Like I Say, Mercurial: How fast do polls shift in South Korea? This fast.

Bureau 39 Watch: Another setback for Bureau 39–Japanese authorities have searched the offices of two entities affiliated with Chongryon, the North Korean-controlled association of Korean residents in Japan. They’re suspected of drug trafficking.

Again, Iraqis have reminded us that liberal values cannot survive unless we are willing to defend them. The news today–a high turnout almost nationwide and very little violence–is a heartening antidote to the self-loathing flagellation and emotionalism of the surrender-to-everyone lobby, despite the media’s amplifification of that message so far beyond the proportions of its relevance. Initial results suggest that enough Sunni Arabs voted “yes” to pass the Constitution. Gateway Pundit has pictures and links to a Reuters (!) video....

Ambassador Alexander Vershbow has arrived: Acting as America’s face, another task for the new ambassador will be to interact with the South Korean public, particularly the younger generation that did not experience the Korean War. This is important because Seoul has increasingly been making clear in recent years that it wants to be treated as an equal partner in the bilateral relationship. Mr. Vershbow is also expected to push Seoul more on North Korean human rights, but exactly how much...

Like I Say, Mercurial: How fast do polls shift in South Korea? This fast.

Bureau 39 Watch: Another setback for Bureau 39–Japanese authorities have searched the offices of two entities affiliated with Chongryon, the North Korean-controlled association of Korean residents in Japan. They’re suspected of drug trafficking.

[Updated] Now this is what I’m talking about when I say that the South Korean right needs to join the public debate about North Korea instead of hiding behind morally and intellectually lazy censorship. Here is the full text of the letter, followed by Rep. Hwang’s press release: Letter of Protest To Mr. Li Zhaoxing, the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of China [OFK Update: A wel-informed source tells me Mr. Li is actually the Foreign Minister. Oops.]: In August...

The Congressional-Executive Committee on China has released its 2005 Annual Report: The Chinese government forcibly repatriates North Koreans seeking refuge in China from starvation and political persecution, contravening its obligations to handle refugees as required by the 1951 Convention Related to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. The Chinese government classifies all North Koreans in China as “illegal economic migrants” and denies the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) access to this vulnerable population. Living conditions of...

Nativity in Hell. Maybe they should name her Kwan Li So.

Reunification. This is a case of either bad polling or bad reporting, on what should have been an interesting survey on South Korean attitudes about reunification. Unfortunately, it doesn’t publish enough facts about previous surveys and when they were taken, or why people don’t want immediate reunification, for me to tell. That leaves it open for academics to interpret this way: While more than eight out of ten people here still see reunification as important, over half of Koreans say...

More union corruption.

We’ll deal with those splitters after the revolution, comrades! The quality of academic debate in some quarters of Korean academia makes for eerie reading these days.

Perhaps I need to adjust my perceptions of the Korean justice system, whose idea of prosecutorial discretion apparently makes no room for Korea’s equivalent of the attorney general to direct who gets prosecuted and who doesn’t. Because our own system protects the independence of the judiciary but tolerates political influence over the prosecution, I’m not able to work myself into a lather over reports that the Uri Justice Minister intervened to quash to prosecution–for something similar to sedition–of the manure-spreading...

There are many wonderful dialogues in Lawrence of Arabia, but this is one of my favorites: SILIAM: And yet now it seems Audar has grown old and lost his taste for fighting. AUDAR: It is well you say it in my tent, thou old tulip! ALI: Yet, this is a tulip that the Turks could not buy. AUDAR: Why should they wish to? Now! I will tell you what they pay me, and you will tell me if this is...

Yet another reason to put up with the bombast, vitriol, and loopy Tokarevs-for-the-masses ideas you read here: you might just get more information, and get it faster: The influential U.S. congressional advisor Dennis Halpin, a Korea expert, said there was a connection between Seoul’s sunshine policy vis-à-vis Pyongyang and its neglect of the alliance with Washington. Halpin went on to compare Korea’s appeasement of the North to the people of Troy’s acceptance of the Trojan Horse laden with enemy soldiers....

The shouting over the last forced repatriations hasn’t yet ended, but still they come, risking their lives to escape hell on earth: Eight North Koreans entered a South Korean school in China in a bid to seek asylum in South Korea, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said. The entry came Tuesday, a day after South Korea protested China’s repatriation of seven North Korean asylum seekers who entered an international school in the northeastern Chinese city of Yentai in August. The...

As confirmed by an unnamed EU diplomat, via Kyodo news: The European Union has decided to present a draft resolution that denounces North Korea’s poor human rights record, including its abductions of Japanese and other nationals, at the U.N. General Assembly, a European diplomat said Tuesday. It will be the first time that North Korea has been named in such a resolution submitted to the assembly. The resolution is aimed at urging North Korea to follow similar resolutions adopted during...

The AP reports: North Korea will find itself in a “wilderness of isolation” if it walks away from a landmark agreement to give up its nuclear program, but will see a host of economic and diplomatic opportunities if the deal sticks, the chief U.S. envoy for talks with the country said Tuesday. . . . . “If they walk away from this, they would truly walk into a wilderness of isolation,” Hill told the Asia Society in Manhattan. “They walk...