(Editor’s Note: This article will also appear in The Asia-Pacific Journal.)
The New Korean Cold War
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North Korea
North Korea Sends Message: ‘Don’t Ignore Us!’
Just as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was arriving in Asia this week, Pyongyang was threatening to test a long-range missile. That’s its way of saying, “Don’t ignore us!” North Korea’s nuclear program is not in the top tier of foreign policy issues facing the Obama administration. The new team in Washington believes it has to deal with other priorities — the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global economic meltdown, climate change, and Middle East peace — before it can address the North Korean conundrum.
The North Korean Conundrum
As Barack Obama assembles his foreign policy team, he appears to be drawing from two primary sources: the Clinton faithful and Republican renegades. These old dogs might be up for some new tricks, but one risk of relying on such “experience” could be the triumph of conventional thinking in Washington — when the world expects, and the times demand, fundamental change.
East Asia’s History Wars Rage On
“Right now seems to be a relatively quiet moment in East Asia regarding historical controversies,” observes Daqing Yang, a professor of Asian history at George Washington University and a participant in a Sep.15 seminar on historical dialogue and reconciliation sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and the university’s Sigur Centre. “But just a few years back, heads of state canceled their summit meetings because of a visit to a particular shrine in Tokyo or because of history textbooks.”
An Uncomfortable Conversation about Nukes
Why are Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry, and Sam Nunn writing opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons? Keep in mind, these four people are not just major defense hawks. People like Kissinger helped push through the single most dangerous and destabilizing innovation in nuclear weaponry, the arming of missiles with multiple warheads. All four have supported every conflict the United States has engaged in since World War II, all have enthusiastically supported nuclear weapons, and none has suddenly gone kumbaya on us.
Mad Cows, Mad People
Just months after taking office, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak’s popularity plunged below 20%. People poured into the streets in unprecedented numbers – in the largest demonstrations in Korean history – to protest against him and his government. His cabinet offered to resign en masse, and he had to sack all seven members of the Blue House senior secretariat. He was forced to abandon key policies such as his plan to build a canal across the full length of the country. And he felt compelled to apologize, twice, for his policy blunders and "lack of communication skills."
The Abduction Narrative of Charles Robert Jenkins
This essay originally appeared in Japan Focus.
North Korea, Japan and the Abduction Narrative of Charles Robert Jenkins
In the 1960s, a subculture of Americans became obsessed with alien abductions. Their ur-narrative revolved around the experience of Betty and Barney Hill, a sober, middle-aged, interracial couple who told of being taken from their car one night in 1961 and subjected to medical investigation by extraterrestrials with small bodies and large foreheads. They were not the type to fabulize simply to draw attention to themselves, so their story attracted interest beyond the usual UFO fans. Gradually others came forward with similar tales.
North Korea No Longer an Enemy?
In Korea in early June, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced what could potentially be the greatest shift in U.S policy toward the Korean peninsula in the last 50 years. Though the Western media paid little attention, the proposed change in tour lengths of U.S. troops stationed in Korea from 12 months to 36 months has profound implications.
Mother Earth’s Triple Whammy
This essay originally appeared in TomDispatch, a website run by Tom Engelhardt and associated with The Nation magazine.