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Category: Yeonpyeong Attack

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
March 15, 2013

North Korea’s cash-for-summit demands put 2010 attacks in a new light

WERE THE 2010 ATTACKS North Korea’s way of making good on extortion?  Stephan Haggard, not widely know for his hard-line views, cites an article in the Chosun Ilbo revealing that Kim Jong Il wanted a summit with Lee Myung Bak, but at a price. The sticking point was money. How much? According to the Chosun Ilbo, $500-600 million in rice and fertilizer aid, which had effectively been cut from the first of the year, and perhaps some cash too; that was...

Categories Appeasement/Cheonan Incident/North-South/Sunshine/Terrorism (NK)/Yeonpyeong Attack
December 19, 2010

The Richardson Effect

After a weather-related delay, South Korea says it is determined to continue with live-fire exercises in the Yellow Sea islands. “The planned firing drill is part of the usual exercises conducted by our troops based on Yeonpyeong Island. The drill can be justifiable, as it will occur within our territorial waters,” said the JCS official. “We won’t take into consideration North Korean threats and diplomatic situations before holding the live-fire drill. If weather permits, it will be held as scheduled.”...

Categories Korean War II/Yeonpyeong Attack
December 14, 2010

Co-Author Distances Himself from Selig Harrison’s Vicarious Surrender Plan

You don’t see the New York Times print a correction like this one every day: An Op-Ed article on Monday, about the sea boundary between North and South Korea, listed as an author John H. Cushman, a retired Army lieutenant general who commanded the United States-South Korean First Corps Group from 1976 to 1978. During the editing process, General Cushman asked that his name be removed as a co-author, but because of technical problems his request was not received before...

Categories Useful Idiocy/Yeonpyeong Attack
December 13, 2010

Lord Haw Haw of Pyongyang

Selig Harrison’s latest op-ed is such a bizarre departure, even by his own declining standards, that I had to read it for myself to really believe it. I have little to add to what Kushibo has already said about this, except to stare agape at Harrison’s use of language. He calls South Korea’s elected President Lee Myung Bak is a “hard-liner,” while hereditary tyrant Kim Jong Il is a “leader.” Deaths that North Korea caused with malice aforethought are attributable...

Categories Useful Idiocy/Yeonpyeong Attack
December 10, 2010

China’s Very Bad Week

I’ll begin this post by offering my congratulations to Liu Xiabao, and extending my hope that he’ll soon collect his Nobel Peace Prize in person. In recent years, Nobel Committee has tarnished the prize with some poor choices, and it may be that a man of Liu’s courage and character lends the Nobel more credibility than the other way around. Even President Obama had to concede that Liu deserved the prize far more than he ever did. The last regime...

Categories China & Korea/Korean War II/Yeonpyeong Attack
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
December 3, 2010

Huzzah, I’m finally a moderate!

Not being a frequent reader of Foreign Policy, I don’t know much about the leanings of the particular bloggers there, although most would call that publication a stalwart of the “realist” view that had so recently become fashionable in Washington, before Al Qaeda in Iraq was squeezed down to a small nub of its former self, and before it became evident that North Korea, Iran, and China weren’t prospective negotiating partners after all. This week, we read one FP contributor...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/Yeonpyeong Attack
December 1, 2010

I’ll bet China could stop North Korea from giving the Dalai Lama a visa!

The nation’s top military officer challenged China to respond forcefully to North Korea’s recent attacks on South Korea and rejected Beijing’s calls for a return to negotiations with Kim Jong Il’s regime. “There is significant leverage [China] could apply to avoiding escalations and improving this troubling situation,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Washington think tank on Wednesday. “We need China to step up. [Stars and Stripes, Kevin Baron] China is just about...

Categories China/China & Korea/Yeonpyeong Attack
December 1, 2010

It’s (long past) time to close Kaesong.

So a week after the shelling of Yeonpyeong, the Washington Post leads me to believe that a lot of South Koreans who had been inclined to overlook previous North Korean outrages are really outraged this time. The Post’s correspondent thinks that the South’s infamous generation gap as to perceptions about North Korea has closed significantly in the last week. That’s good if it lasts, and if it translates into a policy that puts us on the path to strangling and...

Categories Appeasement/Yeonpyeong Attack
December 1, 2010

Doug Bandow Still Wants USFK Out

You’d think that the sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong should have a lot of people questioning what deterrent value American ground forces really add in South Korea now, in light of the risk of having them within North Korean artillery range, and the great expense to American taxpayers. So amid the questions about how to respond — and the bad decisions of former presidents have brought us to point where we don’t really have many ways...

Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/Yeonpyeong Attack
December 1, 2010

National Review nails it.

When North Korea acts up, you tend to see a great deal of commentary from — sorry — ill-informed people who are assigned to write about the subject. That’s why it’s refreshing to see things like this National Review editorial, which avoids the partisan temptation to blame North Korea’s behavior on an American President of the opposite party: Some conservatives have argued that the Yeonpyeong attack was a direct response to U.S. “weakness. In fact, the Obama administration has been...

Categories Yeonpyeong Attack
November 30, 2010

Shen Dingli is a man who really knows the value of a fish.

Shen Dingli has become my favorite poster child for showing just what a bunch of maleficent assholes run China today, and in the aftermath of the Yeonpyeong shelling, he does not disappoint: Shen Dingli, a security expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, was more direct in laying the blame on Seoul. “South Korea provoked the Yeonpyeong conflict first,” he said. “The area where this incident happened is South Korean territory from a ‘South Korean perspective’. But it is a disputed...

Categories China/China & Korea/Yeonpyeong Attack
November 30, 2010

John McCain: “I think it’s time we talked about regime change in North Korea, and I do not mean military action, but I do believe that this is a very unstable regime.” _______________________________ Adm. Mike Mullen: “I am one who believes we shouldn’t be rewarding bad behavior here.” Until last week, I was hearing distinct signs that the State Department was losing patience with “strategic patience.” Now, all of the pressure — backed by a very conservative new House of...

Categories Anju Links/Yeonpyeong Attack
November 28, 2010

Is South Korea Finally Ready to Cut North Korea Off?

The New York Times, in a report bylined in Incheon, says that the Yeonpyeong attack has caused a significant shift in South Korean views about the North. After years of backing food aid and other help for the North despite a series of provocations that included two nuclear tests, many South Koreans now say they feel betrayed and angry. “I think we should respond strongly toward North Korea for once instead of being dragged by them,” said Cho Jong-gu, 44,...

Categories North-South/Sunshine/Yeonpyeong Attack
November 28, 2010

Funny how that works: China doesn’t want to restrain North Korea from attacking South Korea, but hates it when the U.S. Navy shows up on its front door. The Wall Street Journal passes along a sampling of Chinese reactions to the shelling of Yeonpyeong. Well-connected people I’ve spoken to seem convinced that there’s a segment within Chinese academia and government that really has had it with North Korea, but I doubt China will ever restrain North Korea without being subjected...

Categories Anju Links/WMD/Yeonpyeong Attack
November 27, 2010

North Korea: Sorry We Shelled Your “Human Shields”

You have to admit that it was pretty diabolical of Lee Myung Bak to have planted those human shields in their own villages and homes years before he was even inaugurated. In fact, the two civilians who were actually killed were construction workers on the ROK Marine post, but the given the North’s shelling of civilian neighborhoods, it’s lucky there weren’t a lot more “human shields” killed: The North really does have a special gift for adding insult to injury....

Categories Propaganda/Subversion/U.S. Military/Yeonpyeong Attack
November 26, 2010

Before We Start Bombing North Korea, Let’s Try Turning It into Afghanistan

I don’t know about you, but when North Korea decided to shell South Korean homes and kill South Korean civilians in South Korean territory, my balance of risks shifted. We’ve always known that if U.S. and South Korean forces attack North Korea, North Korea would respond by trying to kill as many American and South Korean civilians as possible. Estimates that this would result in hundreds of thousands of casualties are probably worst-case scenarios, but a toll of several thousand...

Categories China & Korea/NK Military/Regime Change/Yeonpyeong Attack