In the early 1990s, Mr. Kim told us, Kim Il Sung posed a question at a meeting of the military committee of the Workers Party. Kim Il Sung’s question, and Kim Jong Il’s reply, were disclosed in a memorandum that was distributed to every member of the Central Committee, including Kim Duk-hong. Colleagues who were present also told him what happened.
“The United States is demanding that we give up our nuclear weapons program,” Kim Il Sung said. “What should we do? Give them up or not?”
The room was silent. Finally, Kim Jong Il spoke, saying he would answer his father’s question.
“Nuclear weapons are Chosun,” he said, using the North Korean word for Korea. “If we destroy our nuclear program, we may as well destroy ourselves.”
Two more stories today add fuel to my suspicions that nutrition, morale, and discipline in the North Korean army declined sharply this year:
“I was 155 centimeters high and weighed 42 kilograms when I entered the military, but my weight was reduced to 31 kilograms in two years,” Paek Hwa-seong, one of the defectors, said at the seminar hosted by North Korea Strategy Center, a Seoul-based conservative private think tank on human rights in the communist state.
“My hair almost fell out after turning yellow and I was bony,” Paek, who worked for a tank unit of the Fifth Corps of the People’s Army before defection, said while testifying about malnutrition among soldiers.
Park Myeong-ho, a former captain, said starving soldiers have often stolen food from civilians, which created a saying in the North that the best place to live is where there is no military unit. [….]
“Sexual harassment on female soldiers was so serious that they had to endure a physical touch. Some got pregnant from sexual assault and had to work wearing a maternity belt,” Choi testified. The women often had months without menstruation as a result of malnutrition, she said. [Yonhap]
Separately, the Joongang Ilbo gets the back story on a North Korean who recently defected by walking through a mine field along the DMZ. I wondered at the time how anyone would be able to do that without some inside knowledge, but the man’s background may provide some explanation:
A 21-year-old North Korean resident surnamed Kim who defected to the South by passing through the demilitarized zone and into Cheorwon County, Gangwon, on Feb. 15, says he escaped because he was starving in the North, according to South Korean intelligence officials.
“Kim, who was discharged from the North Korean People’s Army last year, crossed the border while waving his arms in surrender 1 kilometer [six-tenths of a mile] away from our guard post,” said a South Korean official. “It was obvious that he has been starving for ages.” [Joongang Ilbo]
The survival of a totalitarian state depends on an army that’s willing to follow orders to kill civilians. We’re seeing this illustrated vividly in Egypt, where the army refused, and in Libya, where the security forces split. I adhere to my view that what happened in Egypt could never happen in North Korea, but that there’s just a chance that what happened in Libya could. Some things that would matter to my analysis include which units are still well-fed, the relationship between the officers and the soldiers generally, and how much access common soldiers have to weapons and ammunition.
As I’ve said before — what North Korea fears the most is the truth before the eyes of its people, and the very threat of spreading the truth inside North Korea could be the deterrent that USFK hasn’t been since at least the early 1990’s.
North Korea on Sunday threatened to fire cross-border shots if South Korea continues a leaflet-launching propaganda campaign, which aims in part to inform the hermetic North of anti-government revolts in the Middle East.
In a statement carried by its state-run news agency, Pyongyang called the leaflets — stuffed into massive, column-like balloons — a psychological plot to “shake up our socialism and break the trust of our military and people.” Calling it a matter of self-defense, North Korea said that it will “launch direct, targeted firing attacks” at any area where activists or military members are seen releasing the balloons. [WaPo, Chico Harlan]
Jung Sung San, the producer of Yodok Story, is directing a new film about life inside North Korea. We hear about if in the most unlikely of places:
“Ryanggang Children” is the story of what takes place when a Christmas gift package sent by balloon from South Korea lands in a remote village in North Korea. At a rural public school, all the students go on a field trip to Pyongyang, except for Jong-su, who is deemed unfit to enter the North Korean capital. He cries after running after the bus, and on his way back, he picks up the gift package. In it is a melody card, a Santa outfit and a toy robot. His classmates gather at Jong-su’s home with steamed corn, crispy rice, eggs and fermented soybeans just to see the package. The authority focused on the class president shifts to Jong-su. At this point, the class president’s father, a member of the security forces, intervenes. The rumor is that the robot comes from South Korea. [The Hankyoreh]
Police and security officials displayed a massive show of force here and in other Chinese cities Sunday, trying to snuff out any hint of protests modeled on the uprisings in the Middle East. In Shanghai, several hundred people trying to gather were dispersed with a water truck. [….]
“I came here today to see how people protest against the government, which is corrupt and rules in an authoritarian way,” said a 71-year-old man, who asked that only his family name, Cao, be used. “Democracy is the trend in the world. No country in the world can be an exception to the process.”
Cao said the Communist Party in China was so strong that he expected reform would have to come from within the system. “For those fighting against the government, it is like eggs hitting the stone,” Cao said. “With 10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 eggs hitting the stone, the eggs will eventually succeed.”
Another man, named Xia, 64, said there were about 400 to 500 people gathering at People’s Square when he arrived around 1 p.m., but they were dispersed by the spray from the water truck. He said he would keep returning to try to protest because he was already in his 60s and not afraid. [Wa Po, Keith B. Richburg]
The AP’s Elaine Kurtenbach, who also covered the abortive protests, wonders whether inflation could give a protest movement impetus.
Posted by Joshua on February 27, 2011 at 9:34 am · Filed under Anju Links
I suppose I get why some South Korean politicians are asking the United States to moves nukes back into South Korea, but is such a decision really worth all of the diplomatic and cosmetic complications it would bring? Don’t we already have the ability to fire nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from ships and submarines off North Korea’s coasts, or from Guam based aircraft anyway? In that light, how much deterrence to we really gain by putting nukes in South Korea? The greater limit to American nuclear deterrence isn’t ready access to weapons, it’s the perception of American restraint. If South Korea really wants some effective nuclear deterrence, let it build its own nukes, and let it be known to all that hot-tempered, chain-smoking ajoshis are holding all the keys. For that matter, let Japan and Taiwan build them, too.
North Korea, which was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, threatens war again:
“The army and people of (North Korea) will return bolstered nuclear deterrent of our own style for the continued nuclear threat by the aggressors,” North Korea’s military said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
It accused South Korea and the U.S. of plotting to topple the North’s communist government. It said if provoked, North Korea would start a “full-scale” war, take “merciless counteraction” and turn Seoul into a “sea of flames.”
North Korea also warned it will take “our own missile striking action” against what it called moves by the U.S. and South Korea to eliminate the North’s missiles. The statement didn’t elaborate.
Korea Real Time introduces us to the new KCNA, which looks slightly less user-friendly than the old KCNA, but just as stultifying. Of course, there is a prominent and convenient link button for those of you who want to stay current on Kim Jong Il’s activities.
Posted by Joshua on February 25, 2011 at 8:33 pm · Filed under Anju Links
Hmmm:
South Korea’s military has been dropping leaflets into North Korea about democracy protests in Egypt and also sent food, medicines and radios for residents as part of a psychological campaign, a legislator said on Friday. The campaign was aimed at encouraging North Koreans to think about change, conservative South Korean parliament member Song Young-sun said. The food and medicines were delivered in light-weight baskets tied to balloons with timers programmed to release the items above the target areas in the impoverished North, Song said in a statement.
South Korea’s defence ministry declined to confirm the move, citing its policy of not commenting on sensitive issues in its dealings with the North.
The food items bore a message that they were sent by the South Korean military and were safe for human consumption but could be fed to livestock to test safety, Song said. The leaflets also carried news of public protests in Libya against the country’s long-time leader, Song’s office said. [Reuters]
Publicly, the South Korean government’s position on the democratization of North Korea continues to be ambiguous. Privately, my conversations with the South Koreans and other informed observers convince me that the various ministries and personnel are divided in their views, and that the policy that results often appears uncoordinated. I hope this is true, because it gives me hope that the South Koreans are at least willing to consider more technologically advance and efficient means to disseminate information.
If that is true, it is huge, and it is wonderful. Also, Song Young-sun should be zapped with a cattle prod for revealing it in a press conference.
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Speaking of things that people shouldn’t say in public, here’s a great way of sneaking information into North Korea that I wish the Chosun Ilbo hadn’t printed:
The most common conduit is North Korean traders who frequently travel to China. They store the pictures and videos on USB memory sticks and bring them out with them. “In February last year we developed ’stealth’ USBs and distributed hundreds of them in the North,” said Kim Heung-kwang of defector group North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity.
Kim said when customs officials check the USBs on their computers, they look empty with “0 byte” appearing on the monitors. But after a certain period of time the content is automatically restored. “The stealth USBs appear to contain nothing when they are sent to North Korea and can easily pass through screening,” Kim said. “But South Korean dramas, news or other content are restored later.”
Although most North Koreans have no Internet access, they get information about the outside world through USBs, CDs or DVDs. Some young North Koreans who used the USBs ask NKIS to send more TV dramas instead of “dull” pro-democracy propaganda. [Chosun Ilbo]
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So, depending on what you read, the North Korean street is bubbling with discontent, just beginning to boil over, or mostly copacetic. I don’t doubt that this comment and link from Milton represents the sincere belief of at least one South Korean official that there is now unrest, and that soldiers are among those protesting. Nor do I doubt that this report, in the Korea Times, represents the view of some anonymous Unification Ministry official that he “has observed no signs of a popular uprising in North Korea.” Public inconsistency is what we’ve come to expect of the South Korean government, as any close observer of the Cheonan Incident will clearly recall.
I tend to think it may take a few days before we have a reasonably clear picture of this, at least in North Korean terms. I’m particularly skeptical of this reporting from the New York Times, which dismisses all of the reports of “a winter of discontent.” First, the Times doesn’t cover North Korea very well under ideal conditions (as in covering talks by getting quotes from diplomats). Second, these aren’t ideal conditions, so the race goes to the swift — those who have good contacts with traders and clandestine correspondents inside North Korea itself. Those reports are the most current, but I usually only believe them after I’ve seen three consistent and plausible reports from different sources saying pretty much the same thing.
The Times report still has some interesting gems for the reader, however, including near-universal agreement that reform is nowhere on the horizon, and these statements by the former British Ambassador to North Korea, John Everhard, who notes that “[t]he gap between the elite and the rest of the country has probably never been wider.” Then he says:
After the fall of East Germany, Mr. Everard said, top North Korean leaders were shown videos of former East German officials selling pencils in the streets, as a cautionary lesson on what can befall those who relax their grip on power.
Strategy Page, citing South Korean sources, says that North Korea’s air force performed poorly when its aircraft were scrambled during the shelling of Yeonpyeong:
The flying skills of combat pilots was particularly bad, as was the performance of many aircraft (indicating poor maintenance). There were several crashes, and many near misses in the air, and a general sense of confusion among the North Korean Air Force commanders and troops.
This flight of fantasy became even more ludicrous as Blitzer sought to give an impression of a “rare” look at the same stuff everyone gets to see on tourist trips to Pyongyang - the Great Study Hall of the People, once described to me by a North Korean minder as “the world’s biggest library”, classrooms of privileged kids studying English, a look at a fruit farm, a small “factory” of some sort, the usual empty streets and avenues.
The whole program, aired for nearly an hour by CNN last weekend, reached an apotheosis of silliness on the final day on December 20 when Blitzer wanted to believe he was hearing the distant explosions of South Korean military exercises in the Yellow Sea around the island that North Koreans shelled in November. Blitzer assured viewers that the island was not all that far away - apparently not willing to reveal that it was 150 miles (231 kilometers) due south, more than a little out of earshot of the loudest blasts.
Like too many journalists today, Blitzer would like us to think he’s another Edward R. Murrow, but Murrow didn’t become a legend by covering the Blitz from Berlin while flanked by a Gestapo escort. Murrow became a legend by showing us dramatic events from a perspective of physical courage and moral clarity. Does anyone think Wolf Blitzer exhibited either quality here? (Another hat tip to James.)
Hundreds of protesters have collided with the authorities,” said South Korea’s largest-selling Chosun Ilbo newspaper on Thursday, as top news on its website. Now finally, the global cascade of “Jasmine revolutions” in the Middle East and North Africa appears to have entered North Korea.
Chosun posted a North Korea map with large red circles around multiple cities to mark “riot zones”, adding more drama to the report. One of the circles is the town of Sinuiju on the border with China. “Hundreds of people clashed with security forces … The military was deployed to quell the demonstration, leaving some protesters wounded,” said Chosun. While the protest was sparked by a crackdown in a market, it was “an eruption of long pent-up discontent”, it said.
South Korea’s online newspaper Daily NK reported on Wednesday that North Korea had created a special mobilization force to prevent any demonstrations similar to the recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Another daily, JoongAng Ilbo, said on Thursday that the authorities had begun purging elites who had studied abroad in Russia for fear of a possible coup by people “who were exposed to a Western lifestyle”.
Can this possibly be true? I really just don’t know. I’m not persuaded by the doubts of the Chinese commentariat that Lee quotes. Instead, I think this is worth watching very carefully for more corroboration. I’m also bracing myself for a horrible disappointment, because all of the objective evidence suggests that any uprisings would be isolated and crushed. (Hat tip: Theresa)
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Libya may be the first nation in a long time to defy the tendency of totalitarian dictators to defy the popular will. One significant fact I didn’t know is that Khaddafy intentionally kept his army small. I wouldn’t have guessed that based on his adventures in Chad and other places, but his army performed terribly in Chad anyway. Or perhaps you’ve never heard of the Toyota War.
OFK regulars should all know how much regard I have for Christopher Hill. So are my own preconceptions causing me to find something vaguely repellent in the way Hill frames the issue of food aid, or do others see things the way I do?
Would food aid help to ensure the survival of a state whose treatment of its own citizens is among the most abysmal in the world? If so, and if denying food aid would result in a famine that the North Korean regime could not withstand, what could such a decision mean for eventual relations among Korean peoples living in the northern and southern parts of a unified country?
In the coming weeks, South Korea’s government will confront one of the toughest choices that any government can face: whether the short-term cost in human lives is worth the potential long-term benefits (also in terms of human lives) that a famine-induced collapse of North Korea could bring. [link]
But of course, famine wouldn’t induce regime collapse, for the same reason it didn’t induce regime collapse between 1993 and 2000: because the last thing starving people are thinking about is overthrowing their government. What I think Chris Hill fundamentally misunderstandings about North Korea in this case is that the regime uses hunger to cow its subjects.
Hill is also partially correct. He’s right to suggest that food aid would be diverted to the army and the elite, and that it would be misused to prop up the regime. He’s probably also right that this year, hunger does pose threat to the regime’s stability. But that threat doesn’t rise from the prospect of expendable orphans and peasants dying en masse in front of train stations. Instead, it rises from what I see as a very consequential paradigm shift in the North Korean economy: for the first time ever, the economic balance of power seems to be shifting away from the regime and toward the common people. The commissary officer who carries nothing but won can’t outbid the trader with yuan or dollars. North Korea’s endemic corruption may even allow leakage of food from government and military storehouses into markets, where citizens with dollars and yuan remitted by relatives abroad become the favored buyers. All of this represents something of a reversal of fortune in the last few years.
I admit that I’m making some interferences here, based on evidence of (a) a decline in the regime’s buying power, due in part to international sanctions, (b) a hungry army, (c) a rise in remittances from abroad, and (d) multiple reports that the North Korean won has become a currency of last resort ever since the Great Confiscation. I can’t say definitively that I’m right about this, but my theory is the best explanation I can find for these changing trends. If so, the right policy should be to deny the regime aid, absent a monitoring network that addresses the regime’s long history of diversion and discrimination.
On the other hand, it’s unconscionable to see something as horrible as a famine as advancing the objectives of U.S. foreign policy. Especially when it doesn’t. Instead, our objective ought to be to find the best available way to feed and empower the North Korean people. My view of hunger and food aid is very different from Hill’s. As I see it, nothing would be so transformational for North Korea as the arrival of foreign aid workers to actually hand out food to the hungry and ensure that the intended recipients get to eat it. I’d go so far as to make the regime’s acceptance of food aid — delivered directly by international donors and supervised by WFP monitors — a primary objective of the financial and diplomatic pressure we’re exerting on the regime now. I wouldn’t exclude the soldiers from the feeding program, either. Let them look into our eyes and see how long they’ve been lied to.
Not that any of this could possibly happen, in which case, our next-best option is to quietly encourage remittances, food smuggling, the flow of information, and whatever else erodes the regime’s economic and political control. Of course, a lot of people are going to die waiting for that to happen, but even more will die if we just keep propping up the system.
Which is exactly what Selig Harrison would have us do, naturally. Writing from some parallel universe, Harrison tells us that starvation in North Korea is our next missed opportunity to cozy up to the very people who are causing all of this suffering. He says that “a long-term commitment” to feed the North Korean army would be just the excuse North Korea’s closet reformers have been waiting for to disarm. And when I say “feed the North Korean army,” I’m not twisting Selig’s words. Here he is on the topic of monitoring:
This is a hypocritical response to the present crisis, since Washington does, in fact, impose blatantly political conditions for participating in UN food aid by demanding that Pyongyang agree to more intrusive inspections to assure that the aid does not go to the armed forces. This conditionality makes no sense because the armed forces will get priority in North Korean food allocations whether or not there is outside aid.
Harrison is willing to accept that our aid will be diverted to the army and allocated in a politically discriminatory manner. This is also repugnant, and completely contrary to the ICRC’s Code of Conduct, but give Harrison credit for not even bothering to conceal his motives, which turn out not to be very humanitarian at all. Oh, and Harrison knows this long-term commitment will advance America’s diplomatic interests because — get this — in 1994, during one of his innumerable visits to Pyongyang, “Kang Sok Ju, then Deputy Foreign Minister . . . persuaded Kim [Jong Il] in my presence to accept the proposal” for a nuclear freeze. You see, people? If you’d only done it my way!
But by now, even the Obama Administration is treating Selig like the crazy old uncle who lives in the attic, and Selig’s ego is not amused:
In contrast to the Bush Administration, which allowed me to host meetings for North Korean dignitaries at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Campbell has refused to let me convene a proposed discussion of US-North Korean policy issues to be addressed by Han in Washington. The argument is that this would look like “weakness” on the part of the United States.
You don’t say. So you mean to say that American diplomats see an appearance problem with hosting a function with a diplomat whose country just sank an allied nation’s warship and followed that up by shelling and killing its civilians? If that part of Harrison’s proposal sounds ridiculous, then wait until you see how he has defined the word “dignitary” down. The “Han” he refers to is none other than Han Song Ryol, who in a 2005 incident at a congressional office building accosted the founder of Free North Korea Radio and said: “You, bastard, you wanna die. Look at that son of a bitch ….” Fortunately, Han was with ex-Representative Curt Weldon, so no reputations were harmed. But this surely stretches the definition of “ambassador” and “diplomat,” much less “dignitary.” A man who comes to a congressional office building and threatens a witness to a hearing shouldn’t be sent an engraved invitation. He should be served with a restraining order.
Oh, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In February 2005, Selig Harrison alleged “that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the data” about North Korea’s uranium enrichment program to scuttle the first Agreed Framework. In August 2009, Harrison told an Associated Press reporter that, “Everything I’ve ever said about North Korea since 1972 has seemed at the time like screaming into the wilderness, and everything I’ve ever advocated has come to pass.”
Posted by Joshua on February 23, 2011 at 8:13 am · Filed under Resistance
North Korea is to political disgruntlement what tar sands are to energy — enough to supply the whole world for decades, if only someone could figure out a way to harness it:
Small pockets of unrest are appearing in North Korea as the repressive regime staggers under international sanctions and the fallout from a botched currency reform, sources say. On Feb. 14, two days before leader Kim Jong-il’s birthday, scores of people in Jongju, Yongchon and Sonchon in North Pyongan Province caused a commotion, shouting, “Give us fire [electricity] and rice!”
A North Korean source said people fashioned makeshift megaphones out of newspapers and shouted, “We can’t live! Give us fire! Give us rice!” “At first, there were only one or two people, but as time went by more and more came out of their houses and joined in the shouting,” the source added. [Chosun Ilbo]
Do you suppose this could have been contained to “small pockets of unrest” if the North Korean people had Twitter, or cell phones? Not even the grand old North Korean tradition of ratting out your neighbors is sacred anymore:
The State Security Department investigated this incident but failed to identify the people who started the commotion when they met with a wall of silence. “When such an incident took place in the past, people used to report their neighbors to the security forces, but now they’re covering for each other,” the source said.
The commotion started because the North Korean regime had diverted sparse electricity from the Jongju and Yongchon area to Pyongyang to light up the night there to mark Kim’s birthday on Feb. 16.
See my masthead for further information on that.
Now, take every report like this with a few grains of salt. We don’t know who that “North Korean source” is, or how many of those “pockets of unrest” he’s seen for himself. Still, this report is consistent with other things we’ve heard from North Korea recently, as you’ll confirm by clicking the “resistance” category link above. And while North Korea seems to produce a record harvest of misery and deprivation every year around this time, the situation is more unstable this year, when the regime is also having difficulty feeding the people is actually wants to feed: soldiers, residents of Pyongyang, and the elite.
Interestingly, “a North Korean defector” quoted by the Chosun also notes that Yongchon, a/k/a Ryongchon, “has long been a headache to the regime due to the spirit of defiance of the people there.” Impossible! Ryongchon is the place where, according to the impeccable Korean Central News Agency, residents “struggled heroically in the last moments of their lives to save portraits” of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 explosion.
Posted by Joshua on February 22, 2011 at 7:43 pm · Filed under Anju Links
Also, they make ddok from the blood of pure Korean children:
“There is a possibility that the discrimination, scorn and frustration felt by migrant workers, multicultural children and North Korean defectors may erupt in acts of terrorism,” Howon University Professor Lee Man-jong, head of the Korean Association for Terrorism Studies, wrote in the paper. Drawing on examples from the 2004 Madrid train bombings and the 2005 suicide attacks in London, Lee said that the “discrimination and scorn of minorities were the main cause of terrorism.” [The Korea Times]
I don’t know the last time I’ve seen such groundless broad-brush scapegoating. If any members of the above-mentioned groups support acts of terrorism in South Korea, I’m pretty sure they have that purpose in mind when they come to South Korea in the first place.
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“A South Korean-U.S. Marine Corps joint drill is planned for Yellow Sea islands this year,” the official said on the condition of anonymity. “The planned drill would take place near the islands of Baengnyeong or Yeonpyeong.” [link]
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North Korea has suspended rental of mobile phones to foreign visitors since January, visitors to the country said Monday, a move that may reflect concern in the North over the flow of information about democracy demonstrations sweeping the Middle East.
You’re kidding. North Korea used to let foreigners rent cell phones? Hell, when I was in South Korea, a foreigner could barely rent one there.
Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi used tanks, helicopters and warplanes to quell a growing revolt, witnesses said on Tuesday, as the veteran leader scoffed at reports he was fleeing after four decades in power. Warplanes bombed portions of the capital Tripoli on Tuesday in new attacks in the Mediterranean coastal city, and mercenaries fired on civilians, Al Jazeera reported.
As bad as this is, I shudder to think of what will happen if Khaddafy’s army rolls into Benghazi and the other cities of the east. Think Hama. Things like this are the reason why I say that non-violent resistance has no chance of changing North Korea. Either the military mutinies, or the people need guns.
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So no one really expected to see the overthrow of the Chinese government this weekend. In fact, the mysterious “Jasmine Revolution” looks suspiciously like a hundred-flowers hoax or a police response exercise. Still, the authorities there certainly seem jittery, don’t they?
North Korea’s defense minister warned of a “nuclear catastrophe” in a letter sent to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month and demanded direct talks with Washington, a senior South Korean official was quoted as saying Monday.
Kim Yong-chun, the minister of the North’s People’s Armed Forces, stressed in the letter that the North and the U.S. should meet bilaterally because the nuclear standoff boils down to an issue between the two sides, the Seoul official said during a briefing at an annual conference of South Korean diplomatic mission chiefs, according to multiple participants.
Kim said in the letter that unless something is done about the deadlock in the North Korean nuclear issue, a “nuclear catastrophe will break out on the Korean Peninsula,” the senior briefer was quoted as saying at the diplomats’ conference that opened in Seoul for a five-day run.
Who else thinks North Korea is starting to sound desperate? Anyway, thanks to the brilliant diplomacy of Chris Hill, Condi Rice, and George W. Bush, there’s one less state sponsor of terrorism for us all to to worry about. Discuss among yourselves.
Our friend John M. Glionna profiles one of Kim Jong Il’s former bodyguards, who now runs a duck farm in South Korea:
For 10 years, until 1988, Lee was a personal bodyguard for Kim Jong Il, working among the phalanx of trained killers who protected the future North Korean dictator, infamous for, among other things, his fetishes for handguns, imported caviar and foreign-made limousines.
Lee oversaw the enigmatic strongman’s younger years as a leader in training, observing a privileged life played out inside grim fortresses and hideaway villas. Eventually, Lee came to detest what he now recalls as a farcical leader who enjoyed unparalleled luxury while his impoverished nation starved.
He watched high-ranking officials hide behind trees rather than face the mercurial “Dear Leader,” who was so fearful of duplicity that he constantly switched limousines, so fussy that he demanded his favorite perfume sprayed throughout his villas. Displeasing Kim could mean imprisonment, as it did for the guard sent to a gulag for using one of Kim’s favorite ashtrays.
“As time went on, I saw the real evil,” recalls Lee, who defected to South Korea in 2000 and wrote a tell-all book two years later about his experiences. “He’s a man who is not qualified to be a world leader.” [L.A. Times, John M. Glionna]
It only takes one brave man and one bullet to awaken a nation from a nightmare.
Kim Tong-un, formerly head of Office 39 in the Workers’ Party of Korea, assumed the post in May last year, when North Korea revived Office 38, which was merged with Office 39 in 2009, the source said on condition of anonymity. Office 39 is believed to be another organ that governs a wide network of business operations both legal and illegal.
Both Offices 38 and 39 belong to the Secretariat of the Workers’ Party, which Kim Jong-il chairs, according to a diagram of the North’s power structure released by the Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs. Last year, the ministry had only included Office 39 in a similar diagram.
In a meeting with reporters last week, a ministry official said Office 38 has been spun off from Office 39 and is now running on its own again. The official, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity citing the sensitive nature of his comments, described “a stream of information” that has come through since mid-2010.
Office 38 mainly oversees transactions involving foreign currency, hotels and trade, the official said, while Office 39, headed by Jon Il-chun, drives revenue by dealing in narcotics, arms, natural resources and others.
Here’s the first semi-official semi-reaction to reports that China has sent its military into the Rason semi-autonomous zone:
A U.S. official, authorized to speak on intelligence matters, said “there are no indications at this point that China is moving forces to Rajin.”
Nevertheless, the State Department issued this caution: “We would urge countries to be vigilant in their business dealings with North Korea, given North Korea’s history of proliferation activities, but there is little (the U.S.) can say on a speculative question about the future use of Rajin port or potential Chinese or North Korean intentions there.”
A White House official, asked for comment on the port and the Chinese-North Korean development plans, said flatly: “We are reluctant to talk on this topic.” [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]
Is North Korea preparing for another nuke test? It wouldn’t shock me much if it did, unless this time it’s a uranium device. What may be more surprising is that the United States been worried about North Korean nuke tests since the early 1970’s.
Researchers and nongovernmental organizations disagree on the proportion of food aid the North Korean government diverts, with estimates ranging from 10 to 50 percent. Diverted food aid, according to experts, is given to the military, redistributed as gifts for elites or re-sold - at a steep profit - to vendors in the market. John Everard, the British ambassador in Pyongyang from 2006 to 2008, said he sometimes saw rice bags labeled “World Food Program” in the market halls.
In recent years, North Korea has often banned food aid monitors from traveling to the most vulnerable provinces. It also demands that monitors do not know Korean. Though North Korea makes exceptions, Prior said, it generally demands seven days’ notice before monitors can visit an area.
Kim Seong-min, a former North Korean army propaganda officer who defected, said he once saw a ton of rice aid arrive at a distribution center. The military distributed the food in a village at a monitor’s request but later went door to door retrieving it.
“I remember some of the collection officers were complaining about not being able to collect 100 percent of the rice,” Kim said.
I wonder if this is the same Kim Seong-Min who now runs Radio Free North Korea.
A Navy admiral calls on China to be “responsible and constructive,” which almost seems to imply that China’s behavior isn’t “responsible and constructive” now.
I realize that the OFK readership is underwhelmed by the significance of Kenji Fujimoto’s observations, and I generally join in that sentiment, but I couldn’t resist quoting this piece, by Sunny Lee, explaining why Fujimoto thinks Jon-Eun could be “a caring leader in the making.” I doubt that he’s likely to be either of those things, but I report, you decide:
“Jong-eun came to my cabin, saying ‘Can we talk’?” On that rare occasion, Jong-eun poured out his heart on the situation his country faced. “Compared to other Asian countries, my country is lagging behind in industrial technology. In terms of natural resource, my country probably can merely boast of uranium. The lack of electricity seems severe,” Jong-eun said. Fujimoto saw this as a sign that Jong-eun was no longer just a spoiled brat.
“As he traveled in developed countries, he also appeared to be eager to make his country the same,” said Fujimoto.
On China, Jong-eun said, “Compared to my country that has 23 million, China has 1.3 billion people and still seems to be managed well. How can they feed such a big population! China is strong in agriculture. Its exports are also good. Maybe we can learn from it?” The little prince, as Fujimoto recalled, took interest in China’s success stories of reform and opening up.
[T]here is no concept of “democracy” in the North Korean awareness, only class elements, the Suryeong system, guilt-by-association, prison camps, the Ten Principles and such like. These are the things that the people must be helped to cast aside, and the key is for the people to retrieve from the dictator their sovereignty.
In order to make that happen, the most important element is freedom of information. There are three steps to achieving freedom of information.
The first step is to provide the North Korean people with information on the outside world. The second is to release domestic North Korean information to the outside world. The third is for information to move between North Korean people within their territory. Thankfully, we have managed to conquer the first and second steps. Unfortunately, the most important one is the last.
Even Chosun Central Broadcast (a state-run radio station) does not report any internal news to the people. It is almost impossible for residents of North Hamkyung Province to know about what is happening in the markets of Hwanghae Province. So the infrastructure the democratization movement needs is for the horizontal circulation of information between people, some form of “social network.”
There is no civilian broadcasting, no newspapers and no Internet or other tools for the people. Therefore, the task of sharing information is South Korea’s and the international community’s. Just as South Korean NGOs and U.S. broadcasters are trying to do, we should report what is happening in Hoiryeong to the citizens of Pyongyang and make citizens in Sariwon aware of what is happening in Chongjin.
I couldn’t agree more, which is why I continue to ask your views on the viability of ideas like portable base stations and mesh networking. Eventually, we may stumble across a combination of ideas that will give North Koreans’ discontent the chance to coalesce and focus.
One teacher protested, making a wry face, “This administration has been misleading the public.” The other teacher also said angrily, “The Cheonan was not sunk by the torpedo attack but by the mistaken bombing of a U.S. warship on maneuvers 100km away or it struck a rock. If it had been caused by the underwater explosion of a torpedo, all the dead soldiers would have been torn apart.”
I consider myself a strong proponent of free speech, and I would add that a teacher’s right to free speech ends if and when she begins to propagate this kind of nonsense in a classroom. Presenting this sort of nonsense to children wouldn’t be philosophically distinguishable from teaching 9/11 conspiracies, flat earth theories, or for that matter, any one sect’s version of creationism in a public school. While each of those points of view has its place within the wider debate that societies ought to tolerate and sometimes embrace — say, in Sunday school or private schools — the educational system that the taxpayers fund is a common space for the propagation of facts that have achieved general acceptance through objective, reasoned, empirically supported science. I have yet to see any Cheonan conspiracy theories that can meet that standard. Teachers who teach them should be fired.
Don Kirk worries that revolutions in the Middle East will only lead to the rise of radical regimes that will be great clients for North Korean proliferation. I happen to share that worry, being the sort who believes that democracy is the Hegelian end-state of political evolution, but that not all societies have evolved sufficiently for successful self-government. Here’s how I would rank the Middle East’s unstable countries’ readiness for democracy, in descending order: the UAE, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and in last place, Yemen. A cursory review of that list, and the literacy rates of the countries on it, suggests that 2011 probably won’t end as well as 1989.
Libya’s unrest spread to the capital Tripoli on Sunday after scores of protesters were killed in the second city Benghazi, which appeared to have slipped out of control of forces loyal to strongman Muammar Gaddafi. [….]
In the first sign of serious unrest in the capital, thousands of protesters clashed with supporters of Gadaffi in Tripoli. Gunfire could be heard and police using tear gas to disperse the demonstrators. In Benghazi, center of Libya’s unrest, tens of thousands of people took to the streets and appeared to be in control of the city before security forces opened fire and killed scores.
The defection of military units and tribal leaders is very bad sign … if your name is Muammar Khaddafy. I don’t know anyone who voted for him, so I don’t suppose he’ll be missed much, but I have little reason to think that Libya is well prepared to replace Khaddafy’s regime with a better one. Could things get even worse? Why, yes! It’s the Middle East, after all. Which is reason enough to remember that things could still get ghastly in Egypt, too.
If you need another reason to look forward to the fall of the Khaddafy regime, it’s the certainty that it will reveal — if not produce — a spate of great stories about his 40-member squad of hand-picked, ahem, bodyguards. One version of the story holds that they’re all virgins (uh huh) while another holds that many of them are married with children.
What is generally agreed that they’re trained in martial arts and other means of actually killing people.
Who among us wouldn’t pay another dime for a gallon of gas for that back story? Also, am I the only one who thinks Khaddafy has taken on a disturbing resemblance to Michael Jackson?
There are some North Korean angles I’ve been rambling my way toward here. One is that at least until 2004, Libya had been one of Kim Jong Il’s best weapons customers, and even sold Khaddafy some casks of uranium hexafluoride before Khaddafy came clean and turned them over to the Americans.
There is also the example of the Libyan revolution, regardless of its eventual outcome. Egypt’s government was overthrown by mostly non-violent protests and a non-violent defection by the army. This could not have happened in a totalitarian place like Libya, where the reports tell of a violent popular uprising and a violent split in the security forces. Unlike the Egyptian case, Libya’s violent revolution is a plausible fit for North Korea. That’s especially the case when, as Rimjingang reminds us, the North Korean army isn’t eating well:
[F]ood shortages in the army are very serious. According to a Defense Security Command commissioned officer Kim Dong-cheol met in North Pyongan Province, the amount of food, principally corn, supplied to the troops is being restricted to 300 grams/day. “At 100 gram a meal amounts, you will suffer malnourishment just by sitting around.” Kim says that the food supplied to the army hasn’t been in this low in the last 10 years.
The Defense Security Command is in charge of protecting Kim Jong-il and other important officials, so it receives better treatment than normal combat squads or construction teams. This officer, an acquaintance of Kim, spoke his mind about the lack of food: “It is only January and the food situation is already this bad. That means that during the spring distress period (the offseason running from April to August, when there are food shortages every year) it will be terrible.”
The report goes on to say that “even though food is being trading in the markets, the government is left scraping the bottom of the barrel,” suggesting that for once, citizens are gaining an economic advantage over the regime in the markets. How can this be? For one thing, traders probably aren’t particularly interested in taking the new North Korean scrip that the regime is using as a medium of exchange. For another, some ordinary North Koreans are probably able to buy food with the yuan and the dollars they’re getting from relatives abroad. There’s an element of speculation on my part here, but if I’m right, this would be the first time that markets are diverting food from the military to the common people, instead of the other way around. That would be a wonderful and dangerous tipping point.
Posted by Joshua on February 20, 2011 at 11:02 am · Filed under China
While I don’t believe that this story means that the Chinese political system is in imminent danger of collapse, I do think it illustrates that as technology advances, the system is one recession away from a political cataclysm.
Jittery Chinese authorities wary of any domestic dissent staged a concerted show of force Sunday to squelch a mysterious online call for a “Jasmine Revolution” apparently modeled after pro-democracy demonstrations sweeping the Middle East.
Authorities detained activists, increased the number of police on the streets, disconnected some mobile phone text messaging services and censored Internet postings about the call to stage protests at 2 p.m. in Beijing, Shanghai and 11 other major cities. [….]
On Sunday, police took at least three people away in Beijing, one of whom tried to lay down white jasmine flowers while hundreds of people milled about the protest gathering spot, outside a McDonald’s on the capital’s busiest shopping street. In Shanghai, police led away three people near the planned protest spot after they scuffled in an apparent bid to grab the attention of passers-by.
Many activists said they didn’t know who was behind the campaign and weren’t sure what to make of the call to protest, which first circulated Saturday on the U.S.-based, Chinese-language news website Boxun.com.
The unsigned notice called for a “Jasmine revolution” — the name given to the Tunisian protest movement — and urged people “to take responsibility for the future.” Participants were urged to shout, “We want food, we want work, we want housing, we want fairness” — a slogan that highlights common complaints among Chinese.
Pressures that can’t be released only build, and given the cyclical nature of economies, it’s inevitable that economic pressures will eventually cause political pressures to peak, too. Nations can delay those cycles — the familiar tricks include subsidies, loan guarantees, low interest rates, currency manipulation, and price supports — but these tricks only stretch out the very contradictions that will eventually snap and unleash an even deeper recession later. We saw this with the demise of managed economies in Japan and Korea in the 1990’s, and in our own over-managed economy in 2008. Europe’s economy, which was even more over-managed than our own, may consequently take longer to recover. The Euro may never recover at all. Unless you believe that the Chinese Communist Party has found a formula for repealing the laws of macroeconomics, we’ll eventually see it there, too.
By the way, if you’re thinking that this all sounds like an inversion of Marxist crisis theory, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you.
How will China cope with its own great recession? In the long term, there are really only three ways for political systems to survive economic fluctuations. On one extreme, a nation can opt for an elastic (read: democratic) political system that can bend to the popular will without fracturing. The other extreme is the North Korean example, the cost of which is isolation, long-term decline, and famine. In the middle is the course that most repressive regimes choose, which is the gradual relaxation of their authoritarian character to allow for economic growth and some tolerable degree of political ventilation. But can China, a nation with endemic corruption and poverty, ever evolve into something like Singapore? I doubt that it could evolve enough to survive the next recession, much less the demographic threat of its one-child policy.
But then, with reform comes dissent. With dissent comes the formation of organizations that may challenge the state. And with openness comes innovative (and subversive) technology that propagates dissent. And of course, no authoritarian leader ever thinks that a society is quite ready for self-government without him. Yet always before The Leader concludes that his statesmanlike work is done, some unexpected provocation will arouse the masses to challenge his rule. When that happens, the existential question is whether the soldiers fire on the crowds as ordered. The paradox is that they won’t if they’ve grown up in a system that’s liberalized enough to regard the people in those crowds as human beings. That was Mubarak’s downfall, and eventually, it will be Xi Jinping’s downfall, too.
This video gives a simple explanation of the concept of mesh networking, which allows android phone users who download some additional software to connect with each other wirelessly without a base station or cell phone towers. An Australian group known as The Serval Project is trying to raise funds to test and prototype the technology, and OFK reader Josh Hansen wrote me a few weeks back to start a discussion about the potential this technology could have for bring cell phone service to North Korea, without the obvious involvement of any foreign government.
Here’s how the Serval Project’s founders explain the potential for mesh networking to penetrate closed societies:
Several months ago, I wrote about the potential of cheap portable base stations to cover much of North Korea with a cell signal. The obvious drawback to that concept is that this system still depends on a centralize network with base stations, which would have to be hosted on South Korean territory. South Korea probably still lacks the testicular fortitude to allow that.
Personally, I lack the technological knowledge to say whether or not this could work. I’d be interested in your thoughts below, in the comments.
China has told U.N. Security Council members it plans to block publication of a U.N. special report that accuses North Korea of violating sanctions on its nuclear program, Western diplomats said. [….]
Diplomats told Reuters that China informed council members it would block the publication and transfer of the report to the full council. They said China’s move was odd since one of the experts who prepared the report, Xiaodong Xue, is Chinese.
I sure hope Mr. Xue’s family isn’t in China right now.
The panel’s report, which was seen by Reuters, says that North Korea almost certainly has several more undisclosed enrichment-related facilities. It also says that Pyongyang’s uranium enrichment program and its development of a light-water reactor are serious violations of U.N. sanctions. [….]
The panel also voiced concern that North Korea might “transfer fissile materials or the means of producing them” to foreign countries due to its shortage of hard currency. The panel has previously suggested that Pyongyang may have aided Syria, Myanmar and Iran with nuclear or missile technology.
The panel concluded that the North’s enrichment program, which Pyongyang says it began in April 2009, must have been developed much earlier, over the course of “several years or decades” and appears mainly to be for military purposes.
In February 2005, Selig Harrison alleged “that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the data” about North Korea’s uranium enrichment program to scuttle the first Agreed Framework. In August 2009, Harrison told an Associated Press reporter that, “Everything I’ve ever said about North Korea since 1972 has seemed at the time like screaming into the wilderness, and everything I’ve ever advocated has come to pass.”
And since you may also be reading, Mr. Chinoy, isn’t it time for you, too, to concede that critics of both agreed frameworks were right after all?
Whatever you think motivated the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong attacks, I see no sign that those motivations have changed. Hence, I wouldn’t discount this:
North Korea may stage another attack “in months and not years,” said Navy Admiral Robert Willard, the top U.S. commander in the Pacific.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il appears to be training his son “on a compressed timeline” in “coercive measures” like the attacks last year that killed 46 sailors on the South Korean Cheonan warship and four people on the island of Yeonpyeong, Willard told a forum sponsored by the Asia Society in Washington today.
“We may very well be facing the next provocation in months and not years,” Willard said in remarks that also touched on China and Southeast Asia.
A “big and bright halo” floated above Mt Paektu, revered by North Korea as the sacred birthplace of leader Kim Jong-il, to mark his birthday on Wednesday, state media reported.
KCNA news agency, the secretive state’s main news outlet and renowned for its colorful propaganda, said the “mysterious natural wonder” occurred at the break of dawn.
“The bright sun rose up, throwing its brilliant rays and the area of the Paektusan Secret Camp turned into a fascinating picturesque of spring. Then rarely big and bright halo persisted in the sky above Jong Il Peak for an hour, starting at 09:30,” it said.
I doubt anyone in North Korea believes this, including the people who write it. The only purpose for forcing people mouth this nonsense is intellectual subjugation — a rape of the human mind that crushes hope and self-worth.
A BBC video report on the deteriorating food situation in North Korea. But really, is the situation this year really any different from the grim indications we see around this time every year? With North Korea, it’s always something.
The week’s most interesting North Korea rumor relates to Kim Jong Chol, who was recently spotted at a Clapton concert in Singapore, occupying a seat whose price could have fed every homeless orphan in Chongjin for a month:
Japan’s Fuji TV caught up with Jong-chol at an Eric Clapton concert in Germany in June 2006. The broadcaster reported that he appeared to suffer from a condition where his body secreted abnormally large amounts of female hormones, causing his physique and voice to become feminine, possibly as a result of steroid abuse prompted by his fascination with Belgian actor Jean Claude Van Damme.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that! The news of Jong-Chol’s night on the town seems to have revived the Obama Administration’s campaign promise to talk to our enemies anytime, anywhere. Yet somehow, I don’t think the hippies right-thinking people who applauded then were expecting these tweets from the poison thumbs of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley:
#KimJongIl’s son attended an #EricClapton concert in Singapore? Actually, the #DearLeader himself would benefit from getting out more often.”
Now that’s my kind of diplomacy! And there’s more:
“Of course, there is nothing preventing #KimJongIl from opening up #NorthKorea so his people could enjoy #Clapton, and maybe get more to eat.”
How much do you have to hate peace to be so impudent? This is no less devastating than “hellish nightmare” or “axis of evil.” Just imagine the howls if John Bolton had said that! But this year, crickets and Selig Harrison will chirp, and that will be all. As it should be.
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Put this one in your “the sanctions are working” file:
As North Korea suffers from drought and food shortages, Kim Jong-Il may be turning to rip-off luxury goods for his gift bag. The Associated Press reports that for the past three months North Korean officials have been purchasing clothing and textiles, including fake Gucci and Armani suits, in bulk from Beijing’s Silk Street market.
How do you walk through a mine field without blowing yourself up, unless you know where not to walk?
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I don’t care what your political views are: Justin Beiber’s Obama impression is spot on. It cramps my fingers to say this, but the kid (I mean Bieber) isn’t completely untalented after all.
“Any resumption of U.S. food aid to North Korea should be contingent on North Korea allowing access and accountability by monitors in accordance with international standards,” Sen. Richard Lugar (R-In) said in a statement. “It is essential to ensure that the U.S. assistance is actually received by hungry North Korean children and their families rather than reinforcing the North Korean military whose care is already a priority over the rest of the population.”
More here. I like Dick Lugar as a person, but he sometimes acts like the Junior Senator from the State Department. I wonder if the rising threat of a primary challenge from the right is causing him to take more strident positions. I can’t imagine that the people of Indiana would think highly of the idea of feeding the North Korean army this year. In the past, of course, we’ve extracted some modest concessions from the North Koreans on monitoring, only to see North Korea renege on those concessions within a few months and refuse further aid. North Korea’s obstructionism of foreign food aid has been so determined that I’ve long inclined to the view that North Korea wants to keep certain political classes of its population on the verge of starvation (or worse) as a tool of political control.
We’ll know that the regime is serious about transparency when it allows aid workers to distribute and monitor aid distribution, and — key point — to stay long enough to conduct long-term nutritional surveys. Until then, we’d be better off organizing and assisting money smugglers who can harness the power of the market to draw food toward those North Koreans who need it most.
Over to you, Kushibo: “Meng Jianzhu, China’s public security minister, congratulated Kim’s youngest son Jong-un on his appointment as vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission last year, “hailing the successful solution of the issue of succession to the Korean revolution,” KCNA news agency reported.” This is followed by some “expert” interpretations of what “succession” means in this context, but I don’t find those interpretations very persuasive.
Veterans remember Chipyeong-ni:“In the aftermath of Chipyong-ni, the (Chinese) Army limped north,” he said. “It was the last Chinese offensive of the Korean War, and within four months the Chinese high command requested truce talks.” The next time an American president goes to Beijing, we should ask Yo Yo Ma to play a sonata in remembrance of their bravery.
In April of 2009, I laid out a series of ten tough non-military options that I didn’t believe President Obama would have the spine to apply to North Korea. At the time, North Korea was about to test our new president by launching a Taepodong II missile in the general direction of Hawaii. I can’t fail to begin this article without conceding that Executive Order 13,551, signed on August 30th of this year, ought to count as full or partial credit for at least items 1 and 2.
At lunch with a journalist friend earlier last fall, my friend asked me if I saw any evidence that what I like to call Plan B was working at exerting useful pressure on North Korea. I answered that I saw no direct evidence of that yet, but that I expected to in the coming months. I attributed this confidence to the past success of the sanctions applied to Banco Delta Asia in 2005, no matter how much some sanctions opponents would like to deny that success. But if asked the same question today, I’d give a very different answer.
So how do you detect financial duress in a place that’s been starving for years? By looking for signs of shortages in those segments of the North Korean economy and population that have always been high economic priorities, even while everyone else was starving. Those priorities include showpiece industries, the military, the elite, and of course, Kim Jong Il’s own opulent lifestyle. There is now some evidence that each of these priorities has recently been underfunded.
First, North Korea has revived Bureau 38, which manages the personal assets of Kim Jong Il. Yonhap thinks this means the regime is under financial pressure. The Chosun Ilbo adds some context:
“It seems the North in 2009 merged Room 38 with Room 39, another special department that handles a network of business operations, but separated them again in mid-2010,” a ministry official said.
According to a North Korean source, Room 38 handles the private slush funds needed to buy luxury goods for Kim Jong-il and his family as well as gifts for officials, while Room 39 deals with executive funds to pay expenses for party events.
A source in the North said the regime merged Room 38 with Room 39 in March 2009 to simplify management of Kim Jong-il funds but apparently restored Room 38 in September last year, since it had become difficult for Room 39 alone to earn enough hard currency due to tightened international sanctions against the regime. [Chosun Ilbo]
I have already noted the evidence that the regime is having an unusually difficult time feeding its army this winter. While some soldiers have been going hungry for years — I’ve noted examples regarding North Korea’s border guards with particular interest — the recent evidence suggests that airborne and “special forces” units are also suffering. That is unprecedented, even if we can agree that “special forces” is a somewhat imprecise term, and that most of these reports are anecdotal.
Then there are the key industries. North Korea’s steel mills and coal mines are largely idled.
Finally, the regime has been forced to reduce the size of the capital and home of the elite:
North Korea has halved the size of Pyongyang in a possible bid to ease the burden of keeping the loyal residents of the capital well-fed amid deepening food shortages, sources here said Monday. According to the sources that cited 2009 and 2010 almanac maps from North Korea, the city of 3 million has relinquished most of its southern half and a portion of its west to surrounding areas.
“We believe about 500,000 people have been excluded as Pyongyang citizens since 2009,” one source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the maps were obtained through intelligence means. [Yonhap]
Ordinary North Koreans have been hungry since the early 1990’s, but last year was much worse because of the Great Confiscation. The markets have only partially recovered from this disastrous series of policy decisions. Evidence of rising food prices has to be put in context; food prices tend to rise every year around this time, as winter stocks are depleted. The fact that the regime has gone begging for aid means that this year may be different, and adds weight to suspicions that the elite and the military are sharing some of the pain.
To this evidence, we might as well add the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong outrages. Extortion certainly seems to have been one plausible motive for these, and much as North Korea might have wanted, some would now offer North Korea a payoff for this conduct. But despite some signs of impatience with “strategic patience,” the Obama Administration continues to tell North Korea that refusing to negotiate in good faith only means more isolation. And despite the North’s insistence that it won’t talk until we lift sanctions, the administration’s answer — for now, at least — is that it has “no intention of removing those sanctions as an enticement for dialogue.”
Let’s hope they stick with it. We’ve seen this pattern before: North Korea shows an unexpected (to some) interest in diplomacy when we apply economic pressure. This isn’t to say that talks are likely to get us anywhere in the foreseeable future, but it by backing our diplomacy with real force, it might create the conditions for diplomacy to work. Some day.
By any objective measure, the Obama policy toward North Korea is tougher than that of his predecessor. This still isn’t saying much. In any event, North Korea’s recent behavior arguably forced President Obama to impose sanctions, something his foreign policy team never intended to do when it came into office. On paper, the new executive order is a very powerful tool, but it’s still not clear how determined the administration will be about enforcing it. As it becomes increasingly clear that China is circumventing U.N. sanctions toward both Iran and North Korea, Treasury has yet to take action against any of the Chinese entities funneling funds and technology in violation of the sanctions resolutions China voted for.
At least to my eyes, the President’s policy still lacks a coherent and plausible objective. A negotiated disarmament of the Kim Dynasty isn’t that. I harbor the hope that perhaps the administration has seen the light, but isn’t ready to step out of the regime change closet. But at least give President Obama the credit he is due for finally attaching consequences to Kim Jong Il’s actions.
