In honor of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I’d like to remind everyone that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad–now living out the remainder of his ill-considered existence in the monastic surroundings of Gitmo–is somewhere around his 153rd trimester. If some court decided to retroactively declare Mr. Mohammad to be a postmature fetus and appoint a forward-thinking military doctor as his guardian ad litem, and–stay with me here–have that guardian order a safe and legal medical procedure to be performed on Mr....

The title was just too good not to steal from Glenn Reynolds. The Saddamists and nationalists in Iraq have gone on the warpath against al-Qaeda and its Iraqi followers, and have vowed to drive them out of Anbar, the epicenter of the insurgency. It all began when an al-Qaeda bombing killed 80 local residents: Residents told Reuters on Monday at least three prominent figures on both sides were among those killed after local insurgent groups formed an alliance against al...

No question about it: perception of a threat has a direct relationship to the hospitality–or hostility–with which U.S. forces are received. After a United States Navy sailor was confined on an American base near here, accused of the Jan. 3 beating death of a Japanese woman, 20 people held a protest at the base. One man held up a sign that read, in English, “Dear Sailors, Don’t Kill Local Women.” A decade ago, when three American servicemen were detained on...

The New York Times gets it: Mr. Cheon said the worship of Dr. Hwang was also rooted in the fierce nationalism fostered during the decades of military dictatorship, until the late 1980’s. “We were taught constantly about national interests and that the ends justified the means,” Mr. Cheon said. In this atmosphere, Dr. Hwang became untouchable. “Many of us didn’t trust him,” Kim Jae Sup, professor of developmental biology at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, said of...

Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can Nothing to kill or die for A brotherhood of man Can anyone name one place where there there was not a substantial difference in standards of living between different socioecomic classes? I can’t, but Chung Dong Young can imagine it: Former unification minister and Uri Party chairman contender Chung Dong-young said at a press conference yesterday that if the strength of the army was reduced to 300,000, about half its current size,...

The Unification Ministry is again facing criticism over its laxness toward North Korea, after announcing yesterday it would provide 4.8 billion won ($4.8 million) to repair and complete a project on Mount Paektu on which it has already spent 4.98 billion won. Of that, 2 billion won is to repair faulty construction by North Korean workers, carried out without clear specifications of what the South expected for its contribution. The project happens to an airfield, and I’ve yet to hear...

You have to love this headline: U.S. Investigators Smash Hopes of N. Korea Compromise Investigators? The people who find just the facts, ma’am, have smashed those hopes, as opposed to the protaganists behind those facts (the counterfeiters, anyone)? A U.S. investigation team headed by the Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, Daniel Glaser, on Monday presented Korean officials with its evidence that North Korea is engaged in counterfeiting U.S. dollars. The team was met by...

Kim Jong Il won’t be happy about being second-worst to anyone. It’s not a terribly good neighborhood, overall: The magazine ranked Chinese President Hu Jintao sixth. “Although some Chinese have taken advantage of economic liberalization to become rich, up to 150 million Chinese live on US$1 a day or less in this nation with no minimum wage. Between 250,000 and 300,000 political dissidents are held in “˜reeducation-through-labor’ camps without trial,” the magazine said. “The government opens and censors mail and...

[Warning: This post rated R!] Let me get this straight–horny Korean businessmen go to China, get caught using illegal drugs, and where do they expect to be tried? Where does their government want them tried? EXACTLY! In Korea! Under Korean law, Korean police retain jurisdiction over any crimes committed by its citizens while traveling overseas. Un. Fucking. Real. Possession, though, is nine-tenths of the law, and these fellows are very fortunate to have returned home before the Chinese authorities caught...

For you hard core North Korea junkies, reader Brendan Brown went to the Freedom House conference in December and filmed portions of it (for new readers, Brendan is a native of Australia who lives in Seoul and teaches English to North Korean refugees). Our friend at usinkorea then put them all on the web over at his site. I suspect usinkorea is undergoing the same evolution I went through three years ago, when I made a conscious decision to redirect...

Now, we reach the fundamentals. What, then, is the enduring purpose of this alliance? Let me throw down every reasonable alternative, and we’ll pick them apart one at a time. What are the interests of South Korea and the United States? It’s in the interests of the United States for the region to be peaceful and for trade to flow freely . . . . . . with the notable exception of weapons of mass murder, dope, and counterfeit currency....

I wonder what a certain reader of this blog might think about this. Everything is a matter of funding and budgets, I suppose. Busan always struck me as being just about the ugliest, most unfriendly city one could possibly build in such a beautiful location. It should have been the Seattle or San Francisco of Korea, but isn’t.

A hat tip to an influential official in the U.S. government, who saw this post at usinkorea and e-mailed me this morning to say, “Josh: These continuing developments in South Korea worry people in Washington.” Thanks also to Antti, whom I presume is the Finnish blogger who helped with the translation: Japanese bastards were expelled, and American bastards came in. We thought it was liberation, but they were all same bastards. Kick them out! Kick them out! USFK! Kick them...

Via Austin Bay, the Washington Post reports that the State Department’s personnel system has gotten the memo that the Cold War is over, and that a new war has started: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that she will shift hundreds of Foreign Service positions from Europe and Washington to difficult assignments in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere as part of a broad restructuring of the diplomatic corps that she has dubbed “transformational diplomacy.” The State Department’s culture...

The first of two detailed reports in the New York Times. First, the macro view: BEIJING, Jan. 19 – Chinese took to the streets to protest land seizures, corruption, pollution and unpaid wages in record numbers in 2005, the national police said Thursday, with mass incidents that involved violent confrontations or attacks on government property surging at the fastest rate. The number of “public order disturbances” rose 6.6 percent last year, to 87,000. Mass protests that involved “disturbing social order”...

I make no specific comment on Google’s refusal to let the U.S. government access the content of customers’ searches. Read carefully, and buried in the middle of the article is the tidbit that it seems to be aimed at catching child molesters (not Commie witches, as the lede would suggest) although you can’t really figure out what the big, bad government is looking for, or why, or based on what authority, at least not from this schlocky reporting. So they’re...