November 19, 2008

Can we finally dispense with the whole “no gay in Korea” myth … ?

… now that the Korean Supreme Court is considering the case of a certain “Sergeant A?” A sergeant identified only as “A” was initially booked on a charge of making a sexual attack on a private in a platoon that he led, but the suit against him was dropped with the victim’s consent. However, the sergeant has been newly charged for violation of Clause 92 of military criminal law.  [Joongang Ilbo] In the American system, cases very rarely become “test...

Categories Korean Law/Korean Society/ROK Military
November 18, 2008

Who Needs a Contingency Plan? Everyone Near North Korea

The most persuasive evidence I’ve yet seen that there is a real danger of instability in North Korea comes from the people who probably have the best intelligence about events in Pyongyang: The Chinese military has boosted troop numbers along the border with North Korea since September amid mounting concerns about the health of Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, according to US officials. Beijing has declined to discuss contingency plans with Washington, but the US officials said the Peoples’...

Categories Reconstruction/Regime Change
November 17, 2008

Freedom Isn’t Free

USFK has announced that a battalion of Apache attack helicopters, comprising some 24 aircraft and half of USFK’s Apache strength, will leave Korea for Ft. Carson.  The choppers are expected to redeploy to Afghanistan and Iraq later on. Washington had in the past tried to redeploy some of its Apache helicopters from Korea, but such moves were often met with strong opposition from the government in Seoul, which feared a possible reduction of U.S. strength here. “The situation we are...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
November 16, 2008

Arbeit Macht Nichts: The End of Kaesong?

The second of the twin pillars of the Sunshine Experiment, the Kaesong Industrial Project, may have gone to join the Kumgang Tourist Project on the ash heap of history this week with North Korea’s closure of the border between North and South.  With that closure, South Koreans inside the North Korean enclave have been served with their eviction notices.  The North Korean directive may yet prove to be a bluff, but it will still mean the end of Kaesong as...

Categories Appeasement/NK Economics
November 16, 2008

New Media Lead the Way in Covering North Korea

Interestingly, this tacit admission comes from the L.A. Times, no less. [Defector Zhu Sung-Ha, now a journalist] criticized South Korean intelligence for not getting inside the Pyongyang government. “The two Koreas have been at war for 60 years,” Zhu said, in reference to the state of war that has officially existed since the Korean War. “During that time they should have placed someone close to Kim. I am surprised their intelligence is so weak.” As a result, much of the...

Categories Inside NK/Media Criticism
November 14, 2008

And the lions shall lie down with the lambs, and there shall be good eatin’ for the lions.

I am not one who believes that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim or Trotskyite just waiting to fling open the republic’s gates to let the barbarians in, nor have I seen credible evidence that a significant percentage of the population ever really did. On the other hand, the significant percentage of the population wearing those creepy cultish idol-worshipping shirts will find the feet of clay in due course. I do believe that within the next several years — the...

Categories Geopolitics/U.S. Politics
November 10, 2008

More Light Blogging for a While Longer

Things have been busy at work, and weekends and holidays have become rare and valuable time to spend with my family, so I’m going to slow the tempo here for a while.  How long?  Depends on events, I suppose, but at time when everyone’s attention is on other events here at home seems like a good time for that.  The kids are young.  They won’t be young forever.  We had a great weekend out seeing things together. One interesting story...

Categories China
November 2, 2008

Yet again, Kim Jong Il caught proliferating right under Chris Hill’s nose.

Sometimes, I wonder why I even bother. India blocked a North Korean plane from delivering cargo to Iran in August, responding to a U.S. request based on fears about the spread of weapons of mass destruction. This, nine weeks before President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, ostensibly to reward it for some sort of good behavior. According to the Western and Asian officials, the North Korean plane, an Ilyushin-62 long-range jet owned by...

Categories "United" Nations/Proliferation/WMD
October 30, 2008

N. Korea Marks Terror De-Listing By Threatening to Turn Seoul into ‘Debris.’

Never mind North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  any government that delivers messages like these should be listed as a specially designated terrorist group: “We clarify our stand that should the South Korean puppet authorities continue scattering leaflets and conducting a smear campaign with sheer fabrications, our army will take a resolute practical action as we have already warned,” the official KCNA news agency quoted the military spokesman as  saying. At a...

Categories Censorship/Democracy/Terrorism (NK)
October 29, 2008

Generalissimo Kim Jong Il Still Not Dead But Rumored to Need Ventriloquist’s Assistance to Brush Teeth, Conduct Inspections, Sign Public Execution Warrants

[Update:  C’est pas vrais, says le docteur.] Every day seems to bring a new rumor about Kim Jong Il’s health, which is in itself a good thing if you consider the effect this must have on the cohesion between ambitious generals, party apparatchiks, and disgruntled young officers in a hungry year.  We know the rumors are circulating in North Korea, and it’s safe to assume that they’re just as contradictory inside North Korea as they are on Earth.  The difference...

Categories Kim Jong Il
October 28, 2008

Anju Links for 28 October 2008

ANOTHER STALINIST WHO’S PISSED AT LEE MYUNG BAK: Noam Chomsky, over an alleged ban on his works. I’m not sure whether Chomsky’s screeds circulate freely in Pyongyang, but the answer is probably useful to prove a point regardless of what it is. I don’t support banning even a yutz like Chomsky, whose work is all over the internet anyway. But if Chomsky is — to use Yonhap’s barren description of him — no more than a “linguist,” then Goebbels was...

Categories Anju Links/Uncategorized
October 28, 2008

While America Drifts, Japan and S. Korea Stand Firm

Does it ever seem that U.S. policy toward North Korea is intentionally designed to clash with those of Japan and South Korea?  No matter how necessary a coordinated approach may be to the success of any policy, and even when Japan and Korea are newly aligned toward the same strategy we’d been pursuing until February 2007, our State Department seems to delight in creating diplomatic chaos at the first sign that order might break out.  Ironically, it’s now America that...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
October 26, 2008

Once Again, Kim Jong Il Starves the People; Once Again, World Doesn’t Know How to Respond

Recently, I was arguing with an influential supporter of a soft-line approach to North Korea about food aid.  Generally, we both supported the provision of food aid, and both of us acknowledged that the regime would use every means at its disposal to divert that aid to loyalists, high-ranking cadres, and the military. We agreed that Kim Jong Il doesn’t see the lives of all North Koreans as having equal value. We diverged when it came to what U.S. policy...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
October 25, 2008

Mystery Solved? Senior N.K. Diplomat Reportedly Defects

We may now know why North Korean diplomats were told to stand by for an important announcement on Monday: The United States declined Thursday to confirm or deny a report that a senior North Korean diplomat has defected and seeks shelter in the United States. “We have no information on that,” said Melanie Higgins, spokesperson for the State Department’s East Asian Affairs Bureau. Reports said that the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat led the Pyongyang regime to order...

Categories Defectors/Regime Change
October 24, 2008

Domestic State Terrorism: North Korea Expands Use of Public Executions

[Updated below] A few weeks ago, the Chosun Ilbo, quoting NGO’s that in turn cite interviews with recent defectors, reported that North Korea carried out 901 public executions in 2007.  This figure, of course, does not include summary executions or those carried out in secrecy, or the ordinary toll of starvation, disease, and torture in the North Korea’s vast concentration camp system.When a society is as opaque as North Korea’s, I originally thought it strained to suggest, as some newspapers...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Inside NK/Regime Change
October 24, 2008

I’ll Give You a Topic: The Verification Protocol is Neither. Discuss.

It’s hardly worth discussing anyway; after all, with North Korea, there’s little point in expecting what’s agreed today to stay agreed tomorrow. We’ve already abandoned the goal of disarmament, there is always another demand, it is always followed by another concession, and someone always wants us to think that this time, it’s really the last one. Still, the State Department justifies its de-listing of North Korea as a terror sponsor by claiming that it has reached a verification protocol with...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
October 20, 2008

Generalissimo Kim Jong Il Is Still Not Dead

If there really was a special announcement played for the diplomats and shadowy “trading company” officials at North Korea’s embassies and consulates yesterday, it may have been about sign-ups for intramural softball or the results of the fantasy football pool.   We did learn that the  Great General offered this on-the-spot guidance, which, for once, I wholly endorse: “get a haircut, hippie!”   Like so many recent reports from North Korea of late, however,  the latest ones  fall sadly short of our...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
October 19, 2008

What Removing North Korea from the Terror List Means

If tomorrow’s Big Announcement from North Korea isn’t that the Great Leader has gone to the Great Meat Locker, it may well be that the North, having met with  such stunning  success at blackmailing the United States,  will throw some new tantrum at South Korea.  I would not credit the North with diplomatic genius for its success at isolating and blackmailing its enemies one at a time.  The trick isn’t new.  It seems more fair to credit us for the...

Categories Appeasement/Asia/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics