime by canceling the New Tang Dynasty’s (NTDTV) New Year Spectacular in...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/China & Korea/Korean Law/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea
January 14, 2007

China’s Latest Pandemic: The Clap

The Economist has a very interesting report on the subject: In China the chance of catching it is now more than 28 times greater than it was in 1993. Syphilis cases are increasing in many countries but the extent of China’s rise, in relative and absolute terms, dwarfs figures from America, Canada and Europe. That is the conclusion of a study by Zhi-Qiang Chen and his colleagues at China’s National Centre for STD and Leprosy Control published in the latest...

Categories China
January 13, 2007

Shenyang Six Update

From LiNK: We know how agonizing it is to think of the possible fate of the Shenyang Six if things do not go well in negotiations with People’s Republic of China. Please rest assured that we are doing all that we can. The instant there is a role for us all in the grassroots to play, you will hear about it, and we will mobilize internationally for the six. At the moment, we are waiting on high-level discussions and working...

Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
January 12, 2007

UniFiction Ministry Plans ‘Peace Education’ and ‘Unification Education’ in Public Schools

From the Ministry’s own Web site: Minister Lee said, “The inter-Korean relations have improved from confrontation and tension to reconciliation and cooperation. Excuse me????   In order to match such improvement, peace education needs to be introduced into the curriculum of school and unification education. I want to promote the peace education in a future-oriented way so that the people can foster their ability to keep peace firmly and it can contribute to the peace in Northeast Asia as well...

Categories Appeasement
January 12, 2007

What Unites These Nations?

ASEAN says it wants to become a more robust organization with more “teeth.”   Think they can do it?  Maybe this is a clue: The 10 leaders, whose members range from an absolute monarchy and military juntas to parliamentary democracies and one-party communist states, have agreed to start drafting a charter that would give ASEAN a legal basis for the first time since it was founded at the height of the Vietnam war nearly 40 years ago. I wonder what...

Categories Southeast Asia
January 12, 2007

Beyond Empty Threats

  Yes, Stealth fighters have some value in deterring a North Korean  first strike, if we think that’s a possibility, but I do not believe that any weapon in the U.S. military arsenal (with this possible exception) can deter or prevent a North Korean nuclear test.  The threat of a direct, large-scale  use of force by either the United States or North Korea against the other  is an empty threat.  The conventional Korean War has been a standoff since 1953. ...

Categories An Alliance?/NK Military/Resistance/ROK Military/U.S. Military
January 12, 2007

Fortunately, No Translators Were Present

Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, stated that the new South Korean president must be “sensitive to the needs of the (Asia-Pacific) region, in addition to thinking about North-South relations.” …. Washington expects the new Korean administration to think “about working closely with Tokyo and Washington in terms of joint approaches, in terms of what’s going on in North Korea,” he told Yonhap News Agency after meeting with Kim Geun-tae, chairman of the ruling Uri Party, at Kim’s parliament...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
January 12, 2007

Donga Ilbo Interview: David Straub

Straub, a State Department expert on Korea and Japan who has been a member of our six-party negotiating team, will spend an unspecified amount of time at an unspecified university — the report seems to have been mangled by an editor —  doing the heroic work of openly questioning Korea’s historical mythology: “I would like to teach historical issues such as Katsura-Taft Secret Agreement (a secret treaty between Japan and the U.S. The U.S. recognized Japanese control of the Korean...

Categories America/Anti-Americanism/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea
January 11, 2007

Lefkowitz on Kaesong: ‘Material support for a rogue government, its nuclear ambitions, and its human rights atrocities.’

[Updates Below; and a big welcome to everyone coming in from Gateway Pundit.] Ambassador Jay Lefkowitz, the U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, has an excellent new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (thanks to a reader!) that will provoke an absolute Category 5 sh*tstorm between the United States and South Korea, and for the best of reasons. Without question, the State Department and the Administration have not always lived up the high ideals the Special Envoy...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD
January 10, 2007

N. Korean Foreign Minister Conveys Dear Leader’s Greetings to Saddam Hussein, Presents Credentials to Satan

In an obituary dated Jan. 4, the Minju Chosun said, “Regrettably, Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun passed away at 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 2 at the age of 77 because of terminal disease (lung cancer),” the newspaper was quoted as saying by Yonhap News Agency.  [link] After  a simple funeral service in Paek’s provincial  home town, his porcine corpse was disinterred, rendered into soondae and taeji-kalbi,  and eaten by starving neighbors. Pic:  REUTERS/Viktor Korotayev

Categories Diplomacy/Kremlinology
January 10, 2007

Gov’t Investigates Misuse of Funds It Gave to ‘Civic’ Groups

I’ve previously written about the South Korean government’s provision of $5.2  billion in state funds to 149 different  hippie communes, drum circles,  and commie spy cells “civic” groups, only to have it revealed that some of those groups had a history of organized political violence.  The worst offender was South Korea’s largest labor organization, the ardently pro-North Korean and anti-American Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, and the worst of the violence was over the government’s  costly failure  to negotiate a...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Law/Korean Politics/The Fifth Column