Park Chung Hee

After Donald Trump threatened the Democratic People’s Republic of [North] Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” I spoke to K.J. Noh, a peace activist and scholar on the geopolitics of the Asian continent.

Rehearsing Armageddon
Ann Garrison: North Korea is standing up to the US’s 4800 “locked and loaded” nuclear weapons with an estimated 30 to 60 of its own. Do you think it would still be standing without them?
K.J.Noh: It’s hard to imagine so.

The United States and its allies have embarked on a dangerous path of aggression against the government of North Korea and its allies China and Russia.

Question: What do a brilliant feminist novelist, a cutting-edge film director, and a Nobel-nominated poet have in common, in South Korea?

Mysticism does not necessarily lead to despotism, but many despots frequent mystics: to obtain a psychic safety net for high wire acts of political violence, to prescribe emotional narcotics to put the conscience to sleep, and in the final act, as karmic adjusters to insure against retribution from the bloodshed and suffering they unleash.

On December 28th, 2015, the foreign ministers of Japan and Korea, suddenly and hastily announced a “resolution” to the “comfort women” issue, women trafficked and exploited as sexual slaves by the Japanese Army during WWII. This involved an apology by the Japanese prime minister, and the creation of fund for reparations.