The Death of an Alliance, Part 38: Chairman Lee’s Little Red Book of Quotations
[Update and Clarification: Non-geek readers with lives may not realize that Lee Jong-Seok is actually South Korea’s Minister of Unification. One reader reasonably assumed that he was a North Korean, which is certainly an understandable assumption, based on some of the things Lee has been saying this week.]
“[Kim Jong Il is] one of the figures in the North we can get [an] agreement from and who can make proper decisions. . . . The two [Kim and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun] could produce significant results since Pyongyang is well aware that President Roh is a decisive man who is able to see the big picture, and Kim is always being portrayed as broad-minded in the North Korean media.
Relax. He’s probably just being diplomatic.
“The Bush administration of the U.S. is fundamentalist in nature, and it has been raising questions about drugs and human rights abuses since it took office.”
“It is a unilateral and narrow-minded thought as well as anti-humanitarian and inhumane attitude to talk about North Korean human rights issue on one hand and turn a blind eye to the dire situation facing the North Korean residents on the other hand.”
OK, then!