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Category: Korean Politics

January 26, 2009

That Rabbi was such a nice man. Maybe I should send him another ham.

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak, who as mayor of Seoul awkwardly offered the city to Almighty God, was recently rescued from the brink of a social and sectarian fiasco when a staffer prevented him from sending Chuseok gift sets of dried anchovies to a group of Buddhist monks (link is in Korean). Fact 1: Buddhist monks are required to abstain from eating living things. Fact 2: 22.8% of President Lee’s constituents are Buddhists. So many mouths. How can one...

Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society/Unintended Humor
January 23, 2009

As KCTU Calls for ‘All Out War,’ Rally Attendance Declines

The thugs at the Korean Confederation of trade unions see opportunity in their country’s bad economic times, reports the sympathetic Hankyoreh: The KCTU plans to launch an “all out war” against the Lee administration in February, since it has again made known its intention to have the ruling Grand National Party pass revisions to laws on irregular workers and the minimum wage in the extraordinary National Assembly session scheduled for that month. The KCTU plans to launch its offensive with...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
January 16, 2009

FTA Prospects Still Bleak

You know, with all of the anti-American falsehoods some Koreans proliferated before the FTA was signed, I thought the entire effort was more trouble than it was worth even before the beef riots, also inspired by asinine libel, and largely attended by people so stupid as to legitimize the issue of reproductive licensing. Then came the recent parliamentary brawls: And for a moment, South Korea blessed a troubled world with the gift of laughter. (If you polled Koreans about how...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
December 9, 2008

Roh Legacy Death Watch

There are two entries in this merry vigil: – Roh’s brother ordered jailed over a bribery scandal. – A left-wing agitprop history textbook heads off for the ash-heap of …. Still, the counter-revisionism is going a tad too far when episodes like Kwangju are flat-out written out of history. The idea is to put historical events into their proper context. Kwangju no more defines South Korean history or its modern reality than the Pullman Strike defines American history or its...

Categories Korean Education/Korean Politics/Korean Society
November 29, 2008

The Wisdom of Kim Dae Jung: Slavery Is Prosperity, Censorship Is Freedom, Terror Is Peace

No matter what the North Koreans do with Kaesong next week or next year, their actions last week have already assured that it will fail to attract the international investment it needs to succeed. The North having demonstrated its willingness to hold potential investors’ capital hostage to their political whims, those investors will now stay away in droves. It’s worth reviewing just how grandiose the dream of Kaesong had become so recently. If you recognize the url stamped onto this...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
July 30, 2008

Tokdo: Now Officially the Dumbest International Crisis in History

… thus supplanting all of that Seige of Troy unpleasantness. I cannot say that South Korea would be much the worse for having dismissed Ambassador Lee Tae Shik from his post, but that is incidental to the skull-smacking stupidity of why: The government on Monday decided to call Korean Ambassador to the U.S. Lee Tae-shik to account if it is found that the embassy did not react promptly to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names listing Dokdo under “undesignated sovereignty.”...

Categories An Alliance?/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/Korean Society
July 29, 2008

In Seoul, ‘Mad Sheep’ Protests Descend into Radical Violence

Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode. The herd has gotten leaner, and meaner:  Around the Seorin Rotary in Jongno, another 80 protesters besieged a traffic police officer and an auxiliary police officer from Jongno Police Station, and stole three two-way radios. Demonstrators also broke the windows of a police bus in front of the Samsung Tower, and flattened tires. Two police officers were taken to the Boshingak Pavilion, had their shirts taken off, and were...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
June 28, 2008

Mad Sheep Disease

Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode. It is an inviolable rule of today’s South Korea that all social movements will eventually become violent and anti-American.  So inevitably, a movement  that was, at first,  ostensibly about food safety has descended into a violent anti-American riot, with protestors ransacking the offices of newspapers that don’t  echo the street’s bleat.   I’d love to know a little more about who  the shepherds are: Junior Naver, the children’s site of...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society
June 16, 2008

B.S. Stands for ‘Bovine Spongiform’

At this time a year ago, I thought by now that I’d be writing about the restoration of an alliance that Roh Moo Hyun had just about managed to destroy.  Although I’ve long felt that  a large  U.S. military presence in South Korea was an anachronism no longer justifed by any North Korean threat, I saw benefits to having  a healthy military, diplomatic, and economic alliance between South Korea and the United States.  Also, I think it would be nice...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
April 23, 2008

Yes, This Should Be Interesting

PAGING DON KIRK: Former South Korean spymaster Kim Ki-Sam, who must know where a lot of the bodies from the 2000 North Korea summit scandal are buried, has just been granted asylum in the United States, reports Yonhap. From the article, you have to infer that Kim was able to convince an immigration judge that he has something to be afraid of in South Korea, notwithstanding the recent changes in the presidency and the National Assembly. Kim is promising to...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
April 13, 2008

Kim Won Ung: A Most Joyous Political Obituary

Imagine an America in which Cynthia McKinney chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and holds regular meetings with Osama Bin Laden, and you can be begin to grasp the national embarrassment of Kim Won Ung’s tenure as leader of the Korean National Assembly’s Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee. Perhaps this analogy will also illustrate the depth of my ambivalence at confirming that Kim has lost his bid for reelction. Kim Won Ung at Kim Il Sung’s Birthplace in North...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics
April 9, 2008

A Good Election for Korea

Well, what can I add to what Andy and Robert have done here?  Let me start with this complete listing (in Korean) of the results and just add some notable points: *   Defeated presidential candidate “Comrade” Chung Dong Young, originator of the die-in-place policy  toward North Korean refugees,  was trounced and failed in his bid to win a  seat in the National Assembly.  Chung was a superficial, anti-American demagogue.  I despise him so deeply  that I  hope he tries...

Categories Korean Politics
April 1, 2008

A North Korean Runs in a Real Election

The Daily NK introduces us to North Korean defector Lee Ae Ran, who represents another step forward in the development of a class of post-Kim Jong Il leaders for North Korea. “I know it is laughable that a North Korean defector is running for a seat in the South Korean National Assembly,” the candidate admitted during a phone interview with Daily NK on March 28. She added, “In North Korea, if you come from a bad family background, there is...

Categories Defectors/Democracy/Korean Politics
March 18, 2008

Rule of Law or Rule By Law?

The Hanky has the vapors over President Lee’s plans to let the police use a bit more force against violent protestors. The plans include detailed rules on the use of force, and plans to arrest people who engage in violence and cross police lines. To this, the Hanky reacts with hyperbolic charges of a return to dictatorship: President Lee seemed to have been encouraging the police when he said, “If foreign television programs show the nation’s unlawful, violent demonstrators wielding...

Categories Censorship/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society
March 17, 2008

The Ides of 3ì›”

So why is Lee Myung Bak is avoiding ideological fights with the left?  Probably because he’s concentrating his energy on purging his own party of political enemies, including supporters of Park Geun-Hye.    The Grand National Party has as expected eliminated a large number of its 62 incumbent lawmakers from the Gyeongsang Provinces, the party’s political heartland, in the selection of candidates for the general election next month. Twenty-five lawmakers or 43.5 percent were eliminated, the largest number in the...

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
March 13, 2008

Surprise! Roh Administration Files Mysteriously Vanish

Despite Lee Myung-Bak’s specific warnings, many of the paper and electronic files in Roh Moo-Hyun’s Blue House have mysteriously disappeared: When the new government started work, chief secretaries of President Lee Myung-bak were shocked to find that there were no useful references other than trivial manuals and policy reports in Cheong Wa Dae’s work management system e-Jiwon (digital knowledge park). Most documents and files had been deleted and some parts of the hard disk were damaged. [….] It was especially...

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
March 13, 2008

Surprise! Roh Administration Files Mysteriously Vanish

Despite Lee Myung-Bak’s specific warnings, many of the paper and electronic files in Roh Moo-Hyun’s Blue House have mysteriously disappeared: When the new government started work, chief secretaries of President Lee Myung-bak were shocked to find that there were no useful references other than trivial manuals and policy reports in Cheong Wa Dae’s work management system e-Jiwon (digital knowledge park). Most documents and files had been deleted and some parts of the hard disk were damaged. [….] It was especially...

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
February 28, 2008

When did pining for the collapse of a genocidal tyranny become a bad thing?

Somewhere in Washington, Joshua is no longer smiling. Nam Joo-Hong, the nominee to be Unification Minister whom I had called “my kind of guy,” has withdrawn from consideration after becoming a lightning rod for those on the left who lost the election by a landslide. Nam Joo-hong, the unification minister-designate, and Park Eun-kyung, the environment minister-designate, stepped down as they were grilled by opposition parties over their accumulation of wealth and alleged misconduct. Nam does not qualify for the unification...

Categories Korean Politics