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Category: South Korea

July 25, 2006

Free at Last?

The Koreans have been relatively free for some time now. But if a new bill passes, the American men and women who help secure that freedom may be able to put outrages like these behind them: The bill aims to prevent discrimination in all public and private sectors including employment and education. Discrimination would be defined based on 20 criteria, including gender, physical disability, religion, age, nationality, race, skin color, appearance, pregnancy, ideas and sexual preferences. Under the bill, indirect...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Law/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea
July 25, 2006

Let Them Make Won!

Update: Gee, how curious. Police recovered a briefcase containing a hoard of probably forged United States Treasury bonds worth $500 million during the investigation of a local theft, Seoul’s Gwanak Police Station announced. Police said they are looking into the possible involvement of international crime networks. ===================================== With Seoul questioning why the United States is making such a big deal out of North Korea’s counterfeiting of its currency and saying it “will take no further steps” against it, the Chosun...

Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/U.S. & Korea
July 23, 2006

And They Wonder Why Relations Are Deteriorating

Update: Ouch. You can clearly see how this administration has moved to the left from where it began. UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok says the United States “failed the most” when North Korea launched its missile. You thought, perhaps, those whose main event exploded 45 seconds after launch? The rising superpower whose uncontrollable satellite managed to cement a U.S.-Japanese alliance? The government whose incalculably costly and increasingly unpopular appeasement policies were exposed as a worthless sham at the push of one...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/U.S. & Korea/WMD/WTF?
July 22, 2006

Now What? Part 2

Right after North Korea launched its round of missiles, I outlined a series of options, mostly financial, that the U.S. and other countries could take in response. Two weeks later, several aspects of that forecast are holding up well. What looked at first like another U.N. farce, then a modestly successful sanctions effort (by U.N. standards, anyway), now looks to be an important and hard-won component of a coordinated effort to tighten the squeeze on the regime-sustaining half of North...

Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD
July 22, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 45: An October Surprise?

[This is an updated post, originally published Saturday morning (22 July 06). An interview with the USFK Commanding general has partially confirmed what it asserts, so I’m supplementing the old post rather than starting a new one.] Jodi at The Asia Pages appears to be the recipient of some inside information that a dramatic reduction of the U.S.-Korean military welfare state alliance will be announced this fall, which coincides high-level security consultations scheduled for October. According to Jodi’s source, the...

Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
July 21, 2006

‘Truly Evil’

Not starving millions of your own people to build missiles for attacking cities in other nations, but the idea that one of those nations might try to protect its citizens from them. There’s only one way I can make that statement remotely comprehensible — by recalling that Roh won’t protect his own citizens. Just as a reminder, we have 30,000 troops in Roh’s country, with a resulting defense cost savings of $60 billion a year. I wonder how much of...

Categories Appeasement/Japan/Japan & Korea/U.S. & Korea/WMD
July 18, 2006

Congratulations

… to GNP Assemblyman Hwang Woo-Yea, who has become the new General Secretary of the party. Despite the Soviet-sounding title, Assemblyman Hwang has supported human rights for the North Korean people since the peak of the UniFiction in 2000. He is also a leader in an international, interparliamentary committee to promote human rights in the North. If Kim Moon-Soo (1, 2) is the movement’s populist face, Hwang, a former judge, is its diplomat.

Categories Human Rights/Korean Politics
July 17, 2006

The Death of an Aliance, Part 43: Kim Won-Ung, Nutcase

The problem with identifying the most unhinged politician in South Korea’s ruling Uri party is a lot like trying to identify France’s most offensive armpit: at a certain point, extremity renders empirical comparison pointless. Still, I’m not sure anyone in the Uri party has built a more solid record than ex-GNP’er Kim Won-Ung, the only South Korean parliamentarian to have earned two of his very own “DOA” posts. His latest oral discharge is a ferocious denial that North Korea’s short-range...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/WMD/WTF?
July 15, 2006

Too Little, Too Late

There may be no better way to defeat a radical movement than to let it win an election. The radical is an inherently emotional creation, one ill suited to the objective analysis of facts that effective government requires. If democratic institutions can survive their tenure of office, they generally discredit themselves in short order. I can’t imagine a better illustration of this principle than watching a South Korean government with a 14% approval rating meekly promoting a military alliance and...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/NK Economics/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
July 13, 2006

The FTA Has Turned Ugly

An anti-Free Trade Agreement protest of 25,000 has clogged downtown Seoul, and on that day, it wasn’t safe to look “American” on the streets, not even for the Swiss. A Swiss man and two friends were set upon by a mob of angry protestors who apparently mistook them for Americans on Wednesday. The group of 10, who were taking part in a Gwangwhamun rally to protest against an FTA between Korea and the U.S., approached the man and his friends...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Law/Korean Society/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
July 12, 2006

For the Bush Administration, the Moment of Truth

We learn today that China intends to veto a resolution that would impose binding sanctions on North Korea’s missile trade. Got that? No binding sanctions on a starving nation’s trade in … missile components. China and Russia introduced a resolution Wednesday deploring North Korea’s missile tests but dropping language from a rival proposal that could have led to military action against Pyongyang. Excuse me? Who said anything about “military action?” Unless they mean intercepting their nukes, missiles, and dope on...

Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/China/China & Korea/Russia/Russia & Korea/WMD
July 12, 2006

Sticker Shock: A Post-USFK South Korea Must Do Less for More

A few days ago, the Marmot linked this RAND report on South Korea’s Defense Reform Plan (DRP). The report starts with some alarming disclaimers: it could not access much of the ROK MND’s classified information on strength levels or weapons systems, and the author has no experience (!) analyzing defense budget requests. Nonetheless, the author was able to pull together enough knowable facts to convince me that the DRP will come unglued. How fast? Without a national emergency, I give...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/NK Economics/Technology/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military