This millenium’s Brass Balls Award will go to these people, if there’s any truth to this story: A group of human rights activists will attempt to stage a protest in North Korea after gaining access to the Stalinist country ostensibly to make up audience numbers for the “Arirang” mass calisthenics performance. The maverick human rights advocate Norbert Vollertsen said during a conference on North Korea’s human rights violations at the National Assembly the same day that the protest was planned...

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...

Kaesong Update: The U.S. is keeping duties on Korean stainless steel cookware, but dropping them for Taiwan. I wonder why.

The National Human Rights Commission of Korea has recommended quietly to the National Intelligence Service not to oppose the issuance of a passport to Kim Tok-hong, a North Korean defector, an official with the commission said yesterday. Mr. Kim headed a state-run trading company in the North before he defected to the South in 1997, since when he has been an outspoken critic of the North’s regime. In 2003, he was invited by the Hudson Institute to speak on North...

You Heard It Here First: The United States House of Representatives’ International Relations Committee is expected to hold a hearing on South Korea-U.S. relations, a source in Washington said yesterday. The source said the hearing will address calls for the removal of the statue of General Douglas McArthur from Incheon, reasons behind increasing anti-American sentiment and the lack of public diplomacy by Washington. I have some fairly good guesses on who the source was . . . if it wasn’t...

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...