Japan’s Colonialization of Korea (Review)
Korean Quarterly, Spring 2005
Category: Korea
The Restaurant Theory of Reform
When I lived in Moscow in 1985, in the first year of the Gorbachev era, it was hard to get a decent meal. I waited on line with my friends for hours just to eat a mediocre pizza with a sour tomato at its center. It was not the same everywhere in the Soviet bloc.… Continue reading The Restaurant Theory of Reform
Beyond Korean Barbecue
Alternet, June 10, 2005
Korean Food, Korean Identity: The Impact of Globalization on Korean Agriculture
Asia Pacific Resource Center, Stanford, February 2005
To Link or Not to Link: The Human Rights Question in North Korea
Though it would be difficult to find anyone in the United States who would praise North Korea for its dismal human rights record, this consensus of opinion by no means extends to practical foreign policy. In other words, there is broad agreement on what is wrong in North Korea, from the political labor camps to… Continue reading To Link or Not to Link: The Human Rights Question in North Korea
Round Two of Bush vs. North Korea
Hope springs eternal that the Bush administration, in its new post-election configuration, will finally get serious about the North Korean nuclear crisis. According to the most optimistic assessment, the new appointments at the State Department–Condoleezza Rice, Robert Zoellick, Christopher Hill–will leaven the administration’s hard-line policy with a measure of pragmatism. This more realistic diplomacy will… Continue reading Round Two of Bush vs. North Korea
Uses of Ambiguity in North Korea Agreement
On September 19, North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear program. As part of the same agreement, which followed the latest round of the Six Party Talks, the United States pledged not to attack or invade North Korea, to coexist peacefully with the country, and to work toward normalized relations. The United States and… Continue reading Uses of Ambiguity in North Korea Agreement
The Legacy of Lee Kyung Hae
The South Korean farmer snaps a cucumber in two to show me the drops of moisture that bead to the surface around the break. “If you put it back together and wait a minute, then it will stick together,” Yang Yoon Seok says. Sure enough, he easily rejoins the severed halves and the cucumber is… Continue reading The Legacy of Lee Kyung Hae
Atoms for Peace
Those crazy North Koreans. They’ve promised in principle to give up their nuclear weapons, but they insist on generating nuclear power for peaceful purposes. With Pyongyang and Washington at loggerheads over this point, the Six-Party Talks to resolve the nuclear crisis in Northeast Asia have taken a recess after two weeks of promising discussions. U.S.… Continue reading Atoms for Peace
Korea’s Slow-Motion Reunification
Somenthing extraordinary is happening in Korea, and Washington appears to be paying no attention. The two Koreas have plunged headlong in to unknown territory: reunification. For 50 years, aside from the occasional defector, it was impossible to cross the demilitarized zone dividing the Korean Peninsula. Today a bus leaves the capital of South Korea every… Continue reading Korea’s Slow-Motion Reunification
Dealing with the Powers in Pyongyang
North Korea’s public declaration of nuclear status does not definitively prove that it possesses nuclear weapons. What’s clear is that Pyongyang expects no changes in Bush administration policy. The announcement and North Korea’s decision to stop participating in the international negotiations with the United States and its neighbors known as “six-party talks” was designed to… Continue reading Dealing with the Powers in Pyongyang
The Spirit of Kwangju
It happened nearly 25 years ago, but the old woman’s grief was still raw. We were queued up to lay flowers on the ceremonial table with its pyramids of fruit and platters of pounded rice cake. At the head of the line was a group of victims’ mothers, clad in white. Each lay a single… Continue reading The Spirit of Kwangju
Next Stop: Pyongyang
There is no Vaclav Havel of North Korea. Don’t expect to turn up a Solidarity-like trade union or a Democracy Wall movement on your next visit to Pyongyang. Nor, as far as anyone can tell, is a North Korean version of Boris Yeltsin or even Mikhail Gorbachev waiting in the wings to shake up the… Continue reading Next Stop: Pyongyang
U.S. must abandon hard-line stance in talks with North Korea
You can lead two parties to a negotiating table, but you can’t make them compromise. As the United States and North Korea head into six-party negotiations this week, both countries find themselves boxed into a diplomatic corner. These hardening positions make a robust agreement unlikely even though such a deal is in the long-term… Continue reading U.S. must abandon hard-line stance in talks with North Korea
Gulliver and the Lilliputians
Gulliver and the Lilliputians Superpowers don’t like multilateralism. They fear that smaller countries will gang up to tie their hands, as the tiny Lilliputians bound mighty Gulliver in the famous novel. In the last four years, the U.S. Gulliver has defied the Lilliputians and projected an unprecedented amount of unilateral power – military,… Continue reading Gulliver and the Lilliputians
The Future of US-South Korean Security Relations
FPIF, October 24, 2004
Bring Our Troops Home–from Korea
FPIF, June 21, 2004
It’s Our Party (and We’ll Cheer If We Want To)
FPIF, April 30, 2004
Between Kim Jong Il and a Hard Place
FPIF, February 27, 2004
The Forgotten Lessons of Helsinki, World Policy Journal
World Policy Journal, Fall 2004
Second Act
American Prospect, February 14, 2004 The Bush administration has been at times dangerously ambiguous in its policy toward North Korea. With a second round of six-party talks likely for early 2004 and North Korea’s nuclear program chugging along, the upcoming debate on Capitol Hill over a new bill, the North Korea Freedom Act, may well… Continue reading Second Act
Kim Il Sung and Korea’s Struggle
Review of Kim Il Sung and Korea’s Struggle by Won Tai Sohn John Feffer A casual observer of the United States in the 1950s might conclude that Dwight D. Eisenhower was a genial war hero who, as the 34th president, presided over a decade of unprecedented prosperity. Even my father, a World War II… Continue reading Kim Il Sung and Korea’s Struggle
The North Korean Revolution 1945-1950 (Review)
Review of Charles Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Cornell University Press, 2003) Journalists almost ritualistically describe North Korea as the world’s last Stalinist hold out. “Stalinist,” like “communist” or “totalitarian,” is used more for its damning than its descriptive power. Indeed, in the same breath, journalists acknowledge that North Korea remains a profound… Continue reading The North Korean Revolution 1945-1950 (Review)
Wish List
Conflict-resolution professionals often say that to break a deadlock requires parties to shift from “positions” to “interests.” For the past year, the United States and North Korea have repeated their positions ad nauseum. The United States wants North Korea to give up its nuclear program; North Korea wants a guarantee that the United States won’t… Continue reading Wish List
North Korea: A Different Kind of Regime Change
For the last year, the Bush administration has spoken with a forked tongue on North Korean policy. The pragmatists in the Bush administration have wanted to negotiate a solution to the current nuclear stand-off. The hardliners have been eager for Korean War II. Now, according to Beltway gossip in Washington, the pragmatists have bested… Continue reading North Korea: A Different Kind of Regime Change
North Korea and the Fire Next Time
TomPaine, September 3, 2003
Regime Change in North Korea?
A Different Kind of Regime Change For the last year, the Bush administration has spoken with a forked tongue on North Korean policy. The pragmatists in the Bush administration have wanted to negotiate a solution to the current nuclear stand-off. The hardliners have been eager for Korean War II. Now, according to Beltway… Continue reading Regime Change in North Korea?
From Gulf War II to Korean War II
Albany Times-Union, April 3, 2003
An Uneasy Anniversary
Greensboro News and Record, July 27, 2003
The Peculiar Pragmatism of Pyongyang
The Progressive, October 2003
Highlighted Articles
- What’s Up with the Herd? FPIF
- Death and the Economy: A Dialogue, FPIF
- COVID-19 and the Global Economy, Inference
- Revisiting the Goldilocks Apocalypse, TomDispatch
- A Global Green New Deal Could Defeat the Far Right—And Save the Planet, Newsweek
- The Widening Rift Between the US and China, The Nation
- Between Rocks and a Hard Place, Foreign Policy
- Deserts vs. Development in China, Global Post
- Infantilizing North Korea, Hankyoreh
- Jeju Island: Paradise with a Dark Side, Washington Post
- Waiting for the Curtain, Washingtonian
- My Backlogged Pages, New York Times
- Starting Where North Korea Is, 38North
- Will Facebook Remake the World? Harvard International Review
- Are We All North Koreans Now? TomDispatch
- Bringing a Living Wage to the Farm, Alternet
- Writers from the Other Asia, The Nation
- The Forgotten Lessons of Helsinki, World Policy Journal
- The Politics of Dog, American Prospect
- Containment Lite: U.S. Policy toward Russia and Its Neighbors, FPIF
- The Costs and Dangers of NATO Expansion, FPIF
- The Selling of the Russian President, 1993, Z Magazine
- The Age of Diminished Expectations (Review), Commonweal
- Poland’s Solidarity: Who Is in Charge? Z Magazine
- Corruptions of Empire (Review), Philadelphia City Paper