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...

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...

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...

Prediction is a dangerous business, but Stratfor is saying it’s a sure thing: Meanwhile, signs of rot in the North Korean police state continue to appear. These include more crime, especially burglary and robbery. There’s more corruption, with even some secret police (the core force in keeping the communists in power) taking bribes. Discipline continues to decline in the army, as does readiness (because of little training with heavy equipment, and lack of spare parts for maintenance.) It’s looking more...

The aide in question, Dennis Halpin, was actually seated between the Committee Chairman (Rep. Hyde) and the Subcommittee Chairman (Rep. Leach) at the last Korea-related hearing of the House International Relations Committee on October 6th, at which Ambassador Chris Hill testified before the Committee. The following day, Mr. Halpin spoke to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. This is the text of his address. Must-reading if you want to puncture through the diplospeak to see what Congress...

Updated 10/12; scroll down. Never accuse the North of not fighting above its weight or thinking big. In the process, it has cemented the most recent credible evidence of its cooperation with international terrorists, which might prove troublesome for that pesky terrorism list. Via the Times of London (also reported in Yonhap): ONE of Ireland’s most famous revolutionaries could face 20 years in an American jail for his alleged role in a communist plot to wreck the dollar. Sean Garland,...

Ohno wins again. Heh. But what’s this? Ahn Hyun-soo failed to keep his dominance over archrival Apolo Anton Ohno of the United States at the final phase of the second meet of the Short Track Speed Skating World Cup in Seoul, Sunday. Since this is the first time in my natural life that I’ve deliberately clicked a “Sports” button, I’ll defer to readers. When did Ahn “dominate” Ohno before, or is this just the reporter’s way of keeping a grievance...

Uri Party chairman Moon Hee-sang said Thursday a “significant change” to the armistice that has divided the two Koreas since the Korean War could come within three years. Link.

How many hungry kids do you suppose could be fed for the cost of moving 800,000 people around? A regime that recently sent hundreds of thousands of city dwellers to the farms to perform agricultural labor is now sending hundreds of thousands of others from the hinterlands to the city to hold up pieces of carboard . . . during the height of the harvest season. Meanwhile, 6.5 million citizens are starving and the government is rejecting food aid. More:...

This will be considerably harder for South Korea to abstain from without making its amorality conspicuous: The UN General Assembly is likely to see a fresh resolution on human rights in North Korea during the 60th plenary session now under way in New York. A South Korean official said Thursday EU countries were leading the way, with their resolution on human rights in North Korea adopted at the UN’s Human Rights Commission. “At this time there is a 50:50 chance”...

I wish the South Korean government would stop pretending that it makes protests against things like this when the Chinese are so conspicuously comfortable about ingoring them: Seven North Korean defectors who entered the compound of a Korean international school in the Northwestern Chinese city of Yantai, Shandong Province, on Aug. 29 and requested safe passage to South Korea have been returned to the North. The group consisted of two men and five women, four of them from the same...

A group of Korean-Americans has sent a pointed message about the MacArthur statue: A group including Washington State Senator Paull Shin on Monday delivered the signatures of some 8,129 Korean Americans opposing calls to topple a statue of U.S. general Douglas MacArthur in Incheon to Grand National Party chairwoman Park Geun-hye. The signatories said today’s Republic of Korea would not exist without the sacrifices of Allied forces led by MacArthur in the Korean War. If Incheon City cannot defend the...

The Chosun Ilbo is talking about heeding the dangers spotlighted in a recent OECD report on the long-term prospects for the Korean economy. The main dangers highlighted are shortages of labor and capital (and neglects another to which the OEDC gently alluded, mainly Korea’s lingering xenophobia). It seems to me that the answer to all but the latter is unification. Unification, if done peacefully or semi-peacefully–and what I’m talking about here is a sudden regime collapse in the North–would suddenly...

More union corruption exposed: The Korean Federation of Trade Unions has suspended its president Lee Soo-ho in a bid to combat corruption in its ranks. The decision came in an executive committee meeting on Saturday after former vice president Kang Seung-kyu was arrested on charges of taking W81 million (US$81,000) in kickbacks from the Association of the Taxi Industry in Korea. I wonder what it cost the North Koreans to keep them quiet about low wages and unsafe working conditions...