News updates..

First, I must apologize for the lack of posts. I have been dealing with personal issues lately that kept me out of the loop for the short bit. Fortunately, there has been some notable events in the last week or so that are worth looking into:

-First the labor ministry has imposed a ban on certain ceremonies that civil servants can do during their official events. Usage of folk labor songs and chants are common at these events which apparently antagonizes the government and people.

-The Korea Railway Workers' Union has voted for a strike.

-Minu, a migrant worker activist from Nepal, has officially been deported from Korea. Minu was deported for his involvement in political activities which non-citizens are restricted from doing under Korean law (though they are fairly vague on what a political activity is). I haven't paid to much attention to migrant worker issues on this blog so far but I am going to try to keep a better eye on it from now on.

-The NHRCK is requesting an investigation on the possibility of police brutality during the Ssangyong occupation.

Now, moving away from labor related news...

-We are all aware of DPRK defectors.. but have you heard of defectors from ROK to the DPRK?

-In more positive news not only has the ROK government came out of the recession, but had the highest quarterly GDP growth since 2002.

-The ROK government will restart the sending aid to DPRK after a series of backdoor talks between President Lee and DPRK officials. Does this mean President Lee is a in-closet Communist?

-There was a few elections this week for some seats in the parliament and to the surprise of a few, the GNP did not do well.

-Probably the biggest news however is that the Constitutional Court has made a ruling on the media bill reforms. While they state that the GNP acted inappropriately and violated the voting rules, they will not overturn the passing of the bills. This ruling is fairly similar to what happened during the Roh impeachment issue where the court ruled that Roh was out of line, but did not throw him out office. As I mentioned in a previous post, this should have been expected.

All around the news today..

-First up, the DPRK has officially announced Kim Jong-il as the "supreme leader" of the DPRK due to his position National Defense Commission. Kim Il Sung is currently the DPRK's eternal president just for random trivia.

-The Korea Times also has this laughably bad editorial by a guy named David Thiessen who proves that racism doesn't exist. His proof? The Bible states that we are all descendants of Adam so there is no race thus racism doesn't exist. The Korea Times generally has pretty decent and balanced editorials, what the hell happened here?

-The Hankyoreh has a short interview with Korean Democracy Government Employees’ Union (KDGEU) head about the merger with the KCTU. Unfortunately the article is really short and for some reason the article isn't sure if he is the leader if the KGEU or KDGEU.

-The Republic of Korea has a new Prime Minister now, Chung Un-chan who I talked about before. His election came with walkout of most of the opposition parties, including the conservative Liberty First Party. Chung is under fire for his switch of positions and ethics problems in his past. Some unity eh?

-A three day reunion between families separated by the South/North divide just ended.

One annoyance about evaluating KDJ's legacy..

The issue over many articles and posts I have read involves the hopes and failures of the Sunshine Policy that Kim Dae-Jung developed during his Presidency. It is often portrayed that this policy was a radical and new idea in ROK politics and that Kim Dae-jung deserves blame for keeping the DPRK in existence.

First, I should say that saying any specific person is the cause for keeping the DPRK alive is ignorant. There are many factors that keep the DPRK from collapsing, singling any person or entity out is just foolish. This idea seems to stem from the basic idea that was thrown around in the early 90s that the DPRK was on the verge of collapse and Kim Jong-il will not last a few years. Clearly this is has been proven to be false and we got to stop acting like that it is an undeniable fact that the DPRK is barely surviving on a shoe string. The reality is that we don't know.

Secondly, Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine Policy was not that radical; in many ways it was the natural evolution of ROK policy that stems back nearly 30 years. The first ROK President to try to make peaceful reconciliation with the DPRK was Park Chung-hee during the 1970s. Park Chung-hee met numerous leaders in the DPRK, and the two sides came up with a Join Statement in 1972 that called for peaceful reunification of the country and setup committees to prepare for it. The plan was eventually scratched because of an assassination attempt on President Park by a DPRK agent.

In the late 80s, President Roh Tae-woo begin a policy of cooling relations between the two sides with some success. During this period the two sides signed the the Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Exchanges, and Cooperation and the Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. President Roh also publicly discussed allowing family reunification, intertrade and other peaceful exchanges on both sides. This was derailed by the first nuclear crisis that happened at the end of his Presidency. After the Agreed Framework was signed, Kim Young-sam begin loosening business restrictions on firms within the ROK with dealing business in the north. These eventually paved the way for the Sunshine Policy to exist, and many aspects of it was clearly influenced by the agreements achieved by both President Park and President Roh.

Even the conservative leaders of Korea do not want a military conflict, and prefer a peaceful resolution than war. That is the nature of international relations.

John Bolton is an idiot..

I was wrong; while everyone is celebrating the release of the two US journalists, warhawk John R. Bolton decided to be a debbie downer on the subject. John R. Bolton also proves himself not to be very knowledgeable on history.

ad_iconThe Clinton visit may have many other negative effects. In some ways the trip is a flashback to the unfortunate 1994 journey of former president Jimmy Carter, who disrupted the Clinton administration's nuclear negotiations with North Korea and led directly to the misbegotten "Agreed Framework."

First of all, there is no comparison to either of the situations. Jimmy Carter was sent by the US in hopes to brokering a mutual agreement with Kim Il Sung on the matter. What angered the Clinton administration was that Carter created a treaty with Kim Il Sung and announced it on television before telling Clinton. In this case, Clinton went with approval of Obama with a simple mission of getting the two journalists back (which many analysis believe was already negotiated before his arrival). Comparing the two situations is ridiculous.

North Korea violated the framework almost from the outset but nonetheless enticed the Bush administration into negotiations (the six-party talks) to discuss yet again ending its nuclear program in exchange for even more political and economic benefits.

Bolton is negating the fact that the US also violated the Agreed Framework when it came to offering aid. This was due to Republican opposition in Congress during the time. Despite this, we made better inroads in nuclear proliferation and had much better knowledge on the DPRK then we did during the first term of the Bush administration.

Also, why did Bush decide to start the Six Party talks again? Oh wait, I remember now; because their policy of doing nothing that was promoted by John Bolton was a failure and lead to the DPRK getting nuclear weapons in the first place. During this time, Bolton was the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and was kicked off the negotiations team with the DPRK due to his inability to keep his mouth shut at the negotiating table. Gee, now I remember why I don't take Bolton seriously.

Article on sex and woman's rights in the DPRK...

Andrei Lankov, probably the biggest expert on the DPRK, wrote a great article on the changing image of sex and woman's rights in the DPRK.

In the North, this approach was soon taken to the extreme. From the late 1950s even the slightest references to sexual activity were purged from North Korean art. Only villains could be depicted as thinking about sex, while the positive heroes were always asexual. Divorce was made difficult, almost impossible.

It seems that the government control, along with the activities of the neighborhood watch groups, the infamous ``inminban,'' helped to maintain the officially endorsed standards of sexual behavior. The powerful few sometimes could have extra-marital affairs, but they were an exception.

I also know of some cases when women got pregnant from premarital sex ― like a female soldier who once ``did it'' with her boyfriend in the late 1970s.

But once she found out that she was pregnant, she knew she was in serious trouble: if discovered, a pregnancy would lead to a dishonorable discharge from the army, after which nobody would allow her to return to her family in privileged Pyongyang.

Suck it all you Marxist-Leninist who talk about how the DPRK "liberated" women. Despite early progressive reforms when it came to issue of women, the DPRK has historically made women nothing more then machines that produce revolutionary men. The fact that this is changing further shows that the DPRK population is not as "brainwashed" as people make it sound as well as the decline of the Stalinist state.

Ssangyong update and other news...

There have been several news updates the last couple days and I unfortunately do not have time to comment on all of them, so here is a quick summary:

-The union at the Ssangyong plant and the management are going to meet later today to discuss ending the current occupation.

-Former Director of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, Kim Sang-wan, is going to jail for three years for trying to rape a female union member.

-So far 70 DP legislators have handed over letters of resignation to opposition leader Chung Sye-kun who has already announced his resignation in protest of the GNP ramming through the media reform bills. Opposition parties will also begin a 100-day street protest.

-Many of you have already probably heard of the recent verbal jabs the USA and DPRK have fired at each other at the last ASEAN Regional Forum summit. You might have also heard about that Christian activist that was executed in the DPRK recently. But did you hear about the newest act of defiance within DPRK's borders that is causing a giant crackdown? Korean dramas. Apparently they cannot resist the charms of Rain and Lee Young Ae.

-The ROK is officially the third biggest buyer of US arms behind Israel and Saudi Arabia.

-On July 20th, there was some confrontation between police and protesters. The protesters were forming a march in memory of the Yongsan incident.