5 posts tagged “north korea”
Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan:
“
Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, denied on Thursday that the country's' military forced women into sexual slavery during World War II, casting doubt on a past government apology. "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion," Abe told a reporters."
"
Nariaki Nakayama, chairman of a group of ruling party lawmakers that deny a Japanese government role in the forced sexual slavery:
“
Some say it is useful to compare the brothels to college cafeterias run by private companies, who recruit their own staff, procure foodstuffs, and set prices," Nakayama said. "Where there's demand, businesses crop up ... but to say women were forced by the Japanese military into service is off the mark," he said. "This issue must be reconsidered, based on truth ... for the sake of Japanese honor."
"
Quotes from the International Herald Tribune Website, 1 March 2007
This has got to stop. Japanese government denials of forcing women into military sexual slavery have the same basis in ‘fact’, plus similar levels of dysfunctional morality, as Holocaust denials.
Facts are facts - IT HAPPENED. Japanese government records say so. The former victims, thousands of women from countries around the world, say so. Even former Japanese military members say so. Only politicians could be idiotic, ignorant, and racist enough to deny this.
The U.S. House of Representatives had hearings last month on this issue of Japanese WWII sexual slavery. Now they need to pass the resolution before them calling on the Japanese government to accept responsibility and apologize. No more should Japanese politicians be allowed to hide behind lies and childish historical obfuscation.
For more information, in English, please visit:
- Sharing House - http://www.nanum.org/
- Japan Policy Research Institute, Japan's Responsibility Toward Comfort Women Survivors - http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp77.html
- The Comfort Women Project - http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~soh/comfortwomen.html
or try reading:
- True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women
- The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War
Oil for Vacation Time!
Calling this an agreement to denuclearize North Korea, or block any of Pyongyang’s future nuclear options, doesn’t cut it. This agreement is simply the exchange of fuel oil for the temporary freezing, not closure, of the North’s aged nuclear facility at Yongbyon. The most important goals – finding and permanently closing all of the North’s facilities, plus getting rid of any/all existing nuclear fuel and weapons … are left to some dreamy future fantasyland.
The North could freeze Yongbyon for a few months of relaxation and world happiness, collect its fuel oil donations, then restart Yongbyon later in the year and barely miss a beat in its nuke program. Plus, they could repeat the same scenario ad infinitum, irritating the U.S., China, and everyone else along the way, but still skillfully making similar agreements whenever Chinese/international heat gets too high.
The North is basically getting aid for nothing – though many in the U.S. right-wing (i.e. former UN ambassador John Bolton) have come out against the agreement, can you imagine the incredible decibel level had it been Carter or Clinton that signed this thing?
Looking for a secure, long-term job? Become a State Department negotiator!
With so many of the most important issues left up to future negotiations, a better name for this deal would be something like 6-Nations Diplomat Employment Act. Since so much was glossed over in the current deal, it’s going to take years of negotiations, plus tons more fuel and other aid, before anything even close to denuclearization of the North, the ‘Libyan endgame’ everyone is hoping for, actually occurs. So send in your applications now, and you too could spend years in Beijing hotel rooms bargaining with the North!
Good News for Traveling U.S. Citizens
The North was all set to allow in American tourists last August, but backed out at the last minute when its July missile test brought a fresh round of international opprobrium. With this current agreement, especially its call for future U.S. diplomatic recognition of the North (something that Pyongyang has long desired, and originally promised in the 1994 nuclear agreement), the chances are very good that Americans will be allowed into North Korea later this year – the first time since October 2005 (not coincidentally, right after a previous ‘breakthrough’ in the 6-party talks).
Worried that the deal may blow up before the North’s summer travel season? Legitimate, but there’s so much fluff and diplomatic yapping built into this process that, even in the worst case, the summer will hopefully have come and gone before things get too far into the dumper. All you’ve got to do is place your bets on bureaucratic inefficiency!
Japan and Iran
Interestingly, Japan did not agree to provide any of the aid mentioned in the agreement. It stuck to its guns, saying it will only provide aid to the North once a full accounting is made of Japanese citizens abducted to the North in the 1970s and 80s. The aid will instead be provided only by the U.S., South Korea, China, and Russia.
Since any fuel oil provided by the bill will need congressional approval, may I humbly suggest that the honorary name for this bill be Iranian Nuclear Weapons Support Act? Because, god/Allah knows, after witnessing the North test a nuke, then get an agreement for aid within four months, the Iranians would be nuts not to speed up their nuclear development!
"If they want a future with us, if they want to work with us, if they want to be a member of the international community, they're going to have to get out of this nuclear business," U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said on Sunday.
Ugh, this drives me crazy. I know there are people at State that understand Juche and the North Korean world outlook, so where does this ignorant BS Hill is uttering come from?
Isolation from the world community, in Pyongyang terminology, “self-reliance,” is a goal to be obtained, not a threat to be worried about. If you want to get the North’s attention, and really get them worried and ready to deal, you threaten them with MORE foreign interaction, not less. You threaten radio broadcasts, leaflet drops, satellite phones, defector education and re-training camps along their border, THEN you’ll get the North’s attention. Threatening the North with isolation is like threatening the Middle East with oil, or the French with wine – they have it already, they like it, and they really wouldn’t mind more.
There is a HUGE disconnect somewhere along the line from the people at the State Department who actually know something about the North, up to Hill and the others doing the talking and forming the U.S. negotiating positions. No wonder the North keeps doing whatever it wants – the people running the show on the U.S. side can’t tell a carrot from a damn stick.
I came across an article in the International Herald Tribune a couple of days ago that does an excellent job summing up South Korean views on the importance of the NK nuclear test and what the hot topics are here on the peninsula a year ahead of next year's presidential elections - economy first, nuke stuff later.
"SEOUL: Bruised by South Korea's cutthroat politics, bewildered by voters' rapidly changing concerns and battered mercilessly in the polls, President Roh Moo Hyun is limping toward the last year of his term.
But it is not Roh's engagement of North Korea, or even its recent nuclear test, that has saddled him with a current approval rating of 11 percent.
...
Indeed, even as the North Korean crisis keeps widening the gap between Seoul and Washington, it is nothing like a hot-button issue here among voters. North Korea's nuclear test last month has, if anything, reconfirmed the national consensus that South Korea has no choice but to keep its policy of engaging North Korea."
More at IHT 'Roh Loses Support' Article
Ever since the North’s nuclear test last month, and in the run-up to the holidays, people at home have been asking about what the mood is like here on the peninsula. Is it more dangerous now? What do the South Koreans think?
Is it more dangerous now?
Nope, not if you’re living in Seoul, or anywhere else close to the North’s border. Whether I’m sitting here and get killed by an artillery shell, or a nuke, the result is the same – I’m dead. So, for anyone living in the area, in range of North Korean artillery for decades, the North’s development of a nuke changes little.
What was the reaction among South Koreans?
I first heard of the explosion the afternoon it happened, during a break between classes. When I returned to class I asked my students, 1st to 4th year female students at the university in Seoul where I teach, if they had heard the news. Most had not and, when I explained what had happened, I was met with cheers and applause. Some of the students were literally ecstatic that the North had developed a nuclear weapon, “Because their power is our power.” Friends and co-workers reported similar reactions.
While these feelings are most common among the young and the left-wing, they are in no way a small minority. A sizeable segment of the South Korean population is honestly happy the North has tested an atomic bomb. The idea the North would ever do anything to hurt them is deemed crazy and war-like, the events of 1950-53 notwithstanding. In my class I told my students to go talk to their grandparents before getting too excited, then got back to the lesson.
In the end, the reaction to the nuclear test here in ranged from joy and happiness at one end, through a vast lack of concern across the middle, to a few demonstrations and some anger from the old and the right-wing. In the space of a few weeks, if not a few days, it seems everything here on the peninsula returned to normal. People that like the North still do – the SK government has kept up the Kaesong and Kuemgang projects. People that dislike the North still do, only with maybe a little more energy than before.
If there is such a thing as yawning at a nuclear test, that’s what’s happened.
