A Quick Thought on this Psy business
My ten year-old can already tell you that one of my life’s newer objectives is to die an old man without having heard “Kangnam Style” even once. Pop culture has never been my thing, but I sure did get...
View ArticlePost-Sunshine South Korea is sober, pragmatic, and grouchy.
In this post last week, I cited polling data showing how South Koreans’ views of North Korea have hardened in recent years, representing a dramatic swing since the fervent anti-Americanism and...
View ArticleCan Park Geun-Hye prepare Korea, and the world, for reunification?
Yesterday, Yonhap reported that an unusual billboard had appeared in Times Square in New York: “Korean Unification would be an immeasurable BONANZA for any nations with interests in the Korean...
View ArticleIn South Korea, a political realignment
When President Park speaks of reunification as a “jackpot,” she is seizing an issue that the left had “owned” for at least a dozen years. Ten years ago, the left could draw crowds of candle-carrying...
View ArticleWhat the hell? Seoul bar bans black customers over Ebola panic.
Story and photo here. I had to read that twice to believe it, but I can’t say that it completely astonishes me. I wonder how many of those banned from the bar, which is a short walk from a large U.S....
View ArticleThose who’ve been assigned to Yongsan, or who sometimes went to Itaewon, …
will appreciate this well-researched history of the neighborhood’s sleazy past and present gentrification, although sleaze has been a difficult thing to extinguish from the places where it has put down...
View ArticleI love watching North Korean refugees emerging as a cultural force …
to inform the world about life, such as it was, in their homeland. The South China Morning Post covers a North Korean human rights film festival in Hong Kong, and The Washington Post’s new Seoul...
View ArticleAre South Koreans always the last to learn facts about North Korea or
… does it just seem that way? Years after Google Earth made North Korea’s gulags visible to any American with an internet connection, Daum is launching a Korean-language map service covering North...
View ArticleCan peer pressure do what South Korea’s conscience couldn’t?
Did the U.N. have to care about human rights in North Korea first for South Koreans to care, too? What is it about Michael Kirby that gives him the capacity to move the South Korean government that,...
View ArticleReally? Just 15% of S. Koreans support humanitarian aid to N. Korea?
Yonhap reports that, according to a poll commissioned by the Database Center for North Korean Human rights, 73.1% of South Korean adults surveyed support approval of a human rights law. That would be...
View ArticleBreaking: U.S. Ambassador to S. Korea slashed by guy who really hates bloodshed
Here’s a link to the story, and here’s a picture: Picture released of injured U.S. ambassador Lippert on YTN pic.twitter.com/ztxS3QzwmH — Mark Broome (@mark_arirang) March 4, 2015 Hat tip to Sung Yoon...
View ArticleSouth Korean National Assembly passes human rights bill. Finally.
Last month, I leveled some bitter criticism at South Korea’s opposition Minju Party for blocking North Korean human rights legislation (ironically enough, “Minju” means “democracy”). This week, after...
View ArticleDear President Park: Make Reunification Your Legacy
Last week was a tough week for Park Geun-hye, when her party lost its majority in the National Assembly. The simplest explanation for this is that historically, ruling parties usually take beatings in...
View ArticleWhat victory looks like from Pyongyang (Parts 1 and 2)
Part 1 David Straub’s “Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea” has resonated with me in several ways, but none of them more than Straub’s deep ambivalence about Korea in the late 1990s and early...
View ArticleMust read: Brian Myers on what North Korea really wants (hint: it’s South Korea)
Over the years, the soft-liners’ explanations for why Pyongyang sacrificed billions of dollars and millions of lives to build a nuclear program have shifted. First, they said it just wanted the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
North Korea policy in the South Korean election: what (little) the data tell us
What exit polling data I do have come to us from the Asan Institute. And while Asan’s analysis contains much interesting information that political types would call “internals,” it doesn’t tell us all...
View ArticleSouth Koreans like Moon Jae-in personally, but are uneasy with his North...
If Moon Jae-in and his inner circle are, in the pits of their souls, as extreme as I think they are, why hasn’t Moon moved forward with his plans to reopen Kaesong, or Kaesongograd? Probably because he...
View ArticleClik here to view.
To save Korea’s democracy, withdraw its American security blanket
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” – Samuel Johnson Most Korea-watchers will view the recent hints from both Seoul and...
View Article
