Election Updates

If my math is any good — and if it were, I suppose I’d have found another line of work — Koreans are already voting in local elections. Here are a few last-minute posts before exit polls and results come in: Park Geun Hye is already up and out of her hospital bed campaigning in the wake a failed throat-slashing attack. Also yesterday, the Seoul West District Court dismissed an appeal by her admitted attacker, Ji Chung-ho, against his detention....

Operation Sunshine Continues

LiNK is asking for your help to shame South Korea’s government into showing some concern for the 23 million Korean citizens living North of the DMZ: LiNK is amassing a giant collection of “messages to the president” which we shall put on a banner to be delivered to South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to show him that the people of Korea and the world are watching how he deals with the North Korean human rights crisis. Here’s how it works:...

News Flash: Kim Jong Il and Hitler Share a Fan Club

Continuing with our Nazi theme, a member of the Korean “Friendship” Association has registered his disagreement with my criticism of that group by illustrating the ease with which the extreme left and the extreme right accomodate to each other’s ideas (as if Mussolini’s conversion from Communism to Fascism weren’t evidence enough). For extra fun, there’s a photo lineup! I must say that the KFA has great potential for more material like this.

The Dictator on My Bar Napkin

Two recent news stories again raise the one of the most difficult questions free societies face: what role should governments play in limiting the expression of views that are tasteless, offensive, or which might even be lies designed to strip that society of its freedom? Let’s begin with some context. If the first casualty of prosperity is taste, a corollary to this rule is that the depth of affliction is proportional to the speed with which a society achieves prosperity....

Court Sentences Nutty Professor to Two Years, Suspended

Let’s just be clear that Professor Kang Jeong-Koo is a lying Stalinist media whore and failed petty tyrant: In a lecture in Incheon last year, Kang said, “Had the United States not intervened, the Korean War would have ended in a month with the death toll in both South and North less than 10,000. But 3.99 million more people died additionally because of the American intervention. The U.S. is the main culprit in the war and Douglas MacArthur its advance...

Freedom for the Shenyang Four

America is doing the right thing: China and the U.S. have reportedly agreed that four North Korean defectors who barged into the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang after making their way into the South Korean legation will be permitted to leave the country. It is understood that the U.S. has decided to give them asylum. Sources said Thursday’s secret negotiations were favorable to the defectors, adding Washington would accept the group’s request for asylum.

Two North Korean Soldiers Cross the MDL

Could this have been a deliberate provocation, a defection attempt, or neither? Two North Korean soldiers crossed a stream some 20-30 m into the South in Hwacheon, Gangwon Province at around 12:47 p.m. on Friday but returned to the North when South Korean troops fired warning shots. This is the first time in five years the South Korean military has had to fire over the heads of North Korean soldiers crossing the Military Demarcation Line (MDL). The last time was...

What, Me? Xenophobic?

You Don’t Say: The head of U.S. private equity fund Lone Star says criticism of the firm’s investment in Korea Exchange Bank is driven by an “anti-foreign political climate” in Korea. I don’t know enough to evaluate Korea’s accusations against Jay Grayken, but Grayken’s accusations against Korea certainly have a ring of truth to them. Meaning that even if Grayken is a complete scoundrel, he’s at least standing on firmer ground than Cynthia McKinney.

Give Me a Mile! Make It Ten!

What Korea really needs is a futures market devoted exclusively to joint North-South projects. A very simple model here is to imagine yourself as a ruthless North Korean tyrant ensconced in an underground lair in Pyongyang, surrounded by his pleasure squad. Then ask yourself, “what’s in it for me?” Having done this, try to spot the irrational exuberance. If you can, and if that market actually did exist, there would be a beach house in Ko Samui with your name...

TDAXP: The Thesis

Tdaxp has been one of my favorite blogs since day one. Dan strips each problem to its foundational assumptions and rebuilds a range of solutions around interlocking analyses from political, economic, social, and even behavioral laws. To a greater degree than I am, Dan is a TPM Barnett fan — I tend to think Barnett places too much confidence in the power of economics to overcome the predatory nature of tyrants — but every word of his full thesis, “Redefining...

Modern-Day Comfort Women Describe Escape and Survival

In a follow-on to interviews they gave here, some of the first six North Korean refugees are talking about their escapes from the North. Here is an excerpt from the Dong-a Ilbo’s report: A woman who shared the same cell with Chan-mi died of malnutrition with her whole body swollen; another woman she witnessed was beaten to death. Chan-mi wept when she said, “When I was pardoned last year in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Korean Workers’ Party...

LiNK ‘Operation Sunshine’ Events This Week

Adrian Hong sends: ================================================================= SEOUL ““ On Tuesday, May 23, 2006, at 10:30 am, some 30 members of a delegation of members of LiNK, Liberty in North Korea, an international grassroots NGO, will be meeting with former President Kim Young Sam, at his residence in the Sangdo neighborhood of Seoul. LiNK is a group devoted to raising awareness of the North Korean humanitarian and human rights crisis, and engages in activism and advocacy on the issue. The delegation of LiNK...