Archive for July, 2008
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 31, 2008 at 2:45 pm · Filed under Anti-Americanism, Media Criticism, Korean Society, Censorship
A Seoul civil court on Thursday found an influential MBC report on U.S. beef health risks “wrong” and ordered the major broadcaster to air a correction, upholding the government’s complaint over the critical coverage.
“PD Notepad should broadcast a correction of its wrong piece on mad cow disease,” Judge Kim Sung-gon of the Seoul Southern District Court said in the verdict.
The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries raised a complaint against the popular MBC current affairs program, PD Notebook, arguing its April report intentionally distorted facts related to U.S. beef to exaggerate the risk of mad cow disease. [Yonhap]
As long as the power of courts goes no further than to declare a broadcast to be factually inaccurate and expose the basis and motivations for the inaccuracy, I am not troubled by the idea of a government agency suing a media organization in court. There has to be some kind of check on media reporting that is this irresponsible and this consequential for national policy. Unfortunately, things have gone further, and we have crossed the line from the correction of falsehoods to the state mandating the content of broadcasts.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 31, 2008 at 11:40 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Diplomacy
At what point will we admit that the North Koreans have repeatedly repudiated any intention of disarming?
North Korea threatened Tuesday to bolster its “nuclear armed force,” saying the United States was not yet ready to drop its “hostile policy” towards the communist country. Washington and Pyongyang face “a grave political challenge” on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula and end their decades-long hostility, the North’s state newspaper Minju Joson said in a commentary.
“What is crucial here is that the U.S. should completely abandon its hostile policy. But the U.S. is not yet prepared to make a strategic decision,” the commentary said.
“As we have stressed several times, our nuclear armed force is a self- defensive measure to protect the security of our country and people against maneuvers by hostile forces to stifle the DPRK,” it said, referring to the North’s official acronym. “Therefore, the stronger U.S. military threats and schemes to invade us are, the more our republic will keep strengthening its powerful self-defensive deterrence. That is our right.” [AFP]
Just talk. Mere words. Blustering. Tis nothing. So why should be give more credence to promises they make to Chris Hill than to official written statements they make in official publications? How on earth are we supposed to know when they’re lying and when they aren’t? Or should we consider all of their statements to be equally subject to being dropped down the memory hole? I tend to watch their actions more carefully:
North Korea and its five dialogue partners at disarmament talks are sharply divided over the concept of the next phase of the agreed-upon denuclearization process, South Korea’s top nuclear envoy said Tuesday.
Kim Sook said that the six nations could not move on to the substance of the final step in the three-tier process in their latest round of negotiations in Beijing earlier this month because of the differences. Other participants are South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia, and Japan. [Yonhap]
Congress will go into recess on August 8th, almost certainly without putting the brakes to the State Department’s lifting of sanctions. Knowing this, the North Koreans realize they’re in the clear. From this point to November, our nation’s and the region’s attention will be on the Olympics and the election. Expect absolutely no additional substantive progress from the North Koreans now, except in the exceedingly unlikely event Congress passes a “snap-back” provision that would automatically reimpose sanctions by a date certain if the North Koreans don’t cooperate.
That will not happen, and this administration will end having thrown away most of its leverage over the North Koreans for virtually no tangible gains at all, and having appeased those responsible for the worst human rights atrocities anywhere on earth today. What a disgraceful legacy.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 31, 2008 at 10:27 am · Filed under Korean History, U.S. Military, History
The restoration of Korea’s nationhood seemed to begin so harmoniously:
It is their purpose that Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since 1914, and that all territories stolen from China shall be restored. Japan will be expelled from all other territories taken by violence and greed. In due course Korea shall become free and independent.
With these objects in view, the three Allies, in harmony with those of the United Nations at war with Japan, will persevere in the serious and prolonged operations necessary to procure the unconditional surrender of Japan. [Time, Dec. 13, 1943, quoting the joint Tehran declaration of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin]
The following March, on the anniversary of the 1919 uprising, a Time correspondent wrote this prescient reflection:
The passive, unarmed revolt led to savage repression. The Japs arrested, tortured, executed the Committee of 33; they flogged 11,000 other Koreans. The rocky Asian peninsula at Japan’s back door, where China and Russia had vied for influence and may vie again, became a land of silent people.
Last week brought the 25th anniversary of the declaration of independence. Korea was still a land of silent people. No one could say how few, if any, of the nation of 23,000,000 knew that China, the U.S. and Britain, at Cairo last November, had promised to restore their freedom “in due course.” In Chungking, greying Kim Koo, head of a Korean provisional government, declared that Koreans want “full and immediate independence” after the war. But strategic Korea, after long years of bondage, seems more likely to become the ward of an international condominium until she has learned the ways of self government again. [Time, Mar. 13, 1944]
As the war raged in other theatres, Korea was left mostly untouched by World War Two. Japan and the Soviet Union had fought a very large and mostly forgotten battle at Khalkhin Gol in August 1939, one month before Hitler invaded Poland. The battle ended in a decisive Soviet victory and the elevation of Georgi Zhukov, one of the few capable Soviet officers to survive the purges of the 1930’s.
Torgau on the Imjin: American and Soviet soldiers meet at the 38th Parallel, 1945.
By April 1945, Zhukov’s tanks were racing those of Marshals Koniev and Rokossovsky to Berlin over the remnants of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS. The final Soviet offensive began on April 16th, as Hitler made the decision to die in his Bunker. That same day, Time reported that the Soviet Foreign Commisariat had summoned Japanese Ambassador Naotake Sato to inform him that the Soviets were abrogating the two nations’ 1941 neutrality pact, signed two months before Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. The writing was on the wall, notwithstanding the frequency with which the words “free and independent,” qualified by ”in due course,” would appear in declarations, conferences, and on leaflets showered on Seoul at the start of the U.S. occupation. The Americans, however, were not the first to arrive:
For 25,000,000 Koreans a new era had begun. Russian marines patrolled Seoul, Korea’s capital. Elsewhere in the Land of Morning Calm, Red Army paratroopers and truck-borne infantry had taken over airfields, harbors, railway junctions. Moscow reported that the Red flag waved in Korean towns, that Korean crowds were wildly cheering their liberators, that self-government committees were operating, and that a purge of collaborationists had begun. [Time, Sept. 10, 1945]
Seoul, 1945: The Soviet and American flags fly together on a welcome banner.
What do I love about this photograph? The font. What American soldier has served in Korea who hasn’t seen it on hundreds of off-post storefronts, advertising tailors, plaque shops, and nightclubs? Like all of the photos here, it comes from tok1’s flickr page, where you can see larger-size versions of most of these photos, and more.
In January 1946, the erstwhile allies were still talking about the mechanics of governance, peace, and reunification:
The communiqués, released without [French Foreign Minister Georges] Bidault’s okay, set up a procedure on drafting peace treaties far closer to the Russian than to the U.S.-British proposals at London. The Russians at Moscow agreed to a general conference, but the Big Powers will handle the first & last drafts.
[The Secretary of War visits General Hodge in Seoul, 1945]
Government by Gadget. On Japan the U.S. stood fairly firm. To save Russian face it set up an eleven-power policy-making commission and a four-power council to “implement” the policy. The commission would operate under veto provisions, so that little or no action could pass through this Rube Goldberg international machinery. Fortunately, General MacArthur can make interim decisions. The General, however, did not like it. He said: “On Oct. 31 my final disagreement was [radioed to Washington that] the terms ‘in my opinion are not acceptable.’ Since that time my views have not been sought. . . . Whatever the merits or demerits of the plan it is my firm intent … to try to make it work.”
In Korea a U.S.-Soviet commission will attempt to set up a provisional government, may recommend establishment of the first of the trusteeships envisaged in the San Francisco Charter. If so, Korea will be run by the U.S., Russia, Britain and China for five years, after which it will be free. Koreans in the U.S. zone greeted the trusteeship with mass strikes and attacks on American soldiers. [Time, Jan. 7, 1946]
By May of 1946, the differences had only sharpened. All of this seems typical enough of that year’s machinations when put in the context of similar ongoing disputes over Poland, Germany, and Japan – where the Americans barely preempted Soviet landings in Hokkaido – and the massive westward shift of the borders lying between Moscow and Berlin. Clearly, the Koreans’ post-colonial euphoria had begun to fray:
The pleasant May afternoon in Seoul has been disturbed for several hours now by a long blast of Korean oratory, hurled into the streets from a loudspeaker in a former Japanese bank building. “We will fight for independence,” an unseen speaker shouts, “until the last Korean is dead!” Other voices are summoning Koreans to a mass meeting on behalf of freedom.
[Seoul, 1945: Political posters angrily denounce the “trust rule system.”]
U.S. military-government officials are paying no evident attention to the oratory, which has much the flavor of a political campaign in Chicago or Seattle. In America’s Korea, as in Chicago or Seattle, free speech has been the rule since the U.S. Army arrived last fall to take charge below the 38th parallel. In fact, U.S. insistence on free speech for Koreans has become the newest impaling post of Soviet-American relations.
A Matter of Semantics. Seven weeks ago a delegation of 120 Russians came down from their zone north of the 38th parallel. They were led by rotund Colonel General Terenty Shtykov, who said: “The Soviet people warmly support … a free way of life … for the Korean people.” Inside the pillared grey walls of Seoul’s Duk Soo Palace, General Shtykov and four top comrades began a series of talks with five U.S. officers, led by strapping Major General Archibald V. Arnold.
The joint commission sought to “implement the directive” (as they say in Washington) of last December’s Conference of Foreign Ministers in Moscow, which called for a provisional Korean government. Koreans were supposed to be consulted, but the Russian idea of which Koreans to consult differed radically from the American.
A Formula for Purging. Koreans, remembering Japan’s tutelage, were disappointed when the Moscow Conference decided upon another trusteeship, under the U.S. and Russia, for five years. Rightist groups in the American zone, loosely amalgamated in the Representative Democratic Council under elder statesman Syngman Rhee, protested heatedly, berated both the U.S. and Russia. But leftists, gathered under Communist domination in the Democratic People’s Front, espoused trusteeship and opposed immediate independence, although Communists all over the world were yipping for the freedom of India and Indonesia.
In the Duk Soo Palace, Soviet negotiators demanded that all Koreans who had spoken against trusteeship be barred from consultation. The Russian attitude, as one American put it, was: “The gods have spoken. Korea is going to have trusteeship. Why listen to those who oppose it?” They went even further. They asked that members of the Representative Democratic Council be disqualified from any provisional government.
The Americans balked over what, in effect, was a political purge in favor of pro-Russian parties. Since there was no meeting of minds on that issue, the Americans shifted to another. Would the Russians consent to “remove the 38th degree parallel boundary as an obstacle to the reunification of Korea?” The Russians refused to consider it. [Time, William Gray, May 20, 1946]
No such acrimony would be tolerated in Pyongyang:
A dog-eared copy of the one-page North Korea Communist mouthpiece Chawng Lo (Right Way) turned up in the U.S. zone last week. From it, South Koreans, eager for news of their northern countrymen, learned of a two-day meeting in P’yongyang to plan a provisional government for the Soviet-occupied area. The self-government murmurs had strong overtones of the Internationale.
Chairman of the conference, Chawng Lo said, was Kim II Sung, “a 32-year-old hero” who appeared “in a Red Army uniform . . . proudly wearing medals received from the Russian Government.” Chawng Lo reported: “All of Kim II Sung’s bills passed unopposed.” Delegates had set up an Interim Peoples Committee and voted a platform which included extermination of pro-Japanese and antidemocratic elements, confiscation of land, extermination of imperialistic ideas. “Plans were drafted,” Chawng Lo proclaimed, “for the benefit of the human race.”
In the U.S. zone skeptics called the provisional regime a “Soviet puppet,” charged that Kim II Sung was an impostor trading on the name of a legendary Korean resistance leader. [Time, Mar. 4, 1946]
The charge that Kim Il Sung was an impostor is of dubious merit, but there’s little question that Kim was a Stalinist puppet. There was dissent in the North, too … briefly. Once, at a meeting of the North Korean Freedom Coalition, I met an elderly man who claimed to have been a member of an anti-Soviet student group in Pyongyang. When the Communists came for him, he wasn’t home, but his mother was. She packed him a bag, and he fled to Seoul. He never saw her again.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 31, 2008 at 10:27 am · Filed under Media Criticism, Famine & Food Aid
As busy as I’ve been at work, I’ve been derelict in covering the famine. But the famine continues to spread and worsen, according to the Word Food Program:
North Korea is suffering its worst food crisis since the late 1990s due to rising grain prices and a poor harvest, the U.N. food agency said Wednesday.
“We believe that the food security situation right now, in many parts of the country, is the worst that it has been since the late 1990s,” Jean-Pierre de Margerie, the World Food Program’s director for North Korea, said at a press conference in Beijing. [Yonhap]
What is interesting about the reports is not the unsurprising truth of the famine’s exacerbation, but the implications of its distribution. Another recent WFP report notes that “areas undergoing the crisis include the Hamgyong and Ryanggang provinces.” It is “normal” for those areas to experience the worst of North Korea’s privations for several reasons, including bad soil and poor infrastructure, but also because those are the most politically disfavored parts of North Korea. And what is so damning about that this year is the reason so many press reports give for this year’s famine, which is last year’s floods. While I don’t question that those floods certainly caused plenty of problems in areas like North and South Hwanghae, Pyongyang, and South Pyongan, note well that the northeastern areas that have seen begun to starve are the only areas of North Korea that last year’s floods actually missed.
Media reports that attribute the food crisis to the floods are speaking in half-truths. The greater problem is the regime’s priorities, and there is no better illustration of this than the regime’s investment of scarce foreign exchange in a 105-story, 4,000 square foot Death Star while its people are starving to death.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 30, 2008 at 9:15 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Diplomacy, U.S. Politics
What is interesting, though not stated in the article, is that Blumenthal is one of John McCain’s senior advisors on Asia policy. The article certainly doesn’t purport to speak for McCain, though it doesn’t seem far afield of his views. If McCain were elected, it suggests that both he and his advisors would want
The piece begins with plenty of substantive criticism of where the Bush Administration has brought us, all of which is on the mark, but which you’ve probably read here. Blumenthal and Friedberg then talk about the limitations of the verification measures that Hill is proposing. Not surprisingly, they’re not calculated to get to the truth of what the North Koreans are actually up to:
All of which brings us to the heart of the problem. In dealing with North Korea the only sensible approach is to “distrust and verify.” To date, however, North Korea has not agreed to, and the Bush administration has not yet insisted upon, any serious measures to verify the full scope and status of the North’s nuclear weapons programs. Those measures that reportedly have been discussed-site visits, interviews with scientists, and further access to documents-apparently apply only to a limited number of facilities at Yongbyon. As useful as it may be to gain firsthand access to these, what is more important is to set up procedures that will permit full access to all known nuclear-related installations, as well as mechanisms for ensuring (or at least reducing the chances) that other, hidden facilities do not exist.
For this purpose, the best available instrument is an understanding that would permit no-warning, challenge inspections of any suspicious facility or location, by the United States, other countries, and the IAEA. This is what Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi agreed to in order to demonstrate that he was serious about nuclear disarmament. In the Libyan case, the United States, the IAEA, and the U.K. had inspected facilities and destroyed and removed 55,000 pounds of nuclear related materials including design information, uranium enrichment materials, and thousands of centrifuge parts almost two years before President Bush announced the lifting of sanctions on Libya. If Kim Jong-Il is equally serious in changing the direction of his country, he should be willing to make a similar commitment.
As it reviews the status of the Six Party talks, the next administration should return to first principles and reexamine its goals. If the aim of American policy is still-as we believe it should be-the “complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement” of all North Korean nuclear programs, then there is no escaping the need for an inspections regime of the sort just described. Instead of being left for the very end of the negotiating process, verification should be moved to the top of the agenda. If the North is unwilling to accept the necessary measures, the United States should be prepared to walk away.
If, on the other hand, the next administration decides to settle for Yongbyon and a pile of plutonium, it should insist on an early date for their dismantlement and repatriation. But it should also be candid about the risks it has chosen to run. And it should begin at once to prepare for the next North Korean nuclear crisis. [Dan Blumenthal and Aaron Friedberg in the Weekly Standard]
There is a certain other critic of this piece who says that it’s based on the false assumption that we have more pressure to apply to the North Koreans as an alternative. But as I’ve often repeated here, we have plenty of unused and potentially devastating weapons in our arsenal. Once the next president concludes that unilateral concessions won’t work, some of those weapons will have to be unpacked and cleaned. If it’s McCain, we may well see a policy review, hopefully quicker and more decisive than the one Bush tried in 2002:
Whoever takes office in January 2009 will inherit a process and a set of understandings that supporters claim have finally brought that goal within reach. But have they? A new administration should take the opportunity to pause and conduct its own assessment of where things stand and where they may be going.
Read the rest on you own.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 30, 2008 at 1:01 am · Filed under An Alliance?, Korean Politics, Korean Society, Japan & Korea, Japan
… thus supplanting all of that Seige of Troy unpleasantness.
I cannot say that South Korea would be much the worse for having dismissed Ambassador Lee Tae Shik from his post, but that is incidental to the skull-smacking stupidity of why:
The government on Monday decided to call Korean Ambassador to the U.S. Lee Tae-shik to account if it is found that the embassy did not react promptly to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names listing Dokdo under “undesignated sovereignty.” The change, from a clear indication of Korea’s sovereignty, appears to play into the hands of Japanese attempts to portray the islets as disputed territory. [Chosun Ilbo]
Even the Foreign Minister’s job may be in peril over this insignificant development in the dispute over two insignificant and uninhabitable lumps of guano.
Wait. It gets even dumber:
South Korea could stop cooperating with Japan in six-party talks on denuclearising North Korea if their territorial dispute worsens, Seoul’s ambassador to Tokyo said Thursday. South Korea has already rejected a Japanese proposal for foreign ministerial talks next week on the sidelines of a regional security forum in Singapore.
Japan’s reaffirmed claim to South Korean-controlled islands in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) has sparked anger and public protests in Seoul, which recalled ambassador Kwon Chul-Hyun this week. The furore began when Japan Monday published new educational guidelines calling on students to have a deeper understanding of their country’s claim to the islands known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea.
“The worst thing happened at a time when South Korea and Japan need to cooperate as partners in various aspects internationally,” Kwon told reporters.
He said South Korea has been cooperating with Japan in issues arising in six-party talks such as North Korea’s past abductions of Japanese citizens.
“If public opinion worsens at home or political circles strongly oppose such cooperation, we have no other choice but to take it into consideration,” Yonhap news agency quoted him as saying. [AFP]
Somewhere, Kim Jong Il is smiling.
If Occam’s Razor is of any use in explaining this, it means that the current South Korean government is just as infantile, irrational, and emotional as its predecessor. What is particularly reprehensible and self-defeating about South Korea’s threat is that by using the abduction issue in this way, it is functually using North Korean terrorism as a negotiating instrument. It would do this notwithstanding the fact that North Korea is committing the same continuing pattern of terrorism against hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of South Koreans who are being held against their will in the North — South Koreans that President Lee Myung Bak until recently feigned interest in bringing home.
That, in turn, would be further evidence that an alliance with South Korea is not worth the strategic risks it brings for the United States. In that case, the United States would be better off not to include South Korea in any regional security framework whose presence it would only gum up with manipulated faux crises at critical moments. Such an alliance has long been needed to deter Chinese expansion or North Korean aggression. Obvious candidates include Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, and India. The essential prerequisites must be that member nations must share our values and interests … and our basic rational framework.
Of course, Occam’s Razor allows for the possibility of more complex explanations. A few have crossed my mind. For one thing, Japan has recently declared that it’s opting out of contributing to any aid package for North Korea until its abducted citizens are accounted for, so it’s questionable whether South Korea making good on that threat would mean all that much. After all, Japan has already functionally seceded from the six-party process, and the U.S. State Department is driving on anyway, with the South Koreans in tow.
For another, I’ve suspected for some time that the current South Korean government isn’t entirely fond of our State Department’s total giveaway to the North Koreans, but doesn’t want to say so openly. Anyone who actually listens to what the North Koreans are saying must realize that Agreed Framework 2.0 isn’t going to disarm North Korea. If South Korea’s new government can see the value of economic pressure in securing North Korea’s nuclear disarmament, it must realize that throwing away our leverage won’t help us get Kim Jong Il’s nukes away from him. You’d think that with advisors as savvy as Park Jin, the South Koreans must realize that the process has descended into an eleventh-hour legacy grasp that will only be an albatross around their necks after Bush and Rice go off to write their memoirs and leave this problem behind for others to deal with. Tokdo would seem to be as good an excuse as any to impede that, especially if you’d rather not antagonize the United States directly.
On balance, however, the second-simplest explanation is most likely the closest to being correct: for unpopular presidents, old-fashioned Jap-baiting will probably always be the crack cocaine of South Korean politics. That means there isn’t room for both countries in the same security framework. And any side-by-side comparison of the two nations’ wealth, military strength, strategic geography, and political stability makes it very clear which would be the stronger, more reliable ally.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 29, 2008 at 7:07 am · Filed under Korean Politics, Anti-Americanism, Korean Society, The Fifth Column
Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode.
The herd has gotten leaner, and meaner:
Around the Seorin Rotary in Jongno, another 80 protesters besieged a traffic police officer and an auxiliary police officer from Jongno Police Station, and stole three two-way radios.
Demonstrators also broke the windows of a police bus in front of the Samsung Tower, and flattened tires. Two police officers were taken to the Boshingak Pavilion, had their shirts taken off, and were beaten by crowds after midnight. The rest of the policemen could not dare to rescue the two. Some demonstrators went inside the fence around the pavilion to smoke.
The police have repeatedly announced that the illegal demonstrations will be dealt with seriously, only to be mocked by lawlessness all around. The police started shooting colored water at demonstrators from 3:10 a.m. on Sunday, when the number of protesters decreased to 200, and detained 42 on charges of illegally occupying roads. [Chosun Ilbo]
Robert links to an eyewitness to the demonstrations who confirms that the mob is behaving like … a mob. Yes, there is a certain incongruity in screaming “violent police!” while kicking fallen police officers. More so when you consider that the basis for this commotion has been exposed as false.
I do not think that bad or false journalism is an appropriate subject for either search warrants or criminal prosecutions, absent some evidence of a conspiracy to incite violence, or of foreign influence with intent to deceive the public. The Korean government has pursued both of those things; it should have stopped at simply answering the lies with facts (though one wonders why, with the proliferation of so much free media in South Korea, the government must still fund MBC, the network that produced the mendacious “PD Diary” program that started all of this).
Still, even if you disagree with the role of the authorities here, it is interesting to see who is herding the flocks:
Police yesterday released documents produced by anti-U.S. beef rally organizers that appear to show that the rallies were organized with the intent to bring down the Lee Myung-bak administration. Police raided the office of the Korea Alliance for Progressive Movement and confiscated documents that were made during its meetings. The documents recount discussions between leaders of various civic groups on the direction of anti-U.S. beef demonstrations.
The leaders included those from the Democratic Labor Party, Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, South Korean Federation of University Student Councils and Korea Alliance for Progressive Movement.
At a meeting, a leader put it simply:
“If Lee Myung-bak and the United States do not make a serious mistake, we have no choice but to wait until 2010. We need to foster a strong political opposition front by combining anti-American sentiments and President Lee’s faulty policies.”
“If we merely focus on demanding U.S. beef renegotiations, it can swamp our real intention, which is to bring down the Lee Myung-bak administration.”
Furthermore, there are suggestions in the papers of intent to paralyze downtown streets by encouraging citizens to participate in candlelight vigils at night and mobilizing their groups’ activists during the day. Another leader suggested a week-long demonstration to swamp the downtown core of the city with demonstrators. There were ideas thrown about by demonstration organizers to tie the South Korea-U.S. alliance issue into the protests.
“The moment we suggest why the Lee Myung-bak administration cannot renegotiate the beef deal, we can start to bring up our discontent towards the South Korea-U.S. alliance.”
Police believe the demonstrations started as peaceful candlelight vigils and later escalated into something more. They also believe the demonstrations were masterminded from the beginning by members of various civic groups spearheaded by the Korea Alliance for Progressive Movement. [Joongang Ilbo]
I have said before that it is an inviolable rule of today’s South Korea that all social movements will eventually become violent and anti-American. Here is a rare exposure of the precise process through which that evolution is engineered. And you could hardly write a better list of “the usual suspects.” There are well-grounded reasons to suspect that several of the aforementioned groups are substantially influenced by the North Korean regime.
The leaders of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, Korea’s largest trade union umbrella organization, are particularly prone to juche idol-worship, anti-American tirades that seem to be plucked straight from Pyongyang’s Rondong Shinmun, and the occasional exposure as North Korean spies.
The South Korean Federation of University Student Councils, more commonly known as Hanchongryon, has long been suspected of being a North Korean puppet. It’s mainly known for its North Korean-inspired ideology, its regular pilgrimages to the North, its thuggish rule of college campuses, and its violent street protests.
The Democratic Labor party was so humiliated and damaged by the conviction of two former members — a former Vice General Secretary and a former member of its “Central Committee” – in a recent North Korean spy scandal that it recently split into red and pink factions. The latter faction later seceded to form the New Progressive Party and left the rump DLP as pretty much a wholly owned subsidiary of North Korean puppet cadres. Those who left to form the NPP were ashamed to be associated with the DLP’s pro-North faction after it emerged that the North tried to throw DLP votes to the then-ruling party candidate to throw the Seoul mayoral election to him (it didn’t work).
Without direct evidence — which is lacking here — we’re left to infer what we will from North Korea’s encouragement of the protests. But we don’t have to crawl out on a very long limb to suspect that the North’s carefully tended fifth column is now playing a leading role.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 29, 2008 at 6:38 am · Filed under Korean History, U.S. Military, History
From the Oct. 8, 1945 edition of Time:
The autumn air was brisk and clear. Eagles wheeled overhead against the white clouds, their shadows crossing palaces and hovels, crumbling temples and Western buildings. The city of Seoul (pronounced soul), home of a million people, was 550 years old. Yet the Americans felt like discoverers last week as they explored Korea’s mountain-ringed capital.
On the broad boulevards their jeeps competed with oxcarts, with bicycles thick as gnats. Tooting streetcars fairly bulged with grinning Koreans, all in white. Pedestrians gave ground to nothing on wheels; they did not walk like conquered men. In twisted alleys and along the teeming Bun Chung, G.I.s shopped for kimonos. In the “Grill Room Hollywood” they made faces over the villainous brandy. At the “International Cultural Association” they danced (at two yen a dance) with slack-clad Kihsang girls. Over & over, the eleven-piece band played My Blue Heaven.
In the Chongno, street of the big bell, the visitors heard a legend: the city’s ten-foot bell has an overtone like the wail of a child, since an infant was among the treasures that went into it in 1396. It rang long & loud on liberation night. Part of the Japanese false front of modernism, they learned, was a race track beyond the East Gate. The Japs took their horses away, so it is closed. Near the South Gate, called Nam Tai Moon, the brick railway station was seething with refugees and other travelers. Nobody was northbound—that way lay Manchuria. Only a handful of Russian liaison officers—no troops—had appeared in Seoul. When one carload neared the city, they were politely turned back.
In their letters home, the Americans would remark that in Seoul the palaces face south, the city wall is all but gone, a tycoon is a yang ban, the favorite dish is shinsunro (beef, eggs, fish, chestnuts, etc.), the housewives wash their white clothes endlessly, and countrymen still wear miniature, translucent top hats, the traditional insigne of the married man. Very friendly people, too—everybody beaming and waving, and the children tagging along behind jeeps shrieking “Hello! hello!”
A wonderful place. But the G.I.s could hardly wait to get home. [link]
Once again, the pictures are from dok1’s flickr page.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 28, 2008 at 7:27 pm · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Diplomacy
The North Koreans must have concluded that our Secretary of State’s failure to register their renunciations of any intent to denuclearize originates in some lapse of clarity on their part.
North Korea cannot unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons when it is technically at war with the United States, a pro-North Korean newspaper published in Japan said Saturday.
The Chosun Sinbo said Pyongyang cannot easily surrender its nuclear deterrent because it would be tantamount to lowering its guard while facing an enemy. [Yonhap]
Just as some Americans abroad have imagined that they could make themselves understood by speaking (in English) LOUDLY AND SLOWLY ENOUGH, the North Koreans must think Rice will get the message if they repeat themselves enough.
What they do not understand is how determined she is not to hear them.
Here’s a rhetorical question for the rest of us: why continue to negotiate for a goal — here, nuclear disarmament — that the other side has repeatedly said it won’t give you?
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 28, 2008 at 6:39 am · Filed under Anju Links
WHAT’S MISSING HERE?
“For the past seven years, we’ve spoken out against human rights abuses by tyrannical regimes like those in Iran, Sudan and Syria and Zimbabwe,” Bush said in a speech here titled “the Freedom Agenda Introduction.” “We’ve spoken candidly about human rights with nations with whom we’ve got good relations, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and China,” he said. [Yonhap]
Of course, it’s not as if Bush did much to materially advance freedom in any of those nations, either.
OPPOSITION PARTIES IN KOREA ARE DENOUNCING Lee Myung Bak’s government for spending a measly $4.5M in public funds to refute the viral bullshit about U.S. beef and mad cow disease:
The advertisements paid for by the government were televised and published via broadcasters and newspapers between May 5 to June 27, Kim said, citing government records. The ministries of agriculture, health and culture published ads emphasizing that Koreans will be eating the same beef Americans eat, and that Seoul had secured sufficient safeguards in an additional agreement reached on June 21. [Yonhap]
So when, exactly, did accurate counterspeech become an excess in the face of widely accepted viral falsehoods, many of them spread by a government-funded media organization? Wouldn’t the funding for said disgraced media organization be a more appropriate subject of inquiry? If a society’s news media can’t be trusted to disseminate the truth – pretty clearly the case here — who exactly is supposed to lead the national conversation if not its elected leaders? This is idiocy, especially coming from the party that did so much to inflame the nonsense, and which feigned insult at the very idea of testing the braying of the stampeding herds with scientific inquiry.
BUT WE MUSTN’T POLITICIZE THE OLYMPICS: China and South Korea both deny that China will close the bridges between China and North Korea before the Olympics, but South Korea does confirm that China is stepping up its refugee cleansing operations in the border region:
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao dismissed the Yonhap report as “totally groundless.” “Everything along the China-DPRK border is normal,” Liu said, referring to the North by the acronym for its formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The NIS official, who asked not be named, citing an internal policy, told The Associated Press that China had no plans to close all bridge links with North Korea “out of concerns of diplomatic friction with North Korea.” The official also said China would not ask all North Koreans in China to leave, saying that Beijing plans to crack down on North Koreans who illegally stay in China and Beijing plans to restrict renewing visas for North Koreans. [AP, Kwangtae Kim]
PROBABLY IN RESPONSE TO COMMENTS from South Korea’s Defense Minister, characterizing North Korea as an “enemy” that poses a threat to national security, the North Koreans are squeezing traffic to the Kaesong Industrial Park:
North Korea has limited overland traffic entering the communist country from South Korea, citing inadequate communication infrastructure near the corridor leading to the Kaesong industrial complex, government sources said Thursday.
Sources said the new restrictions that limit traffic to 200 vehicles every 30 minutes in the Gyeongui corridor went into effect at 8:30 a.m., when the first group of vehicles is allowed to cross. The west coast corridor is used mainly by South Korean cars going to and from the Kaesong industrial complex in the North.
“They claimed that old communications links between the two Koreas made it hard for them to get the information needed to process more than 200 vehicles at their end,” a government official said. [Yonhap]
In tandem with North Korea’s otherwise inexplicable shooting of tourist Park Wang-ja at the Kumgang Tourist Project, these actions suggest a calculated North Korean decision to seize upon any available provocation to reduce interaction with South Korea, which had already been strictly controlled (though highly profitable for the North). The North may not realize that actions like these will permanently chill investors’ interest in Kaesong, which was already struggling.
North Korea must have concluded that it can afford to cut its own nose off despite its face because of the easing of U.S. sanctions. It’s enough to make you wonder how quickly those Japanese abductees would be released if North Korea’s seduction of our State Department were to fall apart. You could hardly blame the Japanese for stabbing us in the back at this point. Plus, there’s a whole world of potential replacement abductees out there.
The Defense Minister’s remarks suggest a reversal of the Roh-era shift in South Korea’s annual Defense White Paper, which had dropped the longstanding characterization of North Korea as the South’s “main enemy.” All of which should give some comfort to 29,500 Americans military personnel who might have wondered if they were there to protect South Korea from the Mongol Hordes or Hideyoshi.
AT THE SAME TIME THE NORTH KOREANS are restricting traffic to Kaesong, they’re attacking the South for suspending tours to Kumgang pending a transparent inquiry into Park Wang-Ja’s killing.
HERE’S ONE DAMN FINE PIECE of political satire, regarding Obama’s visit to Europe. Really, I see Europe’s love of Obama as about two degrees away from North Korea’s preference of him. While the latter is rooted in outright hostility toward America, the Soft Reich’s is, at best, ambivalent tit-biting. I have no use for Europe’s idea of what America should be, though I wonder to what extent it’s mostly fantasy. Would Obama spring Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other occupants of Gitmo to a quiet exile in the Paris suburbs? Will he suddenly arm U.S. forces in Afghanistan with nerf guns and Chicago-style community activism? With even the AP declaring the end of major combat operations in Iraq, will Obama be able to get most of our forces out of there much faster than McCain would? For that matter, would Europe suddenly put real pressure on Iran or make a sufficient military contribution in Afghanistan? How would Obama dramatically alter the thousands of hard compromises we’ve made between civil liberties and our security if he’d assume political responsibility for making the wrong ones? Is there any substance at all to his vague promise to denuclearize the world when he’s unlikely to even denuclearize Iran or North Korea? Less may change than Europe pines for, but for now, Europe loves its image of Obama the way a shrewish ex loves her image of vasectomy.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 26, 2008 at 9:16 am · Filed under Korean History, History
A frequent criticism of the American occupation of Iraq was the “decision” to disband the Iraqi Army. It’s been said in response that there wasn’t much to disband by the time we reached Baghdad, anyway, and that decision was distinct from (though not unrelated to) our failure to prevent Iraqis from looting their own capital.
What if we’d done things badly in exactly the opposite different way? Time’s wonderful archives take us back to events that have brought us grief ever since – that very brief interlude of joint U.S.-Japanese occupation in Seoul:
Meanwhile, Lieut. General John R. Hodge, unbriefed on Korea, landed there. The directive he had not seen told him to replace Japanese officials immediately. Hodge retained the Japs, including the notorious General Nobuyuki Abe [picture, wiki], ex-Governor of Korea, whom he thanked publicly for making the U.S. occupation “simple and easy.” Hodge also kept the Japanese police, holding that Koreans were “too excited” to perform police duty and that they were “the same breed of cat as the Japanese.” Koreans roared and rioted (Japanese soldiers machine-gunned one throng, killed two, wounded ten.)
Even before Hodge arrived they had been in a ferment. U.S. planes had dropped leaflets with Korean translations of the Cairo declaration promising Korea independence “in due course.” The Korean translation of “in due course” meant “in a few days.”
After 35 years of complete Japanese domination, Koreans were falling over themselves with pent-up political activity. One small boat met the U.S. convoy 20 miles offshore. In it was a Korean who nominated himself for Finance Minister. [….]
In Seoul, General Hodge heard from General MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo (which had heard from Washington). Hodge changed his policy, dismissed Abe and other high Jap Army officials.
U.S. prestige in Korea—and elsewhere—had suffered. Said the N.Y. Times: “A major error of political strategy and principle.” [Time, Sept. 24, 1945]
I take several things from this, and the first is the great flaw of hindsight, the fact that it never shows you how badly things might have gone had you chosen a different course, or whether a good one even existed.
The other thing I take from this is that General Hodge was an ass who came to Korea with little knowledge of, or use for, Korea or its people. Hodge’s ignorance sowed grudges that are held against America to this day.
Photo: LTG Hodge with a Korean official, 1945, from dok1’s must-see flickr page.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 25, 2008 at 7:03 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Diplomacy, U.S. Politics
If you want to know what I think, no. I think it’s posturing. But Yonhap catches some significance in these remarks that I had missed:
“It’s a 45-day minimum notification, but we certainly expect, and we’re watching very carefully, to see20whether or not North Korea is going to come through on the essential issue, which is verification, and to act accordingly,” Rice said. “I just wanted to clarify it’s a 45-day minimum notification, not maximum.”
Rice reiterated her skepticism about the North’s declaration of its nuclear facilities and activities.
“This declaration has left some questions,” she said. “Nobody is going to trust the North Korean number on how much plutonium they need. One of the facts is that in this process, thus far, we have learned more about some activities, questionable activities in North Korea than, frankly, we had learned before we engaged in this process.”
North Korea has said it has acquired 37 kilograms of plutonium from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, but the U.S. intelligence community believes it should be up to 50 kilograms.
“Fortunately, there are very good, tried and true, as one of my colleagues called it yesterday, international — internationally recognized methods to verify the number of kilograms of plutonium make,” Rice said. [Yonhap]
Translation: trust me. The fact that Rice feels compelled to say things like this — which can’t fail to aggravate the North Koreans — can only mean that Rice’s move to delist North Korea as a terror-sponsor is in some degree of peril in Congress. She knows that North Korea gave a low-ball estimate on the plutonium, and she’s trying to cover her right flank by suggesting that what is undone can be done again, though she knows very well it won’t be.
Several additional points: (1) you can’t get complete verification without a complete declaration, which North Korea still hasn’t given us; (2) she isn’t exactly saying that de-listing is conditional on verification, she’s only hinting; (3) if Congress doesn’t object within 45 days of June 26th, she has the power to de-list North Korea on, say, election day, when nobody’s looking. Waiting longer than the 45-day minimum gives her the flexibility to do just that while looking hawkish. All she wants to do is give Congress enough reassurance to give her — and Kim Jong Il — carte blanche.
One point that’s occurred to me recently is that with conditions improving rapidly in Iraq and with even the Iraqis saying it will be safe enough for us to withdraw most of our forces 2-3 years from now, the differences between the candidates have narrowed, and McCain can’t make Iraq his signature national security issue. Winning wars — the current trajectory, though hardly a foregone conclusion — has a way of putting those issues into the past tense. McCain needs to keep national security issues in the foreground because those are the issues where he has an advantage over Obama. Iran is one of these. North Korea is another. It hardly hurts McCain much if by pressing those issues, he splits from a highly unpopular incumbent administration, something he’s never hesitated much about doing before. A forceful denunciation of this deal from McCain would probably derail it in Congress, and if you read his words carefully, McCain has laid a good foundation for that. Obama’s position, though punctuated with moments of skepticism, is more “nuanced.”
I’ll give you a fuller quote from Rice below the fold for more context.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 24, 2008 at 9:38 pm · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Diplomacy, Abductions, Proliferation
Somehow, I don’t think Condi Rice’s “‘very strong message’ about [North Korea’s] nuclear disarmament obligations” quite got through:
North Korea reportedly asked to be recognized as a nuclear state at a meeting of foreign ministers from countries in six-party talks on Wednesday. North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun urged the U.S. to stop its hostile policy toward the North, saying verification of the nuclear facilities and stockpiles it has declared is not a duty but cooperation. [Chosun Ilbo]
Somewhere, Jack Pritchard must be smiling. In May, when he brought back this very same message from Pyongyang — “that the United States should get used to a nuclear-armed North Korea” – the State Department lit into him with the sort of fury you only see in the face of damaging truths and unexpected betrayals (State probably saw the dovish Pritchard’s denunciation of its current policy as both of these things).
That brings us to Rice and Hill’s distorted characterization of the meeting with Pak, which should fuel Congress’s doubts about their candor. I’ve pasted the texts of their subsequent statements to the press below the fold (thanks to a reader). Scan those carefully for any hint of what just happened here: a flagrant North Korean renunciation of any intention to disarm, even as Hill and Rice continue to tell us that they will. Any boldface in the remarks is my own emphasis.
Provided the Chosun Ilbo’s report is true — and Pritchard’s corroboration suggests that it is — we have our third and biggest whopper from Hill, now joined by Rice, on North Korea policy (here’s the first; here’s the second). Imagine how the sleeping watchdogs in our media would have treated lies and obfuscations like these if they had come from John Bolton, Douglas Feith, or Paul Wolfowitz.
I should note that the Chosun Ilbo’s report comes via an unnamed ”diplomatic source,” which might mean some highly placed person in the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and then again, might mean a Japanese diplomat. Japan recently made it known that it will opt out of giving North Korea one yen of aid until its abducted citizens are accounted for, an issue on which it reports “no progress whatsoever” thus far:
“Unless and until North Korea really comes to grips with this issue of abduction, there is no way for it to expect economic assistance from Japan,'’ Kazuo Kodama, a spokesman for Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura, told reporters late yesterday in Singapore. [Bloomberg]
A few other points to take away from those transcripts below:
- Rice says twice that there were no surprises in her discussions with the North Korean Foreign Minister. There are two ways to interpret that, both of them bad.
- There is no agreement on any sort of time frame for verification. Read: license to stall.
- Hill speaks of the North Korean declaration as an issue we’ve put behind us so that we can get on with verification. So much for continuing to press the North Koreans on answers about uranium, existing weapons, fissile material, or proliferation to Iran and Syria.
Parting shot: when you read Hill and Rice speak of this picayune verification mechanism they’re working day and night to put in place, ask yourself how detailed a mechanism you can fit into four pages.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 24, 2008 at 12:41 pm · Filed under Anju Links
CONDI RICE WAS NOT AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: A South Korean NGO reports that North Korea carried out 901 public executions last year. Don’t expect to see this in State’s human rights report next year. Boy, talking to the North Koreans really is changing them, isn’t it?
JUST KILL YOURSELF NOW IF YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE THIS:
The protocol has to be one “that can give us confidence that we’re able to verify the accuracy of the North Korean declaration,” she said. It must also offer “a way to address proliferation as well as all nuclear programs as well as highly enriched uranium.” [Chosun Ilbo]
She’s talking, of course, about things that she’s insisted for years were an essential part of any “complete and correct” declaration, which would be a prerequisite to lifting sanctions. So why should be believe her now, on the death-bed of her tenure? Acceptance of Rice’s assurances by any demographically significant segment of the U.S. population would be conclusive proof that Darwin has been away for too long.
NORTH KOREAN LUMBERJACK-TURNED-REFUGEE Han Dong Man, who sought refuge in the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok [correction: in the UNHCR Office in Moscow], will be allowed to leave for the United States. I think I’ve blogged about this guy before, but I don’t have time to dig through my archives. Han would mean that our government has accepted a whopping 62 North Korean refugees since the passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act almost four years ago.
THE DEATH OF AN ALLIANCE: Five months into the new, improved, America-friendly administration in South Korea, South Korea still refuses to pay even half the cost of maintaining the USFK. Worse, it persists in trying to scam us into accepting payment in goods — no doubt made by favored South Korean suppliers — rather than cash. According to the Hanky, a State Department official is negotiating this instead of Defense, which probably means the South Koreans will get everything they want and PX privileges. For the congressional staffers out there, I hope you’ve thought to ask the GAO if that would even be legal under our procurement rules. It’s funny how little has changed, even when we don’t have Roh Moo Hyun to kick around anymore.
BUT WE MUSTN’T POLITICIZE THE OLYMPICS:
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican member in the House foreign affairs panel, said Beijing had ahead of the Olympics “intensified its brutal crackdown on political dissidents and activists.
“One would wish that the motto of this year’s Olympics, ‘one world, one dream,’ could ring true,” she said. “Unfortunately, when it comes to the pursuit of democratic values and human rights, we remain a world divided with a dream unfulfilled.”
Ros-Lehtinen also claimed Beijing had initiated “broad and sweeping measures to silence internal criticism,” allegedly detaining hundreds of practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual sect and members of other organized movements.
“The number of reported raids and summary executions continues to rise, and the regime has even taken violent measures to discourage North Korean refugees from seeking asylum in China,” she said. [AFP]
Ros-Lehtinen is supporting Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D, CA) who is pushing a resolution calling on China to be a little less brutal, and a little less supportive of others who are brutal. Good luck with that, but I’m starting to like Howard Berman’s actions more than I liked Tom Lantos’s lofty words. There’s some bipartisanship left in Congress after all. (hat tip to a reader)
MAD SHEEP DISEASE UPDATE:
Instead of the People’s Association for Measures Against Mad Cow Disease, whose leadership has been significantly weakened, a small number of groups such as the radical National University Student Council or Jeondaehyup led the protests. Without a concrete plan, the protesters carried out guerrilla rallies, marching without direction from the Cheonggye Stream through Jongno and Namdaemun to the Seoul Railway Station. [Chosun Ilbo]
Sounds as though most of the flock is off to graze in other pastures. The fad is passing, although I wouldn’t necessarily connect that fact to the exposure of its inspiration as total bullshit. There’s always more bullshit to get inspired about, especially in a country full of demagogues in desparate need of a cause.
THE CONTINUUM:
Gandhism is rife in Korea, province of Japan. Koreans are being urged by their leaders to use only articles of Korean manufacture. Although civil disobedience has not been advised, the movement is an attempt to copy the Gandhi methods in India. Governor-General Saito says that the people are as a whole satisfied with the Japanese regime and that the state of unrest should not be taken too seriously. [Time, Mar. 3, 1923]
MORE SKEPTICISM about North Korea’s version of the killing of South Korean tourist Park Wang-Ja, some of it from former North Korean soldiers. The killing turns out to have been bad for business, though not nearly as bad as it would be in a more sensible place and time.
“KOREA’S FIRST U.S. State Supreme Court Judge” isn’t Korea’s. When Koreans equate ancestry with nationality, they should know that they’re diluting the loyalty and patriotism of Korean-Americans.
AN INTERESTING ANALYSIS of the candidates’ positions on Iraq: as the security situation improves — dramatically — and the need for a large U.S. presence declines, both candidates seem likely to withdraw about half of our troops within the next 2 years, especially if a democratically elected government wants us to. Iraq should not become a permanent U.S. military dependency in the same way that our fair-weather allies in South Korea and Europe have.
On the other hand, Barack Obama’s “residual” force turns out to be a lot bigger than his supporters might have guessed, and we’re entitled to wonder how much bigger it would be than the force McCain (who has the disadvantage of knowing the value of strategic ambiguity) would leave behind. I think the key realization is that for now, the improvements are probably fragile. That said, if things don’t significantly worsen in the months leading up to a competitive presidential election in America, we’ll know that Iraq has been won. If that’s so, large withdrawals can and should follow, though Iraq is still years from having a decent air force, or self-sufficent logistics, command, and control. We should be mindful that Iraq hasn’t been a perfect place for a few thousand years, and stability there is always going to leave some room for interpretation. We should also be mindful that the government forces of South Vietnam in 1973 and Afghanistan in 1990 proved surprisingly persistent without foreign forces … as long as they had external financial support, spare parts, ammo, and air cover. Once a nation’s own forces are capable of maintaining stability, foreign forces become more of a political liability than they are a military asset.
The Washington Post takes issue with the idea that the Iraqis endorsed Obama’s timetable, but that will be the perception. You can’t help but pity John McCain here. In precisely the same way that a stopped clock is right twice a day, a 16-month timetable to withdraw most of our forces has only now become reasonably plausible because of a strategy McCain has risked his political life to demand, and which Obama vaulted himself to the nomination by opposing, without putting any more thought into it than his escapist constituency would tolerate. We all been taught not to use four-letter words that start with “f.” The worst of these is “fair.” As in, what life isn’t. And if Iraq will not be a host for terror and a venue for genocide, that will be fair enough.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 22, 2008 at 7:00 am · Filed under Anju Links
BUT WE MUSTN’T POLITICIZE THE OLYMPICS: To further its pre-Olympic “cleansing” policy, China will shut down the bridges to North Korea until the Olympics are over. Those who promised us that the Olympics would mean more openness and liberalization have a lot of refugee “cleansing,” oppression, censorship, arrests, and a tidal wave of state-inspired Lebensraum rhetoric (see comments) to answer for.
IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER (PT.1): Pressed by a reporter last week, White House Spokeswoman Dana Perino said that North Korea was still a member of the Axis of Evil (can these people even appease competently?). I’m sure I speak for very few when I say how much I look foward to State’s explanation of how those Axis of Evil sanctions will keep slave-made North Korean goods off Wal-Mart shelves or help us restore the kind of pressure that’s needed to secure any actual disarmament.
IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER (PT.2): North Korea assures us that the killing of South Korean tourist Park Wang-Ja by one of its soldiers was not premeditated (meaning, instead, that this was just a part of North Korea’s natural cycle of death). The North Koreans have even taken the elaborate step of reinventing the soldier who killed Park as a 17 year-old female. As I predicted, this has resulted in no mass protests. What if the shooter had been an American?
JAY LEFKOWITZ HAS CANCELLED a trip to the Kaesong Industrial Park for the second time in almost exactly two years. Conspicuously absent from the story is an explanation of why that happened, or any comment from the muzzled Lefkowitz, who is one of the few administration officials who still even talks the talk. One wonders whether the North Koreans, sensing how completely Lefkowitz has been marginalized in Washington, simply withdrew his permission to visit.
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