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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?
February 11, 2008

S. Korea Still Denies Paying Ransom to Taliban; Larry Craig Still Not Gay

After months of wildly inconsistent estimates ($2 million? $20 million?) of just how much ransom the South Koreans paid for their two dozen-odd hostages in Afghanistan, the Taliban is saying the actual amount was “at least” $4 million. This final, authoritative answer is brought to you by an unidentified “senior Taliban commander,” so we need not ever speak of this again. Until the next time it happens: If we were going to free them without any payment, [the hostage taking]...
Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Terrorism (NK)
February 8, 2008

The Morally Retarded Lorin Maazel

I’ve  already said that I’m  ambivalent about the visit of the New York Philharmonic to North Korea.  They will play some  good music,  which will probably do little harm and little good.   If we would just accept the music on its face value without injecting politics into it, this visit wouldn’t be taking on  such a  pernicious odor.  Is that too much to ask?  Apparently. Spurred on by the mendacious appeaser  Christopher Hill, the Philharmonic  now imagines itself as an...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Human Rights/WTF?
February 4, 2008

USFK Commander Against Further Troops Cuts (Update: USFK Denies)

General Burwell B. Bell III, commander of United States Forces Korea, expressed his wish to keep the status quo at a meeting last month, the sources said. South Korea and U.S. officials met for talks in Washington on Jan. 23.  According to the sources, Bell asked Korean officials to back his proposal to hold force levels at the current 28,500 troops. As a part of a plan to realign US. troops around the world, Washington and Seoul have agreed to...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
February 4, 2008

U.S., ROK Forces Will Draw up Contingency Plans for N. Korea Unrest

It’s about time: The Defense Ministry is planning to create a joint plan with the United States to cope with possible internal unrest in North Korea after the Lee Myung-bak administration comes into office.   According to military sources, the ministry reported last month a US-Korea joint plan to the transition committee in preparation for possible contingencies in North Korea from March to the end of this year. [….]   “The current administration was too conscious of North Korea to...
Categories An Alliance?/Reconstruction/Uncategorized
February 1, 2008

KCTU Declares Jihad Against Lee M.B., Scores Meeting With Nancy Pelosi

On Tuesday, I wrote that  President-Elect Lee was about to meet with the  leaders of  South  Korea’s largest,  most radical, and most violent labor organization — the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.  There was, however, the matter of KCTU Chairman Lee Sok-Haeng’s outstanding arrest warrant for an “illegal” rally last October.  President-Elect Lee, showing more interest in public order than his  predecessor,  was not willing to let this  slide or grant  Chairman Lee the special  privilege of being questioned at...
Categories Anti-Americanism/U.S. Politics
January 19, 2008

Good Riddance, Ministry of Silly Talks

After weeks of conflicting reports, Lee Myung Bak’s transition team had made it official:  the UniFiction  Ministry goes to the ash-heap, along with  the Ministries  of Truth Information and Communication, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Science and Technology, and the Anti-Sex League Gender Equality and Family.  The  Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade will become a much larger  and more powerful  Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Unification.  As a whole, the government will shrink by more than 5%, about 7,000 employees....
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
January 14, 2008

I am so ready for a North Korean spy scandal right about now …

[Update:    He resigns.  Kim Man-Bok claims that his motive in leaking the tape  was to dispel speculation that  he met with Kim Yang-Gon to try to influence the South  Korean election.   Using Nordpolitik is a  well-established way of trying to influence South  Korean elections, and I’m not sure exactly how Kim M.B. expected to reassure anyone about  what’s not on the tape.   To me,  one missed  significance of this  is the casual ease with which Roh’s people accepted North...
Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column/WTF?
January 9, 2008

Honor, Delayed

President-Elect Lee Myung Bak will finally  honor six South Korean sailors killed in a North Korean attack on their patrol boat on  June 29, 2002.  The sailors’ surviving family members were embittered, believing that their government and outgoing  President Roh Moo Hyun had  snubbed  them to appease Kim Jong Il.  One young widow  even left South Korea for good: Kim Jong-seon, the widow of Petty Officer Han Sang-guk […]  turned her back on her homeland Sunday and boarded a flight...
Categories Appeasement/ROK Military
January 8, 2008

The Restoration

No one should take pleasure in seeing another person worry about  losing his job, but there  is much to celebrate about how Lee Myung-Bak’s new administration is shaping up.  Some doubt is now cast on earlier reports that  the UniFiction Ministry would be abolished, although it’s clear that  its size and influence will be reduced  dramatically.  Its days as a foreign policy player are over,  and the the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT) will regain its foreign policy...
Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/U.S. & Korea
January 3, 2008

UniFiction Ministry to be abolished?

[Update:   The Marmot  is giddy about this.]   Had George Orwell lived in modern-day Korea, reality would have  mooted his most sardonic fiction.  After all, a  lying Ministry of Truth  is only marginally sillier than  a Ministry of Unification whose primary function is  keeping the slaves on the other side of the mine fields through the lavish financing of their overseers.  Today comes word that president-elect Lee Myung-Bak may put an end to this cruel joke by abolishing the...
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
December 30, 2007

Ralph Cossa is wrong; Pressure on North Korea worked, when applied

Generally, I agree with  Robert Koehler  that Lee Myung Bak’s landslide victory was anything but a mandate for a better, more moral North Korea policy.  It will put  less irrational people in charge, but the policy will not be the improvement that Nicholas Eberstadt hopes for unless Kim Jong Il gets seriously on the wrong side of  Lee Myung-Bak’s temper. Why?   First, the election was all about money.  Second, Lee Myung Bak is all about money.  Third, South Korean voters  …...
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics/Money Laundering
December 22, 2007

Experts predict Lee Myung Bak’s behavior; Still no comment from Miss Cleo, Nostradamus, or KCNA

My “what to expect from Lee MB” updates have outgrown and seceded from this post. As for what we should expect from a Lee presidency, any prediction rows into some pretty treacherous water. Lee strikes me as a guy who begins with dry cost-benefit analysis, but one with an autocratic streak as wide as that asinine canal he’s proposing to build. Lee’s history and my gut suggest a term punctuated by emotional, stubborn, and vindictive behavior, which means that national...
Categories Korean Politics
December 21, 2007

Their long national nightmare is over (Updated)

[Updated and Bumped — scroll down — original post 19 Dec 07] Following record low voter turnout, Yonhap has Lee Myung Bak winning by a landslide with over just under 50%. This is unbad news to me; I always root for a lying stock manipulator over a lying abettor of genocide with untamed abandon. I can hear the celebratory gunfire all the way out in Centreville. I’m also pleasantly surprised that the last-second leak of a video proving that Lee...
Categories Korean Politics
December 8, 2007

Time to Shake Some Money-Makers

Recently, I articulated my suspicion that the Eugene Bell Foundation’s plan for family reunions between elderly Korean-Americans and their North Korean relatives would turn out to be just what Kaesong, Kumgang, and just about every other “grand opening” scheme also was: a cash pipeline to the North delivering dubious benefits and incalculable costs — incalculable because we have little or no idea of how Kim Jong Il spends the large sums he extracts from the South. In the case of...
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics