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Category: South Korea

May 29, 2009

Photoblog: Seoul’s Farewell to the “Babo President”

[It’s been almost six months since I last submitted something to OFK, but I’m hoping to be able to write a bit more frequently from now on.  We’ll see.] In addition to the title “People’s President,” which is being used a lot this week, I learned today that Noh Moo-hyun was called “바보 대통령.”   I’m not so knowledgeable about the man, so that was a bit of a surprise for me to hear at the ceremony for him at...
Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society
May 27, 2009

I Sense a Great Disturbance in the Force

This just had to happen:  Roh’s bodyguard has changed his story: It was confirmed that there was no bodyguard present when the former President Roh Moo-hyun committed suicide on May 23. Accordingly, police have launched a reinvestigation of what the former president was doing on the day of suicide. “It may be that the bodyguard sent by the Cheong Wa Dae was not present when the former president threw himself from “˜Owl Rock,’” an official of the Cheong Wa Dae...
Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
May 26, 2009

Will we see a more proactive South Korea?

While I’m hearing a lot of commentary on what Obama should and shouldn’t do with his North Korea problem, I am curious as to what South Korea is thinking. I have been told by contacts in South Korea that these latest moves by the DPRK have not been able to break through the average South Korean’s desensitized shell. Indeed, South Korean headlines seem to suggest the South is just as obsessed with the nuclear test’s affect on the economy, if...
Categories North-South/South Korea
May 25, 2009

Fifth Column Update: Pyongyang Orders a Hot Summer for Seoul

I certainly don’t believe for an instant that North Korea’s infiltration of the South was suspended during the DJ or Roh administrations; rather, I think stories about that infiltration were less likely to be leaked or reported under the former left-wing administrations unless they were just too newsworthy to suppress.  But if North Korea’s agents had ever gone to ground, they’ve come back up to prepare for the summer riot season: The North Korean regime recently ordered officials and organizations...
Categories Refugees/The Fifth Column
May 22, 2009

Roh Moo Hyun Dead, an Apparent Suicide

Update 2:   Here’s a translation of Roh’s suicide note. “I’m indebted to too many people. The pain that I caused to so many people is too great. The pain in the coming days is unfathomable,” Roh said in the note disclosed by police. “Due to my frail health, I cannot do anything. I cannot read or write. Don’t be too sad. Don’t blame anyone. Life and death are identical parts of nature. It’s fate,” the note said. It also...
Categories Korean Politics/Sunshine
May 21, 2009

Sunshine Death Watch

BUT WOULDN’T THAT BE NEEDLESSLY STRENUOUS?  South Korean conservatives call for their government to close down Kaesong before Kim Jong Il gets around to it.  Personally, I think things are going perfectly just as they are. THE GRAND NATIONALS ARE REALLY TWO PARTIES, to hear Andy Jackson describe Park Geun Hye’s efforts to keep her people out of President Lee’s government.  Fortunately for them, the left is even more fragmented and rudderless, because that and the fact of incumbency are...
Categories An Alliance?/Korean Politics/Sunshine
May 5, 2009

South Korea: Always There When They Need Us

South Korea, whose main contribution to the war in Afghanistan so far has been to pay the Taliban a $20 million ransom, has ruled out sending troops there to help fight them. Who still thinks that the unsound fundamentals of the US-ROK alliance have suddenly renewed under President Lee, or doubts that Lee’s decision was an acknowledgement of the anti-American sentiments of South Korean voters, sentiments that can only remain latent for so long?  Who still thinks that Obama’s election...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea
May 3, 2009

A Redefined Alliance With South Korea as Necessary as Ever

I can’t resist returning to the Weekly Standard piece I linked here to quote one very interesting passage for special mention.  After calling for a strengthening of our military alliance with Japan, it says: Second, we should redefine our alliance with South Korea. The North’s primary threat to the South is its arsenal of hundreds of artillery systems that could devastate Seoul. Rather than a U.S. presence that still includes ground forces, the primary focus of our military cooperation with...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
May 1, 2009

NOOOOO!

Chung Dong-young, the former DP presidential candidate who lost to President Lee Myung-bak in 2007 in the presidential race, will now represent Deokji in Jeonju, North Jeolla. Following his defeat against Lee Myung-bak in 2007, a power struggle with the Democratic Party and his subsequent defection, Chung has scored a successful political comeback with 72.3 percent of the vote. [Joongang Ilbo] This, of course, follows Chung’s much-discussed failure to be named to the National Defense Committee after March’s Supreme Peoples’...
Categories Korean Politics
April 10, 2009

Roh Moo Hyun Apologizes for Taking Money in Bribery Scandal

There is now a silver lining to the growing bribery scandal that threatens to tarnish OFK favorite Park Jin. It has also brought some richly deserved shame to leftist former president Roh Moo Hyun, a man who often seemed more like North Korea’s paymaster in Seoul than the leader of South Korea. How much shame, you ask? They’re putting a two-story-high screen around his house. Much of the money was allegedly paid to Roh’s family and relatives, including his wife...
Categories Korean Politics
March 17, 2009

GNP Lawmaker: Roh may have tried to force N. Korean bomber to retract her accusation of Kim Jong Il

I figured we’d find out a lot of disturbing things about Roh Moo Hyun’s strange affinity for the North Korean regime after he left office. This alleged effort to hijack history suggests that that affinity exceeded his affinity for the lives of South Korean airline passengers: The ruling Grand National Party will hold a National Assembly hearing about allegations by the surviving bomber of Korean Air flight 858 that the previous government bullied her into backing a conspiracy theory surrounding...
Categories History/Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
March 4, 2009

NIS Seeks Direct Power to Eavesdrop on Foreigners

The bill before the Legislation and Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee would have the law changed to make it possible for the NIS to eavesdrop on all current communication formats like mobile telecommunications and the Internet, as well as all communications networks that take form in the future. It would also require communications companies to maintain records of all communications for at least one year keep user location information as part of those records. In addition, the bill would allow the NIS...
Categories Korean Law
March 2, 2009

Quote of the Week

Kurt Campbell, the new Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, actually stated it in an academic paper some time ago, but still …. The report urges Seoul and Washington to keep publicizing the importance of their bilateral relations at home. Historical issues are dogging Korean-Japanese relationship, it notes, and urges Japan to stop provoking Korea but adding that Korea’s excessive response allows the issues to remain burning. It warns that Seoul’s noisy protests over the Dokdo...
Categories Korean Society/South Korea
February 10, 2009

KCTU Politburo Resigns Over Rape Cover-Up

The executive board of the radical Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a violent organization with strong links to the pro-North Korean fifth column in South Korea, has resigned to atone for trying to cover up the attempted rape of a female union member by a “senior” union official: The Korea Confederation of Trade Unions says its entire executive board is stepping down to account for a sexual assault scandal. In a press briefing the KCTU said the leadership is resigning...
Categories The Fifth Column
February 10, 2009

Being Loved Is Overrated

Good morning, America — the world hates you slightly less! They took a poll shortly after Obama’s election: Views of the US showed improvements in Canada, Egypt, Ghana, India, Italy and Japan. But far more countries have predominantly negative views of America (12), than predominantly positive views (6). Most Europeans show little change and views of the US in Russia and China have grown more negative. On average, positive views have risen from 35 per cent to 40 per cent,...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Europe/Geopolitics
February 5, 2009

S. Korea Finally Ends Subsidies to Violent ‘Civic’ Groups

Drink a toast to President Lee for this one: The government cut financial aid to non-profit organizations by half this year. Civic groups hosting or participating in illegal violent demonstrations will have their aid scrapped, and the government has asked the National Police Agency for background checks. [Chosun Ilbo] One of the most infuriating things the Roh government did was to subside extremist groups that engaged in violence, including violent demonstrations against U.S. installations. Why any government would subsidize violent...
Categories Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column
February 4, 2009

North Korean Johns in Need of More Effective Consumer Protection

As a worker at a state enterprise, at Chongjin city, North Hamkyung Province, he came to Pyungsung City on a business trip. As a beautiful woman approached him and said the motel had a warm cozy room as well as a “high-class waiting room” (rooms where prostitutes wait for travelers who want sexual intercourse), he went to a one-story house in Yangji-dong. [Open Radio for N. Korea] What could possibly go wrong with a story that begins like that? For...
Categories Human Trafficking/Korean Society