Category: KOREA/NORTH KOREA

The reinstatement of North Korea: What effects on the ‘story’ of socialism?

RAMIN MAZAHERI—Without access to North Korea’s rare earth metals China will have perhaps as great a chokepoint on the modern global economy as any OPEC nation save Arabia (which I refuse to call “Saudi”, as only Western governments believe/want the house of Saud to be synonymous with the People of Arabia). Furthermore, due to their educational advancements, North Korea can obviously serve the same function for South Korea as East Germany did for West Germany upon their reunification: cheap but smart labor.

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Hawks Renew Their Attacks On North Korea Talks

MOA—U.S. intelligence on North Korea is notoriously bad. The North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests last year were only detected when they were imminent. It is unlikely that U.S. spy services know what senior North Korean official “discuss” about “potentially asserting” something. The U.S. services probably “gathered” that through South Korea’s spy service. But whatever South Korean agencies say about North Korea is colored by their traditionally very hawkish position. They pay up to $860,000 to those North Korean defectors who make up the most scary stories. Such stories are often false.

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VIEWPOINTS: Three Cheers for Trump’s Peace Trifecta

JOHN WALSH—It is no exaggeration to say that the Singapore Summit is the biggest step toward peace on the Korean Peninsula since President Dwight Eisenhower lived up to his 1952 campaign promise to “go to Korea” and end Truman’s deeply unpopular war, which had claimed millions of Korean lives, 1 million Chinese lives and tens of thousands of American ones. Ike ended that genocidal war, which had slaughtered 20% of the population of North Korea primarily due to bombing and chemical weapons. An armistice was negotiated quickly and so the killing stopped, but a formal treaty of peace proved politically impossible. (Ike, the peacemaker, was criticized by the media for being inarticulate and stupid and for spending too much time on the golf course. And he had a mistress. Sound familiar? But he brought peace.)

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