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Category: U.S. & Korea

December 3, 2006

If the Alliance Has a Future …

Several new articles give us some idea of what it might look like. The first item is the alliance’s reason for being, part of which involves dealing with life after Kim Jong Il: OPLAN 5029. Back in April 2005 the South Koreans unilaterally pulled out of planning for it for fear of pissing off North Korea. A month later, talks seemed to be on again, but with no word on progress until now. A government source on Thursday said then-defense...
Categories An Alliance?/Reconstruction/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
November 29, 2006

O Roh Is Me

It’s time for another installment of President Roh Moo Hyun’s whiney, self-pitying Hamlet act. “I hope I won’t be the first president to fail to complete his full term in office. Speculation about his intentions ran wild. The opposition Democratic Labor Party said the president was “threatening the public. Insiders do not rule out an extreme step, saying Roh is in a brittle psychological state. If you’re surprised by any of this, you must be a new reader.  Recall that...
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
November 29, 2006

Man Who Led Violent 9/11 MacArthur Protests Arrested as N. Korean Spy

Has anyone forgotten this?  Today, we have a bit more certainty about what many of us had probably guessed, and we have yet more mounting  evidence of a hidden North Korean hand behind South Korea’s violent anti-American radicalism: Kang Soon-jeong, the former vice chairman of the South Korean chapter of the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification, an outlawed pro-Pyongyang group, was arrested on Tuesday for providing “national secrets” to Pyongyang, police said. Kang was also co-chairman of a civic group that...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea
November 21, 2006

The Horse Is Dead, Already

Update:   And remember, kids, they’re not  anti-American.  No, this is not Pyongyang.  Sadly, it’s the very building where I got married.  Until today, I never knew that the road back to the Third World passed it. Original Post:   There can’t possibly be more than a 10% chance that there will be a U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement  before 2010, and that assumes that the Democrats lose control of Congress in 2008.  The window has closed.  So why on earth...
Categories Anti-Americanism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
November 17, 2006

Proliferation Security Watch

The AP has a very detailed story on the search of a North Korean ship in the Indian Ocean, along with a nice summary of other searches in the recent past.  In this case, it sounds like all they found was cement. In other searches, Hong Kong authorities detained two North Korean cargo ships in October for safety violations apparently unrelated to the U.N. sanctions. Myanmar permitted a North Korean cargo ship in distress to anchor at a port in...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China & Korea/Japan & Korea/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/WMD
November 16, 2006

What’s the Korean Word for ‘Obsolete?’

Unification minister-designate Lee Jae-joung said Wednesday while the Korea-U.S. alliance is crucial and should remain solid, it must not be allowed to affect South Korea’s future negatively. In a special lecture for children of Korean expatriates in English-speaking countries, Lee said there must be a “Maginot Line“ for South Korea in maintaining its alliance with the U.S., and the two countries should break away from the form their relations took in the Cold War and pursue a new relationship suited...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
November 13, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 60

The United States and its allies are moving forward with active naval operations  to contain the North Korean proliferation threat.   The strikingly odd thing about this is that South Korea isn’t going to be one of them.  Here is a list of nations with which the United States has more diplomatic and military synergy today than with South Korea:  Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Australia, … and France.  I guess you’re officially no longer  a U.S. ally when...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized/WMD
November 9, 2006

Chosun Ilbo’s Take on Dem Takeover Sketches Shape of New Realignment

Today is November 9th, which means that the official sulking period has ended, and it’s time to start picking your way though the banquet of bloggable delicacies of our new moveable feast.  America has moved to the left, but it’s uncertain just how far.  At the same time, Korea seems poised to move  right just, and it’s not at all clear that either side will stop to shake hands if, and when, they cross paths.  A more elemental question is...
Categories America/An Alliance?/Human Rights/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 8, 2006

Rumsfeld Resigns

[Update:   More on Robert Gates here, and some clues to how he thinks here and .]   It was probably inevitable, and if it might have been the only way to preserve any kind of bipartisan consensus on Iraq.  I agree with Robert’s analysis, as it concerns Korea policy.  Rumsfeld has managed the downsizing of the alliance creditably, confronting, rather than denying, the effect of the political trends there.   Much of what Rumsfeld did right in Korea is owed...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 6, 2006

A (Blue) House Divided Against Itself

Kim Jong Il can count dividing the U.S.-Korea alliance as one of his recent  successes, but in the process, he’s also divided his friends in South Korea.  The left finds itself  split among  accomodators, appeasers, and  outright agents, and those factions  are going into an election year  at  war with each other.  One of the most divisive of the internecine struggles is Seoul’s to-join-or-not-to-join agony over the Proliferation Security Initiative.  Today, Yonhap has a long story on the subject. President...
Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/WMD
November 3, 2006

Wobble Watch: Condi Rice Talks Tough, the Pentagon Talks Scary Tough

The Administration is trying to sound tough with the North Koreans, but I’m inherently distrustful of tough talk that comes the week before an election: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday the United States wanted “concrete action” when six-party talks resume on North Korea’s nuclear program. Rice said the starting point for the talks, which North Korea has boycotted since last November in protest at U.S. financial restrictions, would be to seek implementation of an agreement signed with...
Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views/WMD
November 3, 2006

Someone Please Staple Kim Geun-Tae’s Lips Together

This is an act that damages our national pride and is not appropriate for the South Korea-U.S. alliance.” — Kim Geun Tae, head of S. Korea’s ruling party and North Korea’s favorite dancing piggy, on hearing that the United States actually intends to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718. When I worried aloud that the United States would ease sanctions on North Korea during the pendency of the next round of endless, pointless six-party extortion denuclearization talks, I based my...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Unintended Humor/WMD/WTF?
October 30, 2006

As Roh Prepares to Name a New Cabinet, New Calls to Reboot Uri

After the local elections, I had blogged about the rift in the Uri Party about merging with other parties on the left.  In the wake of Uri’s beating in the last round of elections, it’s painfully obvious that the left is weak and fragmented and only stands a chance if it unites.  Note, for example, how Uri can’t win in South Jeolla province because other lef-wing parties win instead.  In that spirit, a former Justice Minister and Uri founder has...
Categories Diplomacy/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
October 28, 2006

Suspected N. Korean Spies, Shielded by Ruling Party Parliamentarian, Played a Leading Role in Anti-U.S. Protests (The Death of an Alliance, Part 58)

[Update: Welcome Gateway Pundit readers; this story is developing rapidly, and now, there’s new evidence that the North Koreans tried  to help the ruling leftist Uri  Party win the Seoul  mayor’s race last May.  Plus, more evidence of a North Korean hand in fanning anti-Americanism in the South.] A  widening  spy scandal surrounding  several senior members of the  leftist Democratic Labor Party and  a U.S. citizen  may have  led to  the resignation of the head of the National Intelligence Service...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
October 23, 2006

So Much for a Nuclear-Free Korea

Update:   A well-informed reader says the Pentagon denies this story. This should get their attention in Beijing.  As ye sow: Seoul and Washington will add use of nuclear arms by U.S. forces in response to North Korean atomic weapons in a joint operation strategy codenamed OPLAN 5027, sources said Thursday. That would mean the return of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea 15 years after they were pulled out in 1991. At the 28th Military Committee Meeting (MCM)...
Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/WMD
October 21, 2006

Dance, Little Piggy! (Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 14)

Most observers had speculated, since at least 1994 or so, that North Korea has the capacity to create a crude nuclear weapon. That appears to be exactly what they demonstrated recently, meaning that the only real news was our need to recalibrate Kim Jong Il’s brass-to-brains ratio. I didn’t guess whether he’d actually go through with it, but I did believe that he’d try to time it just before the U.S. election if he did. I also guessed that if...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/China & Korea/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea
October 21, 2006

MUST READ: NYT on Korean Nationalism, North and South

Today, even though it has a highly advanced economy — more than 80 percent of South Koreans have broadband Internet access at home, the highest rate in the world — the country has a nearly provincial relationship to its local heroes, like Ban Ki-moon, the foreign minister who will be the next U.N. secretary general. The most famous South Korean of recent times was Hwang Woo Suk, a scientist who in 2004 and 2005 announced breakthroughs in cloning. At home,...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Korean History/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 21, 2006

To Slip the Noose

The New York Times has a very interesting piece war-gaming the enforcement the Proliferation Security Initiative. One possibility would be for North Korea to try to smuggle out weapons or weapons components across its land borders with China or Russia, and then to a Chinese or Russian port. The weapons could then be loaded on a vessel secretly owned by North Korea but flying another country’s flag — and perhaps not be closely watched by Western intelligence services as a...
Categories Anti-Americanism/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/WMD