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...

IT’S A FEW DAYS OLD, but this New York Sun report on Republican revulsion at President Bush’s appeasement of Kim Jong Il is worth a read, particularly because of the signals McCain is sending.  If McCain were to oppose this vocally, Bush would probably have a hard time keeping the Republicans togther, and some Democrats would probably also feel the need to pivot.  Related editorial here. ONE WAY YOU COULD help push public opinion (here, anyway) modestly in the right...

YOU DON’T SAY: “There is concern that North Korea might want to retain nuclear weapons that they have already produced so, in fact, they can be considered as a nuclear weapon state,” Lee Myung-Bak told Japan’s Kyodo News in an interview released on Monday.  “This is a very serious concern we all have,” said South Korean President Lee stressing the need for the six-party nuclear negotiations to tackle the weapons issue.  [Channel News Asia] Unlike Japan’s leaders, Lee doesn’t have...

NOT-VERY-FAMOUS LAST WORDS:  Most observers now rate the 100,000-man South Korean army as the best of its size in Asia. Its fast-moving columns have mopped up all but a few of the Communist guerrilla bands. And no one now believes that the Russian-trained North Korean army could pull off a quick, successful invasion of the South without heavy reinforcements. [Time, June 5, 1950]   MAD SHEEP DISEASE UPDATES: In a fine example of the unrealized expectations of government-funded media, KBS...

STARVING NORTH KOREAN WOMEN TURN TO PROSTITUTION:  “Around stations in big cities, you can see many pimps affiliated to inns . . . .  They approach pedestrians, euphemistically saying that “˜I am selling a bed,’ or “˜selling a flower.’”  Sadly,  some of those forced to survive this way are children.  IT’S CAUTIOUSLY ENCOURAGING to hear USAID official John Brause say something like this about the first shipment of U.S. food aid to North Korea  since 2005:  The agreement to provide...

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED the show.   That’ll be $2.5 million.  SORRY ‘BOUT THAT!   Yet again, the South Korean government endangers the families of its forgotten prisoners of war. DON’T THINK OF THEM AS LOVED ONES.  Think of them as hostages  (more). FOR THE FIRST TIME, senior South Korean officials have commemorated the anniversary of a 2002 sea battle with North Korean patrol boats that left six South Korean sailors dead. THE HOTTEST ITEM FOR SMUGGLERS in Sinuiju, along the...