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At the end of last week, there was mounting evidence that the Park Geun-hye government was trying to lower the temperature on the peninsula and that humanitarian assistance would play a central role. On Thursday, Minister of Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae made the mistake of admitting that the closure of Kaesong was causing pain to [...]
Setting aside Syria, South Korea may be the only country in the world with politics more polarized than the United States. While in Seoul last week I was reminded of this when the leaders of the political opposition attempted to march on the US embassy to deliver letters addressed to President Obama and Vice President [...]
Growing up in Texas, occasionally the legislators would get so cranked up over some issue confronting the state that they would, as we used to say, “go to fist city.” But as far as I know, brawls in the Texas State Legislature were mere slugfests. This week in Seoul, National Assembly member Kim Sun-Dong, a [...]
In South Korea, the antics of the DP opposition in the National Assembly have finally backfired; the GNP appears poised to use its majority to bring the KORUS to a floor vote on November 24. We consulted with one of our students who has served in government, Yongha Son, and he provided some insight into [...]
We have repeatedly written about what we believe are misguided concerns expressed by some members of the House of Representatives about activities at the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement. (To be sure, we have our doubts about KIC, but not for the reasons expressed by the House members.) Now the South [...]
We have reported on North Korea’s stated interest in attracting foreign direct investment. But an equally important question is what responsibilities investors have given the abysmal human and labor rights record of the country. Our reflection on this question was triggered by running into John Ruggie at a recent conference at Wharton. Ruggie, a Professor [...]
Don’t you love billowing legislative preambles? Well, sometimes they are revealing, in this case with respect to that Executive Order that we blogged about earlier. Freshman Rep. Mike Kelly (Republican, Pennsylvania 3rd district) has introduced a piece of legislation to finally get the long-suffering KORUS through Congress (editorial comment: in our humble opinion, this is [...]
The two of us have been arguing over what EO 13570 means. Sitting out on the West Coast, Haggard had the temerity to simply read what it said: “Except to the extent provided in statutes or in licenses, regulations, orders, or directives that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered [...]
Getting trade agreements passed is like solving a Rubik’s cube: one wrong-colored square and you are not really there. But it finally looks like all the surfaces have lined up and that passage could come before summer. The negotiations on substance were supposed to be completed at the G20 meeting in Seoul in November—a minor [...]
As we discussed last week, there were rumblings from the House International Affairs Committee about the treatment of the Kaesong Industrial Complex in the context of the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) legislation, with Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Ca) likening it to a “slave labor camp” and Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl) and eight co-sponsors introducing [...]
