Not a very ambassadorial thing to say, perhaps, but there are plenty of reasons to justify Washington’s harder new line toward North Korea of late. Leave aside the decade-plus of North Korean cheating and defiance of any standards followed by the rest of humanity. Although evidence of a policy shift is still inconclusive, it’s arguable that several developments last fall strengthened the hand of hard-liners (me, for one) seeking the abandonment of negotiation from weakness in favor of the economic...

Hat tip to the Nomad for this one. You can be sure that if these guys had caused this accident, it would be a major news story, and possibly an international incident. Hopelessly skewed coverage of this kind causes me to conclude that our soldiers won’t be appreciated until they’re gone, and when Korean taxpayers are doing what American taxpayers have done for far too long.

What sort of moral shallowness transforms murderers into fashion icons? Sometimes, there’s no serious answer for unserious consumers of the radical chic pablum that twelve year old Cambodian girls stitch together for affluent suburban college kids.

If true, this could be a tangible sign of sincere Chinese annoyance with its North Korean viceroy. Via Daily NK, then Yonhap: SEOUL, Jan. 28 (Yonhap) — A local Internet news site reported Saturday that a top aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was arrested in Macao earlier this month. Citing Japanese diplomatic sources, DailyNK claimed Kang Sang-choon, a secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and chief of staff to Kim, was detained in connection to circulation of...

Long-time readers of this blog know that for nearly two years, I’ve advocated aggressive economic measures against the North Korean regime that would force international finance to choose between doing business in the North and in the United States. Such sanctions would wring the most knowledgeable and best-financed investors out of North Korea until it made signficant and irreversible steps toward comporting itself with the rules by which humanity lives. Until now, the Bush Administration has failed to take strong-yet-practical...

The Donga Ilbo reports that North Korea has banned fishing from motorboats.

Sunni tribes claim to have arrested 270 al-Qaeda, and those harboring them. The next test is whether they will hand the prisoners over to someone who can exploit their intelligence value.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, whose goons most recently gained infamy with an anti-anti-North Korean protest that blocked the U.S. Ambassador from attending a media interview, will now represent South Korean government workers. The KCTU has a long history of violent and thuggish protests, reflexive anti-Americanism,* and sympathetic dealings with the North Korean regime. The KCTU is the more radical of South Korea’s two largest labor organizations, the other being the Federation of Korean Trade Unions. The Korean Government...

How did I miss this? I’d normally hang on every word of a Hitchens article about British cuisine; this time, he nails the human rights issue in North Korea, drawing unfavorable comparisons to history’s most infamous oppressions: To call a set of actions “genocidal,” as in the case of Darfur, is to invoke legal consequences that are entailed by the U.N.’s genocide convention, to which we are signatories. However, to call a country a slave state is to set another...

First, let me say that I will miss Hidden Nook’s blog, and I will leave the link on my sidebar in the event he returns to blogging, as he’s suggested. Second, I extend him a public invitation to blog here on occasion, particularly if the thoughts are reasonably topical. Your correspondent is a rich lode of eccentrities, which is why it’s so difficult to pick just five things about myself that are strange: 1. My wife and I have always...

I discussed the rising Chinese military power earlier. Here is a contra-indication of that trend (maybe Richardson was right about the personnel quality issues): Three divisions, comprising about 50,000 troops, from the Shenyang military region took part in the four-stage exercises, in which the troops representing the PLA were defeated by the enemy Blue Army – believed to have simulated US battle techniques. In the first stage, the Red Army was ordered to repel the attacking Blue Army. Despite its...

[Update] Debra Saunders says something similar to what I wrote below — that Google is tough with the DoJ and wobbly with the Chinese government, because it takes no courage to confront the DoJ (in fact, such fake “courage” might even help its business) while the Chinese can hurt its business. [Original Entry] Yesterday, I expressed an admiration for what Rebecca MacKinnon wrote about the “we’re just following the laws” defense of American corporations that operate in places like China....

The New York Times has a great historical perspective on Kim Jong-Il’s show-tours of Chinese factories and industrial zones. And astonishingly, all of the show-tours seem to have come to naught. Beyond the question of will is the question of means. Economists cite other crucial differences that may curb North Korea’s efforts to pull off Chinese-style market reforms. While China used its large agricultural sector to expand its industrial base, the North’s economy is already largely industrialized, albeit with hulking,...