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October 19, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 56

At the end of this post, there is big news, but  if I told you now, I couldn’t wring the last full measure of absurdity out of  it.  So please stick with me here.  I have  accused the South Korean government of promoting anti-Americanism.  When I do, I speak of things like  this: The chief presidential secretary for security Song Min-soon on Wednesday said South Korea would be the greatest victim in a war on the peninsula due to the...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD/WTF?
October 19, 2006

Interview: L. Gordon Flake, Executive Director, Mansfield Foundation

Gordon Flake (bio)  is two things that make his opinions interesting and valuable to me.  First, he’s a fluent Korean speaker, and those of us who aren’t are always at some disadvantage to those who do when we are gathering the facts we process into our views.  Second — and Gordon may not agree with this characterization — his views  strike me as classically  liberal. His views are probably more independent and less jaundiced by partisan bias or  ambitions  than...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/Famine & Food Aid/Google Earth/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Media Criticism/NK Economics/Proliferation/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
October 17, 2006

Of Tin-Pot Crises, and Real Ones

U.N. Resolution 1695, passed after North Korea’s missile tests, demanded that countries exercise “vigilance” to be certain that their money wasn’t paying for more missiles.  South Korea adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach and continued as if nothing had changed.  It even had another illegal payments-to-North Korea  kerfuffle (“I apologize for the illegal remittance issue, which was caused by mismatch between law and reality” — a real classic).  The focii of all these legal and ethical evasions are Kumgang...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 16, 2006

NRO on Ban Ki-Moon and the Alliance

It reads like an autopsy. The choice of Ban Ki-moon should have been good news. South Korea and the United States are formal treaty allies. We have about 30,000 troops in South Korea, who train alongside the South’s army, and a headquarters meant to take operational control of all of them in the event of a crisis…. Yet the author, Mario Loyola,  thinks that South Korea  is  fully  capable of self-defense.  He thinks Roh and Ban really see the alliance...
Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
October 16, 2006

Grand Nationals Call for Reexamining Aid to North Korea

The GNP had been modestly supportive of “engagement” theories during the high times of the unifiction, but in South Korea, the high has worn off. Park Geun-Hye, an exceedingly cunning sensor of the shifting political winds, is staking out “Sunshine Lite” as something more reciprocal than her previous statements had suggested. Here’s a rough translation of her most recent statement: The Sunshine Policy is necessary for leading North Korea toward change and for releasing tensions between North and South. But...
Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 15, 2006

U.N.S.C.R. 1718: Who Won, Who Lost (Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 13)

John Bolton: Winner. I’d like to hear John Bolton’s critics deny that, as with Resolution 1695, he has wrung far more effectiveness from the U.N. than we had come to expect. Not only should we confirm this man, pronto, we should clone him. Madeleine Albright never got results like these. The United States: Winner. We got everything we really wanted here: help constricting Kim Jong Il’s financial arteries the right to search his ships and planes. an embargo on the...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Geopolitics/Japan/Japan & Korea/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 11, 2006

The Sunshine Policy Is Dead, Part 3

Like the captain of a sinking ship herding rats back into the hold, Kim Dae Jung is desperately trying to preserve a policy that was his dubious legacy.  Without Sunshine, there is only bribery and a tarnished hunk of metal.  Kim, predictably, apportions blame equally between North Korea and the United States.  Honestly, there is just no pleasing some people.  We’ve offered the North Koreans far too much for far too long.  If DJ really thinks the North Koreans have...
Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 1, 2006

Is the Bush Administration Backing Ban Ki-Moon?

Jim Hoagland thinks so, and he thinks we may regret that: That warning of the dangers of answered prayers applies particularly to President Bush and his support for Ban Ki Moon, South Korea’s reliably stolid foreign minister, in the highly competitive race to succeed Kofi Annan at year’s end. Bush — pilloried by Third World radicals at last week’s General Assembly opening — may be picking up a lightning rod instead of a shield. Hoagland isn’t very clear in his...
Categories "United" Nations/U.S. & Korea
September 30, 2006

Fifth Column Watch: The USFK, Free Speech, and Subversion

Nothing really surprising here: North Korea on Tuesday criticized the U.S. military for giving American names to certain areas in South Korea, arguing that it is part of a ploy to “permanently Americanize South Korea.” Americanize South Korea? Perhaps you can be forgiven for suggesting that if you live in an oppressed, suffocated, isolated tyranny where reading up on current events can get you killed. Since we’re on the subject, where has the U.S. military given an American name to...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
September 29, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 53

The end of the Eighth U.S. Army  in Korea  comes as no surprise to me; the rumors are not new, and this is easy  to downplay as “restructuring.”  With less than one complete U.S. infantry division left in Korea, it’s hard to call it EUSA a true Army-level command, but the symbolic value of  its removal  would be very significant.  I suspect it will also mean that the USFK’s new commander will be a three-star.
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
September 28, 2006

Maybe He Needed Instructions.

President Roh Moo-hyun said Thursday that South Korea had sounded Pyongyang out on the joint comprehensive approach to the stalled six-party talks prior to his recent summit with U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington. Really, I don’t quibble with him floating his trial balloon to the North Koreans.  It’s the sequence of it that speaks volumes.  While we’re dumping on the South Korean government, don’t miss another fairly shocking example that Jeffery turned up: In the early stage of...
Categories Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea
September 28, 2006

What, Me Wimpy?

“Sometimes I may look like a weak, soft leadership,” Ban said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press. “You may look at me as a soft person, but I have inner strength. This is what normally people from the outside world would have some difficulty in seeing — people from Asia particularly, when we regard humility, a humbleness, as a very important virtue.” Ban spoke to reporters after being reached at a  Manhattan salon, where he was receiving a...
Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
September 27, 2006

My Testimony at the House International Relations Committee

[Update: For some strange reason, the document was coming up as a previous, incomplete draft. Sorry for any who saw that one; you should be able to see the final version now.] [Update 1/2007:   , including my verbal testimony, written statement, and photographic exhibits, at pages 59-94 (pdf).  Other witnesses that day were Amb. Chris Hill, Undersecretary of Defense Richard Lawless, and Korea experts  Balbina Hwang and Gordon Flake.] Well, I can’t thank Rep. Henry Hyde’s staff enough for...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
September 26, 2006

DOA 52 Update

Ordinarily, allies shouldn’t have to issue ultimata to each other, but in this case, it got results when nothing else did.  In a few days, you can expect to see the Roh Administration use this to play the han card for political gain and depict themselves as helpless victims of Yankee bullying.   We’ve gained a range, and Roh will gain a moment’s sympathy, but the alliance’s long-term political support will suffer.
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
September 22, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 11: Eyes on Seoul

Green eyeshades are turning toward Seoul, Kaesong, and Kumgang.  If you think things were bad before, this is where U.S.-Korea relations will be severely tested.  The U.S. Treasury Department isn’t going to put up with Seoul acting as Kim Jong Il’s financier for long, and  with the  likely exceptions of some shady  Russian banks  and whatever China is secretly providing at the state-to-state level, South Korea is Kim Jong Il’s last cash cow. Kumgang That poll yesterday — the one...
Categories Appeasement/Money Laundering/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
September 22, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 52: Thirty Days

The Air Force, via  USFK Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Garry Trexler,  speaking at a public lecture, has given the South Korean Defense Ministry thirty days to find it some training range space, or see the air component relocated.  I’ll go that one further:  if the air cover leaves, the ground forces leave, too.  With the exception of small Special Forces and SEAL teams, the U.S. military fights combined arms warfare.  Take away the air cover and we go home.  I...
Categories An Alliance?/Korean Politics/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
September 21, 2006

The ‘C’ Word, Part 2: Yu Gi Joon Is a Vicarious Thug

[Update: Great minds think alike Oh, and did I forget to mention that Yu is spokesman for his party? Shoulda mentioned that.] I’ve previously stated — and will now restate — that it’s time for the United States government to condemn, in some appropriate but unambigous manner, any suggestion of a coup in South Korea. I yield to no one in my distaste for Roh Moo Hyun, who I believe will eventually share culpability for the needless deaths of many...
Categories Korean Law/Korean Politics/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea
September 19, 2006

Self-Fulfilling Demagoguery

The background research for Roh Moo Hyun’s national security policy was a “progessive” TV documentary. The claim: The USFK could strike North Korea and lead the South Korean army into a war without even consulting Roh first: A ruling-party official quoted Roh as saying at the time, “Could the U.S. carry out a bombing raid on North Korea as it wishes without our knowledge? It is possible. South Korea can’t even claim the status of a sovereign state. The truth:...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea