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Category: Appeasement

February 26, 2007

Chronology of a Capitulation: Why Nothing Will Be Solved in 60 Days

Kyodo News has a very distressing report about just what the United States came to Beijing prepared to give up, and give up almost immediately: North Korea’s abandonment of nuclear weapons was stated in a first draft of an agreement document for the six-party talks held earlier this month, but was dropped in a second draft drawn up by the United States after the North Korean side rejected it, negotiation sources said Sunday. Given that North Korea giving up nuclear...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 22, 2007

Richardson on David Albright: Put Me Down for “C”

Update: Albright has published his views here in slightly more detail, and I’m even less persuaded than I was before. Albright completely mischaracterizes the HEU evidence by ingoring evidence he can’t refute (North Korea’s admissions, Musharraf’s admissions, Libya) and arguing as if all of our evidence consisted of a receipt for aluminum tubes we’d found in A.Q. Khan’s lint filter. The key point about aluminum tubes is that they’re used to make gas centrifuges to enrich uranium. I’ve never seen...

Categories Appeasement/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 21, 2007

‘Paying the Clown’

[Corrected, Updated]   Harvard Professor Sung Yoon Lee  dissects the North Korea sellout  in the Daily NK and manages to say in one paragraph, with crisp eloquence, what it’s taken me about four posts to say less clearly. Energy, food, economic aid, and legitimacy are a necessary condition to the North Korean regime’s long-term survival, for the quintessential criminal regime of Kim Jong Il–despite its claims of juche (self-sufficiency)–is unable to function over the long-term without aid from abroad. At...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 17, 2007

Except for the Checks Being Written Out to ‘Herr A. Hitler,’ and The Dachau Industrial Park, Yes

Paying off Kim Jong Il is just like the Marshall Plan, says Roh. “There is frequent criticism that we are pouring out aid to the North,” Mr. Roh told South Korean residents in Italy. “After the war, the United States had several plans and investments, and among those the most efficient was the Marshall Plan. He noted the great benefits Washington had reaped from its investments: “Inter-Korean relations are being worked out, and we have the Kaesong Industrial Complex, but...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement
February 15, 2007

Escape from Munich

[Update:    The Washington Post declares a  conservative revolt against the Not-Quite-Agreed Framework.  E-mailing another activist today, I noted the irony that after years of being on President Bush’s side and getting no media traction, we’re far more likely to attract media attention now that we oppose his new policy.  Just watch.  This will be  a fascinating experiment in media behavior.] [Update 2:   More at MSNBC.  The Administration is now  furiously “clarifying” that it will  interpret the terms strictly, which...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Uncategorized
February 5, 2007

Wobble Watch: Kaesong

In a one-hour meeting with Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said that while it is unrealistic to recognize the goods made in the border city of Kaesong as South Korean, there is room left to negotiate within the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries, Unification Ministry officials said. “Lee stressed that U.S. recognition of the goods produced in Kaesong as South Korean will contribute to bringing about a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula....

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics
January 22, 2007

Phoney War (I)

It is a natural tendency of people to accomodate themselves emotionally to conditions they cannot change. At its most extreme, accomodation can explain an abused child’s seeming acceptance of an abuser’s predations. At its most benign, it can be a mostly beneficial tendency to compromise with opposing views. But there is a difference between being open-minded and fooling one’s self. I’m still leaning against belief that a Democratic Congress with a narrow margin is going into an election year with...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
January 22, 2007

It’s All a Matter of Perspective

Does it sometimes seem to you like we are two ships that pass in the night?  The South Korean government should not disgrace itself by obeying foreign powers and imposing sanctions on its brethren….  South Korea’s political parties, groups and the public in all walks of life should be aware of the maneuvers of conservatives to take power ….   South Koreans should form a broad anti-conservative alliance to destroy pro-American and anti-unification politicians and their conspiracies. You say that like...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/WTF?
January 21, 2007

North Korea Seeks Those Who Aided Abductee’s Escape

It’s been a bad week for North Korea’s P.R. machine, with the embarassments of abducted South Korean fisherman Choi Uk-Il’s escape and the repatriation of nine family members of South Korean POW’s (one of whom is already dead).   Both incidents — and the small matter of North Korea’s latest threat to nuke Seoul — proved embarassing to North Korea’s friends in South Korea, who have problems enough already.  But  good neighbors take care of their friends, so  North Korea is...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement
January 21, 2007

Opposition Legislator Responds to Shenyang-Gate with Refugee-Protection Bill

SEOUL, Jan. 21 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s main opposition party plans to introduce a law revision aimed at helping North Koreans and South Korean abductees fleeing the communist country, a senior party official said Sunday. Rep. Hwang Woo-yea, secretary-general of the Grand National Party (GNP), said the bill will help prevent the forced repatriation of defectors from North Korea and expedite Seoul’s diplomatic efforts to bring them to South Korea. “The National Assembly passed a similar GNP-initiated bill in 2004...

Categories Appeasement/China & Korea/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Refugees
January 19, 2007

One POW’s Repatriated Wife Already Reported Dead

She apparently was in ill health and froze to death in police custody, according to Yonhap. I’ll have a link and more details later.  [Update:   here:] One of the nine, who was the wife of a South Korean prisoner of war, apparently froze to death one month ago while she was being questioned by North Korean security authorities after they were deported to the North, a source familiar with North Korean affairs said. The woman, the source said he...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/China & Korea/Human Rights/Korean War
January 18, 2007

I’m Kim Jong Il, and I Approve This Message!

The message is, “if you elect  the Grand National Party, I’ll nuke you!”  “South Koreans are well aware that if the GNP takes power, it will destroy North-South relations and leave them only with the calamity of nuclear war,” wrote the Rodong Shinmun, the North Korean Workers’ Party daily. “The GNP and their puppets stand to be destroyed.” The daily again denied the GNP’s charge that the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, in similar remarks on Jan....

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics/WMD/WTF?
January 17, 2007

Sorry ‘Bout That: How a South Korean Consulate Helped Doom Nine Family Members of Its POWs

[Scroll down for updates.]   Thirty-one years after the North Koreans kidnapped him from his fishing boat, 67 year-old Choi Uk Il is back in South Korea with the wife who never lost faith in him, and after his own government’s Shenyang consulate nearly turned him away.  You can’t help but admire the ferocious loyalty of his wife, who raised their children on a cleaning lady’s salary, kept faith with her husband, and then cowed the faithless Ministry of Foreign...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees
January 17, 2007

Kumgang Update

Update:   More here.   Whenever you read about the Kumgang Tourism Project, which South Korea likes to tout as an initiative to reduce tensions,  consider those assertions in the context of  well-sourced suspicions that North Korea uses the proceeds for its WMD programs.  Thus, we should celebrate stories like this one from Yonhap, documenting its failure in extensive detail.  The best news is that enough people have a conscience to impede the project’s success.

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
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 10, 2007

Be Sure the Survivors Stay Buried

The South  Korean government is going all out to find the remains of its  Korean War dead:  The Defense Ministry has set up a task force to retrieve and identify the remains of the dead from the 1950-53 Korean War, officials said Wednesday. The team of 85 is modeled after the U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. Its mission is to excavate remains and identify them through DNA analysis, they said. Col. Park Sin-han, chief of the team, said they would...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Korean War/ROK Military
January 10, 2007

Two Questions for Lee Jae-Joung

1.  If poverty is  really the reason why North Korea builds nukes, then why is it that the people who actually built the thing  have so much higher a standard of living than  I do  (contrarily, I wonder how much Lee really knows about what poor North Koreans think about this)? 2.  If the key to denuclearization is ending poverty in North Korea, why has your government tolerated the North Korean regime’s theft of your government’s aid from the neediest...

Categories Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid/WMD