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Monthly Archive: December, 2008

December 18, 2008

Of Fools and Their Money

When North Korea first started ejecting South Koreans from Kaesong, I noted that the Kaesong project was already economically marginal and falling well short of its ambitious goals. I also predicted that the North Korean move would be fatal to the project’s efforts to coax cowardly capital into a potential war zone controlled by the world’s most opaque, least capital-friendly regime. That prediction has already come true. The leftist Hankyoreh is reporting that South Korean companies are fleeing for the...

Categories NK Economics
December 18, 2008

Chris Hill Resignation Watch

Jack and Wolmae point to a statement by Chris Hill that Obama’s people have not invited him to stick around. On balance, I agree they probably won’t, but I’m not sure I agree that this article answers the question. First, parse Hill’s words. When asked if Obama’s people asked him to stay, he said, “I haven’t talked to anybody about my future.” Even for Hill, that statement contains a lot of loopholes. Second, consider the credibility of the source. I’ll...

Categories Washington Views
December 17, 2008

Even the Metaphors Are Deadlocked!

In the summary of its December 15th press briefing following the collapse of the Not-Quite-Agreed Framework, the State Department admitted that the talks are at an impasse and declared that the “[b]all is in North Korea’s court.” Interestingly, the Chosun Ilbo, summarizing a Rodong Sinmun editorial calling on North Koreans to unite around “the strength of comradeship,” headlines with the opposite conclusion: “Ball Is in America’s Court, N.Korea Warns.” Here, I must register rare agreement with our State Department. Our...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 16, 2008

WaPo Finally ‘Discovers’ Concentration Camps in North Korea

I submit that any man so morally retarded that he would utter the statement quoted below is not qualified to represent the values or interests of the United States abroad. And South Korea isn’t alone in tuning out the horrors. The United States is more concerned with containing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The State Department’s stunning lack of urgency was captured in a recent statement from its assistant secretary for Asia, Christopher R. Hill: “Each country, including our own, needs...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/The Camps
December 15, 2008

Kaesong Worker Defects

So, I was wondering, just how popular is the Workers’ Paradise among its hand-picked proletariat, that is, those able to pass the best family history, background, and loyalty screening the government of North Korea can manage? Not very, evidently: A North Korean defector who escaped from an inter-Korean industrial complex in the border city of Kaesong where she was employed remains in a third country, a South Korean activist here said Wednesday. The 27-year-old woman, whose identity was withheld for...

Categories Deprogramming/NK Economics
December 15, 2008

Surely our government has bigger shoes than this to throw?

Taking a page, no doubt, from Richard Nixon’s Christmas bombing of Hanoi, President Bush has decided that Pyongyang must face stern measures for reneging on its most recent agreement to verifiably disarm: No more fuel oil for you! The humanity! Well, all I can say is, thank God he didn’t disinvite the Pyongyang State Symphony. How many more days until this cowboy diplomacy madness ends?

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 14, 2008

North Korea Imposes Harsher Penalties for Unauthorized Border Crossing

Although I recall hearing someone say recently that human rights would be an important part of the State Department’s negotiations with North Korea, I have yet to see any recent evidence that State’s masters of cerebellingus have applied their techniques to the task of lifting North Korea to a shallower level of hell. Somone had better tell Glyn Davies that a few more adjectives will have to be sacrificed for the cause: North Korea has imposed stiffer punishments on those...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees
December 14, 2008

Chosun Ilbo Re-Runs Accounts of “On the Border” Refugees

If you haven’t seen “On the Border,” the Chosun Ilbo has re-posted the accounts of the refugees featured in the documentary: – Young-Hwa, a 19 year-old girl crossing China and Laos with her family. – Kim Soon-Ok, the young mother of a handicapped child, forced to leave him behind in China to earn money for his medical treatment and passage to South Korea. – Mun Yun-Hee, a 26 year-old woman who allowed herself to be sold to escape starvation in...

Categories Refugees
December 12, 2008

On North Korea, Bush has one last chance not to go out with a whimper.

In several ways, it would be a mistake to make too much of the New York Times’s declaration of the “collapse” of Agreed Framework 2.0, a/k/a the Not Quite Agreed Framework. The Times’s coverage of this story has never been particularly good, and its editorials have been ridiculously inconsistent. Clearly, The Times’s loathing of Bush did not dwell easily with its approval of Bush’s new willingness to excuse North Korea from every standard of human civilization. The Times saying so...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks
December 11, 2008

That’s Going to Buy a Lot of Cognac for Someone (Updated 7/2009)

How likely a story does this sound to you? The accident took place in April 2005 when, it is claimed, a helicopter owned by Air Koryo, the North Korean state airline, was dispatched from Pyongyang, the capital, to collect a woman who was in labour with triplets from a remote island. On the return flight it crashed into a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, causing a fire that destroyed a large amount of humanitarian relief goods. [Times of...

Categories NK Crime
December 11, 2008

U.S. Halted Food Aid to N. Korea in August

Not surprisingly, the North reneged on the agreements it made with USAID to get food aid. Its interest is in feeding its elite, our interest is in feeding those in greatest need, and there’s little overlap between those two groups. It’s more surprising to see Americans with the courage to hold North Koreans to their commitments. We are now learning that things broke down last August, and that most of the food aid was never delivered. A much-heralded U.S. program...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
December 11, 2008

No Deal on Verification

Chris Hill’s words to the press speak well enough for themselves, but the testiness of his tone tells us just as much. He has no one but himself to blame for his own humiliation, of course. It’s just unfortunate that his personal ambition created such risk and suffering for so many others. Christopher R. Hill ,Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs China World Hotel Beijing, China December 11, 2008 ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Good morning. Obviously we would like...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 9, 2008

Roh Legacy Death Watch

There are two entries in this merry vigil: – Roh’s brother ordered jailed over a bribery scandal. – A left-wing agitprop history textbook heads off for the ash-heap of …. Still, the counter-revisionism is going a tad too far when episodes like Kwangju are flat-out written out of history. The idea is to put historical events into their proper context. Kwangju no more defines South Korean history or its modern reality than the Pullman Strike defines American history or its...

Categories Korean Education/Korean Politics/Korean Society
December 9, 2008

Agreed Framework 2.0 Death Watch

Whoop de doo. The six-party talks have started again. China has circulated a draft protocol that strives mightily to top Chris Hill’s gift for vagueness by omitting the word “sampling.” I don’t think the people who designed this six-party concept, in retrospect, realized what a perfect venue this was for Chinese, Russian, and (often) South Korean back-stabbing. The concept may be with us for a while, at least as a superficial demonstration of Obama’s commitment to “multilateralism.”* With the clock...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 9, 2008

Food Situation Updates

A UN agency reports that North Korea’s food production this year will be up slightly over last year’s, which is a lot like predicting that the Nasdaq will perform better next year than this. The production figure of 3.3 million tons of cereals is still far short of the North’s total needs — 800,000 tons short — and lower than the average annual production of the post-famine period. At the same time, the WFP and FAO are both saying that...

Categories Famine & Food Aid