Divorce in North Korea
You know what they say about breaking up ….
Archive for August, 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 that are shooting up. Open Radio offers some explanations for why this might be, and reports, contrary to what the ChiCom press would have us believe, that food continues to flow freely across the border from China, most likely under the tight control of the regime’s discriminatory rationing system.
China has refused for years to donate its food aid to North Korea through the World Food Program, channeling its aid to the regime itself and undercutting the World Food Program’s efforts to force the regime to accept a transparent and non-discriminatory distribution system.
Pyongyang residents’ favored place in this year’s rations are not surprising, but Open Radio also reports that remote, traditionally disfavored and discontented Hoeryong is also getting 100% of its rations. Officially, that’s related to the fact that Hoeryong is the birthplace of Kim Jong Il’s mother, although Hoeryong’s history of dissent and its proximity to China may mean that North Korea is trying to avoid an outbreak of rebellion that would be difficult to keep secret.
Update: Related thoughts from Richard Halloran.
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 of Justice of the People’s Committee, was killed by inmates.”
Meanwhile, “In Hoiryeong, North Hamkyung Province, 18 prisoners in a labor-training camp, in the process of being mobilized for construction work, beat managers, tied and gagged them and then escaped.”
In one other case in Chongjin Steel Complex, Chongjin, North Hamkyung Province, 40 workers and managers, including an engineering team manager, have had to concentrate on their private businesses and not their work at the Complex because they have not been given any food by the factory since June. [Daily NK]
The obvious caveats apply — there’s no way to verify any information that comes out of North Korea. If true, these stories would be evidence that the state’s grip is again weakening, as it did during the famine years. The result then was a wave of outbreaks of discontent, though an infusion of South Korean, Chinese, and international aid eventually helped the regime to reestablish control. (Most of the South Korean and international aid was ultimately funded by American taxpayers.)
Now, as then, the outbreaks are fragmentary and thus easily isolated and suppressed. To challenge the regime effectively, the outbreaks will have to happen across wide segments of the country, something that will only happen when good broadcasting and an effective underground make nationwide coordination possible. Knowing this, the regime is cracking down on cell phone possession, which is why Orascom is going to lose a great deal of money in North Korea.
(Hat tip to Irene.)
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 collapse of North Korea’s socialist distribution system has brought social mobility into North Korea. For those not already resident in South Korea, the project will involve travel to South Korea to interview North Korean refugees, meaning that those already present in Korea have an advantage.
HRNK, a highly respected, bi-partisan, non-profit organization based in Washington, has a record of ground-breaking studies that speaks for itself. Its reports are often quoted in congressional testimony and the world’s most influential newspapers.
The primary qualifications are excellent English-language writing skills, a rigorous and precise approach to research and analysis, and understanding of the subject matter. The position may be paid, and pay will depend on the individual’s qualifications and experience. Korean language skills are desirable but not essential. Interested candidates may contact me, or the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea at webmstr[at]hrnk[dot]org.
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. (Note — the article misstates the number of the U.N. resolution.)
The authorities seized “military components”, but the vessel has since departed, a person familiar with UAE thinking said. The seizure took place in the UAE, but not the shipping hub of Dubai, the person added.
This report gets a bit more specific about the cargo:
Diplomats told the Financial Times that the vessel is still being held in the UAE, adding that various forms of basic weaponry, including rocket-propelled grenades – which had been labeled as machine parts – were found onboard. [Washington TV]
Rocket-propelled grenades are some of the least expensive, most ubiquitous weapons in the world. The Soviet designed RPG-2 and RPG-7 are particularly cheap and common models, although they’re still extremely potent weapons.
[image from here]
It’s difficult to imagine that Iran, a country that manufactures explosively-formed penetrators and supplies them to terrorists, would need to import any of those. Then again, the North Koreans were recently reported to be reengineering, manufacturing, and exporting sophisticated Russian-designed Kornet antitank missiles to Syria for Hezbollah’s use.
President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss.
Previously, North Korea’s Kang Nam I turned back before arriving from Burma, apparently after Burmese officials were pressured to agree to search the ship. More recently, Indian authorities boarded and searched a North Korean ship, but apparently found no prohibited cargo. All teasing about “angry letters” aside, UNSCR 1874 seems to be having a real effect on North Korea’s arms trafficking. A resolution is as good as its implementation, of course. This time, the implementation has been far better than it was after UNSCR 1695 and 1718, passed in 2006 after a round of North Korean missile tests and a nuke test, respectively.
The seizure of this shipment reveals North Korea’s flagrant violation of at least the latest of these resolutions just as North Korea launches another of its periodic displays of superficial non-belligerence, which is what passes for charm in North Korean terms. If they’re smiling sweetly, it probably means they’re stabbing us in the back.
Hat tips and thanks to two readers.
Update: The Wall Street Journal adds that the shipment also included detonators, and notes that the seizure will likely trigger investigations in several countries:
According to the Security Council diplomat, the weapons were carried on an Australian vessel, the ANL-Australia, which was flying under a Bahamian flag. According to an Aug. 14 letter sent to the U.N. sanctions committee, the exporting company was an Italian shipper, Otim, which exported the items from its Shanghai office.
“The cargo manifest said the shipment contained oil-boring machines, but then you opened it up and there were these items,” the diplomat said. ANL and Otim officials couldn’t immediately be reached to comment. [….]
The Security Council official said the sanctions committee will conduct its own investigation and is likely to send out letters to all countries who had companies involved in the shipment, including Italy, Australia and France, where the parent company of ANL is based.
“All of these countries are going to be investigating, interacting with their shipping firms, with their private sector and saying: There was a possible violation here. What are you doing to make sure you have total transparency on all exports and imports into North Korea?” the diplomat said. “That’s why this matters.”
A spokeswoman for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the Australian government is aware of the incident and is investigating to determine whether any Australian laws may have been broken. [Wall Street Journal, Peter Spiegel and Chip Cummins]
This is probably the least dramatic and most significant part of the story, because what it’s likely to lead to a cooperative, multinational investigation of North Korea’s proliferation networks — how they solicit, conceal, and finance their transactions; which individuals, agencies, and trading companies are involved in arranging them; where their bank accounts are; and how they recoup their profits without having their assets blocked by Treasury. It may also lead to the blocking of additional North Korean assets and accounts. The weapons themselves are secondary. The proliferation network and it financial tendrils are the issue. This could be a significant blow to both.
The Journal also says the seizure “could also raise fresh questions about North Korea’s intentions.” Not to me it wouldn’t, but it might to that great mass of unteachable people who are easily swayed by atmospherics.
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 but also to the small and medium-sized nations in Asia. They want the military power of the U.S. to function effectively for the stability of the region but want to restrain U.S. political and economic excesses. They also want to reduce the military threat posed by our neighbor China while ensuring that China’s expanding economy develops in an orderly fashion. These are major factors accelerating regional integration. [Yukio Hatoyama, N.Y. Times]
As we continue suck on America’s tit, let us resolve to bite it, too. Also, His Majesty-in-Waiting would like everyone to know that he was accepted into grad school. He’s a geeeeeenius. Just ask him:
Let me conclude by quoting the words of Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, founder of the first popular movement for a united Europe, written 85 years ago in “Pan-Europa” (my grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama, translated his book, “The Totalitarian State Against Man,” into Japanese): “All great historical ideas started as a utopian dream and ended with reality. Whether a particular idea remains as a utopian dream or becomes a reality depends on the number of people who believe in the ideal and their ability to act upon it.”
Choose your torture: a good waterboarding, the tear gas bunker at Ft. Lewis, a Cher concert — I’d choose any of them over being trapped in a cocktail party, much less on an island, while having to listen to this pompous bore drone on about why he’s the reincarnation of Themistocles. Talk about “enduring the unendurable.”
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 on your patio to give the cameras a perfectly posed shot of your pleasantries with the emissaries of a regime that does this to human beings?
[Photo: Wall Street Journal]
I wonder if Bill Richardson has ever thought to ask himself what it means that people as extraordinarily sensitive to an easy mark as the North Koreans have continued to seek him out for years after the expiration of his position in Bill Clinton’s cabinet. The fact that his little diversion was to no effect suggests that it has occurred to someone in power in Washington. We know that Hillary Clinton is no fan of Richardson, but it seems fair to give due credit to President Obama and his administration for not letting Richardson’s reach for gravitas and self-aggrandizement disrupt the president’s patient construction of the first semi-coherent North Korea policy since 1985.
Really, North Korea’s sudden desperation to sideline the elected leaders of America and South Korea (Richardson, the Clinton visit, the Hyundai hostage deal) suggests that it hears the baying of the hounds from all sides. Look for North Korea to continue to divide the nations enforcing sanctions against it by offering separate appeals to each of them.
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 as desperate for peace as Kim Dae Jung ever achieved it? That’s the lesson I take from DJ’s failure to accomplish the goal that obsessed him.
Had DJ never been inaugurated, there would be no debating his legacy as a liberator. Nothing did so much to undermine that legacy as the manner in which he squandered his moral authority for the sake of atmospheric improvements in relations with North Korea:
[W]hen it came to the question of the fundamental rights of his fellow Koreans north of the border, Kim was unable to present any vision of hope. In fact, throughout his term in office, he assiduously downplayed the widespread human rights abuses in North Korea. Incredibly, Kim told an audience at a leading Washington think tank in March 2001 that the greatest human rights problem in the Korean peninsula was that of the separated families between the two Koreas and that his administration was making progress on that admittedly important issue. But on the far graver issue of the North Korean regime’s systemic and widespread attack on its civilian population — including the operation of vast political prisoner concentration camps where random beating, torture, public execution, hard labor, and starvation are brutal everyday realities — Kim chose to remain silent. [Prof. Sung-Yoon Lee, Foreign Policy]
(Lee’s piece is a must-read if only for his use of language in its last two paragraphs.)
DJ’s canonizers most desperately want to remember him as a man who somehow soothed or pacified tensions with North Korea. Some have been dishonest enough to do this by airbrushing out any mention how DJ’s principal claim to accomplishment in office was bought with an illegal transfer of $500 million in taxpayer funds:
What went unmentioned, however, was that the half a billion dollars in question was roughly equal to North Korea’s export earnings at the time. It was an enormous cash infusion for North Korea, one of the smallest and most isolated economies in the world. Kim’s cash gift to a hereditary totalitarian leadership that identifies as its highest state priorities regime preservation, advancement of its nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction programs, and existential competition against Seoul was an economic bonanza that carried serious strategic and moral implications.
DJ denied the scandal and its greater significance until the very end:
Three days before he was admitted to the hospital in July, the former president told the BBC that his administration had never sent cash to Pyongyang but only 200,000 to 300,000 tons of food and fertilizer aid each year. Kim claimed that the cash transfer of $500 million was a risk undertaken by the South Korean conglomerate Hyundai alone to secure commercial rights in North Korea.
Such claims are inconsistent with the findings of the special prosecution that led to the imprisonment of one of Kim’s key aides and the conviction of several others.
North Korea certainly created a superficial appearance of soothed tensions as long as DJ and Roh kept the money flowing, and if you measure tensions in terms of atmospherics, look no further. But all of that money, and the billions that would follow thereafter — never resulted in one artillery tube being pulled from a bunker facing Seoul, never closed down a concentration camp, never brought home a POW, never reunited a family for more than a few torturous minutes, didn’t stop North Korea from going nuclear, and didn’t stop North Korea from proliferating its missiles and nuclear technology. If Kim Dae Jung really cared about those things, it’s not evident from his words or his policies.
Indeed, what Kim Dae Jung’s policies really did was to keep Kim Jong Il sufficiently well-funded to allow him the option of not reforming, not disarming, and not moderating his brutality, in spite of U.N. sanctions and the best efforts of America. While America subsidized South Korea’s defense from North Korea, South Korea subsidized the North. To this day, that fact causes many Americans (myself included) to question why South Korea needs to be a military welfare state at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, even to question the very nature of what the alliance ought to be. DJ’s fanning and exploitation of hostility toward the nation that saved his life no less than three times only fuels those questions.
If DJ’s legacy was what some would have us believe, North Korea would not still find it so easy to adjust the tension dial after a decade of the policies he favored.
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 recent history has shown that doing so won’t make us more secure, but would send the wrong message to other proliferators.
Second, Green doesn’t invest any more faith in Kim Jong Un’s readiness to be a real successor to Kim Jong Il than I do. He thinks the succession contest that has probably already begun marks the first stage of North Korea’s descent into becoming a failed state:
At a minimum, it is already becoming clear that the regime is hardening its ideological stance in anticipation of the death of the Dear Leader. In addition to the rapid acceleration of nuclear and missile tests to achieve full nuclear status by 2012, the regime has expelled most aid workers and has begun closing markets that opened when the state could no longer feed its people through the rationing system. With the future balance of power within the National Defense Commission uncertain, no senior general or party official is likely to promote compromise or diplomacy with the United States, South Korea or Japan. If anything, the collective impulse will be bellicosity toward the outside world in order to mask internal challenges.
And this is why we are already seeing the first signs of the inevitable nuclear blackmail we will soon face. The first stage has thus begun. [Michael J. Green, The National Interest]
I’d take that a step further. Kim Jong Il was just “ready” enough to seize power, but not “ready” enough to prevent famine, economic collapse, and the breakdown of state control over all but a few key industries. The first stage really began in 1994 with the death of the last leader most North Koreans viewed as “legitimate” to some degree, loss of Soviet aid, and the accession to power of a functionally incompetent bacchanalian — incompetent at everything but palace intrigues and global brinkmanship, anyway.
From there, Green thinks things only get worse. He goes on to explain the why North Korea is effectively undeterrable with regard to proliferation. It thinks it can get away with anything, and pretty much has. Take North Korea’s construction of a nuclear reactor in Syria, which our government tried to cover up, then forgave, because of its enchantment with Agreed Framework II. The North Koreans have learned that our “red lines” mean nothing. Green suggests that the fragmentation of North Korea’s security forces increases the danger of loose WMD’s. I’d say that danger is just as great with the current regime in power and taking advantage of a well-developed proliferation network than with it fractured and preoccupied with fratricide.
Green correctly notes that when the regime fragments, the various factions are likely to invite in foreign powers to assist them, meaning that the states in the region need to do better contingency planning, with South Korea’s role being especially important. It also calls for some good diplomacy with China and Russia, diplomacy that (in my view) ought to begin with the understanding that we’ll stay out of northern Korea if they’ll agree to do the same (we can make limited and temporary exceptions for humanitarian aid and WMD dismantlement). Given the chaos that’s already overtaking North Korea, we’ll all eventually thank one another for such an agreement.
What’s given too little attention in all of the analysis of this issue, including Green’s, is the influence of the North Korean people in a post-Kim North Korea. Korea’s future — and by extension, the geopolitics and economics of the entire region — will depend on the extent to which they favor or resist any potential occupier or form of government. Within 20 years, a unified Korea could be a prosperous nation with vastly enhanced military and economic power, nuclear weapons, and a strong infrastructure, and even a robust birthrate. Or, the battle lines between warring rump-states backed by competing foreign powers could consolidate, leading to several more decades the would superficially resemble the Three Kingdoms era, and with local conditions resembling those in Mogadishu or Kandahar. (Great-power competition could be particularly intense in North Korea’s far northeast, where the Chinese have invested heavily to get access to North Korean ports, but where Russia also has the advantage of proximity.)
Green manages to squeeze in a pitch for standing up for the basic rights of North Koreans as human beings:
And the Obama administration should not lose sight of the plight of the North Korean people. The United States should be clear and consistent in building international pressure on the regime for its horrifying human-rights record. More should also be done to provide food and medical assistance to the North Korean people, as long as it can be monitored by something close to international standards. It is also important to continue modest international NGO and training efforts now in place for the North Korean people, as long as the regime itself does not receive cash, technology or propaganda benefits. The more we can expose the North Korean people to the possibilities before them, the better prepared they will be.
But this still falls short of the kind of broad outreach necessary to crystallize and shape North Koreans’ amorphous discontent, to entice them with the promise of unification, or to steel them against becoming a Chinese colony. How unfortunate that the administration Green served never managed to pursue even the limited goals he outlines here.
(Hat tip and thanks to a reader.)
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 human costs of a system like North Korea’s, or on the political system that makes such extreme repression and deprivation possible on a national scale.
Xianhui Yang’s “Woman From Shanghai: Tales of Survival From a Chinese Labor Camp,” a newly translated collection of firsthand accounts that the publisher calls “fact-based fiction,” is about what might be called the Gulag Archipelago of China. Reading it, one begins to appreciate why travelers to North Korea are so reluctant to reflect on human suffering: the reality of North Korea today is too painfully close to a situation endured by the Chinese well within living memory. [Howard W. French, N.Y. Times]
Read the rest of French’s review to see how North Korea’s present ties into China’s past, although I doubt that even in China, all of that is completely in the past.
I sometimes wonder if China’s support for Kim Jong Il might have dropped away a decade ago had we made half as much effort to demonize China for its rape of North Korea as China has made at demonizing America, or demonizing Japan for its rape of China and Korea half a century ago. Not until now has an American administration made even a superficial effort to make Kim Jong Il into a diplomatic, moral, and historical liability for China.
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 for The Independent’s readers. If there is no policy America can adopt that can make these bitter, envious, yappy little Yorkies like us, can’t we learn to just ignore them? Now that they’re biting the ankles of Barack Obama, most of the press already has, but that’s another story.
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 no doubt had domestic political motives, and in both cases, the satellites failed to enter orbit.
Feel free to insert your own innuendo in the comments section.
South Korea isn’t banned from developing or using missile technology. The North is limited by no less than three such resolutions — 1695, 1718, and 1874 (see sidebar; scroll down).
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 profiting by crossing the line from the arbitrary cult-enforcement that passes for law there to outright hostage-taking, but Yu’s case never caused me the conflict or angst that the case of Euna Lee and Laura Ling did. I have little sympathy for anyone stupid and amoral enough to willfully accept employment at Kaesong, nor do I accept the self-serving “arbeit macht frei” lies used to justify it. A South Korean at Kaesong assumes at least some small portion of the risks the North Korean slaves there live with every day of their lives.
Today, we learn some of what it cost Hyun Jeong-Un, the Chairwoman of Hyundai Asan Corporation, to get Yu back, in addition to a set of jammies and some health books. There’s no confirmation as to whether “Final Exit” was among them, but let’s not forget that Hyun became Chairwoman of a company that lives or dies with Kim Jong Il’s whims after her husband flung himself from a skyscraper after being implicated for making illegal payments to North Korea. Hyun’s late husband thus acted as one of the bag men who helped Kim Dae Jung buy his Nobel Prize with the embezzled money of South Korean taxpayers and shareholders, and with the involuntary servitude of North Koreans.
Today, we learn that the North Koreans billed Hyundai Asan for $20,000. Mind you, insurance will cover the cost, which is itemized as room and board at $115 a night for 137 days, not ransom.
Duly noted.
How Hyundai Asan or South Korea justify this payment under UNSCR 1874 is beyond me, which may be why Kim Jong Il was satisfied that he’d won a significant victory by extracting even this modest sum (U.S.S. Pueblo lawyers, take note). The lesson? Doing business with the North Koreans is always more expensive than it would initially seem, and it eventually demands the corruption of everyone who partakes, though Ms. Hyun initially offered token resistance.
For their part, the North Koreans sound glad to be rid of Mr. Yu. The ingrate even had the temerity to burden his hosts with repeated requests for more rice and complaints about the side dishes. Yu should thank the deity or fetish object of his choice that the North Koreans didn’t add a ten-year sentence in Yodok to his troubles.