Category: Uncategorized

How to wreck the Syrian economy virtually overnight: Interesting piece on NRO. Those who want to appease Syria, Iran, North Korea, etc., often portray the process as a false choice between appeasement and war. But the combination of bold public statements and economic leverage are precisely the kind of “soft power” that works so well on regimes that depend on exports–like Syria, Iran, and North Korea (and which Europe undermined in Iraq). Syria has just lost one valuable source of...

Freedom is a beautiful thing, no?

Speaking of guerrilla logistics . . . . For all of you who titter at , take heed of the recent “UFO sightings” in Iran. Airspace is neither sacred nor hermetically sealed. You just have to do it more carefully with North Korea. Nor must a UAV carry a Pentagon price tag. More . Hat tip: Winds of Change, which is on fire this week. Funny how people are using UAVs for all sorts of imaginative gee-whiz apps–remote sensing, thermal...

UPDATE: I’m getting some unverified information (but from a good source, and shared with some fairly important people) that the Yonhap report may not be true, Chun Ki-Won’s confirmation notwithstanding. This has to be absolute hell for Rev. Park’s family. Obviously, I want to give readers the most accurate and up-to-date information I can, so keep checking back. You will know when I know. This is one time when I pray that I was wrong. * * * * *...

About that press conference: Just got back, but there is much to do at the office. Will give you a full report later. Much pointed discussion of North Korea, and a little entertainment, too. UPDATE: OK, here are three posts for your reading pleasure– First, what’s in the bill itself; a nice, readable summary. Second, my observations on how the press has turned the U.S. Capitol into a closed shop, and how they managed to blow the story anyway. Third,...

Heh. Absolutely the last thing I’ll pilfer from Winds of Change today. North Korea sees that it has an image problem. Apparently this guy’s not meeting his quota. This apologia probably isn’t holding much water, either–not even on the left.

How to wreck the Syrian economy virtually overnight: Interesting piece on NRO. Those who want to appease Syria, Iran, North Korea, etc., often portray the process as a false choice between appeasement and war. But the combination of bold public statements and economic leverage are precisely the kind of “soft power” that works so well on regimes that depend on exports–like Syria, Iran, and North Korea (and which Europe undermined in Iraq). Syria has just lost one valuable source of...

Freedom is a beautiful thing, no?

Speaking of guerrilla logistics . . . . For all of you who titter at , take heed of the recent “UFO sightings” in Iran. Airspace is neither sacred nor hermetically sealed. You just have to do it more carefully with North Korea. Nor must a UAV carry a Pentagon price tag. More . Hat tip: Winds of Change, which is on fire this week. Funny how people are using UAVs for all sorts of imaginative gee-whiz apps–remote sensing, thermal...

North Korea is threatening to test long-range missiles again. Maybe this time, they’ll lob one over South Korea and send Roh’s poll numbers into the mid-teens. This BBC report has a great run-down on the various North Korean missiles and what they can hit.

In the absence of a nationhood based on principle, it is jingoistic nationalism that becomes the most politically and economically expedient binding agent. Two reports from South Korea today tell us of the woeful depths to which some would stoop to exploit it. How does the contagion spread, you ask? One carrier is television: Reigncom, an MP3 player maker, raised the specter of an American invader in its ads: “Will cheering for independence make you independent? Korean researchers have spent...

The gentle, tolerant climate that gave us the English-spectrum lynch mob is at it again. You may have thought that Korea’s “netizens” and Map Police were just a nonspecific group of twitchy nationalist asshats with DSL and too much time on their hands, but they prefer to be called “cyber diplomats.” They also have a great name–VANK. Most recently, these particular VANKers punked the British Museum for failing to completely reflect their own parochial, stilted, and (one suspects) deeply insecure...

Kudos to the Joongang Ilbo’s Washington correspondent, Brian Lee, whose report on the State Department’s human rights report goes beyond summaries and bullet points and actually tells us a few things we didn’t already know. Freedom House, which had done much to keep human rights on the table in our Cold War-era talks with the Soviets, is going to receive $1.7 million to put together a conference on North Korea next year. They’re already hunting for a Director and a...

In the absence of a nationhood based on principle, it is jingoistic nationalism that becomes the most politically and economically expedient binding agent. Two reports from South Korea today tell us of the woeful depths to which some would stoop to exploit it. How does the contagion spread, you ask? One carrier is television: Reigncom, an MP3 player maker, raised the specter of an American invader in its ads: “Will cheering for independence make you independent? Korean researchers have spent...

Prepare to hear more about this one. The other coup for the Joongang‘s Washington reporting is this bit, about which I blogged here several weeks back. The basic thrust was that California Democrat Tom Lantos and Virginia Republican Frank Wolf were working on a new anti-dictatorship bill that from the very limited information initially reported, sounded a little like a revival of the Jackson-Vanik concept (much praised in Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy) that first tied trade and economic...

The gentle, tolerant climate that gave us the English-spectrum lynch mob is at it again. You may have thought that Korea’s “netizens” and Map Police were just a nonspecific group of twitchy nationalist asshats with DSL and too much time on their hands, but they prefer to be called “cyber diplomats.” They also have a great name–VANK. Most recently, these particular VANKers punked the British Museum for failing to completely reflect their own parochial, stilted, and (one suspects) deeply insecure...

A very good crowd. Norbert sent me a notice (unf, by which time it was already the day of), so I suspect he deserves partial credit. I’d like to know more about the Korean group that helped organize this.

Kudos to the Joongang Ilbo’s Washington correspondent, Brian Lee, whose report on the State Department’s human rights report goes beyond summaries and bullet points and actually tells us a few things we didn’t already know. Freedom House, which had done much to keep human rights on the table in our Cold War-era talks with the Soviets, is going to receive $1.7 million to put together a conference on North Korea next year. They’re already hunting for a Director and a...