ROK and Inter-Korean relations
February 2010
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N.Korea Still Expects Payment for Summit
North Korea is still demanding rice and fertilizer in return for an inter-Korean summit, even as it keeps sending increasingly urgent messages to Seoul to bring such a summit about.
Since a secret meeting between South Korean Labor Minister Yim Tae-hee and Kim Yang-gon, the director of the North Korean Workers' Party's United Front Department, in Singapore in October, "North Korea has kept asking us for a huge amount of economic aid in return for arranging a meeting" between President Lee Myung-bak and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, a South Korean government source said on Thursday.
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North Korea detains four South Koreans
February 26, 2010
North Korea said today it has detained four South Koreans for illegally entering the country.
The official Korean Central News Agency neither identified the South Koreans nor say how they entered the communist country. The brief report only said the South Koreans were "recently detained" and are now under investigation.
The South Korean Unification Ministry was still trying to validate the report.
The crossing, if confirmed, would mark the first illegal entry by a foreigner into the North after Robert Park, a Korean-American missionary and human rights activist, walked into the country across the frozen Tumen river along the Chinese-North Korean border in December.
Park was released earlier this month.
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Ailing Kim Jong-il 'Increasingly Reliant on Inner Circle'
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il apparently had age spots removed from his face to look healthy but is becoming more and more fretful and dependent on old friends or family, the National Intelligence Service said in a report at the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.
When asked by lawmakers if the North Korean leadership is in control, he said, "We believe that they are still in control. There is zero possibility of a coup."
He also commented on rumors that North Korea's recently established official investment agency, the Taepung International Investment Group, has managed to woo US$10 billion in foreign investment. "The rumors have turned out to be unfounded. It's improbable that the North could attract that kind of investment in the circumstances," he added.
[Kim Jong Il] [FDI] [Takeover]
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Kim Jong-il 'Could Be Indicted at Int'l Criminal Court'
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il could be hauled before the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity if South Korea and Japan can prove that North Korea abducted their citizens during a bizarre campaign in the 1970s and 80s to find trainers for spies.
Kwon O-gon, the vice president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, made the remarks at the first human rights and environment convention under the sponsorship of the Korean Bar Association in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province on Monday.
[Manipulation] [Takeover] [Legality]
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South Korean view of the North takes nosedive
February 23, 2010
South Koreans’ perception of North Korea has worsened to a level not seen since before Seoul adopted a more open-arms policy toward Pyongyang in the late 1990s, according to a survey by a state-run institute.
A survey of 1,000 South Korean adults showed that 56.4 percent have a negative perception about North Korea, the Korea Institute of National Unification reported.
[Media] [SK NK policy]
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S. Korean Navy to Receive New Patrol Aircraft
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The Navy will acquire the first three of the eight planned P-3CK maritime patrol aircraft from Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) after a delay of nearly one and a half years due to systems integration and redesign problems.
[military balance]
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Most S.Koreans Feel Threatened by the North
Some 56 percent of South Koreans have a negative view of North Korea and 70 percent feel threatened by the North's nuclear arms, a poll suggests. But 87 percent support another inter-Korean summit.
The Korea Institute for National Unification polled 1,000 people. Of the 56.4 percent who had a negative view of the North, 43.8 percent saw the North as dangerous and 12.6 percent as an enemy.
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Korea Has a Historical Duty to Honor Ex-Child Soldiers
The Defense Ministry said Thursday it will recognize the military service of child soldiers who fought in the Korean War and record their contributions to their country. A ministry official said the recording of their identities began last year and will be completed this year.
Over the last 60 years, the ministry had refused to recognize those young soldiers as having served on active duty because doing so would violate international regulations prohibiting the conscription of people under the age of 18. But the South Korean military, which suffered from an acute shortage of soldiers at the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean War, deployed large numbers of young soldiers in combat without proper military training, and many of them gave their lives to defend the country.
[Korean War events][War crimes]
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Korea Needs In-flight Refueling Tankers
Yu Yong-won An aircraft resembling the Boeing 767 landed on Japan's Air Self-Defense Force base at Komaki, in Aichi Prefecture early in January. It was KC-767J, an aerial refueling tanker remade from a Boeing 767-200ER. This is the fourth refueling tanker Japan has imported.
These aerial refueling tankers allow U.S. Air Force bombers and fighters to just wait for instructions in the air over Pakistan and launch air strikes in Afghanistan when notified of target positions.
Korea's Air Force too should be able to mount such operations in an emergency.
If a military conflict flares up between Seoul and Tokyo over the Dokdo islets, there would be a glaring gap in fighting power because one side has the tankers and the other does not.
[Tribute] [Role of ROK military]
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Majority of S.Koreans support active dialogue with Pyongyang
A survey shows that 86.7 percent of S.Koreans support holding an inter-Korean summit, although S.Korea’s overall view of N.Korea has become increasingly negative
A majority of citizens believe the Lee Myung-bak administration must set the direction of North Korea policy towards active dialogue with Pyongyang. An overwhelming majority, 86.7 percent, also supports holding an inter-Korean summit, while 13.3 percent oppose it.
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NK Wants Better Ties With Seoul: Pascoe
By Sunny Lee
Korea Times Correspondent
BEIJING ? North Korea told a visiting senior U.N. envoy that it wants better ties with rival South Korea, while its chief nuclear envoy was staying in the Chinese capital, meeting with Chinese officials for consultations on the stalled nuclear talks.
During a press conference late Friday at Beijing's United Nations representative office near South Korean embassy, Lynn Pascoe, U.N. under-secretary general for political affairs, said North Korea "talked a lot about" South Korea during his four-day visit to the reclusive country.
[NK US policy]
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Lee urges troops to be vigilant against N. Korea
By Lee Chi-dong
SEOUL, Feb. 10 (Yonhap) -- President Lee Myung-bak instructed his troops Wednesday to stay alert against North Korea's continued military threats and provocations, saying South Korea's strong military has served as a buttress for its economic growth.
"North Korea is taking many provocative acts, whether it is because of its domestic situation or other factors," Lee said during a visit to a marine base near the inter-Korean maritime border in the Yellow Sea, where tension was running high following recent artillery drills by North Korea's military.
[Takeover] [Inversion]
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S.Koreans 'Indifferent to N.Korean Gulag'
South Koreans are largely indifferent to human rights abuses in the North such as labor camps, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported Tuesday.
In an article titled, "Facing Apathy and Gulags: Ex-North Korean Inmates Struggle to Raise Concern in South," the U.S. daily cites a former prisoner and erstwhile soldier, Jung Kyoung-il, who said he was stunned by questions from a group of young South Korean soldiers when he spoke to them about the North Korean gulag.
[Manipulation] [Softwar]
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The North Korean Human Rights Law will only bring more conflict to the Korean Peninsula
The North Korean Human Rights Law passed yesterday by the National Assembly’s Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee contains a number of problems in both procedure and content. If the law goes into effect as is, it is very possible it will create an array of problems rather than contribute to substantively improving the human rights situation of North Korean citizens.
[Manipulation] [Softwar] [Intelligent design]
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Changing Slogans Confusing, Costly
By Do Je-hae
Staff Reporter
One lingering concern for tourism authorities has been the absence of an English-language slogan that captures the essence of the pleasures of travelling in Korea.
Recently, the nation's tourism organization announced "Korea, Be Inspired" as the new slogan to market Korea overseas, replacing the three-year-old "Korea Sparkling" tourism campaign that left many experts and foreign visitors divided and puzzled.
[Image]
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N.Korea Keeps Blowing Hot and Cold
Two key North Korean agencies threatened a "sacred war of retaliation" against South Korea on Monday. In a statement on Monday, the Ministry of Public Security and the State Security Department said what they claimed were South Korean attempts to topple the North Korean regime "have gone beyond the danger line." "A sacred war of retaliation to wipe out insidious elements has already begun," they fulminated.
[Takeover] [Inversion]
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N.Korea Human Rights Bill Clears National Assembly Hurdle
The National Assembly's Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee passed a bill Thursday authorizing the creation of a body to monitor North Korea's human rights situation and support activists in the South.
[Manipulation] [Softwar]
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Is Seoul Ready for the Fall of the N.Korean Regime?
he North Korean regime has sacked the Workers' Party's Finance Director Pak Nam-gi, letting him take the fall for the failed currency reform late last year. Until December, Pak was frequently spotted accompanying North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on his "on-the-spot-guidance" tours, but he suddenly dropped from sight in January.
Diplomatic sources in Beijing say Pak was probably removed as a sacrificial lamb after social unrest increased following the currency revaluation, which led to skyrocketing prices. When millions of people starved to death or fled the country to escape famine and flooding between 1995 and '96, North Korea accused Minister of Agriculture Seo Gwan-hee of espionage and executed him in public in the streets of Pyongyang.
[Takeover]
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Inter-governmental competition increasing to broker summit talks
Analysts say President Lee’s CEO style of delegating a task to multiple groups is creating confusion in inter-Korean relations policy
The situation surrounding a potential Inter-Korean summit is becoming more complex in the wake of President Lee Myung-bak’s recent statements. In his Jan. 4 New Year’s address, he said that “a new turning point in inter-Korean relations must be created this year,” and during a Jan. 9 press conference with Great Britain’s BBC network he said that he “may be able to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il within the year.” The figures that have confirmed the president’s intent to hold a summit are pursuing meetings with North Korea in an “individualistic combat” format, claiming to be close associates of the president. However, because most of the windows of opportunity for meetings are through private channels whose official status and responsibility cannot be ensured, some observers are concerned that the efforts may end up generating confusion.
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Northeast Asia Body to Be Headquartered in Seoul
The permanent secretariat of an East Asian cooperative body consisting of Korea, China and Japan will be established in Seoul next year, the first time the headquarters of a multilateral body is based in Korea.
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Kim Jong-il Advised Not to Expect Cash for Summit
By Na Jeong-ju
Staff Reporter
President Lee Myung-bak said Tuesday that there would be no financial incentives for North Korea in exchange for a summit with its leader Kim Jong-il.
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Upgraded National Image to Make Koreans Feel Proud, Happy
By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
Economic indicators show South Korea to be a global economic powerhouse. To foreigners, however, the nation's economy is most often associated with the poverty-stricken North Korea and the Stalinist country's nuclear defiance.
Such a discrepancy between reality and impressions is a key cause of the "Korea Discount."
[Image]
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North Korea’s Hard-Line Behavior: Background & Response
By The Honorable Han Sung-Joo, former foreign minister of the Republic of Korea
North Korean Goals
Currently, there are two leading interpretations of what North Korea’s recent aggressive behavior indicates. One analysis argues that North Korea’s hard-line behavior is an external manifestation of North Korea’s internal situation, including Chairman Kim Jong-Il’s health problems and questions of his succession. The second analysis holds that North Korea is trying to exert increased pressure on the Obama administration. I believe neither interpretation is necessarily correct, and moreover, that this specific debate is somewhat irrelevant.
[NK US policy] [Succession] [Overtures]
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Navy Launches High-Mobility Combat Unit
The Navy has mobilized its first fast-response combat unit composed of six destroyers, including the country's first Aegis combat destroyer King Sejong the Great. Since its inception in 1945, the operational radius of the South Korean Navy had been restricted to waters near the coast, due to the small number of ageing vessels. But since 2002, the Navy has commissioned six 4,500-ton KDX-II destroyers and the 7,600-ton Aegis destroyer.
The high-mobility unit will be able to conduct operations against North Korean aggression and protect South Korea's key trade routes including the Straits of Malacca and support UN peacekeeping operations in major trouble spots.
[Military balance] [Threat] [Tribute]
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June, August Slated as Likely Dates for Inter-Korean Summit
Officials are saying an inter-Korean summit could take place on June 25, the anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, or on Aug. 15, the anniversary of national liberation.
The speculation follows remarks by President Lee Myung-bak that a summit should take place "without preconditions."
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N.Korea Designates 5 More No Navigation Zones
North Korea on Sunday designated additional navigation bans on both coasts. A military source on Monday said the North banned navigations in four locations in the West Sea and one in the East Sea from 7 a.m. on Sunday to 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
Military authorities are watching out for the North Korean Army firing short-range missiles as part of a winter military exercise, which it has done in the past.
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Abduction Victims' Families Irate Over Inter-Korean Summit
A group of South Koreans whose family members were abducted by the North on Monday called on the government not to sweep the issue under the carpet again for the sake of an inter-Korean summit. Choi Sung-yong, the head of Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea, complained in a telephone interview with the Chosun Ilbo that President Lee Myung-bak, who in a town-hall meeting in November promised not to hold a summit unless the question of South Korean prisoners of war and abduction victims is on the agenda, seems to have changed his mind.
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Korean Reunification Likely to Come Faster Than Expected, Says German President
German President Horst Koehler believes the reunification of the two Koreas could come sooner than expected. In an interview with Yonhap News, Koehler said he based his observation upon Germany's experience.
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South Koreans to take stake in Gatwick
By Christian Oliver in Seoul
Published: February 1 2010 22:15 | Last updated: February 2 2010 01:06
South Korea’s National Pension Service, the world’s fifth biggest pension fund, will next week take a 12 per cent stake in Gatwick airport, stressing that investment in Britain will play a significant role in quadrupling its international exposure.
The NPS, which is aiming to expand its overall portfolio from $240bn to $400bn by 2014, came to the attention of Britain’s financial community last year when it bought the headquarters of HSBC in Canary Wharf for £773m ($1.2bn) in cash.
[FDI]
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President Lee showing increasing flexibility on inter-Korean summit agenda
While President Lee has softened his hardline policy tenor towards North Korea and preconditions for a summit, he still plans to make the Grand Bargain a key element of the talks
For an inter-Korean summit to take place, the two Koreas need to agree on the three issues of the agenda, time and place. What is noteworthy is that since the second half of last year in interviews with the BBC and CNN, President Lee Myung-bak has shown an increasingly flexible attitude towards these points of contention as time passes.
[SK NK policy]
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South Korea’s Kwangju Uprising: Fiction and Film
Ch’oe Yun and Mark Morris
2010 will be a year of commemorations in South Korea. The 25th of June will mark the sixtieth anniversary of the beginning of the Korea War. Midway between 2010 and 1950 was 1980. The Kwangju Uprising of May of that year was an event almost as significant as the US-Korean War in framing the contemporary nation.
We have brought together in this section two articles, both of which look at how South Korean artists have attempted to describe, understand and represent the impact of Kwangju in the form of words, images and sound. The essay by author Ch’oe Yun looks back over her career and gives fresh insight into her novella, ‘There a Petal Silently Falls’, perhaps the single most eloquent literary attempt to make sense of the massacre at Kwangju. The article by Mark Morris which follows examines recent films which approach Kwangju and its aftermath in very different ways. [link]
[Human rights] [Kwangju]
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The New Korean Cinema, Kwangju and the Art of Political Violence
Mark Morris
This is part two of a supplement on South Korea’s Kwangju Uprising: Fiction and Film. Part one is Ch’oe Yun and Mark Morris, South Korea’s Kwangju Uprising: Fiction and Film.
[Human rights] [Kwangju]
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Secret Inter-Korean Meetings Over Summit Collapsed
Seoul and Pyongyang held two rounds of secret meetings in the North Korean border city of Kaesong in November to discuss a possible inter-Korean summit but failed to narrow differences over the nuclear issue, South Korean prisoners of war and abduction victims, and humanitarian aid.
Won Tong-yon, the deputy director of North Korea's United Front Department who headed the North Korean delegation, had reportedly already prepared a draft summit agreement. Won also drafted the 2007 summit agreement between president Roh Moo-hyun and leader Kim Jong-il.
[SK NK relations]
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Anti-Pyongyang Leaflets Jolt N. Korean Society
Balloon-carried leaflets sent by South Korean civic groups to North Korea are unnerving the North Korean authorities as the anti-Pyongyang messages are gaining trust among North Korean citizens, a local daily said on Saturday.
In the past, when the anti-North Korean leaflets were spread in Pyongyang, North Korean residents didn't believe their contents. However, the situation is different now. According to the Chosun Ilbo, civic groups' leaflets these days are much more effective than in the past as they are now written by North Korean defectors who write contents that ring a bell among northerners.
The leaflets also contain the private life of its leader Kim Jong-il of whom North Koreans are very curious, it said.
[Takeover] [Destabilise]
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