Category: Politics-Korea

According to the Economist it is:

The Economist weekly has ranked South Korea 31st and North Korea 167th or dead last in its global democracy index. In a special edition titled “The World In 2007”, the U.K. magazine looked at the state of democracy in countries around the world using 60 indicators across five broad categories such as free elections, civil liberties, functioning government, political participation, and political culture. The index classified the nations surveyed (165 independent states and two territories) into four groups: 28 full democracies, 54 flawed democracies, 30 hybrid regimes and 55 authoritarian regimes.

South Korea scored 7.88 out of a possible 10 to land in 31st place and was classified as a flawed democracy. It scored a high 9.58 for free elections but did worse than advanced nations in the rest of the categories: 7.14 in functioning government, 7.22 in political participation, 7.5 in political culture and 7.94 in civil liberties. North Korea was last with a paltry 1.03. The Economist did not produce a democracy index for each country last year.

(Note: sarcasm on) I wonder why Korea’s lowest score was for a functioning government?

The latest poll numbers on President Roh’s job approval are in and they are not pretty:

Polling Data

Do you approve or disapprove of Roh Moo-hyun’sas president?

I wonder who has higher approval ratings in Korea, Kim Jong-il or President Roh?

The former foreign minister to the current Roh Moo-hyun administration had some very interesting things to say in today’s Chosun Ilbo about the US-ROK relationship:

Prof. Yoon Young-kwan, who served as the first foreign minister of the current administration, said in a lecture to a Korean Federation of Teachers¿ Associations affiliate on Monday, “Despite becoming the 10th largest economy in the world, the consciousness of South Korea remains in turn-of-the-19th-century resistant nationalism and passive concepts of independence, desperate to get out from under the influence of the Great Powers. We have to pursue positive independence taking advantage of our relations with these powers to achieve our national interests.” Yoon cited the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl as representing a spirit of genuine independence when he achieved German unification through close diplomatic ties with the U.S. Germany achieved unification by overcoming fears of a united Germany in neighboring countries or former enemies like France, the Soviet Union, Britain and Poland through cooperation with Washington.

Make sure you read the whole article because it is a good read, but I think there is a reason why this guy is no longer the foreign minister; because he makes sense compared to people like this.

It was just another day in the Korean National Assembly:

Vice Assembly Speaker Kim Duk-kyu of the Uri Party chaired the session in the absence of Speaker Kim Won-ki, who was prevented from leaving his office when GNP representatives surrounded it. The vice speaker wrapped up voting in just 25 minutes guarded by Uri Party lawmakers who had barricaded themselves in the speaker¿s seat until his arrival. Unruly scenes ran the gamut from verbal abuse to physical scuffles between the adversaries.

If I was in the Korean legislator I would be really smart and hire Choi Hong-man as one of my aides:

Image from MMATKO.

Here is a great editorial look at one of North Korea’s favorite useful idiots, South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young’s term in office:

Since Mr. Chung took office, Pyongyang has refused to talk with Seoul using such pretexts as South Korea’s refusal to pay tribute to the former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung and the South Korean government’s admission of North Korean refugees into the country. Mr. Chung had on several occasions made comments seemingly calculated to appease the North Koreans, suggesting at one point that Seoul did not understand how important these affairs were to the North Koreans.

While he said he sympathized with the long-term prisoners charged with espionage for the North based on humanitarian grounds, Mr. Chung was distant when it came to the matter of South Korean abductees or prisoners of war still held captive in the North. While he vowed to stand firm against both North Korea and the United States for the sake of our national interests, he only picked bones with his U.S. counterparts.

Such policies of Mr. Chung deepened the internal strife within the South and aggravated the tension between Seoul and Washington. North Korea, in particular, took advantage of this all-tolerant attitude of ours and took economic gifts from us while encouraging strife within our society. Even in their New Year’s editorial, North Korean newspapers called for the formation of a coalition against the conservatives in South Korean society and for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula.

As long as our government continues this all-tolerant attitude that Mr. Chung practiced, there will be no substantial progress in inter-Korean relations and only strife within South Korean society.

Amen.