Category: Books

Here are some of the excerpts involving the Korean peninsula from Bob Woodward’s new book about the Trump administration:

A former senior adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump removed a document from the president’s desk to stop him from signing off on withdrawing the United States from a trade deal with South Korea, a news report citing an unpublished book said Tuesday.

Bob Woodward, a Washington Post journalist known for his investigative reporting on the Watergate scandal, wrote the anecdote in his new book, “Fear,” set for release next week, the paper said.

Woodward also wrote, based on in-depth interviews with administration officials whose identities were not revealed, that Trump’s handling of the North Korean nuclear threat caused anxiety among his subordinates.

“According to Woodward, Cohn ‘stole a letter off Trump’s desk’ that the president was intending to sign to formally withdraw the United States from a trade agreement with South Korea,” the Post wrote, referring to Trump’s former top economic adviser, Gary Cohn.

“Cohn later told an associate that he removed the letter to protect national security and that Trump did not notice that it was missing,” it said.

Trump is known to have considered terminating the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement last year before stopping short due to tensions over North Korea’s sixth nuclear test in September.

The two sides later renegotiated the deal but have yet to formally sign it.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

I find it hard to believe that something as significant as withdrawing from the US-ROK FTA would be something that President Trump would just forget about, he probably never intended to sign it in the first place.  This just seems like typical Trump approach of making a threatening demand to show his seriousness to later settle for a better deal.

At a National Security Council meeting in January, Trump downplayed the importance of the U.S. troop presence in South Korea and questioned why government resources were being spent in the region, the paper quoted the book as saying.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis responded, “We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” it said. “After Trump left the meeting, Woodward recounts, ‘Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like – and had the understanding of – ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’”

I find it believable that Secretary Mattis made the “prevent World War III” comment, but I find it hard to believe that Secretary Mattis would openly mock the President in front of his aides.

One month into the Trump administration, U.S. Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Joe Dunford was “rattled” when Trump asked him to prepare a plan for a pre-emptive military strike on North Korea.

I doubt someone of General Dunford’s stature and experience gets “rattled” by much of anything.  I would hope the Pentagon has a pre-emptive strike plan for North Korea on the shelf.  If the President wants to review it that seems prudent.

And last fall, Trump mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a United Nations speech by calling him “Little Rocket Man.” Aides worried that he may be provoking Kim, but the president told his then aide Rob Porter that it was a “contest of wills,” according to The Post’s account of the book.

“This is all about leader versus leader. Man versus man. Me versus Kim,” Trump was quoted as saying.

This last excerpt I can actually see the President saying.

This reminds me of the old Keys to the Kingdom book that used to be sold in Korean villes to GIs a long time ago:

Major book retailers have stopped selling an “obscene and racist” book about Filipinas.

Online retailers, including Aladin, Yes24 and Bandi & Lunis, have removed the e-book, “How to Treat Bar Hostesses in the Philippines.”

This move came after a tweet about the book was widely spread earlier this month. Many people have taken issue with the contents, which objectify Filipinas from a Korean man’s perspective.

“Once you go to the Philippines, you will soon be attracted to nightlife and meet many kinds of women there. Language won’t be a problem. A few words will be enough to communicate with them,” the book’s author, identified just as “Kevin Cho,” writes.

“Even if you are not a womanizer in Korea, you will definitely be one in the Philippines. This is not the case only for Koreans but also Japanese and Americans. The fact that the Korean Wave is sweeping across Asia makes you feel even more proud. While studying English there, women can be either medicine or poison.”

In the book, published three years ago by Scene in the Moonlight, Cho urges readers to “make the best use of Filipinas, who can give unforgettable memories.”  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

The New York Times magazine recently published a list of the 10 best books about North Korea.  Here are the 10 books:

There is a number of very good books on this list, but one I was surprised was not included was the The Cleanest Race by B.R. Myers.  This book I believe is a must read for anyone trying to get a deeper understanding of North Korea.  You can read my review of this book at this link.

When I have time I will have to put my own North Korea book list together, but in the meantime do any ROK Heads have recommendations not on this list as well that they would like to make?

This Kind of War by T. R. Fehrenbach: The book Jim Mattis recommends as US faces threat of conflict with N. Korea https://t.co/uFJB6Qj3PI

— Dr. Mark P. Barry (@DrMarkPBarry) December 25, 2017

Review

I like reading geopolitical forecasts especially ones involving Northeast Asia which is what made “The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century” an interesting read for me.  The book was written by strategist and founder of STRATFOR, George Friedman back in 2008.  The book makes predictions about countries around the world, but here is what he predicts for Northeast Asia in the near term.

Friedman believes that China’s rise will eventually end due to a massive economic recession caused by decades of bad bank loans similar to what happened to Japan and Korea in the 90’s.  The economic fallout will cause deep seated economic inequities to rise to the surface and create political instability in China.  Unlike Japan and Korea that had the social cohesion to implement difficult reforms after their banking crisis, the Chinese government will instead mobilize nationalism and blame foreigners for all their economic troubles.  This will ultimately fail and Friedman predicts the Communist party will be overthrown leaving China possibly a fractured country by the 2020’s.  Considering it is 2016 today I just don’t see the prediction of Communist Party losing power in the 2020’s coming true.

For the Korean peninsula Friedman believes unification will come in the 2020’s.  He foresees the Kim regime collapsing, but does not predict a major war breaking out.  I believe that as long as the Communist party remains in power in China the likelihood of North Korea seeing regime collapse will remain low.  Friedman though believes a unified Korea will be strong, but not as strong as Japan.  Friedman predicts that Russian power will collapse and fracture the country at the same time that Japan is on the rise.  To maintain Japan’s rise it will occupy territories in the Russian Far East that broke away from Russia for its resources.  Japan will greatly expand their naval power to challenge the United States Navy for control of the Pacific Ocean around Japan.  I have a hard time believing Japan would have the domestic political will to occupy parts of Russia considering the public’s deep memory of World War II.

As Friedman gets into the 2050s this is were he gets into the realm of science fiction.  He believes the US will have orbiting “battle stars” in space with manned crews.  These battle stars will have spaced based weapons that will allow the US military to control space.  Friedman believes that today’s US power is centered around the control of the seas where in the future the control of space is what will be the center of US power.  I believe this is in fact true, but I don’t know if manned battle stars is the way the US will control space.  The battle stars Friedman believes will allow the US military to drastically reduces its manpower size.  What manpower that is left for infantry duty will be equipped with battle suits that will make heavy weapons such as tanks obsolete.  Considering the advances in robotics and exoskeletons we are seeing today this doesn’t seem that far fetched.

He believes that tensions between Japan and the United States will grow to the point that Japan launches a sneak attack against the US battle stars and destroys them thus eliminating the US’s advantage in space.  The attack on the battle stars will then be followed by conventional attacks on US military bases by the Japanese to minimize the US military’s ability to counterattack Japan.  Much like with the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II, the Japanese are going to hope that the successful attack causes the US to agree to terms favorable to the Japanese that solidifies their dominance in Asia.

While the Japanese and the US are battling, Turkey will join with Japan to attack the Polish empire.  Friedman believes that by the 2050’s Poland will be the powerful hegemon of Eastern Europe.  While battling the Japanese, the US will similarly help the Poles they are allied with to battle the Turks on the ground in Eastern Europe.  The US and its allies ultimately succeed and win the third World War and Friedman believes this will spur a technological and economic Golden Age for the United States in the 2060’s and 2070’s.  The Golden Age will end in the 2080’s when the US will have a showdown with Mexico over control of the American Southwest which by then will be a majority ethnic Mexican population.  Friedman believes that by the 2080’s Mexico will be a world power and by then have the confidence to challenge the United States to regain the American Southwest.  The US military may be called to conduct counterinsurgency operations in places such like Los Angeles.

Conclusion

Who knows if any of what is predicted in this book will come true, but Friedman’s analysis makes constant references to past historical trends to help support his predictions which I found interesting.  The first part of the book I thought was the most believable because you can see some of his predictions coming true.  However, the last half of the book as I said before is in the realm of science fiction so it was not as believable.  In fairness, trying to predict that far out is pretty difficult.  For example could someone after the American Civil War have predicted the nations and military technology used during World War II accurately?  Looking one hundred years out is a difficult proposition for any analyst; regardless the book is a good read for those who enjoy informed geopolitical analysis.

#Offbeat #Korea – presenting over 100 of South Korea’s weirdest destinations via guidebook. https://t.co/40HbyewA6q pic.twitter.com/l6cFv1rXoZ

— Chris Backe (@oneweirdglobe) October 10, 2016

I'm thrilled that How I Became a North Korean is one of #Oprah Sept picks at #O_Magazine #books #Goodreadshttps://t.co/0Mf8FxwxE9

— Krys Lee (@krysleewriter) August 20, 2016

This author seems to believe in leftist conspiracy theories to explain why the US wants to deploy the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea:

The deployment of the United States missile defense system, or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), in Korea is currently a hot potato. It even gave a stir among Asian countries such as China and perhaps in the rest of the world too — some people believe it might trigger the next devastating World War III.

When Korean novelist Kim Jin-myung published his book “THAAD” in August 2014, the advanced U.S. defense system was not well-known to the public. It was only two months after then-USFK Commander Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti first raised the necessity to deploy THAAD in Korea against North Korea’s military aggression, or to be particular, against a nuclear attack.

But the author seems to have been well aware of the indispensable position of the U.S. to allocate the radar machine in Korea to complete its Military Defense (MD) system as Kim’s fiction charts the conspiracy that has to be based on a thorough understanding of the U.S. Army’s military scheme.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if it has ever crossed the minds of the Korean left that maybe the US wants the system to better protect its servicemembers and South Korean citizens from increased missile capabilities from North Korea?

If you're still using the verb "abducted" to describe 2 California journalists in North Korea in 2009, think again. https://t.co/0BhPaLdtBQ

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) January 23, 2016

Yeonmi Park who is a well known North Korean human rights activist has recently just published a book about her experiences growing up in North Korea titled In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom.  A good portion of the book is highlighted in this Telegraph article which has little nuggets like this about growing up in North Korea:

One of the main problems in North Korea was a fertiliser shortage. When the economy collapsed in the 1990s the Soviet Union stopped sending fertiliser to us, and our own factories stopped producing it. This led to crop failures that made the famine even worse.

So the government came up with a campaign to fill the fertiliser gap with a local and renewable source: human and animal waste. Every worker and schoolchild had a quota to fill. You can imagine what kind of problems this created for our families. Every member of the household had a daily assignment, so when we got up in the morning, it was like a war.

My aunts were the most competitive. ‘Remember not to poop in school,’ my aunt in Kowon told me every day. ‘Wait to do it here.’ Whenever my aunt in Songnam-ri travelled away from home and had to poop somewhere else, she loudly complained that she didn’t have a plastic bag with her to save it.

‘Next time I’ll remember,’ she would say. Some people would lock up their outhouses to keep the poop thieves away. At school the teachers would send us out into the streets to find dog mess and carry it back to class. This is not something you see every day in the West.  [The Telegraph]

The whole article is worth a read.