Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Hollywoodaction]

[Privateer]

I love how there's no event so simple that an analogy to something us mere plebs can relate to won't make it easier to understand. It's getting so without a good helpful common-life analogy from the commentators I can't follow the news any more.

[Rteacher]

It seemed like very good news, but now it's not clear if there really were any positive developments -

News reports had raised hopes that tension was easing after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was quoted as telling Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan that he planned no further tests following the detonation of a device on October 9 that shocked the world.

The Japanese news agency Kyodo said on Sunday that Kim had expressed his intention of honoring a 1992 declaration for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula during talks with Tang, saying it was a "dying instruction" of his father -- the country's late leader, Kim Il Sung.

But U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, heading home after a whirlwind tour of Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and Moscow, cast doubt on the report, saying Pyongyang was bent on escalating the crisis.

"Tang did not tell me that Kim Jong-il either apologized for the test or said that he would not ever test again," Rice said. [emphasis mine]

"The Chinese did not, in a fairly thorough briefing to me, say anything about an apology. The North Koreans, I think, would like to see an escalation of the tension."

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted an unidentified diplomatic source in Beijing as saying Kim had told the former Chinese foreign minister that Pyongyang would resume the six-country talks if Washington ended its financial sanctions.

But Rice said these curbs would remain and she questioned their commitment to resuming talks.

"The financial measures are a legal process which has to do with counterfeiting money. The (U.S.) president has made very clear at every turn that he is going to defend the U.S. currency," Rice said...

Little emerged from her talks on Saturday evening with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but on Sunday a Japanese newspaper said Tokyo planned to monitor ships heading to North Korea in waters off its western and southern coasts.

Tokyo was considering deploying several destroyers and patrol aircraft to the two areas to conduct warning and surveillance activities, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

But Rice won few commitments from China and South Korea on implementing sanctions on their impoverished neighbor.

China is seen as having the greatest potential leverage but fears instability and a potential wave of refugees should sanctions prompt North Korea's collapse.

Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency said on Saturday that U.S. pressure for sanctions, backed by Japan and South Korea, was aimed at suffocating the country.

"This development is pushing the situation to the worst phase of confrontation and the eve of war," it said. "The army and people ... are fully ready to become human bullets and bombs in defending Korean-style socialism, their dignity and life." [emphasis mine]

Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who accompanied Rice on her North Asia tour, was in Hong Kong on Sunday for briefings by consulate staff on the freezing of North Korean funds, a consulate spokesman said.

Last year, the U.S. Treasury Department said Macau's Banco Delta Asia was involved in illicit North Korean activities and it froze some $20 million of the North's funds in the bank...

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&u=/nm/20061022/ts_nm/korea_north_dc_173

I think I'd rather bribe them to return to talks by letting them have that $20 million... It seems that U.S. hardliners in charge are all too willing to pursue policy that carries a high risk of causing the collapse of the NK regime to the detriment of China and South Korea - and which may prompt North Korea to suicidally go out in a blaze of glory ...

[Bondrock]

like i said earlier, this "news" was overstated. If Kim really said it, he would suffer too big a loss of face.

'deniable plausibility" is the result of second-hand information, whether the information is misinterpreted by someone in the chain, or deliberately leaked to the media.

[Junior]

[The Lemon]

[On the other hand]

[Rteacher]

I've only heard that Kim Dae-Jung and most South Korean security officials favored the continued presence of U.S. troops in Korea even after unification...
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/sept_11/cha_001.htm

The following indicates Kim sung il's (and NK's ) position - at least before the famous summit:

South Korea's rapid economic growth eventually shifted the economic and military advantage away from the North, enabling Park to offer the North a negotiating challenge. He called for a North-South Competition of Good Will in the early 1970s, offering a set of proposals for "normalizing" North-South relations. These involved humanitarian, cultural, and economic exchanges, and perhaps most importantly, the simultaneous admission of both North and South Korea into the United Nations. The North rejected these proposals, arguing that they were designed not to advance the reunification process, but to allow the South to secure a stable division of the peninsula. The North called for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the South, the signing of a peace treaty between North and South, the formation of a confederation, and the establishment of a single, shared UN delegation. Park, in turn, rejected these proposals, arguing that North Korea's unwillingness to agree to "confidence-building measures" showed that it was not serious about reunification, but only interested in dominating the South...
http://www.monthlyreview.org/koreac8.htm

[Manner of Speaking]