Tag: United States

What the AIIB Means for the US-China Power Transition http://t.co/JEuazVGrxI pic.twitter.com/HbB8GTa4vN

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) March 29, 2015

Regarding Korea, China and Japan’s troubled modern history, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman seemed to side with Tokyo’s stance when she said, “Of course … it is not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy. But such provocations produce paralysis, not progress.” By Park Yong-seok

This speech was probably not a good idea:

Washington said on Monday that there has been no change in U.S. policy, part of an attempt to rectify controversial remarks made by an American diplomat that seemed to position the United States with Japan on historical issues with its neighboring Asian countries.

On Monday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf expressed surprise over how Seoul had interpreted comments made by Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs.

“We were, frankly, a little surprised to see that some interpreted her remarks as being directed at any particular leader in the region,” she said.

On Friday, Sherman stated in an address at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington that, “It’s not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy,” words that seemed to be directed at South Korean President Park Geun-hye or Chinese President Xi Jinping, though the Asian leaders were not specifically identified.

Sherman’s remarks, which appeared to trivialize sensitive historical issues, were met with strong backlash in Seoul over the weekend, namely her claim that Seoul and Beijing “have quarreled with Tokyo over so-called comfort women from World War II.”

“There are disagreements about the content of history books and even the names given to various bodies of water,” she continued, likely referring to the dispute over the name of the body of water between Korea and Japan, designated as the East Sea in Seoul and the Sea of Japan in Tokyo.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but publicly calling out leaders like this is sure to backfire and entrench their positions.  Something as sensitive as the comfort women issue I think requires more quiet back room diplomacy.  The Chinese government is never going to stop using historical issues to drum up anti-Japanese sentiment to turn attention away from major domestic issues when needed.  The South Korean government does this as well, the best example is when former President Lee Myung-bak was plagued by scandals so he took a trip to Dokdo to bash the Japanese and his poll numbers rose.  However, if the Japanese right wing would stop making provocative statements in regards to this issue more traction in regards to reconciliation between Korea and Japan could happen.

Here is the latest ban on a US food import to Korea:

The government’s import ban on U.S. chicken is feared to raise poultry prices.

U.S. poultry accounts for half of Korea’s chicken imports, or over 10 percent of consumption here.

In particular, prices of chicken legs could soar if the ban continues because Korea imports tens of thousands of chicken legs each year.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Sunday, Korea has banned the import of U.S.-bred chicken since Dec. 20, two days after a highly-pathogenic avian influenza virus was found in chickens on an Oregon farm.

Since then, no U.S. poultry has been brought into Korea unless they were killed before Dec. 20, or were heat-treated at over 70 degrees Celsius.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Census Bureau: 30.3% Millennials Still Living With Their Parents http://t.co/uGJa2F5laG

— CNSNews.com (@cnsnews) February 17, 2015

Remember when everyone in the media was highlighting Kim Jong-un’s offer of high level talks as some great thing?  Like I said then he was just playing the media to frame the US and the ROK as the bad guys when the North Koreans like they always do make demands to stop US-ROK military exercises:

North Korea called on South Korea Sunday to stop all military exercises, including joint drills with the United States, if it really wants to improve inter-Korean ties.

“If the South is truly determined to improve inter-Korean relations through dialogue and negotiations … it should stop all kinds of war schemes, including reckless military exercises carried out jointly with foreign forces,” Minju Joson, North Korea’s cabinet newspaper, said. “War rehearsals and dialogues cannot coexist.”

The North Korean newspaper also warned that if Seoul sticks to the joint war rehearsals against the North, inter-Korean relations will get much worse and the South Korean government will have to take all the responsibility for it.

The Sunday warning is the latest in the North’s recent desperate efforts to stop rounds of military exercises conducted annually between South Korea and the U.S.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

This supposed cyberattack on North Korea’s Internet is probably more for US domestic political consumption to show that the US is “doing something” than punishing North Korea for the Sony hack:

 

Key North Korean websites were back online Tuesday after a nearly 10-hour shutdown that followed a U.S. vow to respond to a crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures that Washington blames on Pyongyang.

It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the Internet stoppage in one of the least-wired and poorest countries in the world, but outside experts said it could be anything from a cyberattack to a simple power failure. The White House and the State Department declined to say whether the U.S. government was responsible.  [AP]

Even if a cyberattack had caused the shutdown, analysts said, it would largely be symbolic since only a tiny number of North Koreans are allowed on the Internet — a fraction of Pyongyang’s staunchly loyal elite, as well as foreigners.

You can read the rest at the link, but the few websites they have like the Korean Central News Agency was shut down for just 9.5 hours, big deal. Hopefully some different response actions will be explored as well.

Here is an interesting report that says that North Korea was training agents to conduct terrorist attacks within the United States according to Bill Gertz in the Washington Free Beacon:

 

North Korea dispatched covert commando teams to the United States in the 1990s to attack nuclear power plants and major cities in a conflict, according to a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report.

The DIA report, dated Sept. 13, 2004, reveals that five units of covert commandos were trained for the attacks inside the country.

According to the report, the “Reconnaissance Bureau, North Korea, had agents in place to attack American nuclear power plants.”

The document states that the North Korean Ministry of People’s Armed Forces, the ministry in charge of the military, “established five liaison offices in the early 1990s, to train and infiltrate operatives into the United States to attack nuclear power plants and major cities in case of hostilities.”

“One of the driving forces behind the establishment of the units and infiltration of operatives was the slow progress in developing a multi-stage ballistic missile.”  [Washington Free Beacon]

You can read more at the link, to include the comments from a ROK Drop favorite and Korean War historian Mark Sauter on this issue.  Gertz’s information is based on heavily redacted documents that Mark Sauter was able to uncover through Freedom of Information Act requests.  Here is probably the most interesting passage from these documents:

North Korea’s interest in training its agents about Americans is supported by many other reports, including the one below about an alleged U.S. citizen known as “Jackson” who instructed North Korean special forces operatives in “U.S. Special Forces tactics, American English, and interrogation techniques” from before 1983 to at least 1993. The American, called “Comrade Ch’ang-sik” in Korean and said to be a U.S. Air Force POW, trained members of the 52^nd Seaborne Sniper Battalion. He was reported to be the chief of psychological operations study at the Reconnaissance Bureau’s Madonghui College.*  [DMZ War]

Here is a copy of the redacted report about this American:

What is really interesting about this is that the EC-121 shootdown occurred over the Sea of Japan.  Some wreckage from the crash along with two bodies were recovered on the Sea of Japan.

• DMZ Flashpoints: The 1969 EC-121 Shootdown

So the picture the source saw could not have been the EC-121.  Maybe it was just a picture from the Korean War years that people mistook for the EC-121?  Looking at his estimated age of “Jackson” he would be too young to be a Korean War POW and I have never heard of an Air Force officer being taken hostage or defecting across the DMZ.  So who is this guy?  Mark Sauter believes it may be US Army defector Jerry Parrish:

However, if the “Jackson report” above is accurate, it may be even more likely that “Jackson” was one of the five U.S. Army defectors to North Korea during the Cold War. These men were sometimes described as “POWs” by escapees from North Korea and some of “Jackson’s” characteristics match defector Jerry Wayne Parrish, now dead. [DMZ War]

Specialist Jerry Parrish defected to North Korea in 1963 while on patrol along the DMZ.  Here is a picture of Parrish while in North Korea:

If the mysterious “Jackson” is Parrish it seems what US Special Forces knowledge he was teaching was not from personal experience.  This leads me to believe his main job was teaching English like the other US defectors did.  Anyway this is just another interesting chapter of the ongoing conflict with North Korea that these declassified documents are slowly shining a light on.

Students of Whispering Pines School wearing traditional Korean clothing hold South Korea’s national flag during a ceremony held at the private school near New York on Dec. 4, 2014, to celebrate the Korean Education Center of New York’s contribution to its scholarships. A total of 124 of the school’s students are learning Korean as their second foreign language. (Yonhap)

N. Korea slams U.S. over racial discrimination http://t.co/wZ4NkbPDkU via @GlobalPost

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) November 30, 2014