September 23, 2008

The Continuum: The Origins of Korean Politics

Before the allies arrived in Korea in September 1945, Korean politics existed only undergound and in exile, among  feuding  factions of various brands of radicals.  A search of Time’s  fascinating archives, which are completely free, shows that the American press paid little attention to events in Korea until American missionaries began reporting on Japan’s oppression.  This  attention increased in the 1930’s as  hostility rose between Japan and the United States, but exile politics received almost none of that attention. Less...

Categories Korean History
September 22, 2008

Grim Vindication: Predictably, Appeasement Fails to Disarm North Korea … Again

[Update:   Now they’re asking the IAEA to remove the seals and cameras.  More here.] There are some who can look back on decades of failure and learn nothing, while some of us looked into the future two years ago and foresaw everything.  One Agreed Framework should have been enough for any observer possessed of an average ration of common sense.  Crediting myself with that much, in March of 2007, I wrote a post in the form of news reports...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
September 19, 2008

Starving Soldiers Deplete North Korea’s Meager Harvest

I got too busy to keep an eye on Good Friends’ updates for a while,  but on my commute home last night, I managed to eke out the time to read some items that caught my interest.  Overall,  people continue to die by the dozens, though not yet by the hundreds or thousands.  The starvation seems localized, yet those localities are distributed across the country, including the regions surrounding Pyongyang.  But what I’m watching for most keenly is a sign...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Military/Regime Change
September 17, 2008

Ho Hum, North Korea Violates 2 More U.N. Resolutions, World Yawns

Remember that fancy new North Korean missile test site that was in the news the other day?  North Korea has reportedly conducted an engine ignition test for a long-range missile, presumably the Taepodong-2 missile with a range of 6,700 km, at a new long-range missile test site under construction in Dongchang-li, North Pyongan Province. For the test, the rocket engine of a missile is laid out horizontally at the test site and ignited to test its performance. The test confirms...

Categories "United" Nations/Proliferation/WMD
September 16, 2008

Joe Biden Is Blocking North Korea Human Rights Legislation, and You Can Help Un-Block It (Update: Biden’s Staff Denies, Predicts Bill Will Pass This Term)

[Update:   Not so, says Frank Jannuzi, who wrote in after I put up this post.  According to Jannuzi, Biden has never blocked this bill and has never opposed the two provisions mentioned in the post below.  As to the refugee provisions of H.R. 5834, Jannuzi says Biden supports them just as they are in the House version.  Jannuzi also says that not only does Biden support a full-time Special Envoy with ambassadorial rank, Biden offered the amendment to the...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
September 13, 2008

Anju Links for 13 September 2008

HELLO! ARE-YOU-THE-BRAIN-SPECIALIST!?   More rumors about Kim Jong Il’s health, and speculation about what might follow him, at the New York Times.  The Times doesn’t specify, but another report claims it was brain surgery. THIS TIME, I TEND TO AGREE WITH THE CONSENSUS VIEW of post-KJI North Korea, whenever that eventually should grace us all:  military junta with Dauphin figurehead to lend legitimacy to puppetmasters.  But with the regime so economically weakened and unpopular, one can’t help thinking that the...

Categories Anju Links
September 11, 2008

Wake Me Up When There’s an Unscheduled Military ‘Parade’

The latest report on Kim Jong Il’s condition — for what it’s worth — is that he is recovering but partially paralyzed on his left side. Foreign doctors, possibly from China and France, performed the operation after Kim, 66, collapsed about Aug. 15, the newspapers Dong-a Ilbo and JoongAng Ilbo reported, citing unidentified government officials. Kim’s condition has improved and he is not suffering from slurred speech, a disability often associated with a stroke, the reports said. [AP, Jae Soon...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
September 10, 2008

Also, In a Just World, Isaac Hayes Would Still Be Alive

That night there came from the farmhouse the sound of loud singing, in which, to everyone’s surprise, the strains of Beasts of England were mixed up. At about half past nine Napoleon, wearing an old bowler hat of Mr. Jones’s, was distinctly seen to emerge from the back door, gallop rapidly round the yard, and disappear indoors again. But in the morning a deep silence hung over the farmhouse. Not a pig appeared to be stirring. It was nearly nine...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
September 8, 2008

Verify Distrust: Kim Jong Il’s Next Move

No one exceeds Kim Jong Il at the production of belligerent and grandiose theater. So exactly what sort of kind of theater is he putting on for international monitors at Yongbyon? That may depend on what you’d rather believe. Do you remember a time, back when Roh Moo Hyun and George W. Bush were still the presidents of their respective nations, when South Korean leaks always cast the Americans as too suspicious and inflexible? My, how times have changed. North...

Categories Uncategorized
September 7, 2008

Hill: We Would De-List N. Korea Even Before Verification

Why, all we need is one more set of promises: THE United States will take North Korea off its terrorism list “immediately” if it can agree on a way to verify its nuclear facilities, America’s top nuclear envoy Christopher Hill said today. The renewed pledge followed a flurry of meetings here after North Korea said it had stopped dismantling its Yongbyon nuclear reactor and started taking equipment back to the site. “I want to stress that we’re not looking to...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
September 4, 2008

Congratulations to Suzanne Scholte

Suzanne Scholte, the President of the Defense Forum Foundation and head of the North Korean Freedom Coalition, has been awarded the Seoul Peace Prize, which comes with an award of $200,000: In a press conference held at the Seoul Press Center on Wednesday, Lee Chul-seung, chairman of the Seoul Peace Prize Cultural Foundation, said, “We selected Scholte as the winner this year for her contribution to improving human rights of North Korean residents and North Korean refugees, and bettering the...

Categories Activism/South Korea/U.S. & Korea
September 3, 2008

Anju Links for 3 Sept 08

MORE REGIME COLLAPSE PROGNOSTICATIONS from Strategy Page. What all of these articles are trying to describe is a gradual process whose pace we can’t really measure, although their high-altitude description of the process seems about right. What also seems likely is that the regime will last through the year, given the passage of the spring and summer without any significant incidents of unrest. Soon, the pre-harvested fall crops will come in, and the worst shortages may be over until next...

Categories Anju Links
September 1, 2008

Get a Load of This Aso.

The tepid and unpopular Yasuo Fukuda, who showed signs of softening Japan’s policies toward North Korea, is out, and Foreign Minister Taro Aso looks like the front-runner to replace him.  Fukuda recently installed former Foreign Minister Taro Aso as secretary-general of the ruling party. Aso has kept a low profile during nearly all of Fukuda’s term and could be seen as offering a fresh start for the party.  [AP] Is this good news or bad news?  The answer is “yes!” ...

Categories Japan/Japan & Korea
August 31, 2008

Under Lee Myung Bak, Refugee Policy Moves in a More Humane Direction … Mostly

The number of North Korean refugees arriving in South Korea has risen by a whopping 42 percent from the number arriving this time last year: The ministry estimated the number of North Korean defectors coming to the South in the first six months of this year to be 1,744, up 41.7 percent from 1,230 during the same period last year. The figure represented a growth of 101 percent from 869 in the corresponding period in 2006. A ministry official said...

Categories Anju Links/Refugees
August 30, 2008

Suckers ….

THE FULL TEXT OF KCNA’S PENULTIMATE TANTRUM is at the link after this money quote: The U.S., however, raised all of a sudden an issue of applying an “international standard” to the verification of the nuclear declaration, abusing this agreed point. It pressurized the DPRK to accept such inspection as scouring any place of the DPRK as it pleases to collect samples and measure them. The “international standard” touted by the U.S. is nothing but “special inspection” which the IAEA...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
August 27, 2008

Unusual Suspects (1)

Update:  I see Robert had pretty much the same reaction. Maybe all that hand-wringing  about a Lee Myung Bak dictatorship isn’t so exaggerated after all:  Oh Se-cheol, a professor emeritus of Yonsei University and prominent leftwing academic, was arrested on Tuesday on charges of breaching the National Security Law. Oh’s arrest is seen as a start of a government crackdown on leftwing organizations which grew and expanded their realm of activities under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations. Seoul...

Categories Censorship/The Fifth Column
August 27, 2008

Unusual Suspects (2) (Updated)

In South Korea, where North  Korean agents still infiltrate into the South  to kidnap and occasionally even kill people,  commie conspiracy theories aren’t  always just for John Birchers.  The prosecution has just announced the arrest of a 35 year-old female North Korean “defector,” Won Jeong-Hwa,  for spying for the North Korean regime.  Before coming to the South in 2001, Won served jail time for theft and feared possible execution for committing another crime — stealing tons of zink, which is...

Categories Censorship/Defectors/Refugees/The Fifth Column