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Category: South Korea

August 29, 2013

Leftist South Korean lawmaker sought for pro-North insurgency plot

No, as a matter of fact, it would not surprise me in the least if leftist fringe National Assemblyman and alleged Chosun Workers’ Party member Lee Seok-Gi was actively plotting to support a North Korean invasion by organizing violent fifth-column attacks in South Korea. Duh, he’s already been featured in a “fifth column watch” post. The UPP members allegedly had a plan to blow up infrastructure in the country, including communication networks, a district court official said, quoting court-issued warrants...

Categories The Fifth Column
February 6, 2013

Sometimes, a missile is just a missile

Every time North Korea tests a rocket, Hans Blix sheds a little tear and Ban Ki Moon’s fluffy white tail stops wagging, because North Korean rocket tests violate three U.N. Security Council Resolutions — 1695 (which bans “all activities related to its ballistic missile programme”), UNSCR 1718 (ditto, and requires N. Korea to “re-establish its pre-existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching”), and 1874 (which bans “any launch using ballistic missile technology”).  North Korea’s official response is that it is...

Categories Anju Links/Anti-Americanism/Propaganda/WMD/WTF?
December 21, 2012

Best Graphics of the Week (So Far)

The first shows the persistence of regionalism, in living color. Via Yonhap; hat tip to Step Haggard and Jaesung Ryu. If I’m sitting in Pyongyang right now — and also, if I’m a malignant narcissist with a bloated army — I’m thinking the people who voted this way must be punished.  One sense of ill foreboding has been replaced by another. The second graphic is a newer, higher resolution image of the Koreas at night. Don’t stop there.  The full-resolution version...

Categories Korean Politics/NK Economics
December 15, 2012

Obama Administration’s N. Korea policy evolves from the 90s to the 60s.

Not surprisingly, North Korea’s missile test is bringing out a lot of criticism of President Obama’s North Korea policy, but sometimes, that criticism writes itself.  Writing at The Cable, Josh Rogin tells us that just as Kim Jong Un was counting down the launch sequence between drags on a smuggled Marlboro, Wendy Sherman and the State Department’s crack team of Asia experts were relaxing at a cocktail party in honor of — smack your forehead now — the Emperor of...

Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/Diplomacy/U.S. Military
December 14, 2012

A Quick Thought on this Psy business

My ten year-old can already tell you that one of my life’s newer objectives is to die an old man without having heard “Kangnam Style” even once. Pop culture has never been my thing, but I sure did get tired of all the forced Kangnam-Style allusions and cliches in just about everything written about Korea during Psy’s 15 minutes.  Anyway, if you’re wondering whether I’m even a little bit surprised that Psy once sang, “Kill those fucking Yankees …. Kill their...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Society/Useful Idiocy
June 27, 2012

Flower Indeed: Lim Su-Kyung and the Bigotry of the Korean Left

For several days, I’ve hoped to find time to write about the new hit TV show in South Korea, “Now on My Way to Meet You,” featuring (and humanizing!) photogenic North Korean women: Each woman also entertains, some by singing and dancing. Others perform comedy skits, including several who mimic North Korea’s iconic, stern-faced female TV newsreader. But the ending turns sad as the women send video messages to family members back in the North. Everyone in the studio sobs...

Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society/Refugees
May 30, 2012

Fifth Column Watch

I haven’t really had time to follow the story of the United Progressive Party as carefully as I’d have liked; South Koreans who are avowedly pro-North are a constant source of fascination to me. In South Korea, political parties break up, re-form, and re-brand every election season. During the most recent National Assembly election, the far left was represented by the UPP, which occupies approximately the same position as the former Democratic Labor Party. The largest UPP faction is openly...

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
April 23, 2012

See Kim Run!

It’s very rare that an election in any country is anything but a choice between the lesser of two evils. For a brief moment at least, South Korea’s election will be an exception to that dreary rule, because Kim Moon Soo has said he will run for president. Years ago, before he was elected as Governor of Kyonggi Province, I profiled Kim here and here. On Saturday morning, while conversing with my wife, I was lamenting that Park Geun Hye,...

Categories Korean Politics
July 14, 2011

Sohn Hak-Kyu’s Olympic Folly

Why did I shudder when I heard that South Korea had won the winter Olympics? Because I knew it was just a matter of time before some imbecile had an idea like this one: Rep. Sohn Hak-kyu, chairman of the opposition Democratic Party, said Monday the party would push for “some events at the 2018 Winter Olympics to be staged in North Korea. He said he would also bring up the issue of forming a unified team with the North...

Categories Korean Politics/Sports
June 30, 2011

Who will defend South Korea? And why?

Even as President Lee’s government stokes fears of another North Korean attack, we’re seeing a steady stream of reporting that he may drop his demand that North Korea apologize for the attacks of 2010 before there would be any direct bilateral talks. So far, Lee has thrown cold water on those reports, all of them anonymous and all of them seemingly indicative of some internal debate in the ROK government. Here’s the latest such report. That this should be a...

Categories ROK Military
June 6, 2011

Sung Kim Through the Retrospectoscope

The announcement that Sung Kim will be our new U.S. Ambassador to South Korea suggests continuity if a comparison of his background to Kathleen Stephens’s tells us anything. Like Stephens, Kim is a protege of Chris Hill* and comes from the State Department’s Korea Desk, which has long favored appeasement, agreed frameworks, and a peace treaty with North Korea, and had previously been caught trying to water down language in the State Department’s annual human rights report. My own fears...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
May 20, 2011

Close Kaesong, Then Pass the FTA

I’m a fan of the Heritage Foundation’s Bruce Klingner, consider him a friend, and can’t remember the last time I disagreed with him about anything, but when he writes, using unusually strong language, that the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement won’t help North Korea, I continue to harbor doubts. First, North Korea has become adept at selling its products under false labels. Second, some South Koreans — including some who could end up governing South Korea after the 2013 elections...

Categories NK Economics/Sanctions/U.S. & Korea
February 9, 2011

What Don Rumsfeld Got Right

Writing at Korea Real Time, Evan Ramstad quotes from a memo written by Don Rumsfeld in late 2002, shortly after Roh Moo Hyun was elected President of South Korea on a wave of anti-American rage: “As you know, the new President-elect [Roh] has stated that he wants to review the relationship,” Mr. Rumsfeld wrote. “Rather than pushing back, I think we ought to accept that as a good idea. If we had recommended it, we could be accused of destabilizing...

Categories An Alliance?/Anju Links/Anti-Americanism
January 9, 2011

Heritage Scholar Calls for Asian Missile Defense Alliance

Bruce Klingner at the Heritage Foundation is proposing an idea whose time has come: a comprehensive, multi-national missile defense system for Asia. Klingner’s argument begins with an explanation of what should be obvious — that diplomacy has failed to disarm North Korea, as China’s own missile arsenal is growing rapidly. The land- and sea-based system Klingner proposes would protect Asian democracies from both North Korea and China, and enhance U.S. national security, as well. Here’s the abstract: The United States...

Categories An Alliance?/Anju Links/China/Japan/Taiwan/U.S. Military
December 8, 2010

If You Must Bomb, Bomb Their Palaces

Now that Victor Cha has written that another Korean War is a very real possibility, that risk has become a matter of accepted conventional wisdom. Some in South Korea seem to be waiting for an excuse to restore deterrence through bombing. This is probably a mix of bluff and bluster, but there’s no arguing with South Korea’s right to self-defense and its need to restore deterrence. A lot of unthinkable things have already happened this year, and I certainly hope...

Categories Korean War II/NK Military/North-South/ROK Military
December 7, 2010

Victor Cha: “There is a real possibility of war on the Korean Peninsula.”

So begins a very sober assessment from a man not known, to put it mildly, for his erratic mood swings or his turbulent creative energy. If anything, I think Cha understates the gravity of the situation. North Korea — by the way, it was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 — has already sunk a South Korean warship, shelled a South Korean island, killed and maimed Marines and civilians, and turned the survivors...

Categories ROK Military/Yeonpyeong Attack