Open Sources

Good morning! This is my first post on my shiny, wafer-thin new Macbook Air. So far, it’s everything I’d hoped it would be. I like the two-finger scrolling very much. Using the “command” key for cutting and pasting, not so much. We all love affirming our own decisions, don’t we? Change! Hope! Now let’s see how much I love this thing, say, in November 2012.

Sorry for the light blogging of late, by the way. One of my very best work friends passed away, and I had to attend his funeral in another city. I’ll respect his family’s privacy and keep the details to myself, other than to say that the man was a legend on multiple levels and one of the best storytellers I’ve ever known. He was a consummate gentleman and consigliore, and what a wonderful family he was blessed to have. The service is what it ought to have been, and what he’d have wanted it to be — a lot of crying, but a lot of laughing, too.

I really, really can’t believe that North Korea can sink a South Korean warship in March, shell a South Korean village in November, and then be expected to take a North Korean hint of talks seriously the following January. Look, I’m all for avoiding misunderstandings and keeping channels of communication open. That’s why we have phones. I’m all for engaging in talks once we’re in the position to negotiate from some strength, and if we negotiate like it (as in, setting dates and benchmarks, and letting North Korea know the severe consequences of missing those). But formal, sit-down talks between diplomats now, when North Korea has suffered no consequences for its crimes, sends a message that is beyond inappropriate, extending to dangerous. Like the continuation of Kaesong, the message this sends to Pyongyang is “business as usual.” Which means we’re sure to see more provocations soon enough. I understand, then, why South Korea doesn’t seem so enthusiastic:

South Korea has dismissed a North Korean call for unconditional talks to ease tensions, saying on Thursday the offer was “propaganda” it does not take seriously. [….]

“North Korea previously issued statements like this early in the year … they are normally done as part of (a) propaganda campaign towards the South,” a Unification Ministry official said. “We do not consider this is as a serious proposal for dialogue. It is not even in the correct and appropriate format.”

Unlike John Bolton, I’m not quite ready to conclude that Obama’s policy has come to a dead end, but this certainly isn’t a good sign. What Bolton apparently sees and I’m not seeing is that the U.S. government is welcoming this, or pushing South Korea toward it, but that’s probably just because I’m still catching up on the news after being occupied with other things.

More evidence of changing attitudes on the South Korean street:

A survey last month by KBS-TV showed that, of 1,000 respondents aged 19 years and above, 71.6% said that two Koreas should be unified. That’s a sharp increase from 60.2% in a similar survey in August. Notably, the number of people with “no idea” or no opinion on the matter fell to 1.8% from 13.5% in the August survey.

Asked why unification should take place, 16.3% said they want to get out of threat of a war. In August, those with the same answer were merely 6%. The survey found South Koreans seem to be ready to pay the price for a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula. When asked whether they’re willing to pay for the needed unification costs, nearly 70% of the respondents said yes, while 26.6% said no.

The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) says in its World Refugee Survey 2006 that the Chinese government, while permitting employment and property ownership to 300,000 Vietnamese refugees, persecuted, detained and deported 5,000 North Koreans, and as many as 100 a week during crackdowns. The inability to work legally forces many North Korean women to depend on relationships with Chinese men to survive — some are forced to work as domestic servants or prostitutes — while male North Korean defectors survive as day laborers, the report says. [Chosun Ilbo]