When a government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter, or to abolish it.
Hey, something has to push that off page one. And people really think China will finally bring North Korea to heel this time? Fat chance. If the North Koreans are interested in making a big spectacle of their belligerence, it’s a very bad sign indeed for Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two young women who made the mistake of trying to tell us the truth of another, slow-motion massacre, perpetrated by North Korea and enabled by China.
Mr. Gates raised “the notion that we should think about this as we are pursuing the six-party talks,” said a senior defense official who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. “We ought to think about what more we need to do should they not prove successful.” [N.Y. Times, Elisabeth Bumiller]
Better late than never, and he’s welcome to order from this menu.
MISSILE TEST UPDATE: Here’s the latest from the South Korean intelligence leak ticker:
The source, asking not to be identified, said an object that appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was recently spotted on a cargo train at an artillery research center near Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
“We believe that the object is certainly an ICBM,” said the official, adding that its size is somewhat similar to the one the North fired into the Pacific on April 5. North Korea is believed to have started moving the object to a missile launch pad in Musudan-ri on the country’s east coast, according to the official.
“The missile may be a modified version of a Taepodong-2 missile, which can travel over 4,000 km,” the official said. A Taepodong-2 missile is theoretically capable of reaching the western U.S. “It usually takes about two months to set up a launch pad, but the process could be done in as little as two weeks, which means the North could launch a long-range missile as early as mid-June,” the source said. [Korea Times]
NORTH KOREA THREATENS NUCLEAR WAR AGAIN:
An official North Korean newspaper on Thursday said a “tense touch-and-go situation is being created” on the Korean Peninsula by the South Korean government’s decision to join the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led anti-proliferation regime, and UN discussions of possible sanctions against the North.
“A minor accidental clash could lead to a nuclear war,” the paper warned in a commentary titled “Prelude to a War of Northward Invasion.” It defends North Korea’s nuclear development, saying, “There is no choice but to further intensify deterrence for self defense to prevent warmongers from attempting to provoke new wars.” [Chosun Ilbo]
President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 10, 2008 as a reward for promising to verifiably dismantle its nuclear weapons programs. Discuss among yourselves.
MORE U.S. CALLS FOR MILITARY STRIKES: Must be those damn neocons again!
This time, however, most who are urging the military action option are not Republicans or neo-conservatives but Democrats who have championed dialogue with Pyongyang. While conservative hardliners, including former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, focus on stopping the six-party talks and strengthening sanctions on North Korea, the doves want a broader spectrum of responses ranging from direct talks to military action.
Former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, the architect of the “Perry Process,” a comprehensive approach to the North Korean nuclear program, told a forum in Washington Thursday that if non-military options do not stem the North’s escalation of tension, the United States must consider others, namely military options. [….]
In an interview with The Dong-A Ilbo last month …, Philip D. Zelikow, who designed the comprehensive and bold approach to the North under the Bush administration, also proposed a preemptive U.S. strike on North Korean missiles placed on launch pads. [….]
Michael O`Hanlon, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institute, told a forum Wednesday that if the North begins to sell nuclear materials to terrorist groups or other countries, the Obama administration will seriously consider military sanctions. [Dong-A Ilbo]
This is the height of foolishness. U.N. santions may have been undermined by China, but the Treasury Department’s targeting of the North Korean regime’s finances worked. We’ve never applied it in a sustained and comprehensive way, and we’ve barely done anything to cultivate and enable a North Korean resistance network. A war in Korea would play to Kim Jong Il’s last remaining strength and get millions of people killed. Knowing that as we do, all of this is probably just talk. All the same, we need to begin the process of strangling the regime and planning for North Korea’s reconstruction now.
MYTHS ARE PAINFUL THINGS TO PART WITH:
At the time of the first [nuclear] test, the common liberal lament was that Kim Jong Il was belligerent only because President Bush had eschewed diplomacy in favor of tough rhetoric, like naming Pyongyang to the “axis of evil.” [Wall Street Journal]
And now they want to start a war. The Journal’s editorial, by the way, is a very good summary of the second-term Bush policy toward North Korea, and how that policy failed. And the architect of that policy? Don’t worry. President Obama found a safe place for him where he can’t possibly do any harm. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
From the London Telegraph comes the story of Hyok Kang, a resident of Onsong, quite possibly the most miserable quarter of North Korea that isn’t a concentration camp, in its extreme northeast.
Kang speaks of a hellish everyday life in which people were publicly executed for stealing copper wire to sell:
When the time came, the condemned man was displayed in the streets before being led to the place of execution, where he was made to sit on the ground, head bowed, so everyone could get a good look at him. He was dressed in a garment designed by army scientists for public executions, a greyish one-piece suit made of very thick, fleece-lined cotton. That way, when the bullets are fired, the blood doesn’t spurt out but is absorbed by this fabric, which turns red. The body is thrown on a cart and then abandoned in the mountains for the dogs to eat. [The Telegraph, Interview with Hyok Kang]
Kang explains why anyone who take such a risk. Copper is valuable, China is just across the river, and food was desperately scarce:
At school, as time passed, there were fewer and fewer of us at our desks. The teachers sat shapelessly in their chairs, cane in hand, while we repeated by heart lessons we had already learned about the childhoods of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Yet work in the fields was still compulsory despite the fact that the remaining pupils and teachers were extremely weak. We actually went there not to work, but to glean anything we could find to keep from starving to death.
In the end, just before I escaped to China with my family in 1998, there were only eight or nine of us in class. The rest were too weak even to walk.
Given the death-stalked state of existence in Onsong and its proximity to China, you may wonder why anyone sticks around. People cross the border anyway, some to trade and earn money, and others to leave for good. The North Korean regime stops at nothing to prevent its subjects from escaping. The first odd thing you notice about this large town, located beside a river that forms an international border, is that no bridge crosses it. Long ago, one did. In this image, you can see the pilings of a bridge still jutting out of the Tumen River.
The bridge was probably blown during the Korean War. The North Korean regime, obsessed with secrecy and isolation, never rebuilt it. Incidentally, I believe this New York Times article incorrectly identifies the bridge pictured here (more photos here) as crossing into Onsong. Based on this map, this article, and this article, I believe that this bridge actually span the Tumen River between Tumen, China and nearby Namyang, North Korea, approximately eight miles to the west. Google Earth shows no bridge crossing the river at Onsong, although it is a much larger city than Namyang.
In Onsong, the illusions of the state coexist uneasily with the grim realities of life and death. What North Korean city would be complete without a grandiose political monument and a hill covered with shallow graves?
Onsong is only visible in medium resolution. The graves are faint and barely visible, but compare them to what you see here. South of the city, you can see a string of coal mines, as Kang describes:
To halt a burgeoning traffic in refugees, smugglers, and food traders, the regime was recently reported to have built a tall wire fence across most of its border. But the fence wasn’t all:
Side by side with building the wooden fence, North Korea is also preparing traps at strategic spots along Yalu and Tumen rivers that are frequented by people.
A defector who recently crossed the border said, “The traps set up by the border guards are about 3 to 5 meters deep and have sharp metal or wood spikes at the bottom so people are killed or seriously injured when they fall into them.”
These traps, which were installed outside political prison camps to stop inmates from escaping, have now made an appearance along the national border. [Chosun Ilbo]
More recently, border guards summarily executed 15 people, most or all of them women, for trying to cross the border. The mass execution contributed to a rare display of public anger by residents, though there have been other reports of discontent in Onsong for years. The few outsiders who have heard of Onsong probably remember it for the 1987 massacre of 5,000 prisoners of a nearby concentration camp who rose up against the guards there. After the guards machine-gunned the prisoners and retook the camp, they leveled it. I have been unable to locate the site of the former camp.
Lots of incoming traffic today, but it’s not coming from any other linked url on the internet. If you’re one of those visitors, would you mind dropping a comment to tell me where you heard about this site?
G.I. Korea’s latest posting on the renewed “don’t ask, don’t tell” controversy causes me to note a point that this entire debate is missing: I saw very few cases in which soldiers were discharged involuntarily solely because of homosexual conduct. In my experience as a former Army JAG, at least 80% of the Chapter 15 (homosexual conduct) discharges I saw were self-reports by soldiers who may or may not have been gay, but who just wanted out of the Army. They tended to do this after reassignment into units with bad commanders or NCO’s, often after years of honorable service. Had they really been gay all that time? Here, their answers varied. I often had my doubts, but I seldom really needed to know that much detail to defend them. Read the rest of this entry »
“The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States and our allies,” Gates told officials gathered at an Asian defense summit here. “And we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action.” [L.A. Times]
The reporter makes this out to be an epiphany shattering a deliberate official ambiguity, but if this wasn’t already made very clear to the North Koreans long ago, that would be the most frightening part of the story. Indeed, the fact that the North Koreans have specifically threatened to sell nuclear weapons to terrorists suggests that they know how seriously we’d take that. Then again, when you look at our complete failure to react to the revelation of North Korea building the Syrians their own nuclear reactor — reportedly paid for by Iran — you have to wonder how seriously the North Koreans take our “red” lines at all.
I’m the last one to downplay the danger that North Korea really represents. I’ve said all along that there is no purely diplomatic solution to that danger, and I’ve spent the last five years arguing for a combination of economic strangulation, political subversion, and strong conventional deterrence with the specific purpose of overthrowing Kim Jong Il. By showing you Kim Jong Il’s death camps and the vast fields of graves that surround North Korea’s cities, I hope I’ve helped to place the risk of subverting Kim’s regime in the context of the human cost of the status quo. That having been said, can we please try to calm down and not do anything stupid that will only get a lot of people killed needlessly?
Let’s begin at far-left Air America, where a member of the “peace is patriotic” crowd manages to lose his grip on both concepts as he rants, “Bush Is Gone. Let’s Bomb North Korea.” Read the rest of this entry »
Journalist Lisa Ling, Laura’s sister received one letter from Laura, dated May 15, 2009. Below are excerpts from Laura’s letter, read by her cousin Angie Wang, at the vigil.
When I first got here, I cried so much. Now, I cry less. I try very hard to think about positive things, but sometimes it is hard too. Some days I get to go outside and get some fresh air. In the early evening, I do some stretching. I also sit and meditate. I breathe deeply and think about positive things that have happened in the day. For example, I think “I’m lucky I made it through another day.” I’m lucky my family is working so hard to get me released. I’m thinking about you all constantly and how fortunate I am to have an amazing family. Stay strong and please take care of yourselves. That is my request. Know that I’m thinking of you and dreaming about being reunited with you all again.
All my love,
Laura
I’m quite surprised Ling was able to send a letter home, but then maybe I shouldn’t be. Perhaps, as a blog reader has mentioned before, North Korea allowed it in order to (falsely?) show the journalists are being treated humanely.
Although I’m hesitant to mention the name Bruce Cumings within the presence of this readership, I will offer a bit of his interview posted on the Democracy Now! Web site.
As far as I can tell, they stumbled across the North Korean border inadvertently, giving the North Koreans a nice catch, like Iran. There’s been much less attention to these two than there was to the woman reporter who was recently released by Tehran. But there will be a lot of attention next week when they come to trial in Pyongyang on June 4th. I think—one never knows, but I would guess that the North Koreans will declare them guilty and then kick them out of the country. [Emphasis mine.]
I can actually see this happening. Let’s hope things end in the two reporters’ eventual release.
[It’s been almost six months since I last submitted something to OFK, but I’m hoping to be able to write a bit more frequently from now on. We’ll see.]
In addition to the title “People’s President,” which is being used a lot this week, I learned today that Noh Moo-hyun was called “바보 대통령.” I’m not so knowledgeable about the man, so that was a bit of a surprise for me to hear at the ceremony for him at City Hall early this afternoon (노제 — a word not in my dictionary — which followed the 영결식 that was attended by all the big-wigs at Gyeong-bok Palace just up the road).
Most of you know what 바보/babo means, but for those who don’t, it literally translates to fool, though it’s tossed around so frequently among friends that it’s often along the lines of calling your friend a dork for doing something silly. Ie, the term is clearly used with affection here. Though I suspect there is a back story here.
Begin Update – Friends have since filled me in on Babo Noh Moo-hyun. He apparently got that nickname before he ever became president — for running as a liberal in races for the National Assembly in districts that were conservative, ie, in races he inevitably lost. It also was used, now somewhat ironically, to say that he would not be corrupted by the machinations and dealing and corruption that is common if not expected in politicians here. The thinking was along the lines of only a fool *wouldn’t* go down that road. – End Update
I got to City Hall a bit after 1pm, when things were scheduled to start there. During the World Cup, it was a sea of red, and this time it was a sea of yellow, the color that represented Mr. Noh. Many people were wearing card-stock adjumma-style yellow hats that had been handed out, and others were punching yellow balloons in the air.
This being Week One of Korean War II, there’s been a proliferation (groan) of thoughtful commentary on North Korea. Two thinkers I’ve been waiting to hear from in particular are B.R. Myers and Marcus Noland, and both have since weighed in.
Interesting news and analysis focusing on Russia within the past 24 hours.
In the past, the Kremlin has relied on China to make the leading decision on how to react to North Korean aggression since the latter appears to have more influence on the DPRK when dealing with the Kim regime. However, in light of the most recent North Korean nuclear test, it seems we are seeing a more aggressive Russia than before, with some suggesting the country is looking to take a more active role in the situation this time around. From the previously linked Washington Post article:
After an initial, mild expression of “concern” by the Russian foreign minister, the government issued a high-level statement denouncing the underground blast as a “direct violation” of U.N. resolutions.
“Initiators of decisions on nuclear tests bear personal responsibility for them to the world community,” said Natalya Timakova, chief spokeswoman for President Dmitry Medvedev, adding that the test “deals a blow to international efforts to strengthen the global regime of nuclear nonproliferation.”
[…]
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations convened an emergency meeting of the Security Council to condemn the test and pledged to support a strong new resolution against North Korea. Russia holds the rotating presidency of the council this month.
But does this necessarily mean Russia has any leverage in the situation? This tougher Russia may not be able to do much if you believe China holds the key to success, and some don’t even see a more aggressive Russia at all, but rather, a helpless one.
Russia’s influence may just be limited to PR at the moment. It can help produce a more unified voice within the UN and ostracize North Korea, a country it once had friendly relations with. It can also join other nations in putting pressure on China to use its influence and take the lead, assuming China doesn’t feel helpless as well.
Meanwhile, at the grassroots level in Russia, university students and teachers in Vladivostok held demonstrations the other day protesting North Korea’s nuclear test. (They demonstrated under the interesting slogan of “Peace in the Sea of Japan!”) One activist in Vladivostok told a reporter that a nuclear disaster in North Korea would cause Russia’s Primorsky Krai region to suffer, as it is only 150 kilometers away from North Korea.
A resolution signed by the demonstrators urging Pyongyang to end its nuclear tests was sent to the North Korean Consulate in Nakhodka, but one of the protesting students told RFE/RL’s Russian Service that she does not expect the Kim regime to seriously pay attention to their demonstration.
True, the DPRK regime may not bat an eye at a resolution signed by anyone, much less Russian university students and teachers, but I think Russia is very aware of what a nuclear disaster in North Korea would mean for the country.
This just in from the Facebook page for Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two U.S. journalists whom North Korea seized along its border with China back in March, shortly before its long-range missile test:
Subject: Going public
Hi everyone, it’s Lisa Ling. Firstly, our families are deeply grateful for your support and efforts to try to secure the release of Laura and Euna. To say that this has been stressful would be to grossly understate how hard this has been. Our families have been very quiet because of the extreme sensitivity of the situation, but given the fact that our girls are in the midst of a global nuclear stand-off, we cannot wait any longer.
We have to speak out!
Our families will be on the Today Show on NBC in the 7AM block on Monday morning –3 days before the June 4 trial (taking the time differnce in consdieration). We will also be on the Larry King show on CNN Monday night as well. Please help us urge both our government and North Korea’s to resolve this humanitarian issue. Help us stand up for truth and two girls who just wanted to tell the world a story.
The Facebook page for Laura Ling and Euna Lee (which Lisa Ling has now taken over as administrator) is calling for vigils to take place everywhere on June 3, U.S. time, which is June 4 in North Korea - the date of the scheduled trials for Ling and Lee.
So far, vigil locations include Washington, D.C.; New York, NY; Birmingham, AL; Portland, OR; San Francisco and L.A., CA.
Organizers are also asking for help from willing volunteers. Contact information is posted on the group’s Facebook page linked above.
Fred Fry gets a big hat tip for sending this, via the Inner City Press. And what an predictable disappointment it is — it “deplores” the North Korean tests and calls on U.N. member states to finally enforce the same resolutions they’ve been failing to enforce since 2006. But to be fair, this is still a draft.
Feel free to insert your own Hans Brix/Team America clip link in the comments.
Update 1: We’d all love to know what’s going into that blank paragraph in the draft resolution, and here are some of the reports on what it may ultimately say.
Jim Lobe, writing in the Asia Times, claims that “administration officials suggested that Washington may be preparing to re-impose Bush-era financial sanctions against banks and companies suspected of conducting illicit transactions on behalf of Pyongyang.” Obviously, I’d be all for that, and I predicted before that President Obama would be glad that he decided to keep Stuart Levey around. I have no doubt that Levey could accomplish more in 60 days than Chris Hill did in four years. Lobe also writes that Obama feels constrained by the situation of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, something that could not have been inadvertent on the North Koreans’ part. I swear, they have a word for that.
Yonhap claims that China is being less resistant to U.S. demands for strong financial sanctions, the kind that actually worked:
A draft resolution, distributed to the five permanent members of the council, plus South Korea and Japan, in a follow-up to the meeting held Tuesday, “bans loans to North Korea and virtually suspend all financial transactions between North Korea and foreign financial institutions,” a diplomat based in New York said. “We need to consult our respective capitals about the draft over the coming weekend.”
The draft also toughens the provisions of Resolution 1718, adopted by the council after North Korea’s 2006 nuclear and missile tests, so that the North would be barred from all weapons trade. [Yonhap News]
This probably means that China’s strategy is to vote for the resolution today and undermine it tomorrow. The same is probably true of the East Asia Bureau in our own State Department.
The Joongang Ilbo notes that in addition to the financial sanctions, the new resolution could “add more companies to the UN blacklist of those helping North Korea’s nuclear programs, to expand embargoes to cover all arms, to restrict flights to and from North Korea and to freeze assets.”
Update 2: The signals are mixed as to the degree to which China and Russia are willing to accept tough sanctions against North Korea, but let’s give appropriate credit to the Obama Administration for pushing for the kind of sanctions that really will work:
The administration is also seeking China’s cooperation in a global effort to disrupt the flow of money to North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong-il, and his family, officials said. Some of that money is suspected to be held in Chinese-owned banks, making such an effort diplomatically sensitive.
Still, a senior official said he was “pleasantly surprised” by how open China was to cooperating with the United States. China has historically tolerated the erratic behavior of Mr. Kim, worrying more about a calamitous collapse of his government than about his nuclear ambitions. But the recent test and missile launchings, the official said, may have crossed a line with China’s leaders.
“At the level of Chinese irritation, this is historic,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “Normally, the Chinese urge us not to react. But they are reaching a point where they could be agreeable to using more of their own weight.” [N.Y. Times]
According to the unnamed UN diplomat, the proposals for expanded sanctions range from a broader arms embargo to an asset freeze on individuals and additional companies, restrictions on flights to and from North Korea, and restrictions on the country’s financial and banking operations. [AP]
The Wall Street Journal reports to some more critical rhetoric from the ChiComs, which means no more than China’s vote for past U.N. resolutions — in short, bupkes. I agree with Marcus Noland that China acts as North Korea’s enabler, and I’ve said before why I think China wants North Korea to be a threat to us. I did like this quote from OFK favorite David Asher:
“In many ways, the six-party process has allowed China to manage the U.S. as much as it manages North Korea,” said David Asher, a former State Department official who helped initiate the negotiating track during President George W. Bush’s first term. [Wall Street Journal]
Oddly enough, the Administration does not appear to be leaning toward putting North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. While I don’t believe that the terror-sponsor list is the most powerful of the sanctions at our disposal, I think the Administration would be making the wrong decision. First, it sends the wrong message to allow this concession to stand when the North Koreans reneged on the specific promise that induced it. Second, the Japanese desperately want the designation restored, and if diplomatic reasons justify lifting the designation, then diplomatic reasons justify restoring it. Reflexive advocates of multilaterialism ought to be more vocal about this — the interests of our allies matter. Third, the terror sponsor list has some significant consequences, my personal favorite being the exemption it provides under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (28 U.S.C. sec. 1603 et seq.). If you don’t see the value in this exemption, just ask the survivors of the U.S.S. Pueblo crew. And certainly Lisa Ling might find some use for it.
Aliou Niane was born in Guinea West Africa, but due to decisions he had no control over, he found himself in North Korea from 1982-87. He is currently writing his memoir in French about the years he spent there and generously agreed to an email interview. Niane’s story is interesting, if not for the insider’s look he can give into what life was like for a foreigner living in North Korea during the 1980s, but also for the information he can provide about the historical ties between Guinea West Africa and the DPRK, a relationship that has not been sufficiently documented in English.
Niane’s years north of the DMZ were the result of an agreement between his country’s first president, Ahmed Sekou Toure, and Kim Il Sung. For those unfamiliar with Ahmed Sekou Toure, he was a hardline communist who reigned with an iron fist using fear, hunger and a strong police state where trust did not even exist between friends, family members, students or the military. According to Niane, everybody feared for their lives during his reign as president.
Niane told me that in 1982, Toure attended Kim Il Sung’s 70th birthday celebration in Pyongyang. It was there that Kim offered Toure the opportunity to send 10 Guinean students to be educated in agricultural technologies at Wonsan Agricultural College. There, the students would learn juche ideology on shared community agricultural methods. Guinea had already adopted government controlled farming practices and food distribution in the 1970s but this would be the first time Guinean students would be instructed according to North Korea’s particular system based on juche.
Upon his return to Guinea, Toure asked his Minister of High Education to provide him with a list of his 10 best students from the country’s agriculture universities and faculties. These chosen 10 would be sent to North Korea. Read the rest of this entry »
