Category: U.S. & Korea

February 4, 2014

Post-Sunshine South Korea is sober, pragmatic, and grouchy.

In this post last week, I cited polling data showing how South Koreans’ views of North Korea have hardened in recent years, representing a dramatic swing since the fervent anti-Americanism and pro-appeasement sentiment of the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun years. I reckoned that the 2010 Cheonan and Yeonpyeong attacks were the tipping point in this shift, but a wealth of polling data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project changes my mind about this. I wish the data...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Sunshine/U.S. & Korea

January 14, 2014

Gates: Roh Moo Hyun was “anti-American” and “a little crazy,” and Lee Myung Bak wanted to bomb the crap out of Kim Jong Il.

This must be the most controversial understatement of the year, so far: Reading a new memoir by former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, South Koreans may be quite surprised by his characterization of the country’s late President Roh Moo-hyun as “a little crazy.” I estimate that approximately 63.8% of them won’t be in complete shock about that. Gates recalls a November 2007 meeting in Seoul with the liberal-minded president, whose diplomatic and security policy is still being debated. He calls...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/U.S. & Korea/Yeonpyeong Attack

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

August 30, 2010

Throw the Book at Him

So I will assume that Stephen Kim, the Korean-American State Department contractor who is now being prosecuted for leaking top secret / sensitive compartmentalized information was neither employed by, nor sympathetic to, North Korea given his choice of Fox News as a recipient for his leak of information that might have revealed U.S. intelligence sources in North Korea. And having said that, I really don’t care what Kim’s specific views were, I just want to know if any foreign government...

Categories U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Washington Views

July 22, 2010

Plan B Watch: Clinton Announces Tightening of N. Korea Sanctions

Well, it’s about damn time: The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it would impose further economic sanctions against North Korea, throwing legal weight behind a choreographed show of pressure on the North that included an unusual joint visit to the demilitarized zone by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. The measures, announced here by Mrs. Clinton after talks with South Korean officials, focus on counterfeiting, money laundering and other dealings that she said the...

Categories An Alliance?/Cheonan Incident/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. & Korea

June 28, 2010

A Good Week for Lee Myung-Bak, But What America Gained Isn’t So Clear

On balance, Lee Myung Bak seems to having a pretty good week — at least better than last week’s failure to secure a serious response to the Cheonan incident abroad or even at home. This week, Lee has already won a three-year delay in the dissolution of the U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command, a/k/a OpCon transfer. He also secured a commitment by President Obama to push for an FTA that had faced strong opposition from some American labor unions and Max...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea

June 24, 2010

Lee, Bush Commemorate 60th Anniversary of the Korean War

Golly, this was a nice thing of President Lee to say: As we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, I offer our deepest, most sincere gratitude to all the American veterans and their families for what they did. The friendship and bond that we share is reinforced by the strong and robust military alliance, which in turn was the basis for the Republic of Korea’s remarkable twin achievements of the past six decades, namely achieving economic growth and...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Korean War/U.S. & Korea

June 4, 2010

Rep. Ros-Lehtinen Pays Respects to Cheonan Victims

From Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s staff: U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, had flowers placed on her behalf at South Korea ‘s Daejeon National Cemetery in honor and memory of those lost on the Republic of Korea naval ship Cheonan. Statement by Ros-Lehtinen: “As we conclude Memorial Day observances in the U.S. and South Korea and honor the sacrifices of our military personnel, I would like to take the opportunity to, once again, express...

Categories "United" Nations/Cheonan Incident/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views

May 24, 2010

President Lee Announces Weak Response to Cheonan Sinking

We have always tolerated North Korea’s brutality, time and again. We did so because we have always had a genuine longing for peace on the Korean peninsula…. But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts,” he said. “I will continue to take stern measures to hold the North accountable. — President Lee Myung Bak After this, President Lee explained that his government will adopt the following measures as a response to North...

Categories "United" Nations/Cheonan Incident/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea

May 12, 2010

Mad Cow Revisionism

The Hankyoreh reacts to comments by President Lee by reinventing the Mad Cow riots of 2008: During a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, President Lee said, “It has been two years since the candlelight vigil demonstrations and although many suppositions proved untrue, not one of those intellectuals or medical sector figures who participated back then has engaged in any reflection. The president also said, “Without reflection, there is no development of society. He added, “I would like to say that it is...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea

April 12, 2010

Just for the Paulbots: Why the U.S. Army Should Leave South Korea

Even an imbecile like Ron Paul accidentally happens on the truth now and then. And while the election of Lee Myung Bak has reduced the degree to which South Korea actively undermines U.S. policy toward North Korea, the continued existence of Kaesong and Kumgang up to this moment refutes any suggestion that South Korea has really joined it, either, or restored South Korea as a bona fide U.S. ally on a global or regional scale, or tapped into South Korea’s...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/U.S. & Korea

March 26, 2010

Don’t Know Much About History

Just the latest example of historical myopia from the kids in South Korea. As the university was announcing the plans, the Chosun Ilbo reported a Gallup poll in Korea that showed 62.9 percent of teens and 58.2 percent in their 20s did not know when the Korean War broke out. Also, only 43.9 percent of those surveyed said North Korea is to blame for starting the Korean War, with the figure among teenagers 38 percent and 36 percent for 20-somethings....

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Education/Korean History/Korean War/U.S. & Korea

February 21, 2010

Were the Taliban Casing Yongsan?

By what unhappy accident did the muses of Seoul’s urban planning put a large mosque with a significant population of Pakistani fundamentalists in its congregation smack-dab on top of Hooker Hill? Walking through Itaewon shortly after 9/11 and shortly before my DEROS date, watching chitrali hats and shalwar kamiz coexist uneasily with spandex mini-dresses, Dimple scotch, and crowded nightclubs frequented by U.S. military personnel, I confess to having thought: it’s just a matter of when. A Pakistani man who claims...

Categories Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military

January 28, 2010

Equality Begins Where Dependence Ends

South Korea, which spent the better part of the last two decades bitching that it wanted to be treated like America’s equal, has been bitching ever since the Pentagon decided that Korea was just about ready to take over wartime operational control of its own military, you know … for its own defense. Needless to say, and largely as a result of having served in the USFK myself for four years, I’m neither as sympathetic nor as diplomatic as our...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/UCMJ & SOFA

November 19, 2009

An FTA After All?

On balance, it’s more likely that President Obama’s surprising shift in tone is about keeping up appearances on the one issue that matters most to the South Korean government. Still, you can’t deny that this is a breathtaking shift: U.S. President Barack Obama pledged Thursday morning to ratify a free-trade agreement with South Korea that has been stuck for two years, challenging the U.S. Congress to separate South Korea from other Asian nations enjoying vast trade surpluses with the U.S....

Categories U.S. & Korea

November 18, 2009

Press Conference on NK Human Rights Several Hours Before Obama’s Arrival in Seoul

Updated below with videos, etc. The Association of North Korean Human Rights Organizations (ANKHRO / 북한인권단체얰합회) held a press conference today at 2 p.m. near the US Embassy in Seoul. Member groups Helping Hands Korea, Justice for North Korea, Unify Korea 2009 (which also held another event in the evening -Update: BBC–), and Christians for Social Responsibility all participated. Several North Korean defectors joined the other activists, though I wasn’t sure which individual organization(s) they came with or represented. The...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. & Korea

November 17, 2009

If He Has to Deny It, It Must Be True

While we still aren’t sure whether our Blood Allies © paid the Taliban $2 million or $20 million in ransom, or how many American soldiers or Afghan civilians the Taliban used that money to kill, the South Korean government wants you to know that despite its refusal thus far to do more good than harm there, it did not promise the Taliban that it would keep its troops out of Afghanistan: South Korea did not offer to refrain from redeploying...

Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea