Category: U.S. & Korea

January 30, 2007

Almost Right

The Joongang Ilbo (among others)  writes about discontented foreigners, but disappoints by limiting itself to the financial issues faced by a limited cross-section of foreigners:  Let’s think about what it will be like if they return to their mother countries with mistrust and hate in their hearts. It will have a boomerang effect on Korean businessmen and students who are abroad. In this globalizing world, must we cut ourselves off through this exclusive attitude?  [link] Yes, and  this recognition is...

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

January 22, 2007

So I Guess Charlie Rangel Is Voting for the FTA, Then

United States Congressman Charles B. Rangel received the Distinguished Order of Diplomatic Service from the Korean government on Korean-American Day (January 13) at the Colden Center for the Performing Arts theater, Queens College, New York. Congressman Rangel said that he was honored to receive the award and that his achievement is the achievement of all his Korean friends. The medal was awarded to him by the consul general in New York, Moon Bong-ju. It is given to non-Koreans who have...

Categories U.S. & Korea/Washington Views

January 19, 2007

The Death of an Alliance, Part 64: Thank You, Secretary Obvious!

The first Democratic-controlled hearing of the International Relations Foreign Affairs Committee has met.  No bold intiatives, brilliant proposals, or clear theme  emerged.  Instead, it was  a dizzying variety of views and  partisan mutual cancellation  that rendered the entire excercise inconclusive and confusing.  One could expect little else:  both parties are advocating more talks  backed by threats that North Korea does not fear.  Both sides fail to grasp,  or at  least to admit,  that North Korea will not disarm  for  any...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views

January 17, 2007

Kumgang Update

Update:   More here.   Whenever you read about the Kumgang Tourism Project, which South Korea likes to tout as an initiative to reduce tensions,  consider those assertions in the context of  well-sourced suspicions that North Korea uses the proceeds for its WMD programs.  Thus, we should celebrate stories like this one from Yonhap, documenting its failure in extensive detail.  The best news is that enough people have a conscience to impede the project’s success.

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea

January 17, 2007

Wendy Cutler for President

At this point, I oppose the FTA  because Korea does not seem to be serious about opening its markets fundamentally.  Nor do  I  believe that  Korea should be rewarded for  doing so much to demagogue anti-Americanism, or to  undermine U.S. national security interests or  the humanitarian imperatives of the North Korean people.  Those are the reasons I don’t buy things made in Korea these days, and I know that the FTA would  instead reward Korea’s worst politicians and labor unions...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Korean Politics/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea

January 16, 2007

Eum, Yang, and Korean Diplomatic Courtesy

A few days ago, Occidentalism posted this absolutely priceless flowchart that is too telling by half about how some Koreans tend to scapegoat their way through real problems. I suppose the temptation to pin blame on others is human nature; that temptation is at its greatest when a solution to the underlying problem seems beyond reach. Witness the finger-pointing that followed last October’s nuke test (and the notable absence of constructive proposals accompanying it). I shouldn’t miss this opportunity to...

Categories Anti-Americanism/China & Korea/Diplomacy/History/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military

January 15, 2007

The China Veto

[Updated below]   For those who still doubt that the South Korean government would bow to another government’s sensitivities to cancel an artistic performance — witness the debate and denial over the censorship of “Yoduk Story” — I suppose we can now put those doubts to rest. On January 7, several major South Korean media published editorials that criticized the Korean government for kowtowing to the Chinese communist regime by canceling the New Tang Dynasty’s (NTDTV) New Year Spectacular in...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/China & Korea/Korean Law/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea

January 12, 2007

Fortunately, No Translators Were Present

Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, stated that the new South Korean president must be “sensitive to the needs of the (Asia-Pacific) region, in addition to thinking about North-South relations.” …. Washington expects the new Korean administration to think “about working closely with Tokyo and Washington in terms of joint approaches, in terms of what’s going on in North Korea,” he told Yonhap News Agency after meeting with Kim Geun-tae, chairman of the ruling Uri Party, at Kim’s parliament...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views

January 12, 2007

Donga Ilbo Interview: David Straub

Straub, a State Department expert on Korea and Japan who has been a member of our six-party negotiating team, will spend an unspecified amount of time at an unspecified university — the report seems to have been mangled by an editor —  doing the heroic work of openly questioning Korea’s historical mythology: “I would like to teach historical issues such as Katsura-Taft Secret Agreement (a secret treaty between Japan and the U.S. The U.S. recognized Japanese control of the Korean...

Categories America/Anti-Americanism/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea

January 11, 2007

Lefkowitz on Kaesong: ‘Material support for a rogue government, its nuclear ambitions, and its human rights atrocities.’

[Updates Below; and a big welcome to everyone coming in from Gateway Pundit.] Ambassador Jay Lefkowitz, the U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, has an excellent new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (thanks to a reader!) that will provoke an absolute Category 5 sh*tstorm between the United States and South Korea, and for the best of reasons. Without question, the State Department and the Administration have not always lived up the high ideals the Special Envoy...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD

January 10, 2007

The Death of an Alliance, Part 62: South Korea’s Government (and North Korea’s Agents) Try to Veto USFK Restructuring

Update 1/10:   The Korean reaction to General Bell’s push-back has actually ranged from the restrained (the leftist Hankyoreh picked up Yonhap’s coverage, quoted below, but had no editorial comment) to the rueful (the conservative Chosun Ilbo’s reporting focused blame on its own government): A key U.S. military official handling Korea’s national security has voiced his discontent with an ally by using the word “fight”. After the press conference, Korea’s Ministry of National Defense rushed to contain the situation by saying...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea

January 6, 2007

KCTU Thugs May Have to Switch to PVC Pipe

When I testified before the House International Relations Committee last September, one of the issues I raised was a report that the South Korean government was funding “civic groups” that habitually engaged in violence (see page 18), including the protests at Camp Humphreys last year. More recently, some of the leaders of those protests, and other violent anti-American protests, have been exposed and indicted as North Korean agents. This should not have surprised anyone.

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Democracy/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea

December 9, 2006

South Korea’s Influence Machine

The Donga Ilbo has an excellent piece on how South Korea lobbies Congress.  Well worth reading in its entirety. Related:  how it tries to influence the American  press. Also related:   Felony violations  of the Foreign Agents’ Registration Act  are now classified as Specified Unlawful Activity  under 18 U.S.C. sec. 1956, meaning the transactions of unregistered agents are considered money laundering.

Categories Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views

December 8, 2006

Which ‘Major Government Offices’ Contained N. Korean Moles?

Update:   The Chosun Ilbo thinks the investigation’s recent lack of progress is suspicious. A court has issued five indictments, including one against U.S. citizen, former soldier, and current traitor, Jang Min Ho. In the Korean judicial system, those who are indicted are virtually always convicted, so these fellows are looking at some time. Prosecutors also said the group delivered secret information to Pyongyang under direct or e-mail directives from a North Korean spy operative. The information provided was mostly...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Law/Korean Politics/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea

December 5, 2006

Robert Gates Gets It (Mostly) Right on Korea

Consider that: how often do bloggers, who live to bite ankles, find no fault with the pronouncements of those who make policy? I begin my observation of Gates as SecDef as a skeptic. And indeed, nothing that Gates could say about Korea could make me a fan if he prescribes Surrender Lite in Iraq or “learning to live with” an Iranian bomb. But listen carefully to his views on the Koreas, from his confirmation hearings. Begin in 1994, back when...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views

December 3, 2006

If the Alliance Has a Future …

Several new articles give us some idea of what it might look like. The first item is the alliance’s reason for being, part of which involves dealing with life after Kim Jong Il: OPLAN 5029. Back in April 2005 the South Koreans unilaterally pulled out of planning for it for fear of pissing off North Korea. A month later, talks seemed to be on again, but with no word on progress until now. A government source on Thursday said then-defense...

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

November 29, 2006

O Roh Is Me

It’s time for another installment of President Roh Moo Hyun’s whiney, self-pitying Hamlet act. “I hope I won’t be the first president to fail to complete his full term in office. Speculation about his intentions ran wild. The opposition Democratic Labor Party said the president was “threatening the public. Insiders do not rule out an extreme step, saying Roh is in a brittle psychological state. If you’re surprised by any of this, you must be a new reader.  Recall that...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea

November 29, 2006

Man Who Led Violent 9/11 MacArthur Protests Arrested as N. Korean Spy

Has anyone forgotten this?  Today, we have a bit more certainty about what many of us had probably guessed, and we have yet more mounting  evidence of a hidden North Korean hand behind South Korea’s violent anti-American radicalism: Kang Soon-jeong, the former vice chairman of the South Korean chapter of the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification, an outlawed pro-Pyongyang group, was arrested on Tuesday for providing “national secrets” to Pyongyang, police said. Kang was also co-chairman of a civic group that...

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