The Korea Times

National Intelligence Service needs overhaul

By Lee Chang-supKorea’s top intelligence agency is at the center of another controversy. This time, the former leader of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) faces investigation for allegedly manipulating the presidential campaign.Controversy is nothing new for the NIS. Over the last decade, seven out of its 10 directors were either investigated or jailed, and now Won Sei-hoon faces a similar fate.Won, who was appointed director under the Lee Myung-bak administration, was banned from leaving Korea this week. The opposition Democratic United Party (DUP) plans to file a criminal complaint against Won, alleging he masterminded a plot to influence the most recent presidential election. The party claims Won manipulated public opinion by instructing agents to write comments online in support of President Park Geun-hye and her party during the presidential campaign last year.A female NIS agent admitted to writing comments online through multiple social media accounts. The allegation was only confirmed after the election.The DUP called this kind of political manipulation a grave cri

Mar 28, 2013By Ahn Seong-jin

Learning English

Koreas can create another economic miracle

By Lee Chang-sup Last year, Korea became the seventh member of the 20-50 club, an unofficial group of countries with more than $20,000 per capita income and a population of more than 50 million. The group comprises Korea and the G-7 countries, excluding Canada.After this achievement, the next question is whether Korea can join the so-called 40-80 club, which groups countries with more than $40,000 per capita income and a population of 80 million. So far, this group includes only the United States, Japan and Germany.Korea cannot automatically realize this goal, but it can eventually do so by meeting certain preconditions. First, the economy must grow by more than 5 percent each year. Second, the country must adopt a proactive immigration policy, reform the education policy, foster the service sector and upgrade the manufacturing sector. Lastly, the country must pursue reunification with North Korea.Of these preconditions, reunification is the most difficult. Today, inter-Korean economic cooperation sounds like a dream. The ongoing military drill between South Korea and the United

Mar 14, 2013By Ahn Seong-jin

North Korea

NK threatens to nullify nonaggression pacts

North Korea will nullify non-aggression agreements with South Korea, the state-run news agency said Friday.It also said that it will sever its inter-Korean hotline.   "The DPRK abrogates all agreements on nonaggressions reached between the North and the South," the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a statement.  "The DPRK (North Korea’s official name) will close the Panmunjeom liaison channel between the north and the south," said the English statement carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency.  The statement came after the United Nations unanimously adopted a resolution to punish the communist country for its internationally-condemned underground nuclear test on Feb. 12.

Mar 8, 2013By Ahn Seong-jin

NK threatens to nullify nonaggression pacts

North Korea

N. Korean leader threatens all-out war

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited military units that launched the 2010 artillery attack on South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island and called on troops to be ready for a confrontation with the enemy, a media report said Friday.The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) monitored in Seoul said Kim visited the front-line units on Mu and Jangjae islets in the early hours of Thursday and told soldiers to be ready to destroy enemy targets at a moment's notice if the order is given.He also said that the Nov. 23 artillery attack annihilated efforts by the warmongers in the South to provoke the North, and claimed the event was the most satisfying engagement since the Armistice Agreement that halted the Korean War was signed.The islets are south of North Korea's Kaemori shoreline and just a few kilometers north of the Northern Limit Line (NLL) that acts as the sea demarcation line between the two Koreas in the Yellow Sea. Kim had visited the garrison on Mu Islet last August.Artillery from Mu kicked off the sudden attack against Yeonpyeong on Nov. 23, 2010 that resulted in four deaths and 16 people

Mar 8, 2013By Ahn Seong-jin

North Korea

UN condemns NK's nuclear activities

The following is the gist of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2094, adopted Thursday in response to North Korea's nuclear test on Feb. 12. The measure:- Condemns in the strongest terms North Korea's ongoing nuclear activities, including its uranium enrichment program, and reaffirms the obligation on North Korea to abandon all existing nuclear, other weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.- Imposes new financial sanctions to block financial transactions in support of illicit DPRK activity, crack down on bulk cash transfers, and further restrict ties to North Korea's financial sector, if there is a link to illicit DPRK activity;- Strengthens states’ authority to inspect suspicious cargo and deny port and over flight access to DPRK-affiliated shipments where warranted;- Enables stronger enforcement of existing sanctions by UN Member States.- Sanctions new individuals and entities;- Adds new items to the Security Council sanctions list. Financial Sanctions- Requires states to freeze or block any financial transaction or financial service that could con

Mar 8, 2013By Ahn Seong-jin

Learning English

Limiting pardon power

Rule change needed to prevent abuse of authorityTo be fair, President Lee Myung-bak would not be the first chief executive to grant 11th-hour pardons for political and personal reasons. His three predecessors more or less did so. Nor is he violating any laws or rules by exercising the president’s exclusive powers of unlimited pardon.Yet there are two reasons why Lee should not push ahead with a final act of clemency in office during today’s Cabinet meeting, or, should he do so, he ought to at least drop his cronies and political allies from the list of beneficiaries.President-elect Park Geun-hye has made clear her opposition to the amnesty not once but twice, saying, rightly, it would be “tantamount to the abuse of presidential rights and run squarely counter to popular sentiments.” But avoiding political conflicts with his successor cannot be the main reason. Nor should it necessarily be for fear of a possible political vendetta from the next government for forcing it to take office amid low approval ratings.Still President Lee must exclude two of the most ce

Feb 1, 2013By Ahn Seong-jin

Learning English

Stirring up speculative drive

Difficult economic times force ordinary people to rely on chance. Economists note that the deeper a recession becomes, the more prosperous the gambling industry.Statistics prove them right: lottery ticket sales in Korea rose 3.4 percent to 3.19 trillion won ($2.95 billion) last year. The 2012 sales figure broke the limit set by an anti-speculation panel for two years in a row, causing the related government agency to push for even higher ceilings.The finance ministry is going even further to ask the National Gambling Control Commission to get rid of the annual sales restrictions on the lottery. Officials cite two reasons: the lottery is less addictive than other gambling industries, and its share of GDP is half of the OECD average and one-third of other Asian countries.What these officials failed to say is that the share of other gambling industry sectors, such as horseracing and casinos, is 1.2 times of other OECD countries and more than twice that of Asian neighbors, and that most gambling addicts start with the lottery as a form of light entertainment. Lotteries are a little like

Jan 29, 2013By Ahn Seong-jin

Learning English

Pork and earmarks

Is this new politics pledged during campaigns?The just-ended deliberation of the 2013 budget showed how low politics can fall, tainted by abuse and the misuse of legislative authority, rampant pork-barrel politics and earmarking of funds by political bigwigs.Together, lawmakers, both ruling and opposition, managed to put in a total of 4,500 earmarks to take 557 billion won ($523 million) away from essential welfare and military spending to their respective home districts.  As a result, free medical treatment for poor people will sharply decline and underprivileged children will continue to have awful meals, while regional construction firms will profit from the building and repairing of non-essential roads and buildings. These egregious theft of taxpayer’s money were made not even at the National Assembly but behind the closed doors of a hotel room. The relocation had nothing to do with their guilty conscience and had much to do with the need to leave no official records. Should voters feel comforted that their representatives had a modicum of shame at least?Gone were

Jan 8, 2013By Ahn Seong-jin

Learning English

Message from North

Koreas should be ready to meet each other half wayFor the first time in 19 years, North Koreans watched their leader deliver the year-opening message on TV instead of reading it in newspapers. It was a symbolic gesture intended to build both on Kim’s charisma and stress his people-conscious leadership, modeled after his grandfather, Kim Il-sung.As the unification ministry officials pointed out, there was little new in the content of the address, which reemphasized basic needs for military and economic development. More noticeable was that Pyongyang neither denounced South Korea and the United States nor mentioned its nuclear plans, an olive branch for the next governments in Seoul and Washington.In the part targeted mainly at South Korea, and President-elect Park Geun-hye, Kim opened the way for inter-Korean dialogue, provided the incoming administration is ready to respect joint declarations from the South-North summits of 2000 and 2007, sending the ball into Seoul’s court. Park and her diplomatic aides ought to return the ball, ideally not long after she takes office in

Jan 6, 2013By Ahn Seong-jin

Learning English

A year of detente

Koreas should lay foundation for reunification Diplomacy, including inter-Korean relations, was not the most important issue of the 18th presidential election. Voters and candidates focused on the economy and welfare, as in other leadership ballots across the world. This should change in the new government despite, or rather because of, the dire economic situation and urgent need for recovery. The state of international politics throughout Northeast Asia leaves Seoul no other option but to put top priority on diplomacy and national security. North Korea’s challenge, buoyed by its improving nuclear capacity and rising status of its patron, China, will be more “serious, complicated and diverse,” as predicted by a recent report of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy. Japan will change itself from a potential to overt military power leaning unabashedly to the right. In the bigger picture, the United States and China will vie for global hegemony more fiercely within this region than anywhere else in the world. All this means 2013 will be a year in w

Jan 3, 2013By Ahn Seong-jin

Ahn Seong-jin

Read more

National Intelligence Service needs overhaul

Koreas can create another economic miracle

NK threatens to nullify nonaggression pacts

N. Korean leader threatens all-out war

UN condemns NK's nuclear activities

Limiting pardon power

Stirring up speculative drive

Pork and earmarks

Message from North

A year of detente

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