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Category: History

September 23, 2008

The Continuum: The Origins of Korean Politics

Before the allies arrived in Korea in September 1945, Korean politics existed only undergound and in exile, among  feuding  factions of various brands of radicals.  A search of Time’s  fascinating archives, which are completely free, shows that the American press paid little attention to events in Korea until American missionaries began reporting on Japan’s oppression.  This  attention increased in the 1930’s as  hostility rose between Japan and the United States, but exile politics received almost none of that attention. Less...
Categories Korean History
July 31, 2008

The Continuum: Birth of a Nation

The restoration of Korea’s nationhood seemed to begin so harmoniously:  It is their purpose that Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since 1914, and that all territories stolen from China shall be restored. Japan will be expelled from all other territories taken by violence and greed. In due course Korea shall become free and independent. With these objects in view, the three Allies, in harmony with those of the...
Categories History/Korean History/U.S. Military
July 29, 2008

The Continuum: Down Range

From the Oct. 8, 1945 edition of Time: The autumn air was brisk and clear. Eagles wheeled overhead against the white clouds, their shadows crossing palaces and hovels, crumbling temples and Western buildings. The city of Seoul (pronounced soul), home of a million people, was 550 years old. Yet the Americans felt like discoverers last week as they explored Korea’s mountain-ringed capital. On the broad boulevards their jeeps competed with oxcarts, with bicycles thick as gnats. Tooting streetcars fairly bulged...
Categories History/Korean History/U.S. Military
July 26, 2008

The Continuum: How (Else) to Screw Up an Occupation

A frequent criticism of the American occupation of Iraq was the “decision” to disband the Iraqi Army.  It’s been said in response that there wasn’t much to disband by the time we reached Baghdad, anyway, and that decision was distinct from (though not unrelated to) our failure to prevent Iraqis from looting their own capital.  What if we’d done things badly in exactly  the opposite  different way?  Time’s wonderful archives take us back to events  that have  brought us  grief...
Categories History/Korean History
July 8, 2008

History, Through Charles Hanley’s Soda Straw

[Update:   See also GI Korea’s post.  Neither Hanley nor Syngman Rhee comes out of this one looking good, nor do U.S. officials and officers who had the breathtakingly poor judgment to attend Lee’s killings.  Clearly, however, Hanley has told us nothing we didn’t already know.]   Professional atrocity monger Charles Hanley is back again, faithful to his  rigid 13-month  schedule, to report breaking news from 1948 that contains no relevations for Korea-watchers:  Syngman Rhee  turns out to have been...
Categories Korean War/Media Criticism
June 25, 2008

Paroled from Death, Or Worse

The anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s invasion of South Korea is a fitting time to post about just the latest Ssouth Korean prisoner of war to return home after being held in North Korea  since a 1953  Armistice agreement in  it agreed to  return  its prisoners.    A prisoner of war (POW) escaped from North Korea 55 years after being captured and is currently staying in China awaiting entry to South Korea, the association of abductees’ family members said Tuesday. ...
Categories Abductions/Korean War
June 25, 2008

With Friends Like These (Pt. 1)

Today is June 25, 2008, the 58th anniversary of Japan’s America’s North Korea’s invasion of South Korea.  I hope you’ll excuse my temporary confusion; my han has been acting up again: More than half of teenagers here do not know when the Korean War broke out or who started it, showing ignorance about the country’s history and national security.  The Ministry of Public Administration and Security said Monday that a survey of 1,016 middle and high school students showed nearly...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean History
June 20, 2008

How Much More Don’t We Know?

There are two  unfolding enigmas  from that black hole of disappearing humanity known as North Korea this week.  The L.A. Times  catches us up on the rumors that North Korea may soon “discover” that, notwithstanding years of denials, it may have some more Japanese abductees after all.  I wonder how many Yen this will cost the Japanese  in ransom reparations.  Wouldn’t that make this, you know, terrorism? The second story involves an American who has been missing since the Korean...
Categories Abductions/China/Korean War/Uncategorized
May 28, 2008

Equality, Fraternity, Atrocity

A group of lawmakers plans to submit a bill to the Diet mandating government financial compensation for Korean and Taiwanese former Class B and Class C war criminals and their surviving families.  The move, led by Kenta Izumi, a Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) Lower House member, could come as early as the current Diet session. At issue are those who worked as guards of POWs for the Imperial Japanese military during World War II. The non-Japanese were later denied...
Categories History/Japan/Japan & Korea
April 6, 2008

KCNA Trips Over the Truth on Human Rights

Writing in the Asia Times, Professor Sung Yoon Lee describes reading KCNA in the original Korean and finding, among the hackneyed sloganeering, that the writers “inadvertently rang with uncommon common sense, not to mention striking validity:” A staple of the KCNA diet, such oft-stated claims [about Japanese abuses during colonial times] are indeed valid historical grievances that North Korea and Japan will have to resolve if the two are ever to normalize diplomatic relations. [OFK note: as if.] But the...
Categories Human Rights/Korean History
March 25, 2008

S. Korea (Sort of) Links Humanitarian Aid to Return of Abductees

South Korea’s president has asked North Korea to consider sending home prisoners of war and captured civilians in return for receiving humanitarian aid from Seoul. President Lee Myung-bak said in an interview published Monday that he wouldn’t seek to link food and fertilizer aid to international efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. “Still, since we are sending humanitarian aid, the North should consider humanitarian measures, without any condition, on the pending issue of South Korean PoWs and 400...
Categories Abductions/Famine & Food Aid/Korean War
February 11, 2008

Goodbye, Old Friend

  What words?  My wife and I both feel as if an old friend we’d meant to visit again had been murdered, stolen from us by a deranged killer, a thief of beauty and history.     Anyone who has lived in Seoul recently knows that it can and will be rebuit with faithful perfection.  But like the Golden Pavillion of Kyoto, which I would not call Namdaemun’s equal, it will be never be the same, either. As many have already...
Categories History/Korean Society/WTF?
January 12, 2008

South Korea to push U.N. for return of its POW’s

President-Elect Lee Myung Bak’s transition team  is speaking more about its plans to finally bring home about 560 prisoners of war  it believes North Korea is still holding, in violation of the 1953 Armistice agreement.  South Korea may seek help from the international community in pressing North Korea to return South Korean prisoners of war, the Defense Ministry said Saturday.   North Korea has so far balked at South Korean requests to return POWs, saying it has never held any South...
Categories "United" Nations/Abductions/Korean War
November 28, 2007

How Times Have Changed!

I’ve very much enjoyed the first installment of reviews of World War Two-era Korean films at Gusts of Popular Feeling, and look forward to the next ones.  The first film reviewed was made in 1941, a pro-Japanese propaganda film called “The Volunteer,” surprising not only for its cinematic technique and  moments of artistry, but also for its mention of discriminatory treatment of Koreans by the Japanese. The Japanese character (the one who told Choon-ho about the opening of the military...
Categories History/Korean Society
September 24, 2007

Some USFK Stats and History

A few days ago, a reader asked me how much the presence of the USFK cost American taxpayers.  This is a research project I’ve taken on before, only to be confronted by few answers from credible sources.  You’re about to see what I mean here. Writing for the Nautilus Institute, Selig Harrison claimed in 2001 that the annual cost was $42 billion per year.   Another Nautilus alum,  Doug Bandow, claimed in his recent Korea book  that withdrawing from the...
Categories An Alliance?/History/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
April 15, 2007

Anju Links for 15 April 2007

*    We’ve Lost the True Meaning of Kim Il Sung’s Birthday.   It’s another OFK exclusive — I have the first video of North Korea’s Kim Il Sung Day parade.  In North Korea, where devotion comes from the barrel of a gun, the object of this  devotion  is now a side of preserved meat; thus,  I urge everyone to  pay their respects  with  a feast  appropriate for the occasion.  If only the people of North Korea were fortunate enough...
Categories Abductions/Anju Links/Appeasement/Korean War/Refugees
April 10, 2007

North Korea by Google Earth: Kim Jong Il’s Largest Palace

[Updated; The Mystery of the Tangun Tomb] Remember my March 28th post,  a stream of consciousness  that washed against  the subject of EU sanctions against North Korea?   Among the items sanctioned were  pure-bred horses, which are the kind not even  North Koreans would dare eat — because of who owns them.   That led me  to the one location in North Korea where I suspected that such horses might be kept.  I had recently found that location on Google Earth  while...
Categories Google Earth/History/Kim Jong Il
March 17, 2007

Marks of Distinction

Inspired by the Marmot’s  cool photo of a Japanese zero in U.S. markings, I rounded up a few other pictures of cross-dressed aircraft and tanks  from World War II. Me-109 in British markings Russian T-34, KV-1, and other type armored vehicles in German markings Russian KV-1 tanks in German markings A Spitfire, and other  allied aircraft, in German markings German Ju-87 “Stuka” in British markings B-17 in German markings  (more) B-17 in Swiss markings Sherman tank in German markings King...
Categories History