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In our post from last Friday, we discussed central deterrence on the Korean peninsula: the ability of the United States and the ROK to deter both a first nuclear strike and a large-scale conventional attack. We raised questions about whether the use of strategic or even tactical nuclear weapons were even credible, and emphasized the [...]
With the third anniversary of the sinking of the Cheonan, the suspicion on the left that the LMB government commission fabricated evidence is being kept alive by Hankyoreh. When we issue our usual caveat–”you be the judge”–there is typically some body of evidence that an intelligent observer can assess. In this case, the devil is [...]
Several weeks ago—on March 15 to be exact—we offered a “review of the bidding”: an analysis of three successive statements in the first half of March from the Supreme Command of the KPA (March 5), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (March 7) and the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (March 8). We also [...]
The South Korean public regards “economic growth” as the top priority for the incoming Park Geun-hye government according to two recent polls. I recently received a short report from the TNS office in Seoul summarizing South Korean public opinion on a variety of issues, and comparing those views to those found five years ago as [...]
South Koreans sometimes label Chinese investment in North Korea as “economic colonialism.” I normally discount these concerns as slightly paranoiac but a series a press reports from last week are starting to make even me wonder. First, multiple stories appeared in the Chinese and South Korean press describing an agreement between the China Overseas Investment [...]
Several weeks ago, we posted on a new technical paper that contends that the Cheonan may have been sunk by a mine after all. The Russian investigation team advanced this theory at the time, apparently based on tangled line in the ship’s propeller that could have dragged a mine up. My colleague Marc Noland subsequently [...]
A few weeks ago I stumbled across an article by Steven Borowiec titled “South Korean Businesses in the North Going Broke.” The thrust of the piece, which paralleled other articles that appeared during the spring, is that the policies of President Lee Myung-bak have inflicted more damage on South Korean firms than the North. Borowiec [...]
According to the Joongang Ilbo, a report from the Bank of Korea claims that North Korea trade dependence on China reached 89 percent last year. As we have argued ad nauseum, these figures overstate North Korea’s dependency for a variety of reasons, most notably the exclusion of North-South trade. We calculate China’s share of [...]
We were always skeptical of the Cheonan skeptics; useful pieces in Nature and Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus summarize the contradictory positions held by this eclectic group. Critics were motivated by President LMB’s effort to exploit the issue politically and weakness in the joint investigation process. They seemed better at raising red flags about the government’s [...]
Last week, on the anniversary of the “24 May measures” undertaken in response to the shooting of a tourist at Mt. Kumgang, the sinking of the Cheonan, and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, the Hyundai Research Institute (HRI) released a report claiming that North-South economic activity has been depressed greater than originally expected. According to [...]
