US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flies on Tuesday to Thailand for a regional security conference expected to focus on the North Korean nuclear threat, Myanmar’s rights record and terrorism. Clinton will travel from New Delhi to Bangkok to meet Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva,
Posts Tagged ‘korea’
Clinton heads to SE Asia for talks on North Korea, Myanmar
July 21st, 2009 |
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Damages win for S Korea baby swap
July 20th, 2009 |
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A South Korean mother who left hospital with the wrong baby after giving birth more than 16 years ago has won some $56,000 (£34,000) in damages.
The woman was unaware of the hospital’s mistake until last year when she found her daughter’s blood type could not possibly match hers or her husband’s.
Tests proved the girl was not hers, and it was then discovered that a nurse had accidentally swapped the children.
Seoul Central District Court refused a request to see the other girl’s file.
It cited the need to protect personal information.
The woman, who gave birth in a hospital at Guri, Gyeonggi Province, in 1992 wanted to see the medical file to track down her biological daughter.
The court ordered the hospital to pay damages to the mother for mental losses, The Korea Herald reported.
"The hospital bears responsibility for taking adequate care of the newborn babies and to return each one to the right parents," said the court in its ruling.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Paul Rieckhoff: GAO: VA Failing to Serve Women Warriors
July 17th, 2009 |
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If you blinked, you could’ve missed it. With the media’s obsession over Michael Jackson’s death and Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings plastered across cable news shows, an…
UN sets new North Korea sanctions
July 16th, 2009 |
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A United Nations committee has added a number of North Korean individuals and firms to a sanctions blacklist.
Five individuals, five firms and two weapons-related items are subject to the new sanctions regime.
A UN resolution in June toughened sanctions against North Korea after it conducted nuclear and missile tests.
The last time the UN imposed sanctions on Pyongyang, it responded by carrying out a nuclear test, says the BBC’s Laura Trevelyan in New York.
According to the UN Security Council sanctions committee, nations are now banned from doing business with five firms involved in North Korea’s nuclear programme, and five individuals are to have their financial assets frozen and face a travel ban.
They include:
- three North Korean trading corporations – Namchongang, Korea Hykosin and Korea Tangun, as well as North Korea’s bureau of atomic energy
- an Iranian-based company, Hong Kong Electronics, is also sanctioned, accused of moving millions of dollars used for North Korea’s nuclear programme
- Yun Ho-jin, Ri Je-son, Hwang Sok-hwa, Ri Hong-sop and Han Yu-ro now face sanctions because of their involvement in the development of North Korea’s banned activities
- countries cannot sell North Korea certain types of graphite or para-aramid fiber because they could be used to make parts for ballistic missiles
The UN resolution in June called for inspections of ships to or from North Korea believed to be carrying goods connected to weapons of mass destruction.
It also broadened the arms embargo and further cut the North’s access to the international financial system, but did not authorise the use of force.
Ties between North Korea and the outside world have grown extremely tense since it walked away from six-nation talks aimed at ending its nuclear programme.
It subsequently said it would "weaponise" its plutonium stocks and start enriching uranium, prompting fears that it is working to produce nuclear warheads small enough to put on missiles – though analysts say it could take a long time to do so.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
S Korean ex-leader on respirator
July 16th, 2009 |
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Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung is in an intensive care unit in a Seoul hospital being treated for pneumonia, medical officials have said.
Mr Kim, 85, was put on a respirator after complications arose, but is not in a critical condition, hospital official Park Chang-il said.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for brokering the first summit of leaders from divided Korea.
He served as South Korean president from 1998-2003.
"He became short of breath on Wednesday night and was put on a respirator around 0300 this morning," an official at Yonsei Severance Hospital was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.
"His condition has improved since. He is conscious, and his pulse, breathing and body temperature are normal."
Mr Kim was taken to the hospital on Monday with a fever and cold symptoms.
He dedicated his career to promoting democracy and human rights during the decades of authoritarian rule in South Korea.
His Sunshine Policy improved ties with the North during his presidency, but successors have taken a tougher line with Pyongyang and North-South relations have since soured.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Thom Hartmann: Obama Drinks Friedman’s Kool-Aid
July 14th, 2009 |
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If President Obama and our Congress don’t soon learn the lessons Alexander Hamilton taught us in 1791, we’ll continue to see American industry slowly die.
Indian tiger park admits it has no tigers
July 14th, 2009 |
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By Faisal Mohammad Ali
BBC News, Bhopal
One of India’s main tiger parks – Panna National Park – has admitted it no longer has any tigers.
The park, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, was part of the country’s efforts to save the famous Royal Bengal Tiger from extinction.
State Minister of Forests Rajendra Shukla said that the reserve, which three years ago had 24 tigers, no longer had any.
A special census was conducted in the park by a premier wildlife institute, after the forest authorities reported no sightings of the animals for a long time.
This is the second tiger reserve in India, after Sariska in Rajasthan, where numbers have dwindled to zero.
Warning bells
Officials from the wildlife department say there is no "explicable" reason for the falling number of tigers.
But a report prepared by the central forest ministry says Panna cannot be compared with Sariska because "warning bells were sounded regularly for the last eight years".
The report says wildlife authorities failed to see the impending disaster despite repeated warnings, and lost most of Panna’s big cats to poaching.
While this controversy rages, there have been reports that another national park in Madhya Pradesh, Sanjay National Park, which was included in the tiger project three years ago, also has no tigers left.
The park had a population of 15 tigers until the late 1990s.
Of the more than 1,400 tigers in the country, 300 dwell in the state of Madhya Pradesh, which is also called the "tiger state of India".
Best managed
But Madhya Pradesh’s forest minister Rajendra Shukla says all the news is not bleak.
"Panna is our only park which has lost on this count," he says. "Three of state’s reserve forests – Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Pench – have been adjudged among the best managed tiger reserves in the country."
Mr Shukla has drawn up a seven-member committee comprising the state’s chief conservator of forests and experts, to ascertain why the tigers have disappeared.
The chief conservator, HS Pabla, told the BBC that the report would be submitted some time in August.
He said that tigers from Sanjay National Park "could have strayed to the adjoining area, which is now part of the state of Chattisgarh, created some years ago."
The authorities have recently transported two female tigers to Panna from another nearby tiger park, and sought permission from the central administration to bring in four more, two of them males.
Project tiger
India had 40,000 tigers a century ago, but the numbers dwindled fast because of hunting and poaching.
The country banned tiger hunting and launched an ambitious conservation effort named Project Tiger to increase the population of the endangered species.
A number of forest areas were declared national parks and funds allotted for protecting the tigers.
Though the programme bore fruit initially, with the decline in numbers checked because of a hunting ban, recent years have seen a phenomenal rise in poaching, which is now organised almost along the lines of drug-smuggling.
The authorities have not been able to put a stop to it, owing to the ever-changing techniques used by the cartels, and corruption within.
MK Ranjitsingh, a member of National Wildlife Advisory Board, says the authorities must crack down on the poachers by preventing their activities in the parks, and stopping the export of tiger products.
And they must, he adds, lobby for international pressure on the nations of the Far East, which are the main buyers of such goods.
There have been reports that there is a huge demand for tiger bones, claws and skin in countries like China, Taiwan and Korea.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Lost in translation
July 13th, 2009 |
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By John Sudworth
BBC News, Seoul
South Korea has even begun to keep count.
A government official recently claimed that North Korea’s official state media has insulted the South Korean president more than 1,700 times this year alone.
That is an average of 10 insults a day.
He is variously called "a lackey", "a stooge", "a dictator" and the leader of "a gang of traitors".
The official admitted that the jibes were sometimes "downright silly".
But the language chosen by North Korea to attack its opponents can border on the terrifying.
Last year, for example, it threatened to reduce South Korea "to ashes" and, more recently, warned of a "fire shower" of nuclear retaliation.
So, just how much attention should we be paying to this kind of rhetoric
Is it mere bluster, or is there a real risk that the bombastic outbursts will be translated into action
‘Wolf in sheep’s clothing’
Michael Harrold has an unusual claim to fame.
In 1987 he became the first British citizen to be employed by the North Korean government in Pyongyang.
SELECTION OF N KOREAN QUOTES- The American Yankee is a wolf in sheep’s clothing
- About the US:Even piles of manure in the fields are fuming out smoke of hatred
- [S Korean leader Lee Myung-bak] is a political charlatan, an absent-minded traitor and a US sycophant
- US imperialists are the greatest threat to humanity [in the 20th Century]
- We will tear the limbs from the United States, which is an empire of evil
- The situation is inching close to the brink of war due to the brigandish moves of the US
His mission was to offer advice on the correct use of English for the translations of North Korean propaganda.
At the start of his seven-year posting, having arrived in a strange and bewildering city, he remembers buying himself a Korean phrase book.
"The second from last chapter was called ‘useful phrases’," he tells me.
It included such choice essentials as: "The American Yankee is a wolf in sheep’s clothing", and "the US imperialists are the greatest threat to humanity in the 20th Century".
Unlikely to trip off a beginner’s tongue perhaps, but the run-of-the-mill phrase book was his first lesson in how all pervasive this kind of language is inside the reclusive country.
External enemy
So does the average North Korean go about his daily life peppering his speech with such casual insults Is North Korea really one of the angriest places on the planet
"At times when the relationship with the outside world is more peaceful they use softer language. But when relations get worse, that’s when it gets much tougher"
Prof Paik Hak-soon
Joo Sung-ha, who defected from North Korea seven years ago, thinks it might be.
He is now a journalist working on the foreign desk of the Dong-A Ilbo, a South Korean broadsheet, with regular cause to analyse the propaganda coming out of Pyongyang.
"It is a unique aspect of socialist societies in general," he tells me.
"People learn to use this kind of strong language, even in everyday life. It is instilled into society."
The state-run newspapers are certainly full of it, a constant hard-blowing of warnings and threats aimed at an external enemy kept constantly in the forefront of people’s minds.
But if the rhetoric is designed to rally citizens to the leadership’s cause, it may have limited effect, according to Mr Joo.
"People are too used to it. They learn to read between the lines for the real meaning, and the often repeated words like ‘war’ don’t even register."
‘Nuclear maniac’
They register in South Korea though.
So much so that North Korean propaganda is still illegal here, banned under the country’s national security laws.
To read a North Korean newspaper you need special permission to access one of the secure collections, like the one held at the Sejong Institute, a private think-tank, located just outside Seoul.
Professor Paik Hak-soon shows me round, and pulling a large volume of the Pyongyang Times off the shelves, it falls open at an edition from March 1988.
Little has changed, it seems.
Right there in the first paragraph is the talk of the "US imperialists" and the South Korean "military fascist clique".
The individual words might not tell you much, but according to Professor Paik, it is worth trying to follow the trend, the rising and falling tone of North Korean rhetoric.
"There are ups and downs," he says. "At times when the relationship with the outside world is more peaceful, they use softer language. But when relations get worse, that’s when it gets much tougher."
North Korean propaganda, the theory goes, can be used like a barometer, giving clues about the current thinking of the leadership in Pyongyang.
President George W Bush was "a gangster" and "a nuclear maniac", but despite the abuse heaped on current US policy, no personal insult has yet been levelled at President Barack Obama.
If and when it comes, it might tell us something about North Korea’s assessment of the prospects for dialogue and engagement with his administration.
‘Piles of manure’
At times of extreme hostility the language turns flamboyant, even poetic.
America sank so low in 2003, according to state radio, that even the "piles of manure in the fields" were "fuming out the smoke of hatred."
It is strong stuff, no doubt, but sometimes the outside world can be tempted to analyse too deeply.
Michael Harrold has written a book about his seven years in Pyongyang, entitled Comrades and Strangers: Behind the Closed Doors of North Korea.
"One very senior translator once asked me whether using the title Great Leader every time we referred to Kim Il-sung was perhaps too repetitive and limited its impact, and I agreed," he tells me.
So, for a time, the term was occasionally dropped from North Korea’s English language news reports, much to the excitement of foreign journalists.
Speculation began to run rife, Mr Harrold recalls, that the leader was losing his grip on power.
"I think they were somewhat disappointed when I told them it was simply a translation issue," he says.
Brigandish
The anecdote helps explain why North Korea’s statements sometimes read so strangely.
Mr Harrold was employed as a proof-reader, but the English translation itself is always done in-house by North Korean nationals.
And it is the English language news reports from the country’s state-run news agency that make up the bulk of what appears in the foreign press.
Joo Sung-ha, the defector turned South Korean journalist, says there is an easy explanation for North Korea’s use of seemingly antiquated words like "brigandish" to refer to its opponents.
"They’re using old dictionaries," he says.
"Many were published in the 1960s with meanings that have now fallen out of use, and there are very few first-language English speakers available to make the necessary corrections."
So, while North Korea’s rhetoric is certainly worthy of analysis, perhaps we shouldn’t be too alarmed by every outburst.
To be fair, even its most inflammatory statements are not always what they seem.
That "fire shower" of nuclear attack made a great headline for journalists, but many gave less emphasis to an important proviso: as so often with North Korea, the warning was conditional, to be acted upon only if someone else started the fight.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Tortured row
July 13th, 2009 |
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By Hilary Andersson
BBC Panorama, Washington
In making Licence to Torture, Panorama did not set out to ask whether the US practices adopted in the aftermath of 9/11 were right, wrong, justified or fruitful. We aimed to find out if they broke US and international law.
One might think that in the world’s most powerful democracy this would be the central public debate. But not in America. The debate that dominates here today is whether torture worked.
At a public forum at a southern California college, we tracked down one of the legal architects of the Bush interrogation programme, a man named John Yoo.
He pointed out that the legal advice that he and other senior lawyers in the Bush administration wrote were not policy recommendations.
Still, Mr Yoo defended the harsh interrogation techniques.
"Was it worth it" Yoo asked the crowd rhetorically. "Well, we haven’t had an attack in seven years."
The audience burst into applause.
There is a significant number of Americans who are sickened by the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics, but many are unsure if they want to see prosecutions.
Legal memos
It came as little surprise that our project, looking into the question of guilt, was not popular with some CIA and White House insiders. Nevertheless we were granted extraordinary access to a large number of key individuals who helped piece together the story, mostly off camera.
As we ploughed through legal memos, court cases, government reports and books and talked to lawyer after lawyer, it emerged that a central legal question was this: Did America’s leaders intend to torture
"There was a real sense that there was going to be a major new attack that was going to come and that we needed to somehow prevent it"
John Bellinger
Former legal adviser, US National Security Council
Did the White House approve torture "by accident", because their lawyers decided that waterboarding and confining someone in a box was not actually torture
Or was there a policy and an intent to torture behind it all
In investigations of this nature, the answer lies in the detail. In this case, chronology was the key.
America’s leaders say they only authorised the controversial techniques because their lawyers advised that they did not constitute torture. It therefore became critical for us to find out if the torture started before the key legal memos were issued.
We spoke to several people who we believed knew this very precise piece of information. But so often in our inquires, the answer came back: "I cannot recall."
Then we met John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who had led the capture of key al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah in 2002. He had flown back to the US shortly after the capture and monitored Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation from CIA headquarters in Virginia.
Kiriakou was categorical that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded in the early summer of 2002. This became a crucial piece for the Panorama team in the puzzle that we were slowly piecing together, because the key legal memos that approved the method were not issued until August 2002.
The CIA has told the BBC that waterboarding did not happen before that August 2002 memo but would not reveal when it did occur.
It is not clear that any oral legal advice that told White House leaders that the harsh techniques were not torture before August would amount to much of a legal defence in court.
For more than 50 years, waterboarding has been considered torture in America, and torture is illegal.
Secretive techniques
Abu Zubaydah was strapped to a board, with his face partially covered, while water was poured onto his nose and mouth.
According to his lawyer, the detainee had begun to drown until they stopped. This happened at least 82 more times.
It has emerged partly from newly-released government legal memos that the CIA borrowed some of its new interrogation techniques from a secretive US military programme called SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape).
The SERE programme teaches American soldiers how to cope in captivity. Amongst other training techniques, it simulates torture used by the Chinese on American soldiers in Korea in the 1950s.
These methods were intended for training US soldiers, not for use in the interrogation of enemy suspects.
But a recent report by the Senate Armed Service Committee traces how Donald Rumsfeld’s Department of Defense, in parallel with the CIA, also contacted the SERE programme, and modelled its interrogation plans on the same techniques.
The Pentagon says SERE techniques were never authorised.
Post 9/11 reality
All this has left many in America asking themselves how they got to this point in the first place
The reality is that on 11 September 2001 the CIA had virtually no interrogation capacity but, the BBC was told, the agency was rapidly authorised by President Bush to set up a detention and interrogation programme anyway.
A senior CIA insider said they trawled intelligence agencies worldwide in the hunt for new techniques. SERE was contacted as part of this.
Donald Rumsfeld, it was suggested, pushed for his own tough programme.
"Rumsfeld needed intelligence and he didn’t trust the CIA", said Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell, former US secretary of state.
Critically, there was distressing intelligence in the aftermath of 9/11 that another attack was imminent.
"There was a real sense that there was going to be a major new attack that was going to come and that we needed to somehow prevent it," said John Bellinger who at the time was legal adviser to the National Security Council.
Insiders say the resulting atmosphere in the White House was that extraordinary measures were called for.
Shock waves
Within months the Bush administration announced that the Geneva Conventions, which ban cruel and degrading treatment, did not apply to suspected members of al-Qaeda.
This sent shock waves around the world.
William Taft, who was Colin Powell’s lawyer, drafted a memo arguing that detainees be treated humanely in accordance with article three of the Geneva Conventions, but he said his memo was blocked by the administration.
"I really do think at that time that the reason that they didn’t approve publishing my memo was that they intended to actually use coercive techniques," said Mr Taft.
The Bush administration said it was committed to humane treatment along the lines of Geneva, as long as it was consistent with "military necessity", a significant caveat.
"The decision was that the rules were gone" said Mr Taft.
Department of justice lawyers began to prepare legal memos that redefined torture in terms broad enough to allow harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.
With the legal ground dramatically altered, widespread use of controversial interrogation techniques and systematic abuses appeared across US military bases.
Later, concern mounted inside the administration. John Bellinger, who believes existing international law is poorly equipped to deal with al-Qaeda, nevertheless worried that applying none of the Geneva conventions left a large legal grey area.
"I said well if the Geneva conventions in their entirety don’t apply, that we need to conclude that something does apply because we are a nation of laws, we’re not just a nation of men and of policies".
Panorama has been told by other insiders that President Bush personally authorised the CIA’s interrogation programme soon after 9/11, and that he may have personally approved the specific programme by the early summer of 2002.
The net of responsibility could go much wider. The CIA says that over the years more than 50 members of Congress were briefed on elements of the CIA’s tactics. Objections were few. But exactly what Congress was told and when is hotly disputed, particularly with recent allegations that the CIA misled Congress during the Bush era.
The Obama administration has not ruled out criminally investigating the lawyers involved in all this. Even interrogators who may have acted beyond the controversial legal advice could face investigation. A major CIA watchdog report with more information, is due to be released this summer.
But with mounting evidence pointing to fundamental responsibility at a very high level, President Obama appears little inclined to pursue anyone who was senior.
Panorama: Licence to Torture, BBC One, Monday 13 July at 2030 (1930 GMT).</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
North Korea Army, Lab 110, Suspected Over Cyber Attacks
July 11th, 2009 |
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SEOUL, South Korea — A North Korean army lab of hackers was ordered to “destroy” South Korean communications networks _ evidence the isolated regime was behind cyberattacks that paralyzed South Korean and American Web sites _ news report…
North Korea launched cyber attacks, says south
July 11th, 2009 |
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Intelligence service claims document shows hackers across border waged internet war on Seoul and the US
South Korea has obtained intelligence that North Korea ordered a military institute of computer hackers known as Lab 110 to “destroy” its neighbour’s communications networks last month, news reports said.
The National Intelligence Service told parliament of its finding on Friday, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported, citing evidence the north was behind cyber attacks that paralysed major South Korean and US websites in recent days.
The newspaper, citing unidentified members of the parliament’s intelligence committee, said Lab 110, which is affiliated with the north’s defence ministry, received an order to “destroy the South Korean puppet communications networks in an instant”.
The JoongAng Ilbo said Lab 110 specialised in hacking and spreading malicious programmes.
The NIS – South Korea’s main spy agency – said it could not confirm the report. Calls by Associated Press to several key intelligence committee members went unanswered.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency carried a similar report, saying the NIS obtained a North Korean document issuing the order on 7 June. The report, quoting an unidentified senior ruling party official, said the North Korean institute was affiliated with the people’s army.
The state-run Korea Communications Commission said it had identified and blocked five internet protocol (IP) addresses in five countries used to distribute computer viruses that caused the wave of website outages, which began in the US on 4 July.
The addresses point to computers distributing the virus that triggered the “denial of service” attacks in which many computers try to connect to a single site at the same time, overwhelming the server. They were in Austria, Georgia, Germany, South Korea and the US, a commission official said on condition of anonymity.
The attacks targeted high-profile websites, including those of the White House and South Korea’s presidential Blue House.
Though fingers were immediately pointed at the north, the IP addresses themselves provide little in the way of clarity. It is likely the hackers used the addresses to conceal their identities – for instance, by accessing the computers from a remote location. IP addresses can also be faked or masked, hiding a computer’s true location.
South Korean media reported in May that a North Korean internet warfare unit was trying to hack into American and South Korean military networks to gather confidential information and disrupt service. The Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that the north had between 500 and 1,000 hackers.
Members of the parliamentary intelligence committee have said in recent days that the NIS also suspects North Korea because of a threat it made in state media last month where it boasted of being “fully ready for any form of hi-tech war”.
The fact that some of the attacked sites – such as that of the ruling party and the office of President Lee Myung-bak – have links to the South Korean government’s hardline policies toward the north were further cited.
The north has drawn repeated international rebukes in recent months for threats and actions seen as provocative by the international community. Those include a nuclear test in May and short-range ballistic missile launches on 4 July.
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North Korea army behind South web attack: report
July 11th, 2009 |
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North Korea’s military is behind a series of cyber attacks against South Korean and US websites that slowed or disabled access by saturating them with traffic this week, a South Korean news report said on Saturday. The attacks on dozens of US and South Korean government and business sites
Ssangyong – action needed, quick
June 18th, 2009 |
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It’s a right old mess over at Ssangyong. The beleaguered firm is in Korea’s equivalent of Chapter 11 and having a tough time of it. Market conditions aren’t fine and dandy and Ssangyong’s model line-up is short on recession busting fuel-sippers; it’s a niche offering concentrated in no-frills but good value for money SUVs with some reliable Mercedes heritage technology under the skin.
Ssangyong was, however, thrown an important lifeline with the Korean bankruptcy court administrator’s decision last month to allow it to restructure rather than enter liquidation.
And there are some significant plusses in the outlook for Ssangyong. A big one is an attractive looking crossover – the C200 – just around the corner as well as an international distribution set-up. There could also be financial sweeteners for anyone prepared to invest. Overall, Ssangyong looks like a brand with potential that could actually be attractive to outside investors (another OEM, for example, just has to figure that it can do better than SAIC did).
But the new business plan includes many job losses and that has led to a dispute with the union that has quickly paralysed production.
While some union resistance was to be expected, it has dragged on – to the detriment of those still left who want to take the business forward. It won’t be long before parts and vehicle supply lines start to run dry.
Korean labour unions aren’t to be taken lightly and the sit-in at the Pyeongtaek plant has reportedly attracted some extreme elements. The police are, by all accounts, standing off and prefering not to risk further violence by forcing the strikers out. Nipping it in the bud early on might have been the thing to do, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course.
The danger is that the whole thing gets more difficult to resolve the longer it goes on, positions entrenched, along with a growing siege mentality. Meanwhile, Ssangyong racks up accumulated revenue losses and confidence in the brand erodes further. And potential investors are turned off.
Decisive action immediately to end the dispute might well get the best outcomes for all concerned.