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Monthly Archive: December, 2009

December 31, 2009

Man-Portable Surface-to-Air Missiles Found in Seized Bangkok Shipment

Brian McCartan, a freelance journalist based in Bangkok, has written an exceptionally detailed account of what is know and not known about the North Korean weapons seized in Bangkok. All of the many details McCartan relates are consistent with the better reporting I’ve read in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, but there is one thing in this article that I hadn’t read anywhere else: A search of the plane’s cargo after a tip-off from US intelligence sources found 35...

Categories Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)
December 31, 2009

What Would Be a Good Crank Call for the North Korean U.N. Mission?

ReACH, the Japanese abductee advocacy group, sends: Call North Korea at UN in New York, USA 1-212-972-3105 Call North Korea at UN in Geneva, Switzerland 41-22-735-4370 Send fax to North Korea at UN in New York, USA 1-212-972-3154 Send fax to North Korea at UN in Geneva, Switzerland 41-22-786-0662 Don’t forget to copy and paste Kim Jong-Il’ s photo, (example) and write “Important Message to Chairman Kim Jong-Il”, so that they cannot throw it away and have to report it...

Categories Abductions/Humor/Satire
December 31, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates: Regime Turns Attention to Foreign Currency

The North Korean People’s Safety Agency has declared a “complete prohibition of foreign currency usage. The decree was issued on December 26th and went into effect on Monday 28th. A source inside North Hamkyung Province reported, “A People’s Safety Agency declaration on banning the use of U.S. dollars, Yuan and the Euro was publicized on the 26th. The declaration was posted in public places and in every workplace starting this morning. The title of the declaration is, “On punishing severely...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
December 30, 2009

North Korea Loots KEDO Site (Updated)

North Korea has been stealing trucks, cranes and other equipment from the site of a nuclear power plant where an American-led consortium stopped construction four years ago in a dispute over the North’s nuclear weapons development, the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reported Wednesday. [N.Y. Times] It gets better: “There is even suspicion that the North Koreans used the equipment when they conducted a nuclear test in October 2006 and in May,” the paper quoted a source as saying. North...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
December 30, 2009

Iran’s History May Be Decided This Friday

I continue to be astonished by the numbers, persistence, and courage of the Iranian people in coming out into the streets to protest the corrupt theocracy, even as that theocracy lowers itself to new depths of brutality to suppress their hopes. The other day, I framed the question that is key to Iran’s fate this way: “I wonder if the security forces can maintain their cohesion as long as the protesters can maintain their courage.” The stakes are rising. There...

Categories Iran
December 30, 2009

Review: Nothing to Envy — Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick

December 30, 2009:   I’ve been looking forward to this one. It arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon, and I’ll be nibbling away at this a few pages at a time during my commutes, posting short updates as I hit interesting passages (this way, I don’t labor under the guilt of having written nothing about it for weeks if work or family obligations prevent me from finishing it). Having flipped through a few pages, I see a work that sits...

Categories Books & Films/Media Criticism
December 30, 2009

LiNK Needs Your Help to Rescue One Hundred North Korean Refugees

I’m always glad to post updates on LiNK fund-raisers; they’re one of the most dedicated, effective, smart-thinking activist groups working on North Korea issues. This season, they’re launching the One Hundred campaign: Up to 300,000 North Koreans are hiding in the underground today. Most are looking for an opportunity to escape but cannot fund their own journey. This is where we can help. LiNK will start with the rescue of 100 refugees. To launch TheHundred program in 2010, our goal...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Refugees
December 29, 2009

Don Kirk’s Korea Betrayed is changing the way I think about Kim Dae Jung

And unless you already believe that DJ was a closet commie, Korea Betrayed might change the way you think, too. Kirk, whose research of his subject is extensive, describes in detail how in his early life, DJ flirted with a number of leftist political organizations and unions, some of which were also linked to North Korea, but none of those associations necessarily linked DJ to the North Koreans. After all, North Korean troops almost shot DJ in 1950, and only...

Categories Books & Films/Korean History/Uncategorized
December 29, 2009

29 December 2009: South Korea Channels N. Korea Aid Through the U.N., Blackouts, and Chinese Colonialism

A WELCOME CHANGE: President Lee is giving $22 million to W.H.O. and UNICEF aid projects in North Korea so that at least a few more kids will outlive the Kim Dynasty. That is a vast improvement over how things used to be under Roh Moo Hyun, whose “Unification” Ministry used to give unmonitored cash and food aid directly to Kim Jong Il and his minions, with predictable results. This time, South Korea’s donations are flowing through the U.N., which at...

Categories Anju Links
December 28, 2009

North Korea Says It Has Robert Park (Updated; Another Statement by Park)

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch Tuesday that the American was detained and under investigation after illegally entering through the North Korea-China border last Thursday. [AP] I suppose this comes as no surprise. The North Koreans don’t identify Robert Park by name, but I think we can assume it’s him. You don’t have to agree with Park’s methods to pity him now. There are two theories here: one, that North Korea will want to...

Categories Robert Park
December 28, 2009

28 December 2009: Another Nuke Test, Proliferation Updates, Hard Times for N. Korean Workers Abroad

BRING IT ON: There’s speculation that North Korea may test yet another nuke, to which I say, that’s one less it can sell. MORE ON THE LOGISTICAL CHAIN behind the Bangkok weapons seizure, at the Wall Street Journal. Still no finality on the final destination for the weapons, however, though I’m sticking with my educated guess that it was Iran, in part because the shipment contained parts for long-range missiles. IF YOU CAN’T TRUST A FELLOW MARXIST OLIGARCH, WHO CAN...

Categories Anju Links
December 28, 2009

Iran Rises Again

I confess that I’d written off the Iranian protest movement for this year, but I was wrong: the movement actually appears to be spreading to new places and attracting support beyond its traditional base among the students. Large-scale protests spread in central Iranian cities Wednesday, offering the starkest evidence yet that the opposition movement that emerged from the disputed June presidential election has expanded beyond its base of mostly young, educated Tehran residents to at least some segments of the...

Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Proliferation
December 27, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates

The Washington Post’s Blaine Harden writes today that popular discontent over the Great Confiscation isn’t going away: It was an unexplained decision — the kind of command that for more than six decades has been obeyed without question in North Korea. But this time, in a highly unusual challenge to Kim’s near-absolute authority, the markets and the people who depend on them pushed back.  Grass-roots anger and a reported riot in an eastern coastal city pressured the government to amend...

Categories NK Economics/Resistance
December 25, 2009

Korean-American Activist Crosses Into North Korea (Updated)

Oh God, not again. Reuters is reporting that Robert Park, a 28 year-old American, has walked across the Tumen River from China to the North Korean town of Hoeryong, which is infamous for being both the birthplace of Kim Jong Il’s mother and the town nearest to Camp 22. Park’s apparent objectives were (1) to get himself arrested and (2) thereby raise global attention about North Korea’s brutal political prison camps. Rest assured that Park will accomplish Objective Number One....

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Robert Park/Useful Idiocy
December 25, 2009

Korean American Robert Park Reportedly Enters North Korea

Updated Below Late last night (the night of December 25th, Seoul-time) a couple Korean media outlets reported a Korean American, Robert Park, crossed from China into North Korea. Twelve hours later I couldn’t find anything more on the story, and I wondered if maybe Park had not carried it out. But within the last hour Reuters also has the story, though no comment from the North Korean government as of yet. SEOUL (Reuters) – A U.S. human rights activist trying...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Robert Park
December 23, 2009

Treasury Issues Alert on Another North Korean Bank

Just days after Stephen Bosworth’s mostly unproductive visit to Pyongyang (it was, despite much spin to the contrary) the Treasury Department has issued a financial advisory against one of North Korea’s largest banks, Kumgang Bank, for “[i]nvolvement in [i]llicit [f]inancial [a]ctivities,” based on “publicly available information.” You can read Treasury’s advisory in full here, but you’ll find it terse and otherwise lacking in detail about Kumgang’s transgressions. The advisory updates this broader advisory against North Korean financial institutions, issued following...

Categories Money Laundering/NK Economics/Sanctions