Search Results for “Lefkowitz”

December 30, 2007

Jay who? Christopher Hitchens, President Bush, and the betrayal of the North Korean people

Christopher Hitchens is certainly one of our age’s most compelling thinkers and one of the English language’s best writers. I disagree with him about plenty of things; who could say otherwise? Hitchens’s greatest logical strength is his consistent argument for the moral superiority of freedom — for all of its flaws of application — over slavery. That is a woefully unfashionable idea among popinjays in Europe and America who are too sodden with the smug confidence of liberties taken for...

Appeasement/Human Rights/U.S. Politics

November 13, 2007

Korean Election Update: Lessers Versus Evils

Just over a month before South Korean presidential election, Lee Hoi Chang has announced that he’s running as an independent candidate. I have now seen it all. So can he win? Hell if I know. To an observer of long American political campaigns, it’s hard to see how anyone could enter a race so late and have a chance of winning it, but this most definitely is not American politics. Korean politics is famously mercurial; it’s about as exact, empirical,...

Korean Politics

July 5, 2007

The FTA and ‘Fortress Korea’

It can be disturbing to find so much to agree with in the writings of someone who doesn’t share your outlook on the bigger picture. I generally favor the lowering of trade barriers and oppose the protection of domestic industries from the competition of a fair and open market. Note the key caveat in that last sentence, for defining “fair and open” is where the devil is. I suspect Alan Tomlinson defines it more narrowly than I do, and that...

NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics

June 12, 2007

Win the Battle, Lose the War: How South Korea’s Brilliant Negotiation Skills May Have Killed the FTA

[Update: The USTR will reportedly call for renegotiation of the entire deal, in part to make the draft FTA compliant with U.S. labor standards. More at the bottom of this post.] Absolutely stomach-turning. After all of the Bush Administration’s brave rhetoric about “forced labor” and “material support” for “atrocities,” it ended up signing a free-trade agreement that could very well have allowed slave-made, axis-of-evil Kaesong imports into the United States. Then, because there was no denying the staggering hypocrisy...

Anju Links/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/U.S. Politics

April 24, 2007

Kaesong, Kim Jong Il, and Killing the Goose

Update: South Korea may be reconsidering the expansion plans after all.The Kaesong Slave Labor Park may want to reconsider its expansion plans in light of the Daily NK’s new breakdown casting doubt on just how successful the existing venture really is. Of 23 businesses that were supposed to have started operations at Kaesong since 2005, 4 have abandoned their space reservations; 1 or 2 more are considering abandoning their reservations; 4 have placed their space reservations on hold; 6 or...

Appeasement/Human Trafficking

April 20, 2007

Rhetoric and the Record on North Korean Human Rights

[Update: video of the event and full text of the speech below] So I went to this yesterday, thanks to the kind invitation of the organizers, and left with the usual sense of guilt I feel every time I meet Jay Lefkowitz. Lefkowitz has acquired an understandable “Oh sh*t, not that guy again” expression whenever he sees me. If I were him, so would I. Even when I’ve been critical of him, I’ve said that Lefkowitz is sincere,...

Human Rights/Washington Views

March 25, 2007

Anju Links for 3/25: N. Korea Threatens to Do Us a Favor, Money We Can’t Follow, the FTA Circus, and S. Korea’s Slavery-Loving Unions

* No.Please.Stop. North Korea is threatening to pull out of the dreadful (for us) February 13th Agreed Framework 2.0 over the RSOI / Foal Eagle exercises. “This may entail such serious consequences as escalating the tension between the DPRK (North Korea) and the US and scuttling the six-party talks for the settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, arranged with so much effort.” [Channel News Asia] A KCNA statement wouldn’t be complete without a reference to...

An Alliance?/Human Trafficking/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/UCMJ & SOFA

March 19, 2007

Anju Links for 3/19

* Radio Megumi. An international body has granted Japan permission to increase broadcasts into North Korea. The broadcasts will be directed at a small audience: its abducted citizens. I tend to think that Japan would see them home again sooner if it broadcast words of dissent and subversion to the North Korean people. * Short-Selling Appeasement. Japan now stands alone in standing up to the North Koreans in Beijing: not one Yen until you give us back...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Japan & Korea/Media Criticism/NK Economics/Terrorism/Iraq

March 14, 2007

Chris Hill Testifies at the International Relations Foreign Affairs Committee

Headlines now, details later: Hill was firm that North Korea had purchased items that had no other use but highly enriched uranium. He said that a failure to resolve the HEU issue would be a deal-breaker. Committee members of both parties also seemed to believe that North Korea must come clean on HEU. Hill left open the possibility that North Korea will still be denying the existence of its HEU program 60 days from now without breaking the deal. He...

Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views

February 8, 2007

‘Asia’s Darfur’

The better the words Jay Lefkowitz speaks, the more the rest of this administration seems to be drifting toward appeasing the regime at any cost. I admire his efforts to attach the plight of the North Korean people to a worthy cause that has received so much attention from the media, Hollywood, and the Human Rights Industry, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Lefkowitz’s approach is all wrong. What Lefkowitz and others need to grasp is this: hatred of...

Activism/Human Rights

January 16, 2007

Eum, Yang, and Korean Diplomatic Courtesy

A few days ago, Occidentalism posted this absolutely priceless flowchart that is too telling by half about how some Koreans tend to scapegoat their way through real problems. I suppose the temptation to pin blame on others is human nature; that temptation is at its greatest when a solution to the underlying problem seems beyond reach. Witness the finger-pointing that followed last October’s nuke test (and the notable absence of constructive proposals accompanying it). I shouldn’t miss this opportunity to...

Anti-Americanism/China & Korea/Diplomacy/History/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military

November 7, 2006

S. Korean Defense of Kaesong Raises More Questions Than Answers

Last spring, the U.S. Special Envoy on Human Rights in North Korea and some NGO’s first raised concerns about the rights of workers at North Korea’s Kaesong Industrial Park, which hosts just over a dozen South Korean factories. The Unification Ministry initially tried to allay those concerns by bringing journalists and some foreign dignitaries up to Kaesong for guided tours. This did not work as planned. The U.S. Ambassador wandered around and snapped pictures of all the U.S.-made machine tools that...

Appeasement/Money Laundering/WMD

October 6, 2006

Marcus Noland on the Economic Implications of Nuke Test

[Update: link fixed, thanks!] Last night, just before “Yoduk Story” (my not-a-review post here), I met several of the people often quoted and cited in these pages, including Ambassadors Vershbow and Lefkowitz, but also the scholar and economist Marcus Noland, someone whose work I’ve long admired for its rigor, research, and objectivity. This morning, Mr. Noland kindly forwarded two of his recent articles: “The Economic Implications of a North Korean Nuclear Test,” and “The Economic Implications of a...

NK Economics/WMD

October 5, 2006

Yoduk Story: A Roundup, Not a Review

I expected to hate it, because until last night, I’ve never not hated a musical. Actually, it held my interest and entertained me for three entire hours, and this from a man who is officially diagnosed with ADD. At times, I was quite moved, and I saw plenty of people in the audience crying. I didn’t “enjoy” it, any more than I “enjoyed” Schindler’s List. This wasn’t “Schindler’s List,” but it looked like good art to me, and a credible,...

The Camps

September 8, 2006

Six More North Korean Refugees Caught at the Laos-Thailand Border

The refugees, including one child, were arrested on September 2nd at the village of Sri Chiangmai in the Nong Khai region of Northeastern Thailand, along with Kim Hee Tae, a South Korean humanitarian aid worker. Mr. Kim was able to make bail by paying a large amount of money to the authorities; the refugees remain jailed in Nong Khai. Norbert Vollertsen is with them, and provided the details for this post. The timing is fortuitous, with the new E.U. Resolution...

Refugees/Southeast Asia

September 3, 2006

Breaking the Blockade

[Update: Andrei Lankov has a must-read piece on radio broadcasting in the Asia Times Online.] Where there is demand, there will be a supply, and the trickle of alternative information to North Korea, though small, shows signs of persistence and of having a receptive market. In addition to Radio Free NK and Open Radio for North Korea, there is now a Japan-based broadcaster, Shiokaze. The DailyNK interviews its director. Although their original focus is on sending messages to Japanese abductees,...

Abductions/Activism/Appeasement/Censorship/Democracy/Japan & Korea/Reconstruction/Refugees/Resistance/Uncategorized

June 20, 2006

The End of Sunshine?

[Update 6/20: As predicted, the North Koreans aren’t taking this well.] “We have the right to speak.” — North Korean government official, talking about South Korean politics Has international pressure has finally forced South Korea to abandon years of official apathy about the phobocracy that is North Korea? Finally, South Korea declares, it will ask the North to treat the lives of its people with a modicum of respect.

Activism/Europe/Human Rights/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized

Search Results for: Lefkowitz