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May 5, 2006

The Battle of the Hump, Part 2

They’re ba …. ack! A day after the Defense Ministry forcefully evacuated protesters from an area in Pyeongtaek slated for the relocation of U.S. military installations, about 2,500 activists staged abrupt demonstrations by cutting through the fences built around the site of the future base. About 2,000 protesters from around the nation broke through the police line to seal off the area from outsiders. They marched three hours to join about 500 other protesters who had been scouting in Daechu...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Law/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized/Washington Views
May 4, 2006

Battle at the Hump: You Can Keep the Place

“During the May 1 North-South Workers’ Rally in Pyongyang, the workers of North and South agreed to unify to carry out the anti-American struggle”¦ The center of that struggle with the United States is Daechu-ri, Pyeongtaek. — Kim Tae-Il, “General Secretary” of the Korea’s largest labor group, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions As predicted, South Korean police have cleared out a group of several hundred local area residents and violent anti-American activists — many from the radical KCTU — who...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized
May 4, 2006

NGO Warns of New Famine in N. Korea

In the wake of North Korea’s decisions to kick out the World Food Program and reassert state control over food distribution, Human Rights Watch is warning that North Korea can’t feed its people, and that attempts to reconstitute its broken and discriminatory Public Distribution System could trigger a new famine. “Only a decade ago, similar policies led to the famine that killed anywhere from 580,000 to more than 3 million,” the group said in a statement released to reporters in...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid/U.S. & Korea
May 4, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 38: Chairman Lee’s Little Red Book of Quotations

[Update and Clarification: Non-geek readers with lives may not realize that Lee Jong-Seok is actually South Korea’s Minister of Unification. One reader reasonably assumed that he was a North Korean, which is certainly an understandable assumption, based on some of the things Lee has been saying this week.] “[Kim Jong Il is] one of the figures in the North we can get [an] agreement from and who can make proper decisions. . . . The two [Kim and South Korean...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
May 4, 2006

Refugees Update

[Update: Richardson picks up several other reports to the same effect. Things seem to be moving, and you have to wonder what could happen next now that the word has started to spread.] The Chosun Ilbo reports fresh signs of progress that the State Department is finally aboard the love train on North Korean refugees. A group of North Korean defectors in Southeast Asia is reportedly seeking asylum in the United States. In an interview with Korea’s Yonhap News, a...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Diplomacy/Human Rights/North Korea/Refugees/Southeast Asia/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
May 2, 2006

Jay Lefkowitz Is Right About Kaesong

The debate about South Korea’s role in (not) improving human rights in the North seems to intensify by the hour. Freedom House is the latest to testify for the prosecution. If you believe the latest report from the Chosun Ilbo, the State Department is reeling from the vitriolic South Korean reaction to U.S. Human Rights Envoy Jay Lefkowitz over labor conditions in North Korea’s Kaesong Industrial Park: Another U.S. government insider also said the controversial piece by Lefkowitz had not...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Media Criticism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Uncategorized/Washington Views
May 2, 2006

The Forked Tongue of Lee Jong-Seok, Part 2

“At least since 2000 when we began providing assistance to the North, no one there has been starving to death,” Lee said. — UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok (ht to Richardson) In sum, although the period of high famine has passed, North Korea continues to experience chronic food shortages that are hitting hard at an underemployed and unemployed urban working class in particular. . . . Moreover, given the political stratification of North Korea and the inability of the WFP to...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Censorship/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/North Korea/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
May 2, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 37: Seoul’s Scorched Earth Retreat on Human Rights

At a comment to an earlier post by James, I listed the following as one of the accomplishments of last week’s North Korean Freedom Week: South Korea has never been more diplomatically isolated in regard to the aforementioned issues, plus on Kaesong, where it sounds increasingly desperate. South Korea’s government is giving some preliminary confirmation of that analysis, in a characteristically disordered way. The first reaction was a tantrum that almost merited a “Death of an Alliance” post. The Korean...

Categories Activism/An Alliance?/Appeasement/Human Rights/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
May 1, 2006

Has a U.S. Embassy Accepted NK Defectors?

[Update: link fixed, thanks!] Via the Chosun Ilbo: Some five or six North Korean defectors are reportedly preparing to enter the U.S. under the protection of its embassy in a Southeast Asian country as Washington prepares to make good on a pledge to grant asylum to more refugees from the Stalinist country. Sources in the U.S. government and Congress said Thursday as soon as procedural matters with the Asian country are resolved, the North Koreans will make their way to...

Categories Activism/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees/Southeast Asia/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
May 1, 2006

Revealed: The Halliburton Conspiracy to Unify Korea!

A comment to this post implies belief in an old canard of the Korean left that the United States is an invisible hand that keeps Korea divided. That argument depends on any number of dubious lines of reasoning, from control of South Korea’s natural resources (such as . . . ?), to controlling its trade (and yet, China is now Korea’s largest trading partner), to keeping Korea as a client for U.S. arms (a united Korea wouldn’t need arms, and...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/China & Korea/Democracy/Geopolitics/Humor/Satire/Korean Politics/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized
April 30, 2006

Mixed News on Kaesong

The bad news is that Kaesong-made goods look to be headed toward acceptance into the ASEAN FTA. This comes via Philip Dorsey Iglauer, who has made himself infamous both for awful reporting and awful analysis, so you’ve been warned. I kind of hope Iglauer likes to google his own name, because that’s my cue to point out a story in the Donga Ilbo that’s certain to have him calling for his smelling salts: The Korean government is opposing an article...

Categories Activism/An Alliance?/Appeasement/Human Rights/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
April 30, 2006

USFK Relocation in Trouble

One of the most interesting things I observed during my recent visit to Seoul was the absence of any apparent arrangements to evacuate Yongsan Garrison, in the heart of Seoul. The relocation plan calls for the evacuation of Yongsan by the end of next year, and the movement of all of its facilities to Camp Humphreys, near the shitty city of Pyeongtaek. Yet the only visible changes at Yongsan are improvements — the new bridge connecting Main and South Post,...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Law/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
April 30, 2006

The Slavery Candidate

Former Minister of UniFiction / Uri Party Leader / presidential candidate Chung Dong-Young thinks he has found his winning issue: transforming the North into a corporate plantation, with Kim Jong Il as overseer. Chung has the additional disadvantages of being anti-American and having a self-confirmed sub-room-temperature IQ (I’ve never met Chung, but several others who have confirm that judgment). If Chung or someone like him wins the presidency, expect a rapid and mostly complete departure of America’s military contingent from...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Human Rights/Korean Politics/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
April 29, 2006

First N. Korean Gets U.S. Asylum, But What Does This Really Mean for NKHRA Compliance?

Updated 4/30; scroll down “We can and will do more to protect North Korean refugees. . . . We hope that very, very soon, we can welcome North Korean refugees here in the United States.” — Amb. Jay Lefkowitz, April 28, 2006 WASHINGTON, April 28 (Yonhap) — The Los Angeles Immigration Court has granted asylum to a North Korean defector after he awaited a decision in the U.S. for the past 20 months, his lawyer said Friday. The final ruling...

Categories Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. & Korea
April 28, 2006

NK Freedom Week 2006, Part II

The events have not yet concluded, and an all-night prayer vigil at the Chinese Embassy is underway. For various reasons, all of us missed the first half of the week. In my case, that was due to a family visit to South Korea (observations to follow later). Still, the events that are capable of being described at a forum like this one can be described now. Here is the week’s enduring image, one that creates a hopeful contrast to when...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
April 28, 2006

N. Korea Freedom Week Updates

First, please join us on the West side of the U.S. Capitol today, starting at 11:30. The rally will last well into the afternoon, with plenty of opportunities to frighten powerful and cynical people throughout the day. Some of us may even make a special appearance at the South Korean Embassy later this afternoon. At 6 PM, Suzanne Scholte of the North Korean Freedom Coalition will lead a rally at the Chinese Embassy that will become an all-night prayer vigil....

Categories Abductions/Activism/Appeasement/China & Korea/Defectors/Democracy/Human Rights/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean History/North Korea/Refugees/Resistance/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views