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Category: Diplomacy

May 12, 2006

Ooh! Over Here!

“The regime change crew is in charge now and they are looking for any new ideas that can affect regime change.” — John Wolfstahl, CSIS The tone of regime change opponents and Bush foes is also interesting to observe these day. Two of them have published pieces nearly simultaneously, concluding that Bush has made the decision to get rid of Kim Jong Il. I agree. They they wonder if he’ll have time to do it. I agree with that, too....

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
May 12, 2006

Balance This!

[T]he Foreign Ministry’s special envoy on international security, Moon Chung-in, in a phone interview with the Chosun Ilbo elaborated on remarks a day earlier that Roh “is losing patience with U.S. President George W. Bush. Today, my friends, I write to you from a city living in fear. As our President, George W. Bush, sits in the White House nibbling compulsively at the bleeding tendrils where there were fingernails just a day ago, a cunning tiger holds court from his...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/WTF?
May 11, 2006

Highway Rohbery

I thought the idea was to teach capitalism to North Korea, not to teach South Korea’s government how to expropriate and confiscate. The government has asked the Federation of the Korean Industries (FKI) to help urge large companies to set up in the Gaesong Industrial Complex. Most large companies do not want to do so, and they view the request of the government as “pressure. The leader of the Gaesong Industrial Complex Support Team of the Ministry of Unification and...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
May 8, 2006

Kaesong Absurdities

[W]e have signs to believe that there are certain incentives for North Korean laborers working at the Kaesong complex, such as there are no complaints from workers who are asked to work overtime. — Unification Ministry Official As long as the UniFiction Ministry speaks, this blog will never lack for exquisite fisking material. With the White House standing firmly behind Human Rights Envoy Jay Lefkowitz’s concern that Kaesong fails to comply with international labor standards, (I would also raise U.S....

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Human Rights/Korean Politics/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
May 8, 2006

Refugees Reax, Part 2

We have learned, via the Donga Ilbo that the arrival airport was Los Angles. The Donga also speculates about the meaning of the U.S. decision to comply with its own law and concludes that the admission of “common” refugees means that the U.S. is also preparing to clamp down hard on North Korea diplomatically and economically. While I hope that’s indeed the case, the conclusion ignores the fact that plenty of those in Congress (Leach and Lantos, to name two)...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Defectors/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
May 7, 2006

Links of Note

The Political Pendulum: The Chosun Ilbo thinks that the Korean blogosphere is turning right. Although the report depends on readers’ ideological self-identification, I do see modest signs that in South Korea, the pendulum is swinging away from the far left. The problem for the Korea right continues to be that it has articulated no vision that has appeal for younger voters. In a word, it’s reactionary. ====================== Engaging the People: American cartoonist Ranan Lurie wants to bring “uniting artwork” to...

Categories Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/Korean Law/Korean Politics/News Links
May 7, 2006

Reaction to the Arrival of North Korean Refugees

The arrival of the first six North Korean refugees — including survivors of concentration camps and sexual slavery — could mark a tipping point in the politics of North Korean human rights. The timing of the arrival is either a fortunate coincidence or the height of shrewdness. Local elections are coming up in South Korea on May 31st, and with the human rights issue having created a clear schism (see here, here, and here) between the United States and South...

Categories An Alliance?/Defectors/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Refugees/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
May 6, 2006

Why We Signed

I grow weary of sounding the death knell of the U.S.-Korea alliance now that it’s just a question of being how fast and how ugly. If anyone is smart and honest enough to offer a cogent defense of it, it’s U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, who has made plenty of enemies in Korea by speaking his country’s views plainly. Now we know that the best justification he can offer is as light, flavorless, and indigestable as styrofoam, and just as easily...

Categories An Alliance?/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/North Korea/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views/WMD
May 4, 2006

NGO Warns of New Famine in N. Korea

In the wake of North Korea’s decisions to kick out the World Food Program and reassert state control over food distribution, Human Rights Watch is warning that North Korea can’t feed its people, and that attempts to reconstitute its broken and discriminatory Public Distribution System could trigger a new famine. “Only a decade ago, similar policies led to the famine that killed anywhere from 580,000 to more than 3 million,” the group said in a statement released to reporters in...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid/U.S. & Korea
May 4, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 38: Chairman Lee’s Little Red Book of Quotations

[Update and Clarification: Non-geek readers with lives may not realize that Lee Jong-Seok is actually South Korea’s Minister of Unification. One reader reasonably assumed that he was a North Korean, which is certainly an understandable assumption, based on some of the things Lee has been saying this week.] “[Kim Jong Il is] one of the figures in the North we can get [an] agreement from and who can make proper decisions. . . . The two [Kim and South Korean...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
May 4, 2006

Refugees Update

[Update: Richardson picks up several other reports to the same effect. Things seem to be moving, and you have to wonder what could happen next now that the word has started to spread.] The Chosun Ilbo reports fresh signs of progress that the State Department is finally aboard the love train on North Korean refugees. A group of North Korean defectors in Southeast Asia is reportedly seeking asylum in the United States. In an interview with Korea’s Yonhap News, a...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Diplomacy/Human Rights/North Korea/Refugees/Southeast Asia/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
May 2, 2006

Jay Lefkowitz Is Right About Kaesong

The debate about South Korea’s role in (not) improving human rights in the North seems to intensify by the hour. Freedom House is the latest to testify for the prosecution. If you believe the latest report from the Chosun Ilbo, the State Department is reeling from the vitriolic South Korean reaction to U.S. Human Rights Envoy Jay Lefkowitz over labor conditions in North Korea’s Kaesong Industrial Park: Another U.S. government insider also said the controversial piece by Lefkowitz had not...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Media Criticism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Uncategorized/Washington Views
May 2, 2006

The Forked Tongue of Lee Jong-Seok, Part 2

“At least since 2000 when we began providing assistance to the North, no one there has been starving to death,” Lee said. — UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok (ht to Richardson) In sum, although the period of high famine has passed, North Korea continues to experience chronic food shortages that are hitting hard at an underemployed and unemployed urban working class in particular. . . . Moreover, given the political stratification of North Korea and the inability of the WFP to...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Censorship/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/North Korea/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
May 2, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 37: Seoul’s Scorched Earth Retreat on Human Rights

At a comment to an earlier post by James, I listed the following as one of the accomplishments of last week’s North Korean Freedom Week: South Korea has never been more diplomatically isolated in regard to the aforementioned issues, plus on Kaesong, where it sounds increasingly desperate. South Korea’s government is giving some preliminary confirmation of that analysis, in a characteristically disordered way. The first reaction was a tantrum that almost merited a “Death of an Alliance” post. The Korean...

Categories Activism/An Alliance?/Appeasement/Human Rights/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
April 30, 2006

Mixed News on Kaesong

The bad news is that Kaesong-made goods look to be headed toward acceptance into the ASEAN FTA. This comes via Philip Dorsey Iglauer, who has made himself infamous both for awful reporting and awful analysis, so you’ve been warned. I kind of hope Iglauer likes to google his own name, because that’s my cue to point out a story in the Donga Ilbo that’s certain to have him calling for his smelling salts: The Korean government is opposing an article...

Categories Activism/An Alliance?/Appeasement/Human Rights/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
April 30, 2006

‘Barrel of a Gun’

During my recent trip to Korea, I was fortunate to have dinner and moderate quantities of alcohol with several other K-bloggers, including The Marmot, The Flying Yangban, Oranckay, The Drambuie Man (also a S. Dakota native), and Professor Andrei Lankov, who is working on a book on the Korean War, based on material from old Soviet archives. Oranckay picked a restaurant where I had some of the best kalbi I’ve ever eaten, and Robert knew of a beautifully restored old...

Categories Diplomacy/Inside NK/Korean Society/North Korea/Six-Party Talks/WMD