Another Shot Across the Bow? Barry Briggs at NKZone has a very interesting post up on U.S. sanctions against a Macau-based bank that’s been helping North Korea launder its money. This should be read as a further development in the supernote story. Previous developments here and here. Update: CNN (remember them?) is now reporting that Secretary of State Rice is threatening to freeze North Korean assets. “We’re not sitting still, you know, we’re working on anti-proliferation measures that help to...

Post updated; scroll down. Thanks very much to my deep-cover source in the House of Representatives (how important it makes me feel to use that phrase). Here is the House International Relations Committee’s response to the MacArthur protests, addressed to Roh Moo-Hyun. Enjoy. Newspapers, if you care, please include the URL of the site but don’t print my full name or discuss my work, wife, kids, home address, favorite color, etc. Update 9/15: It’s not exclusive anymore. This is all...

Update: The Marmot has much more insight on this by directly tracing the MacArthur/three-day-orgy story to a North Korean textbook. Astonishingly, OhMyNews figured this out. Must read to believe. ________________ The U.S. media are also beginning to catch on to the MacArthur story and the blood-libels revisionist thinking that propels it. Let’s hope they’ll eventually get a better grip than this story in Newsweek online by B.J. Lee (HT to Occidentalism–which will be a new addition to my blogroll). Lee...

Mongolia is allowing NGOs to build a “care center” for North Korean refugees. This is very big news: “Construction will be starting soon, so we need to secure a safe passage to transport them from China to Mongolia,” Sung-ho Kim, executive director of the Rainbow Foundation, told RFA’s Korean service. “As soon as the facility in Mongolia is ready, we should able to accommodate them.” Kim said his group had already been allocated 400,000 pyeong (1.3 square kms) of land...

I absolutely despise the Chinese government, and yet I have trouble with the idea that even they would use the skin of executed prisoners to make cosmetics for export. Something doesn’t sound right about that, and the fact that it’s in The Guardian doesn’t help. And after all, the things we know to be true are already enough to turn your stomach. HT: The Kommentariat.

. . . to the 3,000 ROK Marines and friends who showed up to protect MacArthur’s statue in Incheon. Thank you for fighting the good fight, but please leave the hoglegs home next time (they were almost certainly prop guns). The neo-Stalinists–who had been looking forward to this day–stayed home, so there was no violence. It suggests that that radical left either feels that it’s overreached, or that the government intervened to keep them away. The mayor of Incheon weighed...

Korea-Iraq Update: On September 6, I blogged about what appeared to be a trial balloon statement from an Uri MP that Korea was considering a premature downsizing of its force of 3,600 troops in Iraq. Korea’s Iraq contingent is substantial on paper–the third-largest of any coalition partner–but is of little military value, remaining hidden away behind its barricades in the safest corner of Kurdistan. Today comes word that the Korean Ministry of National Defense intends to extend the mandate of...

The Daily Anxiety: Iran’s insane new “president” is offering to share nuclear technology with other Islamic nations. As I’ve said before, Iran and North Korea always seem to stage their provocations in tandem. I have no evidence of outright coordination, but at the very least, they seem to be watching each other’s moves as opportunities to refract world condemnation.

Kudos to the Chosun Ilbo for an outstanding response to the blood libel that General MacArthur gave his troops a green light to spend three days raping the women of Seoul. First up is an interview with James Zobel, the chief archivist at the MacArthur Memorial and Museum in Norfolk, Virginia. The view of someone so connected with MacArthur’s legacy will have to be buttressed by more neutral experts to take hold, but here, at least, is a newspaper trying...

Chosun Ilbo reports “few signs of progress . . . ,” and that the Chinese may even adjourn the talks early. And then? Since the last round of talks, the U.S. delegation has been saying, “After Christopher Hill, it’s John Bolton,” shorthand for referring the matter to the UN Security Council. Bolton is regarded as the most hawkish of the Bush administration’s neocons. As UN ambassador, he handles his country’s duties in the Security Council. He has described North Korean...

South Korea’s “Ally” Rating with the American people remains mostly unchanged since 2002, the first year in which Harris Surveys started collecting these numbers: The U.K. was America’s best friend in the eyes of respondents, with 76 percent designating it a close ally, while 18 percent saw it as friendly, and 1 percent with long memories considered it hostile. It was followed by Canada and Australia, which were seen as allies by 48 percent and 43 percent. Israel came fourth...

Ousted Hyundai Asan vice chairman Kim Yoon-Kyu is still offering to facilitate business deals in North Korea, and sounding like a bit of a corporate mutineer in the process. Background here.

For new readers, here’s my original post on the violent 9/11 anti-American protests in Incheon, by North Korean sympathizers who want to tear down a statue of General Douglas MacArthur. Today saw the first major coverage by major U.S. media. This L.A. Times piece by Barbara Demick, though an incomplete picture, was much better than nothing. First, what the article does say: On Sunday, more than 4,000 anti-MacArthur demonstrators armed with bamboo sticks clashed with an almost equal number of...

Everything you didn’t learn about Seoul Mayor and presidential aspirant Lee Myung-Bak in my piece on him last week is here at the L.A. Times, by Barbara Demick. Unlike me, she leaves out most of the dirt. Lee is right, of course, to say that Seoul is an ugly city and shouldn’t be, although I happen to be one of the billion or so people who would have preferred a different approach than paving over swathes of city–including some places...

REMINDER–LINK PROTEST AGAINST ROH MOO-HYUN TOMORROW TODAY IN NYC. I’m tempted to make a comparison to people who serve the cause of tyrants with sticks and firebombs . . . but I just did, and once is probably enough.

It’s hardly the strong leadership that protects liberal values from political violence, but it’s a start. From The Korea Times: In a meeting with Korean residents of New York, Roh, emphasizing the South Korea-U.S. alliance, said Gen. MacArthur is “part of our history” and added that it would be undesirable if it were not respected as such. “We should not manage the South Korea-U.S. relationship in such a way as to pull down the statue,” he said. “We should not...

Roh: Alliance Is Improving Steadily.