US readies for Korean business
While South Korea is a US$300 billion import market, US exporters currently have only 11% of the pie. The signing of a free trade deal
between Washington and Seoul, therefore, has US  business rubbing its hands in anticipation. (Apr 3, '07)



All fired up over Korea-US free trade
A South Korean protester who tried to burn himself to death on Monday might just as well have been sacrificing his life on the altar of US motor-vehicle manufacturers as on that of South Korean farmers. Conservative US business people and radical Korean activists alike oppose the highly contentious free trade agreement between the two countries, reached at the eleventh hour on Monday after marathon negotiations. - Donald Kirk (Apr 2, '07)

North Koreans hungry for a deal
The six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program have hit a roadblock again, this time the issue of a relatively paltry US$25 million. This means that North Korea is unlikely to shut its nuclear facilities within the agreed 60-day time frame. But as usual, there's more to this picture. The leadership's long-term strategy is not about nukes - in which it has probably lost interest anyway - but the fact that the economy is a complete mess and the people are once again facing a disastrous food shortage. - Donald Kirk (Mar 23, '07)

Dining with the Dear Leader
Move over, Planet Hollywood; another restaurant chain is making waves. A number of Pyongyang Restaurants have opened in Cambodia and Thailand. The Cambodian venues trace back to former King Sihanouk's close relations with North Korea. The Bangkok eatery attests to Thailand's growing trade relations with Pyongyang. - Bertil Lintner (Mar 14, '07)

Agricultural obstacle to US, Korea trade deal
South Korea reiterated on Wednesday that key agricultural productss must be excluded from the free trade deal being negotiated with the US, a move that collides with Washington's insistence that no exceptions be made. (Mar 14, '07)

North Korea hawks down but not out
Even though US State Department pragmatists have seized the initiative in North Korea policy away from the Bush administration hawks, the nuclear accord with Pyongyang - and peace on the peninsula - still hangs by a thread. If Pyongyang were to fail to observe the agreement, a President Hillary Clinton, for example, might not reject the idea of a second Korean war. - Donald Kirk (Mar 13, '07)

US cartoons 'made in North Korea'
Despite sanctions that include a ban on commercial trade, several US animated films have been outsourced to North Korea, according to a Beijing-based entrepreneur who says he has been involved with the Stalinist state's cartoon industry. - Sunny Lee (Mar 13, '07)

Chinese firms venture into North Korea
Chinese car manufacturer Brilliance Auto recently signed an agreement with PMC of South Korea to launch an assembly plant jointly in North Korea. (Mar 12, '07)

Japan in a bind over North Korea
Tokyo and Pyongyang are holding bilateral talks aimed at trying to resolve the matter of North Korea's abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s. But Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe surrendered some of the high ground by asserting that Korean and other Asian women had not been forced into prostitution during World War II. - Hisane Masaki (Mar 6, '07)

A South Korean reporter's confession
A South Korean reporter has gone public to deny that a high Chinese official leaked him state secrets concerning a visit by Kim Jong-il. But is this about protecting the innocent, or pique at the implication that he didn't have the journalistic smarts to nose out the story by himself? - Sunny Lee (Mar 2, '07) 

North Korea: Yes, we have no uranium
Pyongyang's purported secret plan to enrich uranium for atomic bombs was the reason the 1994 nuclear "freeze" collapsed in 2002. Under the new agreement, both sides studiously avoided the word "uranium". Does that mean the US is less sure of its footing now, five years later? - Donald Kirk (Feb 23, '07) 

Joseph White's walk in the dark
On one hot summer night in 1982, US Army Private Joseph White shot a lock on the gate leading to Korea's Demilitarized Zone and made his way into North Korea. He never returned. Of the handful of Americans defecting to North Korea, the story of this seemingly typical GI Joe is the strangest. - Robert Neff (Feb 22, '07)

RISKY BUSINESS
Economic crisis closing in on S Korea
Yen appreciation against most currencies this year will provoke widespread defaults in South Korea, reversing short-term foreign capital flows. This could prompt the devaluation of the won and a correction in the stock market of 50% or more. - Jephraim P Gundzik (Feb 21, '07)

North Korea's prescription for prosperity
Pharmaceutical manufacturers in North Korea hope that exporting updated versions of traditional medicines can help cure what ails the Stalinist country's hard-currency-hungry economy. - Ting-I Tsai (Feb 20, '07)

SPEAKING FREELY
Bush waves a white flag
This week's six-party agreement is just another in a long line of victories by North Korea's leaders over a fading superpower. It means that US President George W Bush acknowledges that North Korea is a full-fledged nuclear weapons state that can wreak havoc any time it chooses, writes Kim Myong-chol, unofficial spokesman of Kim Jong-il. (Feb 15, '07) 
 

BURYING NORTH KOREA'S BOMBS Political battles just beginning Some of the more sensitive issues over Pyongyang's nuclear program remain open after Tuesday's six-party agreement, such as the plutonium it has already produced and its advanced missile-development program. These uncertainties make the accord vulnerable to attack, particularly from US hardliners seeking regime change, as well as from Democrats trying to score political points. - Jim Lobe (Feb 14, '07) US enters the reality zone  John Bolton, hawkish former US envoy to the UN, is correct. The accord North Korea has reached contradicts fundamental premises of President George W Bush's policy - a failed policy, that is. Graham Allison, a nuclear expert, tells National Interest Online editor Ximena Ortiz why the agreement is a significant step for the Bush administration into the reality zone. (Feb 14, '07)

N Korea accord: Now for the hard part
In the first and one of the most important steps in ending North Korea's nuclear program, the six nations involved have agreed that Pyongyang shut down its nuclear facilities in exchange for heavy fuel oil. Some of the most contentious issues, though, have been put aside for later talks, giving Pyongyang ample time to get up to its all too familiar tricks. - Donald Kirk (Feb 13, '07)

SPEAKING FREELY
Lost in translation at the six-party talks
Analysts and the world's press hang on every word that passes out of the mouths of North Korea's representatives at the six-nation talks on nuclear disarmament. But not all of those words are accurately translated - indeed, often they are mistranslated. The North Koreans usually shrug it off, convinced that nobody in the Western press will give their country a break anyway. - Sunny Lee (Feb 12, '07)

US has a bone of contention with Seoul
The ongoing dispute between Seoul and Washington over screening for bone fragments in American beef potentially infected with mad cow disease continues after US officials rejected a compromise offered by South Korea. (Feb 9, '07)

Korea nuke talks: Optimism is in the air
For the first time in more than a year there is optimism that the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program, which resumed in Beijing on Thursday, will result in an agreement that will look like progress. Pyongyang may shut its Yongbyon complex in return for renewed shipments of heavy oil. But don't expect it to dismantle its nukes completely - or for Washington to give way on light-water reactors. - Donald Kirk (Feb 8, '07) 

CHINA AND THE US, Part 10
The changing South Korean position
South Korean politics has been evolving along two parallel paths since the Cold War. One path moves toward increasing resistance to US domination, and the other toward closer ties with neighboring China. Both paths lead to moderation of Cold War ideological hostility in South Korea toward its estranged Northern fraternal state. - Henry C K Liu (Feb 6, '07) 

N Korean heir gambles with his future
Kim Jong-nam seems to be a chip off the block of his father, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, who himself was renowned for debauchery as a young man. The 35-year-old heir apparent has lately been living it up in the casinos and fleshpots of Macau. It all adds even more uncertainty about who is destined to pick up the mantle of the world's only communist family dynasty. - Kent Ewing (Feb 5, '07)

Hyundai boss jailed for three years
The chairman of Hyundai Motor Group, Chung Mong-koo, has been sentenced in South Korea to three years in jail for breach of trust and embezzlement. He was charged with embezzling US$96 million and causing losses of more than $200 million. (Feb 5, '07)

North Korea: Something might just happen
Guess what? The next round of the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, scheduled to begin next Thursday, might actually accomplish something. Don't expect Pyongyang to surrender its weapons in toto, but the North Koreans suddenly seem in the mood to negotiate. Maybe the financial sanctions are beginning to bite. - Donald Kirk (Feb 2, '07)

Why Koreans have a beef with free trade
Washington's insistence on ramming potentially infected meat down Seoul's throat as a precondition for free trade has enraged South Koreans, who see it not only as a threat to public health, but also to their national sovereignty and democratic system. (Jan 30, '07)

South Korea's Roh in a one-man show
President Roh Moo-hyun, with just 13 months of his five-year term left, bristles when called a lame duck, vowing that he will vigorously continue with his policies, despite widespread concerns over the economy and ties with North Korea. When it comes to finding someone new to wear the mantle of Korean-style liberalism, though, Roh is stumped. - Donald Kirk (Jan 25, '07)

North Korea bites a golden bullet
North Korea, with a chunk of its international assets frozen as a result of US Treasury pressure, is also being shunned by the international banks that buy gold. North Korean companies have been forced to pay in gold for imports from across the border with China and elsewhere. Dear Leader Kim Jong-il is also "rewarding" top officials with gold, not greenbacks. Pyongyang has made the issue central to talks on its nuclear program, but the US is unlikely to budge. - Donald Kirk (Jan 23, '07)

Sanctions under the shadow of war
The sanctions levied against North Korea fit the pattern of Washington's non-diplomacy toward Pyongyang. The economic campaign begun in 2005 pushed North Korea toward accelerating its nuclear program. The more recent sanctions, if implemented with naval interdiction, increase the risk of war. (Jan 23, '07)  

Korea: The fog of war - and talks
Is there a future for US forces on the Korean Peninsula? The question is posed by none other than the commander of those forces, in the face of rising South Korean antagonism to the mechanisms that define the leadership of US-Korean forces in case of war. The proposed solution to the problem is complicated, but no more opaque than this week's US-North Korea talks that produced "a certain agreement", according to Pyongyang. The US negotiator is now wondering what exactly he is supposed to have agreed to.  - Donald Kirk (Jan 19, '07)

US-Korea trade talks move forward
Washington and Seoul made "important" progress in their latest round of free trade talks, establishing the basis for an eighth round in February and raising hopes that a deal could be reached before April. (Jan 19, '07)

BOOK REVIEW
An animator's novel experience
Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea and Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China by Guy Delisle
Jet-set animator Guy Delisle's graphic novels atmospherically depict his life as a manager of outsourced cartoon production on the frontiers of globalization, first in China's cultural desert of Shenzhen and later in Orwellian North Korea. Outsourcing, both of these enjoyable books make clear, is no picnic. - Fraser Newham (Jan 19, '07) 

Six parties, sixfold problems
The latest fruitless bout of six-party talks aimed at curtailing North Korea's nuclear program underscored the deep differences among the countries involved. Addressing these divisions has become as important as dealing with a recalcitrant Pyongyang. - Bruce Klingner (Jan 18, '07)

Seoul 'backs down' in US trade talks
Clearing a major obstacle to a proposed free trade agreement with the United States, South Korea has - according to a leaked government report - all but retracted its demand that the US change its anti-dumping laws. (Jan 18, '07)

SPEAKING FREELY
North Koreans given cause to beef
In a country known for famines, many North Koreans have eaten contaminated beef, and suffered the appalling health consequences. Whether they were desperately hungry and knew what they were doing, or were deviously fed by the government, remains unclear. - Robert Neff (Jan 17, '07)

North Korea's golden path to security
Pyongyang seems to have found a way around the economic squeeze that came with the freezing by the US of its bank accounts and Japan's crackdown on trade. In a word - gold. North Korea has lots of it, even if its mines are decrepit. It has been selling gold and other precious metals through Thailand, which has vaulted above Japan as a trading partner. - Bertil Lintner (Jan 17, '07)

Japanese bigwig on surprise Pyongyang visit
While Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is in Europe trying to drum up support for a tough policy toward North Korea, a veteran parliamentarian of Abe's own party is in Pyongyang on his own peace mission. It is doubtful that Taku Yamasaki pulls enough weight to accomplish anything, except perhaps to undercut Abe's diplomacy. - Hisane Masaki  (Jan 11, '07)

Filling North Korea's bare shelves
Chinese businesses are cashing in on Stalinist North Korea's insatiable hunger for consumer goods, dumping factory seconds and damaged goods on the market at outrageous prices. However, the introduction of more liberalized policies could force unscrupulous operators to clean up their act in the face of broader domestic and international competition. - Ting-I Tsai (Jan 9, '07)

South Korea opts for mind over matter
Commercial service exports worldwide accounted for US$2.4 trillion in 2005, a number that is only expected to grow, prompting manufacturing leader South Korea to shift into a knowledge-based economy to get itself a piece of the pie. - Scott B MacDonald (Jan 8, '07)

SPEAKING FREELY
Kim Jong-il's policy a silver bullet
When Kim Jong-il instituted a military-first policy 12 years ago, the West viewed it as a non-starter, which would drive North Korea even further into poverty and international isolation. Kim Myong Chol, the "unofficial" spokesman for the North Korean leader, argues that to the contrary, this policy has ensured the independence of the Korean Peninsula from foreign domination. (Jan 3, '07)