Comment by berocca

February 23, 2007 @ 12:06 pm

another excellent broadcast. Love Seijigiri and look forward to each edition! keep it up guys.

Comment by Alex Pappas

February 26, 2007 @ 5:43 am

I agree with Ken in that North Korea was painted in a corner because they played their strongest cards.

I don’t know if holding North K’s finances was a great idea diplomatically. But I think the North could have done a much better job using their diplomats and not their missiles.

Comment by Doug

February 26, 2007 @ 7:22 am

Garrett and Ken, thanks for another excellent and very illuminating seijigiri! My only niptpick in the series is that the digression into facetious commentary (eg: I get all my knews from Northern Koren TV! Don’t you?) sometimes goes on a bit long, taking up time that could be spent on discussion. I definitely appreciate humor to liven things up in the show, but sometimes the topics are simply so deep that I would love to have those precious minutes filled with analysis instead. Anyways a small comment on an otherwise excellent and much needed show. Keep up the good work!

On the Japan-North Korea relationship: I was living in Japan when the abduction issue came to light. It seemed to me that the North was extending an olive branch by admitting that it had abductees. In my mind, a sane country would have taken that as a sign of thawing relations and taken the opportunity to start doing some serious trust building. Koizumi instead chose to go along with the nationalists and denounce the abduction and cancel an impending visit to the country. Things really don’t seem to have improved much since then. Am I right in seeing that episode as a big missed opportunity for Japan-North Korea relations?

Comment by Makurein

February 26, 2007 @ 7:47 am

Garrett and Ken: Thank you for another illuminating seijigiri! Two quick items:

1) A small nitpick on the commentary, sometimes it digresses into facetious comments a little too long, leaving me impatient to get back to the analysis. The show delves into such fascinating topics that I would rather have those precious minutes filled with your excellent commentary and analysis instead. (Occasional jokes and humor definitely appreciated though.)

2) I was living in Japan when North Korea publicly announced it had abducted Japanese citizens. I remember this was right as Koizumi was making noises about a visit to Norther Korea in an effort to thaw out relations. It seemed to me that any sane country would have taken this admission as a sign that North Korea was extending an olive branch, and was serious about reconciliation. Koizumi and his cabinet instead took the nationalist approach, immmediately cancelling the visit, and retreating back into icy recrminations. Do you think Japan missed out on a great opportunity to do some relationship building there, and in fact avoid or at least mitigate the ongoing nuclear issue?

Thanks again for providing such a valuable resource, and looking forward to the next episode!

Comment by DeOrio

February 26, 2007 @ 9:14 pm

Doug, Makurein, I’m going to assume you’re either the same person or know each other very well.

1. Uhm, I do get all my news from the KCNA.

No, just kidding, only some of it.

You’re absolutely right about the digressions - both facetious and serious. That’s usually my fault more than Ken’s, so I apologize. For me, there are two hard things about doing a show like this: First, deciding how much detail to go into and deciding what has to be left out in the interests of clarity or time. Second, not laughing at my own jokes. It’s pitiful, it’s like I’m egging myself on, which would be OK except that I’m not that funny and, as you said, it does detract from the topics we say we’re going to cover.

2. I think you’re right here, too. I think Japan has missed a lot of chances over the pass couple of years to be the “bigger man” in terms of diplomacy. On one hand, they can’t just let NK get off Scot-free, but using the situation to their advantage would have been a lot wiser than slapping NK down like they did.

In general, I think cutting off discussion channels with one’s enemies is an ill-considered idea. Cut them off economically, militarily, whatever you want, but make sure they can get in touch with you to say uncle.

Japan knew the KFR had been kidnapping Japanese nationals. When Kim admitted it, which is taking one step closer to resolving the issue, Japan should have said thanks, asked for more info, and laid out the potential carrots, gently, but firmly letting him know that he could take the carrots on Japan’s terms, which would include info on the abductees, or he could find himself even more isolated.

North Korea was kind of a prodigal son for a while there. They kept doing stupid things and getting in trouble, which only pushed them even farther out into the cold and left them with less to lose by trying other stupid things.

North Korea is not going to honor this current preliminary agreement, but there’s not much else the other five parties can do.

Comment by ken

February 26, 2007 @ 10:22 pm

You’re in trouble if you get all your news from the KCNA, since the CIA pays me to write it for them…or something like that. It’s exceedingly complicated and makes it hard to fill out my tax forms (Umm…what goes here? Secret payments for fake news meant to be taken as real or perhaps detrimental to the source itself?), and since I’m pretty sure they don’t want anyone finding out about it, keep it quiet.

Comment by Alex

February 27, 2007 @ 12:14 am

The Kempeitei must have known what the North Koreans were up to in this kidnapping scheme. Like anything in intelligence though its a game of cat and mouse. But I think the Kempeitei have the North pretty well staked out along with their American counterparts.

Good intelligence is the only reason I can think that the American Government has been so passive on the North Korean issue. And I’m sure the Kempeitei have a very good leash on issues.

Comment by ken

February 27, 2007 @ 2:04 am

The Kempeitai ceased to exist in 1945, so I doubt they would have much info on the DPRK. I do still think that there will be bombshells dropped when the extent, and length of knowledge of the kidnappings, is made known to the public, if it ever is.

Comment by Alex

February 27, 2007 @ 2:27 am

Really? Hm your right. Glad I learned about that before I made a fool of myself somewhere… ha ha ha. What is the name of the security or intelligence agency organization that exists today?

Comment by DeOrio

February 27, 2007 @ 9:10 am

Ken, I don’t know about that. I was just catching up on the news and. . .

Comment by DeOrio

February 27, 2007 @ 11:49 am

Alex, the Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA) would be the closest thing to a kempeitai successor out there. It’s kind of like the US FBI, but with a chartered original focus on subversive groups and domestic terrorism.

The Cabinet Secretariat and Defense Ministry have intelligence services as well, but I’m not sure what their mandates are. It seems that the Cabinet Secretariat intelligence service would be the most likely to be watching NK, but Japan does a lot of that stuff by cooperation among agencies and with the US and other allies rather than through having a direct CIA counterpart, although that has been discussed.

Comment by Alex Pappas

February 27, 2007 @ 1:12 pm

Thanks Garrett for the info. I’m rather curious about this so I’m going to research it further…

Pingback by equinoXio » » La “traición” de Washington a Tokio

February 27, 2007 @ 2:03 pm

[…] Así las cosas, Abe la ve negra. La decepción es tan enorme que el vicepresidente estadounidense Dick Cheney realizó una sorpresiva visita a Tokio para reafirmar la amistad de ambos países. Mientras tanto, las dos Coreas empiezan justo el día de hoy una serie de charlas tendientes a normalizar sus propias relaciones (aún más), después de las pruebas nucleares de octubre pasado. China festeja su papel de mediador en el acuerdo, mientras Rusia permanece a la espera, al igual que todos nosotros. Algunos se atreven a decir que no ha pasado nada, bien sea por la ambigüedad en los términos del acuerdo (ni “desarme” ni “arma” aparecen en el texto del mismo), o porque ni Corea del Norte, a pesar de la cuantiosa ayuda que va a recibir, ganó, ni Washington, a pesar de las en apariencia gigantescas concesiones, perdió. Por su parte, Japón se sentirá “traicionado” un tiempo más y Pyongyang, tras haber hecho su mejor negociación, parece disfrutar del éxito conseguido. […]

Comment by DeOrio

February 27, 2007 @ 2:31 pm

And TPR has now been mentioned in seven languages of which I’m aware.

Comment by Alex Pappas

February 28, 2007 @ 3:31 am

Has French been done yet??

Comment by DeOrio

February 28, 2007 @ 9:16 am

Our dear friend Mr. Dersot, who blogs on Tokyo, has taken care of that, but I think he’s French French. You want to get Quebec French in there?

The languages I know we’ve been mentioned in are: English, Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Farsi, Chinese, and Italian.

Comment by Alex

March 1, 2007 @ 1:21 am

There’s very little difference between French from France and French from Quebec in my opinion. So I consider it the same. (Like comparing Hokkaido Ben and Kanto Ben… Lots of differences but not enough to call it a language of its own.)

Hm… Is there a target demographic we could aiming at to expand on this? Japan and Korea have an interesting relationship. Perhaps we could convince a Korean site to like to some of our stories…

I’ll research.