The Marmot’s Hole

By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger

The week began with the Korean people celebrating the 60th anniversary of Liberation Day on Monday.

While we’re having a history lesson, we should not forget the fact that this week also marks the “Axe Murder Incident” that took place in Panmunjom on August 19, 1976. To quickly summarize — members of the DPRK’s military hacked two USFK officers to death simply because they didn’t want a tree pruned.

After a considerable delay, U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday quietly appointed Jay Lefkowitz as his point man on human rights in the DPRK.

Religious conservatives said on Friday that they welcomed Mr. Lefkowitz’s appointment and that he would have a substantive role in the development of North Korea policy.

“It’s hard to imagine that Jay Lefkowitz would be taking this job to be window dressing on a separate track,” said Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, who has been active with a coalition of religious and human rights groups that are pressing the administration to do something about North Korean human rights abuses. “I’m confident that he is not going to be a potted palm no matter how many people at the State Department seek to stick sharp elbows in him.”

While the move was mandated by last year’s North Korean Human Right’s Act, the appointment comes during a three week “recess” in the six-way talk and may put a monkey wrench in them once they begin again.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, folks in Northeast Asia were angstful about the commencement this week of unprecedented Sino-Russian joint-military exercises.

The US has been putting pressure on China and Russia through NATO in Europe and the US-Japan alliance in East Asia. Following the Sept. 11 incident, the US has further intervened in the Middle East, making both China and Russia feel still more threatened by the possibility of being militarily hemmed in.

Third, China and Russia are making joint efforts to tackle the North Korean nuclear issue, as any deterioration on this front will have a negative impact on both nations. Also, their choice of Shandong as the location of military exercises was because of its proximity to the Korean Peninsula. So both countries are taking the strategic potential of this region into account.

Also on the 60th anniversary of VJ day, Japan said — again — that it was “sorry” for its “excesses” during WWII.

TOKYO: Japan’s leader apologised for Tokyo’s war-time colonisation and invasions on the 60th anniversary of the country’s surrender on Monday, after other Asian nations marked event by honouring their dead and demanding compensation for their losses.

Prime minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged that Japan would never forget the ‘terrible lessons’ of the war, and expressed his ‘deep reflections and heartfelt’ sorrow for the damages.

The Korean blogopshere on Tuesday found itself collectively scratching its head when a mysterious blog blackout vanished (kinda) just as DPRK representatives left the country after Liberation Day celebrations ended. While Blogger blogs were again accessable, Typepad blogs were not, at least as of Friday.

This week’s Quote of the Week comes from Gardner in Korea, who this week posted a Soldier’s Prayer regarding next week’s joint American-ROK military exercises.

Dear God, please help us to victory in this great endeavor which we are about to pursue. Teach our noble cooks and truck drivers to handle our computer icons as if their lives depended on it, and have as much mercy on the US icons as you do on the ROK icons. For we know that the ROK officers?? careers depend on this game, and they need to save face, but our dead icons have electronic families as well, and we pray to assuage their anguish.