Search Results for: indict

Months after he was indicted by the feds in New York, oil-for-food bag man Tongsun Park has been arrested. Tongsun Park, a lobbyist from South Korea who was a central figure in the Congressional bribery scandal in the 1970’s known as Koreagate, was arrested yesterday in Houston on charges that he worked illegally to secure favorable treatment for Iraq under the United Nations oil-for-food program, federal authorities said. Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, announced that Mr....

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstacy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic....

U.S. Ambassador to Korea Alexander Vershbow recently drew some shrill responses from North Korea and its friends in the South for calling the North a “criminal regime” when commenting on the latter’s counterfeiting of U.S. currency. The ambassador may create a degree of discomfort in the South Korean government, but he’s certainly doing a far better job of carrying the American message than his predecessors. In the process, he’s won some fans, and not just on this blog. All emphasis...

This had already become the most interesting crime story all year, and then I saw this: A federal grand jury indicted two men Wednesday for allegedly conspiring to smuggle surface-to-air missiles into the United States for use abroad. Such missiles are designed to bring down aircraft. The U.S. attorney’s office said the charges marked the first time a 2004 anti-terrorism law has been used. The law calls for a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years and the possibility of life...

Score another one for counterspeech. The discrediting of South Korean academia’s Stalinist wing proceeds apace despite the Old Right’s inadvertent deification of them into the pantheon of respected dissidents: [I]t was revealed that a large number of Kang [Jeong-Koo]’s theses and columns on the Korean War and the character of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) were posted on a North Korean propaganda group’s website. . . . [A] string of Kang’s remarks and actions coincided with guidelines advocated by the...

Updated 10/12; scroll down. Never accuse the North of not fighting above its weight or thinking big. In the process, it has cemented the most recent credible evidence of its cooperation with international terrorists, which might prove troublesome for that pesky terrorism list. Via the Times of London (also reported in Yonhap): ONE of Ireland’s most famous revolutionaries could face 20 years in an American jail for his alleged role in a communist plot to wreck the dollar. Sean Garland,...

This is another story that I’ve meant to discuss in more detail, but simply could not because of time constraints: U.S. troops stationed in Korea were reportedly involved in 780 criminal acts, three of them homicides, between 2000 and August 2005, yet not a single one of them has been brought to book here, Seoul Metropolitan Police data show. Statistics announced on Monday by Democratic Labor Party lawmaker Lee Young-soon during an audit of the police show U.S. Forces Korea...

Who says Roh Moo-Hyun has no love for America? His war on prostitution has it positively cascading into the United States, in this case, the Los Angeles area: A federal grand jury handed down indictments today charging 24 persons for their role in a sophisticated human smuggling scheme that allegedly brought hundreds of South Korean women into the United States to work as prostitutes. Named in the two multi-count indictments issued today are 23 individuals originally charged in the investigation...

Don’t let the entertainment value fool you. This one appears to have been a bust of major significance, which the feds claim “decapitated” one of the largest crime syndicates operating in the United States: The guests thought they were headed to an early afternoon wedding on a yacht docked near Atlantic City. They ended up in jail instead, courtesy of an elaborate ruse by federal authorities hoping to bust up an international smuggling ring. Lengthy undercover investigations on opposite sides...

What has happened in Uzbekistan now clearly appears to have been a massacre of hundreds, committed by a government with which the United States has a military alliance. How the Bush Administration responds to this moral challenge will determine whether the usual suspects who accuse the United States of hypocrisy in its calls for global democratization will gain a useful talking point for their recruitment drives. I’m not immune to the demands of realpolitik, and I swallowed my discomfort over...

What has happened in Uzbekistan now clearly appears to have been a massacre of hundreds, committed by a government with which the United States has a military alliance. How the Bush Administration responds to this moral challenge will determine whether the usual suspects who accuse the United States of hypocrisy in its calls for global democratization will gain a useful talking point for their recruitment drives. I’m not immune to the demands of realpolitik, and I swallowed my discomfort over...

Claudia Rosett and I have had an intermittent e-mail correspondence now for about a year. For those of you not familiar with Claudia’s work, she’s a columnist at the Wall Street Journal and the one person more responsible than any other for investigative reporting of Oil-for-Food–a fact that guaranteed that she’d be ignored by the Pulitzer committee. Claudia reported from the scene of the Tienanmen Massacre in 1989 and has also been one of the most outspoken writers on the...

Claudia Rosett and I have had an intermittent e-mail correspondence now for about a year. For those of you not familiar with Claudia’s work, she’s a columnist at the Wall Street Journal and the one person more responsible than any other for investigative reporting of Oil-for-Food–a fact that guaranteed that she’d be ignored by the Pulitzer committee. Claudia reported from the scene of the Tienanmen Massacre in 1989 and has also been one of the most outspoken writers on the...

Tongsun Park, a Korean national charged yesterday in New York for brokering corrupt oil-for-food contracts, has told the Joongang Ilbo that he is considering a deal with U.S. prosecutors to testify against corrupt U.N. officials, and that Kofi Annan is among those targeted for possible prosecution: In a telephone interview from Japan, Mr. Park, 70, told the Joongang Ilbo that he had been offered a plea-bargain from the U.S. federal prosecution in return for testifying before a U.S. court. “I...

Tongsun Park, a Korean national charged yesterday in New York for brokering corrupt oil-for-food contracts, has told the Joongang Ilbo that he is considering a deal with U.S. prosecutors to testify against corrupt U.N. officials, and that Kofi Annan is among those targeted for possible prosecution: In a telephone interview from Japan, Mr. Park, 70, told the Joongang Ilbo that he had been offered a plea-bargain from the U.S. federal prosecution in return for testifying before a U.S. court. “I...

“Guardians of North Korea’s Right to Abuse” are protesting the Chosun Ilbo for sponsoring the North Korean Human Rights Conference. Stop now, click here, and read every word, but especially these: Organizations of this ilk are often deeply concerned about the human rights of people in faraway countries like Iraq and Burma. But on human rights abuses in North Korea they not only keep mum but attack efforts to improve human rights there as “acts threatening peace on the Korean...

“Guardians of North Korea’s Right to Abuse” are protesting the Chosun Ilbo for sponsoring the North Korean Human Rights Conference. Stop now, click here, and read every word, but especially these: Organizations of this ilk are often deeply concerned about the human rights of people in faraway countries like Iraq and Burma. But on human rights abuses in North Korea they not only keep mum but attack efforts to improve human rights there as “acts threatening peace on the Korean...

This certainly doesn’t look very encouraging: – Will your criminal record for tax evasion hinder your diplomatic activity? “That is a tough question. I’ve never heard anything from the United States. It is a relief to me that I was appointed ambassador by the [progressive] Roh administration, the successor to the Kim Dae-jung administration [which indicted him]. It means that my punishment for tax evasion in 1999 could be viewed from another perspective.” Note that this guy wants to be...