. . . but you probably made the same guess yourself. Rummy will indeed take troops from Korea to send them to Iraq, just as I’ve been suggesting. The diplomatic significance of the U.S. Army taking half of its infantry strength–a whole brigade of 4,000 troops–is hard to overstate. This is an earthquake. Here are just a few of the angles from which one can analyze this. US Force Restructuring It marks a dramatic escalation of the agreed timetable for...

. . . but you probably made the same guess yourself. Rummy will indeed take troops from Korea to send them to Iraq, just as I’ve been suggesting. The diplomatic significance of the U.S. Army taking half of its infantry strength–a whole brigade of 4,000 troops–is hard to overstate. This is an earthquake. Here are just a few of the angles from which one can analyze this. US Force Restructuring It marks a dramatic escalation of the agreed timetable for...

JeffInKorea has opened up a raging debate over at his site about the different ways Koreans and Americans think. Not being a philosophy major, I went home and asked my wife what she thinks of the premise. Her answer: “It depends on the person.” Such a smart woman; no wonder I married her. But isn’t there an undeniable difference in the ways Koreans and Americans reason through problems–a difference that one does not see with Korean-Americans? After much more discussion...

JeffinKorea has posted some of the most insightful analysis of the differences in how Koreans and Americans think that I’ve seen anywhere. His thesis is that Koreans reason inductively–moving from the conclusion to the facts–rather than deductively, as most westerners tend to do. My comment below his post extends his insight to the growing chasm between Americans and Koreans to the SOFA and North Korea. I think Jeff is onto something here.

Some comments I’ve spotted at various blogs have hoped (against all odds) that the Constitutional Court will uphold Roh’s impeachment. Roh is incompetent and the impeachment is legal, ergo it’s a good idea. That argument misses the point as surely as the impeachment itself did. Just look at where it got the GNP. Roh was riding at 30% in the polls before the GNP gave him that sympathy boost, no matter how illogical and divorced from the realities of Roh’s...

JeffinKorea has posted some of the most insightful analysis of the differences in how Koreans and Americans think that I’ve seen anywhere. His thesis is that Koreans reason inductively–moving from the conclusion to the facts–rather than deductively, as most westerners tend to do. My comment below his post extends his insight to the growing chasm between Americans and Koreans to the SOFA and North Korea. I think Jeff is onto something here.

Some comments I’ve spotted at various blogs have hoped (against all odds) that the Constitutional Court will uphold Roh’s impeachment. Roh is incompetent and the impeachment is legal, ergo it’s a good idea. That argument misses the point as surely as the impeachment itself did. Just look at where it got the GNP. Roh was riding at 30% in the polls before the GNP gave him that sympathy boost, no matter how illogical and divorced from the realities of Roh’s...

Owen at RathbonePress is on board with my view that South Korea isn’t going to send troops to Iraq. Previously, I stated that we could make much better use of the Second Infantry Division (now serving in Korea) than 3,000 South Koreans assigned to the most peaceful part of Iraq. Now, some evidence is emerging that Rummy agrees with that. A South Korean friend and I recently bet 10,000 won on this. I should have said British pounds. Which brings...

On April 21st, I blogged about the new Radio FreeNK and closed by presciently asking, “How long till Roh shuts it down?” We have our answer. South Korea is trying to shut down FreeNK, a radio station that broadcasts independent journalism into North Korea from Seoul. First, they banned the Kim Jong-Il comic book that went on to become a bestseller in Japan. Then, last summer, they beat up Norbert Vollertsen when he tried to send radios into North Korea...

Owen at RathbonePress is on board with my view that South Korea isn’t going to send troops to Iraq. Previously, I stated that we could make much better use of the Second Infantry Division (now serving in Korea) than 3,000 South Koreans assigned to the most peaceful part of Iraq. Now, some evidence is emerging that Rummy agrees with that. A South Korean friend and I recently bet 10,000 won on this. I should have said British pounds. Which brings...

Owen at RathbonePress is on board with my view that South Korea isn’t going to send troops to Iraq. Previously, I stated that we could make much better use of the Second Infantry Division (now serving in Korea) than 3,000 South Koreans assigned to the most peaceful part of Iraq. Now, some evidence is emerging that Rummy agrees with that. A South Korean friend and I recently bet 10,000 won on this. I should have said British pounds. Which brings...

On April 21st, I blogged about the new Radio FreeNK and closed by presciently asking, “How long till Roh shuts it down?” We have our answer. South Korea is trying to shut down FreeNK, a radio station that broadcasts independent journalism into North Korea from Seoul. First, they banned the Kim Jong-Il comic book that went on to become a bestseller in Japan. Then, last summer, they beat up Norbert Vollertsen when he tried to send radios into North Korea...

Her column in today’s WSJ is a must-read. In a sea of mediocre journalism, Claudia Rosett is two giants–the investigative gadfly who exposed UNSCAM and the big media’s only consistent teller of the hideous truth about North Korea. In her column today, she brings both issues to their inevitable intersection in the moral corruption beneath the U.N.’s rotten foundation. Nowhere is that moral corruption more evident than in the case of its unforgiveable silence about North Korea–precisely the kind of...

With the horrific beheading of Nick Berg, Zarqawi and his merry band of excrement sculptures have put the Abu Ghraib story in its rightful context. We punish depravity; they embody it, videotape it, and broadcast it. Now, Zarqawi has done us the supreme service of switching the reels in our election-year theater. Its us or them. This century or the 12th. Victory or extinction. Open debates about abortion and gay marriage or routine bus bombs and burkas for our daughters....

Her column in today’s WSJ is a must-read. In a sea of mediocre journalism, Claudia Rosett is two giants–the investigative gadfly who exposed UNSCAM and the big media’s only consistent teller of the hideous truth about North Korea. In her column today, she brings both issues to their inevitable intersection in the moral corruption beneath the U.N.’s rotten foundation. Nowhere is that moral corruption more evident than in the case of its unforgiveable silence about North Korea–precisely the kind of...

With the horrific beheading of Nick Berg, Zarqawi and his merry band of excrement sculptures have put the Abu Ghraib story in its rightful context. We punish depravity; they embody it, videotape it, and broadcast it. Now, Zarqawi has done us the supreme service of switching the reels in our election-year theater. Its us or them. This century or the 12th. Victory or extinction. Open debates about abortion and gay marriage or routine bus bombs and burkas for our daughters....

Over at NKZone, the Jack Pritchard groupies and Clintonites are attacking the North Korean Freedom Act and the North Korean Human Rights Act as pretexts to open North Korea as a new market for Christian evangelism. Since I’m uniquely free of that purported taint, I went on the counteroffensive on behalf of my Christian bretheren. The new tactic of the appeasers is to label those who are moved to fight patent evil with faith-driven compassion as spiritual junk bond peddlers....

Over at NKZone, the Jack Pritchard groupies and Clintonites are attacking the North Korean Freedom Act and the North Korean Human Rights Act as pretexts to open North Korea as a new market for Christian evangelism. Since I’m uniquely free of that purported taint, I went on the counteroffensive on behalf of my Christian bretheren. The new tactic of the appeasers is to label those who are moved to fight patent evil with faith-driven compassion as spiritual junk bond peddlers....