August 22, 2006

Maybe They Should Get Out of Iraq…

A LEBANESE student suspected of trying to paralyse the German railway network with a bomb concealed in a suitcase appeared in court yesterday, as a huge police hunt for a second suspect continued. The root cause of this is clearly that unequivocal German support for Israel, and for Bu$h’s war, which of course started this whole terrorism thing: [T]he case has rattled Germans, many of whom have clung to the belief that their government’s opposition to the war in Iraq...
Categories Islam/Terrorism (NK)/Terrorism/Iraq
August 22, 2006

NK Freedom Watch, No. 5

Courtesy of Freedom House (with a hat tip to the staff there), here. Portions of this issue read like an indictment, which mainly makes it painfully obvious how far away we are from seeing a real one. The same methods of execution are applied to political criminals and economic criminals. When the death warrant is issued for a criminal, he is immediately cut off from all food supplies and his arms and legs are broken at the joints so that...
Categories Activism/Europe/Human Rights/Washington Views
August 21, 2006

Ministry of Perfect Timing

Seoul Condoles [?] N.Korea on Death of Spymaster— Chosun Ilbo, August 21, 2006 Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok on Monday expressed his condolences to his North Korean counterpart Kwon Ho-ung on the death of Rim Dong-ok, the vice chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland[….] The North Korea committee happens to have another job in planning anti-South Korean operations like dispatching spies, in cooperation with the 35th office of the Workers’ Party. Chameleon N.Korean Spy Nabbed in...
Categories Appeasement/The Fifth Column/WTF?
August 21, 2006

Kaesong Update

[Correction: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A reader (thanks!) notes that Ms. Schwab is the U.S. Trade Representative. As it happens, the USTR has been independent from the State Department since 1962! My apologies to the State Department for the unintended defamation.] This may be the most unequivocal thing I’ve ever heard anyone in our State Department say, ever. And it pertains to including (North Korean) Kaesong products in a possible FTA with South...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 19, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 4: Smoke ‘em While You’ve Got ‘em.

Several months ago, some misguided BBC staffer asked me to fight above my weight and debate former Ambassador Donald Gregg about the allegation that British American Tobacco was secretly making cigarettes in North Korea. (The debate was for a pilot program and never aired.) At the time, I argued that the decision to grow or import tobacco should also be viewed as a decision not to grow or import food. Amb. Gregg, now president of the Korea Society, is a...
Categories Axis of Evil/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Japan/NK Economics/Washington Views
August 17, 2006

BREAKING NEWS: NK May Be Preparing Nuke Test

Thanks to a reader for forwarding; via ABC News: There is new evidence that North Korea may be preparing for an underground test of a nuclear bomb, U.S. officials told ABC News. “It is the view of the intelligence community that a test is a real possibility,” said a senior State Department official. A senior military official told ABC News that a U.S. intelligence agency has recently observed “suspicious vehicle movement” at a suspected North Korean test site. The activity...
Categories NK Military/Proliferation/WMD
August 17, 2006

TKL Saves Washington’s Upstanding Moral Reputation

The questionable massage parlor James blogged about here has been raided and shut down. In the District, federal agents targeted five brothels that were masquerading as massage parlors or spas. The establishments were 14K Spot, which operated in a basement in the 1400 block of K Street Northwest; Downtown Spa, in the 1000 block of Vermont Avenue Northwest; OK Spa, in the 2400 block of Wisconsin Avenue Northwest; Cleveland Park Holistic Health, on the second floor of a building in...
Categories Human Trafficking/Korean Society/Media Criticism/Uncategorized
August 17, 2006

North Korea’s Marshall Plan

Thanks to a reader who forwarded this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Yale Professor Michael Auslin the other day. It ought to be one of the most-discussed articles about North Korea of the year, making it especially unfortunate that you can’t see it without a subscription, except for those excerpts I will publish here. It proposes developing a civil and financial plan for the reconstruction of North Korea, and then publicizing those plans to the North Korean people. The...
Categories North Korea/Reconstruction
August 15, 2006

You’re Welcome.

Today is Liberation Day, at least for those of us on this side of the International Date Line. And because we’ve recently been on the subject of things that happened at Incheon, I thought I’d mention that the Incheon landing pictured here took place on September 8, 1945, when the United States Army arrived to liberate South Korea for the first time … from Japanese rule. You did hear that, right? Funny how no one ever talks about it. If...
Categories Anti-Americanism/History/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
August 15, 2006

Referendum

I don’t really have much to add to this, because I’ve thought a referendum on the alliance was needed since I was serving in Korea myself. While there, I could see the tension between Koreans’ desire to keep the alliance’s benefits and their contempt for the soldiers and the country who bore its burden. My small quibble with Kim Dae Joong is that “wartime control” is only the first of many dominos, and phrasing the question that way benefits those...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
August 12, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 47: What Henry Hyde Said at Incheon

Last September 11th, a band of violent quislings to a pathologically murderous regime tried to tear down a statue of the man who saved their country and the system of government that would eventually protect their right to call for its destruction. The statue survived, but the relationship between two nations suffered one more of many injuries that cumulatively may well be mortal. True alliances cannot be unilateral. As the United States and the Republic of Korea both ask what...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea
August 10, 2006

The “C” Word

When I see things like this: Sixteen former defense ministers and nine retired generals on Thursday expressed dismay at President Roh Moo-hyun’s remarks in an interview Wednesday that suggested Korea can withdraw wartime control of its troops from the U.S. any time. … and contrast them with things like this: In an interview with the Yonhap news agency, the president said, “The South Korean military’s capability is sufficient and it can get U.S. military support.” The remarks pour oil on...
Categories An Alliance?/Democracy/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
August 10, 2006

TKL Exclusive: What Hyde Will Tell Roh

Via a reliable source I can’t name, I now have some specifics on just how pretty this won’t be. Among Hyde’s expected talking points for his visit to Korea this week are the following. Disclaimer — this is a paraphrase of a paraphrase: * You want operational control of all forces during wartime. How is that going to work? Will there be a U.S. general and a Korean general commanding the entire force jointly or two forces separately? Either way,...
Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/China & Korea/Human Rights/Korean Society/NK Economics/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 9, 2006

Worst Reporting Ever

[Update: Even more Hezbollah media exploitation. And Matt has a photo where the North Koreans are caught in the act, too. Check out M.C. Escher up on the blue thing, welding away with his Inspector Gadget arms. On a completely unrelated note, but on the same blog, here’s a rather interesting theory, for all six of you who haven’t seen it yet. I must say the silence is probably the most compelling part of the case.] I’ve had plenty of...
Categories Media Criticism/Terrorism (NK)
August 9, 2006

Republican Congressmen to Visit S. Korea

Regular readers of this blog and OFK before it have seen some very direct expressions of displeasure coming from Representative Henry Hyde to the South Korean government, or whizzing past its ears on the way to North Korea, often scanned in in their original and complete form (here, here, here, here, here, here). So when Yonhap reports that Hyde, the outgoing Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, is on his way to Seoul to visit President Roh Moo Hyun,...
Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 9, 2006

N.K. to Display ‘Captured’ Unmanned Sub?

We may soon see and hear more more details about the alleged U.S. unmanned sub North Korea claims to have captured, suggests Yonhap: North Korea has captured an unmanned U.S. submersible and showcased it in front of the already captured USS Pueblo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper reported Monday. The Choson Sinbo, the organ of the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, said it was seized in waters off North Korea’s eastern city of Hamhung and that North Korean leader...
Categories U.S. Military
August 8, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 3

Two interesting reports from the region this week. One is this report that Japan is considering money laundering sanctions against North Korea, similar to those the United States has used with apparent success. There is also a new report that China, directly confronted by U.S. satellite photos, forced the cancellation of a flight that was to have carried North Korean missile parts to Iran. While I doubt China would sign on to a general boycott or sanctions effort, China is...
Categories Axis of Evil/China/China & Korea/Iran/Japan/Japan & Korea/NK Economics