Search Results for: Fifth Column

January 27, 2016

Meet the assassin/killer/hacker/terrorist Kim Jong-un just put in charge of relations with S. Korea

With all recent movement on sanctions legislation in the House and Senate, I’ve skimmed over the developments in North Korean Kremlinology, reports about which often read like the dossiers in a lost, bad-acid fueled manuscript for a “High Castle” sequel. If you believe that personnel is policy, however, Kim Jong-un’s choice of a replacement for Kim Yang-gon, who ran Pyongyang’s so-called United Front Department until he died in a car-maybe-not-accident recently, is a dark omen about Kim Jong-un’s policy instincts....

Categories Cyberwar/North-South/Terrorism (NK)
September 1, 2015

For Pyongyang, Korean War II is a war of more limited objectives

To Kim Il-Sung, Korean War I was a principally conventional and unlimited war whose goal was the unitary domination of the entire Korean Peninsula by force. To Kim Jong-Un, Korean War II is a war of skirmishes, whose less ambitious aim is hegemony over a supine and finlandized South Korea. Korea has changed dramatically since 1953. It should not surprise us that Pyongyang has adapted its strategy and objectives to fit this new reality. For Pyongyang today, survival is the...

Categories Korean War II
July 13, 2015

The Korea Development Institute wants to help companies “bypass” U.N. sanctions against N. Korea

Pyongyang’s latest business model for accessing hard currency despite U.N. sanctions is to rent out tens of thousands of its workers to Chinese factory owners. Those workers then labor in exploitative conditions, while Pyongyang steals most of their wages. Now, the Korea Development Institute—an “independent” think tank created under South Korean law in 1970, and “partnered” with several U.N. bodies and at least one South Korean government ministry—is urging small and medium-sized South Korean firms to join these exploitative arrangements. I’ve often argued...

Categories Sanctions/Sunshine
July 7, 2015

Can the UNHCR address North Korea’s human rights crisis, despite Ban Ki-Moon?

At long last, the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights has opened its new field office in Seoul. Its mandates will be as follows: Strengthen monitoring and documentation of the situation of human rights as steps towards establishing accountability in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Enhance engagement and capacity-building with the Governments of all States concerned, civil society and other stakeholders Maintain visibility of the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea including through sustained...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Human Rights
November 21, 2014

South Korea’s illiberal left: authoritarians in the service of totalitarians

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. [Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19] In America, we have grown accustomed to a political polarity in which we associate “left” with “liberal.” Whatever the merits of that correlation here, it’s useless to any understanding of politics in South Korea, where very few people...

Categories Censorship/Korean Politics/Refugees/Subversion/The Fifth Column
October 6, 2014

Prediction: the Kaesong worker safety inquiry will be a whitewash.

You may recall that several weeks ago, some North Korean workers at Kaesong fell ill with symptoms of benzene poisoning. The bad news is that we still haven’t heard a peep of protests on the workers’ behalf from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, for some reason. The good news is that the Korean government cares enough about appearances to have ordered a safety inquiry: The South Korean government began a two-month probe Thursday into the working conditions at 33 factories in the...

Categories Kaesong
February 17, 2014

Breaking: Leftist S. Korean lawmaker gets 12-year sentence for pro-N. Korean sabotage plot

Yonhap is just reporting that a court in Suwon has handed down a 12-year sentence against leftist fringe lawmaker Lee Seok-Ki. Ouch. That’s a very tough sentence for South Korea, whose judicial system compensates for its loose rules of evidence (and the error rate that implies) with light and fluffy sentencing. When I was an Army Judge Advocate serving in Korea, I saw people get less than that for murder. On the other hand, prison conditions in South Korea are, shall...

Categories The Fifth Column
November 14, 2013

Open Sources, November 14, 2013

 ~ 1 ~ KAESONG FAILWATCH:  A new report from the Daily NK, containing an interview with an employee of a South Korean company that manufactures textiles in Kaesong, largely validates my post from last week. The bottom line: companies are hiding how much operations suffered from the five-month shutdown to prevent further damage to their business, such as the loss of customers who may seek more reliable suppliers. This, of course, is my cue to publicize the fact that while...

Categories Anju Links
September 4, 2013

National Assembly approves arrest of Lee Seok-Gi

South Korea’s National Assembly has voted to revoke leftist fringe party lawmaker Lee Seok-Gi’s parliamentary immunity and allow his arrest for sedition and “praising North Korea.” This makes it all sound like something a banana republic would charge an opponent with, but in fact, Lee really stands accused of leading something called the Revolutionary Organization and “conspir[ing] to storm firearms depots to secure weapons, destroy oil-storage and communication facilities and assassinate unspecified figures.” The leadership of the main left-opposition Democratic...

Categories The Fifth Column
April 11, 2012

A New Approach to North Korea: Contain, Constrict & Collapse

Sometime in the next few hours, North Korea will launch a prototype for an intercontinental ballistic missile, in flagrant violation of three U.N. Security Council resolutions. The North Koreans announced the launch two weeks after agreeing to a deal to freeze their missile and nuclear programs in exchange for U.S. food aid. It now seems they will follow their missile test with a nuclear test. Traditionally, Chinese obstructionism delays U.N. Security Council action by about three weeks after a North...

Categories Diplomacy/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/Subversion/WMD
February 28, 2011

Open Sources: More reports of hunger in the NK army

Melanie Kirkpatrick, writing with Jack David in the Wall Street Journal, quotes senior North Korean defector Kim Duk-hong on Kim Jong Il’s nuclear policy: In the early 1990s, Mr. Kim told us, Kim Il Sung posed a question at a meeting of the military committee of the Workers Party. Kim Il Sung’s question, and Kim Jong Il’s reply, were disclosed in a memorandum that was distributed to every member of the Central Committee, including Kim Duk-hong. Colleagues who were present...

Categories Anju Links
April 13, 2010

Nothing to Offer, by Glyn Ford

Glyn Ford was a socialist member of the European Parliament until, under even its fringe-friendly rules, he lost his seat by placing fifth in the EP elections. Ford, an early defender of North Korea’s right to possess nuclear weapons, now finds himself with one less demand on his time, and so he reviews Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy. I’m not sure whether Ford himself or the Tribune Magazine is responsible for the headline under which his review is published: “North...

Categories Books & Films/Fiskings/Useful Idiocy
October 9, 2009

October 9, 2009

THE BALLOON PEOPLE are back! OBAMA IS “LEERY” of direct talks with North Korea: “[A] State Department official said Tuesday that the U.S. will not agree to one-on-one talks unless it is given assurances in advance that the outcome will be a deal to resume six-party negotiations.” Well, good for them. No talks will ever disarm North Korea, but always good to show them we mean what we say. SOUTH KOREA PLACES A CAP on what local Commie-sympathizing fifth-columnists can...

Categories Anju Links
July 8, 2009

North Korea Suspected in Cyber Attacks (Update: White House Also Targeted)

If the South Korean leak ticker is right about this, ballistic missile tests weren’t the only mischief Kim Jong Il had in mind for us on the Fourth of July: The sites of 11 South Korean organizations, including the presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry, went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, according to the state-run Korea Information Security Agency. [AP, Hyung-Jin Kim] To be precise about it, South Korean intelligence reports leaked by staffers of National...

Categories NK Military/The Fifth Column
February 26, 2007

The Death of an Alliance, Part 65: Beyond Dependency, Toward Reunification

[Update:   In the course of a whiney tirade about how America “betrayed” South Korea, Kim Dae Joong also calls for a national conversation about South Korea becoming more self-sufficient in its own defense.  I’d suggest to Mr. Kim that it’s a wee bit early to declare South Korea fully abandoned by America while we still have 29,000 of our people there.  Kim also  admits that the (elected) South Korean government got the deal it wanted, and in light of...

Categories An Alliance?/Reconstruction/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
September 16, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 51

First, TKL is privileged to print this exclusive photo of the Bush-Roh luncheon. The pomp and pageantry rolled out for America’s greatest ally since the Marquis de Lafayette does not end there. Roh and the poor ROK Ambassador, Lee Tae-Shik, adjourned to Blair House to meet with a real who’s-who of has-beens. Extra props to whoever invited Richard Armitage, who must be the least popular man in this city this week. Also present: Madeleine Albright, Don Oberdorfer, Donald Gregg, Thomas...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 9, 2006

N.K. to Display ‘Captured’ Unmanned Sub?

We may soon see and hear more more details about the alleged U.S. unmanned sub North Korea claims to have captured, suggests Yonhap: North Korea has captured an unmanned U.S. submersible and showcased it in front of the already captured USS Pueblo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper reported Monday. The Choson Sinbo, the organ of the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, said it was seized in waters off North Korea’s eastern city of Hamhung and that North Korean leader...

Categories U.S. Military
January 9, 2000

The Alternative Reality of Christine Ahn

Dave at No Illusions wants to know more about Christine Ahn, the North Korean apologist (and American, as it turns out) whose views OhMyNews found worthy of the extensive interview I linked and fisked below. Even a cursory exploration of Christine Ahn’s views immediately raises questions about the honesty of OhMyNews’s coverage of her, given its failure to disclose that she is an active member in a pro-Pyongyang organization based in Oakland, California. Who Is Christine Ahn? North Korea is...

Categories Uncategorized