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Monthly Archive: February, 2009

February 26, 2009

State Dept. Releases Annual Human Rights Report

The State Department has released its 2008 country reports on human rights. The North Korea report is here, and it reflects no improvements in the abysmal state of life, such as it is, in North Korea. It features this litany of arbitrary murders by the state’s agents: During the year the South Korean nongovernmental research organization North Korean Human Rights Infringement Record Center reported that North Korea carried out 901 public executions in 2007. North Korea also reportedly carried out...

Categories Human Rights
February 26, 2009

Japanese Human Rights Group Launches Spam Fax Campaign Against N. Korea

The Japanese NGO ReACH, which advocates for the return of abducted Japanese citizens and for human rights in North Korea, has assembled a long list of known North Korean fax numbers, which I’ve published here for all the world to see, below the fold. REACH is calling on Japan’s massive community of netizens (and you, too!) to send spam faxes to these numbers, and offers some recommendations to maximize the subversive/disruptive effect if you decide to join the fun: –...

Categories Abductions/Activism/Japan & Korea
February 25, 2009

안주 Links for 25 February 2009

WHOOP DE DOO: Another one of those private delegations of North Korea “experts” is headed for Pyongyang. I’ll go out on a long limb here: in a few days they’ll return none the wiser to deliver more North Korean extortion demands to credulous American reporters. AND HOW IS THIS NOT A PROVOCATION? According to the Defense Ministry, North Korean artillery batteries deployed in Haeju and on the Ongjin Peninsula fired dozens of shells into the West Sea in the morning...

Categories Anju Links
February 25, 2009

One Big Missile Measuring Contest

Kim Jong Il may not really be capable of traipsing around the remote area near the Musudan-ri launch site, but the point here is that his regime wants us to believe its hints and threats. As little regard as Kim Jong Il has for U.N. weapons inspectors and resolutions, you have to ask yourself why they still bother to tell fibs like this: The preparations for launching experimental communications satellite Kwangmyongsong-2 by means of delivery rocket Unha-2 are now making...

Categories Proliferation/WMD
February 24, 2009

Anju Links for 24 February 2009

SOUTH KOREANS BLAME THE NORTH for the current downturn in inter-Korean relations by 63 to 27, according to a new poll. A solid majority supports aid to the North only on the condition that it gives up its nuclear weapons. Assuming this poll is accurate, it suggests that North Korea’s recent behavior has created a backlash in South Korean public opinion, creating support for Lee’s North Korea policy that didn’t exist when he was elected. MORE RESHUFFLING OF GENERALS in...

Categories Anju Links
February 24, 2009

Dear Mrs. Clinton: Pyongyang Will Not Be Triangulated

For a moment, leave aside what we think Hillary Clinton’s goals for her recent Asia visit should have been. For most of us, that is just an exercise in catharsis anyway. Ask yourself what Mrs. Clinton’s subjective goals were. One certainly must have been to improve our frayed alliances with South Korea (frayed by Roh Moo Hyun’s America-bashing populism) and Japan (frayed by George W. Bush’s betrayal on the abduction issue), and to show both nations that America is a...

Categories Diplomacy
February 21, 2009

Human Rights Industry Reaps What It Sows; Humanity Loses

If I had to pick one single moment when the Human Rights Industry lost its focus on the objective measurement of evil, this statement by Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan may be it: “A new agenda is in the making, with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue policies of fear and insecurity. This includes cynical attempts to redefine and sanitise torture,” said Ms Khan. She said the US claimed to be promoting freedom in Iraq,...

Categories Activism/China/Human Rights
February 20, 2009

Kyodo: N. Korea Enriching Uranium at Yongbyon

South Korea and the United States have shared intelligence that North Korea is operating a plant to produce a small amount of highly enriched uranium at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, a Seoul daily reported Wednesday. ”Despite North Korean authorities’ denial of existence of the uranium enrichment program, South Korea and the U.S. share an intelligence North Korea is running a plant for uranium enrichment,” a high-ranking South Korean source reportedly told the Dong-a Ilbo. [Kyodo News] That would certainly help...

Categories Human Rights/Proliferation
February 20, 2009

An Olympic Verdict

At the National Review, Jay Nordlinger reviews the arguments that bringing the Olympics to Beijing would pressure and encourage the Chinese authorities to liberalize and soften their oppression. Nordlinger finds the evidence to be quite the opposite, and I would go a step further: the ruling party not only amplified its oppression to keep the Olympics scripted, it successfully harnessed widespread foreign disapproval of its oppression to galvanize nationalist support for its worst policies. Today, we see a China that...

Categories China
February 20, 2009

Sanctions? Yes We Can! (But Without the U.N.)

The power to tax is the power to destroy — Daniel Webster As the Obama Administration inherits an intractable, non-compliant, bellicose, and terroristic North Korea, the administration’s great challenge is to see beyond a strategy based on concessions alone. Via GI Korea, the new administration appears to be polarizing into factions, just as the Bush Administration did eight years ago. One of the factions advocates “normalization of relations with North Korea as soon as possible,” in other words, giving even...

Categories NK Economics
February 19, 2009

Of Fools and Their Money, Part 2: Orascom Deal Starts to Sour

That Orascom’s big new investment in North Korea would fail has always been predictable, but it was always incomprehensible how Orascom’s business model centered around introducing the one thing with the most potential to destabilize the regime’s hold on power: a mobile phone network. Not surprisingly, Orascom and the North Korean regime are already at odds over Orascom’s plan to pass out 100,000 free phones to generate a base of bill-paying subscribers. Instead, the regime is selling them for $235...

Categories NK Economics
February 18, 2009

Succession Rumors Spread Inside North Korea

There may or may not be any truth to rumors that third son Kim Jong Un will the figurehead successor to His Porcine Majesty, but word seems to have spread inside the kingdom: The source said, “People who have secretly been listening to South Korean radio seem to be circulating these stories but the Party in Pyongyang has not issued a special decree about it. Many people have an interest in the successor issue, so the rumors have been spreading...

Categories Deprogramming
February 17, 2009

Prof. Sung Yoon Lee in the Asia Wall Street Journal

One of the most consistently perceptive commentators on dealing with North Korea is Professor Sung-Yoon Lee, an adjunct assistant professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. By a very interesting coincidence, Stephen Bosworth, the next North Korea Special Envoy, is the Dean there. If Bosworth tolerates views this much at odds with his own, we can certainly hope he’s open-minded enough to take some good advice from Prof. Lee — if not...

Categories Diplomacy/Washington Views
February 17, 2009

Seoul to Open New Refugee Center by 2012

On its face, this announcement is both interesting, and perhaps, understated: The Ministry of Justice announced on Wednesday plans to build a retreat for refugees in Gyeonggi Province, aiming to open it in 2012. The ministry secured funds of W260 million in this year’s budget to design the facility, and is reportedly negotiating with the Ministry of Public Administration and Security for an appropriate site. [Chosun Ilbo] Nowhere in the article does it say that the new center will be...

Categories Refugees
February 16, 2009

Rice Prices Fall in Remote N. Korean Provinces

That’s good news, because those are the areas the government generally disfavors in its food distribution planning. According to a source in North Korea, rice prices in Pyongyang, Pyonsung, Nampo, Sin-ui-ju, Hyesan, and Chunjin fell sharply in mid-January. The rice price in Pyongyang at the end of January was 1700~1800 Won per 1 kg (the price used to be 2000-2100 Won), the price in Pyonsung and Sincheon was 1700won (the price used to be 2100 Won), and the price in...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
February 16, 2009

20% of Arriving N. Korean Refugees Need Psychological Treatment

It’s because of statistics like these that no one should underestimate the difficulty of Korean reunification: The most common ailments among North Korean refugees are dental disease followed by tuberculosis, according to Hanawon, the government-run institution for North Korean refugees. [….] Some 20 percent of inmates also need psychological treatment after leaving the institution, Hanawon said. Many also still owe money to brokers who arranged their defection to the South and experience discrimination. Here’s this week’s “we are one” moment:...

Categories Reconstruction/Refugees
February 13, 2009

Stephen Bosworth, Formerly Ambassador to S. Korea, to Be New Asia Assistant Secretary N. Korea Special Envoy

One of the legitimate complaints about Bush’s Korea policy that Democrats actually made was that one man cannot simultaneously be an Assistant Secretary for all of East Asia and a de facto special envoy to North Korea. The Special Envoy post looks to be going to Kurt Campbell, and now, it looks like the East Asia A/S post will go to former U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Stephen Bosworth, who was in Pyongyang recently displaying his prowess at forcing the North...

Categories Diplomacy