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.

Christopher Hill to the North Koreans: “I think they ought to come to the table, and if they want to make sarcastic statements, they can make them to me. And stop with these silly press announcements,” Mr. Hill says.

The Family Business: The Chosun Ilbo has an interesting story about the “family business” of black marketing. What my wife and I never understood is why, given the dizzying variety of good-quality and inexpensive food in the Korean markets, anyone would pay extra for black-market American food. We always scratched our heads when we saw the ajummas with their shopping carts loaded with 16 packages of bacon, 30 packs of hot dogs, 25 cans of infant formula, and five 20-pound...

Scroll down for updates. The Korean government is ruling out “renegotiation” of its “tenative” cost-sharing agreement with the USFK, which is no surprise given the likely consequence of losing face to the Yankees just four weeks before the next bi-election. I’m suspicous about the use of the term “tentatively agreed” in the Herald story. Either there’s a binding agreement that was authorized for public release or there wasn’t; if the latter is true, it’s a negotiation, not a renegotiation. Perhaps...

The war rages on in the letters page of the Washington Post. No one lives on Tokdo. Twenty-two million people are living in North Korea, including about 200,000 in concentration camps, where about 20% die each year. Approximately two million of them have already starved to death. Nero, too, is said to have fiddled why Rome burned, but then again, nobody knew the political value of a good circus like Nero.

Power Games Within the Uri Party. We’ve already seen that the good guys are not yet winning the battle for the soul of the opposition Grand National Party, although not all hope is lost. The Joongang Ilbo reports that the young Turks are strengthening their hand within the Uri Party. In a political battle between a party that knows what it stands for and one that doesn’t, the party that knows what it stands for and declares it with conviction...

It’s a sad state of affairs when Ban Ki-Moon is the most realistic person in your cabinet: Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon on Friday held out little hope for the success of six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program after the Stalinist country said the talks must deal with the disarmament of all participants. If the six-party talks collapse as Ban expects, the U.S. is likely to take the dispute to the U.N. Security Council immediately, where it was already on...

The Death of an Alliance, Part VIII. The experts in Washington are weighing in on that go-it-alone, unilateralist foreign policy that needlessly alienates allies. There’s a stunning degree of consensus.

What, us? Nationalistic? Take that back!

Just looking at this hurts. I’d say if you’ve just had a long winter break without any practice, you might want to keep those bayonets locked up until May or so.

Power Games Within the Uri Party. We’ve already seen that the good guys are not yet winning the battle for the soul of the opposition Grand National Party, although not all hope is lost. The Joongang Ilbo reports that the young Turks are strengthening their hand within the Uri Party. In a political battle between a party that knows what it stands for and one that doesn’t, the party that knows what it stands for and declares it with conviction...

It’s a sad state of affairs when Ban Ki-Moon is the most realistic person in your cabinet: Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon on Friday held out little hope for the success of six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program after the Stalinist country said the talks must deal with the disarmament of all participants. If the six-party talks collapse as Ban expects, the U.S. is likely to take the dispute to the U.N. Security Council immediately, where it was already on...

The Death of an Alliance, Part VIII. The experts in Washington are weighing in on that go-it-alone, unilateralist foreign policy that needlessly alienates allies. There’s a stunning degree of consensus.

What, us? Nationalistic? Take that back!