Home  >  

Monthly Archive: March, 2008

March 15, 2008

Will China Get Away With Murder Again?

China may be the O.J. Simpson of thuggish regimes. Gutter thugs like the rulers of Sudan and Burma have justly earned their international pariah status after calculating that the consequences of slaughter would be manageable and acceptable. China’s regime has learned from Saudi Arabia’s example, lining its avenues of commerce with expensive lobbyists and P.R. firms, thus escaping most of the consequences of its behavior and even buying its way to quasi-legitimacy. But even the Chinese know that this strategy...

Categories China
March 14, 2008

Six Two-Party Talks Update: So Far, So Not Bad

Thus far, Chris Hill has failed to sell Hawaii to the North Koreans for a string of beads, though not for lack of effort. This should make you sad, of course, because it’s bad for peace, and because ancient Japanese maps prove that Hawaii is North Korean. Top U.S. and North Korean nuclear negotiators tried Thursday to resolve a snag holding up the six-way process for ending Pyongyang’s nuclear programs, and while the U.S. envoy reported progress, it fell short...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks
March 14, 2008

Collapse Watch: Have We Reached Stage Five Yet?

One of the most interesting experiences of my four years with the Army in Korea was a “collapse briefing” I was able to attend at USFK Headquarters. I had not been able to find a copy of the briefing summarized online until Robert Kaplan published one in The Atlantic, which I commented on in this post. So for the new readers, I feel obliged to remind you of what I mean when I refer to “Stage Four” and “Stage Five.”...

Categories NK Military/Regime Change
March 13, 2008

“On the Border”

Today, on Capitol Hill, I had a chance to see an excerpt of that Chosun Ilbo documentary on human trafficking in North Korea. As my friend had said, it does indeed depict drug smuggling. One smuggler is actually interviewed on night vision, just as he emerges from the freezing Tumen River with a load of drugs he is smuggling into China. His source? His brother, a soldier, who is pilfering from a state pharmaceutical factory in Nampo. I wasn’t able...

Categories Drugs & N Korea/Human Trafficking/Media Criticism
March 13, 2008

Surprise! Roh Administration Files Mysteriously Vanish

Despite Lee Myung-Bak’s specific warnings, many of the paper and electronic files in Roh Moo-Hyun’s Blue House have mysteriously disappeared: When the new government started work, chief secretaries of President Lee Myung-bak were shocked to find that there were no useful references other than trivial manuals and policy reports in Cheong Wa Dae’s work management system e-Jiwon (digital knowledge park). Most documents and files had been deleted and some parts of the hard disk were damaged. [….] It was especially...

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
March 13, 2008

Surprise! Roh Administration Files Mysteriously Vanish

Despite Lee Myung-Bak’s specific warnings, many of the paper and electronic files in Roh Moo-Hyun’s Blue House have mysteriously disappeared: When the new government started work, chief secretaries of President Lee Myung-bak were shocked to find that there were no useful references other than trivial manuals and policy reports in Cheong Wa Dae’s work management system e-Jiwon (digital knowledge park). Most documents and files had been deleted and some parts of the hard disk were damaged. [….] It was especially...

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
March 13, 2008

China Arrests 5 N.K. Refugees; Protest in Seoul This Friday

I’ve been receiving e-mails from a number of NGO’s about this incident, although I haven’t seen published reports about it. I’ll reprint the letter from the North Korean Freedom Coalition in full below. The protest will take place this Friday, March 14, at 10 a.m., in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul, near Exit No. 3 of Gyeongbokgung Station, subway Line No. 3. The group organizing the protest is called Christian Assembly. I haven’t heard of this group previously,...

Categories Activism/China & Korea/Refugees
March 12, 2008

Rep. Howard Berman of California Will Lead the House Foreign Affairs Committee

He will have to fill a giant’s shoes, and a shrill and partisan tone isn’t a promising start for that: “I deeply appreciate the confidence that my colleagues have shown in me today. While I can never replicate the unique historical perspective and natural eloquence that Chairman Tom Lantos brought to this position, I’ll work very hard as chairman to repair the damage done to America’s standing in the world over the past seven years by this Administration. My highest...

Categories U.S. Politics
March 12, 2008

State Department’s Annual Human Rights Report Released

The State Department’s 2007 annual human rights country reports were released yesterday. Recall that a Washington Post columnist recently printed some leaked e-mails in which Glyn Davies of the State Department’s odious Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP) had tried to lean on the authors of the report to “sacrifice a few adjectives for the cause.” Words to have been eliminated are in brackets, those to have been added are in italics: “The [repressive] North Korean government[regime] continued...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights
March 11, 2008

Six Two Party Talks: Doubling Down a Bad Bet?

Back on February 23rd, I predicted that we’d see the first signs that the Bush Administration was losing patience with North Korea’s stall tactics. I also predicted that this recognition would amount to little in practice. Things seems to be turning out pretty much as expected. United States Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow said … there is a ‘sense of impatience building up’ among participants in the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program over the long delay by...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
March 11, 2008

Anju Links for 11 March 2008

SURVIVOR: SIBERIA: Is this the toughest man alive? Not only did he survive a Siberian logging camp, he escaped from his North Korean overseers, lived off the land, and — most remarkably — survived six marriages. THE NORTH KOREAN FREEDOM COALITION’S LETTER to Lee Myung Bak has hit the Joongang Ilbo. A SENSIBLE APPROACH: Kim Ha-Joong, the nominee to be Unification Minister, has annunciated some of the principles that will guide South Korea’s policy to the North. He referred to...

Categories Anju Links
March 11, 2008

I Hate Vista

If you’re about to buy a new computer pre-installed with that virus called Vista, here’s some friendly advice: don’t. XP users have heard too many chilling stories from relatives and friends about Vista upgrades that have gone badly. The graphics chip that couldn’t handle Vista’s whizzy special effects. The long delays as it loaded. The applications that ran at slower speeds. The printers, scanners and other hardware peripherals, which work dandily with XP, that lacked the necessary software, the drivers,...

Categories Blogs & Blogging
March 11, 2008

I Have a Bad Feeling ….

The chief U.S. and North Korean nuclear negotiators will meet this week in Geneva to seek a breakthrough in stalled disarmament talks, news reports said Tuesday. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill was to meet North Korean Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan during a visit to the Swiss city Thursday and Friday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported from Washington, citing sources there it did not identify. [AP, via IHT] It’s rumored that Chris Hill will offer the North...

Categories Six-Party Talks