Category: Specials
Most people assume that the meticulous Japanese are among the world’s most responsible citizens. As an investigative journalist who has covered the Hanshin (Kobe) earthquake and the Tokyo subway gassing , I beg to differ. Japan is just better than elsewhere in organizing official cover-ups.
Japanese officials have ordered anyone living within 20km (12 miles) of the Fukushima nuclear power plant to evacuate the area. Explosions have occurred at two of its reactors and some radiation leakage has been detected….
Editorial The 4th Media, together with our friends around the globe, is going to launch a Global Campaign for the Signing of Peace Treaty to End the Korean War. This global campaign, in solidarity with the…
At the moment, what South Korea needs most is to remain calm. In the Hollywood blockbuster Inception, the main character uses a spinning top to judge whether he is in a dream or in reality. Now the spinning top for South Korea poses a series of question: Will its actions help reduce tensions? Will its policy help address issues with the North? Will its decisions facilitate cooperation among powers like China, Russia and the US? If the answers are yes, then South Korea is in reality. Nevertheless, if the answers are negative, South Korea is dreaming.
Governor Richardson said he “hoped to make a difference” in bringing a more stable situation into being, and settled down to substantive talks with men he knew well. A trickle of sensible-sounding suggestions soon surfaced; establishment of a three-way military commission involving the US and North and South Korea, to study crisis avoidance; setting up a “hot line” between the North and South; the return of recently discovered remains of American soldiers killed in the Korean war; possible resumption of visits by IAEA inspectors to Yongbyon, and sale of enriched nuclear fuel rods to foreign buyers, including South Korea.
That North Korea would feel threatened is not surprising. Its economy is crippled by the imposition of draconian Western sanctions, and the annual South Korean-U.S. military exercises are intended to intimidate. Furthermore, the rhetoric from Washington has been unremittingly hostile, and now with a more conservative government, so is South Korea’s.
Nor is North Korea unaware of the fact that in February 2003, President Bush told Chinese President Jiang Zemin that if the nuclear issue could not be solved diplomatically, he would “have to consider a military strike against North Korea.”
… all three major military drills took place directly under America’s “(both peacetime and wartime) operational control.” South Korean President Lee Myungbak, like all of his predecessors, does not have any legal, military and political power or authority to order or control over his own nation’s military whatsoever.
This extremely dependent (so many call it “puppet”) system is known seemingly the only case in the world in which a sovereign nation has let other country’s foreign (local) military commander has the host nation’s military (army, navy and air) operational control.