Archive for November, 2006
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 30, 2006 at 7:38 am · Filed under An Alliance?, Anti-Americanism, The Fifth Column
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
I will restrain the expression of views on Cindy Sheehan herself. I’m one who makes allowances for the fact that she’s traumatized by her son’s death, an event that quite obviously and understandably blew a few of her circuits. And while I’m sure that Casey Sheehan wouldn’t appreciate his mother’s hard work to render his sacrifice meaningless, I’m just as sure he’d want those of us who support the cause for which he gave his life to at least limit our criticism of his mother to her choice of rhetoric. That rhetoric, however, must be seen to be believed. Sheehan has made herself a reflexive and visceral sympathizer with all declared enemies of the United States. For reasons that ought to be obvious, the same media that made Ms. Sheehan a celebrity and crowned her with absolute moral authority have, shall we say, redeployed their adoring lenses elsewhere.
What, I wondered, were Cindy Sheehan and her droopy friend doing at Camp Humphreys, Korea, my former home and duty station, at the very gate through which a few thousand other American underachievers and I entered and left that especially unpleasant ”bsae” each day, in my case, for seven irrecoverable months? She would say that she’s protesting the expansion of a U.S. Army post there.
This rampant, arrogant, and care-less US militarism has nowhere been more evident than here in South Korea, especially in the village of Daechuri, near Pyong-taek City. The loathing for George Bush, America, Americans, irresponsible capitalism, corporatism, imperialism and militarism is a planetary phenomenon, but above what the US is doing to the wretched countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, I have never been more ashamed of the US government than when I visited the village of Daechuri ….
What Ms. Sheehan either doesn’t know or isn’t telling us is that this “expansion,” negotiated between the U.S. and South Korean governments, is part of a plan that will close dozens of U.S. Army posts in Korea, including a large one in the heart of Seoul. The Army is returning 30,000 acres to Korea in exchange for a few thousand in less populated areas, primarily at Camp Humphreys, which lies among rice fields, run-down villages, and according to GI rumor, dog farms. This drawdown will reduce U.S. forces in Korea by a third in the five-year period ending in 2008. After years of caustic negotiations that drew U.S. threats to unilaterally pull out even more forces, the Koreans agreed to the deal, which required them to relocate and compensate their citizens in the area slated for expansion. A minority refused the compensation offered them, so Cindy Sheehan misdirects her righteous irony on their behalf. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 29, 2006 at 4:18 pm · Filed under Human Rights, China & Korea, Refugees, Activism
Life Funds for North Korean Refugees reports that Choi Young-Hun, who has been in a Chinese prison for the last four years for helping North Korea refugees, has been released:
Choi was met at Incheon Airport this evening by close family members. And although he appears extremely weak following his imprisonment, he took the time to express his thanks to all those around the world who have supported him with their prayers, letters and other contributions.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 29, 2006 at 4:15 pm · Filed under Kim Jong Il, Appeasement, Washington Views, Kremlinology, "United" Nations
The United States has leaked a new set of sanctions on “luxury items” that can no longer be exported to North Korea, in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718:
[T]he list of proposed luxury sanctions, obtained by The Associated Press, aims to make Kim’s swanky life harder: No more cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis.
Electronic goods like I-pods and plasma TV’s are also banned. Defectors helped compile the list of Kim Jong Il’s favorite goodies. There are a few ways of looking at this. One is that it’s easy to evade, because the Chinese will certainly opt for a narrow interpretation of the meaning of “luxury items” and won’t halt transshipments through its territory. That’s almost certainly true, although it might divert some of Kim Jong Il’s arms procurement efforts in less destructive directions. Here is the conventional view:
“If you take away one of the tools of his control, perhaps you weaken the cohesion of his leadership,” said Robert J. Einhorn, a former senior State Department official who visited North Korea with Albright and dined extravagantly there. “It can’t hurt, but whether it works, we don’t know.”
My own view is that these sanctions, by themselves, are unlikely to have a significant impact on the regime in the short or medium term. I also believe that North Korea has no business spending its resources on items like these while its people are starving, and from that springs the real genius of this provision — the way it tends to reshape our conversations about North Korea:
The population in North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated economies, is impoverished and routinely suffers widescale food shortages. The new trade ban would forbid U.S. shipments there of Rolexes, French cognac, plasma TVs, yachts and more — all items favored by Kim but unattainable by most of the country.
….
Responding to North Korea’s nuclear test Oct. 9, the U.N. Security Council voted to ban military supplies and weapons shipments — sanctions already imposed by the United States. It also banned sales of luxury goods but so far has left each country to define such items. Japan included beef, caviar and fatty tuna, along with expensive cars, motorcycles, cameras and more. Many European nations are still working on their lists.
U.S. intelligence officials who helped produce the Bush administration’s list said Kim prefers Mercedes, BMW and Cadillac cars; Japanese and Harley Davidson motorcycles; Hennessy XO cognac from France and Johnny Walker Scotch whisky; Sony cameras and Japanese air conditioners.
Kim is reportedly under his physician’s orders to avoid hard liquor and prefers French wines. He also is said to own an extensive movie library of more than 10,000 titles and prefers films about James Bond and Godzilla, along with Clint Eastwood’s 1993 drama, “In the Line of Fire,” and Whitney Houston’s 1992 love story, “The Bodyguard.”
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 29, 2006 at 3:56 pm · Filed under Korean Politics, Appeasement, U.S. & Korea
It’s time for another installment of President Roh Moo Hyun’s whiney, self-pitying Hamlet act.
“I hope I won’t be the first president to fail to complete his full term in office.” Speculation about his intentions ran wild. The opposition Democratic Labor Party said the president was “threatening the public.” Insiders do not rule out an extreme step, saying Roh is in a brittle psychological state.
If you’re surprised by any of this, you must be a new reader. Recall that last June, I predicted that “the odds are 50-50 that Roh will be gone soon, and they’re looking leaner than ever for him finishing his term.” The Chosun Ilbo points out that Roh has had one of these suicidal ideations every single year of his tenure.
Three months into his term, in May 2003, the chief executive said, “I can no longer sustain the presidency”; in October that year he appealed for a national vote of confidence. Proposing a grand coalition in July and August last year, the president repeatedly mentioned his intent to step down, offering to shorten his term or surrender all of his powers, and confessing to “envy” of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who staked his job on a decisive issue.
Roh also threatened to bail out of the ruling Uri Party, which ought not to be news to many. After all, pretty much everyone else in Uri is shoving aside the women and children for lifeboat space (1, 2), and rumors of an Uri breakup have been rife since last June, after Uri took one of many severe beatings in the polls. At last count, Roh’s approval rating was just shy of ten percent, and Uri’s was below nine. Roh’s base has also deserted him. A mutual urge to disassociate is understandable. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 29, 2006 at 7:14 am · Filed under An Alliance?, Anti-Americanism, U.S. & Korea, The Fifth Column
Has anyone forgotten this? Today, we have a bit more certainty about what many of us had probably guessed, and we have yet more mounting evidence of a hidden North Korean hand behind South Korea’s violent anti-American radicalism:
Kang Soon-jeong, the former vice chairman of the South Korean chapter of the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification, an outlawed pro-Pyongyang group, was arrested on Tuesday for providing “national secrets” to Pyongyang, police said. Kang was also co-chairman of a civic group that led efforts to topple the statue of U.S. general Dougas MacArthur in Incheon last year.
You could call Kang a “usual suspect.” Already on parole after doing 4 1/2 years on a prior spying rap, Kang was a leader in other far-left groups and also played a role in violent anti-FTA protests and in the violent anti-USFK protests at Camp Humphreys. You may recall that Kang is now the second suspected North Korean spy to have found among the Humphreys protest leaders. No evidence connects Kang to the Il Shim Hue ring, and there’s no direct evidence of North Korean instructions behind the protests themselves, although that seems likely, to put it mildly.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 28, 2006 at 7:17 am · Filed under Washington Views, Terrorism/Iraq, U.S. Military, America
John Kerry tried to deny it until his own Web site tried to defend it. Now, Charlie Rangel, even confronted with statistical evidence to the contrary, comes right out and states one of the minor premises of the “back door draft” argument: only an idiot with nowhere else to go would join the United States military. It’s all right here, on video.
We all remember the dishonest suggestion, mostly just before the 2004 election, that a Bush reelection would mean the return of the draft. This was a naked effort to inflame young voters with a baseless charge, and it seems to have worked with some. As Rangel well knows, if a Republican administration were to attempt to bring the draft back, there would be a mighty outpouring of opposition from the surrender lobby and the escapists. That’s precisely the disingenuous reason why Rangel offers it up, as a thinly-veiled effort to undermine the entire war effort for political advantage. It would not simply undermine the war effort in Iraq, but everywhere else, too, by pitting the whole of the U.S. military against the young and the political left. The silence of the surrender lobby in the face of Rangel’s suggestion is the most compelling evidence of its dishonest and unpatriotic motives. They’re not upset because they see the real motives behind Rangel’s false argument for a more equitable military.
Rangel ends up trying not to sound elitist by saying that he was one of many without other opportunities who ended up in the military. In the process, he unintentionally confirms much of what I’d long suspected about Charlie Rangel, who is about to chair a committee of Congress. This one’s for you, Charlie:
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 28, 2006 at 6:42 am · Filed under Korean Politics, Appeasement
The UniFiction Ministry’s budget reqquest for 2007 is out. If you had a bar bet with anyone that North Korea could test a nuke and South Korea would still keep the payola flowing, you may collect now.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 28, 2006 at 6:38 am · Filed under Washington Views, U.S. Military
If you’re looking for reasons not to be glum about Robert Gates, Michael Barone offers a few. Barone pictures Gates as someone with a great deal of sensitivity, and perhaps hostility, toward congressional meddling in foreign policy since its failure to confirm him as CIA Director years ago. I was especially interested in this take on Nicaragua:
“By the end of 1984, I concluded that we were kidding ourselves if we thought the contras might win. I wrote [CIA Director William] Casey on December 14, and began by saying, ‘The contras can’t overthrow the Sandinista regime.’ I continued that we were muddling along in Nicaragua with a halfhearted policy because of the lack of agreement within the administration and with Congress on our real objectives. I urged moving to an overt policy including withdrawal of diplomatic recognition; providing open military assistance and funds for a government-in-exile; imposing economic sanctions, perhaps including a quarantine; and using air strikes to destroy Nicaragua’s military buildup–no invasion but no more Soviet/Cuban military deliveries. I concluded, ‘Relying on and supporting the contras as our only action may actually hasten the ultimate, unfortunate outcome.’”
If Gates were to support a similar policy with North Korea, sans air strikes, I’d become a fan. Unfortunately, I think that’s unlikely in the extreme during the last two years of this administration. Another of Gates’s beliefs is that beneath the politics, different administrations are remarkably consistent with their predecessors. On North Korea, that’s regrettably difficult to deny.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 27, 2006 at 12:34 pm · Filed under Korean Politics, The Fifth Column
Just when I thought that the Il Shim Hue story had been successfully buried by a quick switcheroo of NIS chiefs, we have this intriguing report from the Donga Ilbo:
It was confirmed on November 26 that among the documents found at Jang Min-ho’s residence, the name of a Cheong Wa Dae secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Security, was brought up several times. Jang, the key member of the “Ilsimhoe” spy case, was arrested by the National Intelligence Service on charges of involvement with student activists. [OFK links on U.S. citizen and former U.S. soldier Jang Min-Ho here and here, and here]
In accordance to this, the Public Security Department is reviewing ways to summon the presidential secretary as a reference and investigate how his name ended up in reports to the North Korea.
A public security official stated, “Secretary “A” worked as a student activist before with Sohn Jung-mok (42), who was recently placed under the arrest. As matters stand, Jang has sent a lot of information to North Korea based on Son’s statement which he attained through Secretary A.”
The Secretary’s exceptional radical pedigree includes an arrest for participation in the “occupation” of the U.S. Cultural Center in 1985, along two other men who are now implicated Il Shim Hue spies: Sohn Jung-Mok and Lee Jung Hun. Lee, formerly a senior member of the Democratic People’s Labor Party, was one of those involved in organizing more recent violent anti-U.S. demonstrations. He’s suspected of receiving the Dear Leader’s instructions from North Korean agents in China.
The report does not tell us who “Secretary A” is, which may be a condition set by the report’s source, but was probably the advice of the Donga’s own lawyers. On the other hand, if you really want to know who the person is, this ought to be enough:
Secretary A previously worked at the National Security Council (NSC) when the current government took office and was nominated as the secretary of Foreign Affairs and National security at the presidential office this February.
(Yes, I considered Ahn Hui-Jung, but I can’t connect Ahn with all of those details.)
As the Donga is fair enough to clarify, this may mean that the secretary in question was a made member of the cell, an unwitting source of information, or simply happened to have his name recorded in multiple suspicious documents.
What is so ironic about all of this is that if the Roh Administration were to fail to pursue evidence that its ranks were riddled with North Korean spies, that would (at least to me) clearly justify Roh’s impeachment. In fact, we don’t know whether Roh’s NIS is really pursuing the matter or not, but the entire debate is academic now because of an earlier impeachment that was so clearly unjustified that it cost the GNP its majority in the National Assembly. Nice going.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 27, 2006 at 10:58 am · Filed under Inside NK, Famine & Food Aid, Refugees, Resistance
The Daily NK provides this link to the video of the broadcast (which worked fine for me). They show scenes from across the river and interview a refugee woman on the Chinese side. It’s nothing new, really, although it bears constant repetition that North Koreans aren’t brainwashed automatons. Increasingly, they’re willing to say just what they think of the Dear Leader’s bounty … even to foreign journalists.
On a related note, don’t miss the Daily NK’s follow-up to the protest incident in Hoeryong I noted here. There, a North Korean middle class seems remarkably persistent in its determination to emerge. Even more remarkably, local authorities appear to have caved for the time being. If you’re not reading the Daily NK regularly, you should be. The quality of their reporting continues to improve, and their reach inside North Korea is astonishing.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 26, 2006 at 11:12 pm · Filed under Korean Politics, Anti-Americanism, The Fifth Column
Writing in the International Herald Tribune last March, Choe Sang Hun observed that both the number of protests in South Korea and the violence of those protests is rising: ”from 6,857 in 1995 to an average 11,000 a year in the past five years. The number of police officers hurt by demonstrators increased from 331 in 2,000 to 893 last year.” You would not expect this explosion of grievance under a government that pursues redistribution and appeasement all the way to an 11% approval rating, but anarchy loves a vacuum. Look how much anarchy we saw last week over a Free Trade Agreement that was a dead letter by last spring:
[S]ome 12,000 protestor[s] massed in front of the city government in Gwangju at 4:30 p.m. Some 300 anti-globalization activists among them, who want Korea to end free-trade negotiations with the U.S., attempted to break into the government building, brandishing bamboo and wooden sticks and hurling paving stones they had torn out of the square in front of the building. Dozens of windows shattered and riot police shields were burnt. Protestors also set fire to the city flag above the main gate. The demonstration caused an estimated W420 million (US41=W930) in losses.
Even allowing for the fact that this is, after all, the Chosun Ilbo, hurling stones and attempting to occupy a government building suggests escalation. The same article follows the trends Ms. Choe had tracked last March:
A total of 11,036 rallies were held between the beginning of this year and the end of October, some 30 a day on average. The total number of protestors stood at 2.92 million during the same period, or some 6,700 taking to the streets every day. Over the whole of last year, the figure was 8,023 a day.
Violent illegal protests numbered 41, less than 0.1 percent of the total. But the problem is that they are getting more violent. Molotov cocktails, paint and stones were the weapons of choice in the 80s, but today there are homemade guns (a protest in Seoul in November 2003) and flamethrowers (Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province this July). Some blew up a barrel of liquefied petroleum gas in a protest in North Jeolla Province in November 2003.
In fairness, the left has no monopoly on the use of flammables and other nasty implements for protesting, but two groups on the far left are probably responsible for most of the violence: Hanchongryon and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, both of which are now beyond the point of denying the substantial influence North Korea exercises over them. If I’m right, we will soon say goodbye to an interlude in which South Korea’s protest culture, whatever its other faults, seldom got anyone seriously hurt or killed. Things will get worse, because Korea’s radical left probably knows that another Kwangju is one of the few things that can reenergize it before the next election, or prevent the election of a conservative government with both the will and the means to outlast Kim Jong Il’s. This would represent more than an ordinary electoral setback. If the North Korean regime thinks it might cease to exist without South Korean aid money, there’s no telling what levers it would pull to prevent such a development.
It’s scary to consider the circumstances: South Korea’s Fifth Column is in danger of being exposed, although the government has managed to quiet down the Il Shim Hue scandal for now. But if I were one of its agents, I wouldn’t patiently wait another year for an election that would bring the GNP to power, uproot my network from its positions of hard-won influence, and very possibly land me in a jail cell. First, I’d spend some quality time with my shredder. Then, I’d make as much trouble as I possibly could.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 23, 2006 at 10:58 am · Filed under Inside NK, Famine & Food Aid
The DailyNK strips off the emerald goggles to show us a much grittier view of life in Pyongyang.
It also has another update on the food situation. It’s not good.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 23, 2006 at 10:54 am · Filed under Appeasement, Abductions, Korean War
What else can be said about something like this? It’s easy enough to blame the girl on the phone, but in light of past events like this, the more salient questions are (1) whether she was just following orders.
More on how ROK POW’s lived in North Korean captivity here and here. And Staff Sergeant Chang’s pain didn’t end when he escaped, either:
Chang Moo-hwan, 79, a third POW who returned to South Korea after the defection of Cho, said that due to worries over the lives of his wife and five children he left in North Korea, he suffers serious pain now.
Chang, who returned in October 1998, heard one year after his return that his family was taken somewhere.
Chang said yesterday, “I feel guilty because my family might have been suffering great pain because of me. I want our government to just let me know whether or not they are alive.”
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 23, 2006 at 10:30 am · Filed under Inside NK, Kremlinology
Look what the Partei is telling the proles:
At a people’s meeting in Hoiryeong, citizens were educated on the justice of North Korea’s nuke experiment and the economic aftereffects of the nuke experiment. An organizer of the people’s meeting in Hoiryeong said “The nuclear experiment has broken all of U.S. North Korea pressure policies and we have successfully shown the whole world that our socialism is good. Now, beginning from the nations of the six-party talks, countries around the world are in fear of our nuclear armaments.”
Background here; the general idea is that Kim Jong Il’s otherwise inexplicable missile and nuke tests, for which he paid a severe diplomatic and economic price, were done to show his own people and military that his weapons programs were an effective way to extort goodies from the rest of the world — to disguise the world’s charity as protection money.
I suspect that the North Korean people will buy about half of this. Deprived of much individual pride or self-esteem, they might be tempted to affix themselves to national pride. People have an inexhaustible appetite for nationalism; it just never goes out of style. Ditto anti-Americanism, which is based on something else that has timeless appeal: envy. But I also think that they simultaneously blame their government for their suffering, and many of those who would valiantly resist a U.S. invasion (as if) under some circumstances would just as valiantly resist their own government if given a chance, and that many or most would leap at the opportunity to live in America. And dissent is obviously spreading, or the regime would not make this tacit admission:
Furthermore, on two occasions Sept 29th and Oct 4th, the leader of the unit announced a declaration in accordance to the “General (Kim Jong Il)’s policy” around the districts of the border to “abolish anti-socialist trends” such as aiding undercover border-crossing, smuggling, secretly listening or importing radios and circulating illegal recorded materials.
Not to be missed: the loyalty oaths that include preemptive acceptance of punishment for the aforementioned.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 21, 2006 at 8:26 pm · Filed under Human Rights, "United" Nations
Background: The North Korean government government has plunged the world into crisis with a weapons buildup paid for at the cost of two million North Koreans who were starved to death. The world’s most repressive and belligerent regime has finally and narrowly drawn the diffident and non-binding disapproval of the U.N. General Assembly. And even this was highly controversial to some. The quality of the debate is so depressing as to overpower the quality of the result, such as it is.
If you wonder why the U.N. can’t articulate consistent moral standards or unite the nations, read on. As you do, consider a few simple arguments. If you presume that all innocent life has equal value, then it follows that the U.N. should focus on where the most innocent lives are in danger. If you believe that there are moral gradations in cruelty and the suffering that it causes, then it follows that the U.N. should focus where suffering is greatest. If you believe that Article 51 of the U.N. Charter remains in effect, then it follows that the U.N. should also draw moral distinctions between the deliberate mass murder of innocents and defense against the deliberate mass murder of civilians. If you believe that the U.N. has a role as a global lawgiver, then it follows that it must give its laws with some consistency. Now, ask yourself if this moral and legal logic has swayed the proctors of the Global Test: Read the rest of this entry »
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