Archive for September, 2008
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 30, 2008 at 7:17 am · Filed under Anti-Americanism, Korean Society, China & Korea, The Fifth Column
Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode.
BY NOW, WE KNOW THAT THERE WAS NEVER ANY SCIENTIFIC SUBSTANCE BEHIND all of those “Mad Cow” protests in Korea over the imports of U.S. beef. So why so little protest over melamine contamination in food imported from China poses an actual, no-sh*t health risk to Korean kids who drink powdered milk? It might even be a greater risk to the health of Korean kids than strapping them into strollers to serve as human shields at a riot over a non-existent health risk.
The “human shield” moms are now under criminal investigation, and if this world is as just as I know it not to be, their kids will be taken away and redistributed to sane, loving, childless couples from Singapore to Fire Island.
Americans can’t help but wonder at the absence of such exploitive panic over tainted Chinese food products. Chinese fisherman have just killed a South Korean Coast Guardsman, and an expression of “deep regret” suffices (contrast this to North Korea’s no-nonsense method of dealing with illegal fishing).
Then there were the Chinese thugs who ran riot in Seoul. Korean authorities didn’t charge them.
Chinese farmers and pimps see North Korea as one big comfort woman reserve, string North Korean refugees together like fish on a line with wires through their noses, and lead them back to the firing squad. No outrage.
So the sensible question Robert beats me to asking is, “Where are the candle zombies?“ Clearly, part of the answer has to do with which “usual suspects” have the resources and skill to mobilize the mobs, and where their sympathies and hostilities lay. It had also occurred to me that Robert’s own gravatar goes far to explain why the mobs show up to hate America and not China, but then again, there’s always Japan as an example of Koreans nursing irrational hatred of other Asians, too. So, a related reason may be that the great majority of Korea’s most emotional, least rational people are in the sway of people who hate America and sympathize with China.
Then there’s the fact that China is big, menacing, and seldom seems to care what Koreans think. Americans think in terms of apologies in the same way that senior North Korean officials think of hundred-dollar bills. For Asians, promiscuous apology is a mark of low status, even inferiority. I have often wondered: if America treated Korea with courtesy, but with a little less excessive, obsequious, endlessly apologetic courtesy, would we be such inviting targets for every inferiority complex within the outer boundary of Kyonggi Province?
Is the problem that we’re too damn nice? Or is it just that as long as they sleep under Uncle Sam’s blanket, Koreans will never see their interests and the dangers beyond with anything resembling rational clarity? Of course, the threats of which we speak are much more threats to South Korea than to America, so we have only ourselves to blame if we’re being used. I doubt that most Americans even know we still have troops in Korea, so it’s little wonder they’re not questioning the reason for that increasingly anachronistic presence.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 29, 2008 at 2:53 pm · Filed under Kim Jong Il, Famine & Food Aid
Just as I question those detailed reports on the progress of Kim Jong Il’s purported illness and recovery, I question the sourcing for this anecdote. Still, it’s entertaining enough to warrant posting:
On September 2nd, Chairman Kim of the National Defense Committee received a recent report on the food crisis. It was reported to him that many regions are suffering from severe food shortages. Apparently, he was even shocked to receive word that emergency measures are especially necessary because the military has run out of food as those stationed in Hwanghae Provinces and Pyongan Provinces do not have any food reserves left. Overall, the military is low on rations, the very idea which enraged the Chairman. Sources say that he berated his officials shouting, “How could you let this situation get to be this bad? What have you been doing?”
Chairman Kim was upset by the fact that soldiers fed twice a day are considered lucky and that some soldiers are only fed once a day. Some military units even have their officers go out to neighboring farms to borrow food. If those officers are unable to obtain more food, the soldiers go hungry. When the officers have to skip meals, the subordinate soldiers go hungry without fail. Chairman Kim was angered by the severity of the situation to the point of claiming he was surrounded by idiots. He was so agitated by the situation he even collapsed at one point. He ordered that any grain imported from China and food obtained from outside sources should first be routed to the military in order to guarantee adequate resources for it. [Good Friends, emphasis mine]
It’s very likely to be true, and most likely a complete coincidence or a good guess that it’s reported here.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 29, 2008 at 11:50 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Diplomacy
[Update: I guessed right. Have a barf bag ready for this one, particularly when you get to the part where David Albright says that our proposed verification plan would have infringed on North Korea’s “sovereignty.”
Remember Albright? He’s the guy who was accusing the Bush Administration of trumping up charges that the North Koreans were enriching uranium … until we found enriched uranium all over the same documents and aluminum samples North Korea submitted, in part, to prove that it wasn’t enriching uranium. So why do reporters — including the same ones whose reporting did so much to discredit Albright — continue to quote him as an authoritative source? Maybe he helps them tell their own narratives, which would certainly be par for Glenn Kessler’s course. More at The Hanky, if you can stand it, and at the additional transcript I’ve posted below.]
So why is Chris Hill flying off to Pyongyang to salvage a disarmament deal with a nation that says it won’t disarm, won’t even disclose the full extent of its nuclear arsenal or programs, and is in fact reassembing the nuclear reprocessing capability it had previously “disabled?” Simply stated, because it serves the pecuniary and political interests of Hill, Condoleezza Rice, and George W. Bush to be able to deceive you into believing that North Korea’s nuclear threat is contained, when in fact, Hill’s work has only put an official U.S. stamp of license on precisely the opposite.
As it also turns out, the disablement Hill secured may not be as enduring as previously represented. The North may be ready to restart a reprocessing facility as early as two months from now — not quite soon enough for election day, but soon enough to free up some space in the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
But what harm could come of talking? The answer is “plenty,” when the other side is prepared to concede nothing, and Hill is prepared to concede anything. Hill knows the only way he can prolong the life of this deal is through more diplomatic onanism — negotiating against himself by offering unilateral concessions. To slow the North Koreans’ ongoing repudiation of his fatally vague deal, he must show them that the Bush administration isn’t a dry tit yet. It’s almost a sure thing that Hill will arrive in Pyongyang armed with new concessions on verification, the one area where compromise with Kim Jong Il is least defensible. Be afraid.
North Korea, for its part, seems to have shifted its aid-seeking focus back to South Korea, hoping that a politically weakened Lee Myung Bak will opt for the tested “Northern Wind” strategy to rebuild his domestic support. To call Lee’s reaction “wary,” however, would be a significant understatement. For the first time in more than a decade, a South Korean government may demand concessions from North Korea in return.
Don’t be shocked if North Korea suddenly “discovers” some Japanese abductees.
Below the fold: a transcripts of a recent State Department daily briefing, hinting at Chinese and Russian pressure on the U.S. to soften its verification demands (thanks to a reader).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 29, 2008 at 6:02 am · Filed under North Korea, China & Korea, South Korea
We’re all familiar with many of the ways in which the lives of North and South Koreans differ. The Economist has published an interesting new piece describing some of these way, but which eventually focuses on the demographics of both nations and the greater region. No doubt, from those differences arise very different reasons why the populations of both nations are declining.
As to why the South’s population is declining at one of the fastest rates in the OECD, it’s largely because women are waiting longer to have kids.
The reason for the North’s population decline is necessarily more a matter of conjecture, though the conjecture leads in some obvious directions when we speak of a nation that’s been in or barely out of famine for more than a decade. I’m currently reading Nick Eberstadt’s “The North Korean Economy,” and have just gotten though a chapter in which he discusses how few of the official statistics add up, either economically or demographically. He tracks how the North Koreans first excluded the military population from the official population statistics, thus leading to a severe gender imbalance in the remaining population. Eberstadt suspects, but doesn’t go so far as to allege, that the North Koreans subsequently monkeyed with the male or female stats to reduce that imbalance and thus conceal the size of their military. Thus, experts variously estimate the population of North Korea to be anywhere from 18 million to 23 million.
So put those reports of a new North Korean census into context.
Eberstadt is quoted as a source in the Economist piece as well. It’s too bad that the article offers less explanation of why the North’s population is declining, or whether it really is. In his book, however, Eberstadt suspects that the regime has understated its infant mortality rate. My own suspicion is that hungry people try not to have any more children, and that the children who are born are less likely to survive the first years of their lives.
A final point to which I’d like to draw your notice is the demographic decline of the Korean population of northeast China, suggesting the possible abolition of its Korean Autonomous Zone and the effective absorption of its Korean population into the Han population. Who else can foresee something similar gradually happening to a Chinese-occupied North Korea … and eventually, the South?
Hat tip to a reader.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 25, 2008 at 11:31 am · Filed under Uncategorized, Human Rights, Activism, U.S. Politics
Some preliminary details here, but some important differences of interpretation have already arisen as to the role of the Special Envoy. I may find some time to write about those later.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 25, 2008 at 7:31 am · Filed under NK Military, Kremlinology
As with their southern bretheren, the North Koreans are being reminded of the persistence of the oldest profession, largely because of the traditional confluence of state power and corruptable masculine hydraulics. The Daily NK reports that some twenty North Korean officials in the city of Hamhung were removed from power — and several senior military officers were shot — over a whorehouse patronage scandal:
The Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights (NKnet) reported in its journal “NK In & Out,” released on Thursday that a chief of an army base was charged with smuggling illicit drugs in Hamheung on July 10th and was executed by firing squad. It has also been reported that this execution received more attention locally because the owner of the ‘Yunmi Teahouse’ was executed along with the military official.
The journal added that “The 25 year-old woman known as ‘Yunmi’ operated the teahouse and accrued large amounts of money through the business of debauchery, including prostitution. The teahouse was able to evade various inspections because many members of the military and the Party in Hamheung were its main clients.”
Furthermore, it has been discovered that these high-ranking officials spent at least a hundred thousand won (approx. 31 USD) each visit, which resulted in some 20 officials being charged with prostitution. [Daily NK]
And Robert still wonders how I find all of this so interesting.
The key missing detail here is whether a military or civilian court conducted the investigation and prosecution. Salacious appeal aside, it’s worthy of mention whenever senior military officers can be removed from power or executed, but especially so when any civilian wields that kind of power over North Korean officers. Even in our system, after all, the military has its own courts and usually prosecutes its own officers for on-duty misconduct.
Prosecution by a civilian court would tend to corroborate previous views of a budding “military second” policy, which I blogged about here. If those reports are accurate, the main beneficiary would seem to be first brother-in-law Jang Song Thaek, who has wrested control over the secret police and prosecution since his recent rehabilitation. And if the reports of Kim Jong Il’s illness are not complete b.s., that would give the men with all the guns an imperative to make sure that Jang doesn’t end up ruling the country.
Discuss the myriad possibilities among yourselves.
Some North Korean observers argue, on the other hand, that the real power at the top is firmly in the hands of the party, and the relative numerical superiority of civilian party officials in Kim Jong Il’s recent entourages is some evidence of this. No less an authority than Hwang Jang Yop, however, suggests that the military doesn’t have the political power base to seize power successfully.
While I question the value of persuasion in North Korean politics, military banditry has apparently been rife in the countryside for several years. The failure of senior military leaders to keep their hungry soldiers in the barracks suggests that in the provinces, the military is still supreme … and probably hated. It also suggests that military morale is low.
Consider the timing of Kim Jong Il’s illness if the reports are true — at a moment of apparent flux in the power structure. A smiting at such an opportune moment would constitute conclusive proof that God exists and wreaks mischief on the wicked.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 23, 2008 at 10:17 pm · Filed under Anju Links
YOU DON’T SAY! (Pt. 1): “Nuke Deal Not Likely by End of Bush Term.” The interesting take away from Nicholas Kralev’s piece is that the North Korean efforts to reconstitute their plutonium program are not focused on the old 5-MW reactor, but on the fuel fabrication plant. That would be consistent with my pet theory that the North Koreans are content to retire the old 5-MW model and start up the new 50-MW reactor instead. This also provided some amusement:
The North Koreans have said that Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator, promised them removal from the State Department’s blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism once they submit a declaration of their nuclear activities. Mr. Hill has neither confirmed nor denied that claim, saying only that the North knows what it needs to do. The Bush administration insists on reaching an agreement on a mechanism to verify the declaration before taking Pyongyang off the list. [Washington Times]
The North Koreans are hardly in a position to call anyone out for deception, but let’s face it: Hill has been deceptive with the rest of us, too. This entire deal has been built around glaring ambiguities; still, I have trouble believing that the North Koreans are innocent lambs who simply overlooked them out of audacious hope. OFK reader Bruce Klingner of the Heritage foundation is quoted as saying that the talks are now “firmly deadlocked.” I hope he’s right, and at this point, I’d say he probably is, but never overestimate the U.S. State Department.
HILL CAME OUT TO WORK THE PRESS TODAY: I’ve pasted some transcripts below the fold. Hill is obviously a good schmoozer with a sympathetic audience, but I don’t think his “temporary setback” spin is fooling anyone at this point. I see most of the media as torn between their personal and ideological sympathy for Hill and their eagerness to declare any Bush policy a failure.
WHEN THE NEW YORK TIMES SAYS that speculation about Kim Jong Il’s health “thrives in [a] factual vacuum,” I think it’s things like this that they have in mind. Of course, Kim Jong Il is going to die of something within the next few years, and none of his kids looks capable of taking over. I could add one more blog post to all of the predictions about heirs and juntas, but I’m content to link to what I said about this subject a year and a half ago (also, my pictures are funnier). The latest word is that His Porcine Majesty is recovering. It’s good that we can doubt these reports, which I prefer to ruling out the existence of God, believing that He ignores our prayers, or wondering why He likes to watch us suffer.
OH, AND DON’T ASK YOUR NORTH KOREAN TOUR GUIDE about those rumors. Still, I wonder if the fact that Pyongyang seems “more festive than usual” means that plenty of North Koreans believe the rumors are true.
JAPAN’S BRAND-NEW PRIME MINISTER, TARO ASO, is calling for better contingency planning for Kim’s demise or a crisis in Korea. Like Lee Myung Bak, Aso compensates for some serious personal flaws with a much more sensible policy toward the North. Another story about the “colorful” Aso here, although I’m not sure I agree that his penchant for gaffes is a strong point. Just ask Biden how that business model is working for him.
SOMEHOW, I DON’T FIND THIS COMFORTING:
A total of 74 foreigners were arrested or expelled by the National Intelligence Service over last five years in 19 terror-related cases, on charges of plotting attacks, goading anti-American sentiment and spying on the U.S. Forces Korea, according to classified documents released Sunday. Some of them allegedly had connections to al-Qaeda. ‘We obtained secret information that some Muslim extremists planned an attack on U.S. Army bases in Korea, so we expelled the people related to the plot,’ an NIS official said.
I seldom went to Itaewon’s “entertainment” district before or after 9/11 — it sits directly below Seoul’s main mosque and concentration of Muslim guest workers — without wondering about things like this.
YOU DON’T SAY! (Pt. 2): “Special Law on Prostitution Proving Ineffective.” My first home in Korea was in Icheon-Dong, which meant that every day on the way to the Yongsan Main Gate, I’d pass Yongsan Station and the red-light district directly across the road. When I went back in 2006, the old station had been replaced by a huge, shiny new E-Mart, but more established forms of commerce were still going on across the road, just as they had for decades … and directly adjacent to a police station. At most, this will just do to prostitution in Korea what it did to it in Japan and move it to more discreet venues.
IRON PIPES, 500,000 WON; BILLING THE TAXPAYERS FOR THEM, PRICELESS: The Korean government admits it has almost no idea how “civic groups” are spending their government subsidies. As I’ve pointed out previously, some of those civic groups have regularly instigated politically motivated violence. Groups that fail to control violence by their members should never receive subsidies, but really, the whole idea of subsidizing political speech and association is pernicious. The power to subsidize is also the power to censor, to manipulate, to propagandize, and inevitably, the power to discriminate against speech the state doesn’t like.
SOME OFF-TOPIC LEVITY: Maybe not the most thoughtful South Park, but probably the funniest. The first time I saw this ending, I laughed until my stomach hurt. Warning: tasteless and probably not safe for work.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 23, 2008 at 7:06 am · Filed under Korean History
Before the allies arrived in Korea in September 1945, Korean politics existed only undergound and in exile, among feuding factions of various brands of radicals. A search of Time’s fascinating archives, which are completely free, shows that the American press paid little attention to events in Korea until American missionaries began reporting on Japan’s oppression. This attention increased in the 1930’s as hostility rose between Japan and the United States, but exile politics received almost none of that attention.
Less than a week after the arrival of the first American soldiers at Incheon in September 1945, Time described the main groups of Korean exiles that had begun returning to compete for power:
The Exiles. Many Koreans went into exile. Some 300,000 found refuge in Siberia; more than 100,000 fled to China and a few thousand to Hawaii.
In 1919 the exiles organized a Provisional Government at Shanghai. For two decades they had factional troubles. In 1942 they united again, under the Presidency of earnest, greying Kim Koo, who had taken refuge in Chungking, and won financial support and de facto recognition from Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. The new coalition of exiles did not include the 300,000 Koreans in Siberia. They remained aloof and inaccessible. At least 30,000 of them were said to be organized in a Red Army unit. They were apparently under the leadership of two veteran Korean leftists, Park Hoon and Kim Kun.
The Worriers. In Chungking last week the Korean Provisional Government chafed anxiously, hoped hard for Chinese and U.S. air transport homeward. While waiting, Foreign Minister T. Josowang paid public tribute to Korean troops with the Red Army and with the Chinese Communists, who last month suddenly sponsored a Korean Independence League (TIME, Aug. 20). “We welcome any allies,” he said, “marching in … for the purpose of liberating . . . the fatherland.” [Time, Sept. 10, 1945]
At the same time, dormant opportunists were already emerging to compete with the exile groups. Thus, the story of Korea’s politics really began in 1945, but only for a brief interlude until it was truncated by a zero-sum struggle between two repressive systems, albeit systems that would follow two very different trajectories.
In the North, politics ended almost as soon as the Soviets arrived with Kim Il Sung in their baggage. Despite some initial American insistence on the protection of free speech, little political dissent or competition — beyond fratricidal intra-party purges — appears to have survived beyond 1946.
Before Syngman Rhee established his political supremacy in the South, patterns of political speech and taxonomy emerged that seem familiar to Korea watchers to this day. As soon as the Americans arrived in September, there was an immediate proliferation of political groups, parties, debates, and demonstrations. The Japanese occupation, however, didn’t instill Koreans with much sense of political tolerance or civic debate.
(Once again, the photographs come from the flickr page of Tok1, otherwise known as Don O’Brien.)
O’Brien photographed a couple of those groups demonstrating, the first in some forgotten place, the second in Seoul.
Politics coalesced around political groupings that would be familiar to a modern observer:
Korea today has almost no politics, and legions of politicians. Seventy-odd parties stepped up to be counted at General Hodge’s request. The best guess is that they will shake down to three: 1) a “democratic” party, conservative and nationalist; 2) an extreme left-wing party, Communist-dominated; 3) a middle or pinkish party, claiming a position comparable to Labor’s in Britain.
All parties are for independence, nationalism, turning the Jap rascals out. Where they differ is on methodology, nationalizing industry, and on local issues. After years of political frustration there are few strong personalities. One is plump, man-of -good-will Woon Heung Lyuh (pronounced Yuh), 60, head of the provisional commission for rebuilding Korea, nucleus of party No. 3. He is out of circulation at the moment (it appears there were a couple of fist fights). Lyuh told me he wants to set all good Koreans — Communists included — help the reconstruction.
Song Chin Woo, a fiftyish editor with a long record in the secret nationalist movement, is remaining aloof from parties while things jell. Cho Mansik, called the Gandhi of Korea, is a Christian church elder whom the Russians reportedly brought out of retirement to head the municipal government of industrial Pyengyang. As for the long-exiled government at Chungking, some Koreans would welcome it as a ready-made instrument for wielding political power. More likely, its members will return as private individuals.
In Korean eyes the two tragedies of their country are that the Japanese were here from 1910 on, and the Russians are here now. Eventually the Koreans must solve the problem of transforming their schizoid country into a nation. Meanwhile it is our problem too, and what the U.S. does here in the next year or so will be the tip-off to our future role in the Orient. [Time, Sept. 8, 1945]
Two weeks Later, dozens of political parties were lobbying the Americans for influence:
From Seoul, LIFE Photographer George Silk cabled: “I am writing this during a party in Korea’s leading geisha house. The party is the third in a succession of 51 such parties. In the last few weeks 51 Korean political organizations have mushroomed and each tried to reach American military authorities. Failing, they are entertaining the U.S. press. Some of the new parties’ names: Republican, Democratic, Communist, New Korea, Party for the Control of Law and Order, and Party for Cooperation with the Party for the Control of Law and Order.” [Time, Sept. 24, 1945]
By the following spring, as the authorities north of the 38th Parallel stamped out dissent, Syngman Rhee had established his own control and begun to do the same in the South. Tok1 captured General Hodge with Rhee and his people at a ceremony that sure seemed like a hand-off. Hodge was under tremendous pressure to turn the reigns of power over to Koreans, which was hard enough, but harder yet because collaborators were also off-limits. Rhee had the additional advantages of an ivy league education, an excellent command of English, and an understanding of how to manipulate foreign public opinion.
By 1946, the South Korean left had came under the domination of violent, pro-North cadres who began to assert their views through a brutal insurgency, and through the promiscuous propagation of half-truths and anti-Americanism. It is stories like these that cause me to speak of modern Korean history as a continuum:
Southern leftists too were throwing their weight around. A Communist-inspired “Battle Front Formation Convention” met in Seoul to denounce U.S. occupation measures. One speaker brought the house down with a report on World War II. Gist of the report: when Germany was near collapse in 1944, the U.S. jumped into the European war for spoils. After ineffectual skirmishes by U.S. troops on minor South Pacific islands, Russia staggered Japan with tremendous blows by the mighty Red Army. [Time, Mar. 4, 1946]
Rhee no doubt accelerated the communization of the Korean left by elimination — by suppressing leftists who weren’t siding with the communists. To say that the non-communist left was “non-violent,” however, would also have been inaccurate. In those early years, Seoul was plagued with assassinations, but mostly directed at politicians. The communists broadened their terror campaign to target broad swathes of the population, and Rhee would respond in kind with an equally brutal counterinsurgency campaign.
Korean politics was a high-stakes game in those days. Song Chin-Woo didn’t even survive 1945 before an assassin got him. The assassin was a nationalist who was angry at Song for supporting a U.S.-Soviet trusteeship. Along with fellow activist Kim Song-Su, Song was one of the founders of the Dong-A Ilbo.
Woon Heung Lyu, a/k/a Yo Un Hyung, a/k/a Yuh Woon Hyung, pictured here at right, was assassinated in 1947. Some say a right-wing North Korean refugee did it; others say it was Kim Ku’s people who did it. Yo/Yuh/Lyu himself was also something of a political question mark, called a leftist by some and an American stooge by others, and with enemies on the left and right alike. Yo was one of the first reunificationistas, insisting that North and South eshew their superpower sponsors and unite, something that still may have seemed almost possible in those times. He briefly edited the Chungang Daily News, not to be confused with today’s Joongang Ilbo. You can still find his ardent admirers on the Web. This one also quotes extended passages from the discredited leftist hack Bruce Cummings … so be warned.
Kim Koo was blessed with an exceedingly long life by the standards of contemporary Korean politicians, surviving until June 1949. The building he was assassinated is now Samsung Hospital, which isn’t far from the old West Gate, Sodaemun (fifty-one years later, my mother-in-law-to-be died in that very same building). Suspicions have fallen on Syngman Rhee for having had a role.
The Soviets placed Cho Man Sik under house arrest in 1946. He was executed in a North Korean prison camp in October 1950, as U.N. forces moved North following the second Incheon landings.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 22, 2008 at 10:20 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Diplomacy
[Update: Now they’re asking the IAEA to remove the seals and cameras. More here.]
There are some who can look back on decades of failure and learn nothing, while some of us looked into the future two years ago and foresaw everything. One Agreed Framework should have been enough for any observer possessed of an average ration of common sense. Crediting myself with that much, in March of 2007, I wrote a post in the form of news reports not yet written, predicting how and when President Bush’s Agreed Framework 2.0 would fall apart. That eventuality has now come to pass, and North Korea has essentially renounced a disarmament agreement signed in February of 2007 and hailed by so many as a first step toward peace in our time. In opposition to that chorus, I predicted:
- That the six-party talks would be on-again, off-again, but would continue to be unproductive;
- That the U.S. government would quickly ease money laundering sanctions on the North Koreans, thus throwing away our most important leverage against the regime and prolonging its survival;
- That North Korea would not account for the people it abducted from Japan, South Korea, or anywhere else;
- That our decision to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism anyway would draw objections from the highest level of the Japanese government and strain relations with our most important Pacific ally;
- That the North Koreans would never agree to meaningful inspection or verification, and that they’d respond to our raising the very topic with bluster and filibuster;
- That the North Koreans would publicly state that they would never give up their nuclear “deterrent,” but that our State Department would pretend not to notice;
- Aside from throwing us some sort of bone at Yongbyon, true to their word, they would never meaningfully disarm. Here, it’s key to understand that North Korea partially disabled — and now claims to be restarting — one 5-MW reactor (pics here and here) that was probably crumbling and used up anyway, but did not disable a 50-MW reactor just across the river (pics here and here) that was reported in 2005 to be as little as two years from completion;
- Most eerily, I predicted that the North Koreans would be caught in the act of a grave offense of proliferation, which would draw only a weak response from either the State Department or the U.N.;
- That the agreement would collapse either sometime between the New Hampshire primary and the Republican convention” — which would have been so had we not dropped our insistence on a complete and correct nuclear disclosure – or at best, by December of this year. Kim Jong Il would bargain for as much aid as he could get, then take his chips from the table to the cashier’s window;
- That Al Gore would be the Democratic front-runner going into the New Hampshire primary (OK, so nine out of ten).
So which of America’s “finest” diplomatic or journalistic minds — unlike me, they’re paid for the quality of their analysis — foretold recent events with greater accuracy? I even imagine that the AP’s Matthew Lee must have been reading this blog, including all of the uncomplimentary things I’ve written about his reporting, although he got the important part right this time:
A rare foreign policy success for the Bush administration is imploding as North Korea backs away from pledges to abandon nuclear weapons, pretty much as the president’s critics on the right had warned. [AP, Matthew Lee]
After that, Lee’s piece slides quickly into transparent partisan schadenfreude, but by then, hardly anyone is reading anyway. The point is that it was all so predictable that an amateur could foresee it. South Korea’s newly clear-eyed government is now threatening to cut off the energy aid to North Korea that was agreed in the February 2007 deal. Japan’s government has also taken a more hard-line turn. Its new prime minister is urging caution in dealing with the North’s “murky” regime and its ”unstable” leader, and urging preparations for the regime’s collapse. Even the State Department acknowledges that it will not disarm North Korea before next January, something it had previously refused to acknowledge. In a departure from its usual tip-toe language, it is warning the North not to restart the Yongbyon reactor.
The Bush administration’s internal divisions, its greed for a “legacy,” and its ultimate failure to apply real pressure to North Korea have come at incalculable cost to the world’s security. In the intervening lost years, North Korea became a nuclear power and proliferated nuclear technology to Syria, perhaps to Iran, and God-only-knows who else. Uncounted thousands have perished and been left to rot in the forests, fields, and ravines of North Korea’s death camps. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of North Koreans have died as refugees — some drowned, some shot by snipers, others executed upon their repatriation. Thousands more have starved in a resurgent famine that coexists with the regime’s waste of resources on a jarringly ugly skyscraper hotel it will never fill, and on a missile program that directly violates two forgotten U.N. resolutions. Some legacy.
In hindsight, the reason for this failure has more to do with the big picture than any of its the details. We cannot presume to operate within the same moral, legal, and diplomatic framework as those for whom such grave crimes against humanity are merely the ordinary course of business. If you’re already stamping on the necks of racially impure babies, gassing kids with their parents, and starving millions more, what’s one more broken treaty with the imperialists? If the loss of a few million North Korean lives means so little to Kim Jong Il, why should the loss of a few million American, South Korean, or Japanese lives mean more? The only hell Kim Jong Il fears is an earth on which he is no longer god.
My final, still unrealized prediction was that the North’s food situation would continue to worsen until it triggered food riots, which would be brutally suppressed, but which could fatally fracture the regime’s cohesion and aura of invincibility and start the regime’s long, bloody, agonizing untergang. I pointedly did not predict the year in which this would take place, and I think I deserve a little more time — two years, tops — for that one to come true. The signs point to the development of the conditions for that if you’re watching for them.
Rather than end this post with nothing more constructive than “I told you so,” let me suggest that we come to grips with a basic principle of negotiating with thugs: without leverage, it’s like herding buffalo with a sharp stick. In January of this year, as it became increasingly clear that North Korea would never fulfill its agreements, I published a ten-point proposal for the economic strangulation and political subversion of the North Korean regime. My Plan B, recognizing the fragility of Kim Jong Il’s “palace economy” and our capacity to shatter it with a few strokes of a pen, sets aside the use of military force and calls for the continuation of talks until Kim Jong Il sees the need to take them seriously. Such a strategy would force Kim Jong Il to accept transparency and real disarmament, or, alternatively, would terminate his misrule in the most manageable way conceivable.
It’s as common as it is false for defenders of the Bush administration’s nuclear diplomacy to deny that we have the leverage to force North Korea to disarm. Those who say this cannot see how, concealed just beneath his overflowing chins, Kim Jong Il’s windpipe is within our grasp. Kim Jong Il is a despotic terrorist with no regard for human life, and he is selling nuclear technology to other terrorists. The time has long passed for the gauzy gullibility of our policies toward him for the last two decades. A good first step would be for Chris Hill and his entire East Asia Bureau coterie — including Sung Kim, Balbina Hwang, Kathleen Stephens, and Glyn Davies — to acknowledge the obvious with their prompt resignations.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 19, 2008 at 6:46 am · Filed under Famine & Food Aid, NK Military, Regime Change
I got too busy to keep an eye on Good Friends’ updates for a while, but on my commute home last night, I managed to eke out the time to read some items that caught my interest. Overall, people continue to die by the dozens, though not yet by the hundreds or thousands. The starvation seems localized, yet those localities are distributed across the country, including the regions surrounding Pyongyang.
But what I’m watching for most keenly is a sign that this grim vigil can eventually end, so I watch for signs that disillusionment will become defiance, an exceedingly difficult thing in such a totalitarian society. Once again, Chongjin is the flash point:
On August 24, small teams with three to four security officers conducted intense investigations in the market area in the name of maintaining order. It was inevitable that a fight broke out between these security teams and female peddlers who were struggling to earn a living. In the beginning, the peddlers seemed to be losing, but female peddlers nearby quickly joined forces, and it turned into a big brawl. The word about the fight spread so fast throughout the region that the residents are not reluctant to admit that the fight was the second incident that shook the city of Chungjin since the March 4 incident. The fight brought a public outcry in the area by those female peddlers who did not participate in the fight and those from other markets in the city. This incident also caused anger toward the authorities on the part of the husbands and brothers of the female peddlers. Naturally, this incident has placed the authorities under strain. [link]
The result of this, if you believe that Good Friends has sources inside the local party meetings that followed, was much anger and self-criticism followed by a suspension of the police harassment of the traders. Elsewhere, mine workers appear to have gone on strike for back wages and food rations:
Recently, three workers at Eunryoul Mine of South Hwanghae Province fell ill in a single day. They collapsed due to long term starvation and hard labor. A troop of workers who were infuriated went to the management office and angrily demanded, “We cannot be patient anymore, give us unpaid wages and promise a food supply.” Up to now, Eunryoul mine has provided wages only once and a food supply only twice. [link]
In some areas, the authorities are feeling the limits of their power to antagonize desperate and angry people, which now creates division within the regime about whether to temporarily relax control or crack down hard at the risk of inflaming matters even more.
Otherwise, the regime is trying to sustain the intensity of its inspections too root out foreign influences and public executions of accused lawbreakers. It’s also rumored that the relatives of those who have defected to the South will be relocated to more “restricted” areas of the North, which will probably also be areas where less food is available.
The ultimate question is really this: when things turn ugly, how will the men with the guns react? If we are to believe even half of these reports, the soldiers are going hungry, too. This report is from Kangwan-Do, a front-line area that ought to have preferential treatment:
The food that is distributed into the military base is often robbed by the military officials, leaving low-ranked soldiers short on food. Thus, soldiers generally hope to avoid being placed in the Unit 1. An ex-soldier who recently finished his military duty from the Unit 1 says that he survived on eating grass-meals (풀밥) two times a day. If we observe the health conditions of the soldiers in Unit 1 of the Division 46, 40-50 out of 100 people are undernourished. [link]
The soldiers get by by stealing from everyone else, and everyone else is powerless to stop them:
In this summer, the cornfields in these villages looked like battlefields. After hard work and not being fed properly, the soldiers swept through the cornfields that belonged to the farmers. They even took corn that was not ripened yet, destroying the cornfields. The Farm Management Committee visited the commanding unit numerous times to report such incidence and request for countermeasures, but was no use. Instead, what they heard was that “farmers should think of this as support to the nation’s assault group who’s carrying on an important mission right now.” The farmers think of this group as nothing more than thieves. [link]
[In] Ahnbyun County, a group of hungry soldiers were caught stealing corn on the field by a guard. These soldiers beat up the farm guard before returning to their army base. The soldiers’ beating was so severe that the farm guard died in that evening. The following day those soldiers were arrested while cooking the corn they stole. [….]
Soldiers of the 10th Regiment, 5th division of 5th Corps stationed at Cheolwon, Kangwon Province have been fed only twice a day since last spring. Fortunately this month, some rice has been distributed. However the amount is so little and the soldiers traded the rice for corn because they get a larger volume of corn than the rice. The amount of rationed rice is barely enough for a meal. Consequently the hungry soldiers go to a nearby village and steal corn from the field. The stealing was so rampant that farm managers complained to the army authorities to no avail. A military officer admitted, “We have attempted to draw soldiers’ attention many times. But we have to recognize that the soldiers are fed only twice a day.” [….]
While guarding a corn field on a farm in Ohyun-ri, Yeonahn County, South Hwanghae Province, a farmer was killed and the another severely injured by soldiers attempting to steal some corn. Even though the farmers could guess that the perpetrating soldiers belong to the artillery regiment of the 4th Corps, there was no solid evidence to accuse any of the soldiers. After the afore-mentioned unit denied that any soldiers went outside the camp that day, no one was arrested. The farmers of other farms in the area also suffer from these thefts. They have had to assign more than fifty farmers with teams of seven farmers to rotating guard duties. Their only job is to guard the crops but it is beyond their capabilities at times. When many laborers and soldiers in large groups come and take what they want, it is impossible to stop them all. By the time they report it to the police station, all of them have run away. [link]
Suspecting military personnel involvement, police investigators went to the commanding officers at the training camp. When questioned, the officers denied allegations and refused to assist the police, saying “there is no evidence that our soldiers stole the cow. You should have more proof before suspecting any military personnel.” An altercation ensued when the military officers were quoted as yelling, “How dare you suspect our soldiers with this crime!” According to the police report, soldiers at the training camp beat the police investigators and damaged their bikes. Appeals to the commanding general met with the same resistance and defiance to take action. [link]
In the latter case, several soldiers were eventually sent to labor camps for the theft.
This pre-harvesting of crops is yet another reason why we should expect next year’s harvest to be disastrously low. Starving people pre-harvest crops, eat their seed corn, sell their equipment, and eat the oxen they use for plowing. Hunger begets hunger.
This must be having some effect on military recruitment and morale:
In the past, there were many students who wanted to serve in the military because of the possibility of becoming a highly-ranked general, but these days, the primary reason is food. Han Kyung-soo, 41 years old, explained this trend: “Parents see people coming back from military with thin bodies but the fact that they are still sending their children to serve in the military explains how hard their living really is. However, there are still more parents who do not want to send their children to serve, thinking their children will starve to death there.” [link]
Good Friends’s dispatches are also filled with reports of corruption by military officials, factory managers, and prosecutors, largely driven by hunger, and too numerous for me to quote anyting in particular. In the provinces, even the elite are going hungry, and those who perpetuated the system of terror are wasting away. Even engineers at Pyongyang’s Sunan Airport, which I toured here with Google Earth, are said to be stealing fuel to survive. There are also continuing reports of drug arrests.
So how worried is the regime about its control?
General Assembly of the National Party Cell Secretary (전국당세포비서대회) is scheduled to be held in October. Ten thousand cell secretaries, which will be biggest meeting ever, are expected to attend. This meeting resumed last year after a 14 year hiatus. The objective of this meeting is to discuss the food situation. The food situation has taken an unfavorable turn; the Central party lost its support of the people. They are concerned about a possible public movement in the near future because of the shortage of food.
At the meeting, the Central party will emphasize the role of the cell secretaries who are responsible for educating people. This will allow the cell secretaries to have the people under control. North Korea anticipates a food crisis this coming winter. This might lead people to a movement (protest). They will hold the biggest meeting of 10,000 participates to prevent people from a movement. One official of Central Party said, “The objectives of the general assembly of the National Party Cell Secretaries this year is to indoctrinate people in dogmas as to a projected food crisis. After this meeting is over, the control of people will most likely be tightened.” [link]
If you ask, some people will tell you that they question the accuracy of Good Friends’s reporting, but while I don’t make much of their analysis or projections, I’ve never seen their factual reporting disproven. Of course, it’s not as if we often have anyone else’s word to take.
Related: According to this report, some North Koreans are doing a brisk business in smuggling grain into the country, which is important — it’s a modest but important alternative means of supply that the regime can’t manipulate for its own political purposes. Curtis Melvin thinks that this method of importing food may be more effective at reaching “restricted” areas of the country than international food aid, which I don’t doubt.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 17, 2008 at 6:59 am · Filed under WMD, "United" Nations, Proliferation
Remember that fancy new North Korean missile test site that was in the news the other day?
North Korea has reportedly conducted an engine ignition test for a long-range missile, presumably the Taepodong-2 missile with a range of 6,700 km, at a new long-range missile test site under construction in Dongchang-li, North Pyongan Province. For the test, the rocket engine of a missile is laid out horizontally at the test site and ignited to test its performance.
The test confirms that part of the Dongchang-li test site, which is expected to be completed by 2009, is already operational, and that North Korea has been continuing development of long-range missiles.
The engine is presumably for a Taepodong-2 missile, whose test firing failed in July 2006, or an improved version with a range of longer than 10,000 km. A government source said after the failed test in 2006, North Korea has intermittently conducted engine ignition tests and continued development of long-range missiles.
The Dongchang-li test site is said to be much larger and better than the one in Musudan-ni. Its existence was first reported in the foreign press last Thursday. [Chosun Ilbo]
Let us consult the Book of Meaningless Prohibitions, Resolution 1718, Paragraph 5 (right after the ones about wearing white after Labor Day and snacking after 10 p.m.):
[T]he DPRK shall suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile programme and in this context re-establish its pre-existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching;
And here’s Paragraph 2 of Resolution 1695:
[T]he DPRK suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile programme, and in this context re-establish its pre-existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching;
I feel the occasional compulsion to point these things out not because they are consequential but because they are not. Still, the dwindling ranks (opens in a Vista-clogging pdf) of the UN-topians deserve to be browbeaten with these things. I’m actually hoping that this time, the U.N. will underperform its most famous parody by not even managing to send Kim Jong Il ”a very angry letter.” Our crack State Department did manage to meekly acknowledge the violation of one of these resolutions (one out of two?). Safe to say that not one of a wide range of possible consequences for this will be considered, much less imposed.
I should also note that they — the North Koreans, I mean — are blathering about their “war deterrent” again (that’s code talk for the nuclear arsenal they had supposedly promised to give up). Try to reassure yourself that nothing the North Koreans say should be taken at face value … except their promises to disarm, of course, because you’d have to hate peace not to believe those. Hey, you don’t hate peace, do you?
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 16, 2008 at 7:08 am · Filed under Human Rights, Activism, U.S. Politics
[Update: Not so, says Frank Jannuzi, who wrote in after I put up this post. According to Jannuzi, Biden has never blocked this bill and has never opposed the two provisions mentioned in the post below. As to the refugee provisions of H.R. 5834, Jannuzi says Biden supports them just as they are in the House version. Jannuzi also says that not only does Biden support a full-time Special Envoy with ambassadorial rank, Biden offered the amendment to the 2004 Act creating the post to begin with. And in all fairness, it was President Bush who filled the post with a junior, well-meaning loyalist whom he allowed the State Department to chew up and spit out.
What follows is a much-abbreviated paraphrasing of my follow-up questions and Jannuzi’s answers; don’t take anything here as a direct quote. So will there be more amendments to the bill? In the course of getting unanimous consent, naturally. And what specific amendments will Sen. Biden seek? Jannuzi wouldn’t say, but offered that the refugee provisions will have to approach the issue in a comprehensive and collaborative way. You mean collaborative as in with China? Well, collaborative with all of the countries where the refugees go and stay.
So I’m working with some conflicting information here, but I’m happy to let Jannuzi tell his side of it and thank him for writing in to do so and answer a few questions. I left the conversation feeling that whatever Biden pays Jannuzi is money well spent, and with my own opinion of him enhanced. And whatever the truth may have been last week, this week, barring some sneaky secret hold or other parliamentary end-run, the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization appears headed for passage before the Senate goes into recess … in some form. That’s the key caveat we’ll just have to wait to see. What do I think? I think this is a moment when I’m glad Biden is the vice presidential nominee, because I’m jaded enough to wonder if things would be looking up like this if he wasn’t.
So with that, let me suspend my appeal for calls and e-mails, and offer my most sincere thanks to those who made them.]
Original Post: Four years ago, President Bush signed the North Korean Human Rights Act in an attempt to address the world’s worst human rights atrocities in our world today: the mind-warping oppression of an entire nation, the starvation of millions while the regime blocked international aid and squandered its income on weapons, the murder of refugees and their babies, and the operation of the world’s worst concentration camps since Nazi Germany, camps that occupy vast areas of the country.
During the last four years, our State Department blocked key provisions of that Act that were designed to help North Korean refugees and make the end of those atrocities a precondition to North Korea gaining normal trade and diplomatic relations with the United States. The State Department has instead done Kim Jong Il’s work in Washington by watering down any criticism of the atrocities in North Korea to appease its regime. The 2004 Act also created a Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, a post filled three days a week by Jay Lefkowitz, who has been privately marginalized and publicly humiliated by Condoleezza Rice and her State Department. Meanwhile, human rights issues have been effectively sidelined as an issue in our talks with North Korea.
In an effort to force the State Department to comply with the law and throw a lifeline to the desperate and starving people of North Korea, the House has passed the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act. The Act would force the State Department to obey the law by allowing North Korean refugees to seek asylum at U.S. consular facilities abroad. It would also make the Human Rights Special Envoy’s job a full-time post with ambassadorial rank so that he can’t be sidelined from talks with the North Koreans as easily.
The State Department is now trying to block the Reauthorization Act by working through its wholly-owned subsidiaries in the Senate, Richard Lugar and Joe Biden. The legislation is now stalled in the Senate. An OFK reader with direct knowledge informs me that Biden and his staffer Frank Jannuzi, who also tried to block the 2004 Act, are trying to strip out the provisions on refugees aslyum and strengthening the Human Rights Special Envoy’s hand.
It’s tempting to say that that North Korean “endorsement” of Obama paid off, but in fact, toothless diplomacy comes naturally to Joe Biden, and this is probably about what we should expect from an Obama administration.
(By the way, if you still believe that sweet-talking the North Koreans will actually disarm them, let me help you catch up on recent events. While you were probably watching the presidential campaign, the North Koreans told Condi Rice to her face that they’re not giving up their nukes. They also refuse to allow any verification of their incomplete declaration of their nuclear programs and activities, and they now say they’re rebuilding the one worn-out reactor they had temporarily disabled. Meanwhile, a much larger reactor right across the river is untouched by any disarmament initiative and may be almost ready for start-up, and we’ve let the North Koreans completely off the hook when it comes to explaining their past proliferation to other countries and their suspected secret uranium enrichment program. For this, Kim Jong Il — who still refuses to hurry up and die – expects billions in aid and trade benefits and the full restoration of full diplomatic relations. Some deal.)
Unfortunately for the good guys, the ranking Republican, Richard Lugar, and his Korea point-man, Keith Luse, are just as much in the appeasement camp as Biden. With Lugar leading the Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee and no GOP members forcing him to stiffen his spine, foreign policy conservatives are a non-presence there. As a result, Biden is just days from achieving his goal of letting the Senate go into recess without passing this legislation.
This is why we need your help. Please urge your senators to pass this legislation before the Senate goes into recess. Here is a sample copy-and-paste message you can send to the web forms at this link (opens in a new window):
Please support the immediate passage of H.R.5834, the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act, an important effort address the modern-day holocaust in North Korea. In North Korea, millions are starving while its regime squanders its funds on weapons and luxuries for Kim Jong Il. In North Korea, 200,000 men, women, and children are suffering and dying in the world’s worst concentration camps since Nazi Germany. Hundreds of thousands who have fled North Korea have found no place to turn, as other nations refuse to extend a hand to assist these desperate refugees. Today, the Bush Administration wants to normalize diplomatic relations with this odious regime without demanding an end to those atrocities. I believe that policy is wrong, and that it won’t help disarm North Korea, which has reneged on the February 2007 disarmament agreement in spite of our silence and the betrayal of our values that silence represents. Please urge Senator Biden to stop blocking H.R. 5834 and let it pass in the same form as previously passed by the House.
I wouldn’t normally suggest writing to Biden if you’re not from Delaware, but of course, Biden’s place on the 2008 Democratic ticket means that he wants everyone in America to be his constituent. So please, send your message directly to Joe Biden, too.
Fortunately for the good guys, Chris Hill’s alter-ego Sung Kim needs to be confirmed by the Senate to become the State Department’s Special Envoy to the six-party talks, the latest failed attempt to appeal to Kim Jong Il’s softer side, and any senator could hold up that confirmation.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 13, 2008 at 11:51 am · Filed under Anju Links
HELLO! ARE-YOU-THE-BRAIN-SPECIALIST!? More rumors about Kim Jong Il’s health, and speculation about what might follow him, at the New York Times. The Times doesn’t specify, but another report claims it was brain surgery.
THIS TIME, I TEND TO AGREE WITH THE CONSENSUS VIEW of post-KJI North Korea, whenever that eventually should grace us all: military junta with Dauphin figurehead to lend legitimacy to puppetmasters. But with the regime so economically weakened and unpopular, one can’t help thinking that the loss of the god-king would break what little is left of the old theocratic magic and trigger a round of backstabbing intrigues that would put the Borgias to shame, or greed-driven reforms that would quickly get out of hand. Big Man regimes seldom outlast the Big Man for long, and North Korea is already an outlier.
THE HANKYOREH ASKS THE SAME QUESTION I’ve been asking: How the hell can people claim to know that today, the world’s most reclusive despot can brush his own teeth? Read the whole thing and decide for yourself. My own skepticism is undiminished, especially in light of past history. Hey, a well-timed illness can be just the thing if you need to stall your way out of a promise to a lame-duck president.
IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL IT’S INEVITABLE: The revival of U.S. and South Korean operational plans for the collapse of North Korea is taking on new urgency these days. Recall that former President Roh backed away from the very idea of planning for such a contingency, for fear of offending a regime that has 10,000 artillery tubes pointed at South Korean cities and towns.
YOU CAN READ SOME RELATED THOUGHTS from Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation, although I found this quote to be the most interesting part of his Web memo:
The magnitude of the dispute between the U.S. and North Korea over the verification protocol will make it more difficult for diplomats to continue papering over differences. The Bush Administration is constrained in its ability to again capitulate to North Korean demands in light of rising criticism regarding its perceived over-eagerness to reach an agreement and secure a policy legacy. As such, there is declining potential for a breakthrough during the waning months of the Bush Administration. [Bruce Klingner, Heritage Foundation Web memo]
I hope he’s right, but he may be underestimating the determination of the State Department, and the election-year disengagement of the entire elected portion of our government.
MEANWHILE, DON KIRK RELAYS THIS UNDERSTATEMENT from uber-appeaser Evans Revere of the Korea Society :
“We’re at a bit of an impasse now,” says Evans Revere, president of the Korea Society in New York, but “whether it has anything to do with reports [of Kim’s illness] is a matter of speculation.” [Don Kirk]
No it isn’t. Multiple impasses, including the most recent, all predated the reports of Kim Jong Il’s stroke (may Allah constrict his cerebral capillaries). In any event, those impasses have only been broken by unilateral State Department capitulations. The North Korean side of this negotiation has been at an impasse since at least September 2005, with the negligible exception of further disabling something that was used up anyway. We’ve made all the concessions, and we’ve only negotiated against ourselves. The North Koreans mainly just watched, and to a degree, tolerated the spectacle.
A GOOGLE EARTH PROJECT FOR YOU?
North Korea has been building a new long-range missile base, which is larger and more efficient than its existing intercontinental ballistic missile base, in Pongdong-ni, North Pyongan Province over the last eight years, AP quoted a military expert as reporting Thursday. At the moment, North Korea maintains a long-range missile base in Musudan-ni, North Hamgyeong Province. [Chosun Ilbo]
Supposedly, it’s near North Korea’s west coast, not far from China. The new facility is designed to allow the North to test long-range missiles more frequently than the older, smaller Musudan-ri facility. You may want to scour this, this, this, this, and this for clues as well.* Someday, I suppose, we’ll give the North Koreans another extended series of payoffs in exchange for some unverifiable promises to stop building missiles, too.
THE CORRUPTION-RIDDEN U.N. DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM, whose funds were diverted by the North Koreans, and whose accounts were used to conceal suspicious North Korean financial transactions, is considering a return to North Korea. Aren’t there other countries with more potential for development than those that mercilessly crush every flicker of enterprise? For a look at North Korea’s own development priorities, see the previous item. Shouldn’t that be a factor in how these funds are allocated?
THE OUTRAGE! Commie textbooks being pulled out of classrooms all over South Korea.
* Curtis Melvin of NK Econ Watch, who has already published a comprehensive map of everything remotely interesting in North Korea, thus robbing all other Google-Earthers of any hope of “finding” anything new, is ineligible for this challenge, since he probably found it before Pike and Bermudez did anyway. We are in awe, Curtis, and we curse you just the same for ruining it for the rest of us.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 11, 2008 at 3:22 pm · Filed under Kim Jong Il, Kremlinology
The latest report on Kim Jong Il’s condition — for what it’s worth — is that he is recovering but partially paralyzed on his left side.
Foreign doctors, possibly from China and France, performed the operation after Kim, 66, collapsed about Aug. 15, the newspapers Dong-a Ilbo and JoongAng Ilbo reported, citing unidentified government officials.
Kim’s condition has improved and he is not suffering from slurred speech, a disability often associated with a stroke, the reports said. [AP, Jae Soon Chang]
It saddens me to consider that the extraordinary rendition of a few French doctors would do far more for the cause of world peace than the State Department’s entire East Asia Bureau and the U.N. combined. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Human Rights Industry to get on board with that one.
As to the increasing specificity of these reports, I will just say that it’s surprising … even incredible. And in addition to so many other potential sources of disinformation here, consider that most of these leaks appear to be coming from South Korean intelligence sources.
In another sense, whether the rumors are true is subordinate to domestic perceptions. Today’s North Korea has leaky borders, a proliferation of cheap tunable radios, cell phones, dope dealers, and porn smugglers. The rumors of Kim’s condition are probably racing through markets in Wonsan and Chongjin as we speak. In the world’s last great information vacuum, rumor must move with the speed and power of the water behind a broken dam. In the right hands and with some divine intervention, the rumors themselves could destabilize North Korea regardless of whether there is any truth to them.
Another (partial) State Department briefing transcript below the fold.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 10, 2008 at 2:01 pm · Filed under Kim Jong Il, Kremlinology
That night there came from the farmhouse the sound of loud singing, in which, to everyone’s surprise, the strains of Beasts of England were mixed up. At about half past nine Napoleon, wearing an old bowler hat of Mr. Jones’s, was distinctly seen to emerge from the back door, gallop rapidly round the yard, and disappear indoors again. But in the morning a deep silence hung over the farmhouse. Not a pig appeared to be stirring. It was nearly nine o’clock when Squealer made his appearance, walking slowly and dejectedly, his eyes dull, his tail hanging limply behind him, and with every appearance of being seriously ill. He called the animals together and told them that he had a terrible piece of news to impart. Comrade Napoleon was dying!
A cry of lamentation went up. Straw was laid down outside the doors of the farmhouse, and the animals walked on tiptoe. With tears in their eyes they asked one another what they should do if their Leader were taken away from them. A rumour went round that Snowball had after all contrived to introduce poison into Napoleon’s food. At eleven o’clock Squealer came out to make another announcement. As his last act upon earth, Comrade Napoleon had pronounced a solemn decree: the drinking of alcohol was to be punished by death.
By the evening, however, Napoleon appeared to be somewhat better, and the following morning Squealer was able to tell them that he was well on the way to recovery. [George Orwell, Animal Farm, Chapter 8]
The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and LA Times are quoting U.S. or Western intelligence sources that that Kim Jong Il is “seriously” or “gravely” ill. From there, the reports diverge. One senior South Korean intelligence officer says it’s “certain” that Kim Jong Il is ill. One South Korean diplomat says the illness was “not serious enough to threaten [Kim’s] life,” which may or may not contradict “Western intelligence sources” which suspect a stroke. One legislator from the leftist opposition Democratic Party, who purports to quote an intelligence source, says he’s recovering from the problem, whatever it was. The North Koreans say the reports are not only false, but “a conspiracy plot.” Let me translate this my analysis into words that may not be suitable for the President’s Daily Briefing:
Who the f*ck knows?
It’s all speculation, and probably groundless speculation at that. Who do you suppose has access to up-to-date information about Kim Jong Il’s health that would actually leak it to foreign intelligence? We have no way of knowing whether the information is (a) credible, (b) accurately interpreted, or (c) outright disinformation. And then there’s this point made by the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler:
Still, in recent months, a variety of media outlets have reported that Kim was so weak that he could not walk 30 yards (he later appeared in public and seemed able to walk), that a group of German doctors went to North Korea to perform heart surgery on him (the doctors denied it), and that he passed away (most likely untrue because he’s since appeared in public, although at least one veteran expert has suggested the government could be using body doubles).
Meaning, I’ve written about these reported illnesses and extended absences enough times to know that we’ve never managed to figure out if there was a greater significance to any of those reports. All of them could be true, or none of them. I will boldly predict, nonetheless, that sometime within the next 20 years, Kim Jong Il will die, and there will be much rejoicing carefully disguised as mourning. Then, some time within the next five years, when one junta leader has managed to stab all of his rivals in the back and consolidate the next oligarchy, there will be a “secret speech” about His Porcine Majesty’s “mistakes.” Andrei Lankov, quoted in the L.A. Times story above, puts it this way:
“He is going to die sooner or later, and eventually one of these reports about his health will be true, but this one is probably much ado about nothing,” said Andrei Lankov, a respected Pyongyang watcher and a professor at South Korea’s Kookmin University.
Oh, and the AP’s drive-by Korea-watchers Pamela Hess and Matthew Lee — whose analysis of world events seldom fails to blend illogic and superficiality — wrote a story under the single dumbest headline I’ve seen all year:
Kim Jong Il may be gravely ill, jeopardizing talks
Which I suppose is a lot like printing one that says, “Hitler Suicide Jeopardizes Non-Aggression Pact with Stalin.” Safe to say, Hess and Lee haven’t really been keeping up with the state of those talks and ought to take a few moments out of their busy schedule to read this blog now and then. Remember, children, they get paid for this. I do it for free.
Anyway, feel free to beseech the deity or fetish object of your choice that Kim Jong Il will soon join his old man in the Great Meat Locker. Sure, things could always get worse — and probably will — but that’s more likely to be because the rumors are false than because they’re not.
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