Should I Be Humiliated or Proud?
My son beat me in a chess game today.
My son is seven years old.
Archive for January, 2010
North Korea Threatens Senders of Leaflet Balloons as Messages “Gain Trust” of North Koreans
Balloon-carried leaflets sent by South Korean civic groups to North Korea are unnerving the North Korean authorities as the anti-Pyongyang messages are gaining trust among North Korean citizens, a local daily said on Saturday.In the past, when the anti-North Korean leaflets were spread in Pyongyang, North Korean residents didn’t believe their contents. However, the situation is different now. According to the Chosun Ilbo, civic groups’ leaflets these days are much more effective than in the past as they are now written by North Korean defectors who write contents that ring a bell among northerners. The leaflets also contain the private life of its leader Kim Jong-il of whom North Koreans are very curious, it said.
When leaflets fell down on the streets of Pyongyang last summer, carried by dozens of balloons, revealing the corrupt life of Kim Jong-il and criticizing the North’s repressive regime, the local security apparatus went into a state of alarm. They ordered citizens to stay in their houses. Only after all the leaflets were collected, they allowed people to come out from their residences. [Korea Times]
That would be highly significant, if true. One of the most important benefits of leafleting North Korea is the strain it puts on regime security forces, forcing them to eat up fuel, spare parts, equipment, and unit morale by redeploying those forces to pick up what would be considered harmless litter anywhere else on earth.
North Korean authorities are responding angrily. In recent days, they repeatedly told the South Korean authorities to ban the sending of anti-North Korean leaflets by the civic groups in South Korea, including the specific names and organizations involved. They threatened that if situation is not taken care of by the South authorities, the North “will take the matter on its own hands,” according to the report.
Park Sang-hak, a representative of the Coalition for Free North Korea Movement in Seoul, is undaunted. “Sending leaflets to North Korea is the least we can do for North Koreans to help them to know what is true. I will not yield to the threats.”
President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.
If you want to contribute to the South Korean-based groups that are launching these balloons, you can so do though the North Korean Freedom Coalition.
Brian Myers Will Do Book Event in D.C.
I may have to find the time to attend this: Brian Myers is coming to The Wilson Center to discuss his new book. I’m going to withhold judgment until I read it. Myers has written much great work about North Korea, the state’s wierd pathology, and the problems with viewing it as merely a Stalinist state, but the thing is, the Great Confiscation looks awfully Stalinist to me, and I’m not yet persuaded why North Korea can’t be both racist and Stalinist.
WTF? American Who Crossed Into North Korea May Have Defected
That latest American who crossed into North Korea looks more likely to be a Spartacist than Spartacus:
South Korea’s Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said the man crossed into North Korea from China on Monday.
It said an unidentified source in North Korea told the newspaper the 28-year-old man said he came to the country because he did not “want to become a cannon fodder in the capitalist military,” and “wants to serve in the North Korean military” instead. [Washington Post, via AP]
On the one hand, he’s probably no greater loss to American society than Charles Robert Jenkins. On the other hand, he may soon wish he’d read talked to Jenkins (”[T]he stupidest decision of my life“) before he decided to make himself James Dresnok’s bitch.
I’m unaware of any other reports of Americans defecting to North Korea since the 1960’s, although there have been a few reports of South Koreans defecting to the North since the Great Famine. Why, it was only last October that a South Korean man, who was under investigation for assaulting his employer, defected to the North and was placed “under the warm care of a relevant organ.” I recall reading a few other sporadic reports of reverse defections as well.
Friendly reminder: all of this reporting is sourced to one of the Donga Ilbo’s anonymous sources. It could be disinformation or just groundless gossip.
Hat tip: Kushibo.
Eagerly Awaiting Eric Sirotkin’s Fact Check
A year after President Obama’s inauguration, North Koreans continue to step forward to slander the Workers’ Paradise and act as willing agents of neocon propaganda about North Korea’s political rehabilitation system:
Life under the regime took its toll on Kim’s family. Her parents died of hunger at Yodok, she said. One son accidentally drowned there. Another was executed in 1989 while trying to escape from North Korea. Kim’s husband was taken to a separate camp, which she calls “a place with no return.” She never saw him again. “I spent years not knowing what the charge was,” said Kim, now 73, who was released in 1979. [L.A. Times]
Based on interviews with more than 370 defectors, including 17 who had been held in the gulags, the watchdog group concluded that the prisons — which were set up in the late 1950s and numbered 13 in the 1970s — have established team captains among inmates to pressure prisoners into doing even more labor. On Tuesday, comments by the three ex-prisoners, who were not cited in the recent report, included details on the Yodok gulag’s inner workings.
The former inmates said the North Korean regime often imprisoned the relatives of people it suspected of crimes, as in Kim’s case. They said that at Yodok, relatives of suspected criminals outnumbered the accused. The three said most of Yodok’s inmates had been detained by public security police and sent to the gulag without trial or explanation of their alleged crime.
“Even the beasts would be ashamed to be there,” she said, describing an existence in which prisoners had to get up at 3:30am, get to work in fields or forests or mines by 4:30 am and keep working until nightfall. “Parents and children die there,” she said. “We don’t have a coffin for the body.” [Don Kirk, Asia Times]
It’s remarkable how many North Koreans, including those who were once privileged members of its society, left their homes, livelihoods, families, “collective spirit,” and universal medical care to work dead-end jobs in Seoul by day and act as neocon propagandists by night.
Well, someone is lying here, anyway. Way back in 2003, Eric Sirotkin led a delegation from the National Lawyers Guild to North Korea, which issued a report called, “North Korea: The Grand Deception Revealed,” where Sirotkin wrote:
We were struck by the design of the DPRK criminal justice system. We even found in a bookstore the Criminal Procedures Act of the DPRK in English. Several principles seem quite progressive and reflect more of restorative justice, than retributive justice. The prime objective of the criminal justice system is rehabilitation or setting an example, not punishment. There is an element of the latter, as there are jail terms for crimes, but this is not the major thrust of their system. In fact, they have codified a process by which those affected by the decision or the conduct of the accused have a real role in the process and those that contributed to the delinquent act or were involved in educating the person (i.e. a parent or friend) have to be available in the process to receive a “lecture” from the court. Penalties include submitting the accused to “social” or “public education.” Those arrested are required to have their families notified within 48 hours. A defense counsel is to be provided to represent the rights of the accused.
We were told that there was no death penalty and that the maximum penalty for any crime is 12 years, with the objective being to try to determine why the person committed the crime and to help that person become a productive member of society. A lack of a death penalty was seen by the delegation as a sign of a civilized nation. There appear to be labor camps where people work out their sentences. No effort was made to hide the presence of these camps. The U.S. media’s recent reports on the poor conditions, high mortality rate and lack of proper care or food, in the camps requires further investigation. In light of the false and exaggerated claims about starvation in the country in general, these reports must be viewed with a grain of salt. We will ask to visit these camps on future delegations.We asked about the penalties for crimes against the state and whether there was a separate system for those crimes. There is not, but provisions are made for crimes that present a “social danger.” This seems consistent with a socialist society organized around the “common good,” but very general and could be subject to abuse. How it is applied remains to be discovered. However, the North Koreans we met with seemed professed to not understanding how someone would really formally challenge the decisions of the collective, as there is, according to them, an elaborate mechanisms for participation and input at various levels off society.
To my knowledge, Sirotkin has never retracted or apologized for his comments. In fact, he’s still at it:
The Right to Peace in Korea with Eric Sirotkin at IADL Congress Hanoi from Eric Sirotkin's Ubuntuworks on Vimeo.
The only possible conclusion I can draw from Sirotkin’s failure to retract his praise for North Korea’s death camps carbon-neutral rehabilitation facilities? It should be obvious: all of these alleged North Korea “witnesses” must be lying. Also, these are photographs of optical illusions.
Since Eric Sirotkin just might be reading this, I wonder if he can help us rebut this “grand deception” with his own observations from the inspections of North Korea’s “correctional” system he led us to believe, back in 2003, that he and the National Lawyers’ Guild would soon undertake. Oddly enough, I’ve scoured the internet and didn’t find Sirotkin’s report.
My comments are open to you, Eric.
Hilarity! Guardian Correspondent Explains How to Make a TV News Segment
Not for those with a low threshold for bad language, but funny and spot-on right:
It Aint Just a River in Egypt, Sister
A Pentagon study finds that “severe segregation” of the sexes contributes to “unusually common” homosexual behavior among Afghanistan’s Pushtun men. Ironically, Afghanistan is also one of the world’s most homophobic places, and as a result, the Pashtuns are “in almost complete denial” about their own proclivities. The Taliban, for example, are almost as well known for their frequent homosexuality as they are for their brutal killing of homosexuals.
I’ve long suspected that societies — predominantly Islamic societies — that retard the development of attraction between the sexes have a higher incidence of homosexuality than more open societies. Others seem to have made more educated guesses to the same effect:
Justin Richardson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, says such thinking is backward–it is precisely the extreme restrictions on sexual relations with women that lead to greater prevalence of the behavior.
“In some Muslim societies where the prohibition against premarital heterosexual intercourse is extremely high–higher than that against sex between men–you will find men having sex with other males not because they find them most attractive of all but because they find them most attractive of the limited options available to them,” Richardson says.
In other words, sex between men can be seen as the flip side of the segregation of women. And perhaps because the ethnic Pushtuns who dominate Kandahar are the most religiously conservative of Afghanistan’s major ethnic groups, they have, by most accounts, a higher incidence of homosexual relations. [L.A. Times]
Yet those same societies would never tolerate the formation of monogamous homosexual relationships. Put in that context, the availability of recruits for suicide bombing missions seems almost understandable.
This isn’t the sort of social engineering Americans should undertake, of course. To be clear, I’m not advocating “curing” or “treating” homosexuality; I’m advocating the gradual opening of Afghan society in a way that lifts its artificial and unhealthy repression of romantic and sexual relationships, relationships that are a large part of what makes life worth living. Stories like this illustrate importance, over the long term, of introducing Afghanistan to global culture, for all its obvious faults. I wonder how different a place Afghanistan would be ten years from now if today’s teenagers could watch podcasts of Hannah Montana and iCarly.
Alejandro Cao de Benós Interview – Part 1
I know what you’re already thinking: Alejandro Cao de Benos, that fat Spanish guy who runs around North Korea in a Mao suit, gave you — a guy who advocates the violent overthrow of the North Korean regime — an interview? Don’t be silly.
Cao gave the interview to Italian freelance journalist and OFK reader Enzo Reale, who kindly offered to translate the full four-part interview into English and allow me to publish the whole thing here, which I’ve done with absolutely no edits, except to put Cao’s responses into italics for clarity. I can’t overstate my gratitude to Enzo for offering me this opportunity. No, I don’t suppose Cao is really an influential figure on the global or even the local stage, but Cao is the political equivalent of a Kardashian or a Paris Hilton — someone we can enjoy pitying, despising, and sometimes envying for their material privileges. Cao is a man about town in the world’s most isolated place, a man of material privilege in a land of famine, who leads a libertine lifestyle amid rigid conformity, a self-professed dissident in a land where all dissent is crushed. It just seems especially gratifying to loathe a man like Alejando Cao de Benos.
There are going to be four parts to this interview, and even from Part I, you can see that Enzo is a clever enough questioner to let Cao fisk himself far more effectively than I could ever do.
By the way, Enzo keeps two great English-Italian bilingual blogs — “Asiaedintorni,” and “1972,” which covers global affairs. If you read Italian, the original Cao interview is published there.
28 January 2010
A South Korean lawyer sits down to dinner with a group of North Korean defectors and has an epiphany: “Listening to such painful stories, I naively wondered why the rest of the world is not doing more to help these desperate people. They are not some criminals or fugitives. Their only crime was to be born into a nation which is ruled by a dictatorship that cares more about the survival of its regime than the wellbeing of its people.”
This sounds like a big step forward: Radio Free North Korea will begin interviewing North Koreans inside North Korea about their lives, and then broadcast those interviews back into North Korea from Seoul:
Kim Seong-min, a representative of the Seoul-based Free North Korea Radio and also a defector, said Wednesday that the station will air the program, titled “Voice of People,” twice a day between Friday and Saturday. The seven-minute insert will contain six people’s descriptions on the recent currency revaluation, a crackdown on marketeering and other complaints, he said. [….]
“This will be the first program recorded by North Koreans who are currently residing in the North,” he said. “In order to deliver the lively voices of North Korean people, we will continue to broadcast this kind program once a week.”
The North Korean Freedom Coalition supports Free North Korea Radio, along with leaflet balloon launches into the North.
Howls of protest from the Hanky as Lee Myung Bak withdraws government support for “independent” Korean films. I’m not enough of a film critic to say what artistic merit might be lost here, but I’m optimistic enough to think that good art can find a market. On the other hand, South Korea’s state-supported film industry often seemed to have no higher purpose than winning the Kim Il Sung Prize for anti-American propaganda.
This is why you read the Hankyoreh at your own peril:
Regarding North Korea’s intentions, experts are primarily interpreting the move as a low-intensity “North Korean-style” pressure tactic in response to the “speed modulation” and “neglect tactics” of the Lee administration’s North Korea policy. Since the second half of 2009, North Korea has waged an active “dialogue offensive” toward South Korea, but the Lee administration has responded reluctantly to the idea of inter-Korean dialogue, either linking it strongly with the North Korea nuclear issue or attaching difficult conditions.
See? They really just want to be loved.
Read this story for yourself and just see how it goes on, for paragraph after paragraph, citing no hard facts or sources, relying exclusively on “experts” or “analysts” who could be drunks in a soju tent for all we know. So it typically tends to be with the Hanky. If any “expert” is named, invariably, he’ll be affiliated with the “Hankyoreh Peace Institute,” which I suppose might not be the Hanky’s own kept think-tank, though it’s certainly a reliable fount of views acceptable to the Central Committee. (Of course, some things are impossible to mitigate or explain, even for the Hankyoreh, in which case, it just ignores them.)
Just consider the contrast here: somewhere in China or North Korea right now, reporters and sources for the Daily NK, Open News, and Radio Free North Korea are risking their lives to bring us more relevant facts — facts that are damning to the Hanky’s pro-Kim Jong Il views. Meanwhile, the Hanky is running a shell game to obscure the facts, laundering its opinions through politically reliable, anonymous, or perhaps completely fictitious “experts,” and then passing the views of those “analysts” off as news.
Because it worked so well last time: an unnamed American think tank, presumably the awful Korea Society, wants to invite a North Korean orchestra to the United States. The idea isn’t inherently harmful, though you can count on some American booster of the visit to say something stupid in its defense.
Equality Begins Where Dependence Ends
South Korea, which spent the better part of the last two decades bitching that it wanted to be treated like America’s equal, has been bitching ever since the Pentagon decided that Korea was just about ready to take over wartime operational control of its own military, you know … for its own defense. Needless to say, and largely as a result of having served in the USFK myself for four years, I’m neither as sympathetic nor as diplomatic as our C.G.:
“We are still responsible to come and help defend this great country,” Army Gen. Walter Sharp said. “And what I’m going to do is to take this year and educate the folks of South Korea as to what these transitions mean.”
Some South Koreans also worry another change the U.S. is making—extending typical troop assignments to up to three years and allowing more personnel to bring their families with them—will lead to a reduction in the roughly 28,000 U.S. troops currently stationed there. Both changes began several years ago after prolonged negotiations between Seoul and Washington. But they have been opposed by many South Koreans, including conservative politicians and military retirees who say any changes will leave the country vulnerable to attack by North Korea. [WSJ, Evan Ramstad]
I give up. They don’t want us to bring our families, but they don’t want young, single soldiers chasing “their” women in Hongdae, either. (For the record, when I was in Korea, there was also a widely violated general order against sex in the barracks; also, I preferred the more bookish girls in Shin’chon and Suktae, but that’s another story).
Maybe the ROK Defense Ministry would be willing to hire scantily clad greeters to drape each incoming American soldier with a floral lei and present him with a monogrammed bottle of personal lubricant. Which isn’t to say that I’m a fan of putting more American civilians inside Nodong range, either.
The Great Confiscation Backfires, Badly
How can we tell that North Korea is in a state of self-inflicted economic chaos? When the regime can’t even conceal it from the barbarians.
AFP, quoting an unidentified Western diplomat via Yonhap, reports that “[a]t the Koryo Hotel where many foreigners stay, the [North Korean won exchange] rate swung from 51 won to 120 in the space of a few hours on January 22.” Another report says that currently, prices in North Korea are “anyone’s guess” and that in shops near the railroad stations, there are “stacks of unsold goods” because no one really knows how much to sell them for.
Another AFP report mostly reinforces what we already know — that North Korea’s “politically motivated currency revaluation” didn’t recollective the economy, but instead created a lot of inflation, chaos, “widespread anger,” and hardship, and that has forced people to barter just to get enough to eat. The report goes on, “This prompted authorities to further strengthen control of market activities. However, the situation is getting worse.” U.N. Special Rapporteur Vitit Muntarbhorn seems to agree it’s not working out so well, as do Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard:
“Such an effort is doomed to failure as long as the state lacks the resources and capacity to put goods on the shelves,” they wrote. Despite the regime’s “sheer ruthlessness” including reported executions, there was little evidence it had succeeded in stamping out the market entirely, they said.
Open News reports that food prices continue to rise amid the regime’s dithering failure to set food prices:
The hope that North Korea’s monetary reform would bring stability to inflationary prices has already failed. A source in North Korea communicated on the January 17 that prices have shot up over the past 40 days since the reform. In addition as food prices, the standard measurement for inflation, have rose so have the prices of goods on black markets.
In Pyongyang 1kg of rice is selling for 160-180 won and corn for 80-110 won as of the 17th. In Musan rice is sold at 190-210 won and corn at 80-100 won. In Hyesan rice is selling for 180-210 won and corn for 80-120, while in Shinuiju rice is selling for 170-200 won and corn costs 100-120 won.
These prices have increased over 200% on average since just one week before on the 10th of January. Compared to December 24th prices have increased at least 400%, and compared to the days before the monetary reform (average prices for rice = 20won, corn-10 won) prices rose 10-fold (1000%).
Open News reports that even among those North Koreans who were initially happy that the Great Confiscation increased their wages are now growing discontented that inflation has taken that increase away, and made goods harder to buy. Ironically, this means that the state’s last loyal workers may end up suffering more than those who depend on the markets.
Open News also corroborates AFP’s report that merchants are holding onto their stocks because they don’t know what to sell them for. But the good news is that there is food, and eventually, merchants will release it into the marketplace somehow.
How else do we know that all is not well? Because KCNA is running reports about new “up-to-date foodstuffs factories” and scientific breakthroughs in food production. North Korea tends to issue reports like these in times of public anxiety about the food situation.
Thankfully, and as I’ve noted before, North Koreans have become accomplished survivors. Here’s Marcus Noland, addressing the Korea Society in New York:
“The North Korean people have demonstrated absolutely extraordinary resilience over the last twenty years,” Noland reminded listeners, “It is unlikely that even this government could bring to bear the degree of repression that would be necessary to eliminate the market economy. So the market is going to come back.” [Daily NK]
It’s already happening. The people aren’t waiting for the government to get its act together. They’re already taking matters into their own hands by smuggling food into North Korea on an unprecedented scale.
It has been reported that from early December to January 15 of this year food has been rapidly smuggled in on large and small scales throughout the Korean peninsula, from the northernmost part of Ohnsung along the Tumen and the Yalu River all the way to the city of Shinuiju in the Northern Pyong[an] province. In fact it is being reported that in a province near the banks of the Yalu River 100~120 tons of food were smuggled in in one night. However even though there are significant amounts of food entering North Korea the food prices have not been affected and are not dropping. [Open News]
And, as quoted previously:
It has been reported that from early December to January 15 of this year, food has been increasingly smuggled in on large scales throughout North Korea, from the northernmost part of Ohnsung along the Tumen and the Yalu River all the way to the city of Shinuiju in the Northern Pyong province. In fact it is being reported that in a province near the banks of the Yalu River 100~120 tons of food were smuggled in in one night.
According to news from a source inside North Korea on January 15, food began to be smuggled in last December because they needed to exceed the amount of food for their importing licenses. Also when the New Year started many food importation licenses expired and there were no legal ways to import food; many turned to illegally smuggling food in instead. In North Korea the food importation license is issued after the lunar New Year, so it is difficult to import food before then.
It is reported that in these provinces that trucks are furiously loaded with food across the frozen river in the late hours of night. On some nights over 100 tons of rice have been smuggled in. In order to operate, these companies and wholesale agents are mobilizing transportation and the means to whisk them away quickly for their profit. In fact the current rate of smuggling is on a large enough scale to create the term “public smuggling.”
Even the National Security Agency and the Military National Headquarters, along with other North Korean regulators are said to be overlooking this situation. [Open News]
It’s difficult to overstate the significance of this. First, it means there probably won’t be famine in the spring, because merchants won’t wait forever for the state to set prices. Eventually, they’ll sell that food for something of value.
But the rise of large-scale food smuggling right under the noses of the Anjeonbu also portends needed economic and even political change. It means that the system is now so frayed and corrupt that smugglers can move goods of any kind into North Korea in quantity. Today, of necessity, the cargo is food. Tomorrow, the cargo will be consumer goods. But next will come information — books, bibles, pamphlets, radios, computers, flash drives, cell phone repeaters that can be lashed to remote treetops, and camera phones. It opens up the possibility for a North Korean opposition to galvanize, organize, coopt and corrupt regime officials, and effectively challenge the power of the state.
On North Korea, Obama Touts Sanctions, Not Talks
Now, these diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of nuclear weapons. That’s why North Korea now faces increased isolation, and stronger sanctions –- sanctions that are being vigorously enforced. That’s why the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences. That is a promise. (Applause.)
Now, I suppose you detect sarcasm, but don’t take this as criticism. If candidate Obama’s campaign rhetoric was sincere, then I credit him with being a quick study, with an assist from Kim Jong Il. I don’t deny that President Obama’s North Korea policy leaves much to be desired — it’s really just a continuation of the same paradigm of the last 20 years, only with more sanctions. It’s ultimately headed toward an agreement that won’t make our country more secure. Still, the pressure is hastening the Kim Jong Il’s Untergang, and it’s far, far better than my initially low expectations.
Not Again: Another American Crosses Into North Korea
There’s no word on who he/she is.
There’s no word on why he/she crossed.
A South Korean activist who has been the source of most information about the missionary said Thursday that he has no knowledge of the second American detainee. Jo Sung-rae of the Seoul-based group Pax Koreana said he and fellow activists sent about 150,000 leaflets by balloon across the border into North Korea on Wednesday as part of efforts to let North Koreans know about Park. Jo said the leaflets repeated Park’s demand that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il step down and dismantle camps for political prisoners.
There’s no word on whether it was all of the favorable media attention Robert Park has garnered, or some other reason, that motivated him to do cross over.
There’s no word that this person released a statement before crossing.
There’s no word on whether he brought along his own briefcase full of ransom money … you know, to save “Kim Jong Bill” Richardson the trouble.
Please, people. Stop doing this!
27 January 2010
Some people never learn: After everything that’s happened in the last 20 years, we’re still trying to get Agreed Framework III.
Which moment of truth is this? I lost count in 2007.
A Kaesong Travel Advisory: Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air.
Bangkok Update: Here’s the most detailed inventory I’ve yet seen of that North Korean weapons shipment intercepted last year:
Thai police discovered 40 tons of North Korean arms including multiple rocket launchers, 40 surface-to-air missiles, and hundreds of rocket-propelled grenades worth an estimated US$18 million on an Ilyushin cargo plane operated by Air West of Georgia, which landed in Bangkok on Dec. 12.
Interesting: “Two South Korean rights activist groups on Tuesday released a list of 254 inmates at North Korea’s notorious Yoduk prison camp. In a press conference at the Korea Press Center in Seoul, Democracy Network Against North Korean Gulag and the Antihuman Crime Investigation Committee said that of the inmates on the list, 133 were confirmed recently and the other 121 around 2004. The groups compiled the new list based on testimony of four defectors who escaped from Yoduk camp between 2003 and 2005.”
Related: Kushibo links to an L.A. Times story about former inmates of Camp 15, Yodok.
What’s behind North Korea’s demand for peace talks?
Euna Lee tries to shift the focus back to where it belongs:
But the story the two journalists wanted to tell still gnaws at her, said Lee, 37, a producer for San Francisco-based Current TV.
“I’m glad I’m home, but the story we worked on will not get finished yet,'’ she said, adding: “I wanted to raise awareness about North Korean defections.'’
Lee and Ling were seized March 17 by North Korea while they were near its border gathering information for a story about North Korean women who are forced into the sex trade while attempting to defect to neighboring China.
“They are sold like livestock without knowing where they’ll end up,'’ Lee said.
Fears for the future of dateless Chinese men. This argument, I’ve observed, tends to really piss Chinese netizens off. Especially the single, male, dateless ones.
Bang Bang, Splash Splash
When I first heard that North Korea had declared a no-sail zone off its West Coast, I really wanted to believe that it was because they read this, but I suspected that they’d actually launch some anti-ship missiles from Cho-Do. Instead, we have this:
North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire near their disputed sea border on Wednesday, highlighting instability along a heavily armed frontier for the second time in three months. North Korea warned the South that more rounds were on the way as a part of military training, and then fired off another barrage a few hours after delivering the message in a state media report. Analysts doubt the latest clash will escalate and see it more as an attempt by Pyongyang to stress tensions on the Korean peninsula and press home its demand for a peace deal that would open the way to international aid for its ruined economy.
The shells all appear to have splashed harmlessly into the water. Cue the grave concern, etcetera, etcetera. (yawn ….)