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Category: South Korea

October 9, 2008

S. Korean JCS Chair: N. Korea Building Lighter Nuclear Warheads for Missiles

You  might have thought  that an agreement whose nominal objective is nuclear disarmament ought to be reasonably clear about dismantling, disabling, or dissing those arms in some specific way.  If so, you thought wrong, and here are the consequences of that.  In fact, Chris Hill’s February 2007  disarmament deal was intentionally vague about North Korea’s existing nuclear arsenal.  Until this summer, State had insisted that the North’s nuclear weapons  were covered by the phrase “all nuclear programs,” although North Korea’s...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/NK Military/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 8, 2008

Lee’s N. Korea Policy Will Be, as Lee Says, ‘Pragmatic.’

Suzanne Scholte has accepted the Seoul Peace Prize, offering this prescient comment in her speech: “When all the atrocities committed by North Korean dictators are exposed in the future, people will assess how adequately the Seoul government then responded,” said Scholte, referring to the current administration. “Consider the judgment of history.”  [Chosun Ilbo] I’m hoping to have a guest post from a reader who was there.  Warning:  this post will now enter a stream of consciousness. You can already see...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
October 7, 2008

The Lewinsky Effect

NORTH KOREA SPY WON JEONG-HWA, who exchanged sexual favors for information from South Korean officers and who plotted to assasinate South Korean officials with poisoned needles, is awaiting sentencing.  The L.A. Times covers the story in considerable detail and publishes photographs of Won and her passport.  On a personal note, I realize that standards of beauty are subjective in any culture, but if there’s apparently not much to be said for Ms. Won’s personality, I remain unable to explain her...
Categories ROK Military/The Fifth Column
September 30, 2008

Korean Kids Face Twin Perils: Poisoned Chinese Milk, Moms Who Use them as Human Riot Shields

Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode. BY NOW, WE KNOW THAT THERE WAS NEVER ANY SCIENTIFIC SUBSTANCE BEHIND all of those “Mad Cow” protests in Korea over the imports of U.S. beef.  So why so little protest over melamine contamination in food imported from China poses an actual, no-sh*t health risk to Korean kids who drink powdered milk?   It might even be a greater risk to the health of Korean kids than strapping them...
Categories Anti-Americanism/China & Korea/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
September 29, 2008

Do the Koreans Have a Future?

We’re all familiar with many of the ways in which the lives of North and South Koreans differ.  The Economist has published an interesting new piece describing some of these way, but which eventually focuses on the demographics of both nations and the greater region.  No doubt, from those differences arise very different reasons why the populations of both nations are declining. As to why the South’s population is declining at one of the fastest rates in the OECD, it’s...
Categories China & Korea/North Korea/South Korea
September 4, 2008

Congratulations to Suzanne Scholte

Suzanne Scholte, the President of the Defense Forum Foundation and head of the North Korean Freedom Coalition, has been awarded the Seoul Peace Prize, which comes with an award of $200,000: In a press conference held at the Seoul Press Center on Wednesday, Lee Chul-seung, chairman of the Seoul Peace Prize Cultural Foundation, said, “We selected Scholte as the winner this year for her contribution to improving human rights of North Korean residents and North Korean refugees, and bettering the...
Categories Activism/South Korea/U.S. & Korea
August 27, 2008

Unusual Suspects (1)

Update:  I see Robert had pretty much the same reaction. Maybe all that hand-wringing  about a Lee Myung Bak dictatorship isn’t so exaggerated after all:  Oh Se-cheol, a professor emeritus of Yonsei University and prominent leftwing academic, was arrested on Tuesday on charges of breaching the National Security Law. Oh’s arrest is seen as a start of a government crackdown on leftwing organizations which grew and expanded their realm of activities under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations. Seoul...
Categories Censorship/The Fifth Column
August 27, 2008

Unusual Suspects (2) (Updated)

In South Korea, where North  Korean agents still infiltrate into the South  to kidnap and occasionally even kill people,  commie conspiracy theories aren’t  always just for John Birchers.  The prosecution has just announced the arrest of a 35 year-old female North Korean “defector,” Won Jeong-Hwa,  for spying for the North Korean regime.  Before coming to the South in 2001, Won served jail time for theft and feared possible execution for committing another crime — stealing tons of zink, which is...
Categories Censorship/Defectors/Refugees/The Fifth Column
August 25, 2008

We apologize again for the fault in this broadcast. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked.

The shepherds of the mad sheep refuse to die quietly. MBC, which retracted its misleading report linking U.S. beef to mad cow disease under court order and apologized to its viewers, is now appealing that order.  So if it’s now beyond  serious dispute that the original report misled viewers with sloppy translations, bad science,  and images of people and cows infected with other diseases, why is MBC now trying to retract its retraction? The MBC labor union has fiercely criticized...
Categories Censorship/Media Criticism/The Fifth Column
August 20, 2008

It’s What’s for Dinner!

Even in Seoul: Resumed supplies of controversial U.S. beef are already second most popular in the Korean imported beef market.  According to quarantine data by the National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service on Monday, a total of 4,439 tons of U.S. beef passed Korea’s quarantine inspection from July 1 onwards. During that period, Korea imported beef from four nations. Australian beef accounted for 60.2 percent or 12,753 tons from a total of 21,184. The U.S. came second with 20.9 percent...
Categories Anti-Americanism/U.S. & Korea
August 19, 2008

Richard Halloran Prognosticates on N. Korea Regime Collapse

Halloran knows how many predictions of North Korea’s collapse that have passed unrealized, and  he’s  wise enough to abstain from outright predictions.  Instead, he  walks us through  the factors that make it worthy of urgent-yet-careful planning: North Korean soldiers in a regime that gives priority to the military forces have been reduced to two skimpy meals a day. Factory workers nap on the floor for lack of food and energy. That has led to conjecture that North Koreans, despite the...
Categories An Alliance?/Regime Change
August 18, 2008

Dems’ N. Korea Platform Collapses Under the Weight of History and Logic

You’d think that with a cast of 300 foreign policy advisors  on Obama’s team alone, the Democrats could find one who  has some  idea of who Roh  Moo Hyun was,  what he stood for, and what he would not stand against.  The Democrats have rolled out their 2008 platform.  Party platforms aren’t widely regarded for being repositories of substance.  They’re  better known  dispensing crumbs to interest groups.  When those interests conflict, they get resolved in the great unseen food chain...
Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
August 17, 2008

What Ranch Country Thinks of Korea’s Beef Protests

Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode. As Korea heaves a meek “never mind” to a national crisis based on exposed falsehoods and manipulated by an  anti-democratic fifth column, American Korea-watchers may be tempted to  assume that the episode passed without being noticed by most Americans.  That’s not a safe thing to assume for my part of the country, the part that produces most of that beef.  If you’re not from that part of the country,...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea
August 11, 2008

The Freedom of the State’s Press to Deceive the People Shall Be Abridged

[Updated below] In the wake of a court’s decision ordering a retraction of a distorted, sloppy, and  false  MBC report that triggered massive anti-government protests, Lee Myung Bak is moving to clean house.   A principled approach would be to ask why Korea’s government (or for that matter, ours) is in the business of broadcasting the news anyway and just saw off this vestigial limb.  Instead, Lee is being Lee and conducting a purge. The shakeup culminated on Friday at national...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/Korean Society/Media Criticism/The Fifth Column
August 2, 2008

Senate Confirms Kathleen Stephens as Ambassador to Korea

[Updates below and in the text.] A couple of days ago, while traveling on business, I was informed that Sen. Brownback would lift his hold on the nomination of Kathleen Stephens to become Ambassador to the Republic of Korea. She was confirmed in a voice vote later that day. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to post about it. The Senate confirmed a new American ambassador to South Korea on Friday, after a senator dropped his objections...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
July 31, 2008

Court Orders MBC to Broadcast a Retraction on Mad Cow Report

A Seoul civil court on Thursday found an influential MBC report on U.S. beef health risks “wrong” and ordered the major broadcaster to air a correction, upholding the government’s complaint over the critical coverage.    “PD Notepad should broadcast a correction of its wrong piece on mad cow disease,” Judge Kim Sung-gon of the Seoul Southern District Court said in the verdict. The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries raised a complaint against the popular MBC current affairs program,...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/Korean Society/Media Criticism
July 30, 2008

Tokdo: Now Officially the Dumbest International Crisis in History

… thus supplanting all of that Seige of Troy unpleasantness. I cannot say that South Korea would be much the worse for having dismissed Ambassador Lee Tae Shik from his post, but that is incidental to the skull-smacking stupidity of why: The government on Monday decided to call Korean Ambassador to the U.S. Lee Tae-shik to account if it is found that the embassy did not react promptly to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names listing Dokdo under “undesignated sovereignty.”...
Categories An Alliance?/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/Korean Society
July 29, 2008

In Seoul, ‘Mad Sheep’ Protests Descend into Radical Violence

Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode. The herd has gotten leaner, and meaner:  Around the Seorin Rotary in Jongno, another 80 protesters besieged a traffic police officer and an auxiliary police officer from Jongno Police Station, and stole three two-way radios. Demonstrators also broke the windows of a police bus in front of the Samsung Tower, and flattened tires. Two police officers were taken to the Boshingak Pavilion, had their shirts taken off, and were...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column