December 2008 – Page 2

December 9, 2008

S. Korean Firms to Demand Compensation for Kaesong Losses

Why do I do this every day, you ask? (Again with those straw-man questions I plant in your heads.) I do it because of stories like this. South Korean firms that lost big on the Kaesong bubble are demanding compensation from, or possibly suing, the government. So would the government in the caption — where it says “defendant” — be the government that actually shut down their operations in breach of all of the written understandings and for no legally...

Uncategorized

December 8, 2008

The Unmourned Death of Agreed Framework 2.0

Just as Washington seems to have almost forgotten the name of the current president, hardly anyone still remembers Chris Hill, a media hero for one brief while after he conned George W. Bush out of one part of the “cowboy diplomacy” they loved to loathe. Also mostly forgotten: for the brief interlude when it was tried, the cowboy diplomacy worked. Less so: what replaced it did not. Hill is now about to round up the six various parties for one...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks

December 8, 2008

Seoul Mulls Ransom Payments to Bring POW’s Home

It sticks in the craw to even consider paying ransom to induce North Korea into doing what the 1953 Armistice requires it to do, and return at least 560 South Korean prisoners of war the North is still believed to hold. One can only imagine what ghastly uses the regime might find for the money. Still, when you consider that for years, South Korea had paid the North billions and received nothing in return, getting at least some quo for...

Abductions/Korean War

December 7, 2008

Well, that’s just dumb

Activists have decided to suspend those propaganda balloon launches that were actually starting to have a tangible impact on the North Korean military right as they’re doing their winter training exercises. The balloon launches seem to have been pure P.R. brilliance. Instead of moderating their tactics, the activists ought to keep pressing on with more brazen ones. Imagine the effect a shower of these leaflets would have on Kim Jong Il’s birthday parade in February.

Activism/Defectors/Deprogramming

December 6, 2008

Breaking News from 1953!

Yonhap: “S. Korea to complete pullout from N. Korea”

Appeasement/NK Economics

December 5, 2008

Book Review: Escaping North Korea, by Mike Kim

[By Guest Blogger, Dan Bielefeld] A couple months ago I saw something about a new book by a Korean American who had lived in China for four years helping North Koreans. This really caught my attention — I’ve heard of such people but I don’t know a lot about them since most of their work is done in secret. To pique my interest a bit further, he’s from the same part of the country I am (he’s from Chicago, I’m...

Activism/Books & Films/China/Refugees

December 4, 2008

Leaflets Balloons Prove Effective as Weapons of Economic, Political Warfare

It shows you the woeful condition of modern South Korea that some would show up to defend slavery and oppression from the non-violent propagation of truth to the oppressed. I can understand why, to a man whose life has been stolen from him by that oppression, that proved to me more than he could bear. This is the point at which things ceased to be non-violent: Here, encapsulated in one incident, is the ugly future of reunification. And the longer...

Deprogramming/The Fifth Column

December 1, 2008

N. Korea Expels Half of the South Koreans from Kaesong.

North Korea has allowed 880 South Korean people to stay in the inter-Korean industrial complex in the border city of Kaesong, far less than expected by the South, South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman said Monday. North Korea verbally informed South Korea of its decision Sunday night, Kim Ho Nyoun told a press briefing. [Kyodo] You say that like it’s a bad thing. Updates: The better media reporting on this subject probes two questions: (a) how will this affect Kaesong and...