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December 22, 2006

Roh Learns Bitter Lesson About the Futility of Appeasing Implacable Foes

… inside his own party. The president also laid into three aspiring candidates in next year’s presidential election, describing his appointment of the moderate Goh Kun as his first prime minister as “a failure. “I chose Goh in the hope that he would become a bridge bringing me closer to conservatives, but it alienated me and the government from them instead,” Roh said. His decision to appoint Uri Party hopefuls Kim Geun-tae and Chung Dong-young as health and unification ministers...

Categories An Alliance?/Korean Politics/ROK Military/U.S. Military
December 8, 2006

Which ‘Major Government Offices’ Contained N. Korean Moles?

Update:   The Chosun Ilbo thinks the investigation’s recent lack of progress is suspicious. A court has issued five indictments, including one against U.S. citizen, former soldier, and current traitor, Jang Min Ho. In the Korean judicial system, those who are indicted are virtually always convicted, so these fellows are looking at some time. Prosecutors also said the group delivered secret information to Pyongyang under direct or e-mail directives from a North Korean spy operative. The information provided was mostly...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Law/Korean Politics/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea
December 6, 2006

A Billion for Tribute, But Not One More Cent for Defense!

Update:   Guess what?  GI Korea had it exactly right all along.    All hail GI Korea!   Wow.  Talk about nailing it. Let’s compare the $780 million dollar cost sharing agreement to the amount of money Seoul sends to North Korea.   While North Korea was busy creating international stability with their ballistic missile and nuclear bomb tests, the South Korean government was busy sending them a record amount of humanitarian aid.   The South Korean government sent $227...

Categories An Alliance?/NK Economics/U.S. Military/Washington Views
December 5, 2006

Robert Gates Gets It (Mostly) Right on Korea

Consider that: how often do bloggers, who live to bite ankles, find no fault with the pronouncements of those who make policy? I begin my observation of Gates as SecDef as a skeptic. And indeed, nothing that Gates could say about Korea could make me a fan if he prescribes Surrender Lite in Iraq or “learning to live with” an Iranian bomb. But listen carefully to his views on the Koreas, from his confirmation hearings. Begin in 1994, back when...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views
December 3, 2006

If the Alliance Has a Future …

Several new articles give us some idea of what it might look like. The first item is the alliance’s reason for being, part of which involves dealing with life after Kim Jong Il: OPLAN 5029. Back in April 2005 the South Koreans unilaterally pulled out of planning for it for fear of pissing off North Korea. A month later, talks seemed to be on again, but with no word on progress until now. A government source on Thursday said then-defense...

Categories An Alliance?/Reconstruction/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
December 2, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 61: S. Korea’s Withdrawal from Withdrawal

I agree with GI Korea on this: Iraq won’t even miss the Zaitun “division.”  Although numerically large, Korea’s contribution was militarily nil. The troops did not patrol, conduct raids, or guard anything except their own base, which sat in the most secure area of Kurdish Iraq. The deployment was a translucent veil for Korea’s ingratitude for the sacrifice of other nations, chiefly that of the United States, for its own survival. Locals joked that South Korea was a member of...

Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/Terrorism/Iraq
November 30, 2006

Cindy Sheehan, Kim Jong Il, and Me

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. — Martin Luther King, Jr. I will restrain the expression of  views on  Cindy Sheehan herself.  I’m one who makes allowances for the fact that she’s traumatized by her son’s death, an event that quite obviously and understandably blew a few of her circuits.  And while I’m sure that Casey  Sheehan  wouldn’t appreciate his mother’s hard work to render his sacrifice meaningless, I’m just as sure...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column
November 29, 2006

Man Who Led Violent 9/11 MacArthur Protests Arrested as N. Korean Spy

Has anyone forgotten this?  Today, we have a bit more certainty about what many of us had probably guessed, and we have yet more mounting  evidence of a hidden North Korean hand behind South Korea’s violent anti-American radicalism: Kang Soon-jeong, the former vice chairman of the South Korean chapter of the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification, an outlawed pro-Pyongyang group, was arrested on Tuesday for providing “national secrets” to Pyongyang, police said. Kang was also co-chairman of a civic group that...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea
November 19, 2006

‘The North Korea Refugee Relief and Reconstruction Act’

Several weeks ago, K-blogs were all aflutter with Robert Kaplan’s article on the prospects for destabilizing chaos when the North Korean regime collapses.  I argued in response that the United States should begin planning to fund reconstruction and organize an emergency humanitarian response, and that this ought to be one of the main contingencies  around which a U.S.-Korea alliance should be designed.  Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has now introduced a bill to address those issues.  Here’s the summary;...

Categories An Alliance?/Reconstruction/Refugees/Washington Views
November 16, 2006

What’s the Korean Word for ‘Obsolete?’

Unification minister-designate Lee Jae-joung said Wednesday while the Korea-U.S. alliance is crucial and should remain solid, it must not be allowed to affect South Korea’s future negatively. In a special lecture for children of Korean expatriates in English-speaking countries, Lee said there must be a “Maginot Line“ for South Korea in maintaining its alliance with the U.S., and the two countries should break away from the form their relations took in the Cold War and pursue a new relationship suited...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
November 13, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 60

The United States and its allies are moving forward with active naval operations  to contain the North Korean proliferation threat.   The strikingly odd thing about this is that South Korea isn’t going to be one of them.  Here is a list of nations with which the United States has more diplomatic and military synergy today than with South Korea:  Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Australia, … and France.  I guess you’re officially no longer  a U.S. ally when...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized/WMD
November 9, 2006

Chosun Ilbo’s Take on Dem Takeover Sketches Shape of New Realignment

Today is November 9th, which means that the official sulking period has ended, and it’s time to start picking your way though the banquet of bloggable delicacies of our new moveable feast.  America has moved to the left, but it’s uncertain just how far.  At the same time, Korea seems poised to move  right just, and it’s not at all clear that either side will stop to shake hands if, and when, they cross paths.  A more elemental question is...

Categories America/An Alliance?/Human Rights/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 8, 2006

Rumsfeld Resigns

[Update: More on Robert Gates here, and some clues to how he thinks here and .] It was probably inevitable, and if it might have been the only way to preserve any kind of bipartisan consensus on Iraq. I agree with Robert’s analysis, as it concerns Korea policy. Rumsfeld has managed the downsizing of the alliance creditably, confronting, rather than denying, the effect of the political trends there. Much of what Rumsfeld did right in Korea is owed to the...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 6, 2006

A (Blue) House Divided Against Itself

Kim Jong Il can count dividing the U.S.-Korea alliance as one of his recent successes, but in the process, he’s also divided his friends in South Korea. The left finds itself split among accomodators, appeasers, and outright agents, and those factions are going into an election year at war with each other. One of the most divisive of the internecine struggles is Seoul’s to-join-or-not-to-join agony over the Proliferation Security Initiative. Today, Yonhap has a long story on the subject. President...

Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/WMD
November 4, 2006

North Korean Spy’s Wife Was the Secretary to a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel

No information on which Lieutenant Colonel, or which unit (link in Korean).  Her side of the story is that she just kept his appointments, that he wasn’t in a sensitive position, and she couldn’t have stolen any secrets had she wanted to.   Hey, the wives of North Korean spies can have day jobs, can’t they?  If the South Koreans do what I increasingly think they  will try  to do —  a whitewash  —  then we will have a case of...

Categories An Alliance?/The Fifth Column/U.S. Military
November 3, 2006

Wobble Watch: Condi Rice Talks Tough, the Pentagon Talks Scary Tough

The Administration is trying to sound tough with the North Koreans, but I’m inherently distrustful of tough talk that comes the week before an election: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday the United States wanted “concrete action” when six-party talks resume on North Korea’s nuclear program. Rice said the starting point for the talks, which North Korea has boycotted since last November in protest at U.S. financial restrictions, would be to seek implementation of an agreement signed with...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views/WMD
November 3, 2006

Someone Please Staple Kim Geun-Tae’s Lips Together

This is an act that damages our national pride and is not appropriate for the South Korea-U.S. alliance.” — Kim Geun Tae, head of S. Korea’s ruling party and North Korea’s favorite dancing piggy, on hearing that the United States actually intends to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718. When I worried aloud that the United States would ease sanctions on North Korea during the pendency of the next round of endless, pointless six-party extortion denuclearization talks, I based my...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Unintended Humor/WMD/WTF?
November 2, 2006

The Song Min-Soon Dossier (The Death of an Alliance, Part 59)

We all know that Song Min-Soon is going to be South Korea’s next Minister of Foreign Affairs and trade, but if you think that a man who talks this kind of trash  about his friends couldn’t possibly be a career diplomat, think again. [ ]Mr Song, 58, is a 30-year career diplomat who served as ambassador to Poland while Christopher Hill was US ambassador there. The two then became their respective countries’ chief negotiators in the six-party talks on North...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Korean Politics