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Koreans are by far the biggest educational spenders in the world according to the Korea Times.

South Korea topped the list of household educational spending to total consumption expenditure among the 30 OECD countries, with a ratio of 5.8 percent in 2003.

“Contrary to heavier spending on educational and medical purposes, Koreans are reducing their expenses on public service fees, including transportation fares,” the BOK official said.

This is no surprise with the amount of money Koreans spend to send students to private academies (hagwons) in the evenings and weekends to learn bad English.

My post last week about if North Korea really cheated in regards to its nucear weapons program which was based on an article in Foreign Affairs magazine by Selig Harrison who believes the US may be manipulating or misreading intelligence about the North’s nuclear program in order to create a crisis on the peninsula so the US can continue to control North Korean policy instead of South Korea or Japan.

I don’t agree with everything Mr. Harrison says and Charles Tustison at Korea Watch offers his own rebuttal of the Foreign Affairs article.

Fisking this article is a challenge because there is so much that is inaccurate or misleading. This is not the fault of Mr. Harrison. He is an expert on what is taught and reported about north Korea. However, much of what is reported and taught is based on an inaccurate views pushed by the Korean right and left. These are the views that caused the Clinton administration to underestimate north Korea’s staying power, the views that put south Korean President Kim Dae Jung and later US Secretary of State Albright in meetings with Kim Jong Il under the mistaken impression that he was unable to speak, mentally deficient, or even “delusional.” It is this set of views that caused the Bush administration to offer north Korea’s military aid for removing Kim Jong Il, when it is Kim Jong Il holding north Korea’s military back.

Read rest of the article here, it is an interesting read.

I don’t see this one happening but who knows. The Chosun Ilbo is reporting that Kim Jong Il and President Roh Moo-hyun have been invited to Moscow to attend the 60 year end of World War II memorial.

Both President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il have been invited to attend a celebration marking the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory in World War II to be held in Moscow on May 9.

Will Kim Jong-il attend? During gathering such as these, North Korea has usually sent its nominal head of state, President Kim Yong-nam of the Supreme People’s Assembly Presidium, or simply failed to attend. Korea Institute for National Unification researcher Chon Hyun-joon said that because Kim Jong-il has never attended an international event attended by foreign heads of state, the possibility that he might attend the upcoming one in Moscow was currently low. He said, however, that because Kim has broken with expectations before, it was premature to completely rule out his attendance. A Cheong Wa Dae official said all measures were being considered, including ones based on the presumption of Kim’s attendance.

I don’t think Kim Jong Il will attend this gathering because he likes to portray the image of the crazy mad man and man of mystery. Rubbing elbowes with world leaders does not help that persona. Could you imagine if him and President Bush ran into each other much less Roh Moo-hyun?

The New York Times is reporting that North Korea is prepared to rejoin the six party talks soon.

SEOUL (Reuters) – Negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear programs can and will resume in weeks rather than months, a U.S. congressman said on Friday after rare talks with the North’s number two leader appeared to break a logjam.

“I am convinced, as are my colleagues, that if in fact we move along the process we are moving along today, the six-party talks can and will resume in a manner of weeks as opposed to months or years,” said Weldon, whose delegation also held talks with other North Korean officials.

Good to see they got those Kim Jong Il portraits back up for the congressional visit.

The Flying Yangban has a really good post that provides a good summary and analysis of the North Korean defector issue. It appears the Yangban has been all over this one for while. Go check it out.

When I read Japanese were boycotting North Korean products I immediately thought of, boycott what counterfeit US dollars and Nork heroin? However, North Korea actually does have some legimate exports to Korea besides the illegal variety.

But although the number of consumer goods bearing North Korean labels has visibly declined of late, experts on the reclusive state are divided over whether this means fewer products are coming in or they are merely being given another country of origin, including seafood caught in North Korean waters but identified as Russian or Chinese.

On the other end of the spectrum, boxes of expensive North Korean “matsutake” mushrooms were prominently displayed in the better supermarkets, selling for 10,000 yen to 20,000 yen each.

Now is the “Great North Korean Boycott” having any impact on North Korea? According to this guy it is:

Lee Young Hwa, a professor at Kansai University who is an expert on the North Korean economy, said the effort has had some effect.

The fashion set may breath a sigh of relief that, thanks to boycott pressure, North Korean suits are no longer easily found.

I have never seen any store selling North Korean suits when I have gone to Japan but I find it hard to believe Nork suits have Japanese clothing companies on edge. Next time I go to Japan I am going to have to buy me a North Korean suit just for the novelty of owning one. I would love to compare the quality between Itaewon tailors and North Korean slave labor.

I will be amazed if this construction project ever happens Building a road from China to Taipei just doesn’t seem possible. But going to the moon not to long ago never seemed possible, so who knows maybe the Chinese can do it.

US Ambassador to Korea, Christopher Hill, has said that the USFK will not be used in any regional conflict without permission from Seoul.

American troops in South Korea will not get involved in regional disputes without consent from Seoul, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea said Tuesday.

Turning to the deployment of patriot missiles in Gwangju, the ambassador said the move was not part of the U.S.’ Missile Defense program but came at the request of the South Korean government to defend the country.

A conflict between Taiwan and China has always made me wonder if Korea is willing to fight for democracy in a country that is very similar to itself. Taiwan like Korea is a small country, with a hard working & educated population that has emerged from an authoritarian past to become a thriving democracy. If Korea is not willing to aid in the defense of Taiwan, than why should anyone aid in the defense of Korea? What is the difference between the two situations? Very little. They are both living under the point of a gun by communist thugs who they like to think the best of.

So if war was to come to Taiwan would Seoul be willing to side with the forces of democracy and fight China? I seriously doubt Seoul would ever go to war with China. They would probably try to stay neutral in the conflict but I don’t see how they could when they have thousands of US soldiers located on their peninsula that are a stone throw from the Chinese mainland. What do you all think?

Andrei Lankov over at North Korea Zone has an interesting article published in the International Herald Tribune about amnesty for North Korean leaders before any reunification between the two Koreas can occur.

Then what would be the fate of North Korea’s leaders? Unlike their ex-Soviet comrades, they have few if any ways to transform themselves into successful capitalists or democratic politicians. Even if they manage to follow the example of the new Russian super-rich and privatize state-owned companies, these rusty, antiquated plants will not be of great value, especially if large South Korean conglomerates move in. Capitalism in the North will be built by the managers of Samsung and LG Korea, not by born-again Communist apparatchiks.

What can be done? The short answer is amnesty. People who run the country should be granted immunity from persecution for all crimes committed during the 60-odd years of their rule. I am fully aware that we are talking about people who were in many respects as bad as Stalin and Hitler. But amnesty is necessary – not for them, of course, but for countless people whose lives would be so much better if the North Korean leaders were less persistent in their rejection of reforms.

Make sure you read the rest on your own.

Mr. Lankov is probably right about providing amnesty but I don’t think even that would get these thugs to change their ways. As long as they feel secure with their power and there is no real threat to them losing it, it is in their interest to keep things the way it is. So these thugs are not going to begin reforms because they are given amnesty or suddenly care about their people. They will begin reforms only when it is a last resort. Thus a variety of international pressures such as embargoes, sanctions, and aiding refugees is needed to destabalize the regime.

Amnesty is useful in preventing a full scale war. If the North Korean leaders feel they have no other options to keep their power then they will choose to start a war. However, if they know they have guaranteed amnesty then they would think twice about starting a war because they are sure to die with that option. But there is always the whole “Korean Pride” thing to worry about. They may rather choose to go down in a blaze of glory instead of accepting amnesty and the loss of “face” in stepping down from power and allowing the world to see what the “Workers Paradise” is really about.

I don’t really see the North Korean leaders choosing this option like Saddam Hussein did in Iraq becuase the Nork leadership does not have the concern about how the Korean people will view them historically in the future. Saddam did not want to be viewed in Arab history as someone who gave in to the Americans to save his own hide and Arabs to an extent admired him for standing up to the Americans until he was drug out of a spider hole. However, nobody in Korea will admire the Norks for standing up to America. They will just be hated more. So accepting amnesty would look more favorably on them historically because they would be saving many Korean lives. So amnesty is a useful option.

Interesting article in the January/February Foreign Affairs magazine concerning the possibility that Washington may be wrong about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, much the same way they were wrong about Saddam Hussein’s stockpiles of WMD.

Much has been written about the North Korean nuclear danger, but one crucial issue has been ignored: just how much credible evidence is there to back up Washington’s uranium accusation? Although it is now widely recognized that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence data it used to justify the invasion of Iraq, most observers have accepted at face value the assessments the administration has used to reverse the previously established U.S. policy toward North Korea.

A review of the available evidence suggests that this is just what happened. Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration presented a worst-case scenario as an incontrovertible truth and distorted its intelligence on North Korea (much as it did on Iraq), seriously exaggerating the danger that Pyongyang is secretly making uranium-based nuclear weapons. This failure to distinguish between civilian and military uranium-enrichment capabilities has greatly complicated what would, in any case, have been difficult negotiations to end all existing North Korean nuclear weapons programs and to prevent any future efforts through rigorous inspection.

The writer of the article Selig Harrison also believes the Bush Administration created the nuclear crisis to prevent a warming of relations between South Korea and Japan with North Korea. Any warming of relations between the countries would mean that North Korea policy would be driven by those two countries more than the United States.

American anxieties only grew, however, when, on September 17, 2002, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang to discuss the normalization of relations–a visit that Japan had been quietly exploring for more than nine months without telling the United States. Washington, in fact, found out about the trip only three weeks before it occurred, when Koizumi presented the upcoming visit as a fait accompli to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Koizumi did not ask for U.S. permission to go to North Korea, and he refused to call off the trip even after Armitage revealed Washington’s suspicions about a secret North Korean uranium program.

Faced with the prospect that the North Korea policies of South Korea and Japan had slipped out of its control, the Bush administration “saw a real possibility that its options on the [Korean] peninsula would increasingly be driven by the policy agendas of others,” wrote Jonathan Pollack, chairman of the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College in the summer of 2003. Plans for Kelly’s visit to Pyongyang were accelerated, and his showdown with North Korean leaders came less than three weeks after Koizumi’s meeting with Kim Jong Il.

I do have to admit that the timing of the crisis was a little strange considering Koizumi had just visited the country. When the crisis first materialized, I thought it was really weird because the US had another crisis on its hands with North Korea at the same time it was preparing for war with Iraq. I’m making an assumption here that the US must of knew about the nuclear cheating for a while before going public with it, so Mr. Harrison at least offers a theory about why the information was made public at that time and that was to keep strong Washington influence in all North Korea policy.

I tend to disagree, I think the crisis came up at the time to strengthen the pre-emptive strike doctrine to eliminate thug dictators trying to aquire WMD before they get them. Kim Jong Il already had them so we can’t do much with him but Saddam hasn’t gotten nukes yet so we need to take him out now. I think any concerns about influence in North Korea policy was secondary at best.

The article continues on to make a strong argument that North Korea’s nuclear program is not as advanced as the public is made to believe. I only hope Mr. Harrison is right about this because a nuclearized North Korea is a scary proposition. The upcoming year should prove interesting on how this issue is resolved.

The author of the article Selig Harrison is Director of the Asia Program and Chairman of the Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy at the Center for International Policy. He is also a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the author of Korean Endgame. What that all means I don’t know but I assume he is a pretty smart guy so check out his article and judge for yourself.