Category: Uncategorized

Outbreak Update: The BBC has this interesting report about North Korea’s apparently unique strain of Bird Flu.

The Chosun Ilbo gives cautious coverage to North Korea Freedom Week, and also appears to have confused Senator Sam Brownback with this guy. Still, any attention is welcome. More on North Korea Freedom Week here.

Cheers for the BBC for broadcasting the videotape of the recent public executions in North Korea. For all of its embarassments over Iraq, the Beeb has covered the North Korea human rights story far better than any of its American counterparts. Although it appears that some South Korean news programs did initially show the tape, the Christian Science Monitor subsequently reported that the South Korean government had moved to squelch further broadcasts out of a desire to avoid giving offense...

Stretch out your hand over Egypt so that locusts will swarm over the land . . . . –Exodus 10:12 The New York Times has a fascinating article about how the military is using UAV’s for counterinsurgency patrolling. I’ve long wondered how insurgents could roam with impunity if they were watched from the skies, or how a mechanized force could ever preserve itself under the withering attack of swarms of small UAVs carrying anti-tank bomblets. This probably leads to a...

Credit Where It’s Due: Roh moves to curb police abuse of suspects. Just ask your friendly neighborhood CID agent how the police conducted their questioning in the recent past.

China is stepping up its opposition to giving Japan a seat on the U.N. Security Council. Rest assured that their concerns are more strategic and long-term than a fit of pique over two uninhabited, guano-encrusted rocks. Meanwhile, another one for the “you heard it here first” file. Last fall, I attended a meeting at the Senate office buildings where Rep. Ed Royce was one of the luminaries present. Royce, a Republican from California, first hinted that this spring, we were...

Credit Where It’s Due: Roh moves to curb police abuse of suspects. Just ask your friendly neighborhood CID agent how the police conducted their questioning in the recent past.

China is stepping up its opposition to giving Japan a seat on the U.N. Security Council. Rest assured that their concerns are more strategic and long-term than a fit of pique over two uninhabited, guano-encrusted rocks. Meanwhile, another one for the “you heard it here first” file. Last fall, I attended a meeting at the Senate office buildings where Rep. Ed Royce was one of the luminaries present. Royce, a Republican from California, first hinted that this spring, we were...

Human Rights Updates: A British Junior Foreign Minister who recently visited North Korea has told the BBC that conditions there appear to be getting worse. The report, which quotes Yodok survivors on the conditions they survived there, is somewhat at odds with the new report of the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in North Korea. The U.N. report goes out of its way to note recent improvements, despite the fact that North Korea barred the Rapporteur from entering the...

The Pulitzer Committee did not select Claudia Rosett this year. I can’t criticize the result too much without having read the winning entries–nor am I opposed to the idea of “pungent columns that provided a voice for the underdog and underprivileged”–but it seems to me that the corruption of an institution in which some would invest “global test” powers has broader implications.

Talks to Restart? Take this announcement with a grain of salt, and when it comes to the hope of any real progress there, unscrew the lid from the shaker: “Even if we get past the worst and the six-party talks restart, ultimately we cannot be optimistic” since North Korea is now saying the six-party talks should be mutual nuclear disarmament negotiations. What’s this? My exclusive OFK satellite eaves-ear-dropper has produced a transcript of the meeting: China: The Americans will refer...

Human Rights Updates: A British Junior Foreign Minister who recently visited North Korea has told the BBC that conditions there appear to be getting worse. The report, which quotes Yodok survivors on the conditions they survived there, is somewhat at odds with the new report of the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in North Korea. The U.N. report goes out of its way to note recent improvements, despite the fact that North Korea barred the Rapporteur from entering the...

The Pulitzer Committee did not select Claudia Rosett this year. I can’t criticize the result too much without having read the winning entries–nor am I opposed to the idea of “pungent columns that provided a voice for the underdog and underprivileged”–but it seems to me that the corruption of an institution in which some would invest “global test” powers has broader implications.

I guess the next step is for South Korea to start calling itself the Outer Koguryo Semi-Autonomous Zone. This story from the Chosun Ilbo is almost too amazing to believe: Military exchanges between Korea and China will intensify to a level similar to those between Korea and Japan, the defense ministry said Monday. “China, more than any nation, wishes for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, so we plan to strengthen our military exchanges with China, including making defense...

The Taliban’s Last Gasp? The fighting season has started in Afghanistan. We’ll soon know whether they have the capacity to put a significant crimp in reconstruction.

Note to “local pundits:” Get a life! UPDATE: You guys, too. Lives, you must get. Now, you must get them. What, us? Racist? The nerve!

It takes one to know one: Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara on Sunday fired a broadside at Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, saying his criticism of Japan was a “a third-rate political technique” to recover popularity at home. Appearing on a Fuji TV interview program, Ishihara said Roh’s repeated criticism of Japan over its colonial abuses and the Dokdo Islets was “a stopgap measure for President Roh to recover some of his popularity.” He added, “For a politician it’s a third-rate technique.”...

Zimbabwe Update: Publius reports that Robert Mugabe appears to have gotten away with using electoral fraud to amend his country’s constitution. Zimbabwe has superb land, a relatively well-educated work force, and a tradition of following the rule of law. It had one of the two best judiciaries in the region, along with South Africa. Now, all is being looted by one of Africa’s last surviving Big Men.