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March 7, 2012

Anju: Congressgnome Kucinich goes down

Last night, Dennis Kucinich (D-Middle Earth) was defeated by fellow Democrat Marcy Kaptur after redistricting pitted them against one another. The defeat of Kucinich is not entirely good, because for Kucinich to advocate a cause is to easily identify it as a fringe position. On the other hand, his long-standing ties to Christine Ahn (Kucinich wrote a foreward to a book she wrote years ago) gave a congressional voice to some extreme policy positions on North Korea. Also, the man...
Categories Anju Links/Useful Idiocy
December 23, 2011

Kim Jong Il: Please don’t let him be misunderstood.

We’re still waiting to see who’s willing to print Selig Harrison’s requiem for Kim Jong Il, but in the meantime, there are plenty of tools out there who say that Kim Jong Il was really just misunderstood.  First up is pretty much what you’d expect from the British left: But seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy:...
Categories Useful Idiocy
June 4, 2011

Robert King on Food Aid

Robert King went to Congress the other day to talk about food aid, and I don’t find much in his statement to take issue with. King stressed the importance of monitoring and the prevention of diversion, and proposed two measures to help avoid that: (1) delivering the aid in small allotments, and (2) giving corn or other forms of aid less desirable to the elites, as opposed to rice, which I’ll note is precisely the form of aid the leftist...
Categories Anju Links/Useful Idiocy
May 1, 2011

Announcing the Jimmy Carter-Kim Jong Il Habitat Foundation*

Hello, Jimmy Carter here. Some of you may remember me for my successful negotiations that preceded the freeing of American hostages from our embassy in Iran, brought peace to the Middle East and free elections to China, and secured the peaceful nuclear disarmament of North Korea. But of course, you say, I’m remembered for something else, too — for my tireless campaigning on behalf of the downtrodden and oppressed everywhere from 1973 to 1975, and since 1983. As my covenant...
Categories Humor/Satire/Useful Idiocy
April 28, 2011

North Korea Sort-of Admits Cheonan Sinking?

Buried within the latest AP report on Jimmy Carter’s visit to North Korea was this wonderful morsel: Carter said North Korean officials expressed deep regret for the deaths on the South Korean warship Cheonan and for the civilians killed in the island shelling. But, he said, it was clear that “they will not publicly apologize and admit culpability for the Cheonan incident.” North Korea denies sinking the ship, despite an South Korea-led international investigation that blamed the country. It says...
Categories Cheonan Incident/Useful Idiocy
April 25, 2011

Even the North Koreans think Jimmy Carter is a tool.

I seldom find myself agreeing with the North Koreans on much, but it gives me strange comfort to find that they share my contempt for America’s worst ex-president: In a memoir about her months as a prisoner in North Korea, Ling records that North Korean officials were infuriated by her suggestion that Carter be enlisted as the high-profile American to come retrieve her. They viewed Carter as washed-up and out of office for too long — a retread unfit to...
Categories Anju Links/Famine & Food Aid/Useful Idiocy
April 19, 2011

Kucinich Is the One on the Right

I briefly interrupt my hiatus to give you this to gawk upon: The Daily Show – Dennis Kucinich’s Improbable SuccessTags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook Kucinich, the Congressgnome from Middle Earth, has made a few appearances in this blog for being the main congressional backer of Christine Ahn’s National Campaign to End the Korean War.  Anyway, it disappoints me to see Kucinich nudged out of Congress by non-democratic means, whether those means involve...
Categories Useful Idiocy/WTF?
February 24, 2011

Is the paradigm shifting on hunger in North Korea? (Also, fiskings of Chris Hill and Selig Harrison)

OFK regulars should all know how much regard I have for Christopher Hill. So are my own preconceptions causing me to find something vaguely repellent in the way Hill frames the issue of food aid, or do others see things the way I do? Would food aid help to ensure the survival of a state whose treatment of its own citizens is among the most abysmal in the world? If so, and if denying food aid would result in a...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Fiskings/Useful Idiocy
December 14, 2010

Co-Author Distances Himself from Selig Harrison’s Vicarious Surrender Plan

You don’t see the New York Times print a correction like this one every day: An Op-Ed article on Monday, about the sea boundary between North and South Korea, listed as an author John H. Cushman, a retired Army lieutenant general who commanded the United States-South Korean First Corps Group from 1976 to 1978. During the editing process, General Cushman asked that his name be removed as a co-author, but because of technical problems his request was not received before...
Categories Useful Idiocy/Yeonpyeong Attack
December 13, 2010

Lord Haw Haw of Pyongyang

Selig Harrison’s latest op-ed is such a bizarre departure, even by his own declining standards, that I had to read it for myself to really believe it. I have little to add to what Kushibo has already said about this, except to stare agape at Harrison’s use of language. He calls South Korea’s elected President Lee Myung Bak is a “hard-liner,” while hereditary tyrant Kim Jong Il is a “leader.” Deaths that North Korea caused with malice aforethought are attributable...
Categories Useful Idiocy/Yeonpyeong Attack
November 24, 2010

Mayor of Incheon Blames North Korean Shelling on Little Eichmanns Coming Home to Roost

I’ve often said that in the eyes of many “progressive” South Koreans, it’s just not physically possible for North Korea to do wrong, and Incheon Mayor Song Young-Gil has done much to confirm our worst fears. A day after the North Koreans shelled Yeonpyeong Island — which, by the way, is undisputed South Korean territory — Song tweeted out that the attack was provoked by South Korean military exercises. Song also uploaded some pictures and said that North Korea shelled...
Categories Korean Politics/Useful Idiocy/WTF?/Yeonpyeong Attack
October 19, 2010

The Boy Who Cried “Sheep!”: One Man’s Mass Murderer Is Selig Harrison’s Reformer

For someone who judged the evidence of North Korea’s uranium enrichment program so skeptically, Selig Harrison sure doesn’t set a very high bar to perceive evidence of “reform” in North Korea. But Harrison’s latest op-ed in the Boston Globe is in equal parts breathless and baseless, and might just extend his dismal predictive record into the next decade. In his desperation to find some sign that North Korea’s new Inner Party is a hothouse of reforms, Harrison pounds the square...
Categories Humor/Satire/Kremlinology/The Camps/Useful Idiocy
September 2, 2010

Jimmy Carter’s Trip to North Korea Was a Raging Success, and Here’s Why

First, Carter brought Aijalon Gomes home. Second, he apparently gave away nothing in exchange. Third, he felt so snubbed he hasn’t even been on the talk show / op-ed circuit (at least not yet, fingers crossed) telling everyone how prepared North Korea really is for dialogue. Fourth, Carter’s apparently intentional snubbing has demonstrated to most vaguely reasonable minds that North Korea is not ready for dialogue, and that not even Carter’s generous assistance to North Korea’s nuclear program has earned...
Categories Aijalon Gomes/Useful Idiocy
August 3, 2010

The Peace Train Stops at Al-Jazzeera

Professor Sung Yoon Lee is a friend of mine, and this is why friends don’t let friends go on Al Jazzeera. When the floodlights snap on, you just might find yourself in a circus tent. In the extreme opposite corner, we have present “Professor” of Pacific Rim Studies Christine Hong, who appears to a an exact genetic clone of her comrade in the struggle, Christine Ahn, right down to the hip, urbane glasses (damn you to hell, Hwang Woo-Seok!). The...
Categories Cheonan Incident/Useful Idiocy
July 31, 2010

A modest proposal for Christine Ahn: if you really want peace, maybe you should start by asking North Korea to stop attacking South Korea.

Just when it seemed that no one would, Dennis, the Anarcho-Syndicalist-sounding Congressgnome from Middle Earth, has stepped up to save North Korea from being repressed by the violence inherent in the system: “If North Korea presents some kind of a limited missile threat to any part of the United States coastline, the obvious solution would be to go to North Korea, and to negotiate with them and to talk to them, and to work with them to avoid any confrontation,”...
Categories Useful Idiocy
July 20, 2010

“[W]e traveled with poison, so that if we were caught, we’d take it and kill ourselves.”

Sue Lloyd-Roberts continues her look at North Korea by interviewing refugees in Seoul and asking them about the images her minders allowed her to film. At 13:00, Lloyd-Roberts interviews Young Howard, a/k/a Ha Tae Kyung, the founder of Open Radio. She even sits in as he interviews a source by telephone. She seems to presume (incorrectly) that Ha is North Korean, but in fact, he’s a South Korean and a former leftist political prisoner. It’s both unsurprising and striking how...
Categories Inside NK/Media Criticism/Refugees/Useful Idiocy
July 10, 2010

Debunking the 3/26 Conspiracy “Science”

I have not, until now, seen the report of the The Joint Civilian-Military Investigation Group linked elsewhere, so let’s begin there. You can read the whole thing for yourself, but for your convenience, I’ll reproduce something about the composition of the investigative group itself. Emphasis mine: The Joint Civilian-military Investigation Group (JIG) conducted its investigation with 25 experts from 10 top Korean expert agencies, 22 military experts, 3 experts recommended by the National Assembly, and 24 foreign experts constituting 4...
Categories Cheonan Incident/Useful Idiocy