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Category: U.S. & Korea

November 19, 2009

An FTA After All?

On balance, it’s more likely that President Obama’s surprising shift in tone is about keeping up appearances on the one issue that matters most to the South Korean government. Still, you can’t deny that this is a breathtaking shift: U.S. President Barack Obama pledged Thursday morning to ratify a free-trade agreement with South Korea that has been stuck for two years, challenging the U.S. Congress to separate South Korea from other Asian nations enjoying vast trade surpluses with the U.S....
Categories U.S. & Korea
November 18, 2009

Press Conference on NK Human Rights Several Hours Before Obama’s Arrival in Seoul

Updated below with videos, etc. The Association of North Korean Human Rights Organizations (ANKHRO / 북í•œ인ê¶Å’단체얰합회) held a press conference today at 2 p.m. near the US Embassy in Seoul.  Member groups Helping Hands Korea, Justice for North Korea, Unify Korea 2009 (which also held another event in the evening -Update: BBC–), and Christians for Social Responsibility all participated. Several North Korean defectors joined the other activists, though I wasn’t sure which individual organization(s) they came with or represented. The...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. & Korea
November 17, 2009

If He Has to Deny It, It Must Be True

While we still aren’t sure whether our Blood Allies © paid the Taliban $2 million or $20 million in ransom, or how many American soldiers or Afghan civilians the Taliban used that money to kill, the South Korean government wants you to know that despite its refusal thus far to do more good than harm there, it did not promise the Taliban that it would keep its troops out of Afghanistan: South Korea did not offer to refrain from redeploying...
Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea
July 20, 2009

Seoul Should Join in Constricting North Korea’s Palace Economy

OFK favorite Sung-Yoon Lee, writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review, presses a point that the South Korean government ought to be ready to hear by now. After a sophisticated recitation of the U.S. Treasury Department’s own constriction of the North, he argues: The current ROK government now has its own chance to play a crucial role in determining the future of the Korean nation. As the self-professed sole legitimate government representative of the Korean people, Seoul must pursue a...
Categories An Alliance?/Sanctions/U.S. & Korea
June 17, 2009

Lee, Obama Still Talking Tough, North Korea Still Not Back on the Terror List

This week’s visit to Washington by South Korean President Lee Myung Bak has produced some nice, tough-sounding words that may or may not come to fruition, and which probably won’t mean a thing a year from now: Obama said a nuclear armed North Korea poses “a grave threat” to the world and said “we are going to break” the pattern of North Korea being rewarded for threatening actions. Lee thanked the United States for its “selfless sacrifice” in defending his...
Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
June 15, 2009

Biden, Lee: Won’t Get Fooled Again

He’s best known for saying things that make us cringe, but even Joe Biden is on message on North Korea: “It is important that we make sure those sanctions stick and those sanctions prohibit them from exporting or importing weapons,” Biden said. “This is a matter of us now keeping the pressure on.”  [AP] And since everyone else is, Joe, why not psychoanalyze the North Koreans’ motives?  Nope, he wouldn’t touch that one: “God only knows what he wants,” Biden...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
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
January 18, 2009

U.S. and ROK Sign Cost-Sharing Agreement

After more than a year of acrimonious negotiations — a year that should be seen as part of a perpetual, multi-year negotiation — the United States and South Korea have signed another cost-sharing agreement. So is it a good deal? The question isn’t easily answered, with all of the bullshit you have to squeegie away to get down to the facts of it: Korea has signed an agreement with the United States to provide W760 billion to keep American troops...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
January 16, 2009

FTA Prospects Still Bleak

You know, with all of the anti-American falsehoods some Koreans proliferated before the FTA was signed, I thought the entire effort was more trouble than it was worth even before the beef riots, also inspired by asinine libel, and largely attended by people so stupid as to legitimize the issue of reproductive licensing. Then came the recent parliamentary brawls: And for a moment, South Korea blessed a troubled world with the gift of laughter. (If you polled Koreans about how...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
January 14, 2009

Lee Myung Bak’s Nightmare Scenario

Yesterday, I noted that North Korea is now demanding the full normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States as its latest demand prerequisite to nuclear disarmament … notwithstanding the fact that as recently as February 2007, it had agreed to disarm in exchange for a completely different set of demands. Having achieved its first set of demands — the lifting of U.S. sanctions, the terror-sponsor designation, and probably enough fuel oil and food to take care of its inner...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan/U.S. & Korea
December 1, 2008

Watch Your Back, Comrade

No, this is not a post about Hillary Clinton’s role in Barack Obama’s cabinet. I’ve read a lot of silly reporting about Kim Jong Il’s rumored stroke, but I’ve also seen and heard enough leaks from people who ought to be in the know that I’m actually starting to believe that he’s seriously debilitated. This latest one comes from former CIA officer Art Brown, and it makes it sound as though the power struggle to inherit all this is already...
Categories Diplomacy/Kremlinology/U.S. & Korea
November 26, 2008

Like North Korea, Only Further South

I wonder if this article by the Chosun Ilbo’s Washington Correspondent, Lee Ha Won, pissed you off as much as it did me: [U.S. Ambassador Kathleen] Stephens should inform her government of the very real problems facing Korea’s automotive market, since the issue has the potential to fray ties between the Lee and Obama administrations. Korea has no regulations discriminating against U.S. automobiles. What is not widely known in the United States is that last year alone, 50,000 Japanese and...
Categories U.S. & Korea
November 21, 2008

Obama Cabinet Looking Surprisingly Centrist and Responsible

The L.A. Times reports that Obama is seriously considering either Hillary Clinton or Richard Holbrooke for State and retaining the effective Robert Gates at Defense.  We are already hearing the first sorrowful wailing from those for whom the highest form of patriotism is the emotional investment in America’s defeat and dimunition, in a way that is only coincidentally similar to the patriotism of its enemies.  At least one of them had the deficiency of judgment to actually believe that Dennis...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
November 17, 2008

Freedom Isn’t Free

USFK has announced that a battalion of Apache attack helicopters, comprising some 24 aircraft and half of USFK’s Apache strength, will leave Korea for Ft. Carson.  The choppers are expected to redeploy to Afghanistan and Iraq later on. Washington had in the past tried to redeploy some of its Apache helicopters from Korea, but such moves were often met with strong opposition from the government in Seoul, which feared a possible reduction of U.S. strength here. “The situation we are...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & 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
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