Search Results for: The Death of an Alliance

September 12, 2006

No Balance, No Net: Anything Could Happen During the Roh-Bush Meeting

If you have any questions about the state of U.S.-South Korean relations today, you need only read this. Seoul and Washington have decided not to adopt a joint statement or declaration at the Roh-Bush summit. Contrast that to the scripted appearances and affirmations of unity we saw last time. No longer. This visit was hurriedly scheduled after North Korea’s missile launches, which showed everyone just how little security seven billion dollars could purchase, and after which the United States broke...

Categories An Alliance?/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea
September 8, 2006

Why, What Excellent Questions!

At a public forum sponsored in part by the Joongang Ilbo, USFK Commanding General B.B. Bell asks existential questions about the alliance: “In exercising independent operational command and in developing future alliance war plans, what will be the ROK government’s strategic war aims, military objectives and desired war-end state?” he asked. They have no idea, of course. They’re making this up as they go.

Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
September 7, 2006

Kaplan Identifies the Problem. So How Do We Solve It?

[Updated; Updated again 9/6 regarding South Korea’s withdrawal from OPLAN 5029 planning last year.] First, I want to thank “a fellow blogger” for forwarding me this article. The Marmot has posted the entire text. Richardson and GI Korea have already preempted many of my comments on this piece. As with everything Kaplan writes, the article shows the author’s research; it’s approached with both depth and perspective. Inevitably for a piece that printed out to 12 pages, there were parts with...

Categories Reconstruction
August 9, 2006

Republican Congressmen to Visit S. Korea

Regular readers of this blog and OFK before it have seen some very direct expressions of displeasure coming from Representative Henry Hyde to the South Korean government, or whizzing past its ears on the way to North Korea, often scanned in in their original and complete form (here, here, here, here, here, here). So when Yonhap reports that Hyde, the outgoing Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, is on his way to Seoul to visit President Roh Moo Hyun,...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
July 29, 2006

Can Anyone Still Save the FTA?

The South Korean government has concluded that its proposed Free Trade Agreement with the United States has a P.R. problem. Workshop to be announced; head-scratching to follow. Let’s hope whatever discussion comes of this will be more productive than previous warnings about CIA microphones disguises as insects. Thus far, the government has been afraid to take on the extremists, thugs, and demagogues who have seized control of this debate, often forcibly, but if those people comprise a significant portion of...

Categories Anti-Americanism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
July 13, 2006

The Sunshine Policy Is Dead

I guess the whole protection racket thing was the last straw. Now they’ve even managed to rile South Korea’s UniFiction Minister, Lee Jong-Seok. Efforts to bring North Korea back to disarmament talks were in tatters on Thursday as Pyongyang stormed out of a meeting with the South and a senior U.S. diplomat left the region after a week of shuttle diplomacy. …. “The South side will pay a price before the nation for causing the collapse of the ministerial talks...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Unintended Humor/WTF?
July 12, 2006

For the Bush Administration, the Moment of Truth

We learn today that China intends to veto a resolution that would impose binding sanctions on North Korea’s missile trade. Got that? No binding sanctions on a starving nation’s trade in … missile components. China and Russia introduced a resolution Wednesday deploring North Korea’s missile tests but dropping language from a rival proposal that could have led to military action against Pyongyang. Excuse me? Who said anything about “military action?” Unless they mean intercepting their nukes, missiles, and dope on...

Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/China/China & Korea/Russia/Russia & Korea/WMD
June 30, 2006

Collaborators, You Say?

I’m certainly no expert on those who collaborated to enslave their brothers under fascist tyranny six decades ago. Some may have done genuinely awful things; others may have been “mere” profiteers. Some may have acted more voluntarily than others. The passage of six decades certainly complicates such questions. That’s why there are statutes of limitations. On the other hand, I can’t help but note the absence of any official list with more contemporary application, so here’s my effort at a...

Categories Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column
June 23, 2006

Strange Doves (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About This Missile and Worry About Proliferation Instead)

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” — Napoleon Bonaparte The day after Newt Gingrich called for destroying North Korea’s Taepodong II ICBM on the ground, former Clinton-era SecDef William Perry has made a similar call in a Washington Post op-ed. He is joined by Ashton Carter, who turns out to have been Perry’s assistant before he was Demi Moore’s. The latest to support this proposal is … Walter Mondale: “I think it would end the nuclear...

Categories Diplomacy/Geopolitics/NK Economics/NK Military/U.S. Military/WMD
June 20, 2006

The End of Sunshine?

[Update 6/20: As predicted, the North Koreans aren’t taking this well.] “We have the right to speak.” — North Korean government official, talking about South Korean politics Has international pressure has finally forced South Korea to abandon years of official apathy about the phobocracy that is North Korea? Finally, South Korea declares, it will ask the North to treat the lives of its people with a modicum of respect.

Categories Activism/Europe/Human Rights/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized
June 19, 2006

European Parliament Condemns North Korea’s Human Rights Violations

Thanks to Human Rights Without Frontiers for sending. What follows is the full text of a resolution passed in the European Parliament on June 15, 2006: ======== Text of resolution follows ======== European Parliament adopted resolution on human rights violations in North Korea At its plenary session in Strasbourg on 15 June 2006, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on human rights violations in North Korea. The Resolution was tabled by MEP Dr. István SZENT-IVÁNYI (Group of the Alliance of...

Categories Uncategorized
May 21, 2006

The Battle of the Hump, Part 4: The Fiaola Ricefield War

The lastest example of the Washington Post’s awful Korea coverage is certain to leave you less informed than before you read it. Anthony Faiola manages to distort the Battle of Camp Humphreys into a conflict between peaceful, bucolic peasants and Uncle Sam’s evil puppet. Faiola apparently found one of the few local residents in attendance — there are just 70 of them among thousands — a sympathetic-sounding 90 year-old woman. It makes a better story to tell it this way...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Media Criticism/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
May 19, 2006

Daily NK President Talks to TKL about the New Right and North Korea

Recently, Newsweek’s BJ Lee reported on the emergence of South Korea’s New Right. One of the persons prominently featured in the article was Han Ki-Hong, President of the Daily NK, an online newspaper focusing on conditions in North Korea (DO NOT MISS their latest report on North Korea’s growing border control problems). The Daily NK differs from the South Korean papers in that it primarily focuses on events in the North. More remarkably, its reporters are often North Koreans reporting...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/Human Rights/Korean Politics/North Korea/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
May 19, 2006

Bush’s Old “New” Approach

[Update 2, 5/18: On the other hand, the “Kim Jong Hill” plan looks great next to the Richard Lugar plan, which is nothing more than a shiny new formula for buying lies with bribes. Lugar is a very nice person to meet and has his heart in the right place, but diplomatically, this is not the thing to be proposing when our financial crackdown and our political offensive are both showing some promising signs of success. When dealing with gangsters,...

Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Human Rights/NK Economics/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views/WMD
May 14, 2006

Yankee Come Home

Corporal Henry D. Connell was just a boy of 17 when he died for the freedom and prosperity of a place he probably knew nothing about before his country sent him there. The world has forgotten the hill where he died in a Chinese attack on the night of November 2, 1950, along with the imprisoned country in which the hill can still be found. What was left of Henry Connell’s body remained there until 1994, when his bones, and...

Categories Anti-Americanism/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized
May 12, 2006

Balance This!

[T]he Foreign Ministry’s special envoy on international security, Moon Chung-in, in a phone interview with the Chosun Ilbo elaborated on remarks a day earlier that Roh “is losing patience with U.S. President George W. Bush. Today, my friends, I write to you from a city living in fear. As our President, George W. Bush, sits in the White House nibbling compulsively at the bleeding tendrils where there were fingernails just a day ago, a cunning tiger holds court from his...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/WTF?
May 8, 2006

Kaesong Absurdities

[W]e have signs to believe that there are certain incentives for North Korean laborers working at the Kaesong complex, such as there are no complaints from workers who are asked to work overtime. — Unification Ministry Official As long as the UniFiction Ministry speaks, this blog will never lack for exquisite fisking material. With the White House standing firmly behind Human Rights Envoy Jay Lefkowitz’s concern that Kaesong fails to comply with international labor standards, (I would also raise U.S....

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Human Rights/Korean Politics/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized