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Anju Links for 25 Jan 08

HEY, MEND THIS FENCE:   President-Elect Lee  Myung Bak has sent Chung Mong-Joon  to the United States to “mend fences” which implies the obvious — relations between the United States and South Korea have deteriorated.  The Hanky runs down how it went.  While I’m sure Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel won’t be a tough audience, if Lee wants to  repair some of South  Korea’s well-deserved reputation for anti-Americanism,  he can start with his own damn side of the fence. 

HOSTILE POLICY:   I missed the 40th anniversary of the Pueblo Incident, but Richardson and GI Korea didn’t forget how a U.S. Navy ship became  a  must-see (literally, as in “or else”)  stop for visitors to Pyongyang.  Maybe  when they’re not feeling so hostile,  they can  gas it up  with some of that heavy fuel oil and sail it to Incheon.

WHEN YOU HEAR “COUNTRY OF ORIGIN” in the South Korean context, always assume the South Koreans are trying to smuggle Kaesong products into an FTA with some country.  It worked with us.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA:  A proposal to offer more constructive overseas employment to North Korean nuclear scientists.

THE PENCIL BOMB:   One of the better  new North Korea blogs, along with the excellent DPRK Forum, is the North Korea Monitor, which dares to ask, “What are they showing the kiddies  in Pyongyang?”  Nothing, of course, if the electricity isn’t working, but when it is, they’re teaching them to hate us. 

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  1. I wonder how many nuclear scientists Pyongyang would be willing to send overseas. And how many with training or experience overseas would risk death and torture for their family at home and choose to stay overseas. Or return home and not be put to use advancing Pyongyang’s nuclear program. When North Korea starts sending high school and college students abroad in droves to study English and business, then I may be swayed and see some seeds of “reform and opening.”

    Send teachers into NK to teach English and other foreign languages, the rudiments of economics and business, not nuclear physics. The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, scheduled to open later this year (we shall see), is recruiting American nuclear scientists to come and teach at their experimental university. For what purpose, one might ask? Go, if you must, out of sheer curiosity or adventurism or fame, but prithee do not fool yourself that you are a noble missionary charting out a new alternate lifestyle for North Korea’s young minds. You will only be of service to the state and its nuclear program. Might have better luck instead trying to convert the Islamic Republic of Iran into a Christian nation.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_University_of_Science_and_Technology

    As for the pencil bomb, how touching, the intermingling of flute and xylophone and electric “harp” at the moment of revelry, giving way to the martial call of the bugle. I wonder how many harpists there are in the North, and wonder how many North Koreans will get to hear the NY Phil in late-Feb, coincidentally around the time of the inauguration in the South. Were I the Dear Leader, I’d hand out a rain check and demand a heftier check later, lest I be misperceived as sending Seoul a congratulatory note. Five years ago, the DL gave his blessing to Roh in style with a short-range missile blast just hours before the inauguration.

    Such a prima donna is he, the Dear One, surrounded by legions of fawning fans gazing at him on both sides of the Pacific and the whole world as his stage upon which to strut his stuff. Imagine the tales that Shakespeare could have wrought out of him. Would’ve made Hamlet and Othello and Macbeth prosaic–or even comic heroes.