News Grafs

Korea wants a seat on the U.N. Security Council.*

* Not a parody. But it’s only for a non-permanent seat, which probably means Roh is positioning himself to run interference for Kim Jong Il when the six-party talks finally break down. And whose seat does Korea want to occupy, you ask?

It will be interesting–and extremely telling for the state of US-Korea relations today–to see how much support Korea gets from the United States.

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A Setback for the Mt. Paektu Tourism Project. I predict that the setback will be temporary. Piping rich tourists through unpopulated areas for an exorbitant fee is a win-win for Pyongyang, whose bureaucrats run cutthroat competitions (literally, one fears) for the privileges that come from bringing in hard currency.

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The Roh-Park Meeting Has Produced No Apparent Progress. Machiavellian plot-fest or sincere effort to reach national consensus? I don’t know enough facts to decide, but regular readers know that I’m no fan of either of these people (and much less a fan of Roh). The awful idea of a coalition does not appear to have advanced. You’re on your own from here.

Pity the voters. Hopefully, this weekend I’ll finish my post on Lee Myung Bak, the GNP mayor of Seoul, who turns out to be just as disappointing as these two, although perhaps not quite as unstable as Roh. If God wishes to further test my belief in His existence, He might give us Gingrich v. Clinton in ’08.

Just as South Korea dares not dream of principled politics, we dare not dream of a President who can not only speak the English language, but use it to (steal and) deliver lines like “Presidential ambition is a disease that can only be cured by embalming fluid.”

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MacArthur Update: It’s the controversy that won’t just fade away.