A few times I have come across the assertion that the 1994 Agreed Framework did not prohibit North Korea’s uranium enrichment program, and that document did not even include the word “uranium,” as an argument for why the U.S. was responsible for the disintegration of the Agreed Framework. However, that is a myth […]

Better late than never:
The Unification Ministry has adjusted the content of unification education for both adults and students with President Lee Myung-bak’s North Korea policy, emphasizing the importance of national security and North Korea’s human rights issues.
Some left-leaning lecturers, who have been slammed for propagating distorted views on North Korea for the past […]

Sorry I missed the anniversary, but better late than never: yesterday was the 48th anniversary of the 4.19 Revolution of 1960, which brought down Syngman Rhee (이승만) government.
The background to this “revolution” is complex, but it can be simply summarized as the final act of revulsion toward the increasingly autocratic rule of Syngman Rhee’s […]

Apparently someone in the KPA Threat Department didn’t realize that ashes logically follow fire when attempting to make one of the standard threats sound more menacing:
North Korea threatened South Korea with destruction Sunday after Seoul’s top military officer said his country would consider attacking the communist nation if it tried to carry out […]

A few days ago Joshua discussed the report of 22 North Koreans executed after having drifted into South Korean waters in two rubber dinghies and being returned to the DPRK. Thirteen of those rumored to have been executed were family members.
According to ROK National Intelligence Service (NIS) official, the group was fishing and, “strongly […]

A North Korean defector to South Korea had to go to court to get a passport to travel to the U.S. Why?
The [foreign] ministry had said Kim, 69, could be a target of North Korean assassination attempts during planned trips to the U.S., and the trips could cause diplomatic friction. [. . .] […]

Update: Some timely comments on the problem of Roh and the effect on the U.S.-ROK alliance.
Original post: The Brookings Institution North Korea page has a new paper (h/t Kevin) on U.S.-ROK relations, “Looking Back and Looking Forward: North Korea, Northeast Asia and the ROK-U.S. Alliance,” (full paper-PDF) by Dr. Park Hyeong-jung, a Senior Fellow […]

South Korean President-elect Lee Myung-Bak announced members of his transition team in the past couple of weeks. Since the news did not receive much coverage due to the holidays, better late than never as the saying goes.
Let’s start with the obvious one. Lee made history by including a foreigner, David Eldon. Eldon […]

About two years ago, I wrote about South Korean President-elect Lee Myung-Bak’s “student radical” days and how he came to get his chaebol job despite his prison record, on the now defunct blog The Korea Liberator (archived here).
This episode is fairly well-known in South Korea, but I reproduce much of the original post below […]

On my drive home, I was listening to a radio program, in which Korea “experts” were discussing the Lee Myung-Bak victory. Someone from the audience asked the question to the effect of, “With which American presidential candidate would Lee be the most comfortable?”
Experts were stumped, beyond the usual “He will get along with George […]