South Korea Warning to North Korea

http://news.yahoo.com/skorea-warns-might-shoot-down-nkorean-rocket-024131470.html

Obama urges China to rein in North Korea

Obama, China, and North Korea

"SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday urged China to use its influence to stop North Korea's "bad behavior" in a nuclear standoff with the West and hinted at tougher sanctions if the reclusive state goes ahead with a rocket launch next month.

Such a launch would only further isolate the impoverished North, which much show its sincerity if on-again-off-again six-party aid-for-disarmament talks are to restart, Obama said.

Seoul and Washington say the launch is a disguised test of ballistic missile. North Korea says it merely wants to put a satellite into orbit.

Obama said that Beijing's actions of "rewarding bad behavior (and) turning a blind eye to deliberate provocations" were obviously not working, adding he would raise the matter at a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Monday.

"I believe that China is very sincere that it does not want to see North Korea with a nuclear weapon," he told a news conference in Seoul before a global summit on nuclear security. "But it is going to have to act on that interest in a sustained way."

Foreign Policy - Lankov on NK Nukes

Andrei Lankov on North Korean Nukes

"On Feb. 29, the newest round of negotiations between the United States and North Korea ended. The North Korean side has agreed to freeze its uranium-enrichment program and refrain from long-range missile testing in exchange for food aid from the United States.

The Western media has predictably expressed hope (admittedly, limited and conditional) about the revival of nuclear talks, and the U.S. State Department has described the negotiations as a "modest first step."

Yes, it was a "step," and not the first in the seemingly endless nuclear negotiations between the United States and North Korea -- but toward what?

The United States' official stance is unwavering: Its stated goal is the complete, irreversible, and verifiable nuclear disarmament of the North. This position has not changed over the past 20-odd years. In the meantime, the North has successfully tested plutonium devices, conducted a number of long-range missile launches (admittedly not so successful), and started an impressive uranium-enrichment program. We have never been as far from denuclearization as we are today.

This shouldn't be surprising: U.S. policy is hopelessly unrealistic. Under no circumstances will the North Korean government consider relinquishing its hard-won nuclear capabilities. And why should it?" Read full article by clicking on title. 

PHOTOS; Korea circa 1900

Old Korea

Photos of Korea circa 1900.

Ascom City Memories - 1950s

Ascom City, Korea, memories...

...excerpt by Chris Sarno Memoir from Korean War Educator. "When the train stopped at Ascom City—that huge complex for the Marine Corps--they were one step closer to home. "When I alighted from that train and walked between the tracks with my M-1," Sarno recalled, "I was filled with wonderment." He no longer needed the M-1, because now he was well and truly in a safe area and soon to be even safer back in the USA. "Now I felt the world—combat readiness—was lifted off of my shoulders," he explained. "I knew that I was going home alive as a survivor. Wow! I felt so alive—so very alive—to have made it."
The complex at Ascom City had supplies and communications. Although there were buildings that had been built by the Japanese when they occupied the city, Sarno and the other homeward-bound Marines were assigned to tents. That was okay with them. The tents were clean and they brought back memories of tent camp. Besides, they were all together again. "We had tech sergeants, master sergeants, staff sergeants, and buck sergeants all in the same tent," Sarno said. Nobody got on their case while they stayed there. "Everyone was basically treated like civilians or equals," Sarno recalled, "because everybody was going home. We had survived Korea. We had a good time the few days we spent at Ascom. We woke up every morning to reveille and to Debbie Reynolds singing ‘Good Morning’ from the soundtrack of Gene Kelley’s hit movie, ‘Singing in the Rain.’ We had been in Korea for a year and we hadn’t heard it before. We were just eating it up."
There were movies, hot showers, and hot meals at Ascom City. No more C-rations. The Marines were deloused and underwent fecal tests for worms. "We were all lined up and they gave us a little carton like a half pint milk container," Sarno recalled. "I asked the corpsman, ‘What the hell is this for?’ He said, ‘We want a sample of your turd.’ When I asked him what for, he told me, ‘For worms, you dumb bastard.’ We did our duty in the carton, and turned it in. As far as I know, nobody in my outfit had to hang around Frisco because of worms when they got back to the States. But they tested us for it. I never thought about it, but it could easily have happened with that 1944 C-ration chow."

PHOTOS: Pictures of North Korea from IHT

Photo link for images of North Korea

"The few Western photographers allowed to visit North Korea in the last two decades have returned with remarkably similar images. The highly secretive Communist government allowed them to photograph little else but the extravagant pageants honoring their supreme leader, Kim Jong-il, or the immaculate subways in Pyongyang.
David Guttenfelder of The Associated Press has been able to gain more access as the wire service negotiated establishing a full-time news bureau in Pyongyang, which finally opened in January. (A video bureau was opened by Associated Press Television News in 2006.)
Mr. Guttenfelder is now the only Western photographer able to photograph on a regular basis there. He has used all of his extensive talents – and added a new one: acting as an unofficial diplomat between North Korea and the United States.
“I represent the U.S. and the outside world to them,” he said. “But the big responsibility is representing them to the outside world through my pictures – to understand what I see, to try to be as fair as I can and to dig as deep as I can.” IHT

North Korea Rocket Surprise

Rocket Surprise

"PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea announced plans Friday to blast a satellite into space on the back of a long-range rocket, a provocative move that could jeopardize a weeks-old agreement with the U.S. exchanging food aid for nuclear concessions.

The North agreed to a moratorium on long-range launches as part of the deal with Washington, but it argues that its satellite launches are part of a peaceful space program that is exempt from any international disarmament agreements. The U.S., South Korea and other critics say the rocket technology overlaps with belligerent uses and condemn the satellite program as a disguised way of testing military missiles in defiance of a U.N. ban.

The launch is to take place three years after a similar launch in April 2009 drew widespread censure." AP

Korea, 1973

When I began writing Seasons in the Kingdom, it was part of a first year English class. It began as a short story. Many of the elements of the story lay before me, and as I worked at surviving the next twenty plus years, I also worked at the problems this story presented to me. One was my very particular and intimate experiences in Korea. The others were the larger story of survival by young Korean women and the relationship they had with the GIs that came and went. In following entries I will provide some of the background information that I studied and had hoped would be part of the Seasons in the Kingdom, but that was not to be, because my gathering of information about Korean history, and specifically the changing role of women within Korean society through the centuries began to take on a life of its own. So, here, I will follow up with background of Korean history, the rise of Buddhism and the challenges of Neo-Confucianism and hope that shaped the closeted world of male-female society in Korea, a world that required blinders against the real human commerce of the Korean street. Comments are always welcome.

Leap of Faith

North Korea's Newest Gambit.

"AN UNTESTED youngster, keen to assert his leadership ahead of the April 15th centenary of the birth of his revered grandfather, Kim Il Sung, founder of North Korea, might easily have opted for a more belligerent first gesture to the outside world. Something snazzy like an attack on a South Korean ship, for instance, or a missile launch. Instead, Kim Jong Un’s government has made a surprising and conciliatory move. On February 29th it announced at the same time as the American government that it had agreed to freeze nuclear tests, long-range missile launches and uranium enrichment at its Yongbyon plant, as well as to invite back international nuclear inspectors kicked out in pique in 2009. Few thought that so soon after the death of Mr Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, in December, a young man still in his 20s would have the gumption to go so far." The Economist

Weep not for the Dear Leader

Lankov on the recent death of the Dear Leader.

"So, it finally happened. Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader, Marshal of a Mighty Republic and the Lodestar of the 20th Century, is dead. His demise was widely expected -- Marshal Kim has not looked healthy in recent years, and in 2008 he suffered a major stroke. But nonetheless his death has sent shockwaves around the world. 

North Korean Woman searching for food amongst the weeds.

For most people outside North Korea, Kim Jong Il has always appeared a bizarre and menacing, if slightly comical, figure. He was fat, had a strange haircut, and was reputed to have worn platform shoes to mask his humble stature. His love for cognac and expensive cheese, as well as other luxuries was widely known (outside North Korea, of course) -- and looked especially bizarre for someone who presided over the worst famine in the last few decades. His policies as leader were often explained as irrational, driven by his inflated ego or perhaps ideological jealousy?

How to Stop the Next Korean War

Dr. Andrei Lankov on Korean Tensions

"For the first time in decades, a new war on the Korean peninsula appears to be a distinct probability. Not only does North Korea's regime seem determined to escalate its provocations, but the air has also changed in South Korea, where society is in an unusually bellicose mood nowadays. After North Korean artillery stunned the world by shelling the island of Yeonpyeong last month, killing four and wounding 20, South Korean generals are talking unusually tough. For example, Gen. Han Min-koo, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently promised that in case of another North Korean attack, his forces "will completely crush the enemy."  - Lankovs article is from 2010, but his views remain important for the interpretation of North Asian subjects.

North Korea & the Future?

"When North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died late last year, analysts had no clear idea what the accession of his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, might mean for the Hermit Kingdom. On Feb. 29 this leap year -- appropriately enough -- we got an initial hint, when Pyongyang agreed to suspend work at the state-of-the-art uranium-enrichment plant at Yongbyon that it had suddenly revealed to a visiting U.S. nuclear scientist in November 2010, to halt nuclear and missile tests, and to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency back into the country after a three-year absence. The new deal with the United States, concluded in exchange for 240,000 tons of food aid, will not eradicate the North Korean threat. It augurs well, however, for Kim Jong Un's foreign-policy smarts and will be seen internationally as a diplomatic victory for U.S. President Barack Obama"
Read more here...

‘Seoul summit could signal N.K. to give up nuclear ambitions’

The Korean Herald. North Korea, South Korea, and the Nuclear Question.

Will China Absorb North Korea?

Gordon Chang discusses the future of North Korea, "There is profound unease in China about Kim-family rule, even though the two nations have maintained ties for decades. In September, the oft-quoted Zhu Feng of Peking University even asserted that the 1961 mutual assistance treaty between China and North Korea had become irrelevant—a dead letter—with the end of the Cold War because China had already abandoned the North. Professor Zhu’s view buttresses the assessment of South Korea’s then vice foreign minister, Chun Yung-woo, who is reported to have told then US Ambassador Kathleen Stephens in February 2010 that China “would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the United States in a ‘benign alliance.’”

What we may be looking at with the recent, and mostly meaningless deal with North Korea, is a more important back channel step by China to have North Korea begin to edge in baby Kim steps toward a reality check of what the future will be like. In this, it should be a future in which the regime either goes away totally, or somehow learns to live with its neighbors, including the Chinese, who are weary of the myopic view of the Kim Family Regime in Pyongyang.

Chang's suggestion that the Chinese could, given the provocation that the Northern Generals might slipt into warlords fighting for control of their part of the top of the peninsular, is one of the known scenarios of how the Kim Family Regime will collapse. At that point, the Chinese would have to assume political and military control of the North, a prospect that they probably find incredibly upsetting, considering how far they have come in the world with this dead's man weight around their necks.

How North Korea will collapse, is not the issue, it's when and how, and then, how that failed regime's death throws impact the rest of the region and the alliances that are in place.

Korea, China and the Future - Gordon Chang