Anju Links for 24 July 2008

CONDI RICE WAS NOT AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: A South Korean NGO reports that North Korea carried out 901 public executions last year. Don’t expect to see this in State’s human rights report next year.  Boy, talking to the North Koreans really is changing them, isn’t it?

JUST KILL YOURSELF NOW  IF YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE THIS:

The protocol has to be one “that can give us confidence that we’re able to verify the accuracy of the North Korean declaration,” she said. It must also offer “a way to address proliferation as well as all nuclear programs as well as highly enriched uranium.”  [Chosun Ilbo]

She’s talking, of course, about things that she’s insisted for years  were an  essential  part of any “complete and correct” declaration, which would be a prerequisite to  lifting sanctions.  So why should be believe her now, on the death-bed of her tenure?  Acceptance of Rice’s assurances by any demographically significant segment of the U.S. population  would be  conclusive proof that Darwin has been away for too long.

NORTH KOREAN LUMBERJACK-TURNED-REFUGEE Han Dong Man, who sought refuge in the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok [correction:  in the UNHCR Office in Moscow], will be allowed to leave for the United States.  I think I’ve blogged about this guy before, but I don’t have time to dig through my archives.  Han would mean that our government has accepted a whopping 62 North Korean refugees  since the passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act almost four years ago.

THE DEATH OF AN ALLIANCE:  Five months into the new, improved, America-friendly administration in South Korea, South Korea still refuses to pay even half the cost of maintaining the USFK.  Worse, it  persists in trying to scam us into accepting payment in goods — no doubt made by favored South Korean suppliers — rather than cash.  According to the Hanky, a State Department official is negotiating this instead of Defense, which probably means the South Koreans will get everything they want and  PX privileges.  For the congressional staffers out there, I hope you’ve  thought to  ask the GAO if that would even be legal under our procurement rules.  It’s funny how little has changed, even when we don’t have Roh Moo Hyun to kick around anymore.

BUT WE MUSTN’T POLITICIZE THE OLYMPICS: 

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican member in the House foreign affairs panel, said Beijing had ahead of the Olympics “intensified its brutal crackdown on political dissidents and activists.

“One would wish that the motto of this year’s Olympics, ‘one world, one dream,’ could ring true,” she said. “Unfortunately, when it comes to the pursuit of democratic values and human rights, we remain a world divided with a dream unfulfilled.”

Ros-Lehtinen also claimed Beijing had initiated “broad and sweeping measures to silence internal criticism,” allegedly detaining hundreds of practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual sect and members of other organized movements.

“The number of reported raids and summary executions continues to rise, and the regime has even taken violent measures to discourage North Korean refugees from seeking asylum in China,” she said.  [AFP]

Ros-Lehtinen is  supporting Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D, CA) who is pushing a resolution calling on China to be a little less brutal, and a little less supportive of others who are brutal.  Good luck with that, but  I’m starting to  like Howard Berman’s actions more than I liked Tom Lantos’s lofty words.  There’s some  bipartisanship left in Congress after all.  (hat tip to a reader)

MAD SHEEP DISEASE UPDATE:

Instead of the People’s Association for Measures Against Mad Cow Disease, whose leadership has been significantly weakened, a small number of groups such as the radical National University Student Council or Jeondaehyup led the protests. Without a concrete plan, the protesters carried out guerrilla rallies, marching without direction from the Cheonggye Stream through Jongno and Namdaemun to the Seoul Railway Station.  [Chosun Ilbo]

Sounds as though most of the flock is off to graze in other pastures.  The fad is passing, although I wouldn’t necessarily connect that fact to the exposure of its inspiration as  total bullshit.  There’s always more bullshit to get inspired about, especially in a country  full of  demagogues in desparate need of a cause.

THE CONTINUUM:

Gandhism is rife in Korea, province of Japan. Koreans are being urged by their leaders to use only articles of Korean manufacture. Although civil disobedience has not been advised, the movement is an attempt to copy the Gandhi methods in India. Governor-General Saito says that the people are as a whole satisfied with the Japanese regime and that the state of unrest should not be taken too seriously.  [Time, Mar. 3, 1923]

MORE SKEPTICISM about North Korea’s version of the killing of South Korean tourist Park Wang-Ja, some of it from former North Korean soldiers.  The killing turns out to have been bad for business, though not nearly as bad as it would be in a more sensible place and time.

“KOREA’S  FIRST U.S. State Supreme Court Judge” isn’t Korea’s.  When Koreans equate ancestry with nationality, they should know that they’re diluting the loyalty  and patriotism of Korean-Americans.

AN INTERESTING ANALYSIS of the candidates’ positions on Iraq: as the security situation improves — dramatically — and the need for a large U.S. presence declines, both candidates seem likely to withdraw about half of our troops within the next 2 years, especially if a democratically elected government wants us to.  Iraq should not become a permanent U.S. military dependency in the same way that our fair-weather allies in South Korea and Europe have. 

On the other hand, Barack Obama’s “residual” force turns out to be a lot bigger than his supporters might have guessed, and we’re entitled to wonder how much bigger it would be than the force McCain (who  has the disadvantage of knowing the value of  strategic ambiguity)  would leave behind.  I think the key realization is that for now, the improvements are probably fragile.  That said, if things don’t significantly worsen  in the months leading up to a competitive presidential election in America, we’ll know that Iraq has been won.  If that’s so, large withdrawals can and should follow, though Iraq is still years from having a decent air force, or self-sufficent logistics, command, and control.  We should be mindful that Iraq hasn’t been a perfect place for a few thousand years, and stability there is always going to leave some room for interpretation.  We should also be mindful that the government forces of South Vietnam in 1973 and Afghanistan in 1990 proved surprisingly persistent without foreign forces … as long as they had external financial support, spare parts, ammo,  and air cover. Once a nation’s own forces are capable of maintaining stability, foreign forces become more of a political liability than they are a military asset.

The Washington Post takes issue with the idea that the Iraqis endorsed Obama’s timetable, but that will be the perception.  You  can’t help but  pity John McCain here.  In precisely the same way that a stopped clock is  right twice a day, a 16-month timetable to withdraw most of our forces has  only now  become reasonably plausible because of a strategy McCain has risked his political life to demand, and which Obama vaulted himself to the nomination by opposing, without putting  any more thought into it than  his escapist constituency would tolerate.  We all been taught not to use four-letter words that start with “f.”  The worst of these is “fair.”  As in, what life isn’t.  And if Iraq will not be a host for terror and a venue for genocide, that will be fair enough.