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Category: South Korea

August 19, 2009

Is This Really The Time or the Place to Launch Rockets?

For a variety of reasons, apparently not. Look, I’m the last person on Earth to subscribe to the morally equivalent view of the Koreas as a north-going zax and a south-going zax. South Korean leaders don’t profit politically from international extortion and provocations — well, OK, there is this — but objectively, the world isn’t threatened by South Korea launching satellites or making advances in the nuclear fuel cycle, something President Lee’s people have personally told me they’re keen to...

Categories Missiles/Proliferation/South Korea/WMD
August 18, 2009

Kim Dae Jung, Fallen Liberator (1925-2009)

A few days ago, a well-informed reader and commenter on this site informed me that former President Kim Dae Jung would soon pass on, yet the time proved inadequate for me to work out my own internal conflicts about Kim, or “DJ” as many called him. Maybe Kim’s contradictory legacy just isn’t amenable to mutual reconciliation. Much will be said in the coming days — deservedly so — of DJ’s role in democratizing the South. Less will be said of...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/North-South/South Korea/Sunshine
August 7, 2009

In What Sense Is John Choe Morally Distinguishable from a Neo-Nazi?

John Choe, personifying the appellation “useful idiot” as pictured here, won’t shift U.S. foreign policy if he’s elected to represent a district in Queens in the New York City Council. Technically, Choe is correct when he evades questions about his sympathies with North Korea’s regime and demurs, “I’m not running for secretary of state–I’m running to represent the 20th district in the City Council,” Choe said. That is true in the same sense that David Duke ran for governor of...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Fifth Column/U.S. Politics
July 20, 2009

Seoul Should Join in Constricting North Korea’s Palace Economy

OFK favorite Sung-Yoon Lee, writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review, presses a point that the South Korean government ought to be ready to hear by now. After a sophisticated recitation of the U.S. Treasury Department’s own constriction of the North, he argues: The current ROK government now has its own chance to play a crucial role in determining the future of the Korean nation. As the self-professed sole legitimate government representative of the Korean people, Seoul must pursue a...

Categories An Alliance?/Sanctions/U.S. & Korea
July 15, 2009

A Glimpse at the Growing Pains Connected with Reunification

While living in Korea, I was always surprised at some South Korean citizens’ belief that reunification, whenever it should happen, will be smooth sailing. Indeed, one would think that is the message the ROK government is trying to sell. Has anyone seen the video they play at the DMZ? I’m not sure if they’ve since changed it, but when I saw it, they had smiling, well-fed, healthy children running around a grassy field with butterflies and flowers and a little...

Categories Korean Law/North-South
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
July 8, 2009

North Korea Suspected in Cyber Attacks (Update: White House Also Targeted)

If the South Korean leak ticker is right about this, ballistic missile tests weren’t the only mischief Kim Jong Il had in mind for us on the Fourth of July: The sites of 11 South Korean organizations, including the presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry, went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, according to the state-run Korea Information Security Agency. [AP, Hyung-Jin Kim] To be precise about it, South Korean intelligence reports leaked by staffers of National...

Categories NK Military/The Fifth Column
June 24, 2009

Issue of U.S. Troop Withdrawal from ROK Resurfaces in Opinion Piece

Interesting. I remember hearing many people (American and South Korean alike) call for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the ROK during the Roh Moo-hyun years. Some of the calls coming from South Korea in particular were clearly based off anti-American sentiments while other people simply felt the absence of the U.S. military in Korea (or at least a reduced presence) would help the ROK become more self-sufficient militarily. At the time, I remember having conversations with people who...

Categories ROK Military/U.S. Military
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
June 17, 2009

Lee, Obama Still Talking Tough, North Korea Still Not Back on the Terror List

This week’s visit to Washington by South Korean President Lee Myung Bak has produced some nice, tough-sounding words that may or may not come to fruition, and which probably won’t mean a thing a year from now: Obama said a nuclear armed North Korea poses “a grave threat” to the world and said “we are going to break” the pattern of North Korea being rewarded for threatening actions. Lee thanked the United States for its “selfless sacrifice” in defending his...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
June 15, 2009

Biden, Lee: Won’t Get Fooled Again

He’s best known for saying things that make us cringe, but even Joe Biden is on message on North Korea: “It is important that we make sure those sanctions stick and those sanctions prohibit them from exporting or importing weapons,” Biden said. “This is a matter of us now keeping the pressure on.”  [AP] And since everyone else is, Joe, why not psychoanalyze the North Koreans’ motives?  Nope, he wouldn’t touch that one: “God only knows what he wants,” Biden...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
June 1, 2009

Koreans Flock to U.S. Army

It’s certainly an improvement on how the Army was received in Korea when I was there. For everyone who says “Yankee Go Home,” someone else says, “and take me with you:” The program was authorized without fanfare late last year by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to attract temporary immigrants who speak strategically important languages such as Arabic, Farsi and Korean. The bait: The soldiers could immediately apply for U.S. citizenship, skipping the sometimes decadelong process of securing a green card...

Categories An Alliance?/Korean Society/U.S. Military
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 26, 2009

Will we see a more proactive South Korea?

While I’m hearing a lot of commentary on what Obama should and shouldn’t do with his North Korea problem, I am curious as to what South Korea is thinking. I have been told by contacts in South Korea that these latest moves by the DPRK have not been able to break through the average South Korean’s desensitized shell. Indeed, South Korean headlines seem to suggest the South is just as obsessed with the nuclear test’s affect on the economy, if...

Categories North-South/South Korea
May 25, 2009

Fifth Column Update: Pyongyang Orders a Hot Summer for Seoul

I certainly don’t believe for an instant that North Korea’s infiltration of the South was suspended during the DJ or Roh administrations; rather, I think stories about that infiltration were less likely to be leaked or reported under the former left-wing administrations unless they were just too newsworthy to suppress.  But if North Korea’s agents had ever gone to ground, they’ve come back up to prepare for the summer riot season: The North Korean regime recently ordered officials and organizations...

Categories Refugees/The Fifth Column