For the last two decades, U.S. administrations have come in like a lion and out like a lamb with their policies on North Korea. Determined to demonstrate Washington’s resolve, U.S. presidents have played hardball with Pyongyang in an effort to precipitate regime change or at least bully the intransigent country into knuckling under.
If Asia takes a cue from the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, the world’s governments might face the haunting specter of working people of all countries uniting.
More than a decade ago, I sat down with the head of the academy of architecture in Pyongyang. The school was housed in a large, drafty building in the center of North Korea’s capital. Students were building models out of cardboard and wood. A few were in front of state-of-the-art desktops using the computer-aided design software that had become indispensible to modern architects. But there was one element missing from the architecture program. North Korean builders paid virtually no attention to energy efficiency.
The test of Kim Jong-un’s leadership will be to convince the military to throw its support behind him.
Don’t look for reform in North Korea in the foreseeable future.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and Czech leader Vaclav Havel occupied the opposite ends of the political continuum. One fought against the corrupt communist powers; the other consolidated communist rule. One tried to inject morality into the practice of politics while the other pursued political ends with little or no reference to morality. Having made their marks first in the artistic sphere, they were both in some sense reluctant politicians. Once in power, they managed to stabilize their respective countries during difficult times. But they failed in their efforts at more dramatic transformation.
Kim Jong-il reportedly kept his son Kim Jong-un on the sidelines for fear of a challenge to his authority.
If electromagnetic pulse weapons pose a threat, it’s not from Iran or North Korea, as Newt Gingrich warns, but from the United States.
With parliamentary and presidential elections coming up in 2012, South Korea is in the midst of its very first social-network-driven political season on the world’s stage. After nearly half a decade of the conservative policies of the Lee Myung Bak administration, Koreans seem ready to swing back to the left. The election in October of a progressive as the mayor of Seoul heralds this trend. This race also served as a beta test for an effective web-based campaign model in Korea. A key test issue for the opposition is the naval base that the government is constructing on Jeju Island.
Pakistan is apprehensive that dams India is building will threaten the flow of the Indus through Pakistan.