The new Unification Minister speaks!
And it ain’t pretty.
Lecturing at a forum at the Tower Hotel today, unification minister-designate Lee Jae-joung called on the United States to step back from its “unilateral North Korea policies”—unilateral defined here apparently as multilateral negotiations and working through the UN Security Council—and talk directly with Pyongyang (English version here).
He said, “The United States must bring change to North Korea through sincere negotiations like it did in the past with communist Vietnam.”
He then said, “Sometimes, I wonder why the United States is hesitating to normalize its relationship with North Korea as Pyongyang really wants… multilateral negotiations are important, but the detailed plans also require careful discussion through as much bilateral negotiation as possible.”
He called on the United States to abandon its policies of encouraging the collapse of the North Korean regime, and called on Pyongyang to seek a deal now rather than wait another two years for a change in the White House.
About the Korea-U.S. alliance, he said, “The Korea-U.S. alliance is important and we must maintain it in the future, but it mustn’t have a bad influence on deciding Korea’s destiny.”
He then said, “We should accept having the Cold War-era Korea-U.S. alliance replaced by a transformed Korea-U.S. relationship befitting the post-Cold War period… in the process [of change], the two nations will confirm their importance to one another, but at the same time experience discomfort.”
He stressed, however, “Korea-U.S. cooperations, as a framework contributing to peace and stability, is absolutely necessary… If we focus on this point, Korea and the United States can build a constructive alliance in the 21st century like they did in the 20th century.”
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18 Comments
In-fucking-credible.
Where to begin? The demand for South Korea to lose it’s seat at the table, and petulant complaint about the US arrogantly not excluding South Korea from talks? The straight-faced comment that the US - the US, not North Korea! - is ‘insincere” ? Or this final howler -
“in the process [of change], the two nations will confirm their importance to one another, but at the same time experience discomfort.”
translation: Just to serve notice, we intend to continue the insulting rhetoric, flagburning, harrassment of your military and general public spitting on your country, our cash flow to a nation which is even now hard at work on a missile it can finally threaten Los Angeles with, while you provide us with a nuclear umbrella and a large export market. This may cause you some discomfort.
Some where, Chung DongYoung is scratching his head with a smile. He’s been out-done!
The Roh crew must think John Kerry is a shoe-in for the White House come next election with that Vietnam reference.
It’s good, however, to the old Chung (I believe his name was) days at the anti-Unification Ministry are back. It’s been too long since we’ve seen this branch of the Korean government shooting itself in the foot with a bazooka - like when Chung said the secret hand of the US had been screwing Korea since Taft-Katsura.
“He then said, “Sometimes, I wonder why the United States is hesitating to normalize its relationship with North Korea as Pyongyang really wants…”
That kind of tops Chung in my book. It is a pretty much complete break with reality. It is one thing for the current South Korean government to quietly refuse to acknolwedge human rights atrocities in the North, refuse to participate in stepped up measures against the North since the nuke test, refuse to do something about North Korean ships caught smuggling drugs into the nation, and so on —
—-it is one thing to ignore the ills of North Korea - it is their country and policy to do so —
but it takes it to a whole new level when you have the anti-Unification Minister dancing naked in the news for all to see chastising the US for not ignoring all that too and just treat NK like any other nation.
It borders on the bizzare.
“He then said, “We should accept having the Cold War-era Korea-U.S. alliance replaced by a transformed Korea-U.S. relationship befitting the post-Cold War period… in the process [of change], the two nations will confirm their importance to one another, but at the same time experience discomfort.””
I’m on board here.
The Soviet Union is gone. China isn’t going to replace it in the way it was in the Cold War. The magnitude of our reason for being in South Korea has thus plummeted.
Let’s get the fuck out….now….
It’s too bad Hwang Woo-suk was discredited. Had he continued his research, he may have eventually mapped the “arrogance gene” that is obviously a major consituent of the Korean genome.
Yeah, well, the Uri party should stop pursuing its strategy of disengagement with the North and cease all funding of the Kaesong project and other “charitable” aid. LOL.
“The United States must bring change to North Korea through sincere negotiations like it did in the past with communist Vietnam.”
I agree. We should do this like we did Vietnam…let’s start by getting the fcuk out of here. In 30 years we can come back and normalize trade…that is, if there’s anything left after Japan finishes with the bastards.
As Winston Churchill said, “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.” I don’t really see what the US has to gain by antagonizing, or even recognizing, North Korea. Better to let China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia work this one out.
Noone listens to South Korea — except for fisking material — anymore anyway.
I want some of what this guy is smoking. Coooool.
i don’t think there is a clear picture of what is going on with this situation EVER….so i think it is generally wrong to support any one view too strongly. NK are a bunch of whackos. SK are a bunch of pussy footers. Japan is just…well…aloof. China…focused on the Olympics. And the US….STUBBORN. So I do think the initial change has to come from Uncle Sam. But, Uncle Sam is kind of busy right now…in a continual battle trying to bullshit its own people about everything from 9/11 to the war in Iraq,and they really can’t be bothered to confront the pantomine with NK head on. And what for? Oil? A chance to support “human rights” that they obviously have never really given two squirts about unless it was convenient for imperialistic purposes???? As weak as the Korean government is, it is a step up in many ways to the evil that Bush has created.
Dinkus Maximus: Is this a new record? Bush Derangement Syndrome at the ninth comment? It’s all Bush’s fault! Yeah! Life is simple!
@dogbertt: I think it’s unfair to generalize the entire Korean “genome” just because the ****ing administration constantly comes up with those wacky and disturbing comments.
I, for one, am deeply embarrassed that these idiotic commies are representing my country. :/
Remember, the administration has an approval rating of around 10 percent; hardly anyone in Korea approves of the way the government handles foreign relations and everything else.
When the conservative and (relatively) rational GNP takes over the Blue House next year, I’m sure most of the commie madness in South Korea will disappear.
Does anyone else here think that compared to 2 or 3 years ago, South Korean foreign policy rhetoric has completely flown off the rails? You expect this kind of talk from China, Cuba, or one of the axis of evil countries, but not from a nominal ally.
Prezactly. They aren’t an ally any more. Troops outta here tomorrow.
This feels like the appropriate thread to mentioned something I just heard. So I am watching the congressional hearings relating to North Korea that are on CSPAN at this very moment. In the last two minutes I have heard a democratic congressmen called pyongyang, nonpyong and a republican call kim jong il, kim young il. While I don’t expect conressmen to know all of the details of the situation, I would expect they could get the simple things correct.
Did you see where the new UN head isn’t going to watch the vote on NK. So much for one of the Koreans of power cutting against the Roh crew grain — a day after he says South Korea should push the North on rights more, he announces he doesn’t care enough about it to be on the floor for the vote.
But —- now that I think about it —– it is what an ally would do. (An ally of North Korea, that is….)
I’m not too sure if it makes all that much of a difference one way or another. Bush’s policy regarding N. Korea is an abject failure.
However, I am very uncomfortable with the new ‘pink borders’ at Marmot’s Hole.
Hit control F5.
Origami,
Define what would have been a sucess (and I mean define one that had a remote possibility to suceed in our real world)?
It is easy to point a finger at what NK has been doing then point it to the US (or even South Korea) and say, “Why didn’t you stop this? You are a failure!”
The media and politicians do it all the time.
But, we rarely see tacked onto that the same person outlining a plan that could have worked.
And looking at where we are now, I’d say the Bush crew policy has worked — unless someone can tell me of a plan that would have accomplished more and something concrete.
I might not have said Bush’s policy was a sucess a year and a half ago - though I would have challenged anyone to offer a better method rather than a simple conclusion.
But now, it is clear China has moved much closer to the US and has been putting more effective pressure on North Korea.
And NK has at least agreed to return to the talks.
And I can see no alternative ideas that would have forced or convinced NK to do any of the key provisions needed for the US to do what NK wants. I can see nothing that would have led to NK getting rid of its nuke material or handing over the bombs or handing over the missiles or opening up their society.
Above all, the US has avoided strengthening a regime that has proven time and time again it will never open itself up to the world and become like other nations but does prefer to remain closed and see what it can wring out of the international community through brinkmanship.
That is not a failure.
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[...] But Lantos, a co-sponsor of the North Korean Human Rights Act and the ADVANCE Democracy Act, quacks like a classically liberal Scoop Jackson Democrat. He is the single individual most responsible for getting all of the House Dems to either vote in favor of the NKHRA, or at least not vote against it. As a direct consequence, the bill passed unanimously. If the Tom Lantos policy would back its velvet glove with an iron fist, I really don’t care if we talk bilaterally (read: stab South Korea and China in the back; it’s not as if they don’t do the same to us at every opportunity, defy two U.N. resolutions, and then have the balls to call us unilateralists). As long as bilateral talks don’t turn into a euphemism for America paying up while everyone else squirms away, they’d be fine. Unfortunately, I’m not sure even Tom Lantos could prevent bilateral talks from becoming just that. Would the Lantos policy mean that we forget human rights? Had identical words come from the insufferable, sonorous maw of John Feckless Kerry, I’d say yes. From Tom Lantos, I think not. [...]
[...] The ROK Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung, who isn’t Rep, Lantos, said this, according to TMH’s Robert Koehler. [...]