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Monthly Archive: August, 2009

August 31, 2009

Flowers Bloom, Birds Fly North, North Korean Harvest Fails

Even when you consider the potential consequences, it’s getting difficult to sustain a state of alarm about North Korea’s food situation when alarming statistics about food prices in North Korea’s black markets have become just so much perennial growth: Except that there is a difference: unlike last year’s famine scare, when the price of rice (the food of the “loyal” classes) rose as much as the price of corn (the food of the “expendable” classes), this year, it’s corn prices...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
August 30, 2009

Daily NK Reports Uprisings in Labor Camps, Factory

Recently, the North Korean regime decided that its emaciated slaves hadn’t worked hard enough and declared a “150-day battle,” sending more of them to labor in the countryside and in the factories. The “battle,” however, appears to have taken a turn the authorities didn’t anticipate, according to an exile organization called North Korean Intellectuals Solidarity: It reported, “In a provincial labor-training camp located in Dongheung-district, Hamheung, South Hamkyung Province, a camp inspector, who was also a manager in the Department...

Categories Resistance/The Camps
August 29, 2009

Wanted: Scholar, Writer, and Researcher

The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea is seeking a researcher and writer for an upcoming study of North Korea’s hereditary political caste system, known in Korean as “songbun.” The songbun system, though technically abolished years ago, continues to control each North Korean citizen’s access to employment, residence in the best-supplied areas, and by extension, food and medical care. What is not known is the degree to which the influence of songbun persists, or the extent to which the...

Categories Activism/Human Rights
August 28, 2009

UAE Intercepts N. Korean Arms Ship

[The ANL Australia, photo from here] The ship was on its way to Iran, carrying weapons whose trade is embargoed by UNSCR 1874: Diplomats at the UN identified the vessel as the Bahamian-flagged ANL-Australia. The vessel was seized some weeks ago. The UN sanctions committee has written to the Iranian and North Korean governments pointing out that the shipment puts them in violation of UN resolution 1974. [Financial Times, Simeon Kerr and Harvey Morris] Because they probably had no idea....

Categories "United" Nations/Axis of Evil/Iran/Proliferation/Sanctions
August 28, 2009

Great, Just What We Needed: Japan’s Own Roh Moo Hyun.

Judging by this, Kim Jong Il may have found the weak link he’s been looking for. I wouldn’t advise reading this less than two hours after a full meal. How should Japan maintain its political and economic independence and protect its national interest when caught between the United States, which is fighting to retain its position as the world’s dominant power, and China, which is seeking ways to become dominant? This is a question of concern not only to Japan...

Categories Japan
August 28, 2009

Attorney General Kills Indictment of Bill Richardson

A Justice Department investigation into “Kim Jong Bill” Richardson for a pay to play scandal has reportedly been “killed in Washington,” which I infer to mean killed by Eric Holder. The decision comes shortly after Richardson’s former Secretary of State was indicted for her efforts “cover up a vast money laundering and embezzlement scheme.” I haven’t seen the prosecutors’ case against Richardson, of course. How low must your moral stature must be if you ever find yourself arranging the chair...

Categories Appeasement/Sanctions
August 28, 2009

DJ Was No Peacemaker

Kim Dae Jung may have been brave and statesmanlike as a dissident, but when a politician dies — particularly a liberal one — too many journalists are overcome by the temptation to deify. Let’s not be. DJ’s accomplishments as a dissident, related here vividly by Seth Lipsky, remind us of his courage and vision before he attained power. But what they didn’t do is make him an effective peacemaker or president. But then, when in history has anyone who seemed...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
August 27, 2009

Preventing Another “Three Kingdoms” Era

In The National Interest, Michael Green, the NSC’s primary Asia advisor during President Bush’s first term outlines a series of scary stages that he thinks are approaching rapidly as Kim Jong Il withers away and North Korea dies with him. The lines of fracture in such an opaque regime are extremely difficult to predict, of course, but most of Green’s analysis makes sense to me. First, Green says the current regime can’t be stabilized in the long term, and that...

Categories Kremlinology/Reconstruction/Regime Change
August 26, 2009

For Chinese, Hard Questions About North Korea Hit Close to Home

And it’s dangerous for Chinese to ask hard questions that hit close to home. But why would Chinese find the nostalgia of visiting North Korea sufficiently rewarding to pay money for that dubious privilege? Maybe because human beings have a natural obsession with the things they fear the most, and because for many Chinese, the fear persists: I have spoken with many of these Chinese travelers and have always been struck by how seldom their accounts dwell on the stark...

Categories China & Korea
August 26, 2009

Must Read: On N. Korean Counterfeiting

We’ve seen much first-rate reporting on North Korea’s “supernote’ counterfeiting recently, and here’s one via The Independent that frankly outdoes all of them in its scope and detail, and fills in many missing details. I’m not going to even try to quote just one part of this. Just go and read. The comments are edifying in their own way. The British left is fond of saying that it isn’t really anti-American, just anti-Bush. And yet nothing seems to have changed...

Categories Counterfeiting
August 25, 2009

We Have Lift-Off

I didn’t think President Lee would actually go through with this. Although I’m not sure this launch is a wise move in the broader context of attempts to disarm the North Koreans — who will seize on this to justify their own banned program — it’s almost gratifying to see a South Korean president so unconcerned about what North Korea says. And while I reject most of the comparisons to the North Korean Taepodong II launch last spring, both launches...

Categories Missiles
August 24, 2009

Wow. Those Hostages Eat a Lot.

I didn’t say much about Yu Song Jin during his 137 days as a guest of Kim Jong Il, mainly because I really didn’t care that much about the predicament in which he placed himself. Yu, a South Korean employee at the Kaesong Industrial Park, was accused of attempting to infect one of the hand-picked North Korean factory slaves with his thoughtcrimes — an offense that, if true, might have endangered her life. I’m no great fan of North Korea...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
August 24, 2009

Lisa Ling’s Husband Expresses Concern for Refugees; Mitch Koss, Laura Ling, and Euna Lee Remain Silent

The Wall Street Journal has published its own report on the scandal that is becoming a serious threat to (among other things) Laura Ling and Euna Lee’s public image as newsworthy victims. The Journal’s story adds fuel to suspicions that Ling, Lee, and producer Mitch Koss recklessly endangered the lives of refugees and activists by carrying video of them into North Korean territory, or otherwise failed to take measures to prevent that video from falling into Chinese and North Korean...

Categories China & Korea/Ling/Lee Incident/Media Criticism
August 24, 2009

N Korea Charm Offensive Not Working

One for the archives: By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent WASHINGTON, Aug 24 (Reuters) – North Korea is waxing conciliatory after months of military provocations — but experts say now is no time for the United States to relent on sanctions aimed at ending Pyongyang’s nuclear programs. North Korea has lowered tensions with several gestures from releasing two jailed U.S. journalists and freeing a detained South Korean businessman to offering to reopen frozen North-South business and tourism ventures. A high ranking...

Categories Sanctions
August 23, 2009

Easing of Tensions Amid Intensifying Sanctions Confounds Diplomats, “Peace Studies” Majors

Funny thing is, it was just yesterday that Selig Harrison was telling us that sanctions would make the North Koreans so mad they’d stomp away and not talk to us. And then I read this: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has sent word that he wants to hold a summit with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in the latest sign of easing tensions between the divided nations, news reports said Monday. Kim’s envoy proposed the summit during a rare...

Categories Diplomacy/North-South/Sanctions