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June 20, 2006

The End of Sunshine?

[Update 6/20: As predicted, the North Koreans aren’t taking this well.] “We have the right to speak.” — North Korean government official, talking about South Korean politics Has international pressure has finally forced South Korea to abandon years of official apathy about the phobocracy that is North Korea? Finally, South Korea declares, it will ask the North to treat the lives of its people with a modicum of respect.

Categories Activism/Europe/Human Rights/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized
June 20, 2006

Shenyang Four Three Update

Several days ago, I reported that the Shenyang Four would be allowed to leave China safely. This latest report doesn’t directly contradict that, but … A diplomatic source in Seoul said yesterday the United States will accept three of four North Korean asylum-seekers now in the U.S. Consulate General in Shenyang, China. The source said Washington had informed Seoul of the decision. The four North Koreans first entered the South Korean diplomatic premises in that city, but on May 6...

Categories China/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. & Korea
June 19, 2006

Please, Please, Please Test It!

Plenty of people have asked me if Kim Jong Il will test a long-range Taepodong II missile, and really, I have no more idea that anyone else this side of the Taedong. On one hand, the North Koreans are desperate for some attention. They’re running out of money and friends, and they’ve added liquid fuel to a rocket, that’s corrosive to the fuel and oxidizer tanks and is thus more than an empty gesture. On the other hand, North Korea...

Categories NK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/WMD
June 17, 2006

Why He Took Those Pictures

The U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Alexander Vershbow, has paid a very public visit to the Kaesong Industrial Park, and the initial signs are good. Vershbow, a man who seeks the public debate his predecessors so often avoided, has not shied from stating some rather blunt views about North Korea. Thus, the fact that the North Koreans allowed his visit to go forward at all is surprising. Best of all, Vershbow snooped around, took pictures, and even seems to have...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/NK Economics/Technology/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Uncategorized/WMD
June 10, 2006

Minister Lee, Call Your Lawyer!

I wonder if the UniFiction Ministry’s Kaesong brain trust — perhaps the same great minds that thought they could fill Wal-Mart shelves with Kaesong products — ever stumbled across these articles of the Republic of Korea Constitution: Article 32 (1) All citizens shall have the right to work. The State shall endeavor to promote the employment of workers and to guarantee optimum wages through social and economic means and shall enforce a minimum wage system under the conditions as prescribed...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Korean Law/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
June 7, 2006

State Dep’t Applies the Term ‘Forced Labor’ to Kaesong

This new State Department report looks very bad for Kaesong products even getting into the United States, much less getting FTA status: The North Korean government may be pocketing most of the pay foreign employers pay North Korean workers, a U.S. report on human trafficking asserted. The report was released Monday by the State Department in Washington. …. Seoul wants, and Washington opposes, the designation of goods made there as domestic South Korean products. U.S. officials have criticized the labor...

Categories Human Rights/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
June 5, 2006

Hypocrisy Illustrated

If you want an ideal illustration of why I believe the political tide is turning in Korea, you couldn’t do better than this picture of this anti-free trade demonstration in Washington (Yonhap, via the Joongang Ilbo, now Korea’s best daily). It’s a real Where’s Waldo of illogic and double standards rooted in vitriol, and I’m compelled to warn you that if you stare at this picture too long, you will get a brain aneurism. Before we zoom in on this...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
June 5, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 41

I don’t know how much deader you can get than this: In a seismic shift in an alliance that has held since the Korean War, the military plans to scrap Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command by 2012, it emerged Sunday. Wartime operational control of Korean forces will also return to the country, probably by 2011, since it now rests with the commander of the U.S.-led CFC. According to a military source, plans to abolish the CFC are clearly stated in the...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
June 3, 2006

Mercurial Politics, Part 3: The Right

[Update 5 Jun 06: As I predicted below, the GNP win and the attack on Park Geun-Hye have given her a big boost at Lee Myung-Bak’s expense. Scroll down for more.] You know that the maneuvering is in high gear when it reaches the Washington think tank circuit. Here’s an excerpt from e-mail I received yesterday, inviting me to a think-tank event in Washington next week: The New Right Union (NRU) Mission Statement: “To expand freedom over the entire Korean...

Categories Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
June 2, 2006

Jay Lefkowitz to Visit Kaesong?

He must be thanking his Creator that he’s not in Chung Dong-Young’s league now. South Korea has invited the man Comrade Chung snubbed last year to Kaesong, and Yonhap reports Lefkowitz, who has publicly raised some pointed questions about the use of slave labor at Kaesong, has accepted. The latest report follows this one, confirmed by the USG, that a senior State Department official will also visit. Just one small problem here: the North Koreans haven’t granted him a visa,...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
June 1, 2006

Exit Comrade Chung; Some Predictions

Adios, MF. Don’t let the Portal to Oblivion hit your ass on your way in. Never in Korea’s short history of electing local officials […] has a party which holds the Blue House performed so badly. My main hope for yesterday’s election was not for a GNP victory, but for an Uri defeat. The result, which officially qualifies as a “meltdown” on the Yangban’s scorecard, has already produced a windfall that far exceeds my limited expectations: the ignominious resignation and...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
May 29, 2006

Korea Diary, 29 May 06

A Cold Wind in the North: North Korea has cancelled its visa waiver program for some Chinese visitors, and China has reciprocated. Like every other effort to explain what the North Koreans are up to, it’s speculative. The Joongang Ilbo’s writer speculates that it’s about North Korean fears of excessive Chinese economic influence, which makes sense, whether or not it’s the reason for this move. Another possible explanation — purely speculation and entirely my own — is that North Korea...

Categories China & Korea/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Korean Society/NK Economics/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
May 22, 2006

Modern-Day Comfort Women Describe Escape and Survival

In a follow-on to interviews they gave here, some of the first six North Korean refugees are talking about their escapes from the North. Here is an excerpt from the Dong-a Ilbo’s report: A woman who shared the same cell with Chan-mi died of malnutrition with her whole body swollen; another woman she witnessed was beaten to death. Chan-mi wept when she said, “When I was pardoned last year in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Korean Workers’ Party...

Categories Activism/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
May 21, 2006

The Battle of the Hump, Part 4: The Fiaola Ricefield War

The lastest example of the Washington Post’s awful Korea coverage is certain to leave you less informed than before you read it. Anthony Faiola manages to distort the Battle of Camp Humphreys into a conflict between peaceful, bucolic peasants and Uncle Sam’s evil puppet. Faiola apparently found one of the few local residents in attendance — there are just 70 of them among thousands — a sympathetic-sounding 90 year-old woman. It makes a better story to tell it this way...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Media Criticism/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
May 19, 2006

Four N. Korean Refugees Enter U.S. Embassy in China

[Updated 5/21; scroll down.] The Chosun Ilbo reports that a new group of North Korean refugees is under U.S. protection, this time in China. Four North Korean refugees have reportedly moved from the Korean Consulate in Shenyang, China to the U.S. mission to seek asylum there. If they succeed, they would become the second group of defectors from the Stalinist country to be accepted in the U.S., after six who were given official refugee status there via a Southeast Asian...

Categories "United" Nations/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
May 19, 2006

Daily NK President Talks to TKL about the New Right and North Korea

Recently, Newsweek’s BJ Lee reported on the emergence of South Korea’s New Right. One of the persons prominently featured in the article was Han Ki-Hong, President of the Daily NK, an online newspaper focusing on conditions in North Korea (DO NOT MISS their latest report on North Korea’s growing border control problems). The Daily NK differs from the South Korean papers in that it primarily focuses on events in the North. More remarkably, its reporters are often North Koreans reporting...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/Human Rights/Korean Politics/North Korea/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military