Opinion - The Korea Times

How to avoid ‘voice phishing’

By Tong Kim I experienced an attempted phone scam recently in Seoul, and I feel obliged to share my experience with the readers. It all began when I picked up the telephone on my desk that morning. It was an automated message, saying, “This is an urgent notice from KT (Korea Telecom). Your phone service will be cut off this afternoon. If you want to know the details, press zero now.” I pressed zero, and a woman said, “This is the KT accounting office. Our record shows that you have an accrued balance due of over 486,000 won. KT will have to suspend your telephone service, if you don’t pay it now.” I protested, “This is preposterous. I have paid all the bills.” ``You opened another telephone account at Yeouido three months ago, and you have not paid the phone bills for that account,” she sounded confidently. I could hear background noise as if it was coming from a customer service center. ``Wait a minute, I don’t live in Yeouido or have an office there,” I said in shock. She then said, “It looks like somebody stole your identity to open that account. We hav

Feb 15, 2012By Tong Kim

Tong Kim

Prolonged setback on NK

By Tong Kim While the rival political parties are rushing frantically to prepare for the general elections for the National Assembly slated for April, undertaking competing reforms and outpouring innovative policy platforms, including more proactive approaches to the North, the Lee government is stuck in a setback on North Korea after exhausting its ``flexible measures.” In short, Seoul is back in the waiting mode ― waiting for an unlikely positive response from the new leadership in Pyongyang to its offer of ``a window of opportunity” to ``free the North from isolation and improve its economy.” In theory, the ball is in Pyongyang’s court to decide whether to grab the opportunity to engage the South in dialogue and make progress on denuclearization. One and a half months since the power transition in Pyongyang, the Obama administration’s position on the North remains the same, as there has been no change in Pyongyang’s attitudes toward Seoul and Washington. North Korea is hardly mentioned in the Republican presidential primaries, and it has little priority in the Obama’s

Feb 5, 2012By Tong Kim

Tong Kim

New US defense strategt

By Tong Kim The new U.S. defense strategy, as unveiled by President Barack Obama on Jan. 5 at the Pentagon briefing room, projects a leaner military that is ``agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats” with less spending and fewer soldiers for the coming decade. It aims at maintaining global U.S. military superiority by setting its priorities on the Asia-Pacific region and Iran. Contrary to Obama’s argument that ``the size and the structure of our military and defense budgets have to be driven by a strategy, not the other way around,” the new policy involves mandatory spending cuts of at least over $450 billion by 2021. The U.S. Army will drop to 490,000 soldiers from 570,000 and the Marines will lose about 10 percent of their current strength of 200,000. Obama’s plan will avoid large military involvements like those in Iraq and Afghanistan to ``invest in the capabilities of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, counterterrorism, countering weapons of mass destruction and the ability to operate in environments where adversarie

Jan 8, 2012By Tong Kim

Tong Kim

Kim Jong-un’s North Korea

By Tong Kim The year 2011 was better than 2010 in terms of security and stability on the Korean Peninsula. We somehow avoided renewed provocations by the North that many had predicted would follow in the wake of last year’s sinking of a South Korean Navy ship and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. What made the year relatively free of security trouble is not exactly known. Perhaps, it is owed to the reinforced and determined resolve of the South Korean military with the full support of the United States. Perhaps, it is owed more to international and domestic pressure that helped prevent North Korea from taking further adventures. Before Kim Jong-il died, he was preoccupied with a compressed succession plan to turn over power to his son Jong-un. An official announcement of the succession seemed to have been planned for April 2012 on the 100th birthday of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il also had planned to declare his country as a ``strong and prosperous state” in 2012. Ten days into the mourning period for the demised leader, the power transition to

Dec 25, 2011By Tong Kim

Tong Kim

South should do more to mend ties with North

By Tong Kim Kim Jong-il’s death on Dec. 17 came as a total surprise because the North Korean leader appeared to have recovered from a stroke he suffered in August 2008. When he came back on the scene to attend a special session of the Supreme People’s Assembly to designate his son, Jong-un, as his successor, he looked pale, thin and weak. Kim Jong-il travelled twice to China while still limping. As he looked to be getting better, he kept busy making frequent “field guidance” trips to military units, factories and farms across the country. He died at 69. His father, Kim Il-sung, died also of heart failure. There was some speculation regarding the cause, time, and place of his death, in the wake of Pyongyang’s announcement that “Dear Leader Kim Jong-il died on his moving train on a field guidance trip.” The South Korean intelligence chief said that the train was not in motion at the time of his death. However, that information neither refutes the thrust of the official announcement nor provides a different version of how Kim died. So far, there has been no indication of f

Dec 22, 2011By Tong Kim

Tong Kim

Sunshine Policy revisited

By Tong Kim Last Thursday I had an opportunity to revisit the Sunshine Policy when I chaired a peace conference at the Kim Dae-jung Library of Yonsei University to celebrate the 11th anniversary of President Kim Dae-jung’s winning of the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize. Much of the discussion at the conference touched on the philosophy and religious conviction of Kim Dae-jung that formed the underlining tenets of the Sunshine Policy ― forgiveness, compassion, reconciliation and cooperation for peace. Presenting a paper at the conference, Gary Alan Spanovich, executive director of the Wholistic Peace Institute (WPI), which works with Nobel Peace laureates, spoke of Kim as ``both a man of God and a man of the people.” Kim had ``a strong personal faith and philosophy that sustained him throughout his decades’ long fight for democracy and human rights in his homeland” and around the world by sending powerful messages and demonstrating his ``conscience in action.” ``And he displayed incredible grace and courage under dress and attacks.” Spanovich noted that no force on earth ― inclu

Dec 11, 2011By Tong Kim

Tong Kim

Brainstorming by progressives

By Tong Kim After the Grand National Party (GNP) railroaded the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (FTA) unilaterally through the National Assembly on November 22, without inviting opposition members to vote, the political aftermath continues. While there is no clear, political winner from the trade deal’s passage, it has paralyzed the bipartisan function of the national legislature, at least for now. The GNP may have to pass next year’s national budget bill, again unilaterally, without the participation of the opposition parties, reluctantly due to fear of additional political damage. To make up for the damage from the FTA passage, the GNP is trying to focus on welfare programs that the opposition Democratic Party (DP) had championed first. It would also incur a political cost to the major opposition DP, if it defaults its legislative responsibility by refusing to work on the budget bill that would affect the welfare programs and areas vulnerable to the implementation of the FTA. The opposition, which successfully politicized the FTA, has decided to fight for

Nov 27, 2011By Tong Kim

Tong Kim

Political clash over FTA

By Tong Kim When the initial version of the KORUS FTA was signed in 2007, it was hailed as a viable win-win trade policy to increase exports, induce investment, create jobs, and improve competitiveness in the increasingly interdependent global economy. It took the United States more than four years to renegotiate and readdress its complaints especially in the areas of autos and agriculture before the Congress passed a final FTA version in October 2011. In the course of fighting over FTA ratification at the Korean National Assembly, the economic argument that originally supported the FTA seems to have given in to a political argument that the agreement’s provision on Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISD) conflicts with the Korean constitution and infringes upon South Korea’s economic sovereignty. The government’s security argument that the FTA would reinforce the ROK-U.S. alliance is not even heard nowadays, as it was a far-fetched notion from the beginning. Even after the legislatures in Washington and Seoul took substantive measures to support those industri

Nov 13, 2011By Tong Kim

Tong Kim

A harbinger of change for 2012

By Tong Kim The election of Park Won-soon as the new mayor of Seoul projects significant ramifications for South Korea’s future policy towards the United States and North Korea beyond 2012, as it will impact the two big elections next year that will vote in a new president and a national legislature. Sustaining a strong U.S.-Korea alliance and a stern ``principled North Korea policy” in the face of a rising China would be contingent upon whether there will be a conservative administration that will succeed the policies of President Lee Myung-bak. A former human rights lawyer, civic activist and political novice, Park was supported by all progressive opposition parties, including the Democratic Party (DP), which have different foreign policy ideas. As their unified candidate, he handsomely defeated the governing Grand National Party’s Na Kyung-won on Oct. 26. Park’s victory may have already dampened the chance to ``recreate” another conservative regime in 2012. The most outstanding among several elements that dealt the devastating defeat to GNP was the disappointment o

Oct 30, 2011By Tong Kim

Tong Kim

Difficult resumption of talks

By Tong Kim For the past 20 years, the United States and South Korea have employed various strategies, including diplomatic engagement, intentional neglect, and coercive sanctions, to deal with North Korea, but without remarkable success. The failure of these efforts has led to the emergence of a de facto nuclear North Korea that imposes a direct threat to the stability and peace on the Korean Peninsula and a challenge to the weakening relevance of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). North Korea is a self-declared nuclear state that has conducted two nuclear tests and extracted enough plutonium for six to eight bombs, according to a widely accepted assessment. Since the breakdown of the six-party talks in 2009, the North has also continued launching several ballistic missiles, some of which might serve as a delivery system for nuclear warheads in the future. What’s more, the North is running an active uranium enrichment program, which could eventually produce uranium bombs to add to Pyongyang’s plutonium-based nuclear arsenal. Unchecked, North Korea might be

Oct 16, 2011By Tong Kim

Tong Kim

Read more

How to avoid ‘voice phishing’

Prolonged setback on NK

New US defense strategt

Kim Jong-un’s North Korea

South should do more to mend ties with North

Sunshine Policy revisited

Brainstorming by progressives

Political clash over FTA

A harbinger of change for 2012

Difficult resumption of talks

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