This one is just for GI Korea: The United States and South Korea have been tussling over U.S. demands for additional construction work at the Gyeonggi province site for its new military headquarters, defense officials here said yesterday. “We are reviewing a request by U.S. Forces Korea to raise the level of the ground by two to three meters (7-10 feet) at the new base site in Pyeongtaek,” a senior official at the Ministry of National Defense said. The request...

If this is true, I guess I’ll just have to throw up. How did these palace eunuchs conclude that there is anything to be gained by sacrificing clarity and truth in the face of Pyongyang’s rhetorical missives? Does it occur to them that this will be seen as yet more proof that we’re weak, and that our laws are negotiable? And most importantly, when they die, will they be buried as “whole men?” Fortunately, not everything you read on Naver...

James Brooke reports: The United Nations World Food Program, which was helping to feed a third of the 22 million people of North Korea as recently as August, has ended all feeding programs there at the request of the government. “Operations are completely halted,” Richard Ragan, an American who represents the agency in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, said Friday in a telephone interview. Noting that government pressure had already forced a cutback this fall, he said: “We were feeding...

Updated 9 Dec 06. This just turns my stomach: The Japanese media reported yesterday that Megumi Yokota, the poster child for Japanese abductees to North Korea who was 13 years old when she was kidnapped in 1997 [a factual error; she was kidnapped in 1977], was abducted by Shin Gwang-su (76). The report said that Hitomi Soga (46), another abductee who returned to Japan with her husband who deserted from the U.S. Armed Forces while stationed in Korea, revealed this...

It’s really no cause for alarm. Every Korean election year, the political parties’ festering grudges and tribal feuds, catalyzed by ambition, render the entire Korean political party system unstable. Parties shatter into mercurial gobs, collide, and reform. It has certain advantages over our system, in which party positions tend to ossify for decades. In Korea, the instability of parties means more cutthroat competition in the marketplace of ideas. Guess whose throat is next. The last thing a lame duck needs...

There are two interesting new reports in the Daily NK, both based on clandestine interviews with a small number of North Koreans. The obvious cautions apply. -I- First, an interview of a resident of Chongjin, in the far northeast: The security agents say that they no longer arrest blasphemers. They even say that they will enforce laws on the basis of scientific evidences. (Blasphemers refer to those who blaspheme the system of the Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il...

That’s Putting It Kindly: The new Anti-Unification Minister–now 50% less stupid! The outgoing unification minister, Chung Dong-young, had the same titular portfolio as Mr. Lee will carry, but left much of the day-to-day policy work of the security council to the secretariat while he oversaw his ministry and was the public face of inter-Korean diplomacy. Intelligence, of course, is no replacement for good sense.

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstacy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic....

I know that being discredited must be par for the course for Cheong Woon Sik, but what’s your reaction to the fact that both the South Korean NIS and the government of China agree that the North Koreans are counterfeiting U.S. currency? I presume Japan agrees as well; both Tokyo and Beijing support the U.S. position that North Korean counterfeiting is a separate issue from nuclear disarmament talks. Did you not get the memo, or does your faith require a...

If you could send them a brief message, what would it be? You can. Here’s mine.

Talks Update: Is this another North Korean walkout, a walkout threat, or just another stall tactic?

Of course I’ll settle for the lesser of all evils. Don’t we always? That said, drop what you’re doing and read this superb post by The Flying Yangban. Before it all changes. My profile piece on Lee Myung-Bak here.

Who Else Is Reading Today? I’ve never been obsessed with hit counts, but I confess my love of my visitors’ log. A big OFK welcome to my distinguished visitors from the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, the State Department, the U.N. World Food Program, U.N. Headquarters, Reuters, the Washington Post, Freedom House, a major NPR station, a decent smattering of big universities and corporations, someone else from South Dakota, and of course my loyal regulars, even those with whom I...

You . . . you are the crowd who walk past laughing on the road; and there are a few of us, escaped victims or eyewitnesses of the things which happen in the thicket and who, haunted by our memories, go on screaming on the wireless, yelling at you in newspapers and in public meetings, theaters and cinemas. . . . You shake yourselves like puppies who have got their fur wet, . . . and you walk on, protected...

Thanks to commenter ‘snoopy,’ with whom I ordinarily disagree more than not, for posting the link to the complete documentary here. It recently aired on Discovery Times, a partnership of the Discovery Channel and the New York Times.

The Chosun Ilbo reports: The U.S. special envoy for North Korea Joseph DeTrani is quitting to take up a job in the office of the director for national intelligence next week. As the deputy head of Washington’s delegation at six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program and Washington’s man in the near-defunct Korea Energy Development Organization, DeTrani has been a point man in often informal contacts between North Korea and the U.S. since he took over as special envoy at...

Some interesting stats on South Korea’s protection payments to the North: Recently publicized material by the South Korean Unification Ministry revealed that a total of 340.6 billion won ($324.3 million) was spent on inter Korean cooperation projects from January until November this year, ranging from supporting the North Korean national soccer team to sending fertilizer aid to the North. Less than half of this amount was for fertilizer and rice. A total of 157.3 billion won was spent on fertilizer...

Mine Would Ask Why He’s the Only Fat Man in the Entire Country: “Open North Korea Broadcasting, a private radio station, says it is giving people a chance to send a message to Kim Jong-il. The Korean-language broadcaster, with offices here but with headquarters in Washington, D.C., said yesterday that starting on New Year’s Day and continuing for a week, it would broadcast free messages from South Koreans to North Koreans in general or to specific people there. Currently the...