Instead of pressuring North Korea where we know the regime can be influenced, the Bush administration is setting the stage for removing the DPRK from the list of terrorist sponsoring nations, and insulting our strongest ally in the region, Japan, in the process:
North Korea appears to have met the legal criteria to be taken […]
What Israel hit in Syria, and more importantly the silence from both Israel and Syria, has caused rampant speculation on what the target was. Aside from the prospect of North Korea aiding a nascent Syrian nuclear program – with initial reports indicating Israeli commandos seized nuclear material – some reports indicate the target was […]
Update: Via the Nomad, an interesting theory on Syria’s relatively mild protests to Israels attack:
Notice how far away Dayr az-Zawr is from Israel. An F15/16 attack there is not a tiptoe across the border, but a deep, deep penetration of Syrian airspace. And guess what happened with the Russian super-hyper-sophisticated cutting edge […]
From Japan Today, “U.S. ready to take N Korea off terrorism list by year-end.”
Wow, sounds like a done deal. Let’s read a bit of the report:
The United States has decided to remove North Korea from a list of states that sponsor terrorism as early as by the end of the year, if progress is […]
Daily Chosun says:
Taliban killed another Korean hostage in Afghanistan after the latest deadline for negotiations expired on Monday. Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a purported spokesman for the Taliban, told the Chosun Ilbo, AFP and AP by phone, “’Finally tonight at 8:30, we killed one of the Koreans named Sung Sim with AK-47 gunshots.” He claimed […]
[Update: July 26, 2007] This is what I mean by “metro-elite propaganda” (h/t my former boss). The article begins well enough, but then sneaks in the following:
Some devout Christians are calling the abductees martyrs, evoking the self-glorification of extreme Islamist jihadists.
This is the kind of anti-Christian moral equivalence that bugs me. On the one […]
The 2006 Country Report on Terrorism by the State Department is now available. This is the entire section on North Korea:
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987. The DPRK continued to harbor four […]
There will be no quick change in North Korea’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism:
U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Edward R. Royce (R-CA) and Donald A. Manzullo (R-IL) said they would resist any attempt to prematurely remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism published annually by the U.S. Department […]
WaPo lumps Ayaan Hirsi Ali along with Camille Paglia and Michael Moore (!!!) as being one of “idiosyncratic, opinionated, talented, flawed, impossible… iconoclasts, troublemakers, provocateurs, opportunists, polemicists.”
What???!!!
Let’s review who Ayaan Hirsi Ali is:
She scripted an 11-minute film about the Koran and domestic abuse of women that resulted in the throat-slitting assassination of its director, […]
Update: Information, like a firearm, can be used for good or evil; according to British Intelligence, terrorists used imagery from Google Maps to plan attacks on British bases in Basra.
Original post: Joshua found and implemented the beta English-Korean translator from Google, which apparently isn’t perfect but is better than the alternatives (see OneFreeKorea in […]
Via the Times: "The exhibition features 400 hand-painted posters dating from the peak of the Dear Leader Kim Sung Il's power in the 1950s to the present regime led by his son, Kim Jong Il." The article has only one image, but has several interesting propaganda quotes.
- #Young Korean Herrenvolk engaging in their version of Agoge, at least according to the New York Times. The two Korean schools mentioned in the article are similar to Exeter or Andover in the United States in someways (they are private academies that serve children of affluent parents). But my guess is that the studious atmosphere and intense regimen compare more to the likes of Stuyvesant (my alma mater) in NYC or T.J. in Virginia (both highly selective, but publicly-funded high schools).
- #North Korea claims that on 25 April 1932 the Korean People’s Army (KPA, 조선인민군/ Chosŏn inmin'gun) was formed. However, the more likely accurate date is 08 February 1948. It is celebrated as “Military Foundation Day” in Kimland.
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