The Agonist - Asia: NE & Koreas

Big Changes in Japan

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:16:13 -0700

Chris Nelson and correspondents on the changes in Japan:

JAPAN...it may be that Japan will end up having a woman Prime Minister (history indeed!) following the surprise resignation of Fukuda on Monday.

Still, most bets are on a more conservative outcome...Foreign Minister Aso, a selection which raises the spectre of a more noisy right-wing approach to relations with China and Korea, especially...and so problems for the US.

We'll run more on this situation tomorrow. For tonite, we have an interesting report from a Loyal Reader in Japan who is directly involved, but we are not releasing his name, pending clarification on that point...stay tuned in tomorrow's Report.

Japan: Residents go to courts to evict yakuza

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 04:46:09 -0700

Justin McCurry | Tokyo | Aug 26

The Guardian -

The yakuza are expanding their sphere of influence to include real estate, the stock market and other legitimate businesses. TWPhoto/Corbis

Residents of a city in western Japan this week became the first to turn to the courts for help in ridding their neighbourhood of organised crime, amid fears that they will become the next victims of a violent power struggle.

Around 600 residents of Kurume, in Fukuoka prefecture, have asked a local court to order members of the Dojinkai yakuza gang to vacate an office building in the middle of a busy shopping district.

According to Japanese newspaper reports, the eviction attempt is the first by ordinary residents against an officially recognised crime syndicate.

In their petition, the residents said the gang's activities and the ever-present threat of violence infringed on their constitutional right to live in peace.

Their target is the head office of the Dojinkai, whose 1,000 members have controlled parts of south-west Japan since the late 1960s.

North Korea suspends dismantling of nuclear program

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:41:31 -0700

Barbara Demick | Beijing | Aug 26

LA Times - Less than two months after it blew up the cooling tower of its main nuclear plant in a televised spectacle, North Korea announced that it has suspended the dismantlement of its nuclear program.

North Korea's foreign ministry said Tuesday it was responding to the to the United States' failure to live up to its promises of removing it from a blacklist of "terror-sponsoring" states. It said the suspension had taken place as of Aug. 14th and that it would next consider restoring some of what it had dismantled already at its main nuclear compound in Yongbyon.

President Bush indeed asked Congress on June 27 to remove North Korea from the terror list, but the administration has also said that the measure wouldn't go through until it could verify a 60-page inventory that North Korean had submitted of its nuclear program.

North Korea said in Tuesday's statement that the United States' insistence on verification infringed on its sovereignty and was a "brigandish demand of unilaterally disarming.''

``The U.S. is gravely mistaken if it thinks it can make a house search in the DPRK (North Korea) as it pleases just as it did in Iraq,'' North Korea said in the statement distributed over its official news agency.

Kim Jong-il: School days of a tyrant

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:03:51 -0700

David McNeill | Aug 21

The Independent - An exiled teacher of Kim Jong-il has revealed how he first met an 'ordinary' student who turned into the monster that rid Pyongyang of the disabled – and ordered his entire family killed.

It seemed an ordinary moment, repeated in thousands of schools worldwide. On one side, a shy boy "with puffy, red cheeks" who stammered through a translation test in the principal's office. On the other, a tutor hired by the boy's father to put him through his paces.

But the school was in North Korea, the father was the country's legendary founder, Kim Il Sung, and the boy was his son and future leader, Kim Jong-il. And the relationship between student and tutor would climax in a horrific denouement: the boy grew up to order the execution of the teacher's entire family.

Those are among the milder allegations made by the tutor, Kim Hyun-sik, now 76 and a research professor at George Mason University in Virginia.

Truth emerges too late for Kim Soo-im

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:17:34 -0700

Charles J Hanley | Seoul | August 17

AP - Back in the days of ``Commies'' and ``pinkos,'' of Red scares, black lists, suspicion and smear, Kim Soo-im stood out as a one-woman axis of evil, a villainess without peer.

``The Korean Seductress Who Betrayed America,'' as the U.S. magazine Coronet labeled her, was a Seoul socialite said to have charmed secret information out of one lover, an American colonel, and passed it to another, a top communist in North Korea.

In late June 1950, as North Korean invaders closed in on this teeming, panicked city, Kim was hastily executed by the South Korean military, shot as a ``very malicious international spy.'' Her deeds, thereafter, only grew in infamy.

In 1950s America, gripped by anticommunist fever, one TV drama told viewers Kim's ``womanly wiles'' had been the communists' ``deadliest weapon.'' Another teleplay, introduced by host Ronald Reagan, depicted her as Asia's Mata Hari. Reviled as the Oriental queen of a vast Soviet ``Operation Sex,'' she was even blamed by Washington columnist Drew Pearson for igniting the entire Korean War.

Kim Soo-im and her love triangle are gone, buried in separate corners of a turbulent past. But in yellowing U.S. military files stamped ``SECRET,'' hibernating through a long winter of Cold War, the truth survived. Now it has emerged, a half-century too late to save her.

US restores status of islets at centre of Japan-South Korea row

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:38:10 -0700

Washington | July 31

AFP - The United States has decided to restore the status of a group of tiny islands claimed by both South Korea and Japan as territory belonging to South Korea, President George W. Bush said Wednesday.

Amid an escalating dispute over the islets between the two Asian neighbours, the US government's Board on Geographic Names (BGN) recently changed its classification of the islets from a territory of South Korea to "undesignated sovereignty."

"As to the database, I asked (Secretary of State Condoleezza) Rice to review it and the database will be restored to where it was ... seven days ago," Bush told a group of Asian reporters at the White House.

He pointed out however that the dispute over the islets was a matter to be settled by Japan and South Korea.

Red neon cross lights up Koreans

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:23:56 -0700

A ubiquitous red neon cross rivals the national flag as a symbol for the Republic of Korea. It represents Tonghak, an indigenous religion founded by a peasant mystic in 1860. Today, the same hard peasant wisdom still commands Korean democracy and Tonghak manifests itself in rebellions and protests, perhaps most recently against American beef. - Taru Taylor (Asian Times)

A threat to Coca-Cola? Japan sips the eel thing

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:17:01 -0700

Toby Green | July 30

The Independent - Forget cola, lemonade or beer – Japanese people sweltering in the summer heat now have a new canned drink to quench their thirst – made out of eels.

The fishy drink Unagi Nobori – which translates as "Surging Eel" – contains eel extract and vitamins found in the fish. The fizzy yellow liquid is believed to be the first mass-produced drink of its kind made in the country.

The launch of the drink this month coincides with the start of Japan's annual eel-eating season, which peaks this year on 5 August. Many locals believe the fish boost energy during the summer's hot and humid conditions.

Kazunori Hayashi, spokesman for Japan Tobacco Inc, the makers of the drink, said it is "mainly for men who are exhausted by the summer's heat".

The beverage has a similar taste to broiled eels, a popular form of the summer delicacy. The drink sells at about 140 yen (65p).

Bereaved Japan mother angered by deadly overwork

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:00:14 -0700

Tokyo | July 18

Reuters - A Japanese woman hit out at corporate bosses this week, after her restaurant manager son died of a brain haemorrhage having done 200 hours of overtime in a month.

The case is the latest of hundreds of deaths a year officially determined to have been caused by the hardships of working for Japanese companies, where overtime is a matter of course and holidays few and far between.

Takayuki Maezawa, who died at the age of 32 last October, was the second employee at unlisted restaurant chain Skylark Co Ltd to die from overwork in the last four years, a union official in Tokyo said.

South Korea to recall Japan envoy

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:00:46 -0700

July 14

BBC -

South Korea says it is to recall its envoy to Japan in the latest flare-up of tensions over disputed islands.

The foreign ministry said Japan had reasserted its claim to the islands, which are under South Korean control in waters between the Asian neighbours.

The fresh claim to Japanese ownership of the islands - known as Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan - was reportedly made in a book for teachers.

The islands sit in rich fishing grounds which may also contain gas reserves.

South Korean fatally shot by North Korean soldier

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:49:19 -0700

Jae-Soon Chang | Seoukl | July 11

AP - A North Korean soldier fatally shot a South Korean tourist Friday at a mountain resort in the communist North, prompting the South to suspend the high-profile tour program just as South Korean's new president sought to rekindle strained ties between the divided countries.

The news of the unprecedented shooting of a 53-year-old woman at Diamond Mountain resort emerged just hours after new President Lee Myung-bak delivered a nationwide address calling for restored contacts between the two Koreas, which have been on hold since he took office in February.

U.S. carrier to visit S.Korea, likely to irk North

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:00:29 -0700

Seoul | July 10

Reuters - A U.S. aircraft carrier will make a routine port call in South Korea later this month, U.S. Forces Korea said on Thursday, which should upset a prickly North Korea that has said such moves can hurt nuclear disarmament talks.

Big protest planned for Seoul against beef and Lee

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 02:49:47 -0700

Jon Herskovitz | Seoul | July 5

Reuters - South Korean police said they expect about 35,000 to gather on Saturday for a protest against a U.S. beef import deal and the polices of the new president, whose government has faced a crisis due to the weeks of street rallies.

Polls show that most South Koreans oppose a deal President Lee Myung-bak struck in April to open the market to U.S. beef but about two-thirds of respondents say it is also time to halt the rallies that have grown more violent in recent weeks.

Protest organisers, which include civic groups, religious leaders and a militant labour group that has taken part in some of the most violent street clashes in the country's history, said they expect hundreds of thousands to attend.

The protests began in early May by people worried about possible mad cow disease in U.S. beef but later grew into a forum where a wide variety of people gathered to air their grievances against Lee, who won a December election by a landslide.

UN says US Aid arrived in Nth Korea

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:18:32 -0700

Seoul, Sth Korea | June 30

AP - A U.S. ship carrying thousands of tons of food aid has arrived in North Korea, after the communist nation agreed to expanded international assistance for its impoverished people, the U.N. food agency said Monday.

The World Food Program said the American ship that arrived Sunday carried 37,000 tons of wheat, the first installment of 500,000 tons in promised U.S. aid that will be distributed by the United Nations.

The aid was not directly related to the ongoing nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang, as the U.S. says it does not use food as a means of diplomatic coercion. However, the shipment came just days after the North handed over its delayed atomic declaration and blew up the cooling tower at its main reactor site.

North Has Handed Over Nuclear Declaration/Off terrorism list next?

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:28:00 -0700

UPDATE:

S. Korean FM: North Has Handed Over Nuclear Declaration

South Korea says North Korea has submitted a long-awaited declaration of its nuclear programs, nearly six months after it was due.

Speaking in Seoul, South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said the North submitted its declaration to Chinese officials in Beijing. VOA

Bush, who once branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil," said he will call for the lifting of sanctions against North Korea under the Trading with Enemy Act and notify Congress that he intends to take it off the terror list, a move that will take 45 days.

But he warned that the easing of U.S. sanctions on the secretive state would have little real effect.

"The next 45 days will be an important period for North Korea, to show its... cooperation," he said. North Korea will have to end its nuclear activities in a "verifiable" way, he added.

Bush warned Pyongyang that it would still remain one of "the most heavily sanctioned nations in the world". CNN

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