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December 14, 2006

Chinese Diplomats on the Town, Behaving Like … American Infantry!

Heard in the Forbidden City:  “Those uppity vassals won’t get away with  indignities like this  when we build our governor’s mansion on top of Kwanghwamun!” Police pulled over a car with the diplomatic license plate of the Chinese Embassy near the main gate of Ewha Women’s University around 9:50 p.m. on Tuesday. The driver and three passengers declined to take the test or confirm their identities and kept doors and windows locked. Police guided the car into a corner, where...
Categories China & Korea/UCMJ & SOFA/WTF?
December 13, 2006

South Dakota Moves One Step Closer to Global Hegemony

Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota suffered a possible stroke Wednesday and was taken to a hospital, his office said. If he should be unable to continue to serve, it could halt the scheduled Democratic takeover of the Senate. Democrats won a 51-49 majority in the November election. South Dakota’s governor, who would appoint any temporary replacement, is a Republican. “Senator Tim Johnson was taken to George Washington University Hospital this afternoon suffering from a possible stroke,” read a...
Categories America
December 13, 2006

Korean Apartheid Watch

Arnold knew of only one pool in town, but when she went there she was told, ‘No Foreigners Allowed.”’ She asked a Korean co-worker to call for her and explain that she had to swim for health reasons. “I explained about you (doctor’s order) but they said no,” the co-worker wrote in a follow up e-mail. “Foreigner(s) cannot use the pool.”   [link] The article is incorrect when it states that discrimination is legal in Korea.  As I explained in...
Categories Korean Society/UCMJ & SOFA
December 13, 2006

Wobble Watch: Interesting Comment from S. Korean Delegate to Talks

“As the BDA account case shows us well, if we mention bilateral issues between North Korea and the U.S., we will not see much progress in the denuclearization of North Korea. Matters such as the BDA issue should not be mentioned during the six-party talks, and should be discussed in a working group or at least should be a separate part of the six-party talks. I read this as a good sign, given that the South Koreans had previously pressured...
Categories America/Six-Party Talks/WMD
December 9, 2006

South Korea’s Influence Machine

The Donga Ilbo has an excellent piece on how South Korea lobbies Congress.  Well worth reading in its entirety. Related:  how it tries to influence the American  press. Also related:   Felony violations  of the Foreign Agents’ Registration Act  are now classified as Specified Unlawful Activity  under 18 U.S.C. sec. 1956, meaning the transactions of unregistered agents are considered money laundering.
Categories Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
December 8, 2006

Arrest Galloper, Part 2

Ladies and gentlemen, our long national nightmare is over. We finally have closure in a terrible tragedy in which  innocent Korean  pedestrians were cut down by  a reckless foreigner,  who managed to evade local justice and (the outrage!) face a quickie trial and light punishment  in his home country’s courts.  Remember the protests and the vigils?  No?  Probably because the driver was a drunk South Korean Hyundai Asan  employee, and the victims were North Korean soldiers.  Two were injured, one...
Categories Korean Law/Korean Society/UCMJ & SOFA/Uncategorized
December 6, 2006

A Billion for Tribute, But Not One More Cent for Defense!

Update:   Guess what?  GI Korea had it exactly right all along.    All hail GI Korea!   Wow.  Talk about nailing it. Let’s compare the $780 million dollar cost sharing agreement to the amount of money Seoul sends to North Korea.   While North Korea was busy creating international stability with their ballistic missile and nuclear bomb tests, the South Korean government was busy sending them a record amount of humanitarian aid.   The South Korean government sent $227...
Categories An Alliance?/NK Economics/U.S. Military/Washington Views
December 5, 2006

Robert Gates Gets It (Mostly) Right on Korea

Consider that:  how often do bloggers, who live to bite ankles, find no fault with the pronouncements of those who make policy?  I begin my observation of Gates as SecDef as a skeptic.  And indeed, nothing that Gates could say about Korea could make me a fan if he prescribes Surrender Lite in Iraq or “learning to live with” an Iranian bomb.  But listen carefully to his views on the Koreas, from his confirmation hearings.  Begin in 1994, back when...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views
December 3, 2006

If the Alliance Has a Future …

Several new articles give us some idea of what it might look like. The first item is the alliance’s reason for being, part of which involves dealing with life after Kim Jong Il: OPLAN 5029. Back in April 2005 the South Koreans unilaterally pulled out of planning for it for fear of pissing off North Korea. A month later, talks seemed to be on again, but with no word on progress until now. A government source on Thursday said then-defense...
Categories An Alliance?/Reconstruction/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
December 2, 2006

What Can We Expect from Silvestre Reyes?

Reyes, a Democrat from Texas (he’s the one on the left, next to Curt Weldon), has been picked to lead the House Intelligence Committee. First, let’s heave a sigh that Nancy Pelosi’s first choice, Alcee Hastings, hit the “WTF!?” wall hard. The choice of Hastings was Pelosi’s second major personnel stumble since her selection as majority leader, before even taking up the post. Before he was elected to Congress, Hastings had been a federal judge. In 1988, he was overwhelmingly...
Categories Diplomacy/Washington Views
November 29, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 15

The United States has leaked a new set of sanctions on “luxury items” that can no longer be exported to North Korea, in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718: [T]he list of proposed luxury sanctions, obtained by The Associated Press, aims to make Kim’s swanky life harder: No more cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis. Electronic goods like I-pods and plasma TV’s are also banned.  Defectors helped...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/Washington Views
November 28, 2006

We Support Our Dupes

John Kerry tried to deny it until his own Web site tried to defend it.  Now, Charlie Rangel, even confronted with statistical evidence to the contrary, comes right out and states one of the minor premises  of the “back door draft” argument:  only an idiot with nowhere else to go would join the United States military.  It’s all right here, on video.  We all remember the dishonest suggestion, mostly just before the  2004 election,  that a Bush reelection would mean...
Categories America/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 28, 2006

More G-2 on Robert Gates

If you’re looking for reasons not to be glum about Robert Gates, Michael Barone offers a few.  Barone pictures Gates as someone with a great deal of sensitivity, and perhaps hostility, toward congressional meddling in foreign policy since its failure to confirm him as CIA Director years ago.  I was especially interested in this take on Nicaragua: “By the end of 1984, I concluded that we were kidding ourselves if we thought the contras might win. I wrote [CIA Director...
Categories U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 21, 2006

The Case for Starving the People

I noticed this interesting graf in a story about the effect of the luxury  items sanctions in UNSCR 1718.  For reasons that escape me entirely, some people believe that it’s counterproductive to bar Kim Jong Il from buying sashimi, S-Class sedans, and Omega watches while his people are starving – to – death,  some seem so quick to forget. Over past years, U.S. leaders have described the North Korean regime as an axis of evil, an outpost of tyranny, an...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il/Korean Education/Washington Views
November 19, 2006

‘The North Korea Refugee Relief and Reconstruction Act’

Several weeks ago, K-blogs were all aflutter with Robert Kaplan’s article on the prospects for destabilizing chaos when the North Korean regime collapses.  I argued in response that the United States should begin planning to fund reconstruction and organize an emergency humanitarian response, and that this ought to be one of the main contingencies  around which a U.S.-Korea alliance should be designed.  Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has now introduced a bill to address those issues.  Here’s the summary;...
Categories An Alliance?/Reconstruction/Refugees/Washington Views
November 15, 2006

Two Cheers for Tom Lantos

He’d get three if he’d said  it three years ago, and four if he offered a few more specifics, but Tom Lantos (D, Cal.) sounds at least as  tough here  as Jim Leach (R, Ia.) might have: The Bush administration’s policy toward North Korea has failed and a new approach must be tried, including punishing the North’s leaders and sending a U.S. envoy to Pyongyang for talks, a key Democrat said on Wednesday. Rep. Tom Lantos of California, who is...
Categories America/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
November 14, 2006

In Search of the Clear, Simple, and Wrong

This must be the most interesting, most heartening, and  least reported poll result of the week, if not the year: While a bare majority of 51 percent called the Democrats’ victory “a good thing,” even more said they were concerned about some of the actions a Democratic Congress might take, including 78 percent who were somewhat or very concerned that it would seek too hasty a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Another 69 percent said they were concerned that the...
Categories America/Terrorism/Iraq
November 13, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 60

The United States and its allies are moving forward with active naval operations  to contain the North Korean proliferation threat.   The strikingly odd thing about this is that South Korea isn’t going to be one of them.  Here is a list of nations with which the United States has more diplomatic and military synergy today than with South Korea:  Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Australia, … and France.  I guess you’re officially no longer  a U.S. ally when...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized/WMD