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September 8, 2006

Dastardly Hegemonistic Brilliance

How to get South Korea ready to accept its president’s demand for wartime control of its forces? Why, an aggressive schedule of military exercises, of course! An official with the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday Washington proposed a series of combined military training drills before Korea obtains independent wartime operational control. “The training would be tiered and occur over three years, including the actual transfer period,” he said. In other words, two years before the handover, whether that is...
Categories An Alliance?/NK Military/ROK Military/U.S. Military
September 8, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 50: Alternative Realities and Real Alternatives

I suppose everyone is entitled a theory on why Kim Jong Il decided to launch a round of missiles on July 4th, thereby drawing the wrong kind of attention from the U.N. Security Council, Japan, China, and the U.S. Treasury Department. This blog has been lukewarm on the conventional “extortion” theory, and has recently hosted discussions of the Strategic Disengagement Theory, the “Barrel of a Gun” Theory, The Loyalty Test Theory, and most recently, the Robert Kaplan Theory. All of...
Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/WMD
September 7, 2006

Lugar Fails to Get Bolton Voted Through His Committee

Despite a second impressive success on Darfur at the U.N. Security Council, and following an even more impressive victory on the North Korea sanctions resolution — a resolution I predicted he’d never get — John Bolton has again been denied a vote before the full Senate. There is no honest basis to dispute the excellence of Bolton’s performance at carrying out the President’s policies. That is why George Voinovich and Chuck Hagel are supporting him, despite earlier reservations. Standing beside...
Categories "United" Nations/Washington Views
September 1, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 49: The Perception Gap

[Update: The U.S. and Korean authorities are now denying that the Humphreys move is on hold. The Commanding General of the USFK admits that “minor adjustments” may be necessary, but that they can be “easily handled within the framework of the current plan.” H/t GI Korea] It begins with the apparent perception that Roh Moo Hyun could expect a state dinner or a 21-gun salute. I guess he perceived wrong: Unlike the incumbent, former presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
August 31, 2006

TKL Interview with Chuck Downs on the Alliance, Diplomacy, Nukes, and Why Kim Jong Il Tested Those Missiles

[Update 2: Thanks to the reader who pointed out that I had accidentally disabled the comments! That’s fixed now; please submit any questions or comments you have.] [Update: This post will “stick” at the top of the page for a couple of days; scroll down for new entries.] Chuck Downs is an author, independent consultant, and former Pentagon official who frequently appears on television news programs to discuss North Korea policy. He has held a number of important positions in...
Categories An Alliance?/China & Korea/Geopolitics/Japan & Korea/Kim Jong Il/Korean Politics/Kremlinology/NK Military/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views/WMD
August 26, 2006

Lefkowitz: N.Korean Refugees Welcome in America

Updates: This chatroom for English-speaking expats in Thailand has pictures of the refugees and pages of outraged, sympathic comments. One of them points to this BBC story. The Thai government’s reaction is to increase patrols on the Mekong to keep the refugees out. Look at this baby’s face. Then try to comprehend what will happen to her if she is sent back to North Korea. . . ====== (original post follows) ====== With somewhere around 175 North Korean refugees in...
Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 22, 2006

NK Freedom Watch, No. 5

Courtesy of Freedom House (with a hat tip to the staff there), here. Portions of this issue read like an indictment, which mainly makes it painfully obvious how far away we are from seeing a real one. The same methods of execution are applied to political criminals and economic criminals. When the death warrant is issued for a criminal, he is immediately cut off from all food supplies and his arms and legs are broken at the joints so that...
Categories Activism/Europe/Human Rights/Washington Views
August 21, 2006

Kaesong Update

[Correction: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A reader (thanks!) notes that Ms. Schwab is the U.S. Trade Representative. As it happens, the USTR has been independent from the State Department since 1962! My apologies to the State Department for the unintended defamation.] This may be the most unequivocal thing I’ve ever heard anyone in our State Department say, ever. And it pertains to including (North Korean) Kaesong products in a possible FTA with South...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 19, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 4: Smoke ‘em While You’ve Got ‘em.

Several months ago, some misguided BBC staffer asked me to fight above my weight and debate former Ambassador Donald Gregg about the allegation that British American Tobacco was secretly making cigarettes in North Korea. (The debate was for a pilot program and never aired.) At the time, I argued that the decision to grow or import tobacco should also be viewed as a decision not to grow or import food. Amb. Gregg, now president of the Korea Society, is a...
Categories Axis of Evil/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Japan/NK Economics/Washington Views
August 15, 2006

You’re Welcome.

Today is Liberation Day, at least for those of us on this side of the International Date Line. And because we’ve recently been on the subject of things that happened at Incheon, I thought I’d mention that the Incheon landing pictured here took place on September 8, 1945, when the United States Army arrived to liberate South Korea for the first time … from Japanese rule. You did hear that, right? Funny how no one ever talks about it. If...
Categories Anti-Americanism/History/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
August 15, 2006

Referendum

I don’t really have much to add to this, because I’ve thought a referendum on the alliance was needed since I was serving in Korea myself. While there, I could see the tension between Koreans’ desire to keep the alliance’s benefits and their contempt for the soldiers and the country who bore its burden. My small quibble with Kim Dae Joong is that “wartime control” is only the first of many dominos, and phrasing the question that way benefits those...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
August 10, 2006

The “C” Word

When I see things like this: Sixteen former defense ministers and nine retired generals on Thursday expressed dismay at President Roh Moo-hyun’s remarks in an interview Wednesday that suggested Korea can withdraw wartime control of its troops from the U.S. any time. … and contrast them with things like this: In an interview with the Yonhap news agency, the president said, “The South Korean military’s capability is sufficient and it can get U.S. military support.” The remarks pour oil on...
Categories An Alliance?/Democracy/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
August 10, 2006

TKL Exclusive: What Hyde Will Tell Roh

Via a reliable source I can’t name, I now have some specifics on just how pretty this won’t be. Among Hyde’s expected talking points for his visit to Korea this week are the following. Disclaimer — this is a paraphrase of a paraphrase: * You want operational control of all forces during wartime. How is that going to work? Will there be a U.S. general and a Korean general commanding the entire force jointly or two forces separately? Either way,...
Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/China & Korea/Human Rights/Korean Society/NK Economics/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 9, 2006

Republican Congressmen to Visit S. Korea

Regular readers of this blog and OFK before it have seen some very direct expressions of displeasure coming from Representative Henry Hyde to the South Korean government, or whizzing past its ears on the way to North Korea, often scanned in in their original and complete form (here, here, here, here, here, here). So when Yonhap reports that Hyde, the outgoing Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, is on his way to Seoul to visit President Roh Moo Hyun,...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 9, 2006

N.K. to Display ‘Captured’ Unmanned Sub?

We may soon see and hear more more details about the alleged U.S. unmanned sub North Korea claims to have captured, suggests Yonhap: North Korea has captured an unmanned U.S. submersible and showcased it in front of the already captured USS Pueblo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper reported Monday. The Choson Sinbo, the organ of the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, said it was seized in waters off North Korea’s eastern city of Hamhung and that North Korean leader...
Categories U.S. Military
August 7, 2006

Analyst: All U.S. Ground Forces May Leave by 2012 (D.O.A. #46)

This entire Asia Times piece by Bruce Klingner is a must-read, but this is the paragraph that leapt off the page for me: The US is contemplating cuts below the already-reduced, 25,000-troop level announced for 2008, including a rumored total withdrawal of US ground forces by 2012. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Burwell Bell, commander of US Forces in Korea, have warned that the recent closure of the Maehyangri training range to US pilots could cause Washington to redeploy...
Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military