Korea after Kim Jong-il: a path for reunification?

With the death of Kim Jong-il, all the major media networks now have the flashing “Breaking News” banners flashing and are talking about how South Korea is now on “heightened alert.” But before we let the paranoia-loving news networks get to our heads, it’s important to analyze the death of Kim Jong-il in the large scheme of things.

To start with, Kim Jong-il was an evil person and there is no question that the world is a much better place without him. Throughout his rule, the man defied numerous global outcries about the mass starvation in his country and instead decided to focus on building his arsenal of nuclear weapons. Even though the passing of Kim Jong-il is being taken as good news (as it should be, with people comparing him to Bin Laden and Gadhafi on Twitter), some people argue that things might get even worse under the apparent successor, one of Kim Jong-il’s sons: Kim Jong-un.

When Kim Jong-il first took power, the North Korean economy was already in shambles and many anticipated that the military was going to take control over the state. This did not take place and Kim Jong-il managed to centralize the state around him until his death. The circumstances that Kim Jong-un is now taking power under are eerily similar to the conditions under which his father took power. However, the results are likely to be different. According to Chung Young Tae of the Korea Institute of National Unification, there is a “big possibility that a power struggle may happen (in North Korea.”

No matter who might emerge as North Korea’s leader, the fact remains that North Korea is in an absolutely terrible economic position. It has come to a point where the North Korean government has increased its interactions with the international community, with the goal of seeking food. Over the course of the past few months, there have been “behind-the-scenes diplomatic contacts“ between North Korea and the United States. Word is that the United States will be announcing a significant donation of food to North Korea this week and that an agreement by North Korea to suspend its uranium enrichment program will likely follow.

My prediction is that this current economic instability, along with the now high possibility of political instability, will eventually lead to the failure of the North Korean state. Often misunderstood by the media, there has always been an intention from both Korean sides to reunite, but the problem has consisted in acknowledging and settling their differences. The failure of the North Korean state would hasten this process. However, a classmate and friend of mine, Junseo Lee, raises an excellent question in the previous post as to what would happen if North Korea did become a failed state. Lee asks: “…if North Korea becomes a failed state, who will claim legitimacy over those lands? China? Russia? Or South Korea?” I argue that any efforts from China or Russia to claim this territory is unlikely and that South Korea would in a way “absorb” the North, making for the reunification of the Korean nation.

But there also certain complications that arise with the possibility of reunification. For example, the mere economic disparity is striking. Recent data shows that North Korea’s GDP was estimated at $40 million, compared with the prosperous South Korea, with an estimated GDP of $1.138 trillion. Should the two states reunite into one nation, there is the possibility of a mass exodus of people living in the North to the South. There is no obvious South Korean plan for such a possibility and this would pose a huge problem for the nation.

Despite these complications, the prospects of Korean reunification would create a powerful, democratic, regional power. This would be good for the United States, as it would help counter-balance the Chinese. But it’s important to point out that the failure of the Korean state and possible reunification is not something that is imminent today or tomorrow, it is likely to take years.

I simply argue that the current North Korean state, especially in the context of a likely power struggle, will not be able to survive for that much longer and will likely fail. It is my hope and argument that this will eventually lead to the reunification of the Korean state, and the reunification of the Korean people.

Quick Reaction to Kim Jong Il's Death

I don't have sufficient evidence to prove that I am accurate in my theory but from previous news articles I have read, the first son of Kim Jong Il (who fell out of favor) was in China, involved in money laundering and arms trade. If this is correct, I believe North Korea will see a huge internal conflict - a struggle for power between the two sons. Not long ago, the head of the Parliament was called in for a meeting by Kim Jong Il because of the apparent division in the government between factions loyal to the first son and the factions loyal to the recently named successor. If these factions confront each other, it will lead to a civil war. Then the fate of the Korean peninsula is even more difficult to predict because if North Korea becomes a failed state, who will claim legitimacy over those lands? China? Russia? Or South Korea? Reunification of the North and the South is extremely difficult because North Korea is rich in natural resources and has the manpower while the South has the capital and the technology for further economic advancement. Will these major countries let South Korea become stronger? It's difficult to say.

Source: Myself.

Review of Democracy

Democracy is a book that I used heavily on my seminar paper, written by Charles Tilly. In the first book, Democracy, Tilly described the different definitions of a working democracy with a heavy emphasis on the four dimensions of a working democracy. The four dimensions are: breadth, equality, protection and mutually binding consultation. Tilly states, in terms of breadth, "at one extreme, every household has its own distinctive relation to the state, but only a few households have full rights of citizenship; at the other, all adult citizens belong to the same homogeneous category of citizenship." (Tilly, 14) Moreover, Tilly states, in terms of equality that "at one extreme, ethnic categories fall into a well-defined rank of order with very unequal rights and obligations; at the other ethnicity has no significant connection with political rights or obligations and largely equal rights prevail between native-born and naturalized citizens."(Tilly, 14)

These two concepts do not completely define democracy; they affect citizenship when alone, but with protection and mutually binding consultation, it defines a working democracy. Protection refers to the extent at which protection is provided against the state's arbitrary actions whereas mutually binding consultation is on one end, "seekers of state benefits must bribe, cajole, threaten, or use third-party influence to get anything at all." (Tilly, 14) On the other end, "state agents have clear, enforceable obligations to deliver benefits by category of recipient." (Tilly, 15) The movement of a regime towards the higher ends of the four dimensions qualifies as democratization; the lower ends indicate a de-democratization.

Tilly also discusses the importance of state capacity and the three clusters of changes in democratization. State capacity refers to the extent to which existing distributions of non-state resources, activities, and interpersonal connections are altered by interventions of state agents in those existing resources, activities and interpersonal connections as well as relation within those distributions. (Tilly, 16) Democratization would fail if the state lacks the capacity to supervise and enforce political decisions. The first of the three clusters of changes refers to an increase or decrease of the integration between interpersonal networks of trust, such as religious membership and public politics. Second cluster involves the increase or decrease in the insulation from public politics of the major categorical inequalities such as but not limited to gender or race, around which citizens organize their daily lives. The third cluster involves the increase or decrease i the autonomy of major power centers such as warlord, patron-client chains, armies and, religious institutions with respect to public politics. (Tilly, 23)

These concepts help explain the democratization process and I utilized them to explain the democratization process in Thailand.

Vladimir Putin's Provocative Campaign Ads

Recently there has been protests over the fairness in the Russian elections. Take a look at one of the campaign ads Putin put out to sway young Russian voters. They certainly make American campaign ads look very bland. Some people may have objections because it cheapens the election process or ruins the "sanctity of elections." Any reactions?

Review of American Experience: Fidel Castro

Add caption

 Even though I did not use the film in my research paper, I did watch the film on my own and used it to give me some perspective on the Cuban leader.  Released in 2005, the PBS documentary does not give recent events such as the transfer of power to his brother Raul which happened in 2008.

When people think of Fidel Castro, they simply think of a leader who is just obsessed with cigars.  This is partly true because the CIA attempted to kill him by sending him an exploding cigar. Nevertheless it gives a detailed account of his life from his early days in school to the beginning of the new millennium.  The amazing fact is that he survived so many assassination attempts.The best part of the documentary is the rocky relationship Castro had with the Soviet Union especially regarding the Cuban Missile Crises. Castro wanted the information of the Soviet Union putting missiles on the island public while Nikita Khrushchev wanted the information private.  It proved to be more of a political defeat for Khrushchev since he received alot of criticism of how the crises was handled but the Politburo.  It does not explicitly give an opinion on whether the revolution is successful or not. The film is worth watching if you are just curious about his life.

BLOW BACK

This is the Book that the Professor had mentioned last week in class, especially in regards to Aaron an I, but I feel that anyone in the class would be interested in the book.


http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j081602.html

Review: Internet Politics & The Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics

Part of the trouble inherent in writing a paper on the Internet and its effects on politics is brought about by the fact that the Internet is still a relatively new and continuously developing phenomenon, making any overarching attempt to definitively characterize the Internet and its effects on politics appear somewhat premature. Simply put, the Internet is developing at an astonishing rate- so what may hold true at one moment in time, may prove to be false- rather quickly.

In spite of this, there is value in the history and conceptual frameworks books can provide, to make understanding phenomena useful. Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies and The Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics are two such books. The first is written by Andrew Chadwick and provides an excellent introduction to the whole notion of the Internet and its effects on politics; the second, edited by Andrew Chadwick and Phillip N. Howard is a collection of essays, which effectively sum up the current state of the field as well as go into much more detail than the earlier book. It is my belief that reading the first book first, will acquaint oneself to the background and themes necessary for understanding Internet politics, and reading the latter book after will provide specific case studies for in depth-analysis.

Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies , written by Andrew Chadwick of Royal Holloway College, University of London, is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the relationship between the Internet and politics- specifically, democratic institutional design. The book is unlike many of the other books out there, which seek to explain Internet politics, in that Chadwick's excellent volume is extremely thorough, yet easy to understand. One would think that a field as related to technology as the Internet would prove to be filled with unintelligible technical jargon- but that is not the case here.

Structurally speaking, Chadwick's book is divided into three major sections: contexts, institutions, and issues and controversies. All of these categories are explicated and organized in a clear and logical manner- making for a straightforward and easy to understand reading.

Chadwick begins, in his introduction by explaining why the Internet and politics is a field for close study. His reason is that the Internet has become a mainstay of life within the developed world- further, political actors have become increasingly more involved with the Internet and its communication technologies, some which were not around when the Internet was first created. Additionally, Chadwick convincingly argues that the Internet is now more politicized than it has ever been- and this politicization, a struggle for control, taken with the increasing use of the internet for political ends, will necessarily determine the Internet's future development. The logical consequence of this is that, the Internet- a technology having such a drastic influence on our lives, is being increasingly politicized and subject to control by various political actors. This necessitates further inquiry.

Having established the reason for his inquiry, Chadwick provides a preliminary answer to the question: "What is the Internet?" He provides two answers- one technical, the other comparative. Technically speaking, the internet is "a collection of entities, a relatively decentralized network of networks," which joins together computers from all over the world. This explanation, however, does not adequately suffice for the student of politics. Chadwick's comparative explanation of the internet proves to be much more useful in understanding the role of the Internet in politics.

A comparative answer compares the Internet to traditional types of communicative media. Traditional media is characterized as “one to many,” as exemplified by radio, television, or newspapers; or “one to one,” as demonstrated by telephones and telegrams. The Internet incorporates both types of communicative media, while adding a means by which individuals can collaborate together to work on a project directed towards other entities. That is, the Internet allows many individuals to send information to many other individuals, take for instance, peer-to-peer networks, and for many individuals to send a message to a single group- online opinion, for instance.

This understanding of how the Internet works was perhaps the most useful for me-as I was writing my paper. The differences really highlight some of the major problems that authorities must deal with, in policing the Internet.

The first part of the book, which is devoted to contexts within which one can understand the book was the most helpful for me.

The second part of his book- dedicated to political institutions may prove useful for those who are seeking to explore the issues of "E-democracy;E-mobilization;E-campaigning; and E-government" and are primarily concerned with an understanding of the Internet's affect on Institutions.

The last part of the book, which deals with issues and controversies, I also found to be particularly helpful-- especially the chapter regarding intellectual property issues. If any of the other chapters prove to be as well written as that, then the book is clear, valuable and easy to understand.

In sum, Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies is an excellent, well written, academic book, recommended for anyone who wants to familiarize themselves with the politics of the Internet.

The second book, The Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics is edited by Andrew Chadwick and Phillip N. Howard and makes a great deal more sense if you have a basic understanding of how the Internet operates and its political implications.

The book explores a number of issues related to "Institutions; Behavior; Identity; and Law and Policy" including but not limited to the effect of the Internet on the 2004 US presidential election; the effect of the Internet on European political organization; Intellectual property policy problems; internet surveillance; as well as the formulation of political identity.

It is a great academic book, insofar as you have a basic understanding of the politics of the Internet beforehand. The book provides extremely case-specific examinations of numerous phenomena that have not necessarily been examined before. I highly recommend this book as enrichment material-- something to read if you are looking for more than an introductory glance provided by the book I already mentioned. It also should prove itself rather useful to students of political science who are looking for places to conduct research in new and emerging fields.

In sum, both Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies and The Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics were extremely helpful to me, as I wrote my paper on the New Politics of the Internet and the Pirate Party. I was actually pretty surprised to find out there was a wide, useful body of literature which I could use to conduct my research. I certainly could not have written this paper without these two books.

Rhee Tackles Classroom Challenges.

I came across this very interesting Article about the Washington D.C. Chancellor of Education. She was appointed as Chancellor by Mayor Adrian Fenty on June 2007. Prior to being appointed as the Chancellor, Rhee was running a nonprofit program called “New Teachers Project.” The project’s mission and goals were to help find struggling school districts find new, energetic and inspiring teachers to help educate one of the least performing school district in the nation. Although her previous job wasn’t exactly running school districts, she had some experience and understood what to look for in teachers.

During Rhees first year in charge of Washington’s schools, Rhee made more changes than most school leader, even reform minded ones, make in five years. Rhee shut down 21 failing schools which accounted for about 15% of the city’s total schools. On top of closing extremely under performing schools, she fired nearly 100 workers, not including teachers. She dismissed 270 teachers and removed 36 principals.

This was a very interesting article, especially after reading some of Diane Ravitch work. As you can read from my pervious posting, Dr. Ravitch is against radical firing and closing of schools. Although some may discredit and dislike radical purging of entire schools and staff, I do believe in accountability. I also believe however, that we need much more research and development in areas such as education. It is imperative that we find out exactly which teachers and administrators are failing our future leaders.

You can read the article by Amanda Ripley here http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1862444-2,00.html

First, Let's Fire All The Teachers

Firstly, I want to thank Professor Cocozzelli for directing me towards Dr. Diane Ravitch. Her work is absolutely incredible and has helped my research immensely.

Dr. Ravitch is an historian of education and an educational policy analyst. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 1975. She was a U.S. assistant Secretary of Education under George H. Bush as well as Bill Clinton. Dr. Ravitch has published many books and has written nearly 500 scholarly articles.

The article that I am reviewing for this blog entry is called, “First, Let’s Fire All the Teachers!”. The article written by Dr. Ravitch is a response to the firing of an entire 93 person school staff due to extremely low academic performance and graduation rates. Central Falls High School, located in Rhode Island, is one of thepoorest schools in the entire state and is the only High School in the area. They have a graduation rate of 48 percent, 55 percent are proficient readers and only 7 percent of their students are proficient in math. President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan both were pleased that the school was closed due to it’s poor performance and academic standards. However, Dr. Ravitch points out that a school called “The Met” in providence Rhode Island which has worse proficiency percentages (55 percent reading and 4 percent math), however has a higher graduation percentage of 76.5. Strangely enough, this school was saluted by the President Obama, yet the two schools have similar proficiency percentages. Dr. Ravitch points out that President Obama is more interested in glorifying schools with lower graduation standards rather than fixing the foundational issues.

Although teachers impact students a great deal, they are not the only variable when it comes to education students. Dr. Ravitch states, “It would be good if our nation's education leaders recognized that teachers are not solely responsible for student test scores. Other influences matter, including the students' effort, the family's encouragement, the effects of popular culture, and the influence of poverty.” I believe she is spot on with her analysis and that more in-depth research and development must be provided before we purge an entire school staff.

She closes the article by stating, “This strategy of closing schools and firing the teachers is mean and punitive. And it is ultimately pointless. It solves no problem. It opens up a host of new problems. It satisfies the urge to purge. But it does nothing at all for the students.” Once again, I believe Dr. Ravitch is correct. As I stated before, there needs to be more of an emphasis on research and development in our public school system.

http://www.rifthp.org/node/383 (The original article was published through the Huffington Post, however their direct link wasn't working)

Italian Pension System REFORM TIME

An interesting article in the Financial Times regarding efforts by the new government to reform the pension system. 

Italy 'takes axe' to pension system - FT.com Dec. 6, 2011

America's Education System: Game Over

Thoughts?

Analysis of Unmanned Aircraft

When I searched for an an image the RQ-170 Sentinel Drone aircraft, the majority of the pictures were from 1 to 2 days ago which means before the drone drama in Iran, the aircraft was relatively unknown. Nevertheless whether the plane "crashed" or was "shot down" depending who you ask, it is a big blow for the United States.  Iran probably has little use for the UAV but since it has close ties with Russia and China, it could sell the technology to the these countries.  The alliance is more  related to oil than ideology. Iran has been fulling the needs of China for natural gas which is fueling China's growing economy.  The incident also fuels the fire the between Iran and the United States which have been suspicious of each other.


The United States also has a problem with unmanned aircraft in Pakistan.  Recently the Pakistani forced the United States military to remove Predator Drones the Shamsi Airbase.  This was done after 24 Pakistani soldier were killed in NATO attack on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.  Even though the incident was done by helicopters, it caused great anger in the government and in the streets.  The United States has increased drone attacks in Pakistan sometimes causing civilian deaths.  A number of people have said that these attacks are a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty. 

This brings the debate on effectiveness and morality of the use of unmanned aircraft.  United States officials claim that drone attacks have killed more than half of the 20 most wanted Al-Qaeda leaders.  Furthermore it has reduced civilian  deaths because the military uses "precision surgical strikes" that only hit the intended target to minimize civilian casualties.  An example of this was in 2003 when the United States implemented the "shock and awe" campaign using precision munitions and aircraft to take out targets in the bustling  Iraqi  captial Baghdad. Many of the targeted buildings were completely destroyed while the one next to them usually remained perfectly intact. Many are wary of the use of artificial intelligence. Some say that these drones take away the human face of war.  Robots do not feel emotions and do not surrender. Drones are continually used in the Afghanistan war and it does not seem that the United States will be stopping its use anytime soon. 

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/stealth-drone-cia-op-falling-iran-officials/story?id=15096214#.Tt6NcVayBi4
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1206-drone-iran-20111206,0,928838.story

From Viewpoint Magazine - Steal this Data

Something for the discussion on Pirates.

Pakistan Skipping Peace Talks

Recent violence in both Pakistan and Afghanistan has left both sides pointing the finger at one another. In an effort to stabilize his country, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and over sixty foreign heads of state and foreign ministers will convene in Germany to discuss Afghanistan’s future. Pakistan, unquestionably one of the most important international states for Afghanistan’s security, will not partake in the conference.

Citing recent NATO led drone attacks within Pakistan which have left dozens dead, Pakistan has opted to watch the conference from the sidelines – putting a serious question mark on the prospects of any real progress. Pakistan, which has been one of America’s largest allies on its War on Terror, has protested NATO violations of the state’s sovereignty in the past several months.

Without the participation of Pakistan, the goal of achieving peace in Afghanistan – as well as the rest of the region – is highly unlikely. Cooperation on both sides of the border is needed in order to ensure that terrorist cells are not active. Pakistan is crucial both as a staging ground for international troops seeking to fight insurgents in Afghanistan and as a haven for those militant terrorists fleeing capture. Without Pakistani cooperation, an even greater possibility exists for terror cells to flourish within its borders and for those cells to move into Afghanistan, effectively destroying any peace that has already been achieved.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/29/world/asia/pakistan-afghanistan/index.html?iref=allsearch