May 24th, 2013 at 1:15 pm » Comments (0)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s special envoy Choe Ryong-hae (third from R), vice marshal of the North Korean army, holds talks with Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of China’s Communist Party, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 23, 2013. The official (North) Korean Central News Agency released the photo on May 24, without providing further details. (No sales outside of South Korea) (Yonhap)

May 22nd, 2013 at 3:54 pm » Comments (0)

NKorea’s completely avoidable misstep: PRC media starting to lump them in w/ Japan & Philippines as sea foes. mil.huanqiu.com/paper/2013-05/… — Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) May 21, 2013

May 22nd, 2013 at 3:51 am » Comments (1)

It looks like the North Koreans are sending a high regime official to let the Chinese know they have ended their recent provocation cycle now so the Chinese can let them use their banks again to launder money: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Wednesday dispatched a top military official to China as a special envoy, the country’s state media said. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Choe Ryong-hae, the director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People’s Army, had left Pyongyang for China. It did not
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May 21st, 2013 at 3:52 pm » Comments (2)

US: NYU researchers took bribes from Chinese groupasiancorrespondent.com/107939/us-nyu-… — Asian Correspondent (@AsCorrespondent) May 21, 2013

May 14th, 2013 at 5:01 am » Comments (3)

I think that South Korea would experience the same problem that Taiwan is currently experiencing if it fully professionalized its force.  However, this should not stop South Korea in my opinion from professionalizing more of its military even though they could likely never completely do away with mandatory service as long as the North Korean threat remains: A Taiwanese plan to end mandatory military service and shift to an all-volunteer force is running into a problem: not enough volunteers. Such forces are generally considered superior to conscripted ones, because those
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May 13th, 2013 at 3:16 am » Comments (3)

It does appear that China’s measures to close North Korean banking accounts was able to stop the Kim regime’s saber rattling, but does anyone think they will actually take any measures that will fundamentally change the nature of the regime? North Korea this week renewed its recent series of threats, saying there would be “immediate counteractions” should anything go awry with a series of joint military drills between the United States and South Korea.  Much of Pyongyang’s fiery rhetoric, however, has softened in recent weeks. Warnings like that on North
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May 11th, 2013 at 10:41 pm » Comments (17)

After reading the below article I have to wonder how well security background checks are done on defense workers with a Chinese background? In September 2012, the United States convicted Sixing Liu, a Chinese citizen working for a U.S. defense contractor, of bringing electronic files containing “details on the performance and design of” guidance systems for missiles, rocket target-designators, and even UAVS, the Pentagon’s latest report points out. The document also recounts that two Taiwanese nationals were charged in March 2012 with planning to get their hands on “sensitive U.S.
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May 9th, 2013 at 6:20 am » Comments (10)

Here is the latest from the territorial spat between Japan and China: China criticized Japan on Thursday for lodging a diplomatic protest against a Chinese state media commentary calling into question Japanese sovereignty over the southern Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa. The latest angry exchange could further strain tense relations between Asia’s two-largest economies, which are involved in a stand-off over a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, called the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. On Wednesday, the People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece,
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May 4th, 2013 at 4:17 am » Comments (5)

This analysis is probably not to much of a surprise to those who have been following China’s aggressive policies towards its neighbors: It’s not just corruption. More than three decades of peace, a booming economy, and an opaque administrative system have taken their toll as well, not to mention that the PLA is one of the world’s largest bureaucracies — and behaves accordingly. “Each unit has a committee with a commander, political commissar, and deputies, to the point they have a meeting now for everything,” says Nan Li, associate professor
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April 24th, 2013 at 6:05 pm » Comments (6)

Good luck with this: WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will press China over its forcible repatriation of refugees to North Korea, a U.S. human rights envoy said Monday. He likened the North’s vast gulag to that operated by the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Robert King is among U.S. officials meeting in Washington this week with China’s envoy on Korean affairs, Wu Dawei. The Obama administration is looking for Beijing to use its leverage over its North Korean ally to tamp down its provocative behavior and move toward abandoning
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