Search Results for: Korean teachers' union

December 6, 2006

Just the Latest Juche Idiocy from the Korean Teachers’ Union

The students went up on stage and told participants they had distributed anti-war badges around the nation in protest against the Iraq war and said they felt unifying the two Koreas was a way to create “a world without wars. They also joined the former communist guerrillas in the shouting of their old slogans against “imperialist Yankee soldiers” and the “puppet regime of Syngman Rhee. Kim, who also instructed his students to operate an online group that opposes the U.S.-led...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Education/The Fifth Column
November 21, 2005

Korean Teachers’ Union Update

The Trotskyites in the Korean Teachers’ Union have cut out a few f-words and gone ahead with their agenda of poisoning little minds to hate America: The leftist union yesterday posted on its Web site a class plan and the video clip it will use in those classes. The video was a “cleaned-up” version of one shown in Busan last month and did not contain any foul language; the previous clip included curses directed at President Bush and President Roh...

Categories Uncategorized
February 14, 2006

Korean Teachers’ Union Gets Some Competition

You may recall how the KTU recently made itself  famous in the Korea blogosphere: its “What a Wonderful World” video for the APEC Summit.  This led, in part,  to an acrimonious controversy over education reform and a silly GNP boycott  of the National Assembly.  On a somwhat more productive front, tt also led to the formation of an upstart rival: The Korean Liberal Teachers Union, established last month by teachers opposed to the educational direction of the left-leaning workers union,...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Education/Korean Politics/Korean Society
November 7, 2005

The Excesses of an Extremist South Korean Teachers’ Union Force the Government Into Action

The Chosun Ilbo reports today on an issue that I expect we’ll be hearing much more about–an upcoming strike by the Korean Teachers’ Union, a/k/a the Korean Teachers’ and Educational Workers’ Union, which is affiliated with one of the two major labor groups in Korea, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. One glance at the KTU’s Web site shows that education is clearly the last thing on its mind. It’s reasonable to ask whether these people are really qualified to...

Categories Uncategorized
December 11, 2017

Korean War II: A Hypothesis Explained, and a Fisking (Annotated)

(Update, May 2018: A hypothesis should to be tested by its predictive record. I’ve now watched, with growing alarm, how events since the publication of this post have validated it as a predictive model. I’ve recently gone back and embedded footnotes throughout, to indicate which specific predictions have been validated, or not.) In the last several months, as Pyongyang has revealed its progress toward acquiring the capacity to destroy an American city, the North Korea commentariat has cleaved into two...

Categories Fiskings/Korean War II
December 4, 2017

Korean War II: What the Joint Statements tell us about Pyongyang’s strategy

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” – George Orwell On June 15, 2000, Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il signed a joint statement agreeing to seek “independent” reunification and an inter-Korean coalition government. It was not the first joint statement between North and South. This relatively modest one from 1972 calls for “both parties [to] promote national unity as a united people over any differences of our ideological and political systems.” In retrospect, this...

Categories Diplomacy/Korean War II
August 8, 2010

Sit Down for This One: 9/11/05 Riot at MacArthur Statue Was a North Korean Job

I know this probably stuns you as much as it stuns me: Seoul police arrested two pro-Pyongyang activists on charges of starting a campaign to remove a statue of U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur from a park in Incheon under orders from North Korea. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, two leaders of the Korean Confederation Unification Promotion Council were arrested on charges of receiving directives from a North Korean agent from 2004 to 2005 to stage a series of...

Categories The Fifth Column
November 13, 2007

Korean Election Update: Lessers Versus Evils

Just over a month before South Korean presidential election, Lee Hoi Chang has announced that he’s  running as an independent candidate.  I have now seen it all.   So can he win?  Hell if I know.  To an observer of long American political campaigns, it’s hard to see how anyone could  enter  a race so late and have a chance of winning it, but this most definitely is not American politics.  Korean politics is famously mercurial; it’s about as exact, empirical,...

Categories Korean Politics
January 18, 2007

Teachers Arrested for Posting N. Korean Propaganda On-Line

Two middle school teachers who allegedly posted pro-North Korean propaganda on Web sites have been arrested, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said yesterday, for violating the National Security Law. The teachers, whom police did not identify, allegedly posted North Korean photos and captions reading, for example, “Long Live the Great Victory of the Military-First Politics.   They are both members of the left-leaning Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union [link to other OFK posts]. Both teachers have also served as...

Categories Korean Education/The Fifth Column
January 18, 2006

Korean Academic Cites Left-Wing Bias in Textbooks

Remember, kids, distorted history texts are bad! Now that we’ve settled that, listen to what a Korean professor is saying about history texts in South Korea, before a GNP-hosted forum at which likely presidential candidate Park Geun-Hye also appeared: A Seoul National University professor said yesterday at a political seminar that many textbooks used in primary and secondary schools here contain serious distortions and are disparaging of South Korea’s modern history. Park Hyo-chong, a professor of social studies at the...

Categories Uncategorized
September 12, 2005

Korean “Progressives” Send Message of Gratitude and Sympathy on 9/11: “Fucking USA!”

UPDATED; scroll down. You haven’t heard the last of this. Call it a prediction. The U.S. media was watching, but (thus far) doesn’t much seem to care. The U.S. government is watching and does. Update on that later. For now, here’s what happened, beginning with pictures from OhMyNews: Much, much more here. Here’s part of : The demonstration started off peacefully with singing, dancing and a speech by Democratic Labor Party central committee member Lee Jeong-mi, but turned violent after...

Categories Uncategorized
August 8, 2005

The Death of an Alliance, Part 23: S. Korean Human Rights Comm’n Calls MacArthur “a war criminal who massacred numerous civilians.”

[Update: Scroll down and read the updates. Mr. Kirk and the CSM have corrected the story to reflect that the HRC did not actually take such a position. Kirk appear to have quoted the complaint, believing it was the HRC’s own position. Thanks to readers Antti and Aaron for asking the specific questions that caused me to contact Don Kirk and ask him for verification. ] When my wife first showed me the the comments of Prof. Kang Jeong-Ju, South...

Categories Uncategorized
February 6, 2013

Sometimes, a missile is just a missile

Every time North Korea tests a rocket, Hans Blix sheds a little tear and Ban Ki Moon’s fluffy white tail stops wagging, because North Korean rocket tests violate three U.N. Security Council Resolutions — 1695 (which bans “all activities related to its ballistic missile programme”), UNSCR 1718 (ditto, and requires N. Korea to “re-establish its pre-existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching”), and 1874 (which bans “any launch using ballistic missile technology”).  North Korea’s official response is that it is...

Categories Anju Links/Anti-Americanism/Propaganda/WMD/WTF?
February 25, 2008

The Long National Nightmare Is (Officially) Over

[Update: Now that I’ve read LMB’s inaugural, I’ve posted more detailed comments / ridicule below the fold and the video.] The 17th presidency of Korea started as Lee Myung-bak formally took over presidential authority from former president Roh Moo-hyun at midnight on Monday, with the Bosingak Bell in downtown Seoul tolling the momentous hour. Lee now embarks on a government of pragmatic conservatism after putting an end to the decade-long leftwing rule. [Chosun Ilbo] Judging by Lee’s inaugural address and...

Categories Korean Politics
April 13, 2007

Anju Links for 13 April 2007

*   Matters of Life and Death.   The Chosun Ilbo reports that  Lao authorities have arrested six North Korean  women.   I’m not sure if it’s the same group I mentioned here.  Meanwhile, 53 others are still  in imminent danger of being sent back from Thailand.  If you haven’t already done so, please contact the Thai  Embassy (see previous link for e-mail address) and tell them not to send  these refugees  back to the gulag.  Recent reports suggest that...

Categories Anju Links
April 1, 2007

FTA Agreement Reached FTA Talks Near Failure: The Death of an Alliance, Part 66

[Update 2: Well, as it turns out, the two sides did reach an agreement, although it’s not clear how comprehensive. Both sides — mainly us — made major last-minute concessions. Talks were ongoing until minutes before the legal deadline. Beef tariffs will be phased out over 15 years, which is a long time. (We’ll see if the Koreans actually accept the next shipment.) Korea also gets to protect its rice market. There’s really only one bright spot I can see:...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/NK Economics/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
January 25, 2007

KTU Update

Korean Education takes another small step toward reform. The ministry said soon all bonuses will be performance-related. The seniority system will also disappear. With recognized capabilities, teachers in their early 40s can become vice principals, whereas long-serving teachers with low scores will miss out on promotion. Parents and pupils will now get to evaluate teachers, which is curious from a social perspective, because the status of teachers has traditionally been so high in Korean’s highly Confucian society that the idea...

Categories Korean Education
January 22, 2007

KTU Update

Are you ready for your second story in just four days about Korean Teachers’ Union members being caught in possession  of pro-North Korean propaganda, with intent to distribute?  On closer examination, these appear to be the same suspects I blogged here.   Hat tip to The Nomad, who points out that there’s no evidence that the stuff was actually used in class, although we’ve advanced a step in that direction.  Unlike the case of the previous report, which was about mere...

Categories Korean Education/The Fifth Column