Category: North-South

Unification Minister Hyun In-taek told parliament that the government believes the North deliberately discharged some 40 million tons of water from its Hwanggang Dam north of the demilitarized zone on Sunday. [Yonhap] Well, who really knows? What I would say is the North Koreans aren’t the sort to let concern for the welfare of their own people or anyone else get in the way of sending a political message. For them, killing a few kids could easily be just another...

Kim Dae Jung may have been brave and statesmanlike as a dissident, but when a politician dies — particularly a liberal one — too many journalists are overcome by the temptation to deify. Let’s not be. DJ’s accomplishments as a dissident, related here vividly by Seth Lipsky, remind us of his courage and vision before he attained power. But what they didn’t do is make him an effective peacemaker or president. But then, when in history has anyone who seemed...

I didn’t say much about Yu Song Jin during his 137 days as a guest of Kim Jong Il, mainly because I really didn’t care that much about the predicament in which he placed himself. Yu, a South Korean employee at the Kaesong Industrial Park, was accused of attempting to infect one of the hand-picked North Korean factory slaves with his thoughtcrimes — an offense that, if true, might have endangered her life. I’m no great fan of North Korea...

About one-fifth of South Koreans think North Korea is trustworthy, a poll said Thursday, the lowest level in a decade amid heightened tension over the communist state’s recent belligerent acts. The survey by Hyundai Economic Research Institute, a Seoul-based private think tank, showed 22.2 percent of the 623 respondents felt that North Korea could be trusted as a “partner for dialogue.”  [Yonhap] That’s down from a high of 52.3 percent in 2000, after the summit between Kim Jong Il and...

North and South Korea failed to reach agreement in talks Friday on the fate of a joint industrial estate which is their last remaining reconciliation project, officials said. The South insisted it cannot accept demands for hundreds of millions of dollars in extra payments for the Kaesong estate just north of the heavily-fortified border, Seoul’s unification ministry said. The North refused to discuss the fate of a South Korean employee it has detained since March 30, it said.  [AFP] What...

It’s a rare moment when I express even mild interest in metric football, otherwise known as soccer. This year, however, North and South Korea have both qualified for the World Cup, which holds the distant promise to beat down the saccharine we-are-one, brotherly-love hippie crap of the 90’s. According to this pernicious stupidity, sports could overcome differences between nations with diametrically opposed interests, values, and psychologies. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. It’s enough to make you retch. On...