The New York Times reports that the U.S. may begin withdrawing forces from Afghanistan by next spring, if we can cut through NATO balking (which we may if Schroeder gets Das Boot in Oktober). Because the military and political pressure on our forces in Afghanistan is sustainable, one presumes that U.S. and Afghan commanders are doing this because they believe that the Afghan forces are ready for it. Although I emphatically believe that an Iraq withdrawal is premature now, I’ll...

It’s all too obvious for the need for much analysis. From the Joongang Ilbo: South Korea’s chief negotiator, Song Min-soon, is normally loquacious and brimming with metaphors, but his comments to reporters before he began a round of bilateral meetings were uncharacteristically short. After a lunch meeting with the U.S. team, he said only, “I don’t have any reason to be pessimistic but we still have to build some ground to be optimistic.” Mr. Hill, standing near Mr. Song, said...

Check out the history on this wiki page on (North) Korean Friendship Association member Bjornar Simonsen. Remind me not to ever have one of those, especially if head trauma causes me to become a lackey for a democidal tyrant. The “editing” has been deservedly ruthless. Click around for sophomoric fun!

Updated 9/14: The Chosun Ilbo reports that anti-Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young intervened with Hyun, possibly in an attempt to have Kim Yoon-Kyu reinstated, but that his differences with Hyun were “wide.” Chun is not denying that he’s trying to cobble the NK-Hyundai partnership back together, according to this Joongang Ilbo piece: “The government has responsibilities,” pool press reports from Pyongyang quoted him as saying. “In principle, this is a business relationship between a private company and North Korea, but the...

The Chosun Ilbo thinks that by failing to speak out decisively against the MacArthur protests, Roh Moo-Hyun’s government is tacitly questioning the legitimacy of the Republic of Korea. I wouldn’t personally go quite that far, but its hesitancy to weigh in strongly on the rightness of the U.N. intervention–especially in the context of all of the interference it has run for Kim Jong Il–strikes me as conspicuously agnostic about how which system of government deserved, and therefore deserves, to prevail.

I wonder what Glenn Kessler and Dafna Lizner will say about this: President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said yesterday that he believed that a Pakistani nuclear expert who ran the world’s largest proliferation ring exported “probably a dozen” centrifuges to North Korea to produce nuclear weapons fuel. But no bomb designs, as far as we know. Yes, fine. So can we now let go of the fiction that NK isn’t enriching uranium, a fiction that’s even impervious to confession? The...

Park Geun Hye stands for very little aside from her own will to power, but on the other hand, is she not tasty and bootylicious? A serious Park Geun-Hye dossier may be in order.

More six-party talks. No news.

Today’s Chosun Ilbo has an excellent article on the subject. Definitely read the whole piece, which closes with this: Rather than ignore Yasukuni, Americans should participate in the debate about it, doing so from an American perspective. The US government should quietly discourage Prime Minister Koizumi and other officials from visiting Yasukuni. The government should also encourage Japan to reconsider establishing a non-political memorial dedicated solely to commemorating those who gave their lives, which would not include war criminals. Wish...

[Update and Correction: Dammit. On rereading, I now realize that I missed the highly significant fact that these posts refer to this July protest. That was certainly my screw-up. Mea culpa. Nobody misread the relative turnout on that day because the conservatives apparently did outnumber the anti-Americans. But that’s not the end of the story. By all accounts, the highest turnout either day was on 9/11/05, and it belongs to the neo-Stalinists, at 4,000 violent, screaming, clubbing militants. That shifts...

!Viva Mexico! It’s done something that the United States hasn’t–granted refugee status to a North Korean. That must sting for South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun, who just visited Mexico and certainly would have opposed the move. Not to be confused with asylum, however. This is only temporary.

This week, it’s Barb at Quid Nimis, who did an outstanding job of putting up every last suggested link I sent her. That’s either a mark of that she’s very discerning or that I e-mailed her way too much stuff. Do go over and check out what’s been going on in the world, which doesn’t stop turning because of our own troubles here.

UPDATED; scroll down. You haven’t heard the last of this. Call it a prediction. The U.S. media was watching, but (thus far) doesn’t much seem to care. The U.S. government is watching and does. Update on that later. For now, here’s what happened, beginning with pictures from OhMyNews: Much, much more here. Here’s part of : The demonstration started off peacefully with singing, dancing and a speech by Democratic Labor Party central committee member Lee Jeong-mi, but turned violent after...

Norbert has given me permission to print his e-mail in full: Dear Joshua, Thank you for your message! I am in Seoul ~ it worked again like in January after the tsunami when I returned from Indonesia with a Korean medical aid team. This time I came back from the Philippines with another Korean aid team and I got a “final notice” but was allowed to enter the country even when I refused to sign any document. I do not...

The International Herald Tribune has published a new piece on the North Korean refugee who applied to go back to visit his family–the same one Antti blogged about earlier. HT: The Nomad. ________________ The Nomad also links to a Yonhap report on another sad end for a group of nine North Korean refugees in China–including a seven-year-old child and a year-old baby. ________________ After nine painful and nauseating anthrax shots, now they tell us: North Korea Monday denied possessing ‘a...

I’m with Barbara at Quid Nimis. This Flight 93 Memorial concept absolutely sucks. If I’m called up and killed in the war, my only request that my mom and my entire family not turn me into a poster boy for surrender. If I die in a terrorist attack, all I ask is that some scabby hippies with taxpayer funds not cover my grave with the symbology of my murderers. OK, aside from that part about “avenge me–cow after cow, village...

Good News in Japan: Koizumi was reelected in a landslide.

More public outrage at this thing known as an “independent judiciary,” this time in China.