Archive for May, 2008
Posted by Joshua on May 31, 2008 at 8:05 pm · Filed under Human Rights, China & Korea, Refugees
In the brilliant sunlight of an icy February day, the camera takes us onto the frozen river. A female figure lies, face down, hip raised in the classic pose of a reclining beauty, a North Korean woman - fully dressed - who fell while crossing.
Like a sculpture cast in bronze, nameless, iconic, she is a monument to all the fallen who went unfilmed, their deaths unremarked.
The Chinese guide who has brought the crew to see her has seen it all before.
He kicks her foot.
“Rock hard,” he says and relieves himself nearby.
Her body lay there for three weeks until the ice melted and she was washed away. [BBC, Olenka Frenkiel]
The video is from the Chosun Ilbo series “On the Border,” of which I’ve seen brief excerpts, including the shivering man described in this BBC article who was smuggling heroin. The BBC producer, Olenka Frenkiel, is the same one who brought us the documentary “Access to Evil,” in which former concentration camp guard Kwon Hyuk described the death of a whole family in a gas chamber at Camp 22. The product this time is no less exceptional. It’s the most emotionally moving thing I’ve seen for at least a year.
This short segment of video manages to capture humanity at its most callous and infuriating, and at its most inspiring. It may have been the love and determination of a North Korean mother, strugging to bring her handicapped child to South Korea for treatment, that moved me the most. Don’t miss this one. And remember that none of these people would be suffering and dying this way were it not for the collaborative brutality of the Chinese and North Korean dictatorships.
There are other, shorter segments of footage here and here.
(Another big hat tip to reader and blogger usinkorea)
Posted by Joshua on May 31, 2008 at 7:29 pm · Filed under NK Military, Google Earth
At about the same time it was given out that Napoleon had arranged to sell the pile of timber to Mr. Pilkington; he was also going to enter into a regular agreement for the exchange of certain products between Animal Farm and Foxwood. The relations between Napoleon and Pilkington, though they were only conducted through Whymper, were now almost friendly. The animals distrusted Pilkington, as a human being, but greatly preferred him to Frederick, whom they both feared and hated. As the summer wore on, and the windmill neared completion, the rumours of an impending treacherous attack grew stronger and stronger. Frederick, it was said, intended to bring against them twenty men all armed with guns, and he had already bribed the magistrates and police, so that if he could once get hold of the title-deeds of Animal Farm they would ask no questions. Moreover, terrible stories were leaking out from Pinchfield about the cruelties that Frederick practised upon his animals. He had flogged an old horse to death, he starved his cows, he had killed a dog by throwing it into the furnace, he amused himself in the evenings by making cocks fight with splinters of razor-blade tied to their spurs. The animals’ blood boiled with rage when they heard of these things beingdone to their comrades, and sometimes they clamoured to be allowed to go out in a body and attack Pinchfield Farm, drive out the humans, and set the animals free. But Squealer counselled them to avoid rash actions and trust in Comrade Napoleon’s strategy.
Nevertheless, feeling against Frederick continued to run high. One Sunday morning Napoleon appeared in the barn and explained that he had never at any time contemplated selling the pile of timber to Frederick; he considered it beneath his dignity, he said, to have dealings with scoundrels of that description. The pigeons who were still sent out to spread tidings of the Rebellion were forbidden to set foot anywhere on Foxwood, and were also ordered to drop their former slogan of “Death to Humanity” in favour of “Death to Frederick.” [George Orwell, Animal Farm]
It’s pretty eerie when you consider that Orwell wrote this in 1946.
At around 12:30 p.m. on Friday, North Korea launched one missile on Cho Island near Nampo City in South Pyongan Province. The missile was launched two months after North Korea launched three short-range missiles mobilizing naval vessels in the same region on March 28.
A government source said, “It is difficult to disclose the type and the point of impact of the missile launched by North Korea because it can reveal how we obtained the information. We are closely watching the moves of the North Korean forces while simultaneously investigating whether the missile launch was part of regular training or was for pressuring South Korea.”
According to a military source, the missile is either the same type as the Soviet-made Styx surface-to-surface missile with a 40 kilometer-range launched in March or a short-range missile of a similar sort. [….]
Another government official said, “It seems that North Korean forces launched the missile to create military tension and anxiety near the Northern Limit Line (NLL). It appears that North Korea’s militarists who are recently maintaining a strong stance toward South Korea are the ones who guided the missile launch.” [Donga-A Ilbo]
[Update: Sounds like it was actually three missiles.]
After this, one unnamed analyst suggests that this is somehow connected to anti-U.S. beef protests that have become the latest vehicle for South Korea’s affection for hating America (if I had said that, I wouldn’t want anyone to know my name, either).
In the same context some have analyzed that North Korea intended to intensify pressure on South Korea by crossing the NLL with its defense ships four times this year.
Since the end of March, North Korea has continued to increase pressure on the South. On the day of the missile launch, it published a bitter editorial in North Korea`s official newspaper Rodong Shinmun, and sent an equally severe telegraph notification to South Korea from its military authority.
Korean Central News Agency, the official news agency of the North Korean government, reported on Friday that Commander Park Rim Su, the North Korean chief delegate of the inter-Korean working-level military talks, sent a telegraph notification to the South reading: “The Lee Myung-bak government is mobilizing forces and right-wing anti-communist groups to spread anti-republic fly sheets that viciously denounce and slander our regime and system.”
Have I mentioned how much I love Google Earth?
I can’t be certain that this is the place, but there aren’t really any other places it could be. It’s getting hard to keep a military secret nowadays.
More Google Earth fun here.
Posted by Joshua on May 31, 2008 at 10:58 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Human Rights, Washington Views, U.S. Politics
In March, I explained why I believe that Kathleen Stephens is the wrong person to be our next ambassador to South Korea. In April, I explained why Senator Sam Brownback had placed a hold on Stephens’s nomination, effectively blocking it. Brownback announced his opposition by going to the Senate floor to deliver an impassioned speech — “Google Earth has made witnesses of us all” — that made use of my own satellite image grabs of Camp 22.
State had applied considerable pressure to Brownback following his courageous decision to defy his president and follow his conscience, but Brownback held firm. Now, the Joongang Ilbo reports that other Republican senators have joined Brownback, which means that her nomination is in deep trouble.
Senators Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) and James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) agree with Brownback. They sent a joint letter to President George W. Bush urging him to more aggressively promote human rights in North Korea.
The White House and U.S. State Department are still supporting Stephens, but the situation may change if they continue facing staunch opposition from conservative senators.
It’s unfortunate that the Joongang Ilbo doesn’t tell us much about when the letter was sent or what, if anything, it says about the Stephens nomination in particular. If the article refers to this letter, it does suggest that President should put some spine behind his rhetoric about human rights, but it does not explicitly oppose the Stephens nomination. There may be another letter I haven’t seen.
In a phone interview with Yonhap News, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) said he would withhold support “until we can get some human rights movement taking place in the six-party talks, or some clear commitment to deal with the human rights issues.” [Joongang Ilbo, Kang Chan-Ho]
I can vouch for the sincerity of Brownback’s willingness to be swayed by “some clear commitment,” but what could State possibly offer in the closing days of a lame-duck Administration after four years of flouting the law? Nothing that State could say today could be complete, verifiable, or irreversible; in fact, the gossip I’ve heard is that State will send Congress its 45-day notice that it will remove North Korea from the terror-sponsor list just in time for the August recess. In light of rising controversy over State’s intentions, such a cynical move would only exacerbate the ill will the State Department created by stonewalling Congress about North Korea’s proliferation to Syria.
State, apparently recognizing its predicament, is said to be looking for another nominee. I have to presume they’re looking for someone who isn’t so closely tied to Chris Hill and his see-no-evil views. Whether the same drama plays out with the next nominee may depend on who State nominates and how State’s policy takes shape over the following months.
Posted by Joshua on May 31, 2008 at 10:02 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Washington Views
The U.S. State Department on Friday bashed its former envoy to North Korea, who a day before said Pyongyang is not going to meet Washington’s requirements on denuclearization despite laborious negotiations underway. [Yonhap]
No one should be surprised by anything about this revelation except the name of the prophet. This has started a delicious red-on-red, Mick-on-Keith slap fight between Pritchard and the State Department. Pritchard, of course, was a Clinton holdover, an early defector from the Bush Administration, and a defender of the first Agreed Framework who thought that his former colleagues weren’t willing to bend enough to get a deal with Kim Jong Il.
Jack Pritchard, who coordinated North Korea policy under both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said Thursday that Pyongyang’s officials told him they would only give up key nuclear facilities by destroying them, but not the weapons and plutonium already manufactured.
The North Koreans also told him that they expect to be provided with a set of light-water reactors in return for dismantling their nuclear installations, Pritchard said. The former envoy, now president of the Korea Economic Institute in Washington, had traveled to Pyongyang late last month and met with the foreign and vice foreign ministers and lead members of North Korea’s nuclear negotiation team. [Yonhap]
Why is it that our diplomats so seldom bring out the North Koreans’ conciliatory side? And what is it with the Bush Administration? They seem unusually sensitive about this sort of thing this week:
Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, called Pritchard a “former official with an axe to grind.”
“With all due respect to Jack Pritchard and the foreign government-funded organization he works for, you know, I am glad that he’s gainfully employed, and I am glad he’s having lots of conversations out there,” he told reporters when asked to comment on Prichard’s remarks.
“But for my money, I will bank on the president, the secretary of state, and Chris Hill rather than what Jack thinks he is getting from whoever the heck it is he is talking to today,” the spokesman said. [….]
“There are way too many people that make a living professing to know what’s really going on inside these and other negotiations,” Casey said, “and it’s kind of amazing how usually they are wrong.” [Yonhap, emphasis mine]
It’s even more amazing how those of us who don’t make a living doing this have forecast these negotiations’ outcome with more accurately than those who do.
“If I had a dime for every time some former official with an axe to grind had put forward their own version of what our negotiations were, I would be a very wealthy man,” he said. [Yonhap]
Or, he could write a book of his own and actually become one. You know what would be too ironic for this world? If the Administration were to claim that Pritchard misquoted the North Koreans because of a translation error (see WaPo quote here). Pritchard adds his own views about Agreed Framework 2.0, and he’s no fan:
[Pritchard] he said in an interview yesterday that as a result of his discussions in Pyongyang April 22 to 26, he thinks the Bush administration reached a poor agreement.
“It is a weak handoff that will cause the next administration more problems than it solves,” Pritchard said. [Washington Post, Glenn Kessler]
Specifically, Pritchard pointed out that some of the North Koreans’ most significant technical facilities haven’t been touched by this agreement, including its plutonium metal fabrication or weaponization facilities, or its completed nuclear weapons. To this, I would again bring up two additional reactors this agreement has not touched — a nearly complete 50-MW reactor right next to the worn-out, used-up 5-MW model that has been partially dismantled, and a half-finished 200-MW reactor (satellite images here). Chris Hill has never leveled with us about any of this. That’s one of his charms. And when sanctions against North Korea are lifted, North Korea will lose any incentive to give up those things.
More generally, the North Koreans simply aren’t interested in disarming:
Pritchard said North Korea made a “strategic decision” two years ago that it had harvested enough plutonium from the Yongbyon reactor and would shut it down. The reactor and related facilities since then have been partly disabled. North Korea told Pritchard that the next phase, dismantling the facilities, will take three years. During that period, they said, they expect the United States to complete a light-water reactor promised under a Clinton-era accord that was later nullified.
When Pritchard asked when North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons, he said he was told: “The United States should get used to us as a nuclear weapons state.” North Korean officials asserted that they would consider talking about giving up atomic weapons only after “full and final normalization” of relations. [Washington Post, Glenn Kessler]
All of this comes just as the State Department increasingly resorts to theatrical stunts to create the illusion of progress toward disarming North Korea. First, there was Sung Kim’s display of 18,000 pages of untranslated photocopies that could well be shopping lists for the Dear Larder. Next, the North Koreans will symbolically blow up the Yongbyon cooling tower, which proliferation expert Henry Sokoloski calls ”nuclear theater.” It’s reminiscent of a well-worn tactic known as the “northern wind” in South Korea, in which politicians – in apparent cohoots with the North Koreans, and no doubt in exchange for some undisclosed favor – negotiatie some kind of pre-election summit or reduction of tensions to exhibit their diplomatic finesse to the voters.
Against this backdrop, the unverified rumor I’ve heard is that the State Department will wait until the end of June to notify Congress that it intends to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Because Congress will then have 45 days to oppose the move, State’s idea would be to take advantage of the August recess in an election year.
One interesting point that Casey raises is that Pritchard heads the Korea Econonic Institute (KEI), an influential klatsch in this town that’s also funded by the South Korean government (KEI is registered as a foreign agent). I lean toward believing that Pritchard comes by his views more-or-less honestly, perhaps influenced by a desire to help the Democrats maneuver themselves into looking stronger than the Republicans by opposing a weak deal that’s failing anyway — and maybe, maneuvering himself into Hill’s job in an Obama Administration. From outside of DC, the degree of South Korean influence in this city isn’t apparent, but here, it is. And I’ve recently wondered how Lee Myung Bak’s election would affect the ideological direction of influential groups like KEI, the Korea Foundation, and the Korea Society, all of which have functionally lobbied for the U.S. to show more “flexibility” in the face of North Korea’s various demands, indiscretions, and atrocities. Lee may be too smart to oppose this deal openly, but it doesn’t seem fanciful that he isn’t entirely happy with the United States adopting a Chung Dong Young policy toward the North. It would be in equal parts gratifying and distressing if the Korea lobby ended up killing Agreed Framework 2.0 after seeing America fail to stand up for their own interests.
Japan, however, is signaling its open opposition:
Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura, in the Japanese Diet, recently said that not including those elements would make North Korea’s declaration unacceptable to Japan, one of the six nations participating in the nuclear talks.
The Post also suggests that AF 2.0 will be orphaned in the U.S. presidential campaign:
Both Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic front-runner, have raised questions about the agreement in recent weeks, with both calling for “tougher diplomacy.” [Washington Post, Glenn Kessler]
I don’t think even Kessler would make this up, but I have not seen where Obama criticized this deal. In any event, it’s getting pretty damn unanimous that this agreement stopped being about disarmament or counterproliferation long ago, making any defense of it on the latter basis seem bizarre to the point of being disingenuous.
Pritchard is a smart man who happens to be right this time, but agreeing with him gives me a sensation of uncomfortable confluence I haven’t felt since a time some years ago when I shared a Greyhound bus with a flamboyant transvestite and his/her companion. I don’t discount, of course, that Pritchard probably wishes he were the one making this deal instead of Chris Hill. Indeed, I am inclined to believe the criticisms of both Pritchard and Casey, but Casey isn’t saying anything that’s vital to our national security.
Related: Never, ever have I seen such a one-sided, fawning, biased journalistic tongue bath as Glenn Kessler’s profile of Chris Hill. I don’t doubt that after writing this, Kessler could have identified each spice, condiment, and side dish in Hill’s last three meals based on taste alone. He does let Victor Cha slip in a comment about Hill’s promiscuous media exhibitionism. If you read Kessler’s op-ed the way a Russian would have read Pravda in the 30’s, you can see that Hill’s object is a deal — any deal. And if you want a deal badly enough, a bad deal is exactly what you’ll get.
A well-connected reader adds: “Not so foggy but nasty, nasty from Foggy Bottom. And to think Jack Pritchard used to be one of the chief doves on North Korea policy! (and he is now saying the Norks told him they have no real intention of giving up any bombs)…at least we now know why our negotiators are suddenly shedding crocodile tears for the Japanese abductees…if Prichtard is right and the Norks are going to renew their demand for light water reactors, Washington wants to send that bill to Tokyo, as we did in the Agreed Framework (with gasoline at four dollars a gallon, no one wants to ask the U.S. taxpayer to foot this bill for NK energy). So the abductees become key to milking the Japanese cash cow…”
Posted by Joshua on May 30, 2008 at 8:42 am · Filed under Appeasement, Abductions
[Update: The link was bad before; fixed now.]This is the second of two documentaries by Journeyman Productions I’m featuring here. This one, an Australian production, deals with South Koreans who are abducted to the North and the unconscionable way various South Korean governments through the years have treated them and their families — either as presumptive spies (under rightist regimes) or as irritants to the Unifiction (under leftist ones). Although the docu was made in 2003, it nonetheless features plenty of information that was new to me.
I have to say that the most shocking moment for me was the way one South Korean abductee — who later escaped — recounted life in the North Korean countryside:
You might think I’m lying, but people were so hungry they would catch little children, and bathe them, and boil them to eat. There were times when a lot of people gathered at a place near my house, and I was curious because I didn’t know why. We went into the kitchen and opened the lid on an enormous pot — and inside were three little heads being boiled.
This is not the first time we’ve heard reports like this.
Once again, a big hat tip goes to commenter and blogger usinkorea.
Posted by Joshua on May 29, 2008 at 9:08 pm · Filed under Appeasement, Terrorism (NK), U.S. Politics
I’ve finally obtained a scan of the original letter in which Senator Barack Obama and 19 other members of the Illinois congressional delegation promised not to support de-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism absent a full accounting for the fate of Reverend Kim Dong Shik. Rev. Kim, a U.S. lawful permanent resident, was kidnapped by North Korean agents in China in 2000, while trying to help North Korean refugees fleeing starvation and oppression in their homeland. The letter with Obama’s signature is here:
obama-letter.pdf
Although North Korea has never accounted for Rev. Kim, last week, Barack Obama said that he would support de-listing North Korea after all. Rev. Kim, who was in his 60’s and wheelchair bound when abducted, is believed to have died under interrogation in North Korea. His children are U.S. citizens. His wife and one of his childen were Obama’s constituents in 2005. The strongly worded letter Obama signed compared Rev. Kim to Harriet Tubman and Raoul Wallenberg.
We do not have to ask whether President Obama would be an appeaser. Senator Obama already is. Just like George W. Bush.
Posted by Joshua on May 29, 2008 at 7:09 am · Filed under Japan & Korea, Abductions
The Japanese NGO ReACH, which advocates on behalf of the families of Japanese abducted by the North Korean regime, is active in Washington D.C. and sometimes sends me e-mails with interesting information. Today, they inform me that the award-winning “Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story” will air on the PBS program Independent Lens on Tuesday, June 19th, at 10 p.m. Eastern. (If anyone can find links for listings in their local areas, I’d appreciate it if you’d post them in the comments.)
This week, the Chosun Ilbo reported that Ms. Yokota was seen alive as recently as 1994, two months after the North Koreans said the committed suicide, and that she was not well:
According to the newspaper, Fukie Chimura (52), another abduction victim, told Japanese authorities at the end of last year that Yokota moved in next door to her in June 1994. “She lived there for several months, but I don’t know her whereabouts after that,” Chimura was quoted as saying. “She was suffering severe depression and was mentally unstable.” She added a senior North Korean intelligence official was monitoring her. [Chosun Ilbo]
For us, the story of these abductees is a chronology with a lot of very long gaps. For them and for their families, this has been a daily torture driving the innocent to madness and despair.
In the context of regime-sustaining aid from China and South Korea and eventual betrayal by the Bush Administration, it is remarkable that Japan has had any success at all at freeing its people from North Korea, but it has had some.
In 2004, former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi went to Pyongyang, promising aid if the abductees were released and threatening sanctions if they weren’t. He brought back five abductees, including Hitomi Soga, who had married U.S. Army deserter Charles Robert Jenkins during her captivity. But the North Koreans seem to have a compulsive attraction to exhibitionist brutality and obnoxiousness. They complained, for example, that Japan didn’t send the freed hostages back into captivity. Later, they sent Japan a box of ashes they claimed were Megumi’s, but which turned out to be those of some poor unmourned soul who died from God-knows-what. That may have been the insult that brought Japan’s rage to a full boil, rage that was expressed in the quiet, effective way that is characteristic of modern Japan.
In that context, aid to North Korea became politically unthinkable. Japan eventually severed most trade relations with North Korea, barred North Korean ships from its waters, and largely ran the North Korean front organization Chosen Soren, a/k/a Chongryon, out of business.
For years, the United States publicly and staunchly stood by its most important Pacific ally in demanding the release of the abductees, but after last year’s State Department policy shift, America withdrew all but meaningful support by de-linking North Korea’s abductions to its inclusion on the list of state sponsors of terror.* The shift has left Japan feeling isolated and betrayed, and shows signs of doing significant damage to U.S.-Japan relations. To keep up appearances, Chris Hill created a “working group” with the rather obvious aim of marginalizing the issue, but North Korea has never really been a good-faith participant.
But the issue of the abductees is emotional to Japan, and Japan has stuck to its guns. Today, there is an indication that Japan’s principled and determined protection of its citizens may pay dividends:
North Korea has given the U.S. information about several Japanese, believed to be abductees, living in North Korea and may send them home, a Japanese newspaper reported on Tuesday. [….]
North Korea appears to be trying to bolster the impression that it is making progress on the abduction issue and hoping to encourage the U.S. to remove it from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, the newspaper said, though it is unclear whether the news will actually lead to the return of more abductees. [Chosun Ilbo]
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who is representing the United States in the six-nation talks, is scheduled to visit Beijing on Tuesday, and will hold talks with North Korea’s representative, Kim Kye Gwan, during his stay. In addition to the topic of a declaration on North Korea’s nuclear programs, the issues of abducted Japanese and the treatment of Japanese in Pyongyang linked to the 1970 hijacking of Japan Airlines “Yodo-go” flight were expected to be discussed.
Government sources said that information on the new abduction victims was conveyed to the United States last autumn. The Japanese government has taken the stance that all of the abduction victims are alive and is demanding their immediate return to Japan. [Mainichi Daily]
Amazingly, these people aren’t even among those 12 the Japanese government officially recognizes as abduction victims. The Japanese government suspects that the North Koreans have abducted dozens of other Japanese, as this pamphlet provided by the Japanese Embassy illustrates. According to the Mainichi, Japan “strongly” suspects that North Korea has abducted 36 missing Japanese are abductees, and that as many as 470 more may be abductees.
Although the Japanese government says that the return of all “surving” abductees will settle Japan’s main concerns, the likely Japanese reaction will be to wonder how many of their “missing” fellow citizens the North Koreans really are holding. As with every North Korean assurance, Japanese will be left wondering why they should believe the North Koreans this time, after they’ve been told so many lies. As Japan Probe reminds us, North Korea had said for years that there were no others.
As with any reported agreement with North Korea, this should be viewed with extreme skepticism. Maybe this is all talk aimed at creating the appearance of progress, just like it was last year. For North Korea, the calculus is always “what can we afford not to concede?” Less South Korean aid, less food, and less money this year means that North Korea can’t afford not to concede as much as it could in 2007. But with the United States desperate to let Kim Jong Il off the hook, it’s questionable whether these Japanese citizens, who were guilty of nothing more than being alone at the wrong place and time, will ever see their families again.
Posted by Joshua on May 28, 2008 at 9:50 pm · Filed under Famine & Food Aid
For those of you who do not know him, Marcus Noland of the Peterson Institute for International Economics is a leading expert and author on the North Korean economy and food crisis. Noland writes in to report that he has learned some details of the U.S. government’s negotiations with the North Koreans on food aid. The negotiations have resulted in an agreement (for now) on food aid to the North, something I personally support for overriding humanitarian reasons notwithstanding my distaste for the regime, and for the idea of sustaining it.
The key caveat to my support is that the humanitarian purpose must be served, and because past aid to North Korea has been so replete with secrecy, opacity, and diversion, more transparency and better monitoring are a sine qua non to saving the lives of North Koreans rather than empowering and fattening their oppressors. Most of what follows is my paraphrasing of Noland’s comments, although his answers in the closing Q&A section are verbatim.
Noland offers OFK readers a clearer — but still not clear — idea of what is agreed and what isn’t. The total U.S. commitment is for 500,000 tons of food aid. Of this, the first installment of 50,000 tons is en route now. The rest of that “commitment,” however, will depend on our assessment of North Korea’s needs. What role the World Food Program will play here isn’t entirely clear. The monitoring arrangements are disappointing, but I suppose they could have been even worse. We’ve negotiated 65 monitors into North Korea, but that number includes staff from private NGO’s. This makes the number less than comparable to conditions in 2005, when the World Food Program had 47 or 48 monitors in North Korea.
We did extract a few concessions from the North Koreans, although I emphasize that North Korean concessions are like sandcastles at low tide:
* The re-opening of regional sub-offices. This begs the question of which regions will get the aid. The answer to that question may determine whether this will end up saving lives or merely bailing out the regime that perpetuates it.
* A complete list of recipient institutions. But will the monitors be able to conduct on-going nutritional surveys of the recipients, so that we can determine who’s fattening up and who isn’t? The answer is probably not.
* Korean speakers will be eligible to be monitors, which is a first. The North Koreans had never previously permitted this.
* I didn’t even have the heart to ask if prisoners in the concentration camps will get any of this food. But from what Noland says about the limited nature of the program, it’s a sure thing that the prisoners will continue to starve and die without interruption.
And what of the all-important issue of monitoring? Will the monitors be able to conduct on-going nutritional surveys of the recipients, so that we can determine who’s fattening up and who isn’t? It’s not clear. Noland reports that there “more direct access to final recipients than in the past,” but not formal household surveys like the WFP used to do.
There will be “some kind of random inspection regime,” although that leaves much to be defined to us. Let’s hope it’s well defined to the North Koreans, or it will only be the springboard to the next negotiation.
It does not appear that there will be any novel methods of monitoring, such as electronic tagging of grain sacks or special donor-isued ration cards.
Noland betrays some ambivalence about this; overall, he calls it a “a marginal improvement over the status quo ante mid-2005,” but without the improvements that the WFP was seeking when the North Koreans abruptly threw them out. My assessment is that I still have no assessment until I get answers to some questions that Marcus Noland partially answers here:
Q: Will the aid be distributed through the regime’s public distribution system?
MN: My impression is that some will be and some won’t be. Some of the NGOs have operated food-for-work programs in the past and have indicated that they expect to do this again.
Q: Will this be a U.S. or a U.N. operation?
NM: The WFP Asia bureau is seriously stretched by the situation in Burma, and is working hard to handle two major operations. My impression is that the official channel, up to 400,000MT [metric tons] will be via the WFP. The remainder is via the US NGOs, but in the past to a significant extent they have piggybacked on the WFP system (i.e. FALU). So it is sort of a mixed bag.
Q: What regions of the country will receive aid? As you have noted, North Korea ’s infrastructure is so bad that most of the aid will probably be consumed in the same province where it is landed. The arrival of aid in Nampo may not do much to avert famine in Wonsan, Hamheung, or Chongjin, but it will be a boon to the brahmin castes in Pyongyang.
MN: This is the point of the assessment. The USG position as I understand it is something like “we believe that the DPRK has serious trouble in a general sense, and are willing to provide the initial 50,000MT tranche concurrent to the assessment. But an assessment is needed to determine the scale of distress, its social and geographical particulars, and the subsequent program will be designed and scaled on the basis of the assessment.”
Q: Will the monitors and distributors be U.S. government or WFP personnel?
MN: Don’t know. And remember, 50 experienced aid workers willing to live in the DPRK can’t just be conjured out of the air. My guess is that they will have more trouble recruiting workers than finding food.
Q: What form will the aid take? Rice? Corn? Barley? Omega watches?
MN: Not rice. My impression is largely corn, flour, possibly protein biscuits; I know at least one NGO maintains factories which could be used to turn flour into protein biscuits and noodles.
Q: What about the nutritional surveys to keep track of who is fattening up and who isn’t?
MN: My impression is that formal nutritional surveys such as those periodically conducted by the DPRK in partnership with the UN agencies are not part of the assessment and not part of the monitoring program, though presumably if this program is extended into 2009 (as I expect that it will be) that the donors will ask for this.
Q: With regard to monitoring, do you have any idea what the North Koreans have really agreed to with any specificity? Haven’t the North Koreans’ previous verbal commitments to the WFP proven as ephemeral as anything else the North Koreans say on any given day?
MN: My impression is that the USG and WFP people are going in with their eyes open. The USG people understand that implementation is critical, and if this is a fiasco political support in the Congress could evaporate. Using Korean speakers ought to constrain really outrageous attempts at manipulation and subterfuge (i.e taking people to the same location twice and telling them it is a different place). But how random can a random inspection under these conditions? They seem to be aiming for an arrangement in which the foreign workers get more access to local neighborhoods, local dignitaries etc., hoping that more local contact combined with Korean speakers not so reliant on their minders will generate a deeper understanding of what is really going on, and constrain things from completely running off the rails.
Many thanks to Marcus Noland for that information, and we’ll just have to watch the situation unfold.
Posted by Joshua on May 28, 2008 at 6:21 pm · Filed under China, China & Korea
“[T]he Korean-U.S. alliance is a historical relic. The times have changed and Northeast Asian countries are going through many changes and transformations. We should not approach current security issues with military alliances left over from the past Cold War era.'’ [Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman, quoted in the Korea Times]
… and there was much backpedalling.
Not that I necessarily disagree with Comrade Spokesman; indeed, permit me to expand on his line of thought: if matters left over from the Cold War are historical relics, surely we can say as much for matters left over from the Qing Dynasty. Aren’t China’s official justifications for its occupations of Tibet and East Turkestan, its claims on Taiwan, and its incubating territorial claims on North Korea all historical relics from … well, several centuries before the Cold War anyway?
China could really demonstrate a modern and progressive world view by relinquishing all of those territorial claims first.
(Hat tip to a reader.)
Posted by Joshua on May 28, 2008 at 2:49 pm · Filed under Japan & Korea, Japan, History
A group of lawmakers plans to submit a bill to the Diet mandating government financial compensation for Korean and Taiwanese former Class B and Class C war criminals and their surviving families. The move, led by Kenta Izumi, a Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) Lower House member, could come as early as the current Diet session.
At issue are those who worked as guards of POWs for the Imperial Japanese military during World War II. The non-Japanese were later denied the same pensions and other compensation paid to Japanese war criminals and their family members. At the Allied Forces war trials, 321 Koreans and Taiwanese were convicted as “Japanese” of war crimes. The group included 23 Koreans and 26 Taiwanese who were executed. [Asahi Shimbun]
And now, the best part:
The lawmakers’ group will propose the government pay 3 million yen in compensation to each former Class-B and C war criminal, in “a humanitarian spirit.”
Suddenly, I have a better understanding of why Chinese and Koreans can’t just let bygones be bygones. It’s moments like these when I realize that language may not be the greatest barrier to cross-cultural understanding. There is almost too much perverse principle in there for words to grasp. You could almost celebrate Japan taking a step toward equality were it not for the countervailing embrace of atrocity.
Korea contributes to this ugly little anachronism. Violins at the ready, please:
Izumi said he was greatly moved by the story of Lee Hyok Nae, a Korean who worked at a POW camp run by Japan in Thailand and was later convicted. Lee, 83, is now chairman of Doshin-kai, a group representing former Korean war criminals that since 1955 has urged Japan to act on the issue. Hearing Lee’s story, Izumi realized the Diet has never heard the views of these non-Japanese, the lawmaker said. He hopes the bill will receive cross-party support.
Lee was taken from his home on the Korean Peninsula, which from 1910 to 1945 was under Japanese colonial rule, at the age of 17 in 1942. After the war, he was sentenced to death for abusing POWs.
Wanting more details on that last bit, I consulted Mr. Google, who informs me that Japan Probe has been all over this one. Lee was convicted of working Australian POW’s to death. He now lives in Japan. South Korea ostracizes “collaborators” and was seizing the property of some of their descendants as recently as last August. Although the seizures were begun under the nationalist-left government of Roh Moo Hyun, the seized land went up for sale a month after the inauguration of a center-right government. (Did you notice that that last link goes to, of all places, DynamicKorea.com?)
Not that I have high expectations that certain other camp guards who are working and starving Korean men, women, and kids to death at this very hour will be held accountable, either. In northeast Asia, it is the ethnic identity of the regime, not the ethnic identity of the victims, or (least of all) the objective evil of the acts themselves that separates criminals from old comrades.
Hat tip to a reader.
Posted by Joshua on May 27, 2008 at 8:38 pm · Filed under Korean Society, Refugees
[Update: Apologies — I had Dan’s name misspelled before.]
I met Dan Bielefeld at a LiNK event in Washington two years ago, and he has been living in Seoul since shortly thereafter. After Dan’s excellent photography of the Chinese riot in Seoul last month, I invited him to guest-post here. He was recently invited to a screening of “Crossing” at the Korean National Assembly, and here is review. Since this is Dan’s first post, I’ll introduce him this time.
=============
I saw Crossing today. Just last week I had been disappointed to learn the original release date of June 5 was pushed back — so I was thinking I’d have to wait another month to see it — and then suddenly a friend invited me to a big showing for the National Assembly this afternoon (at the 국회 의원회관, which is next to the National Assembly building).
We got there maybe 10 minutes before the program began, and there were already people standing in the aisles. Through some luck, we ended up with front-row seats (basically the big-wigs only occupied them before the movie began). Before the movie Dr. Vollertsen apparently was sitting next to the older brother of the president and a few seats over from Park Geun-Hye (who, along with a few other people, spoke briefly before the movie). Dr. V with a smile remarked to me afterwards on the nature of Korean politics that yesterday he was briefly arrested in front of the Blue House and today he was patted on the knee by the president’s brother!
Park Geun-hye’s entrance generates a lot of attention.
Crossing, as others have said, is very moving. Yet, as affected as I was, there were two reasons I don’t think I felt the “punch” quite so much as I would have otherwise. First, much of the main storyline is based on the experiences of an extraordinary man who comes to the weekly 444 demonstrations in Insadong, so I roughly knew what was going to happen. And, second, I was sitting next to (the only other?) non-Koreans and we were frequently given translations by a Korean friend. Normally, I prefer watching movies without commentary or other interruption, of course, so it sort of broke the mood for me, if you will.
The director, Kim Tae-gyun, speaks briefly before showing his movie.
That said, I cried several times; I doubt there were any present who didn’t at some point. As someone pointed out afterwards, the director intentionally included very little politics in the movie; it’s just the story of a man trying to help his family. This makes it all the more powerful. The script, the acting, and most aspects of the movie (it was shot in three countries) are excellent, though I thought the music was so-so.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to people in the crowd today to see what they thought, though I suspect many of them were like us; ie, they already are aware of / active in NK issues or at least politics in general. Those I went with all thought it was very good — including the North Korean among us, who said it reminded him of many things he went through in getting to South Korea.
So the stage is set. The movie is good, there’s a well-known star, Cha In-pyo, in the lead roll, and fingers-crossed that the marketing will be sufficient…now the real question is how will the Korean public react, if at all, when the movie is released June 26th? A few weeks ago I started asking Koreans if they’d heard of it yet, and most of them hadn’t. But now it appears the media campaign is getting going. For example, last night apparently there was a big promotional gathering in Jamsil with entertainers, singers, etc. Eg, see photos here. Also, late last night I happened to see Cha In-pyo interviewed on a Charlie Rose-type interview show on KBS.
I heard there is a showing this Friday at 2pm at COEX for the western media, so English subtitles will be shown. I may try to go to that so I can pick up more of the nuance.
Posted by Joshua on May 27, 2008 at 8:01 am · Filed under Refugees, Defectors, Activism
This will be the first of two documentaries from Journeyman Pictures I’ll be featuring this week. “Escape from North Korea” follows an entire North Korean family all the way from their relatively privileged life in Pyongyang to the end of their long journey to escape the North, starting with clandestine camera phone images.
For both of these documentaries, a big hat tip to commenter and blogger usinkorea.
Posted by Joshua on May 27, 2008 at 12:00 am · Filed under Blogs & Blogging
[Update, 31 May 08: China Hand publishes a retraction:
In a comment on Arms Control Wonk in 2007, I made the statement that the website Onefreekorea had apparently received an advance copy of a government ruling concerning Banco Delta Asia. I inferred this from my reading of the timestamp on the OFK post, which I believed indicated that the post had been put up the day before the ruling was officially announced and publicly available. OFK’s proprietor has advised me that he obtained the ruling through an electronic subscription to the Federal Register and did not receive it in advance. I regret the error, withdraw the statement, and apologize to OFK. I’ve also asked ACW to delete the comment.
End update.]
Original Post: So, what did you do this weekend? I took my kids to the circus, mowed my lawn, fixed the tires on my bike, and received a belated notice that I’ve arrived as a made member of the neocon conspiracy, complete with 3-karat pinkie ring and powder blue Coupe de Ville. The belated part is unfortunate, really. Such powers have shelf lives, especially when you use them for world domination. No doubt, my potent svengali juju has begun to wane before I could begin toppling ChiCom satellites like dominoes just in time for the Olympics. My notice came in the form of a year-old blog post about Treasury’s issuance of its final rule putting the hammer down on Banco Delta Asia, with this confident statement:
Definitely some Boltonian shenanigans at work. It appears regime-change advocate Onefreekorea had the text of the Treasury decision ahead of its release and was pushing the idea that the BDA issue would be the “critical failure point” that could derail the Six Party Agreement (perhaps because Treasury’s strongly-worded statement of zero tolerance for ongoing North Korean malfeasance was meant to intimidate other banks and provoke the North Koreans to a precipitate response). Judging from the State Department and Chinese response so far, they’re going to be disappointed. I blog http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2007/03/twilight-of-boltonians-treasury-works.html the issue at China Matters.
— China Hand · Mar 16, 10:27 PM · [Comment, Arms Control Wonk]
Off to show some leg in the big city, are we, China Hand? (The link in that comment goes to his “China Matters” blog.)
I’m just finding out about this today by accident because China Matters never took time out of the sisyphean work of tongue-bathing pandas and justifying the shooting of Tibetan nuns or somesuch to ask me about my Boltonian shenanigans. Truthfully, John never calls anymore (the bitch). Now, I admit to the occasional bout of self-importance when people leak me things, but here, I must protest. There is no importance. Not only did I not get any advance from Treasury, that probability is plainly obvious to a careful reader. China Hand seems in awe of my ability to find the very same information he could have found on public U.S. government web sites. Again, the suggestion that I had any advance notice of Treasury’s final rule is false and made with a reckless disregard for the truth. So are the skullduggery and delusions about my importance he infers from his own error.
China Hand probably refers to this post of mine, dated March 13, 2007, which links to the final rule on Banco Delta Asia published by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (Fincen). Being just literate enough to make a buffoon of himself, China Hand clicked the link to Fincen’s pdf — not mine — of the pages in the Federal Register publishing the BDA final rule. No doubt, he saw the date March 19, 2007 printed on the header.
Presto — neocon conspiracy! Hey, what more proof do you need?
The funny thing about the Federal Register is that sometimes, the date a proposed rule is filed can precede the actual date of publication by several days. Had China Hand read the date of filing at the end of the rule, he’d have seen that it’s actually March 14, 2008. So why is that still the day after I published my post? Because I linked to the Federal Register page in an update, which I must have put up the same day the final rule was issued.
But how could anyone possibly be so all over the publication of the final rule without the guiding hand of John Bolton? Please allow me to demystify that as well. Anyone with the interest can go to Fincen’s web site and subscribe to their updates. Long-time readers know how interested I was in this story. I subscribed. And in fact, the very same FR page that I uploaded to my blog and which you see linked at this post was sent to me by Fincen in one of its subscriber updates on March 14, 2007, at 11:35:58. Yes, I still have the e-mail.
Now as to the charge that I seek to “change” a regime that does this kind of stuff to people, there’s no point in pressing an accusation I freely confess, proclaim, and wear as a badge of honor. Nor is it a secret that I am not cheering for the success of State’s series of surrenders to Kim Jong Il. There’s nothing hidden about any of this, and I haven’t cut politicians of either party any breaks for the stupid stuff they’ve been saying or doing.
Still, it galls to see such carelessness and sloppiness when people write about you. China Hand / China Matters constructed his conspiracy theory on such a slender reed without showing the rigor — or the cojones — to at least confront the one he accuses. He flatters me if he actually believes this. On the other hand, it’s probably no accident that China Hand did not link back to my blog when he made his accusation, knowing that this would probably leave tell-tale trackbacks or show up in my visitors’ log. In light of what passes for due process in China, maybe that shouldn’t surprise anyone. But in the blogosphere, there are certain rules of conduct you follow if you want credibility and respect. One of them is that you don’t write baseless things about people without some minimally diligent investigaton of the facts, and another is that when you get a fact wrong (as we all do) you correct it.
I’ve asked China Matters to print a prominent retraction, including over at Arms Control Wonk, where comments probably closed moths ago. I posted my request many hours ago, but there’s complete radio silence over at China Matters. I understand how time-consuming it can be, constructing those justifications for the starvation of Burmese peasants. Regrettably, this requires me to undertake, as a public service, to post the corrections China Hand won’t.
Posted by Joshua on May 26, 2008 at 7:15 pm · Filed under Famine & Food Aid
Good Friends has released two more newsletters, numbered 129 and 130. No. 129 is partially made up of material I had passed along here yesterday, but picks up from there with some interesting reports about the food supply to the military. The reports are from Kangwan Province, which lies just north of the DMZ’s eastern sector.
According to one soldier in Keumkang County, the soldiers in this county are experiencing a food shortage as well. They are fed with less than half a bowl of long grain rice(안남미), a couple of pieces of Korean radish, and seaweed soup that tastes like seaweed, yet does not contain any actual seaweed. Lamenting on how bad their food situation was, he said that only on traditional holidays, can he see some oil floating in the seaweed soup. “Because we can’t eat well, we do not have any energy to participate in military training. Thus, sometimes we get into vacant houses, steal food and resell them to other residents. With that money, we get a good amount of food. Sometimes the owners of the stolen food come and complain about the theft, but we dismiss their claims and scold them for their negligence.” He added that to save themselves, there is no choice but to do some harm to the other residents. [Good Friends Newsletter No. 129]
This means that there are food shortages in both of the provinces — South Hwanghae and Kangwon — that border the DMZ, and that at least some soldiers in one of those provinces are feeling the effects of food shortages. Assuming these reports are accurate, they suggest good reason to think that the regime is worried that food shortages could trigger social unrest, though I continue to believe that the regime could localize and crush any uprising short of a general military mutiny or a coup in Pyongyang.
(What would change this equation? The North Korean people first need a galvanizing ideology, an organized resistance movement, and the means to communicate dissident ideology and the events of the day from city to city and province to province. If any kind of armed resistance is to have any chance of challenging the regime — and in the long run, armed resistance is the only kind with any chance of success — its political/logistical/intelligence infrastructure would have to be established among the local population. All of this would probably take years, although outside support could accelerate it.)
Newsletter number 130 reports that opportunistic disease is spreading, with the reports mainly originating from the far northeast — Hoeryong and Chongjin. The diseases said to be claiming more victims include colitis and tuberculosis. Skyrocketing food prices are also crushing North Korea’s nascent mercantile economy. Most people cannot afford even the most basis non-food items.
One farm is reported to have sold its seed for next year’s crop because of the dire shortages. Along with reports that farmers are too weak to plow and sow their fields, this also suggests that next year’s harvest will be even worse than this one. Previous reports have also cited shortages of fertilizer and plastic sheeting. Without substantial and effective international aid, next year’s famine will be far worse. Other reports of note:
* The regime has launched a public education program to dissuade growing numbers of starving women from turning to prostitution to survive. (Meaning, the regime would prefer the alternative?);
* There are more reports that starving people are headed for the hills to pick wild plants, even grass, to eat. These foods have so little nutritional value and do so much harm to one’s digestive tract that the net effect of expending energy to gather them may be to hasten starvation;
* A magnesium clinker mine in South Hamgyeong Province was forced to shut down because so many workers abandoned their duties in an effort to gather these “alternative foods”;
* A recent visit to the northeastern city of Chongjin by Kim Jong Il had the effect of further driving up already high food prices because of the interruption it caused to the city’s food supply:
Due to the Chairman’s visit, the Chungjin area was blockaded for 2 days, which is adjacent to Kyongsong County. All vehicles and passengers were prohibited from entering the area, causing the price of rice to rise. After the lift of the blockade on May 13th, the price of rice stabilized back to the 3,000-3,100won level again. Critics complained that “A national level economic blockade brings a lot of difficulties, which are magnified on the domestic level. It is like our hand and feet are bound. Despite severe criticism by the public, the authorities move forth with the blockade.”
It is fair to note that Good Friends wants to go back to the same no-string-attached, government-to-government aid that the regime used to dominate the people and keep them on the verge of starvation for so many years. The reports, nonetheless, are interesting reading (the usual cautions apply). You can read both newsletters in full here:
nkt129-eng1.pdf
nkt130-eng1.pdf
Posted by Joshua on May 26, 2008 at 12:18 pm · Filed under Japan, Terrorism (NK), U.S. Politics
In March of 2005, I blogged about this letter from the Illinois congressional delegation to the North Korean government, in which all members of the delegation warned Kim Jong Il that they would firmly oppose removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism unless North Korea accounts for the fate of the Reverend Kim Dong Shik, a lawful permanent resident of the United States who had resided in Illinois.
In 2002, Rev. Kim was in northeast China assisting North Korean refugees. It was at this time that Kim, who was in his 60’s and wheelchair-bound, was kidnapped by North Korean agents and spirited back across the border to North Korea. (All of this somehow escaped the notice of the Chinese police, although only a few bridges cross the border between China and North Korea.) One of Rev. Kim’s kidnappers, Ryu Young-hwa, confessed to his role in the kidnapping in a South Korean court in 2005. Leaked details from South Korean prosecutors suggest that 10 other North Korean agents took part in the plot. We still do not know whether the Rev. Kim is alive or dead, although Andrei Lankov’s new book reports that, according to a recent defector, Rev. Kim died under interrogation.
Rev. Kim is the forgotten “American” abductee. Although he was abducted and possibly killed by an act of politically motivated intimidation, he is an inconvenience the State Department desperately wishes to overlook so that it can falsely say that North Korea does not sponsor acts of terrorism, which 18 U.S.C. sec. 2331(1) defines as activities that:
(A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended -
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum;
Oh, well. That was then:
U.S. Democratic presidential frontrunner Senator Barack Obama has recently indicated he no longer opposes the removal of North Korea from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Obama in January 2005 came out against the removal of the Stalinist nation from the list until it gives an account of the kidnapping and death in the North of the Rev. Kim Dong-shik in 2000. [Chosun Ilbo]
Obama’s latest shift goes far to confirm my worst fears that he is a political cream puff — sweet, squishy, and mostly hollow except for the airy, sugary filling. When the prevailing winds blow in the direction of principled outrage, Obama gives us principled outrage. When the winds shift toward easy accommodation, so shifts Obama. Take the question of genocide. Apparently, Obama believes that “[s]ilence, acquiescence, paralysis in the face of genocide is wrong.” Meaning, we should break our silence with mere words, or by forming a large drum circle? Or should we should actually do something effective? It’s far from clear, but what if actually doing something to prevent genocide comes with some unpopular cost? So shifts Obama:
“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press. [MSNBC]
This seems to be meant to justify doing nothing effective in either place.
“We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea,” he said.
We’re all ears.
At convenient moments, Obama has readily agreed to sign onto principled-sounding statements about human rights in North Korea. In these final months of the presidency of another well-meaning and “compassionate” — yet essentially shallow — man, we’d be fools not to wonder whether Obama’s words amounted to more than just that. It gives no comfort that Obama has expressed a willingness to fly directly to Pyongyang to supplicate to His Porcine Majesty. To say what that Chris Hill has not already said? What else do we still have to surrender?
If Obama can’t be principled about something as fundamental to our security as terrorism, one can only wonder what other evils he might flutter toward easy accomodation with. Regrettably, it’s his readiness to tell us — and on some level, to believe — whatever we want to hear at any given moment that may well get Obama elected this fall. The American people have never been hungrier to be told that we can have drive-up ease and Barco-lounger comfort without cost or sacrifice, that if we smile at the evils of the world and click our heels three times, apocalyptic prophets will come out of their caves and set up day care centers. It’s not easy to perceive, of course, how much worse things really could be. In the absence of any consistency of principle from either our current president or our next one, however, we have good reason to fear that they will be.
Related: As I had feared, the Bush Administration’s determination to de-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism continues to do harm to our relations with our most important Asian ally, Japan. Two significant points I take from this Washington Post piece are first, that Japan’s Prime Minister made himself available to the Post to show the depth of Japan’s concern; and second, that the Japanese are sensibly turning to China to put pressure on the North. If China secures the release of Japanese abductees after the United States, after years of empty rhetoric, essentially betrays Japan, it will be a major step toward making China dominant in the region at America’s expense. Japanese voters will move in the direction of accommodating China, and away from rearmament and strengthening their defense alliance with the United States.
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