ROK and Inter-Korean relations
March 2012
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N.Korea Steps Up Air Force Training Flights
North Korea has stepped up the number of training flights since last month to as many as 650 sorties a day. The North Korean air force is conducting training flights even on weekends, several times flying so far down south near the border with South Korea that the South had to scramble fighter planes to form defensive formations.
[Military balance]
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Ahn Chul-soo again hinting at ‘third way’ of doing politics
Both progressive and conservative camps interested in courting the enigmatic Ahn
» Ahn Chul-soo gives a special lecture on a topic of ‘communication and sympathy’ to students at the Cultural Auditorium of Seoul National University, March 27. (by Kim Myung-jin, staff photographer)
By Kim Bo-hyup and Sung Yeon-chul, staff writers
Ahn Chul-soo, software tycoon and possible presidential candidate, is reappearing on the political scene ahead of the general election to be held on Apr. 11. There are questions surrounding how Ahn‘s presence could affect the elections.
While talking about “presidential qualifications” during a Tuesday lecture at Seoul National University, Ahn said, “I could stand politics if it meant I would be a tool for bringing positive developments to society.” Ahn appears poised to continue with political activities through lectures in the time leading up to the general election.
[Election]
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Park Geun-hye going back to her old ways
Likely presidential candidate claims to be moving into the future, but still using the tactics of the past
» Park Geun-hye attends the inauguration ceremony of the Venerable Jinje as 13th Supreme Patriarch of the Jogye Order at Jogyesa Buddhist temple in Seoul, March 27. Ven. Jinje has been widely acknowledged as one of the most eminent teachers of Korean seon (Zen) meditation. In the last few years, he has been active in promoting Korean Buddhism overseas. He recently published an English-language book called “Open the Mind, See the Light,” aimed at introducing the benefits of seon practice in daily life. (by Lee Jung Aha, staff photographer)
By Kim Jong-chul, senior staff writer
Park Geun-hye will reportedly spend Thursday, the first day of the election campaign, campaigning in and around Seoul, the election’s main battleground. Park is campaigning under the slogan “let’s go together into the future.” On Wednesday, she visited Jogyesa Temple in Seoul‘s Gyeonji-dong in an attempt to win over Buddhists, who have had strained relations with the Lee Myung-bak government. The pro-Christian Lee administration has cut funding for Buddhist initiatives.
[Election] [Religion]
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[Column] North Korea votes conservative
In spite of appearances, history shows North Korea prefers conservative parties control South Korea
By Lee Jong-seok, guest columnist and former Unification Minister
North Korean authorities have announced that they will be launching a “satellite” sometime between Apr. 12 and 16. Even though they claim the launch has peaceful intentions, it is nevertheless a provocation that threatens peace. The technology used for the satellite is identical to that used for missile development and there are questions surrounding North Korea’s true motivations. It also appears likely that the launch will have an impact, large or small, on April’s general election in South Korea.
Whose side is Pyongyang on in carrying out this provocation on the eve of an election? Does it favor the opposition, as is being claimed by reactionaries who have trotted out their timeworn redbaiting tactics? I don’t think so. In my eyes, it favors the ruling New Frontier Party party. History bears this out.
[Satellite]
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Victims Remembered on 2nd Anniversary of Cheonan Sinking
South Korea marked the second anniversary of the sinking of the warship Cheonan on Monday with a ceremony at the Daejeon National Cemetery to remember the 46 men who were killed in the torpedo attack, as well as Navy Warrant Officer Han Joo-ho, who died in the search and rescue mission.
Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik, at the ceremony attended by the families of the dead and survivors of the attack, said the sailors' sacrifice will never be forgotten.
A multinational investigations concluded that North Korea was behind the attack, but Pyongyang still denies responsibility.
[Cheonan] [Buildup]
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Zero Tolerance for Illegal Protests During Nuclear Summit
The Seoul Metropolitan Police says it will crack down on illegal demonstrations and rallies during the two-day Seoul Nuclear Security Summit, which kicks off Monday.
The police said marching in the city streets is prohibited, and violators will be confronted by an increased number of officers. Also, the police expect rush hour traffic to be more congested than normal, because traffic is restricted in parts of Seoul during the event. They suggest Seoul residents use public transportation on Monday and Tuesday.
[Human rights]
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2nd anniversary of Cheonanham sinking
Sinking of corvette has prompted serious changes to military philosophy and capability
» A depth bomb dropped from the Youngju-ham, a combat ship which participates in a combat readiness exercise ahead of the 2nd anniversary of Cheonanham sinking, makes a huge splash in the Yellow Sea, March 21. (photo pool)
By Lee Soon-hyuk, staff writer
Two years ago today, the Cheonanham, a warship in the South Korean Navy’s Second Fleet Command, split in half in the waters near Baengnyeong Island at 9:22pm. The incident, which took 46 young lives, led to chaos on the Korean Peninsula. Frictions among South Koreans intensified during the investigation process, and inter-Korean relations sunk to Cold War-era levels. The sinking also completely altered the South Korean military’s national defense strategy, and critics have pointed to numerous problems with the new one.
{Cheonan]
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Has MB taken a legal bribe?
By Kim Jong-chul, senior staff writer
A $500,000 award (557,870,000 won) given in March 2011 has been included among assets reported by President Lee Myung-bak to the Ministry of Public Administration and Security (MPAS).
The award was the United Arab Emirates Zayed International Prize for the Environment. According to its official website, the Zayed Prize “recognizes and promotes pioneering contributions in the field of environment and sustainable development.”
[Lee Myung-bak] [Corruption]
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Seoul poised to shoot down NK rocket debris
By Lee Tae-hoon
The military is mulling ordering the deployment of missile interceptors to shoot down any debris that could fall on South Korean territory in the event that a satellite bearing North Korean rocket strays from its planned trajectory.
The Stalinist regime recently announced that it would launch a satellite from a long-range rocket sometime between April 12 and 16 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the April 15 birth of its founder Kim Il-sung.
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Progressive alliance for April election on the rebound
Final pre-election moves consolidate dramatically
» Lee Jung-hee, co-leader of Unified Progressive Party (UPP), respondsto reporters‘ questions after announcing the withdrawal of hercandidacy inApril‘s general election at the National Assembly press conferenceroom, March 23. (by Kang Chang-gwang, staff photographer)
You have to hit rock bottom before you come back up. The opposition alliance for April’s election, which had faced a breakdown due to arguments over corruption in the process of primaries for single opposition candidates, found the foothold it needed to execute a dramatic turnaround on Friday afternoon, the last day of candidate registration. Unified Progressive Party (UPP) leader Lee Jung-hee, who had been set to run in Seoul's Gwanak B constituency, abandoned her candidate registration and chose not to run in the general election.Lee's decision saved the opposition alliance, which had been at risk of floundering.
[Election]
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Lee Myung Bak Accused of Trying to Use Seoul "Summit" for Int'l Anti-DPRK Campaign
Pyongyang, March 23 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea in a statement Friday denounced the south Korean regime for working hard to turn the Seoul "nuclear security summit" into a platform for international smear campaign against the DPRK.
By nature, the summit was first hosted by the U.S. in Washington in 2010 under the pretext of "preventing nuclear terrorism" and, therefore, there is no ground whatsoever to pull up the DPRK, the statement noted, and went on:
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NK's life expectancy 10 years lower than South: report
The life expectancy of an average North Korean stood at 69.3, 10.8 years lower than comparable figure for a South Korean, a report by a social health institute said Sunday.
The report by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA) based on a census conducted in 2008, showed the average life expectancy for North Korean men standing at 65.6 years, while for women it reached 72.7.
[Sanctions]
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North Koreans live 11 years less than South Koreans
By Lee Hyo-sik
The average life expectancy for North Koreans is 11 years less than that for South Koreans, due to poorer healthcare and nutrition among other reasons, the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHSA) said Sunday.
[Sanctions]
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[Column] What a difference three months makes in South Korean politics
As opposition dithers, election momentum has switched back to Park-led conservatives
By Seung Han-yong, political correspondent
It was a sea of bright red windbreakers. The New Frontier Party’s (NFP) combined election committee launch and nomination award ceremony at the National Assembly on Wednesday had such a festival atmosphere that it could have been mistaken for an election victory celebration. The beaming nominees congratulated one another, and while emergency measures committee chairwoman Park Geun-hye had a slight quiver to her voice as she gave her speech, confidence was written all over her face.
“Looking back,” she said, “there was a lot of worry about whether we’d even be able to contest this election just three months ago. But we worked hard to bring about change and reforms. And now we must put everything on the line in this election with a determination to change politics and save the country.”
[Election]
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Seoul Diverts Flight Paths Due to N.Korea's Rocket Plan
The government will change the routes of some flights and restrict ship navigation during the period North Korea has set for a planned rocket launch.
The North informed the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization of the plan to launch a rocket ostensibly carrying a satellite into orbit between April 12 and 16. The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs on Tuesday said it therefore decided to change flight routes and restrict maritime navigation in affected areas between 7 a.m. and 12 noon daily during that time.
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N.Korea Airs Rare Footage of Military Drill
North Korea has aired rare video footage of a joint Army, Navy and Air Force drill, days after it announced a plan to launch a rocket that is widely suspected of being a cover for a long-range missile technology test.
The drill already took place last Wednesday.
The footage aired on state TV showed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un watching missiles, artillery shells and bombers bombard a small island.
This is believed to be the North's first firing exercise since Kim came to power.
[Warning]
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Tight race expected in April’s general election
Experts from both parties weigh in on upcoming general election battle
By Seong Han-yong, senior staff writer
As political parties complete their nomination processes, interest in the result of the April 11 general election is growing. On Monday, we asked election strategy officials from the New Frontier Party (NFP) and Democratic United Party (DUP) for their election predictions.
[Election]
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DPRK Will Regard Any Provocation as Declaration of War: KCNA
Pyongyang, March 21 (KCNA) -- The Korean nation has ardently wished to see the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula at an early date as it has been exposed to a more direct nuclear threat for such a long period than any other nation in the world.
However, this ardent desire and wish are facing a new grave challenge due to the Lee Myung Bak group of traitors' policy of confrontation with the DPRK and moves to provoke a nuclear war.
[Warning]
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[Editorial] Opposition parties must truly cooperate for April’s election
Opposition parties have come together ahead of April’s general election to challenge the ruling party with a unified, progressive opposition. The contest to pick opposition candidates for the Apr. 11 general elections is essentially over. Unless the opposition can put aside party loyalty and support all selected candidates, the election alliance will not succeed.
[Election]
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Koreas agree to hold joint prayer meeting in June in Kaesong
South and North Korean Christian leaders have agreed to hold a joint prayer meeting in the communist country in June, a South Korean reverend said Tuesday, amid fresh tensions over Pyongyang's planned rocket launch.
The two sides tentatively plan to conduct the meeting in a chapel inside the joint industrial complex in the North's western border city of Kaesong on June 12, Rev. Han Gie-yang said.
[Joint Korean]
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This Is No Time to Go Soft on N.Korea
North Korea has decided to temporarily halt its uranium enrichment program, nuclear testing and long-range missile development and allow International Atomic Energy Agency officials to inspect its nuclear facilities. In exchange, the U.S. has agreed to send 240,000 tons of nutritional assistance in the form of biscuits and baby formula and work for additional food aid.
[SK NK policy]
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Why Are Our Politicians Silent About N.Korea's Rocket Plan?
As South Korea holds general and presidential elections in the same year for the first time in two decades, people in the South are worried about two things. The first is a potential vacuum in national security and the second is politicians bleeding state coffers dry as they race to announce one populist welfare program after another to woo voters.
[SK NK policy] [Satellite]
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Seoul Says N.Korean Rocket Launch a 'Grave Provocation'
The government on Monday condemned North Korea's planned rocket launch a "grave provocation aimed at developing a long-range nuclear weapons delivery system using ballistic missile technology."
The government reached the conclusion in an emergency foreign and security ministers' meeting chaired by President Lee Myung-bak, Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Park Jung-ha said.
Park said, "Due to the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit slated for Mar. 26-27, the government will be able to cooperate closely with the leaders of the U.S., Japan, China, Russia, and the EU, and join international efforts to deal with the issue."
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Fewer People Trust Gov't Account of Cheonan Sinking
Some 71.3 percent of South Koreans now believe the South Korean government's announcement that the Navy corvette Cheonan was torpedoed by North Korea, according to a poll. The Chosun Ilbo commissioned Media Research to conduct the survey on Saturday to mark the second anniversary of shipwreck.
That is 8.7 percent less than the 80 percent who believed the official version in a survey by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Hankook Research a year ago. The decline could be due to conspiracy theories circulating among young people that the government fabricated or concealed the truth.
[Cheonan] [Coverup]
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Rival party leaders offer to engage with NK's new leadership
Leaders of the ruling and main opposition parties on Tuesday offered to engage with North Korea's new leadership, although in different ways and to varying extents.
Park Geun-hye, leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, and Han Myeong-sook, chief of the main opposition Democratic United Party (DUP), told a forum in Seoul their respective parties will work to improve inter-Korean ties amid persisting tensions over the North's two deadly attacks on the South in 2010.
"The Saenuri Party and I are willing to support efforts for change in North Korea and work together (with the North), in order to swiftly improve South-North relations that have been marked by distrust since the (two attacks), and start on a path of sustainable peace and mutual growth," Park said at the forum marking Seoul's hosting of the Nuclear Security Summit next month.
[SK NK policy] [Elections]
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Party Given for DPRK Unhasu Orchestra's Successful Performance
Pyongyang, March 16 (KCNA) -- A party was given by French Minister of Culture of France Frederic Mitterand on March 15 to congratulate the Unhasu Orchestra of the DPRK upon its successful performance.
Present at the party on invitation were the Unhasu Orchestra headed by Kwon Hyok Bong, advisor to the Korean Traditional Music Institute, the chief and staff members of the DPRK mission in France, Jong Myong Hun, music director of the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of France, and those concerned of the joint performance.
[Joint Korean]
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For one night, North and South Korea are brought together by music
Musicians from both Koreas enchant audience in Paris with traditional Korean sounds
» The North Korean Unhasu Orchestra and the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Chung Myung-whun jointly perform in Paris’s Salle de Pleyel, March 14.. (AP/Newsis) ,
On Wednesday night, the lobby of Salle Pleyel, a classical concert performance venue in Paris, was packed and buzzing. A line started at the box office an hour before the performance‘s starting time. The organizers announced that all 1,900 seats had quickly sold out.
The first collaboration by conductor Chung Myung-whun and the Unhasu Orchestra, made up of North Koreans in their 20s, lived up to expectations. Wednesday’s joint performance by the Unhasu Orchestra and the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra received thunderous applause at its conclusion.
[Joint Korean]
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[Editorial]Conflict of interest at Yonhap boils over into strike
News agency caught between relying on government support and reporting fairly on government conduct
Yonhap News Agency’s labor union launched a strike yesterday calling for a return to fair reporting and the non-renewal of Park Jung-chan’s term as president. The decision to strike was strongly supported, with 471 out of 504 union members taking part in the vote and 396 of them, or 84.1%, voting in favor. This comes 23 years after the agency‘s last strike, a 1989 action demanding a multiple recommendation system for managing editors.
Yonhap News reporters laid down their pens and microphones due to an outpouring of the anger that has built up over time with reporting biased in favor the Lee Myung-bak administration, worsening labor conditions after the launch of the broadcast news channel News Y, and the deterioration of democracy within the agency. The union is reflecting on its shameful conduct under Park Jung-chan and asking for forgiveness and trust from the South Korean public through a strike bulletin titled “Our Distorted Self-Portrait”. In it, a union member shamefully recalls, “An article I wrote got a reply calling me a ’Yonhap hack.‘ I’m not a Yonhap hack. I work at Yonhap News.” The main impetus for the strike at Yonhap News is a desire to erase the “hack” stain.
[Media]
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Lee Bets on N.Korea Pipeline as Lasting Legacy
President Lee Myung-bak, now in the fifth and last year of his term, is apparently focusing efforts to leave some kind of legacy on a natural gas pipeline that is to run from Russia through North Korea to the South.
Stressing the importance of resource diplomacy, Lee recently toured the Middles East and won a huge contract to develop oil fields in the United Arab Emirates. Earlier in January, he appointed Lee Yoon-ho, former ambassador to Russia who was deeply involved in the gas pipeline project, as special envoy for trade.
[Pipeline] [Lee Myung-bak]
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N.Korean and French Orchestras Perform with Maestro Chung
Musicians from North Korea's Unhasu Orchestra and France's Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra played together under the direction of South Korean maestro Chung Myung-whun in Paris on Wednesday evening (local time).
This marks the first time that orchestra members from the Stalinist state have performed in public with French musicians. They played Brahms' first symphony.
Chung, the chief conductor of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, has also been serving as a music director at the French Orchestra since 2000
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[Editorial] Park Geun-hye is not fit to lead a democracy
A crucial quality required of a national leader is a true belief in democracy. A conviction in popular sovereignty and the inviolability of human rights was fundamental in overcoming monarchy and giving rise to republican government. New Frontier Party emergency measures committee chairwoman and presidential hopeful Park Geun-hye‘s dedication to these principles is questionable.
Park, 60, has spent her whole career in the shadow of her deceased father, former military dictator Park Chung-hee (1917-1979). While his legacy has cast a dark shadow on her own political activities, Park herself has failed to articulate her thoughts on democracy.
[Park Geun-hye]
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DPRK Foreign Ministry Spokesman Refutes S. Korea's Racket of "North Korean Defectors"
Pyongyang, March 13 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK gave the following answer to a question raised by KCNA Tuesday as regards the row of "north Korean defectors" kicked up by the Lee Myung Bak group of traitors:
The Lee group is now busying itself referring what it called the "defectors" issue even to the international arena including the UN Security Council in its foolish bid to internationalize national showdown.
The enemies abducted citizens of the DPRK who traveled to neighboring countries for their personal reasons or crossed the border for economic reasons. Calling them "evacuees" who "defected from the north" for a political reason, the group carried out psychological campaign against the DPRK only to be forsaken by history for its sordid nature.
[Manipulation]
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More Koreans in Their 40s Turn to the Left
A growing number of Koreans in their 40s hold the progressive political views typical of people in their 20 and 30s, bucking the usual trend of becoming more conservative as they grow older.
The spring issue of the academic quarterly Zeitgeist analyzed the views of people in their 20s to 40s due to a clear trend toward the Left in recent elections and local referendums. Forty-somethings account for more than three-fifths of eligible voters.
"Just 10 years ago, the decisive factor in Korea's political landscape was regional affiliation, but recently the generational problem has emerged as a key issue," said Yoon Pyung-joong at Hanshin University. "While those in their 20s and 30s support progressive views and voters in their 50s and 60s tend to be conservative, people in their 40s have become the key factor in elections this year."
Why are voters in their 40s siding with younger people? "Those in their 40s feel a bond with those in 20s and 30s because they have witnessed economic crises and job instability amid globalization and advancing technology, while older generations in their 50s and 60s benefitted from Korea's rapid industrialization and the ensuing economic growth," said Park Jae-chang at Sookmyung Women's University.
[Election] [Demographics]
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