Search Results for “sunshine lite”

December 26, 2012

Open Sources, December 26, 2012

AMPONTAN (AKA BILL SAKOVICH) HAS DIED. Often, when he hear of the loss of someone, our reaction is, “But I just saw him!” Ampontan’s wonderful Japan blog is actually still posting timed entries posthumously, but Bill gave me one of the final links of his life, and for that, I’m honored, grateful, and saddened for his family, who lost him during a season when they should have been enjoying his company in happier circumstances. RIP, Bill. ————————————————————— SELIG HARRISON, CALL...

Anju Links

December 14, 2012

Guest Post: It Pays to Provoke

Prof. Sung Yoon Lee is the Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Korean Studies at Tufts University, a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs, and a good friend of mine. If you’re wondering how he lowered his standards so far so fast, the answer is that he wrote a comment that outgrew the comments section, and he graciously agreed to let me publish it as a guest post. ——————————————————- North Korea’s long-range ballistic missile on Dec 12,...

Missiles/NK Military/North-South

May 10, 2012

Report: North Korea’s Control of Information Breaking Down

For years, advocates of appeasing the North Korean regime have claimed that more “engagement” with its dictators would gradually change its character and moderate its belligerent and brutal tendencies. U.S. policy expressed this hope in a series of failed agreed frameworks by presidents of both political parties. These made no progress toward disarming North Korea, but did provide significant, regime-sustaining financial windfalls for Kim Jong Il. South Korea’s version of this theory was its “Sunshine” policy, which was — you...

Subversion

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...

Diplomacy/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/Subversion/WMD

May 24, 2010

Overthrowing Kim: A Capitalist Manifesto

[Originally published at The New Ledger, May 2010; edited for brevity in October 2017] Within the next 48 hours, South Korea is expected to announce that North Korea torpedoed and sank the warship Cheonan and killed 46 of her crew. Among the evidence the multinational investigation will cite will be the North Korean serial number on the torpedo’s propeller, recovered from the ocean floor. The sinking of the Cheonan may be the most serious North Korean provocation since 1968 —...

Capitalism/Regime Change

March 16, 2010

North Korea, Human Rights, and Diplomacy: When Hell Freezes Over

A series of bleak new reports shows that after more than a decade of attempts by the United States and South Korea to liberalize North Korea though aid and engagement, life is as cheap as ever between the Yalu and the Imjin. The system is less closed than it once was, although this is mostly the result of the fraying of the regime’s control over its borders, economy, and the flow of information. Yet these changes have occurred in defiance...

"United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights

March 15, 2010

Meet Roh Jeong-Ho: Ex-Millionaire, Symbol of a Failed Policy, and Asshole

Please allow me to introduce Roh Jeong-Ho, ex-millionaire, former role model for the Sunshine Policy, and asshole. How does one achieve such distinction in life? In Roh’s case, this way: Roh was once touted by the South Korean media as one of the young leaders in his early 30s who were expected to lead the post-unification era when he exported 44 km of barbed-wire fences to Rajin-Sonbong in 1995. North Korea had asked Roh to supply the fences to isolate...

Appeasement/NK Economics/Sunshine

July 7, 2009

North Korea’s Great Leap Backward

It’s not just on this blog where the ill-informed and the self-deluded continue to defy years of bitter experience and advocate “engagement” with the North Korean regime as a way to encourage economic reform. You can still hear academics in Washington cite the potential for economic reform in North Korea as a reason not to impose sanctions after North Korea’s nuke and missile tests. Some day, we must make a point of tabulating the amount of money spent on this...

China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics

June 14, 2009

Hey DJ, What’s That Big Pink Animal With the Prehensile Trunk? (Updated)

Admittedly, I don’t have high expectations of NPR, but I would expect that even they would at least mention the circumstances surrounding the summit that bought Kim Dae Jung his Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, NPR lets his grandiose claims go unchallenged: “The Sunshine Policy has been and still is supported by the majority of South Koreans and the whole world,” Kim says, sitting in his living room. “It’s the reason I won the Nobel Peace Prize. People are telling President...

Appeasement/Censorship/Democracy/Media Criticism

May 29, 2009

Photoblog: Seoul’s Farewell to the “Babo President”

[It’s been almost six months since I last submitted something to OFK, but I’m hoping to be able to write a bit more frequently from now on. We’ll see.] In addition to the title “People’s President,” which is being used a lot this week, I learned today that Noh Moo-hyun was called “ë°”ë³´ ëŒ€í†µë ¹.” I’m not so knowledgeable about the man, so that was a bit of a surprise for me to hear at the ceremony for him at...

Korean Politics/Korean Society

May 4, 2009

N. Korea: Obama Just Like Bush!

Someone still isn’t feeling the hope and change: North Korea blasted U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday as no different from his predecessor in trying to “stifle” countries that are uncooperative with the U.S., referring to Washington’s move to punish Pyongyang’s rocket launch. [….] “With nothing can the U.S. justify such illegal provocation as forcing the UNSC to table the issue of the DPRK’s (North Korea) launch of a satellite for peaceful purposes and issue ‘a presidential statement,’” the North’s...

"United" Nations/Diplomacy/Japan/Missiles/Proliferation/U.S. Politics

January 15, 2009

John Bolton Abducts Hillary Clinton, Assumes Her Identity, Nears Easy Confirmation Wearing Drag and Mask

First George W. Bush became Jimmy Carter, now this, at “Hillary Clinton’s” confirmation hearing: “Our goal is to end the North Korean nuclear program – both the plutonium reprocessing program and the highly enriched uranium program, which there is reason to believe exists, although never quite verified,” she said. Her vision of North Korea policy was much stronger in her written statements provided to Senator Richard Lugar before the hearing. “The new Administration will pursue direct diplomacy bilaterally and within...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

November 16, 2008

Arbeit Macht Nichts: The End of Kaesong?

The second of the twin pillars of the Sunshine Experiment, the Kaesong Industrial Project, may have gone to join the Kumgang Tourist Project on the ash heap of history this week with North Korea’s closure of the border between North and South. With that closure, South Koreans inside the North Korean enclave have been served with their eviction notices. The North Korean directive may yet prove to be a bluff, but it will still mean the end of Kaesong as...

Appeasement/NK Economics

May 7, 2008

The Venerable Pomnyun, the New Famine, and the Regime’s Stability

Update: SAIS just cancelled Friday’s presentation. Sorry. It is not the nature of famines to make heroes of men, but if a hero emerged from North Korea’s last Great Famine, it is the Buddhist monk the Venerable Pomnyun. I first heard of this man’s humanitarian work in Andrew Natsios’s “The Great North Korean Famine,” a book that, sadly, is must-reading once again. The Ven. Pomnyun, who leads the charity Good Friends, was one of the few South Koreans to speak...

Famine & Food Aid

March 20, 2008

The Beginning of the End: Food Shortages Reach Pyongyang (Updated)

[Update: Welcome to all of you who are coming in from Gateway Pundit and Best of the Web, and many thanks to James Hoft and James Taranto for linking.] Now that I’ve just spent five days writing this dissertation on North Korea’s worsening food situation, there’s dramatic new information that alters the entire analysis. This may be the single most significant event in North Korean history since the invention of blogs, because if it’s true, the regime is finished. North...

Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change

North Korea F.A.Q.

Why blog about North Korea? North Korea’s nuclear program and the diplomacy that has attempted to end it for decades are widely covered in the media, but the media has done a poor job reporting the wider North Korea story: its people and their suffering, the society in which they live, and what these things say about the failure of the international community to respond to a grave humanitarian crisis. Those missing pieces of the story are the pieces that...

Comments: 73

August 24, 2007

Links for 8/24: OFK Forecast, A Family’s Escape, Flood Updates, Nuke Talks ‘Positive’ But Stalled

More Sunshine, But Overcast Later: The Daily NK tracks the GNP’s North Korea policy. I could more credibly claim to do eye surgery with a whipsaw than say just what that policy is today, but good for them for taking that one on. Although things can change very quickly in South Korean politics, Lee Myung Bak is clearly a heavy favorite to win. In the increasingly likely event of Lee’s inauguration, I don’t expect that U.S.-ROK relations, or North-South...