Here’s how I’m commemorating Kwangju this week. I’m going to talk about people we can still save, like these people, just to name a few million: The head of the World Food Programme’s North Korea mission told the BBC that without new contributions famine-like conditions would be likely to reappear. How dare I? For starters, South Korea is already a democracy, and like every case where the good guys won, there’s seldom anywhere to go from there but down. Not...

Here’s how I’m commemorating Kwangju this week. I’m going to talk about people we can still save, like these people, just to name a few million: The head of the World Food Programme’s North Korea mission told the BBC that without new contributions famine-like conditions would be likely to reappear. How dare I? For starters, South Korea is already a democracy, and like every case where the good guys won, there’s seldom anywhere to go from there but down. Not...

Lately, I’ve been researching some of the different death toll figures for the North Korean famine–the one that peaked in the 1990’s, continues to this day, and which the WFP now says is threatening to reemerge. Here’s a summary: The most often-cited estimate of the death toll is two million. A 1999 CNN report estimated that by then, the famine had already killed two million people. The North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 includes a toll of two million...

I know–that’s me, Mister Sensitivity. Spare me. If Korea expects to be treated like a mature nation, it will eventually have to accept some responsibility for the triggers pulled by its own hands rather than perpetually fighting over which group of foreigners should have restrained them. Is today’s fratricide equally destined to be tomorrow’s tortured projection of blame? When a far larger number of preventable deaths is not even on Korea’s moral radar screen, why should anyone accept Korea’s protestations...

This has to be a hoax; it’s just too much like this to be true.

The New York Channel: Whatever the thinking behind our preference for multilateral talks over bilateral ones, it certainly is looking more like a pretense than ever.

This Just In! Shock in the Chosun Ilbo newsroom as Joseph DiTrani suggests that he may comply with an act of Congress (signed last November, btw). Can you believe it–the effontery of bring up human rights to the North Koreans? Will the madness ever stop?

The New York Channel: Whatever the thinking behind our preference for multilateral talks over bilateral ones, it certainly is looking more like a pretense than ever.

This Just In! Shock in the Chosun Ilbo newsroom as Joseph DiTrani suggests that he may comply with an act of Congress (signed last November, btw). Can you believe it–the effontery of bring up human rights to the North Koreans? Will the madness ever stop?

James Lileks on Berlin. Understand America? You can’t understand the world without understanding the history of New York. It’s not the only city one should study, of course. I mean, there’s Berlin. (“And on this site in 1932, chalk-faced Communists premiered a musical devoted to exposing the horrors of the international rubber trade.) I’ll resist the overpowering temptation to add anything other than the fact that I don’t agree with his major premise about New York. Lileks isn’t God, but...

Uri Crack-up-date: The most delicious irony is that one of the factions aspires to be a “balancer” within the Uri Party itself. And yes, Chung Dong-Young is leading one of the factions.

The Washington Post reports: Beset by U.S. attempts to isolate his country and facing popular expectations of change, Syrian President Bashar Assad will move to begin legalizing political parties, purge the ruling Baath Party, sponsor free municipal elections in 2007 and formally endorse a market economy, according to officials, diplomats and analysts. . . . . Emboldened opposition leaders, many of whom openly support pressure by the United States even if they mistrust its intentions, said the measures were the...

The Joongang Ilbo is reporting a rumor, still unconfirmed, that Kim Jong Il is inviting Condi Rice to Pyongyang for a visit. If it’s true, feel free to speculate that the Dear Leader is scared and ready to crack–for now. A “bilateral” meeting with a senior U.S. official would give him a face-saving way to do it. His real goal? To buy time, hopefully another three and a half years. If the Bush Administration sticks to the “verifiable” and “irreversible”...

What has happened in Uzbekistan now clearly appears to have been a massacre of hundreds, committed by a government with which the United States has a military alliance. How the Bush Administration responds to this moral challenge will determine whether the usual suspects who accuse the United States of hypocrisy in its calls for global democratization will gain a useful talking point for their recruitment drives. I’m not immune to the demands of realpolitik, and I swallowed my discomfort over...

James Lileks on Berlin. Understand America? You can’t understand the world without understanding the history of New York. It’s not the only city one should study, of course. I mean, there’s Berlin. (“And on this site in 1932, chalk-faced Communists premiered a musical devoted to exposing the horrors of the international rubber trade.) I’ll resist the overpowering temptation to add anything other than the fact that I don’t agree with his major premise about New York. Lileks isn’t God, but...

Uri Crack-up-date: The most delicious irony is that one of the factions aspires to be a “balancer” within the Uri Party itself. And yes, Chung Dong-Young is leading one of the factions.

The Washington Post reports: Beset by U.S. attempts to isolate his country and facing popular expectations of change, Syrian President Bashar Assad will move to begin legalizing political parties, purge the ruling Baath Party, sponsor free municipal elections in 2007 and formally endorse a market economy, according to officials, diplomats and analysts. . . . . Emboldened opposition leaders, many of whom openly support pressure by the United States even if they mistrust its intentions, said the measures were the...

The Joongang Ilbo is reporting a rumor, still unconfirmed, that Kim Jong Il is inviting Condi Rice to Pyongyang for a visit. If it’s true, feel free to speculate that the Dear Leader is scared and ready to crack–for now. A “bilateral” meeting with a senior U.S. official would give him a face-saving way to do it. His real goal? To buy time, hopefully another three and a half years. If the Bush Administration sticks to the “verifiable” and “irreversible”...