Home  >  North-South

Category: North-South

August 16, 2010

President Lee Drags South Korea Toward Its Destiny (Updated)

If there is such a thing as cautious enthusiasm — particularly for something that’s implausible on its face — that describes my reaction to President Lee’s proposal for phased unification with North Korea: Lee’s plan, similar to proposals from previous South Korean leaders, calls for North Korea’s denuclearization. If North Korea meets that demand — and years of international persuasion have not succeeded — Lee’s plan calls for a “peace community,” improved economic cooperation and then the establishment of a...

Categories North-South/Reconstruction
August 13, 2010

Repatriated South Korean POW Sent to Yodok

An octogenarian South Korean POW has been sent to a North Korean prison camp after he was caught attempting to escape the country and return to his homeland more than 55 years after being captured during the Korean War. [Open News] According to the report, the “peace forest” that will be Jung’s final destination is the infamous Yodok, or Camp 15. Follow me in a slightly cynical thought. If we’re going to start using the I.C.C. as a means to...

Categories Korean War/North-South/Refugees/The Camps
August 1, 2010

North Korean Land Mine Kills One South Korean, Injures Another

A North Korean mine which drifted along a river into the neighbouring South killed a man and badly injured another when it exploded, military officials said Sunday.  Several wooden box mines have been retrieved by South Korean soldiers and police, but it was not immediately clear how the mines ended up drifting into the South.  The explosion was reported shortly before midnight Saturday in a restricted border area in Yeoncheon, 60 kilometres (35 miles) northeast of Seoul, the defence ministry...

Categories NK Military/North-South
July 9, 2010

Kaesong Updates

A bus accident, apparently caused in part by bad weather, has killed 10 North Korean workers and injured 40 others at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which, by the way, subsidizes Kim Jong Il to the tune of $50 million per month. Give a thought to the poor families of the dead … and the wounded as well. I’m not sure how much of that substantial sum goes into providing suitable medical care for the North Korean people, but my best...

Categories Human Trafficking/NK Economics/North-South/Sunshine
June 14, 2010

Psyops Updates

Kim Jung-Wook, the Joongang Ilbo’s Washington Correspondent, thinks that the Cheonan Incident has revived the U.S.-Korea alliance, but frankly, the end result may well be the exact opposite. No, the incident didn’t raise tensions in a way that makes obvious the many conflicts in the two states’ interests, and yes, President Obama has shown more backbone than the North Koreans probably expected. The problem with this theory is that so far, there has been no significant response to the attack...

Categories Deprogramming/North-South/Propaganda/Subversion/The Fifth Column
June 14, 2010

Kaesong Death Watch

Contrary to a recent North Korean statement suggesting that the regime was shutting down Kaesong once and for all, the factories are still shipping goods, although the experiment itself is pining for the fjords. The complete failure of South Korea or the United States to respond to the sinking of the Cheonan with sufficient measures to deter the next attack, on one hand, and the failure of North Korea to extract more money from South Korea or the United States,...

Categories North-South/Sunshine/Useful Idiocy
June 7, 2010

The Kaesong Syndrome

It is much like that other psychological syndrome we sometimes observe in hostages who paradoxically express feelings of sympathy and adulation for their captors. The particular phenomenon I call the Kaesong Syndrome occurs when businesses become economic hostages of a despotic regime, and later begin to mimic its despotic exploitation of their workers, and finally, to parrot its demands in both substance and manner. The South Korean companies operating at the Kaesong Industrial Complex yesterday demanded that the South Korean...

Categories Appeasement/North-South/Sunshine
June 2, 2010

Kim Jong Il Has a Vote, Too

It’s election day in South Korea. The South has retreated, for the moment, from its plans to use psyops to influence public opinion in North Korea, but the converse certainly isn’t true. North Korea has a well developed, firmly rooted cadre of sympathizers, fifth columnists, , and the occasional hit team in South Korea, and the National Intelligence Service thinks they were actively campaigning on election day: A South Korean intelligence officer on Tuesday said Pyongyang is posting articles on...

Categories Korean Politics/North-South/The Fifth Column
May 28, 2010

Where’s the Outrage?

South Koreans’ unifiction mania may have cooled for the moment, but B.R. Myers tells us that public anger toward North Korea doesn’t approach that directed against America after the 2002 accident, and that plenty have made the decision to disbelieve the evidence that North Korea sank the Cheonan: It would be unfair to characterize these skeptics as pro-Pyongyang, but there is more sympathy for North Korea here than foreigners commonly realize. As a university student in West Berlin in the...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Cheonan Incident/Korean Society/North-South
May 17, 2010

Someone Isn’t Feeling That Unification Spirit (And We’ll Find Out Who!).

North Korea threatens to cut off access to Kaesong over leaflet balloons, which don’t just carry leaflets anymore: The head of a North Korean delegation to inter-Korean defense talks sent a letter to the South which read, “Despite our repeated requests, the South Korean government goaded and tacitly permitted activists to send propaganda leaflets that castigate our ideology and regime, small radios, US$1 bills and DVDs [via helium balloons] from May 1.” An anonymous South Korean official speculates that the...

Categories North-South
May 13, 2010

Cheonan conclusions will mean tougher N. Korea policies … for a while, anyway

It certainly looks like every government official outside Beijing who has seen the evidence now believes that North Korea sank the Cheonan and killed 46 members of its crew. Among those who have drawn their conclusions are the South Korean government, the Obama Administration, and the Republicans in Congress. The multinational investigation is now sufficiently advanced that the official Yonhap News Agency says that the findings could be released as early as next week. One interesting leak references a stray...

Categories Cheonan Incident/North-South/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
May 5, 2010

I regret to inform you that other commitments prevent me from joining your DMZ hike.

Memo to the Kyonggi provincial government: Is this really the ideal time to organize DMZ hiking excursions by people wearing bright red fishing vests and sun visors? This weekend, the government of Gyeonggi Province, which borders the DMZ, is unveiling a total of 182.3 km of courses in the area. It plans to post a map on its Web site and has started marking trails as part of a strategy to boost eco-tourism. “If you come and visit this area,...

Categories North-South/WTF?
May 1, 2010

Of Fools and Their Money, Cont.

Will the North Korean money pit sink the Hyundai Group? The financial health of the Hyundai Group began to deteriorate when it started pouring huge amounts of money into its North Korean business in 1998. Hyundai Merchant Marine, the core part of the Hyundai Group accounting for over 80 percent of the group’s total assets, had been supporting Hyundai Asan but was hit badly by the global recession. Last year, it saw sales fall by more than 20 percent from...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
April 22, 2010

Those damn North Koreans PUST us again!

Suckers …. A monument dedicated to Kim Il-sung was installed on the campus of the new Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). Built with donations from South Korean and US Christians, it could tank intra-Korean relations for good. The 20-metre granite monstrosity embodies the Juche idea, North Korea’s quasi-religious state ideology. [Asia News, Joseph Yun Li-Sun] For good, he says? Hasn’t this guy ever read the Hankyoreh? As if the likely diversion of funds from Kaesong or Kumgang, or...

Categories North-South/Propaganda/Sunshine
April 10, 2010

Of Fools and Their Money, Pt. 3: Thoughts on the End of Kumgang

North Korea has announced that it will make good on its threat to confiscate the South Korean property at the Kumgang tourist project. In a statement on Thursday, the North’s Guidance Bureau for Comprehensive Development of Scenic Spots, which is in charge of the tourism, said it is seizing a meeting hall for separated families built by the South Korean government, and a cultural hall, a hot spring spa, and a duty-free shop owned by the Korea Tourism Organization, as...

Categories NK Economics/Sunshine
March 29, 2010

Latest North Korean Threat Directed at DMZ Tours

North Korea warned on Monday of unpredictable disaster unless the South and the United States stop allowing tourists inside a heavily armed border buffer that is one of the most visited spots on the peninsula. President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 as a reward for giving up its nuclear weapons program. On February 3, 2010, President Obama decided not to restore North Korea to the list. An unnamed army...

Categories North-South
March 26, 2010

ROK Navy Ship Sinks Near NLL; Updates: 46 Sailors Missing, ROK Gov’t Downplays Initial Reports of North Korean Attack

Original Post, 26 March 2010, ~0800: This from Yonhap. It’s not clear if the ship is sinking or has already sunk: A South Korean Navy ship with 104 crew members on board was sinking off the Seoul-controlled island of Baengnyeong in the Yellow Sea, near North Korea, Navy officials said Friday. The 1,500-ton ship sank between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. near the island, but the cause of the accident was unknown, the officials said. A rescue operation was underway,...

Categories Cheonan Incident/NK Military/North-South/ROK Military
March 25, 2010

Karmic Justice for Kumgang Investors

North Korea’s threats to confiscate South Korean property at Kumgang are having predictable consequences for its investment climate: In an interview with The Dong-A Ilbo yesterday, Ahn said the head of a conference member company recently died of a heart attack due to severe stress from his business in North Korea. The suspension of the inter-Korean tours caused the late chairman’s company to teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, causing his death at age 55, Ahn said. Ilyeon’s prospects are...

Categories Appeasement/North-South/Sunshine