Search Results for: The Death of an Alliance

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...

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....

Reaction to the Arrival of North Korean Refugees

The arrival of the first six North Korean refugees — including survivors of concentration camps and sexual slavery — could mark a tipping point in the politics of North Korean human rights. The timing of the arrival is either a fortunate coincidence or the height of shrewdness. Local elections are coming up in South Korea on May 31st, and with the human rights issue having created a clear schism (see here, here, and here) between the United States and South...

Why We Signed

I grow weary of sounding the death knell of the U.S.-Korea alliance now that it’s just a question of being how fast and how ugly. If anyone is smart and honest enough to offer a cogent defense of it, it’s U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, who has made plenty of enemies in Korea by speaking his country’s views plainly. Now we know that the best justification he can offer is as light, flavorless, and indigestable as styrofoam, and just as easily...

The Battle of the Hump, Part 2

They’re ba …. ack! A day after the Defense Ministry forcefully evacuated protesters from an area in Pyeongtaek slated for the relocation of U.S. military installations, about 2,500 activists staged abrupt demonstrations by cutting through the fences built around the site of the future base. About 2,000 protesters from around the nation broke through the police line to seal off the area from outsiders. They marched three hours to join about 500 other protesters who had been scouting in Daechu...

Battle at the Hump: You Can Keep the Place

“During the May 1 North-South Workers’ Rally in Pyongyang, the workers of North and South agreed to unify to carry out the anti-American struggle”¦ The center of that struggle with the United States is Daechu-ri, Pyeongtaek. — Kim Tae-Il, “General Secretary” of the Korea’s largest labor group, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions As predicted, South Korean police have cleared out a group of several hundred local area residents and violent anti-American activists — many from the radical KCTU — who...

NGO Warns of New Famine in N. Korea

In the wake of North Korea’s decisions to kick out the World Food Program and reassert state control over food distribution, Human Rights Watch is warning that North Korea can’t feed its people, and that attempts to reconstitute its broken and discriminatory Public Distribution System could trigger a new famine. “Only a decade ago, similar policies led to the famine that killed anywhere from 580,000 to more than 3 million,” the group said in a statement released to reporters in...

USFK Relocation in Trouble

One of the most interesting things I observed during my recent visit to Seoul was the absence of any apparent arrangements to evacuate Yongsan Garrison, in the heart of Seoul. The relocation plan calls for the evacuation of Yongsan by the end of next year, and the movement of all of its facilities to Camp Humphreys, near the shitty city of Pyeongtaek. Yet the only visible changes at Yongsan are improvements — the new bridge connecting Main and South Post,...

Earth to Korea: Nobody Cares About Tokdo. You’re Making Total Asses of Yourselves Over Nothing.

In the face of Pyongyang’s furious protest, the Seoul government indicated it would return to “quiet diplomacy” on North Korean refugees . . . . — UPI, Aug. 17, 2004 On the human rights issue in North Korea, [Prime Minister Han Myeong-Sook] stated that “the government deals with improving the North Korean human rights record and maintaining peace on the Korean peninsula with actions rather than words,” and went on to say that “providing humanitarian aid to the North is...

One Big, Leaky Basket

South Korea has arrested a Taiwanese man for spying for North Korea. What’s not entirely clear is whether the man was spying for prodigal son Kim Jong Nam, and what JN’s relationship is to North Korea these days: The information sent to the North, according to prosecutors, included Newsweek Korea magazine’s coverage of the detention and expulsion of Kim Jong-nam from Japan in 2001 after he tried to enter that country on a fraudulent passport. The man also forwarded tapes...

The FTA Debate Is Turning Ugly

FTA negotiations will likely magnify “anti-American” sentiments in the short run and unleash a backlash in America. — Balbina Hwang, March 2, 2006 There are really three premises to this post, all of them leading to one conclusion: First, a Korean-American free trade agreement would be a good thing for both countries, but particularly for Korea. Second, despite that being demonstrably the case, the usual suspects see the FTA as an opportunity to ride to power on the shoulders of...

Who Is Ma Young-Ae, and What Does She Know?

[Updated 6 Apr 06; scroll down] Via The Flying Yangban, it looks like the U.S. may be on the verge of accepting its first North Korean refugee. Like the Yangban, I’m happy about it. Unlike the Yangban, I don’t see this as necessarily precedent-setting for the broader issue of accepting refugees fleeing persecution in North Korea. Reason: this refugee is also fleeing persecution in South Korea. No, that wasn’t a typo: Ma came to South Korea in 2000. In April...

Anti-American Protest Video at Usinkorea

The Korea Sojourner, a/k/a usinkorea, has put up a video montage of some recent anti-American protests. In some parts, especially where he puts up the lyrics to the latest catchy hate song (which has an unmistakably North Korean sound), he does a service to the uninitiated. Soundtrack, too! Judge for yourself: 1. Just how “peaceful” these peace activists are; 2. How effectively the Korean police have kept their violent acts away from U.S. forces that are defending Korea; 3. If...

NK ‘Spokesman’: We Have ICBMs!

Today’s WTF headline is this piece of work by Kim Myong Chol, North Korea’s unofficial and unmedicated spokesman in Japan. The real torment of this piece is the difficulty of deciding which of the choicest cuts to serve you: Three factors make North Korea unique. The first is possession of a fleet of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of unleashing retaliatory nuclear strikes on the US mainland. Second, the North Koreans still torment the Americans as a result of their...

Springtime in the Gulag: S. Korean Gov’t Says Play ‘Dwells Too Heavily on Negative Aspects’ of Concentration Camp Life

Update: Welcome Instapundit readers! So it has come to this: it is no longer legal to criticize the human rights record of North Korea in Seoul, South Korea. For those who would defy the rising vicarious control of North Korea’s Ministry of Public Security on the streets of Seoul, here is what happens next: A planned musical about human rights abuses in North Korea’s Yoduk concentration camp has run into massive obstacles, not least from officials fearful of upsetting the...

Japan: Times Have Changed

No question about it: perception of a threat has a direct relationship to the hospitality–or hostility–with which U.S. forces are received. After a United States Navy sailor was confined on an American base near here, accused of the Jan. 3 beating death of a Japanese woman, 20 people held a protest at the base. One man held up a sign that read, in English, “Dear Sailors, Don’t Kill Local Women.” A decade ago, when three American servicemen were detained on...

Revolution Watch / China

[Updated; Scroll down.] If the military and the peasantry unite as one, then none on this earth could possibly subvert them. –MaoRural uprisings in China are becoming so frequent, it’s getting hard to keep track of them. BEIJING (Reuters) – China has sealed off a village in southern Guangdong province after days of protests over land grabs ended at the weekend in clashes with police that killed a teenage girl, two residents said on Monday. Last week’s protest came a...

On Lee Jong-Seok, Chung Dong Young’s Replacement

The Joongang Ilbo has an excellent profile of him, including a long and detailed bio. The executive summary: he’s much smarter than Chung–which I realize isn’t saying much–and is a dyed-in-the-wool leftist academic and key theoritician behind Korea’s new neutralist policy, one that ironically depends on the presence of a large U.S. military contingent. His nomination was not well received in Washington. While I think that the significance of his lack of familiarity with the United States may be overstated,...