Search Results for: The Death of an Alliance, Part

June 22, 2012

Open Sources, June 22, 2012

AP WATCH: Uh oh, I see that Jean Lee is back in Pyongyang. So what will it be this time? An exclusive report on how 100% of shoppers at the Kwangbok Area Supermarket blame America for the shortage of Cartier jewelry, an exhibit of oil paintings proving that there are no concentration camps, or Pak Won Il’s feature story about a darling five year-old girl who has learned to hit Uncle Sam’s hooked beak with a real AKS-74 at 460...

Categories Anju Links/AP Watch
February 29, 2012

It’s still Day One. Have they reneged yet?

The Obama Administration, pretty much as I’d guessed, has struck a deal that’s transparently aimed at keeping the North Koreans quiet until mid-November. Wish them luck with that if you wish. Below the jump, you can read a press “availability” event (thanks to a friend) at which the Administration’s mouthpieces, no doubt mindful that we’re in an election year, try very hard to depress expectations that this is leading up to Agreed Framework III. From what little we know about...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
January 20, 2012

Global news agency being held hostage in North Korea.

The dalliance between the Associated Press and the Korean Central News Agency, the world’s most mendacious news agency, has already fathered the global distribution of doctored photographs and some awfully dubious journalism by its correspondent, Jean H. Lee — and transmitted all of it to hundreds of millions of news consumers around the world. Recall that last summer, just after the AP first signed a joint distribution agreement with KCNA, the AP distributed this photograph of a flood in North...

Categories AP Watch/Media Criticism
January 14, 2011

Open Sources

I’ve been looking forward to Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard’s new book on North Korea, refugees, and public opinion for a long time now. I don’t have a copy of my own yet (ahum! – not that I’d find the time to read it these days). But thankfully, Evan Ramstad interviews Noland at the WSJ’s indispensable Korea Real Time. __________________________________ It’s a diplomatic breakthrough: The Onion reports. Love those jackets. __________________________________ A Different Kind of Different Kind of War: Uriminzokkiri,...

Categories Anju Links
December 12, 2010

I wonder if China is pleased with Japan’s new plans to expand defense spending, deploy more PAC-3 Patriot missile batteries, build more submarines to patrol disputed waters, and arm more Aegis cruisers with Standard-3 missiles. Again, there is even talk of acquiring nuclear weapons. China has only its own reckless backing of North Korea to blame for this. Me, I’d be happier if we sold the same types of gear to Taiwan, which as I take delight in repeating, happens...

Categories China & Korea/Japan/Korean War II/Regime Change/Washington Views
September 3, 2010

Lee Myung Bak, History, and Korea’s National Conversation

Nearly five years ago, before Lee Myung Bak was even a candidate for his country’s presidency, I expressed my reservations about his pushy style of governance and his history of gaffes. I do not share his love of grandiose and costly projects of questionable merit (something about water seems to unhinge him). But Lee has performed admirably at governing a nation that often seems ungovernable, and during some very difficult times. Competently. Lee’s first real test stuck shortly after his...

Categories Reconstruction
July 16, 2010

President Obama Goes Wobbly on North Korea

Just what does a psychotic despot have to do to get on the list of state sponsors of terrorism?  Since President Obama’s inauguration, Kim Jong Il has – been caught twice shipping weapons — reportedly including man-portable surface-to-air missiles — to Iran, apparently for the use of its terrorist clients; sent a hit squad to assassinate a prominent defector in South Korea; threatened civilian air traffic to and from South Korea; threatened to turn the capitals of various neighboring states...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
July 16, 2010

If This Isn’t the State Sponsorship of Terrorism, What Is?

Just what does a psychotic despot have to do to get on the list of state sponsors of terrorism?  Since President Obama’s inauguration, Kim Jong Il has — been caught twice shipping weapons — reportedly including man-portable surface-to-air missiles — to Iran, apparently for the use of its terrorist clients; sent a hit squad to assassinate a prominent defector in South Korea; threatened civilian air traffic to and from South Korea; threatened to turn the capitals of various neighboring states...

Categories Anju Links
June 28, 2010

A Good Week for Lee Myung-Bak, But What America Gained Isn’t So Clear

On balance, Lee Myung Bak seems to having a pretty good week — at least better than last week’s failure to secure a serious response to the Cheonan incident abroad or even at home. This week, Lee has already won a three-year delay in the dissolution of the U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command, a/k/a OpCon transfer. He also secured a commitment by President Obama to push for an FTA that had faced strong opposition from some American labor unions and Max...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
January 28, 2010

28 January 2010

A South Korean lawyer sits down to dinner with a group of North Korean defectors and has an epiphany: “Listening to such painful stories, I naively wondered why the rest of the world is not doing more to help these desperate people. They are not some criminals or fugitives. Their only crime was to be born into a nation which is ruled by a dictatorship that cares more about the survival of its regime than the wellbeing of its people.”...

Categories Anju Links
January 18, 2010

Great. Now Even the North Koreans Are Doing the Jihad Thing.

I had meant to blog about North Korea’s simultaneous acceptance of South Korean food aid just as it declared a “holy war” against South Korea, but a nasty intestinal virus had other plans for the entire family for the last few days (and how was your weekend?). Still, I can’t less this pass without comment. For those of you who hadn’t heard, North Korea’s latest fit was over South Korean contingency planning for regime collapse in the North. Planning was...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Terrorism (NK)
February 11, 2009

Following the Money: The Economic Mysteries of North Korea

On Monday night, I had dinner with a distinguished group that included Andrei Lankov, Chuck Downs, Curtis Melvin, and a friend who covers North Korea for a major news service. Professor Lankov is here to speak at a think tank event and to promote some exciting ideas about getting subversive information into North Korea, which I hope to interview him about later. I asked Professor Lankov about those alarming reports from Good Friends about the food situation last year. With...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
January 16, 2009

FTA Prospects Still Bleak

You know, with all of the anti-American falsehoods some Koreans proliferated before the FTA was signed, I thought the entire effort was more trouble than it was worth even before the beef riots, also inspired by asinine libel, and largely attended by people so stupid as to legitimize the issue of reproductive licensing. Then came the recent parliamentary brawls: And for a moment, South Korea blessed a troubled world with the gift of laughter. (If you polled Koreans about how...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
November 19, 2008

Can we finally dispense with the whole “no gay in Korea” myth … ?

… now that the Korean Supreme Court is considering the case of a certain “Sergeant A?” A sergeant identified only as “A” was initially booked on a charge of making a sexual attack on a private in a platoon that he led, but the suit against him was dropped with the victim’s consent. However, the sergeant has been newly charged for violation of Clause 92 of military criminal law.  [Joongang Ilbo] In the American system, cases very rarely become “test...

Categories Korean Law/Korean Society/ROK Military
November 18, 2008

Who Needs a Contingency Plan? Everyone Near North Korea

The most persuasive evidence I’ve yet seen that there is a real danger of instability in North Korea comes from the people who probably have the best intelligence about events in Pyongyang: The Chinese military has boosted troop numbers along the border with North Korea since September amid mounting concerns about the health of Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, according to US officials. Beijing has declined to discuss contingency plans with Washington, but the US officials said the Peoples’...

Categories Reconstruction/Regime Change
November 17, 2008

Freedom Isn’t Free

USFK has announced that a battalion of Apache attack helicopters, comprising some 24 aircraft and half of USFK’s Apache strength, will leave Korea for Ft. Carson.  The choppers are expected to redeploy to Afghanistan and Iraq later on. Washington had in the past tried to redeploy some of its Apache helicopters from Korea, but such moves were often met with strong opposition from the government in Seoul, which feared a possible reduction of U.S. strength here. “The situation we are...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
August 11, 2008

The Freedom of the State’s Press to Deceive the People Shall Be Abridged

[Updated below] In the wake of a court’s decision ordering a retraction of a distorted, sloppy, and  false  MBC report that triggered massive anti-government protests, Lee Myung Bak is moving to clean house.   A principled approach would be to ask why Korea’s government (or for that matter, ours) is in the business of broadcasting the news anyway and just saw off this vestigial limb.  Instead, Lee is being Lee and conducting a purge. The shakeup culminated on Friday at national...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/Korean Society/Media Criticism/The Fifth Column