Category: America

The Last Word

[Update:   Link fixed; sorry!]   My good friend Adrian Hong of LiNK fame  has  ended the  debate on the anti-Korean backlash (that never was) with this piece in the Washington  Post.    Korean Americans do not need to apologize for what happened Monday. All of us, as fellow Americans, feel tremendous sorrow and grief at the carnage. Our community, as it should, has expressed solidarity with and sent condolences to the victims, and as Americans, Koreans certainly should take...

Where All of the Guilty Ones Get Fair Trials

I suspect that relatively  few  members or staffers had time to read the long-winded  written statement I submitted to the record with my September 27, 2006 congressional testimony.  Starting on page  Page 79, I described the many procedural and institutional reasons why  American soldiers do not receive fair trials in Korean courts.  I drew heavily on stories that GI Korea and USinKorea had originally linked in preparing it, along with the assistance of a good friend I asked to fact-check...

Anju Links for 11 April 2007

*   Are You Effing Kidding Me?   The Bush administration, reversing a six-year-old North Korea policy based on deep mistrust, said it will now rely on Pyongyang’s “good faith” to ensure that funds released yesterday from a Macao bank are not misused…. Mr. McCormack said the North Koreans had promised “to spend the money for the betterment of the North Korean people,” and not for the personal benefit of its officials. [Wash Times] Stupidity with malice aforethought is its...

Why Moonbats Will Never Run the World

The “Crawford Peace House” run by Kim Jong Il’s unwitting ally, Cindy Sheehan, is the latest victim  of financial irregularities, unmedicated emotion, and  a characteristic  absence of any moral perspective:  “There are people who have said, `Don’t say anything because you’ll hurt the peace movement,’” Oliver said. “But if the peace movement isn’t pure and transparent and holy as it can be at its heart, then it’s just like George Bush:  lying, thieving, conniving, backstabbing bastards.” This is certainly a...

John Bolton on Agreed Framework 2.0

“I think this deal will inevitably fail,” Bolton said. “That day cannot come too soon in my view.”  [CBS] That was John Bolton speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday (I was home sick).   If you were to ask me the reasons why I think AF 2.0 is a flat-out capitulation —  one that will make our world more dangerous,  hurt our friends, and reward our enemies before it fails — all I have to do is look who...

N. Korea gets a U.S. green light to sell arms, and six months after its unanimous passage, UNSCR 1718 is a dead letter

That resolution may have been the only potentially effective U.N. action in my living memory, and the hand that held the dagger belonged to none other than our own State Department.  The United States ignored an apparent violation of the international sanctions against North Korea by turning a blind eye to an arms shipment that Pyongyang sent to Ethiopia earlier this year, according to a story in Sunday’s edition of The New York Times. North Korea has been subject to...

Richard Lawless Resigns

Lawless was responsible for pushing the South Koreans into USFK restructuring and cost-sharing agreements, and unlike years of predecessors, had been tough enough to sit down and negotiate as firmly as his counterparts.  No one pushed Richard Lawless around.  As a result, the Korean government and press were not fans.  See, e.g., this picture the Joongang Ilbo printed.  “Hulk angry!” Lawless cited personal reasons for his resignation, according to one official. He will leave his post in a few weeks,...

FTA Hits Opposition in U.S. Congress

The Economist’s blog reports, After a long drawn out, and highly fraught, negotiation that pushed right up against the deadline, America and South Korea have inked a new trade deal. It is the largest America has signed since NAFTA. However, tensions between the Bush administration and resurgent protectionists in America’s new Democratic Congress make it highly uncertain that the pact will be ratified. I don’t yet know if the opposition will be enough to defeat the deal, but some key...

FTA Agreement Reached FTA Talks Near Failure: The Death of an Alliance, Part 66

[Update 2:   Well, as it turns out, the two sides did reach an agreement, although it’s not clear how comprehensive.  Both sides — mainly us — made major last-minute concessions.  Talks were ongoing until minutes before the legal deadline. Beef tariffs will be phased out over  15 years, which is a long time.  (We’ll see if the Koreans actually accept the next shipment.)   Korea also gets to protect its rice market.  There’s really only one bright spot I...

A Souvenir from Kim Jong Il

My comparison yesterday  between North Korean ideology, Nazism, and Stalinism led me to conclude that in terms of intrusive state control and deification of  its political leaders, North Korea was the outlier.  Speaking of deification, I nearly forgot this: (Click for full size) The protector of our race’s destiny, unification [gu-song,  possibly N. Korean vernacular] North and South shall bask together in the glow of General Kim Jong Il’s embrace We should follow our great general Kim Jong Il eternally!...

An FTA Pre-Post Mortem

At this hour, it looks like free trade talks with South Korea are about to fail, despite their extension for another 48 hours.   It may be  a bit  early for  the Chosun Ilbo  to have  published this post-mortem, but any free-trade agreement we reach now will be unworthy of the name and hardly worth doing from an American perspective.  Yes, I still  believe an US-Korean FTA is a good idea, but it’s pretty hard to  write a good one when...

Anju Links for 3/25: N. Korea Threatens to Do Us a Favor, Money We Can’t Follow, the FTA Circus, and S. Korea’s Slavery-Loving Unions

*   No.Please.Stop.   North Korea is threatening to pull  out of the  dreadful (for us) February 13th Agreed Framework 2.0 over  the RSOI / Foal Eagle exercises. “This may entail such serious consequences as escalating the tension between the DPRK (North Korea) and the US and scuttling the six-party talks for the settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, arranged with so much effort.”  [Channel News Asia] A KCNA statement wouldn’t be complete without a reference to...

‘Peace in Our Time!’ Updates

[Updated below]   As I write,  diplomats from five nations have decided to stick around at a resort somewhere near Beijing for a couple more days, probably  for many exciting hours of  CNN International, while North Korea decides whether it’s interested in talking about uranium.  Contrary to reports I’d read yesterday, no one is flying home just yet, but no one expects anything to get done this week, either. The holdup — which U.S. negotiator Chris Hill and the New...

Congressional Conservatives Threaten Rebellion on N. Korea Policy

A reader and friend forwarded me a press release by three conservative Republican members of Congress (thanks), including the Ranking Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.  The press release accompanies a letter that urges “caution” on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in attempting to normalize diplomatic and trade relations with the North too quickly.  The clear subtext is that conservatives think that Rice may not be demanding enough of North Korea in meeting the necessary prerequisites on disarmament, terrorism,...

Al-Qaeda Planned USFK Attacks

From the confession of the Ron Jeremy look-alike known as  Khalid Sheikh Mohammad: 23. I was responsible for planning and surveying to hit American targets in South Korea, such as American military bases and a few night clubs frequented by American soldiers. The thought occurred to me almost every post-9/11 day I was assigned to Korea.  The “Hooker Hill” district  of Itaewon mixes very uneasily with the nearby Korea Islam Mosque, a congregation that includes a  high percentage of conversative...

Maybe He Should Have Called It a ‘Slam Dunk’

[Update:   John Bolton weighs in at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page.  Bolton reads Joseph  DiTrani’s remarks similarly to how I read them, although those of an “Anonymous Senior Official” are much more nefarious.  Do not miss.  Bolton continues to do great public service as a private citizen  by focusing on the essential issues of inspection and verification, and then nails  why all pieces of this  framework join at that point,  with pneumatic strength and precision: [I]t is precisely...

How a U.S. Consul Helped Send Six North Korean Refugees to Kim Jong Il’s Gulag

[Update: The Shenyang Six were freed from a Chinese jail in August 2007.] The Secretary of State shall undertake to facilitate the submission of applications []  by citizens of North Korea seeking protection as refugees  …. (Title 22, United States Code, Section 7843) Back in  January, I told you the story of the Shenyang Six, a group of six North Korean refugees who sought  refuge from persecution and starvation in their homeland, and how the Chinese authorities, following their long-standing...