It’s been a terrible thing reading Kevin, a/k/a The Big Hominid, describing the terminal cancer of his mom, someone he obviously loves and respects very much. Kevin is a founding father of the Korea blogosphere, one who never really fit into any of the standard categories — who else could manage to bridge the spiritual, philosophical, and scatological the way Kevin does? I’ve never quite managed to meet Kevin, and yet I’m really at a loss to explain just how saddened I am at this. Words fail me, so I’ll just suggest that you stop by and leave your good wishes at his blog.
In North Korea such things are absolutely forbidden, so naturally the people learn to enjoy crude humor instead; not because of the optimistic and humorous nature of the people I must point out, but because of the nature of North Korean politics.
In North Korea, it is not an exaggeration to say that there is at least one meeting every 24 hours. Every week contains studies, lectures, self-criticism and evaluation meetings in each work unit, and a further two or three meetings of People’s Units to boot.
A worker goes to work in the morning, whereupon s/he has to take part in a morning meeting. Then there is an evaluation meeting after work. At every meeting, they have to criticize others’. Almost every North Korean is sick and tired of every kind of meeting, indeed after defecting they often say that the best thing about South Korea is living without meetings.
I’m struck by two things as I watch this. First, one of South Korea’s poorer cities was completely transformed 30 years later, when I spent 18 months there. There nothing in this video I recognize. Second, it’s strikingly reminiscent of a North Korean provincial town today, right down to the traffic policewoman. The main differences are two things that are in abundance here: cars and signs. Enjoy.
According to the Daily NK, the succession propaganda has resumed. In the long run, however, I agree with the assessment of North Korean defector Kim Kwang Jin, who spoke at the Brookings Institution this week: he doesn’t have the cred to pull it off:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korean efforts to install one of ailing leader Kim Jong-il’s sons as a hereditary successor are likely to fail, a senior defector from the communist country said on Tuesday.
Kim Kwang-jin, a former state insurance executive who helped unveil widespread damage claims fraud by Pyongyang, said Kim’s relative recovery from an apparent 2008 stroke does not alter the fact that the era of Kim rule is fading.
“Fragile, worsening health, long drawn-out economic collapse and growing political instability in North Korea indicate that the Kim Jong-il regime is drawing to an end,” Kim told a panel at a Washington thinktank.
“Right now we are seeing another try in North Korea at hereditary succession. I don’t think it will work well,” said the former manager at the state-owned Korea National Insurance Corp, who defected to South Korea in 2003. [Reuters, Paul Eckert]
I actually took some leave and went to Brookings to see Kim speak, but Eckert’s summary does well enough that I don’t have to add much to it. I agree with Kim Kwang Jin. The best Kim Jong Eun could hope for is to be a figurehead in someone’s gilded cage.
Where I may respectfully differ from Kim is in his expression of optimism that the succession of Jang Son Thaek might be a step in the right direction for the North Korean people. I incline more toward the views of Roberta Cohen, who points out that Jang is generally responsible for North Korea’s prison camps, which makes that a bit like an alt-history novel in which one hopes that Himmler might be a relatively moderate successor to Hitler. I can understand why a North Korean would grasp at reasons for optimism. Were I in the position of watching my homeland die from afar, I’d grasp at hope, too. I can’t begin to imagine the agony of it — no photographs of Mr. Kim were permitted, for obvious and dreary reasons, as Kim spoke in English in steady, somber, and dignified tone. I wish I could see a plausible, non-violent path to a humane North Korea, but I don’t.
Even for North Korea, this would be the WTF story of the year:
A number of analysts here are convinced that not all the photos being released of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, are really photos of Kim Jong-il. Instead, they say, a look-alike has been standing in for him on some of the 122 trips he’s reportedly made this year to the countryside, factories, cultural events, military units, and all sorts of other venues.
Some observers say the North Korean leader is too ill to make all these appearances. One Japanese analyst claims President Clinton didn’t meet with Kim Jong-il in August – he met with a Mr. Kim double. [Christian Science Monitor, Don Kirk]
The evidence for this? None, really, although Kirk points out that Saddam Hussein kept a number of doubles, and North Korean defectors say the same of Kim Jong Il:
Ha Tae-young, president of Open Radio for North Korea, which broadcasts two hours a day via shortwave into North Korea, cites the word of one recent North Korean defector.
“He says he knows a girl whose father is the actor for Kim Jong-il,” says Mr. Ha. “Recently Kim Jong-il loses fat. He’s very skinny these days. The defector says, If Kim Jong-il looks skinny, the actor can do the same thing.”
Make of this what you will. I suppose it’s not implausible, but if it’s true, we can shelve the entire conversation about health and succession. After all, the supply of doubles is as infinite as the supply of plastic surgeons.
We can defer for another day the more complex discussion of who the real Bill Clinton is.
A South Korean university lecturer accused of spying for North Korea since the early 1990s has been indicted on espionage charges, prosecutors said Thursday. The suspect, identified by the surname Lee, was charged with giving North Korea confidential information, including the locations of key South Korean military facilities and an army operations manual, prosecutors in Suwon, south of Seoul, said in a statement. [MacLeans]
The 37-year-old man, who taught politics at a South Korean university, was arrested on Sept. 11 and indicted Tuesday for violating South Korea’s National Security Law, the statement said. If convicted, he could face the death penalty. [….]
Lee began spying for North Korea in 1992 after meeting North Korean agent Ri Jin Woo while studying at the University of Delhi in India, prosecutors said. He stored “vast amounts of confidential military information” on compact discs, portable drives and laptop computers, which he relayed to Ri during meetings in China, Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand and elsewhere, they said.
Lee gathered the information while working as an army officer, an adviser to the presidential National Unification Advisory Council and at the government-run Education Center for Unification, prosecutors said. He also joined North Korea’s Workers’ Party in 1994 after making a secret trip to the North, they said.
I wonder if Lee is the same Blue House advisor — or perhaps, one of those other government employees — who fell under suspicion when the Ilshimhue spy ring was uncovered during the final days of the Roh Administration, and whose string of revelations was truncated by the sacking of the head of the National Intelligence Service, and his replacement by a loyal party hack.
Hat tip to Robert Neff at TMH, who has more on the history of commie professors infiltrating South Korean colleges, but omits Prof. Kang Jeong-Ku, no doubt among many others.
Iif there is any element of Korean society that I’d have thought indestructible even to Kim Jong Il, it’s the strength of Korean families. Korean society strongly encourages marriage, children, and family loyalty. Divorce and out-of-wedlock births are strongly discouraged. The single exception is its traditional tolerance for male promiscuity, whether by single or married men (who are nonetheless expected to keep their dalliances casual and remain with their wives and children). With that being said, South Korean society is clearly changing, and divorce rates are rising fast. But socially, North Korea is frozen in the past, right? Not so.
For obvious reasons, the Daily NK doesn’t have any statistics to support its twin contentions that divorce rates are rising, and that many of the North Korean men with the best jobs — soldiers — are having difficulty finding wives after being discharged, which is often when they’re not so young anymore.
As I have noted before, I recently began working closely with the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) on the identification of North Korea’s concentration and labor camps through satellite imagery. That work has now expanded beyond its beginnings on Google Earth to other sources of imagery, including Digital Globe. This has become a close collaboration and friendship with Chuck Downs, HRNK’s Executive Director, and researcher David Hawk, the author of The Hidden Gulag and a former Executive Director of Amnesty International.
Recently, I felt certain enough that I had located the site of Camp 12 at Chongo-ri to publish images of it, including high-resolution Digital Globe images. Those were the first published images of a camp where defectors repatriated from China have been sent to die in growing numbers in recent years. Today, I am both gratified and saddened as David reports from Seoul that a survivor, to whom I will only refer as “Mr. Kim,” has confirmed the location to be just where I said it was.
I still await witness confirmation of two other prison sites that have not been published elsewhere, one near Chongjin and one near Sinuiju.
I’m not going to tell the whole story that David is going to tell in the near future, when he publishes The Hidden Gulag II. As you can imagine, this is a depressing and draining subject, and that’s about all that I have to say about this today. I would only pause to thank David, his Korean-American research assistant (one who might not want her name published here), Chuck Downs, my good friend Curtis Melvin who provided essential clues, and my wonderful wife, who not only provided other key clues, but who also tolerates me spending far too much time writing this blog and scouring Google Earth. HRNK, by the way, is a wonderful, rigorous, non-partisan group that will make great use of every dollar you can spare. I only hope that this discovery leads to some diminution of evil in this killing field.
A group I had not heard of, calling itself in English the Antihuman Crime Investigation Committee (반인도범죄조사위원회), held a seminar yesterday (Oct. 27th) at the Seoul Press Center in Gwanghwamun.
I received word of the event last-minute, and was only able to attend part of it, but here are some highlights.
After all the necessary introductions and congratulatory remarks (축사), Kim Tae-Jin, president of the Democracy Network against the North Korean Gulag (북한민주화운동본부) and himself originally from North Korea, gave the keynote address, in which he laid out some background and history of crimes against humanity in North Korea.
Next David Hawk (seated second from right in the photos immediately above and below) addressed ways to use international law to seek “Responsibility, Accountability and Redress for Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea.” He noted that dealing with worst-case situations has been a problem using the various international treaties available. For example, the Genocide Convention only applied to ethnic crimes, and often agreements had been written to apply only in war contexts. But the Rome Statue (adopted July 1998, went into effect July 2002, ratified by 110 countries to date), which created the International Criminal Court, provides a much more workable framework in general. However, this only applies to states who have ratified the statute, which North Korea has not done (the US also has not) — and it only applies to acts committed as of July 2002.
But Hawk recommended another way to get the ball rolling. He said that though it might not be easy, it may be possible to get the UN General Assembly to request the Secretary General to appoint a group of international law experts to conduct a “first look” prima facie investigation into crimes against humanity in NK. Situations in Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda were similarly handled. He noted that this request could be inserted into the UN’s existing annual DPRK human rights resolution, which passes every year by a wide margin.
Hawk managed to pack a lot into his 10 or 15 minutes, also talking about an emerging framework in international law, the responsibility to protect. Whereas the ICC deals with individual accountability, this doctrine applies to the responsibility of a state to protect its citizens.
He also stressed that any claims for justice need to be sought by the victims themselves. This is now possible with the growing number of defectors living in the South.
Jared Genser, a force behind the Failure to Protect report (pictured speaking in photo below), spoke next in more detail about North Korea not exactly living up to its responsibility to protect its citizenry. One point he made was, “The starting point for dialogue with the North should be its commitments under international law…such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights…. Meeting these existing would go a long way towards restoring the rights of the North Korean people.” Incidentally, in reading up a bit on Genser, he obviously has quite a resume, and I found this article in an alumni publication about him quite compelling.
Phillip Goldberg and Stuart Levey have done more to advance U.S. interests in five months than the entire East Asia Bureau of our State Department has done in two decades:
Treasury said in a statement that Amroggang Development Bank was being added to a list of proliferators of mass destruction because it was owned or controlled by North Korea’s Tanchon Commercial Bank.
Tanchon was previously hit with sanctions by both the United States and the United Nations Security Council for its involvement in Pyongyang’s proliferation activities.
Treasury said assets of Tanchon under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen and Americans are banned from any dealing with it. It said that Tanchon’s president, Kim Tong Myong, also was being added to the list of weapons proliferators.
Treasury described Amroggang as a Tanchon-related company run by Tanchon officials. It said Tanchon helps finance Korea Mining Development Corp’s sales of ballistic missiles and has been involved in Komid’s ballistic missile transactions with an Iranian industrial group. [Reuters]
Technically speaking, Treasury’s action adds Kim and Amroggang to the list of specially designated national under Executive Order 13382 (see my sidebar for more on that). Tanchon is the financial arm of Korean Mining Development Corporation, a/k/a KOMID, which has been sanctioned by Treasury for years.
A South Korean man who worked at Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor unit and more recently at a pig farm has defected to the North by walking across the heavily mined border, the communist state’s media said on Tuesday. [Reuters]
Something tells me he’ll be dreaming of those little piggies soon enough.
“He is beside himself with joy for having accomplished this heroic deed,” the North’s KCNA news agency said. It identified the defector as Kang Dong-rim, 30.
“He is now under the warm care of a relevant organ,” KCNA said.
No inappropriate snickering, please. This is a family site.
Remarkably, Kang crossed the world’s most heavily mined and fortified border without exploding or getting himself shot by either side. So really, this is a case of natural selection on two separate, mutually contradictory levels. So what was Kang’s motive?
The South Korean military statement said Kang had formerly served in an army division near where the fence was found cut and he has been on a police wanted list following his alleged involvement in an assault case in September. [AP]
The AP notes that at least two other South Koreans have attempted to defect North in recent years, sadly, none of them members of Hanchongryon.
Previously, I’ve written about North Korea’s growing drug problem. The Chosun Ilbo’s “On the Border” even showed video of a North Korean in delicto flagrante while smuggling dope across the Yalu River in his mouth. In keeping with the ancient economic rule that supply chases demand, North Korean meth cooks have found that Chinese customers can pay more than most North Koreans:
Chinese police is [sic] having a hard time with philopon trade in the border area near Tumen River.
According to a source from Chinese police on October 5, Chinese police confiscate 2-3 kg of philopon a day. Smuggling of philopon has increased since the beginning of September when the rainy season ended.
The source stated that philopon seems to be traded by regular residents of North Korea. These dealers secretly smuggle philopon out to China in close communication with Chinese smugglers and it is difficult to arrest them. This has been a headache for the Chinese police. [Open News]
I don’t really see an up side to meth addiction, though I’m mindful that North Korea won’t change until its society breaks down further. Similarly, I’m untroubled by China’s exploitation of North Korea becoming just a bit less one-sided.
What really intrigues me is this question: how can two countries that can’t stop the flow of drugs across their shared border expect to stop the flow of weapons in the opposite direction?
The word from inside North Korea is that it fell far short of its stated goals, and that the people are still starving in the dark. The sum total appears to be that people did a lot of work that ultimately accomplished only short-term gains in “core” areas of the country:
At the end of this September, a high level source stated that according to North Korea it hit a new record of agricultural production from the 150-day battle, which ended on September 20. In fact, it failed to achieve 70% of the average production. It is estimated that crop harvested this year would not reach 60% of that last year.
Ji Young-Il, a head of department of social science at Chosun University, published an article in ‘Professor Ji Young Il’s Monthly Economic Review’ called ‘The 150-day Battle and Prospects for Building an Economically Powerful Nation.’ He claimed that during the battle North Korea accomplished 130% of its goal in machinery industry and produced hundreds of millions Kilowatt more energy than last year. He also said that coal production grew by 150%, light industry by 157.1% and the amount of goods transported by railway increased by 1 million ton.
However, a source reported that North Korea has achieved less than 70% of its goals in all industries above. The fundamental reason was shortage of electric power, the source said. North Korea has excessively exported coal, the key ingredient for thermal power plants. It has led to massive disruption in domestic electric production as well as in machinery and railway industries which consume a lot of energy. Kim Jong-Il ordered prohibition on coal exports on August 12. After the order the state of electric power in North Korea has been improved, the source informed. [Open Radio]
In areas along North Korea’s western corridor to China, sources inside North Korea report improvements in the regularity of train schedules and the supply of electricity.
Otherwise, the Daily NK’s sources report that the effect of the “battle” was to further demoralize the population and raise a lot of grumbling. Those last two links are an interview with just one North Korean, but they sound like the honest observations of an ordinary person. The “150-day battle” has been mostly a blip to Korea-watchers, but I suspect that it’s been a very big deal to most North Koreans.
Related: The forced labor will continue until morale improves — here’s more on the appearance of those anti-government leaflets in Kwaksan I’d blogged about here. Interestingly, Kwaksan lies along the western corridor between Sinuiju and Pyongyang.
Hmmm. I wonder if we’ve seen some of those types around here?
Writer Jang Shin-Jung (former employee of the United Front Department), a North Korean refugee, testified that North Korea’s United Front Department has adopted a new propaganda strategy against South Korea by operating a new internet commenting team to reflect South Korea’s change in media culture. [….]
Jang conjectured that about 30 team members at contact station 101 were cultural experts of South Korea. He described their proficiency in the latest slangs as proficient while posting among the South Korean online community. It was to the point that when Jang knocked to enter the team’s office, the reply would be in South Korean slang.
The teams post on contentious South Korean societal issues on varieties of well-known portal sites, such as Daum and Naver. They also comment on these issues to amplify criticisms. The goal is the same as the number 1 goal of all media propaganda strategies against South Korea, to increase the power of pro-North Korean factions within South Korea. Jang agreed, saying “I saw psychological warfare such as posts insisting that North Korean nuclear weapons are in reality beneficial for South Korea.” [Open News]
If this is true, and it seems plausible to me, it would be a completely legitimate tactic. Bring it on, just bring on some counterspeech to correct the record. In fact, I wish our government would train a few bloggers to read, write, and post in Chinese, Pashto, Arabic, and German to argue against all of the urban myths that pass for serious political discourse in what the dumbest among us sometimes refer to as a Global Village.
The problem with this, of course, is that for North Korea, speech is warfare by other means, not a way for people to find their own way to a better life. Stated differently, it’s not a two-way street:
As foreign information flows into its society in the form of smuggled goods from China and interaction with other states, the North Korean authorities have once again emphasized that people should reject capitalist culture and stick with the North Korean system.
Minju Chosun (Democratic North Korea), a publication by North Korea’s cabinet, claimed on Saturday in a commentary piece, “We should never be attracted by the scent of capitalism,” and that, “The imperialists are penetrating us with all kinds of rotten bourgeois lifestyles, using the nature of our sensitive young generation on a massive scale.” [Daily NK]
I wonder if it ever occurred to the North Koreans that if their propaganda were less snicker-inducing, literally dozens of adolescent losers in this country might write pro-North Korean blog comments, if only as a vehicle to spite their parents.
It went on to claim that in the former Socialist Bloc the young generation had been rendered psychologically disabled by the touch of capitalism.
Minju Chosun emphasized, “Capitalist elements including America continue to viciously blow a sweet capitalist scent into our country in order to devastate our political and ideological position. Therefore, it is very important work to educate our young so they will not be dazzled by that capitalist wind and to save their fate and guarantee the bright future of the nation.”
The publication urged, “Once they are paralyzed by the sweet capitalist wind, they will fall into corruption, ignore the revolution and focus on individual pleasures, so we have to be awake to the enemies’ strategy.”
In September, Rodong Shinmun also emphasized the ideology of the younger generations in an editorial. It asserted that harboring any illusion about capitalism is the same as drinking poison, and that blocking the capitalist wind is more important than war with guns.
Surely a country with our ability to put technology into the hands of ordinary people can find a way to give internet access to the North Korean people, though I think the propaganda may overstate the power of free speech. Its reference to the danger of “individual pleasures” brings to mind an army of 1.2 million suddenly rendered incapable of operating any weapon requiring the use of both hands.
The Voice of America interviews Nancy Heiken, producer of the documentary Kimjongilia, about North Korea’s concentration camps. You can see a short video clip here. Personally, however, I’d say the film’s own site does a better job of conveying its artistic theme — contrasting the eerily beautiful illusions of the state against the terrible realities beyond the gauzy backdrops. I’m looking forward to having a chance to see this.
Even for North Korea, this would be the WTF story of the year: 
