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Category: Korean Politics

June 3, 2006

Mercurial Politics, Part 3: The Right

[Update 5 Jun 06: As I predicted below, the GNP win and the attack on Park Geun-Hye have given her a big boost at Lee Myung-Bak’s expense. Scroll down for more.] You know that the maneuvering is in high gear when it reaches the Washington think tank circuit. Here’s an excerpt from e-mail I received yesterday, inviting me to a think-tank event in Washington next week: The New Right Union (NRU) Mission Statement: “To expand freedom over the entire Korean...

Categories Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
June 1, 2006

The ‘Streets Ingore,’ the Chosun Ilbo Doesn’t

Sort of a bad news/good news proposition: a few dozen passersby turn away, but a few million citizens read a sympathetic portrayal of your message and see your photogenic messengers in full color. The article depicts LiNK as a lonely voice in the wilderness, but in fact, Project Sunshine was media exploitation brilliance. LiNK is the flip side of the lesson Hanchongryon forgot: effective activism isn’t about numbers. It’s about using the numbers you have effectively.

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Korean Society
June 1, 2006

Exit Comrade Chung; Some Predictions

Adios, MF. Don’t let the Portal to Oblivion hit your ass on your way in. Never in Korea’s short history of electing local officials […] has a party which holds the Blue House performed so badly. My main hope for yesterday’s election was not for a GNP victory, but for an Uri defeat. The result, which officially qualifies as a “meltdown” on the Yangban’s scorecard, has already produced a windfall that far exceeds my limited expectations: the ignominious resignation and...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
June 1, 2006

A GNP Blowout

As predicted by just about everyone, except by greater margins than expected. Because the turnout was heavy, the GNP can consider this a convincing win, but I suspect it could have been the result of “negative turnout” — turnout by those voting against Uri, which has allowed South Korea to descend into chaos. The only governorship the Uri Party won was in its heartland of Cholla Puk-do. There’s no way the ruling Uri party can put a good face on...

Categories Korean Politics
May 29, 2006

Korea Diary, 29 May 06

A Cold Wind in the North: North Korea has cancelled its visa waiver program for some Chinese visitors, and China has reciprocated. Like every other effort to explain what the North Koreans are up to, it’s speculative. The Joongang Ilbo’s writer speculates that it’s about North Korean fears of excessive Chinese economic influence, which makes sense, whether or not it’s the reason for this move. Another possible explanation — purely speculation and entirely my own — is that North Korea...

Categories China & Korea/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Korean Society/NK Economics/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
May 29, 2006

Election Updates

If my math is any good — and if it were, I suppose I’d have found another line of work — Koreans are already voting in local elections. Here are a few last-minute posts before exit polls and results come in: Park Geun Hye is already up and out of her hospital bed campaigning in the wake a failed throat-slashing attack. Also yesterday, the Seoul West District Court dismissed an appeal by her admitted attacker, Ji Chung-ho, against his detention....

Categories Korean Politics
May 29, 2006

Operation Sunshine Continues

LiNK is asking for your help to shame South Korea’s government into showing some concern for the 23 million Korean citizens living North of the DMZ: LiNK is amassing a giant collection of “messages to the president” which we shall put on a banner to be delivered to South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to show him that the people of Korea and the world are watching how he deals with the North Korean human rights crisis. Here’s how it works:...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Korean Education/Korean Politics/Korean Society
May 21, 2006

The Battle of the Hump, Part 4: The Fiaola Ricefield War

The lastest example of the Washington Post’s awful Korea coverage is certain to leave you less informed than before you read it. Anthony Faiola manages to distort the Battle of Camp Humphreys into a conflict between peaceful, bucolic peasants and Uncle Sam’s evil puppet. Faiola apparently found one of the few local residents in attendance — there are just 70 of them among thousands — a sympathetic-sounding 90 year-old woman. It makes a better story to tell it this way...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Media Criticism/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
May 20, 2006

Park Geun-Hye Stabbed

An assailant slashed the neck of South Korean presidential candidate Park Geun-Hye with a pencil knife at a campaign event in Seoul today, where she was at a political event with opposition mayoral candidate Oh Se-Hoon. The cut was 11 centimenters long and 2-3 centimeters deep. Word is, Ms. Park will be OK. The assailant appears to be a Korean man in his 40’s or 50’s. Park very recently resigned as head of the opposition Grand National Party to start...

Categories Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society
May 19, 2006

Daily NK President Talks to TKL about the New Right and North Korea

Recently, Newsweek’s BJ Lee reported on the emergence of South Korea’s New Right. One of the persons prominently featured in the article was Han Ki-Hong, President of the Daily NK, an online newspaper focusing on conditions in North Korea (DO NOT MISS their latest report on North Korea’s growing border control problems). The Daily NK differs from the South Korean papers in that it primarily focuses on events in the North. More remarkably, its reporters are often North Koreans reporting...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/Human Rights/Korean Politics/North Korea/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
May 17, 2006

The UniFiction Church Choir

Progress at Last! The last seven years of the Sunshine policy have finally secured a legacy Roh can campaign on. Goodbye “sea of fire,” hello, “deluge of fire!” I’d like to see those neocon skeptics deny that “deluge” beats “sea” any day of the week! This from the lovable North Korean site “Within Our Race” (a rough translation). ================ Who Stopped My Peace Train? My money is on this not being the last obstacle that bars the path of Kim...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Europe/Human Rights/Humor/Satire/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Education/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Unintended Humor/WTF?
May 16, 2006

Korea Diary, 17 May 06

If you need an even better illustration of the idiocy of the Tokdo distraction, read this moving story about the families of two hostages, one Japanese and one South Korean, who married during their captivity in North Korea. Yokota expressed gratitude that his son-in-law was a South Korean. “I am so lucky to have a South Korean son-in-law, not a North Korean. I am so happy that I can hope that our families may meet one another again. He said...

Categories Abductions/Activism/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Europe/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Inside NK/Islam/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/News Links/NK Economics/Proliferation/Refugees/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized/WMD
May 16, 2006

LiNK Press Release

[Update: NKay has the full schedule for “Project Sunshine.” The name is rather inspired, I think.] Adrian Hong sends news of LiNK’s next campaign to seize the initiative on human rights on the streets of Seoul. Some gratuitous advice: bring plenty of camcorders in case these guys show up. That way, if they revert to their thuggish character, there will be incentives for the South Korean and American governments to add significant legal action to the self-discrediting of the radical...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Korean Society
May 15, 2006

UniFictions

This one is straight out of the Peter Ban book of Foreign Policy: A new sign reading “Passengers Heading to Pyongyang Board Here” was set up on the Dorasan Station platform, one of the test-operation sections of the Gyeongeui and Donghae Lines over which South and North Korea reached an agreement on May 13. What an amazing coincidence! Why, that’s just six days before the next election! Still, if we really, really wish for it, it will be. I wonder...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics