July 31, 2008

The Continuum: Birth of a Nation

The restoration of Korea’s nationhood seemed to begin so harmoniously:  It is their purpose that Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since 1914, and that all territories stolen from China shall be restored. Japan will be expelled from all other territories taken by violence and greed. In due course Korea shall become free and independent. With these objects in view, the three Allies, in harmony with those of the...

Categories History/Korean History/U.S. Military
July 31, 2008

Famine Strikes N. Korean Region that Floods Missed

As busy as I’ve been at work, I’ve been derelict in covering the famine.  But the famine continues to spread and worsen, according to the Word Food Program: North Korea is suffering its worst food crisis since the late 1990s due to rising grain prices and a poor harvest, the U.N. food agency said Wednesday. “We believe that the food security situation right now, in many parts of the country, is the worst that it has been since the late...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Media Criticism
July 30, 2008

Must-Read: Dan Blumenthal and Aaron Friedberg on Agreed Framework 2.0

What is interesting, though not stated in the article, is that Blumenthal is one of John McCain’s senior advisors on Asia policy.  The article certainly doesn’t purport to speak for McCain, though it doesn’t seem far afield of his views.  If McCain were elected, it suggests that both he and his advisors would want The piece begins with plenty of substantive criticism of where the Bush Administration has brought us, all of which is on the mark, but which you’ve...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
July 30, 2008

Tokdo: Now Officially the Dumbest International Crisis in History

… thus supplanting all of that Seige of Troy unpleasantness. I cannot say that South Korea would be much the worse for having dismissed Ambassador Lee Tae Shik from his post, but that is incidental to the skull-smacking stupidity of why: The government on Monday decided to call Korean Ambassador to the U.S. Lee Tae-shik to account if it is found that the embassy did not react promptly to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names listing Dokdo under “undesignated sovereignty.”...

Categories An Alliance?/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/Korean Society
July 29, 2008

In Seoul, ‘Mad Sheep’ Protests Descend into Radical Violence

Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode. The herd has gotten leaner, and meaner:  Around the Seorin Rotary in Jongno, another 80 protesters besieged a traffic police officer and an auxiliary police officer from Jongno Police Station, and stole three two-way radios. Demonstrators also broke the windows of a police bus in front of the Samsung Tower, and flattened tires. Two police officers were taken to the Boshingak Pavilion, had their shirts taken off, and were...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
July 29, 2008

The Continuum: Down Range

From the Oct. 8, 1945 edition of Time: The autumn air was brisk and clear. Eagles wheeled overhead against the white clouds, their shadows crossing palaces and hovels, crumbling temples and Western buildings. The city of Seoul (pronounced soul), home of a million people, was 550 years old. Yet the Americans felt like discoverers last week as they explored Korea’s mountain-ringed capital. On the broad boulevards their jeeps competed with oxcarts, with bicycles thick as gnats. Tooting streetcars fairly bulged...

Categories History/Korean History/U.S. Military
July 28, 2008

For the Thousand and First Time, Secretary Rice, We Are Not Giving Up Our Nukes.

The North Koreans must have concluded that our Secretary of State’s failure to register their renunciations of any intent to denuclearize originates in some  lapse of clarity on their part.  North Korea cannot unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons when it is technically at war with the United States, a pro-North Korean newspaper published in Japan said Saturday. The Chosun Sinbo said Pyongyang cannot easily surrender its nuclear deterrent because it would be tantamount to lowering its guard while facing...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
July 28, 2008

Anju Links for 28 July 2008

WHAT’S MISSING HERE? “For the past seven years, we’ve spoken out against human rights abuses by tyrannical regimes like those in Iran, Sudan and Syria and Zimbabwe,” Bush said in a speech here titled “the Freedom Agenda Introduction.”  “We’ve spoken candidly about human rights with nations with whom we’ve got good relations, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and China,” he said.  [Yonhap]   Of course, it’s not as if Bush did  much to materially advance freedom in any of...

Categories Anju Links
July 26, 2008

The Continuum: How (Else) to Screw Up an Occupation

A frequent criticism of the American occupation of Iraq was the “decision” to disband the Iraqi Army.  It’s been said in response that there wasn’t much to disband by the time we reached Baghdad, anyway, and that decision was distinct from (though not unrelated to) our failure to prevent Iraqis from looting their own capital.  What if we’d done things badly in exactly  the opposite  different way?  Time’s wonderful archives take us back to events  that have  brought us  grief...

Categories History/Korean History
July 25, 2008

Is State Backing Away from N. Korea’s Terror De-Listing?

If you want to know what I think, no.  I think it’s posturing.  But Yonhap catches some significance in these remarks that I had missed: “It’s a 45-day minimum notification, but we certainly expect, and we’re watching very carefully, to see20whether or not North Korea is going to come through on the essential issue, which is verification, and to act accordingly,” Rice said. “I just wanted to clarify it’s a 45-day minimum notification, not maximum.” Rice reiterated her skepticism about...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
July 24, 2008

For the Thousandth Time, Secretary Rice, We Are Not Giving Up Our Nukes.

Somehow, I don’t think Condi Rice’s “‘very strong message’ about [North Korea’s] nuclear disarmament obligations” quite got through: North Korea reportedly asked to be recognized as a nuclear state at a meeting of foreign ministers from countries in six-party talks on Wednesday. North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun urged the U.S. to stop its hostile policy toward the North, saying verification of the nuclear facilities and stockpiles it has declared is not a duty but cooperation. [Chosun Ilbo] Somewhere, Jack...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
July 24, 2008

Anju Links for 24 July 2008

CONDI RICE WAS NOT AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: A South Korean NGO reports that North Korea carried out 901 public executions last year. Don’t expect to see this in State’s human rights report next year.  Boy, talking to the North Koreans really is changing them, isn’t it? JUST KILL YOURSELF NOW  IF YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE THIS: The protocol has to be one “that can give us confidence that we’re able to verify the accuracy of the North Korean declaration,” she said....

Categories Anju Links
July 22, 2008

Anju Links for 22 July 2008

BUT WE MUSTN’T POLITICIZE THE OLYMPICS:  To further its pre-Olympic “cleansing” policy, China will shut down the bridges to North Korea until the Olympics are over.  Those who promised us  that the Olympics would mean more openness and liberalization have a lot of  refugee “cleansing,” oppression, censorship,  arrests, and  a tidal wave of state-inspired  Lebensraum rhetoric  (see comments) to answer for.  IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER (PT.1):  Pressed by a reporter last week, White House  Spokeswoman Dana Perino  said...

Categories Anju Links
July 21, 2008

Agreed Framework 2.0 Update

Updates:   According to this AP report, we’ve now presented  the North Koreans with a proposed verification protocol and invited North Korea to stall for two more months and gut it  offer comments.   South Korean negotiator Kim Sook  says, “The ball is actually in the North Korean court ….”  True to form, State is withholding all details about what the protocol would consist of.  And as if in response for my rant below  about the lack of media skepticism, Reuters’s...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
July 21, 2008

Anju Links for 21 July 2008

THE KOREAN CHURCH COALITION’S final prayer vigils will take place on July 20th.  Here are the details. ROH IS LONG GONE, and yet all is not well in  U.S.-Korean relations (imagine that).  Discord recently broke out over the premature announcement of a POTUS visit to Seoul. “Washington has offered an apology for making public Bush’s schedule for his South Korean trip without consultations with Seoul. But this is not the first time such an incident has occurred. It could be...

Categories Anju Links
July 20, 2008

The End of Sunshine

Don Kirk has some straightforward observations about scholars in Washington, who, remarkably enough, are  still  debating how North might reform its economy, as though the  decade-long Sunshine experiment had never happened.  Kirk saves his most acerbic observation for one of the participants in a recent seminar: Probably no Washington think-tanker has been quite so divorced from reality of late, at least in public utterances, as Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. In a recent commentary he held up Vietnam as...

Categories Appeasement/Deprogramming/NK Economics