Geography Archives: South Korea

A brilliant, powerful writer, but clearly the literary dark horse in the race, Han Kang’s unexpected award is the closest the Nobel committee could get to acknowledging the Palestinian genocide.

In less than three years, the erosion in the U.S. hegemony that began cascading with the defeat in Afghanistan in August 2021 spread to Eurasia, followed by the massive eruption in West Asia by the end of 2023.

While the sanctions regime has hit Chinese companies, especially Huawei, hard and exposed weak links in China’s chip supply chain, the last year has seen significant progress by Chinese companies.

The actor’s suicide highlights the truth about the overlooked despotism of a vital U.S. ally.

Although it was widely believed that the U.S. continued to secretly deploy nuclear weapons in Korea, this move by the Biden administration is a blatant violation of the denuclearization treaty.

The U.S. knows from its experience in defeating Germany, Japan, and the “Asian Tigers,” that a decisive way to slow a competitor’s growth rate is to get it to reduce its level of investment, which is what it is now trying to do to China.

Kailath, originally from Kerala but settled in the U.S., is one of the foremost names in the world in communications, control and signal processing. I remembered his words while reading the recent startling headlines that China has become the world leader in 37 of 44 critical technologies evaluated by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

As a result of military aid from the U.S. and many European states, Ukraine became the 3rd biggest importer of major arms during 2022.

The death of South Korean dictator Chun Doo Hwan signals the consolidation of a false media narrative that is misleading and dangerous.

According to the newspaper Jeju Today, the Yoon government is claiming that screening the North Korean film The Story of Our Home, shown in South Korea in February 2019 as part of a national reunification festival, violated SK National Security Law.  It is now investigating the organizers of the film screening three years later.

In a major escalation of the ongoing anti-trade union persecution in South Korea, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) was raided by the National Intelligence Service on charges of violating a Cold War-era national security law.

Ministry of Education justified the move as “exploring the foundation of the Republic of Korea based on liberal democracy.”

In January 2016, I attended Tate Britain’s Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past, a disappointing exhibition that in spite of its title did not face Britain’s past in any meaningful way.  On the contrary, as I argued in my review, it shied away from this bloody history in favour of quasi-glorification, non-committal wording and […]

A television news program opens with a clip of marching soldiers, an obligatory image when the subject is North Korea.  A voiceover intones: “A bold, ambitious plan apparently sanctioned by Kim Jong Un.  Is he in league with the women’s group to promote peace between North and South Korea?” The program in question is the […]

On December 19, the South Korean Constitutional Court delivered a devastating blow against the progressive movement when it disbanded the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) with immediate effect.  That act came as the culmination of a long campaign by South Korean President Park Geun-hye to shackle the labor movement and smash political opposition. The Constitutional Court […]

  The haze of political chaos in America surrounding the Ferguson protests, the Torture Report, and the “relaxing” of US-Cuba relations has been broken by a media spectacle almost too ridiculous to comprehend.  A hacker group called the “Guardians of Peace” conducted a “cyber attack” on Sony Pictures Entertainment, leaking emails, documents, presentations, and information […]

Two famous heads got lost in Berlin.  Neither loss, I hasten to add, was connected with brutality.  From the past or near future, they caused melancholy or rejoicing, depending on your viewpoint. One loss really occurred twenty-two years ago, when the 62-foot red granite statue of Lenin on East Berlin’s Lenin Square and Lenin Allee […]

Despite the prolonged global economic crisis since 2007/2008, neo-liberal economic thought and practice continue to reign supreme.  In his important book Capitalist Globalization: Consequences, Resistance, and Alternatives (Monthly Review Press, 2013), Martin Hart-Landsberg makes a number of key interventions unraveling the myth of neo-liberalism as well as the dynamics underlying capitalist accumulation. First, he identifies […]

Suzy Kim.  Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press.  Cloth, 45.00, pp 307. With Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950, Suzy Kim has filled a major gap in the history of North Korea.  In the West, it has become customary to fixate on the top leadership in historical […]

The divide in Colombia between poverty-stricken rural masses and land-hungry ruling elements is famous for leading to serious conflict.  Farmers, agricultural workers, truckers, and traditional miners revived that pattern on August 19 as they launched a nationwide agrarian strike.  Government repression, true to form, was not lacking. Some farmers gain reasonable livelihoods from sales of […]