Category: Uncategorized

(by guest blogger Andy Jackson) This a part of a series of posts on the Seoul Summit: Promoting Human Rights in North Korea and related events. This is the first in what probably be a dozen or so posts on the Seoul Summit and some other events. While I hope to have them done by the evening of Monday, December 12 (Korean time), family, work and other commitments might stretch the project out a day or two. While participants such...

(By guest blogger Andy Jackson) I was in Seoul on Tuesday to do some work for the Seoul Summit (I live outside Seoul). That gave me a chance to visit a meeting of Catacombs, a group led by Tim Peters. I walked in out of a cold Korean December night and saw about 25 people packed shoulder to shoulder in a very small art gallery. I sat on a small stool in front of the door because their wasn’t room...

(By guest blogger Andy Jackson) (This is just a boring documentation post. I’ll try to have something juicier in my next piece.) I did not get an invitation to the closed sessions at the Seoul Summit tomorrow, but I was able to get an invitation to the evening welcoming reception tomorrow night. I was able to get that much because I’m Executive Director of Republicans Abroad-Korea, one of many organizations supporting the summit. We and the Democrats cosponsored a reception...

(By guest blogger Andy Jackson) It happens with enough regularity that I hardly notice it anymore. Step One; Pyongyang throws a tantrum: North Korea said on Tuesday that it is ‘absolutely impossible’ for Pyongyang to return to the six-party denuclearization talks as the United States is ‘avoiding’ a bilateral meeting on Washington’s financial sanctions on the communist state. Step Two; Chung Dong-young says something stupid in an attempt to appease them: Unification Minister Chung Dong-young says issues other than the...

(By guest blogger, Andy Jackson) This is the last in a four-part series on lectures concerning human rights in North Korea delivered at Sogang University in Seoul on November 26, 2005. The text in block quotes were taken from notes of translation of the lecture and supplemented by an article written by Kim on the same topic. Any inaccuracies in the text are strictly my own. Apostates are often the most vehement of critics. Such is the case with Kim...

(By guest blogger, Andy Jackson) This is the third in a four-part series on lectures concerning human rights in North Korea delivered at Sogang University in Seoul on November 26, 2005. The text in block quotes were taken from part of my notes of the lecture. I apologize for any inaccuracies in the text and would welcome corrections. Tim Peters, head of Helping Hands Korea, is a soft-spoken man who has taken on an imposing mission; to feed starving North...

One of al-Qaida’s top five leaders, said to be responsible for planning overseas strikes, was killed by Pakistani security forces in a rocket attack near the Afghan border with U.S. help, American and Pakistani officials said Saturday. Hamza Rabia, a key associate of al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, died Thursday in an explosion in the North Waziristan tribal area, and his remains were identified in DNA tests, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said. Two U.S. counterterrorism officials . . ....

The Korea Times reports: A North Korean woman trying to defect to South Korea was taken into custody by Chinese police in Beijing Friday after repeatedly failing to gain refuge at a South Korean school there, a government official said. The South Koreans claim to have sent an official to the South Korean International School, presumably to try to help this woman. Thanks to the effectiveness of Ban Ki-Moon’s quiet diplomacy, the Chinese police had already hauled her away when...

Here, in the Washington Times. Bill Gertz has really been all over this story. Plenty of new information in this very lengthy article, including these interesting facts: 1. The trail of evidence leading back to the Chinese government is growing. After we finally convince China to stop manipulating the value of its own currency, we may have to have a serious talk about manipulating ours. 2. North Korea isn’t actually the largest source of counterfeit money. Colombia is. The Colombian...

Andrew Natsios, the author of The Great North Korean Famine and the only senior U.S. official who likely understands the true nature and urgency of the food situation in the North, is leaving his post as Director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). He does so at an ominous moment, just as the famine threatens to return. WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Andrew Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, will leave his post for...

In final the days leading up to Freedom House’s Seoul conference, the movement to put human rights back into the center of South Korea’s policy toward the North appears to be gaining momentum. It is still a fragile moment. The momentum could still be lost to petty factional and interpersonal disputes. If the movement’s leading lights unite, however, it could also shift South Korea’s national debate, across the political spectrum, as Korea’s political parties prepare and adjust their platforms in...

Today’s Washington Times supplies some circumstantial (if subsequent) evidence to back up the claims reported in the Yangban’s excellent post above. Support your jaw on a stable, padded object and read on. Hard evidence of North Korea’s subversion of the South is emerging into the light of day: South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, or NIS, recently reported to the National Assembly that North Korea sent as many as 670 secret dispatches to the South over the last four years. Analysts...

And to think that in Roh Moo-Hyun’s administration, Ban Ki-Moon is actually the sensible one. Via the Chosun Ilbo: Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon told a press conference on Wednesday the government would take some time to decide its position on the conference scheduled for Dec. 8-11 since it was a privately organized event. He also hinted that the government is wary of meeting with Jay Lefkowitz, the special U.S. envoy for North Korean human rights, who will come to Seoul...

Chutzpah Alert: Disbelieve the rumors. The U.S. will not negotiate with North Korea on counterfeiting.

Are we witnessing the rise of a true opposition in Syria?

The bad news is that most Koreans want to keep their sons out of the military. The good news is that most of their sons, if issued weapons, would prefer to point them at us. Maybe we should be encouraging these parents.

Admittedly, it’s unconventional, but I think the man is onto something: After seeing Team America it is virtually impossible, for any of the five of us anyway, to see a picture of Kim Jong Il or even hear his name without the goofy South Park puppet leaping to mind. Parker’s and Stone’s special gift is to see the pompous, the absurd, and the self-important through the eyes of the young and to caricature these with Chaplinesque comic sensibility. The Middle...

Joe Lieberman is back from Iraq: Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And...