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Category: Korean Politics

August 3, 2010

Did Lee Myung Bak Just Get His Mojo Back?

I’ve been meaning to write about the latest off-year election results in South Korea for the last several days. In what must be a welcome shift for Lee, unlike the June local and provincial elections, the ruling GNP scored what Yonhap called “a stunning victory over the opposition parties.” In crucial by-elections gauging public sentiment toward the Lee Myung-bak administration midway through its term, the ruling Grand National Party yesterday scored precious victories in high-profile districts, making a successful political...

Categories Cheonan Incident/Korean Politics
June 16, 2010

A Nation in Denial: On South Korea’s Mid-Terms

I’ve taken a good long while to chew on the results of South Korea’s recent election, and while I’m ready to offer some unscientific speculation about what it didn’t mean, I really wish that I had some good, reliable polling numbers to give me a more concrete idea of what motivated people to vote, and what didn’t. With that said, my main interest in the results (below the fold for the winners) is the media consensus that it was rebuke...

Categories Cheonan Incident/Korean Politics
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 18, 2010

“Decisive” Evidence Implicates North Korea in Cheonan Sinking

As news reports suggest that an international investigation will soon announce that North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan, South Korean military sources are leaking information that, if true, seems reasonably conclusive: “In a search using fishing trawlers, we recently discovered pieces of debris that are believed to have come from the propeller of the torpedo that attacked the Cheonan,” a high-ranking government source said Monday. “Analysis of the debris shows it may have originated from China or a former Eastern-bloc country...

Categories Cheonan Incident/China & Korea/Korean Politics/Useful Idiocy
May 12, 2010

Mad Cow Revisionism

The Hankyoreh reacts to comments by President Lee by reinventing the Mad Cow riots of 2008: During a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, President Lee said, “It has been two years since the candlelight vigil demonstrations and although many suppositions proved untrue, not one of those intellectuals or medical sector figures who participated back then has engaged in any reflection. The president also said, “Without reflection, there is no development of society. He added, “I would like to say that it is...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea
April 30, 2010

Hankyoreh “Experts:” North Korea Sank the Cheonan, But It’s Still South Korea’s Fault

I expect the Hanky and its fellow travelers to be committed 24/7 tools of North Korea, but for God’s sake, people, your country is in mourning. Is this really the time? People’s Solitary for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) General Secretary Kim Min-young offered his diagnosis of the situation, saying, “If the government had faithfully executed the existing agreement between North Korea and South Korea for the peaceful use of the waters near the Northern Limit Line in the West Sea, things...

Categories Cheonan Incident/Fiskings/Korean Politics/Media Criticism/The Fifth Column
February 17, 2010

How Will Chung Dong Young Answer a Truth and Reconciliation Committee?

After years of unproductive debate, the South Korean National Assembly’s Unification and Foreign Affairs Committee finally approved a bill on improving human rights conditions in North Korea last week, on a vote divided along party lines: The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) said the overall budget for its activities in 12 categories was cut by 5.38 percent on-year to 4.63 billion won (US$4 million) for the 2010 fiscal year. Funding for research into North Korean defectors and human...

Categories Human Rights/Korean Law/Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
July 11, 2009

ROK Intel Blames N. Korea for DDOS Attacks, But You Already Knew That

This, from the now-familiar ROK Intel Leak Ticker — unnamed members or staffers from the intelligence committee of the South Korean National Assembly, quoting unnamed members of the National Intelligence Service: A North Korean army lab of hackers was ordered to “destroy” South Korean communications networks — evidence the isolated regime was behind cyberattacks that paralyzed South Korean and American Web sites — news reports said Saturday, citing an intelligence briefing. Members of the parliamentary intelligence committee have said in...

Categories Korean Politics/NK Military/Technology
June 23, 2009

The Jackboot Is on the Other Foot

For years, Roh Moo Hyun’s government funded a host of habitually violent left-wing unions and “civic” groups, and we never heard a peep from the Hankyoreh about that outrage against democracy. But that was then: It has been revealed that of the 14.1 billion Won in subsidies for social groups to be provided by the 25 district offices of Seoul City this year, about half, 7 billion won, will go to three major government-initiated community development project groups and 10...

Categories Censorship/Democracy/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Media Criticism
May 29, 2009

Photoblog: Seoul’s Farewell to the “Babo President”

[It’s been almost six months since I last submitted something to OFK, but I’m hoping to be able to write a bit more frequently from now on.  We’ll see.] In addition to the title “People’s President,” which is being used a lot this week, I learned today that Noh Moo-hyun was called “바보 대통령.”   I’m not so knowledgeable about the man, so that was a bit of a surprise for me to hear at the ceremony for him at...

Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society
May 27, 2009

I Sense a Great Disturbance in the Force

This just had to happen:  Roh’s bodyguard has changed his story: It was confirmed that there was no bodyguard present when the former President Roh Moo-hyun committed suicide on May 23. Accordingly, police have launched a reinvestigation of what the former president was doing on the day of suicide. “It may be that the bodyguard sent by the Cheong Wa Dae was not present when the former president threw himself from “˜Owl Rock,’” an official of the Cheong Wa Dae...

Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
May 22, 2009

Roh Moo Hyun Dead, an Apparent Suicide

Update 2:   Here’s a translation of Roh’s suicide note. “I’m indebted to too many people. The pain that I caused to so many people is too great. The pain in the coming days is unfathomable,” Roh said in the note disclosed by police. “Due to my frail health, I cannot do anything. I cannot read or write. Don’t be too sad. Don’t blame anyone. Life and death are identical parts of nature. It’s fate,” the note said. It also...

Categories Korean Politics/Sunshine
May 21, 2009

Sunshine Death Watch

BUT WOULDN’T THAT BE NEEDLESSLY STRENUOUS?  South Korean conservatives call for their government to close down Kaesong before Kim Jong Il gets around to it.  Personally, I think things are going perfectly just as they are. THE GRAND NATIONALS ARE REALLY TWO PARTIES, to hear Andy Jackson describe Park Geun Hye’s efforts to keep her people out of President Lee’s government.  Fortunately for them, the left is even more fragmented and rudderless, because that and the fact of incumbency are...

Categories An Alliance?/Korean Politics/Sunshine
May 1, 2009

NOOOOO!

Chung Dong-young, the former DP presidential candidate who lost to President Lee Myung-bak in 2007 in the presidential race, will now represent Deokji in Jeonju, North Jeolla. Following his defeat against Lee Myung-bak in 2007, a power struggle with the Democratic Party and his subsequent defection, Chung has scored a successful political comeback with 72.3 percent of the vote. [Joongang Ilbo] This, of course, follows Chung’s much-discussed failure to be named to the National Defense Committee after March’s Supreme Peoples’...

Categories Korean Politics
April 10, 2009

Roh Moo Hyun Apologizes for Taking Money in Bribery Scandal

There is now a silver lining to the growing bribery scandal that threatens to tarnish OFK favorite Park Jin. It has also brought some richly deserved shame to leftist former president Roh Moo Hyun, a man who often seemed more like North Korea’s paymaster in Seoul than the leader of South Korea. How much shame, you ask? They’re putting a two-story-high screen around his house. Much of the money was allegedly paid to Roh’s family and relatives, including his wife...

Categories Korean Politics
March 17, 2009

GNP Lawmaker: Roh may have tried to force N. Korean bomber to retract her accusation of Kim Jong Il

I figured we’d find out a lot of disturbing things about Roh Moo Hyun’s strange affinity for the North Korean regime after he left office. This alleged effort to hijack history suggests that that affinity exceeded his affinity for the lives of South Korean airline passengers: The ruling Grand National Party will hold a National Assembly hearing about allegations by the surviving bomber of Korean Air flight 858 that the previous government bullied her into backing a conspiracy theory surrounding...

Categories History/Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
January 29, 2009

Korean Lawmakers Talk About Fight Club!

I’m at a complete loss to top the absurdity of Korean politics: Their political rivals had fled moments earlier through a secret back door. An incensed Lee smashed her colleagues’ nameplates to the floor. “If I had caught the GNP lawmakers running away, I would have shouted, ‘You bastards!’ ” the petite, bespectacled lawyer said later as she poured tea in her office. “My gesture was symbolic, to mark a moment when the values of democracy and the process of...

Categories Korean Politics