Nearly a year after voting for UNSCR 1874, Russia gets around to implementing anti-proliferation sanctions. Let’s hope that Russia takes enforcement more seriously than China, though I’m not particularly optimistic.
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Projection:“The south Korean conservative regime is no more than a marionette as it acts according to the script written by outsiders, bereft of any independence. This reactionary ruling group is bound to go to a ruin any moment as it goes against the requirements of the times and the desire of the people.“
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Take a drink!
The imperialists’ loud-mouthed “guarantee of peace” is nothing but a synonym for aggression, war and intervention, it notes, and goes on:
The reality clearly proves that the imperialists never change their aggressive nature and regard it as their physiology to launch a brigandish war of aggression and resort to military blackmail in order to achieve their avaricious and hegemonic aims. There is no change in the real nature of imperialism in the past or in that of modern imperialism. If there be any change, imperialism has become craftier and more vicious and diverse in its methods of aggression and plunder.
Their “peace” ballad is just like a sort of narcotic to create illusions among people. [KCNA]
Funny thing is, John Feffer and Christine Ahn are probably the only two people in America talking about that now.
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[T]he Central Party carefully monitors the public sentiment “missing the time of the Great Leader.” One party official in Pyongyang commented that “in times of the Arduous March, many people yearned for the Great Leader’s time. Since 2000, the Central Party has absolutely prohibited such public sentiment because it means we are doing worse than the period of the Great Leader. Thus, it is a real problem that such public sentiment is arising again.” [Good Friends]
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The Korea Herald: “N. Korea Hints at Continued Uranium Enrichment.” But isn’t this all a mistranslation? Isn’t this really just another case of the neocons in the Obama Administration banging their war-drums to justify their hard-line policies and enrich the military-industrial complex? I’ll let you cogitate on that on your own.
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I almost had to duct-tape my head together before writing that — aside from the cheap attempts to blame President Lee for the Cheonan incident — I agreed with much of what Kim Jong Dae writes here in the Hankyoreh about reforming the ROK military registered with me:
But there is one truth that we must face squarely with this incident. Not long ago, when the crashes of an air force fighter and an army helicopter took place in succession, I had a vague sense of unease about the South Korean military. This continuation of incidents where vessels that leaked and should have been repaired instead were sent into action and sank provides concrete confirmation of a deep-rooted vice that runs through all branches of the military.
This vice is the disappearance of humanism from national defense. We are witnessing a phenomenon in which “internal risks” that have grown as antiquated equipment remains in operation without being screened out are now threatening human lives. What is the real reason that the military possesses weapons that have passed through their life cycle? It stems from an obsession with maintaining numbers. If the numbers of weapons drop, the number of units and personnel must also drop, so each branch considers such a drop in weapons numbers taboo. The results have been a paradox in which internal risks become greater than the threat of the enemy. [Kim Jong Dae, The Hanky]
Let me admit up front that I may be reading too much into the word “humanism,” but it suggests one of the things I learned in the Army that I’ve tried very hard to carry into civilian life: the culture of officers and NCO’s caring about the welfare of their soldiers. That’s a key part of the morale and unit cohesion of our professional army, and it’s what kept the Army glued together with high reenlistment rates through the recent wars. In my many conversations with ROK soldiers, I did not get the impression that they felt valued or cared for by their officers and NCO’s. The only cohesion was among soldiers of equal rank, which may be a function of Confucian culture, but isn’t enough to hold a unit together under the stress of severe combat.
The flaw in Kim’s argument is that this isn’t a Lee Myung Bak problem, but one that persisted during the liberal presidencies of Kim Dae Jun and Roh Moo Hyun. It’s firmly rooted in the ROK military’s culture.
Kim goes on to criticize the MOD for overspending on new weapons. My own observation, admittedly a few years old now, is that the ROK military does have a lot of old equipment that needs replacing and adds to its maintenance burden. On the other hand, when I read about South Korea embarking on expensive R&D programs for indigenous weapons systems, I always doubt that South Korea will build or export enough of those fancy new toys for it to be worth the expense. But I’m sure it’s great for Korea’s national pride.
It is now possible to say that a new consensus is emerging that the North Korean regime’s stability is in doubt. The latest article to strike this tone is from Evan Ramstad in the Wall Street Journal:
North Korea’s authoritarian regime appears to be weakening and the prospect of its collapse is being discussed anew by longtime observers, though there is still a broad debate about when that could happen. [Wall Street Journal, Evan Ramstad]
You’re on your own from there, unless you’re a subscriber, but it’s worth reading.
Aidan Foster-Carter recites a history of Kim Jong Il’s political and economic malpractice, registers the increasingly evident effects of this, and concludes that “North Korea has run out of road; the game is finally up.” As is so often the case with North Korea, you have to wonder what else but pure spite could motivate such stupidity as trying to create a favorable balance of payments by specializing in things that are either illegal or just plain nasty:
[M]orality aside, it is stupid policy. Pariahs stay poor. North Korea could earn far more by going straight. The Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), where South Korean businesses employ Northern workers to make a range of goods, shows that co-operation can work. Yet Pyongyang keeps harassing it, imposing arbitrary border restrictions and demanding absurd wage hikes.
Now it threatens to seize $370m (€275m, £247m) of South Korean assets at Mount Kumgang, a tourist zone idle since a southern tourist was shot dead in 2008 and the north refused a proper investigation. Even before that, Pyongyang’s greed in extorting inflated fees from Hyundai ensured that no other chaebol has ventured north. Contrast how China has gained from Taiwanese investment. [Aidan Foster-Carter, Financial Times]
And I’m with Aidan right up until he writes this:
China is quietly moving into North Korea, buying up mines and ports. Some in Seoul cry colonialism, but it was they who created this vacuum by short-sightedly ditching the past decade’s “sunshine” policy of patient outreach. President Lee Myung-bak may have gained the Group of 20 chairmanship, but he has lost North Korea.
I’m generally a big fan of Foster-Carter’s, but … wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that Kim Jong Il was the one who ditched Sunshine? (And to say that Lee “lost” North Korea rather ridiculously suggests that Roh Moo Hyun ever “had” it.) Lee certainly did insist, early on, that the unrestricted flow of the taxpayers’ cash to North Korea must be conditioned on real progress in nuclear disarmament, but that cash bought South Korea no perceptible equity in North Korea itself, it merely sustained the regime and bought superficial quiet (while funding WMD development). Lee also insisted, quite commendably, that humanitarian aid must henceforth be monitored, so that it would actually serve a humanitarian purpose.
But when I think “Sunshine,” I usually associate that term with Kaesong and Kumgang. Foster-Carter himself has accurately described the reasons for the demise of Kaesong, so there’s nothing I need to add to that. As for Kumgang, it would still be running today had North Korea not shot and killed Park Wang-Ja, and then refused to cooperate in an inquiry into her death or guarantee the safety of other South Korean citizens.
All the while, China has been increasing its stake in North Korea to an extent South Korea would never have been permitted. China, after all, does not represent an existential threat to the legitimacy of Kim’s rule. North Korea may see it as a threat — as it sees all foreign influence as threats — but Chinese in North Korea were never so carefully contained as South Koreans in North Korea. Indeed, it was during the Sunshine years that China began to buy up North Korean mines and ports in earnest. Arguably, the best ways to break that trend are to fracture the regime that permits it, raise the political risk of investing in North Korea, foment anti-Chinese nationalism in North Korea, and make it clear that investment agreements negotiated with an unaccountable regime will be subject to renegotiation after unification.
Writing in the Asia Times, Andray Abrahamian, a doctoral candidate at a small South Korean university, finally gets around to publishing — apparently unedited — the term paper that’s been on his hard drive for the last three years:
At present, goods from Kaesong are excluded [from the U.S.-Korea FTA] but could be used as enticement for North Korean reform. The requirements for Kaesong-produced goods to be included in the FTA are deliberately vague: they are dependent on US interpretations of North Korean behavior. Specifically, the text cites progress in the denuclearization of the peninsula, relations between the two Koreas and working conditions in the industrial complex.
Because my feed reader is prone to moments of undeclared nostalgia, I actually had to go back and re-check the date on this to reassure myself that it wasn’t actually written in 2007, when people with working internet connections were actually writing things like this. Now, let’s all plug in our hair dryers, thaw Mr. Abrahamian out from his cryogenic deep-freeze, and download him some updates on North Korea’s idea of economic reform, its behavior since President Obama’s inauguration, and the state of the FTA (also, Michael Jackson died and — sit down for this — Ricky Martin is gay). But then, when is the last time anyone other than Don Kirk wrote anything worth reading for the Asia Times?
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Here is today’s Daily Affirmation from KCNA. Share it with someone you love:
The conservative media organizations and hack writers are bound to face a stern punishment by the nation as they are hell-bent on malignantly defiling the dignity and system in the DPRK and releasing false reports about it as trumpeters serving the above-said group.
The reptile conservative media would be well advised to bear in mind that they will have to pay dearly for falsifying the reality and stoking confrontation quite contrary to the mindset of the people. [KCNA]
Whose idea was it to turn the list of state sponsors of terrorism over to the archdiocese of Dublin?
The Cheonan incident has claimed another victim, a diver who died in the recovery effort. That effort — Yonhap has a detailed report on it — can hardly be considered a rescue effort now, but one hopes that something can be learned from this disaster so that someone might be saved if something like this happens again.
With so much uneducated speculation about the cause of the explosion aboard the Cheonan — here, I include myself — I’ve been waiting to read something a little more informed. Kim Tae-Jun is a 34-year Navy veteran who commanded a patrol boat and went on to become a professor at the Korea National Defense University. Kim thinks it’s unlikely that a collision with the rock would have caused the explosion, but doesn’t rule out an internal explosion. He does not conclude that North Korea sank the Cheonan, but offers some useful observations about how it could have:
If we look at the possible involvement of North Korea, we can think of a torpedo or mine attack from a submarine or a disguised merchant vessel.
Pyongyang has vowed to retaliate for its defeat in the Battle of Daecheong, and North Korea could have studied the operation pattern of the South Korean ships to stay close to the island. A North Korean submarine may have hidden near the island and fired a torpedo to the rear of the ship. When a torpedo approaches from the rear, sonar cannot detect the acoustics of the torpedo.
Also, we cannot rule out the possibility of a mine attack since North Korea has conducted submarine mine drills in the past and the explosion was powerful enough to puncture the ship instantly. Mines can be ignited by various triggers, such as noise, magnetism, pressure, sensors or a combination of these factors. A mine can be anchored at the sea bottom and the explosive can be placed in the middle of the water, so the explosion can happen at the middle or rear of the ship.
Lastly, North Korea could have used a civilian vessel or a submarine and fired a missile at the rear of the ship. However, there is no report of North Korean vessels passing around the Cheonan at the time, and this possibility is very low. The direction the steel plates bent as a result of the explosion would provide a critical clue to determine the cause. [Kim Tae-Jun, Joongang Ilbo]
The Chosun Ilbo discusses another theory I had mentioned in my first post on this story — an unconventional attack by semi-submersible. It does so in the context of describing North Korea’s “human torpedoes.” Like a lot of things about North Korea, it’s far-fetched on its face, yet all of this (sea-borne commandos, suicide missions, sneak attacks) is within the limits of North Korea’s established behavior:
One former North Korean sailor who defected to South Korea said the suicide squads have many semi-submersible vessels that can carry two bombers and either two torpedoes or two floating mines. In areas like the West Sea where the underwater current is fast, the suicide bombers train with mines rather than torpedoes.
One defector who served in North Korea’s intelligence service, said, “Following the first naval battle in 1999, North Korea realized that it cannot defeat the South Korean Navy by conventional means and began studying unconventional methods.” The best method is said to be the use of “acoustic mines” carried by small, semi-submersibles that travel at speeds of less than 2 km/h. The craft could be detected by South Korean sonar if they travel any faster. If the underwater squads returned after placing the mines on the hull of a ship, it would be very difficult to find evidence of the attack. [Chosun Ilbo]
But then, maybe James Steinberg knows something I don’t:
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said that while South Korea was leading the investigation into Friday night’s maritime explosion, he had heard nothing to implicate any other country.
“Obviously the full investigation needs to go forward. But to my knowledge, there’s no reason to believe or to be concerned that that may have been the cause,” Steinberg told reporters. [AFP]
I’m sure plenty of American diplomats and defense planners badly want this not to be linked to North Korea. For that matter, I can imagine that President Lee would rather not have the headache of having to respond to that. It certainly wouldn’t make diplomatic, economic, or military sense for North Korea to have done this, at least not from our rational frame of reference. But that is just as true of North Korea’s nuclear program, nuclear tests, proliferation, and its “handling” of its economy. None of this seems rational in light of the better alternatives that self-interested governments everywhere else have chosen, except when considered in the context of North Korea’s history of profiting from the perception that it is irrational. If that bluff factor doesn’t explain their behavior, all we can do is revert to psychoanalysis.
Update, 9 p.m.:
It sounds like the South Koreans are about to take the most likely accidental cause off the table:
South Korea’s Navy has tentatively concluded that the sinking of a warship last week was not due to an internal explosion, according to a top presidential official Tuesday.
In his report to President Lee Myung-bak, Navy chief Kim Sung-chan said it is almost certain that the 1,200-ton vessel Cheonan was torn in two due to “powerful outside pressure or an explosion,” according to Lee Dong-kwan, senior secretary for public affairs at the presidential office. [Yonhap]
If that’s true, it still doesn’t convict North Korea. It wouldn’t rule out an old South Korean mine as the cause, though the Defense Minister claims that the Navy hasn’t placed any in the area. It also wouldn’t rule out the accidental southward drift of a North Korean mine, which would not have the same implications as the recent and intentional placing a mine or explosive. This would be analogous to the leftover sea mines that are still being found in the Baltic and Black Seas today, but which are hardly a causus belli against Germany today. The Armistice Agreement awards Baekryeong Island to the South and requires freedom of navigation in the Han Estuary, but doesn’t explicitly require the removal of all sea mines from the area. If the mine simply drifted south, it would be a terrible case of negligence, and grounds to demand compensation and apology. But it would not be an act of war.
Still, these waters get a great deal of traffic from patrol boats and fishing boats. It just seems unlikely, though not impossible, that the ROK Navy would strike a mine now, 26 years after the last one was seen. And if it was a mine, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever know when it was placed, even if we ever find out who placed it.
South Korean suspicions seem to be closing in on North Korea as the “prime suspect,” yet the U.S. government still seems genuinely skeptical.
Alternative elite members who can apply the knowledge they learned in South Korea well in the North Korean reality could be doctors, technicians, CEOs and scholars of a post-Kim age. Re-education could cultivate specialists in the new North Korea. Despite the very low economic level, North Korea provides a fairly good basic education. Therefore, when carrying out the rehabilitation of North Korea, re-education based on the knowledge they already have is more reasonable than educating North Korean specialists such as technicians and doctors all over again from the start. An alternative elite which received a university education in South Korea and has experience of working in a modern environment with modern technologies is one which can accomplish the most in re-education.
The Chosun Ilbo calls on South Korea to treat human rights like a serious issue, after years of the opposite:
It is time to make things extremely difficult for North Korea unless it takes at least some steps to improve the human rights situation. “It is time for the highest level of the UN, the Security Council, to step up,” Muntarbhorn said. The Security Council members — the U.S., China, the U.K., France and Russia — must tackle North Korea’s human rights situation and threaten the North with even harsher sanctions to get it to pay attention.
Seoul must play a leading role in these efforts. The South Korean government must undertake a wide range of measures, including assessing the human rights situation in North Korea and coming up with an action plan. South Korea could start by joining hands with international human rights advocacy groups who help sick children and elderly people in North Korea. Such steps will demonstrate to the world that the human rights situation in North Korea is a pressing concern.
Diplomats and analysts of various kinds who treat human rights like a distraction from their nuclear monomania don’t understand that the Kim regime’s nuclear threat and its domestic atrocities both spring from its utter disregard for human life. Diplomacy and drum circles aren’t going to change the fundamental character flaw of a sociopath, but they may weaken the rule of the Kims and empower some transitional figure — or at least someone with a shred of conscience — to push the Kims aside. Only then will diplomatic solutions have any hope for success.
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Dear Richard Halloran: I’m a big fan of your writing, but I must respectfully inform you that I have registered the copyright for the application of the term “Gotterdammerung” in the North Korean context. But because I liked your article, I won’t ask for a royalty this time.
[H]is leadership and charisma are said to be as strong as Kim Jong-Il’s. His personality can be harsh at times, and he acts cold and violent, the source said. The older generation of North Korean elites are very worried about his personality as he even uses his closest people for his ambitions, just like his father, Kim Jong- Il, does. Therefore, elder elites are anxious about Kim Jong-Eun’s succession of power.
Worried enough to do something about it?
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Open News reports that “the National Security Agency ordered public executions of those who are using Chinese cell phones and leaking information.” Because the North Korean people, unlike North Korea’s neighbors, are unarmed and defenseless, this is no idle threat. By way of a grim example, Open News provides more information on “Mr. Chung” (or “Chong”) who was publicly executed in January for using a cell phone.
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Hush, Jimmy. You’ve done enough. Incredibly enough, failed Human Rights President and failed ex-president Jimmy Carter opposes sanctions against Kim Jong Il’s regime, and would like to go back farg up every aspect of our diplomacy left unfarged since in 1994.
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The North Korean dialect is not as pristine as advertised. The number of Russian loan words is more surprising to me than it should be.
North Korea warned on Monday of unpredictable disaster unless the South and the United States stop allowing tourists inside a heavily armed border buffer that is one of the most visited spots on the peninsula.
President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 as a reward for giving up its nuclear weapons program. On February 3, 2010, President Obama decided not to restore North Korea to the list.
An unnamed army spokesman of the North’s Korean People’s Army said South Korea was engaged in “deliberate acts to turn the DMZ into theater of confrontation with the (North) and a site of psychological warfare” by allowing tours inside the border zone. [Reuters, via WaPo]
Psychological warfare, you say? You mean like this?
Alejandro really gets his groove on at about 6:00.
As the report points out, thousands of tourists visit the DMZ every year. I’ve actually done it twice — once with the other defense attorneys, and once while hosting a good friend and combat-wounded Korean War vet to flew from South Dakota to Seoul to attend my wedding. I was required to wear my Class B uniform, in all of its green polyester glory, both times. We were all under strict instructions not to make any gestures — like, say, the Hawaiian Good Luck Salute — or hold up any signs. You can be sure none of us carried megaphones or harangued the people on the other side of the line. I suppose this means the North Koreans are at least thinking about staging some kind of incident up there.
Update, 31 March 2010: KCNA’s report becomes all the more hilarious after you watch the video of Cao’s antics:
The south Korean military warmongers have been busy staging an anti-DPRK psychological warfare in the Demilitarized Zone with agents specializing in this warfare and other riff-raffs involved since the mid-February under the signboards of “visit,” “tour” and “observance”.
It is a well-known fact that the south Korean military concluded what it called “MOU on supporting news coverage of the DMZ” with 15 media organizations in a bid to let their reporters tour not only the DMZ but nearby frontline areas and prepare materials for anti-north smear campaigns and release them by means of newspapers, broadcasting services, internet, etc.
As already known to the world, Paragraph 9 of Article 1 of the Armistice Agreement stipulates that “No person, military or civilian, shall be permitted to enter the Demilitarized Zone except persons concerned with the conduct of civil administration and relief and persons specially authorized to enter by the Military Armistice Commission.”
It is preposterous for the U.S. and south Korean sides to allow those who have nothing to do with the civil administration and relief to enter the DMZ, given that the Military Armistice Commission was completely demised and the military machines of both sides tasked to supervise and control the implementation of the AA in place of the commission have not been in existence for nearly two decades due to the deliberate moves of the U.S. to scrap the AA.
In the final analysis, all these moves of the south Korean military warmongers cannot be interpreted otherwise than deliberate acts to turn the DMZ into theatre of confrontation with the DPRK and a site of psychological warfare against the north in disregard of the AA and strain the overall situation on the Korean Peninsula. [KCNA]
Via this CNN report, which carries video from YTN, we get our first brief glimpse of the hull of the ROKS Cheonan (see also here). It’s just a glimpse of a small piece of the keel from the half of the ship — the bow, apparently — still floating on the surface, but at 2:59, you can see that the metal next to the break appears to be dented inward, lending support to theories that some sort of external explosion sank the Cheonan:
The New York Times prints the recollection of the ship’s captain:
“I heard a terrible explosion and the ship keeled suddenly to the right. We lost power and telecommunications,” Choi Won-il, captain of the Cheonan, told the relatives. “I was trapped in the cabin for five minutes before my colleagues broke the window in and let me out. When I got out, the stern had already broken away and disappeared underwater.”
Most of those missing were believed to have been trapped inside their rapidly sinking ship as waters gushed into their dark under deck, officials said.
“Many sailors were hanging onto the bow of the sinking ship,” Kim Jin-ho, a crewman on a civilian ferry to Baengnyeong, a South Korean border island, told YTN television, describing the rescue scene on Friday night. “They were shouting for help. They were falling into water.” [N.Y. Times, Choe Sang-Hun]
Evan Ramstad of the Wall Street Journal reports that the South Korean government still isn’t really saying what caused, or didn’t cause, the accident. No survivors and no bodies have been found since the explosion itself. Ramstad also points to the long history of North-South naval combat in those same waters. Although I’ve seen no direct evidence of North Korean culpability, that history is reason enough not to rule it out, either, until we have another plausible explanation. But the range of alternatives seems to be narrowing.
Military officials were narrowing down the possibilities to the vessel’s collision with a rock, a torpedo attack from outside forces, including North Korea, or an internal explosion due to the gunpowder and explosives the ship was carrying.
A collision with a rock seems unlikely to have caused such a catastrophic explosion, especially in the ship’s stern. The video and the account of at least one officer who survived the Cheonan both seem to discount an internal explosion.
“There is no possibility whatsoever that the ship sank due to an internal explosion or a collision with a reef. I guarantee that,” a navy lieutenant was quoted as saying by participants in a briefing session organized by the Navy’s Second Fleet Command in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province — the home port of the ill-fated ship.
“Another cause could be an attack from an outside force and that is not exact as of yet. The military is currently conducting an investigation and I am not in a position to comment on that,” he added. [Korea Herald]
The officer’s views might be more persuasive if the Korea Herald also printed his explanation for this conclusion. I can’t say whether the possibility that no one asked frustrates me more than the possibility that no one thought his answer was fit to print.
The CNN report seems to give credence to another theory — that a sea mine caused the explosion. This is plausible if, but only if, we can discount or explain the reports of shooting “around the time of the incident,” or maybe “shortly after.” The Times of London reports shooting “for 15 minutes around the time that the ship began to founder after an explosion in its stern.” That’s a lot of birds.
I could believe that the shooting came after the explosion as the result of panic aboard the ship, or aboard another ship, if the question of timing can be resolved. According to the Chosun Ilbo, the sailors were shooting at “an identified object.” The survivors will know if the shooting came before the explosion, or if anyone spotted anything suspicious. If the answer to either question is “yes,” it would focus the investigation on either a friendly fire incident or an attack. The former should be easy to rule out once the other ROK Navy ships in the area and their armaments are accounted for.
Given the overwhelming evidence of an explosion, the explanation that seems least likely was that offered by a bereaved widow of a crew member and reprinted by the AP:
Some relatives had said Saturday at the naval base that rescued crew members described the Cheonan — which survived a 1999 skirmish with North Korean warships — as old and leaky.
“He was reluctant to go on board because the ship was so old and faulty,” one weeping wife said Saturday of her missing husband. “I am sure the ship being leaky led to it sinking.”
Her grief makes her desire to assign responsibility understandable, but the Cheonan didn’t just spring a leak; she was blown in two.
Notably, most of the speculation about a possible attack has focused on the limited capabilities of North Korean warships and submarines. Typical of this are government statements indicating the lack of radar contacts with, or “unusual movement” of North Korean vessels, or that, according to the Times of London, “sensitive surveillance and satellite data showed there were no North Korean units in the area.”
If they are trying to convince me that this was not a conventional attack by North Korean warships, I’m mostly convinced. By default, this might add some support to the theory that a mine sank the Cheonan, but would not diminish the possibility that this was an unconventional attack by frogmen, speedboat, or semi-submersible. And of course, it’s also possible that a North Korean mine sank the Cheonan. A more difficult question would be determining whether the mine drifted south — the waters are notorious for their strong currents — or was deliberately placed.
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Still, the State Department’s advice — “Let’s not jump to conclusions here” — seems sensible while the evidence is assembled and reported. Unless, of course, you’re more invested in a particular outcome than interested in arriving at the truth of the matter.
“I doubt that North Korea was involved in the incident,” said John Feffer, co-director of the Foreign Policy in Focus program at the Institute for Policy Studies. “It didn’t seem to involve any artillery fire from the North.” [Yonhap]
Well then … possibilities exhausted and case closed!
Feffer disagreed with the assumption that North Korea attacked the South Korean naval vessel, noting this incident is different from the previous clashes that involved fishing boats of the two Koreas crossing their sea border.
Oddly enough, what I’ve noticed so far are the great lengths the ROK and U.S. governments have gone to to avoid making assumptions. Also, until now, I had no idea that anyofthese incidents involved fishing boats. Reinforcing a poor command of the facts with repetition, Feffer continues:
“There have been naval clashes between North and South in the past, but these have usually involved rising tensions, warnings, fishing boats crossing the NLL,” he said. “But this was, as far as we know, a surprise. And there was no larger reason why the North might engage in such a surprise attack.”
Whatever you say, John.
Feffer, you may recall, also managed to construct an absolution of Kim Jong Il of responsibility for starving a million or two of its own people while squandering a fortune on nuclear and conventional weapons, and thinks Kim Jong Il’s concentration camp guards need to be “induced ‘to find their own framework on human rights issues’ . . . so that they can become the ’subject of their own history rather than an object of our policy.’” Hat tip to the pro-Pyongyang Korea Is One for preserving that view for posterity. Most recently, and just a few scant months after it unilaterally renounced the Korean War cease fire, Feffer has joined in Pyongyang’s demand for the United States to sign a peace treaty with the North. This is not expertise. This is chutzpah.
Which leaves me to ask: Who the hell decided that John Feffer was a North Korea expert, much less a military expert. I mean, does this look like a military expert to you?
Again, I’m aware of no direct evidence that North Korea sank the Cheonan, but Feffer certainly offers no convincing evidence that it didn’t. Not that the absence of evidence has ever stopped Feffer drawing a conclusion before.
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Sadly, there seems little chance that any other members of the Cheonan’s crew will be found alive at this point, but the U.S. Navy is sending a ship to assist in the search and recovery operation. The ship had been present for the annual Foal Eagle exercises, which always draw their share of threats and vituperation from the North.
CNN has a photo essay on the rescue operation here; BBC has one here.
Updates: The South Korean Navy has located the rear section of the Cheonan’s hull, where many of the 46 mission sailors are likely to be trapped. It seems unlikely that any of them would still be alive.
Meanwhile, North Korea remains conspicuously silent about the incident, which says nothing about its culpability, one way or the other. If the North Koreans wanted, say, to promote this as Kim Jong Eun’s first great military victory, they wouldn’t use broadcast media. They’d announce it over their domestic cable radio system, and with limited distribution at that. I emphasize that this is a hypothetical statement.
Update, 30 March 2010: Uh oh:
A naval mine dispatched from North Korea may have struck the South Korean warship that exploded and sank near the Koreas’ disputed sea border, the defense minister told lawmakers Monday, laying out several scenarios for the maritime disaster.
Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said there was no sign of a direct attack from rival North Korea, but military authorities have not ruled out North Korean involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan late Friday night. [….]
Kim, grilled by lawmakers on what happened Friday night, said the ship may have struck a mine left over from the war or deliberately dispatched from the North. [AP]
One possibility raised is of a mine left over from the Korean War, but none has been found since 1984, and it just doesn’t seem likely that one would destroy a warship in an area patrolled this frequently only now, when North Korea happens to be raising tensions. It seems more likely that whoever placed the mine — if it was a mine — probably did so recently:
“North Korea may have intentionally floated underwater mines to inflict damage on us,” Kim told lawmakers. He insisted there were no South Korean mines off the west coast, and ruled out a torpedo attack from North Korea, which would have been spotted by radar.
Officials have also said an internal malfunction may be to blame. The 1,200-ton Cheonan is designed to carry weapons, and was involved in a previous skirmish with North Korea.
U.S. and South Korea military officials said there was no outward indication that North Korea was involved in the sinking of the Cheonan. However, “neither the government nor the defense ministry has ever said there was no possibility of North Korea’s involvement,” Kim said.
You can call this backpedaling from backpedaling. There’s still much mutually contradictory speculation going on, but it’s premature to dismiss the possibility that North Korea was behind this. It would hardly be aberrant behavior for them.
Must-read: Writing at the Daily NK, Andrei Lankov proposes a hydroponic growth program for a class of intellectual leaders for North Korea:
While it is important to help North Korean elites, however, it is more important to pursue the formation of a new North Korean elite group. Intellectuals who were educated in North Korea know well about the reality of the country, but they face a lot of obstacles in learning modern knowledge. On the contrary, young North Koreans can learn about world class technology and knowledge when educated in South Korea.
But I find a lot of problems when I listen to the experiences of defectors studying in South Korean universities. Most either quit school or are regularly absent. Of course some leave school because of a lack of ability, but for many of them the reason why they do not graduate does not have anything to do with their ability at all.
The best reason to do this is that it may catalyze better thought by North Koreans about North Korea’s future, though the proliferation of intellectuals tends to diffuse the formation of a unifying ideology as much as focus it. The best reason not to do it is that the North Korean regime may not be around long enough for this program to have its intended effect, but we’ve been saying that for decades, and besides, Korea has no time to lose in educating the leaders who will rebuild the North.
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The U.N. Human Rights Council passes an EU-sponsored resolution condemning North Korea for grave human rights abuses:
South Korea, Japan and the United States were among 28 states voting in favor, while North Korea’s major ally China and Russia were among five against. Thirteen abstained and one delegation was absent for the vote at the 47-member forum.
The Council deplored “the grave, widespread and systematic human rights abuses in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in particular the use of torture and labor camps against political prisoners and repatriated citizens of DPRK.” Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean diplomat in Geneva, rejected the resolution as “politically motivated” and “full of distortions and fabrications.”
Vitit Muntarbhorn, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said in a report this month that human rights violations were “harrowing and horrific” in the country.
These included public executions, a pervasive spying system, and a distorted food distribution favoring the elite. [Reuters]
“We would also be mindful of the potential for instability in North Korea,” he said. “Combined with the country’s disastrous centralized economy, dilapidated industrial sector, insufficient agricultural base, malnourished military and populace, and developing nuclear programs, the possibility of a sudden leadership change in the North could be destabilizing and unpredictable.”
A total of 400 DVDs have been floated from South Korea on three occasions since last month, said Lee Min-Bok, who leads a group of Christian defectors campaigning to topple the communist regime.
“This is a revolution in ways to wake up brainwashed North Koreans,” Lee told AFP. “Videos are a much more powerful way than writing to convince an audience.”
The DVDs contain documentary footage about World War II and the Korean War and footage of South Korea’s dramatic economic development. Lee said they also air witnesses’ accounts of Kim’s “luxurious and decadent” lifestyle, including his affair with Sung Hye-Rim.
It should be interesting to see what effects those DVD’s have, and how quickly they circulate. How many North Koreans would risk their lives to see what their government hides from them?
This from Yonhap. It’s not clear if the ship is sinking or has already sunk:
A South Korean Navy ship with 104 crew members on board was sinking off the Seoul-controlled island of Baengnyeong in the Yellow Sea, near North Korea, Navy officials said Friday.
The 1,500-ton ship sank between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. near the island, but the cause of the accident was unknown, the officials said. A rescue operation was underway, they added.
A South Korean naval vessel with more than 100 aboard was sinking on Friday in waters near North Korea and Seoul was investigating whether it was hit in a torpedo attack by the North, South Korean media said.
Broadcaster SBS said many South Korean sailors on the stricken vessel were feared dead.
South Korea’s YTN TV network said the government was investigating whether the sinking was due to a torpedo attack by the North, and Yonhap news agency said the Seoul government had convened an emergency meeting of security-related ministers.
Assuming this is what it appears to be — a calculated North Korean attack — look for President Lee to avoid escalating a military conflict that looks increasingly like a desperate grasp from a dying regime. A more statesmanlike and more likely response would be for President Lee to simply cut off all trade with, and aid to, North Korea until Kim Jong Il apologizes for the attack.
It will be interesting to see what the United States does at this moment of need to stand by South Korea and show the North that provocations have consequences. A mealy-mouthed expression of concern from a State Department spokesman won’t do it.
Update: Here’s a picture of the ship.
President Lee’s office is not confirming that this was a North Korean attack:
“For now, it is not certain whether North Korea is related” to the incident, Cheong Wa Dae spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye said. “President Lee ordered the military to do its best to rescue the soldiers.”
“[F]inding the truth (behind the incident) is important, but saving our soldiers is more important,” the president was quoted as saying. According to the Defense Ministry, 58 of the 104 crew members on board have been rescued so far.
Update: Statements from the South Korean government now are clearly downplaying the theory that this was a North Korean attack. It seems to me that an examination of the hole in the bottom of the ship would quickly confirm whether the explosion came from inside or outside the hull.
It might just be that the South Koreans don’t know if they ran over one of their own mines. On the other hand, it might also be that President Lee does know and still hasn’t decided what he’s going to do about it. He might be hiding behind those doubts to give people a chance to calm down before he announces his decision.
Update, 27 Mar 2010, 1000: As the scale of the tragedy starts to sink in, there are no answers as to the cause of the disaster. One way or another, the incident already shows signs of being heavily politicized.
An explosion at the rear of the Cheonan shut down its engine, wiped out power and caused the ship to sink a little over three hours later, the Joint Chiefs said. The exact cause was unclear, but North Korea did not appear to be to blame, officials said.
A survivor, Staff Sgt. Shin Eun-chong, 24, told relatives he was on night duty when he heard a huge boom behind him that split the ship apart. The vessel started tilting, and his glasses fell off his face as he hit the deck, relatives at a naval base in Pyeongtaek told The Associated Press. [….]
“Yells and screams filled the air,” witness Kim Jin-ho, a seaman who was on a passenger ship bound for Baengnyeong, told cable news channel YTN. “Marines on deck were desperately shouting: ‘Save me!’”
Despite early fears of an attack, there was no immediate indication that North Korea — which lies within sight about 10 miles (17 kilometers) from Baengnyeong — was to blame, the Joint Chiefs said. Still, troops were maintaining “solid military readiness,” Vice Defense Minister Jang Soo-man said. [AP]
President Lee is calling for a quick and thorough investigation into the cause of the explosion that sank the ship. South Korean officials continue to depress speculation that this was a North Korean attack.
Speaking privately to Yonhap News Agency, however, multiple officials at Cheong Wa Dae said based on what is known so far, chances seem low that the North is involved in the case, citing the relatively long distance between the maritime border and the scene of the incident, about 1.8 kilometers southwest of Baengnyeong Island, home to more than 4,000 residents, mostly fishermen and their families.
“It is hard to say for sure now, but chances appear to be slim that North Korea was related,” a senior official said on the condition of anonymity. “If North Korea’s attack really caused the sinking, it means there is a serious loophole in our defense system.” [Yonhap]
Personally, I do not find these statements to be persuasive. If this was indeed an attack, it’s unlikely to have been the result of an attack by a conventional warship, given that the North Korean Navy has no doubt learned that its conventional surface navy is no match for the ROK Navy.
On the other hand, the loss of the U.S.S. Cole taught us that even the most advanced warships are vulnerable to unconventional attack. If — again, if — this was an attack, it’s far more likely to have been the work of one of North Korea’s midget submarines or small semi-submersible craft, like the one the ROK Navy sank in December 1998, off the southwestern coast of South Korea. We know that North Korea’s submarines have penetrated ROK Navy defenses before, and we can presume that its semi-submersible craft have, too.
These craft are designed for infiltration and sabotage missions, and it seems plausible that one could have gone undetected up to the moment that the sailors aboard the Cheonan reportedly opened fire on something (Baekreong islanders reported hearing “loud artillery firing,” which the Navy later dismissed as the sound of rescue flares being fired). But then again, maybe it really is commonplace for crewmen aboard ROK Navy ships to open fire on flocks of birds.
One thing I will not claim is expertise in naval architecture, but I’d personally be surprised to learn that warships are built with volatile ordnance stored below their engine rooms. On rare occasions, of course warships do just explode all by themselves. The U.S.S. Iowa and the Kursk both did, though probably for reasons that are very different from whatever happened to the Cheonan.
One advantage the investigators will have is that the capsized ship has not sunken completely to the bottom, and its hull is within easy reach of Navy divers.
That will allow the Navy to determine in very short order whether the explosion of the Cheonan was caused by an accidental detonation aboard the ship. The force of the blast will have bent the metal around the hole in the hull either inward or outward, so it should be a very simple matter to determine whether the explosion came from inside or outside. (See, e.g., this photograph of the hole blown in the U.S.S. Cole from the outside.) If the explosion came from the inside, this was almost certainly an accident, though sabotage is always a possibility. If it came from outside, then the only likely accidental cause is a South Korean mine — either because the captain strayed off course, or because a mine broke free from its moorings. Either cause should be simple enough to rule out based on the ship’s course and the ROK Navy’s accounting for its mines, something that ought to be meticulous in an area so heavily trafficked by warships and fishing boats.
Finally, all of this comes in the context of North Korea’s increased threats against the South in recent days, weeks, and months. The North has frequently provoked fights in the Yellow Sea to get the attention of South Korean presidents. As the North’s rhetoric has reached hysterical heights, South Koreans have learned to mostly ignore them. Maybe the North realized that it needed to regain some credibility.
The North Korean Navy certainly had other motives; chiefly, its likely desire for revenge after the beating it took in the last battle in November 2009, when a North Korean patrol boat got itself hosed down with a 20mm gatling gun. We saw this pattern with the sinking of the Chamsuri 357, which came three years after the ROK Navy sank one North Korean warship and severely damaged several others in another battle. The latter incident closely followed the aforementioned sinking of the semi-submersible off Yosu in December 1998. (All three incidents happened during my own tour in Korea.) For North Korean military officers, unavenged defeats are more than a loss of face. They can be grounds for a purge.
All of this is only circumstantial evidence, obviously. In due course, we will know much more than we know now. What we know now is that this is a life-changing tragedy for the families of 46 young sailors who stood guard for the security of their country.
Just the latest example of historical myopia from the kids in South Korea.
As the university was announcing the plans, the Chosun Ilbo reported a Gallup poll in Korea that showed 62.9 percent of teens and 58.2 percent in their 20s did not know when the Korean War broke out. Also, only 43.9 percent of those surveyed said North Korea is to blame for starting the Korean War, with the figure among teenagers 38 percent and 36 percent for 20-somethings. Some 18 percent of teens and 25 percent of those in their 20s said both North and South Korea are responsible.
Until just a few years ago, some teachers who are members of the hardline Korean Teachers and Educational Workers Union have been teaching that the Korean War was a battle for liberation led by the North. During the Roh Moo-hyun administration, a state-run broadcaster aired a documentary on Memorial Day praising China’s Mao Zedong, who backed the North in the Korean War. [Chosun Ilbo]
One of the points I’ve made for years about the USFK is that it’s an impediment to South Korea’s progress toward political maturity, which is in turn impeded by its lack of a confident sense of self-sufficient nationhood. That may be the only thing North Korea has today that South Korea doesn’t, and you can see emotional hunger for this sense among certain demographics in South Korea, though no to the same extent as the North Koreans’ physical hunger for South Korean rice and ChocoPies. Somehow, I don’t think Koreans would be so prosaic about the genesis of their form of government if they had to mobilize to Israeli proportions to defend it.
Google’s decision to stop censoring searches on its China-based servers, rerouting search requests instead to its uncensored Hong Kong facilities, is historic. Google has shown itself unwilling simply to be on the receiving end of whatever Beijing dishes out—and highlighted the growing importance of Hong Kong and Taiwan in shaping the decisions that foreign businesses in China must make.
When an enterprise of Google’s global dimensions and visibility reverses course in China and is no longer a passive, compliant subject of government diktats, it sends a message to enterprises world-wide: You can do the same.
I wonder whether, if Jimmy Carter read KCNA more often, he’d be less woebegone about North Korea’s lack of avenues to dispel misunderstandings, seek out common ground, and show us all its softer side:
North Korea’s military warned South Korea and the United States on Friday of “unprecedented nuclear strikes” as it expressed anger over a report the two countries plan to prepare for possible instability in the totalitarian country, a scenario it dismissed as a “pipe dream.”
The North routinely issues such warnings. Diplomats in South Korea and the U.S. have repeatedly called on Pyongyang to return to international negotiations aimed at ending its nuclear programs.
“Those who seek to bring down the system in the (North), whether they play a main role or a passive role, will fall victim to the unprecedented nuclear strikes of the invincible army,” North Korea’s military said in comments carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. [AP, Kwang Tae Kim]
How different can North Korea’s private diplomacy be from its public diplomacy?
North Korea denounced the plans as “a pipe dream of a lunatic wishing for the sky to fall.” “Such a ‘contingency’ will take place in South Korea” rather than in North Korea, said an unidentified spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army, according to the official Korean Central News Agency, monitored in Seoul.
Anyone involved in overthrowing Pyongyang “will fall victim to the unprecedented nuclear strikes of the invincible army,” the spokesman said. [Yonhap]
And in other news from the state most recently de-listed as a sponsor of terrorism, North Korea is threatening defectors who broadcast uncensored news back to, and uncensored reports from, their homeland:
“We have been entrusted with issuing a strict warning in the name of the Republic (North Korea) and nation to those organizations which will be the first targets for severe punishment,” it threatened in a statement released on propaganda outlet “Uriminzokkiri.” The phrase, ”We have been entrusted,” implies that this warning is being delivered on the direct orders of Kim Jong Il.
“North Korea Reform Radio, Open Radio for North Korea and The Daily NK are throwing dirt at us under the banner of a propaganda front against North Korea,” it continued.
It called defectors “human trash,” “traitors,” and “fugitives” who have ungratefully run away from their families and the embrace of the Republic, and warned North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity and other defector organizations that they will “never forgive the human trash who have degenerated into informants for anti-unification reactionaries, the puppet conservative factions and American and Japanese anti-Republic schemes.” [Daily NK]
The broadcasters answered with defiance.
President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, and on February 3, 2010, President Obama decided not to put them back on. Discuss among yourselves.
If famine, cannibalism, child labor, songbun, lousy education, and the risk of becoming a homeless orphan aren’t enough worries for a lifetime, North Korean kids also have to worry about child molesters.
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For those in the D.C. area, PSCORE will hold an event at Georgetown on Saturday, the 27th, on what life is like in North Korea.
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Only a racist would question the legitimacy of Kim Jong Il’s rule.
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Jimmy Carter calls on President Obama to hold direct talks with North Korea — also, Charles Manson, Jefferson Davis, and the San Andreas Fault.
Critics didn’t seem to like the new anti-American propaganda film about No Gun Ri.
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So you liked the book, then? “Every now again, a book comes round that is so brilliant it makes you want to take to the streets and press into people’s hands, urging them to read it.” Well, it was a good book.
Update, 24 March 2010: Well, KCJ’s first guess turns out to have been right.
A Boston man detained in North Korea is a quiet, devout Christian so concerned about an American missionary held in Pyongyang that he was moved to tears at rallies protesting the communist regime, fellow activists said Wednesday.
North Korea announced Monday that Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, would stand trial after entering the country illegally. The trial date was not mentioned in a brief report in state media.
It was not immediately clear why Gomes, who taught English in South Korea, went to the communist country. However, activists in Seoul said he was an acquaintance of Robert Park, a fellow Christian from Arizona who crossed into North Korea on Christmas in a bold bid to draw attention to the country’s human rights situation. [AP]
Original Post, 23 March 2010:Whatever his motives for crossing into North Korea, Aijalon Mahli Gomes certainly doesn’t fit the angry left personality profile the Donga Ilbo’s first quotation of him led me to believe — that is, the sort of American who’d want to join the North Korean army.
On the contrary, the information assembled by GI Korea’s readers and press reports suggests that he’s a nice, quiet, deeply religious, and somewhat awkward man. He may have belonged to some of the same religious groups as Robert Park. And like Park’s, his crossing is unlikely to have the intended effects, whatever those might be. Read the rest of this entry »
