November 2, 2006

Next UniFiction Minister Was Convicted in 2002 Bribery Scheme; Still Under Suspended Prison Sentence Later Pardoned by Roh

Update:   According to this, Roh pardoned  Lee last year —  which, of course, changes everything except the appeanance of cronyism, whitewashing, back-scratching, and corruption. Funny, I don’t recall anyone mentioning that Lee Jae-Joung is a con. Lee taught at the Sung Kong Hoe University in Seoul and served as the university president from 1994 to 2000 when he joined the then-ruling Millennium Democratic Party to become a member of the 16th National Assembly. He helped found the governing Uri...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Law/Korean Politics
November 2, 2006

North Korea Wants Its Drug Money Back

[Update:  A senior Korean official suggests that the U.S. will do just that right after the talks resume.  Scroll down.] [Update 2:  The Washington Post post also suspects that North Korea’s announcement is merely an effort to foil the American economic pressure: We hope Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, who conducted lengthy talks with his North Korean counterpart in recent days, is justified in expecting “substantial progress” from the new round. But history suggests that both North Korea...

Categories "United" Nations/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks
November 1, 2006

Roh’s New Cabinet Appointments Eschew Experience for Ideology

The Blue House has announced the new appointments for the Foreign, Defense, and UniFiction ministries, plus the new head of the National Intelligence Service. With the exception of Defense — to be filled by the Army Chief of Staff — the appointees look like a bunch of political hacks. I’ll update as I find out more. This post is adapted and updated from previous posts, including the scorecard I presented the other day. UniFiction

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
October 31, 2006

DLP Head Returns Kim Jong Il’s Jacket; Dispute Between Ex-NIS Chief and Blue House Widens

I know I speak for everyone when I say just how thankful I am that the Democratic Labor Party’s head  defied the wishes of the National Intelligence Service and the Ministry of Justice (both overruled by the UniFiction Ministry) to go to Pyongyang while his party’s leadership is under investigation for spying for North Korea.   True to  the DLP’s  promise, the North Koreans have put the issue to rest.  They call it “false and a  scheme of the U.S. and...

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
October 31, 2006

N. Korea Agrees to Return to Six-Party Talks

[Update:   According to this Korean language link, the South Koreans were the last of the six parties to know that the talks would begin again.  You’d think that after getting seven billion dollars from South Korean taxpayers, they’d have enough left over to afford a phone call.  I guess they spent it somewhere else.] News coming off the wires claims that the North Koreans have agreed to return to six-party talks. Chinese, U.S. and North Korean envoys to the...

Categories China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks
October 30, 2006

Must-Read: NYT Op-Ed by Havel, Wiesel & Bondevik Calls on U.N. to ‘Turn North Korea Into a Human Rights Issue’

The authors,  Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel, and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik have co-authored a powerful argument  for confronting  Kim Jong Il’s atrocities against the North Korean people, which they call “one of the most egregious human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.” They also call for a  “renewed international effort to ameliorate the crisis facing the country’s citizens:” For more than a decade, many in the international community have argued that to focus on the suffering of...

Categories "United" Nations/Europe/Human Rights/The Camps
October 30, 2006

As Roh Prepares to Name a New Cabinet, New Calls to Reboot Uri

After the local elections, I had blogged about the rift in the Uri Party about merging with other parties on the left.  In the wake of Uri’s beating in the last round of elections, it’s painfully obvious that the left is weak and fragmented and only stands a chance if it unites.  Note, for example, how Uri can’t win in South Jeolla province because other lef-wing parties win instead.  In that spirit, a former Justice Minister and Uri founder has...

Categories Diplomacy/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
October 30, 2006

Epidemic in North Korea?

Several days ago, a well-informed contact asked me whether I had heard rumors of a new disease spreading rapidly in northeastern North Korea, in the vicinity of Camp 22.  I hadn’t.  The rumor — I emphasize it was unverified and described to me as such — was that this was a made-in-the-lab germ  that had spread from one of the concentration camps in the vicinity to the  population on the outside.  It all sounded a bit conspiratorial to me, until...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK
October 30, 2006

Ex-NIS Chief Hints of Political Pressure in Il Shim Hue Investigation

The Chosun Ilbo spoke with  Kim Seong-Kew, who  just resigned as Chief of the National Intelligence Service. Read this and see what you make of it: Asked who will succeed him, Kim told the Chosun Ilbo it was “very important” who becomes the next NIS chief. “Some of the candidates are unsuitable due to concerns that they tend to do what [politicians] want them to do. Considering the presidential election next year and the operations of the NIS, the right...

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
October 30, 2006

‘Contain and Transcend’

Eric Sayers of the Center for Security Policy has produced a very interesting paper called “Contain and Transcend:  A Strategy for Regime Change in North Korea.”  Eric doesn’t think we can or should  actually promote democracy or encourage dissent inside North Korea — I  think we can and should  — but he  gets the  essential formula right:  starve the regime, reach out to the people.  This one is a must-read think piece.  Eric also keeps a fine blog, The Neo-Reaganite.

Categories Appeasement/Geopolitics/Washington Views
October 30, 2006

Proliferation Security Update

A second North Korean ship has been inspected  in Hong Kong,  but  there aren’t many details. The officials from the Hong Kong Customs and Marine Department said the North Korean vessel, Kang Nam 5, has been barred from leaving the port after its inspectors found about a dozen safety violations Thursday. Details of the suspected violations were not available. Another vessel, the Ponghwasan, apparently was not stopped or inspected, despite fears that it carries banned cargoes.

Categories Uncategorized
October 30, 2006

Sucking Sound, Part 2

Foreign capital continues to flee South Korea, and this time, the trend is far more pronounced than the last time I’d blogged about it. Foreign investors’ exit from South Korea is accelerating amid worries over a worsening business climate here and the economy’s falling growth potential, the central bank said Sunday.  According to the Bank of Korea, foreign direct investment in Asia’s fourth-largest economy reached a mere US$790 million in the first nine months of this year, about one-fourth of...

Categories NK Economics
October 29, 2006

DLP Leaders to N. Korea: ‘Say It Aint So!’

[Previous posts on the Il Shim Hue Fifth Column scandal here.  So far, the NIS has accused the ring of controlling violent anti-American protests, trying to infiltrate civic groups, controlling  senior officials of the Democratic Labor Party, and trying to manipulate the Seoul mayoral election.] As bad timing goes, it’s one for the books.  The far-left minor opposition Democratic Labor Party’s leaders  had planned their visit to Pyongyang  some time  ago, before they realized that their party would be at...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
October 29, 2006

Airborne Laser Leaves the Hangar

The system, mounted in a modified 747, is designed to track missiles in their boost phase.  Although it won’t be ready for test firing at a missile until 2008, it should be operational by the end of the decade.  And it looks cool. In a ceremony at the Boeing Co.’s Integrated Defense Systems facility in Wichita, the agency announced it was ready to flight test some of the low-power systems on the ABL aircraft, a modified Boeing 747-400F designed to...

Categories Technology/U.S. Military/WMD
October 29, 2006

U.N. Report on Human Rights in North Korea

Human Rights Without Frontiers forwards this report on human rights in North Korea  from the U.N. General Assembly (north_korea_u1_2006.pdf).  On the surface, it’s slathered with diplo-lard, but wipe that off and you can see some fairly strong language. In addition, it cannot be overstated that the excessive expenditure by the authorities on its defence sector based upon the country’s “military-first” policy causes serious distortions in the national budget and its use of national resources; it is a key impediment to...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights