Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 16, 2010 at 9:02 am · Filed under Human Rights, Diplomacy, "United" Nations
A series of bleak new reports shows that after more than a decade of attempts by the United States and South Korea to liberalize North Korea though aid and engagement, life is as cheap as ever between the Yalu and the Imjin. The system is less closed than it once was, although this is mostly the result of the fraying of the regime’s control over its borders, economy, and the flow of information. Yet these changes have occurred in defiance of the regime’s brutality and desperation to preserve its power, not because the regime has changed it ways for the better.
The first and most powerful of these reports comes from the most surprising of sources: the United Nations. Ironically for an institution headed by a Korean, that institution’s only effective advocate for the North Korean people turns out to be a diminutive legal scholar from Thailand:
A UN rights expert has accused North Korea’s regime of turning the country “into one big prison,” saying widespread abuses by Pyongyang put it in a class of its own.
In a report due to be examined at the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, the expert, Vitit Muntarbhorn, said the ruling elite had created “a pervasive ’state of fear’ or ’state as one big prison’” for the masses.
He called on top UN bodies such as the Security Council and International Criminal Court to play a more active role in tackling the impunity of the state, potentially for crimes against humanity.
I would like to pause to wish Mr. Muntarbhorn the best of luck in enlisting Ban Ki Moon in this endeavor.
“Abuses against the general population for which the authorities should be responsible are both egregious and endemic,” the special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea said.
“The human rights situation in this country can be described as ’sui generis’ — in its own category — given the multiple particularities and anomalies that abound.
“Simply put, there are many instances of human rights violations which are both harrowing and horrific,” Muntarbhorn’s report said, accusing the military regime of trying “to perpetuate its survival at the cost of the people.”
He called on North Korea to immediately restore equitable food distribution, halt executions, physical abuse and violations of civil liberties, and allow him into the country. [AFP]
Muntarbhorn specifically criticized North Korea’s “distorted food distribution, from which the elite benefits.”
“The international crime which would seem to be most closely related to the happenings in the country in question is ‘crimes against humanity’ and the criteria which would need to be fulfilled include widespread or systematic attack against civilians and knowledge of the attack,” he said in the report. [….]
The state is “seeking to prop up a regime which is out of sync with the general population and which tries to perpetuate its survival at the cost of the people,” he said. [Reuters]
Muntarbhorn also had some choice words for The Great Confiscation, essentially saying that the regime had failed to provide for the people and ought to at least let them provide for themselves. More here.
Does this guy really work for the U.N.? I’m sure a few people in Pyongyang and Beijing must have wondered the same thing.
The UN report was inspired by a Western conspiracy to “eliminate the state and social system” in North Korea, the country’s UN envoy Choe Myong Nam was quoted as saying by AFP. [BBC]
Muntarbhorn’s comments coincided with the release of the State Department’s annual human rights country reports, which had recently come under pressure from within the State Department for political reasons:
In the past border guards reportedly had orders to shoot to kill potential defectors, and prison guards were under orders to shoot to kill those attempting to escape from political prison camps, but it was not possible to determine if this practice continued during the year. During the year the security forces announced that attempting to cross the border or aiding others in such an attempt was punishable by execution. Religious and human rights groups outside the country alleged that some North Koreans who had contact with foreigners across the Chinese border were imprisoned or killed.
Press and South Korean NGOs reported that public executions were on the rise, but no statistics were available to document the reported trend. In February two officials from the Ministry of Electric Industry were reportedly executed for “shutting down the electricity supply” to the Sunjin Steel Mill in Kimchaek, North Hamkyung Province (see section 4). In June the navy allegedly killed three persons fleeing to South Korea on a small boat (see section 2.d.).
Also in June an NGO reported four inmates and a guard at Yodok prison camp were killed following a gas explosion. The incident reportedly occurred while five workers were unloading drums of gasoline. Two of the prisoners reportedly died in the explosion, and guards shot and killed two others. The guard on night duty who survived the accident reportedly was sentenced to death.
An NGO reported that in June four soldiers beat and killed a security guard after he refused to give them the potatoes he was guarding. Security agents reportedly arrested the soldiers. There was no additional information available regarding the soldiers’ status at year’s end. [U.S. Dep’t of State, 2009 Annual Country Report on Human Rights]
To this, former Yodok inmate Kang Chol Hwan adds:
Rape and sexual torture of female political prisoners are no longer banned. One North Korean defector who was imprisoned at a concentration camp, said, “Since 2000, it has become routine for security agents to sexually abuse female prisoners.” The defector added, “Now, moral standards have been tossed out of the window as rumors spread that Kim Jong-il himself enjoys all kinds of decadent acts with his coterie of female entertainers.” As a result, officials now turn a blind eye to abuses lower down the chain of command. [Chosun Ilbo]
The center-left Korea Herald surveys the State Department report, acknowledges that North Korea is a “hell on earth,” and calls for raising human rights in the six-party talks:
One way to exert pressure on the North Korean regime is through the six-party nuclear disarmament talks. There are signs that the stalled negotiations may restart soon. When talks do resume, the humanitarian and human rights issues should also be actively discussed.
If the editors of the Herald read the Joongang Ilbo, you might be tempted to think they’d gotten their wish:
The United States will raise the issue of North Korean human rights in future six-party nuclear talks, once they have resumed and made a certain amount of progress, a U.S. envoy said.
“At this point, what we need to do is restart the six-party talks,” Robert King, U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, said Friday in a media roundtable about the release of the State Department’s 2009 Human Rights Report the previous day.
But King added: “The six-party talks are not just one little narrow box,” hoping that the multilateral nuclear talks will become the venue to address human rights and other issues involving the reclusive communist North.
“The relationship between the United States and North Korea is very much going to be affected and influenced by North Korea’s record on human rights.” [Joongang Ilbo]
Keep reading, however, and you’ll see that it’s pretty much the same old story: after North Korea denuclearizes (as in, never) and when we get to the point of talking about normalizing relations, then we’ll get to the subject of human rights. Eventually. Of course, even that could change if North Korea shows up for the talks, and then throws a tantrum demanding that we never raise the topic again … and after Sam Brownback retires from the Senate. Oh, and King himself will not attend to talks, as a gesture to North Korean sensitivities, of course.
But in one way, there is some marginal improvement over the Chris Hill trajectory. Whereas Hill once said that human rights issues could be discussed in the context of two states that have diplomatic relations, King is saying that improvements are a precondition to normalization, at least that’s what he said if the Chosun Ilbo quoted him accurately:
The new U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues has reaffirmed that the U.S. will not normalize relations with the North unless it improves the treatment of its people. Robert King was speaking at the State Department on Friday in his first meeting with reporters since he started the job.
King said the U.S. enactment of the North Korean Human Rights Act reflects these concerns, while the six-party nuclear talks are a step into the future of U.S.-North Korea relations. [Chosun Ilbo]
It’s better than the alternative, I suppose, but of course, it presupposes a some dubious points — that North Korea wants diplomatic relations with the United States, and that it will ever get far enough in the disarmament process for normalization and human rights to be raised at all. In other words, we’ll talk about the fiddling with hell’s thermostat only after it freezes over. That would suit Kim Jong Il, but it’s of no use at all to the people of North Korea.
I feel, at the same time, a sense of futility in making too much about the absence of something with as little promise as diplomacy has in addressing North Korea’s behavior in any number of ways. It’s not the lost opportunity that offends me; it’s the refusal to acknowledge reality and its relevance. I don’t doubt that many people refuse to recognize it for the very reason that they also realize that diplomacy is of no use. Perhaps they think that we can delay or moderate Kim Jong Il’s provocations for a while longer if we overlook his basic contempt for humanity. But of course, it’s his contempt for humanity that causes the provocations. Can that be altered? The results of several experiments — the Sunshine Policy, Agreed Framework I, Agreed Framework II — are as conclusive as anything in diplomacy ever is.
With that, I will close with the one thing that the U.S. government is doing that holds out any prospect for changing North Korea for the better. Treasury official Daniel Glaser is visiting Seoul to discuss international sanctions against North Korea while generating as little media interest as possible. While the entire press corps focuses on the State Department and the United Nations as our last slender hope for changing North Korea, keep your eye on the Treasury Department instead.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 15, 2010 at 7:11 am · Filed under NK Economics, Appeasement, Sunshine
Please allow me to introduce Roh Jeong-Ho, ex-millionaire, former role model for the Sunshine Policy, and asshole. How does one achieve such distinction in life? In Roh’s case, this way:
Roh was once touted by the South Korean media as one of the young leaders in his early 30s who were expected to lead the post-unification era when he exported 44 km of barbed-wire fences to Rajin-Sonbong in 1995. North Korea had asked Roh to supply the fences to isolate the area from ordinary North Koreans. In return, the North offered him the use of 33,000 sq. m of land in the free zone for 50 years. [Chosun Ilbo]
Roh was willing to make what we’ll call certain compromises for the greater good of reform and liberalization:
At first, the North threatened to scrap the barbed-wire order, complaining that the deal was revealed to South Korean media. Roh managed to calm the North Koreans, but then they started making new demands. They even told Roh to supply equipment to guards who were posted along the fence, including tazers and high-voltage current generators.
The North Koreans were apparently quite serious about what the New York Times called “barbed-wire capitalism:”
But to let in the air of foreign currency without also letting in the mosquitoes of democracy, North Korea wants to confine capitalism to the Rajin-Sonbong Free Economic and Trade Zone in the isolated northeast corner of the country, near the borders with Russia and China.
A barbed wire fence, electrified in places, separates the 288-square-mile zone from the rest of North Korea. This despite the fact that a brochure prepared by North Korea’s Committee for Promotion of External Economic Cooperation touts that the zone will become ‘’a crossroad of human transport and traffic.'’ [N.Y. Times, Sept. 15, 1996]
Although not much else came of the Rajin-Sonbong zone, the North Koreans did put up the fence, at least. Curtis identified it in satellite imagery. What is not stated is how, exactly, one isolates an area from “ordinary North Koreans” if some of them are allowed to live inside the electric fence. Indeed, I recall having read (but cannot currently find) news reports that the indigenous population inside the zone would have been forcibly relocated. North Korea’s failed plans for a similar trade zone at Sinuiju involved the forcible expulsion of “several hundred thousand local residents.”
Whether this monstrous mass relocation actually came to pass, I cannot say, because thankfully, by 2002 the regime’s ambitious plans were generally acknowledged as a failure. It is always so: this is a regime whose ruthlessness is limited only by its incompetence, and its subjects’ best hope is often that the latter will triumph over the former.
I ask you: is there a better living symbol of the Sunshine Policy than Roh Jeong-Ho, the man wanted to get rich — and naturally, do his part to liberalize and open up North Korea — by selling it barbed wire? North Korea got its barbed wire and stiffed Roh (the barbed-wire salesman, not the dead president), who is now bankrupt, bitter, and lacking in any apparent pity for anyone but himself.
“North Korean government workers operate under a bizarre, performance-based system,” Roh said. “Their performance is gauged based on how much they are able to extort from South Korean businesses.” [….]
“If you’re not careful, you could end up losing everything,” he warned. He added that the business prospects are riddled with traps. “We tend to believe that the North Koreans would be accommodating since we are ‘compatriots,’ but that’s a big mistake,” Roh said. “North Korea extends its invitation to South Korean businesses in order to use them as window dressing to attract Chinese and Russian investors.”
As is inevitably the case with investors in North Korea, a fool and his money — in his case, $1.5 million — are soon parted. This may be one of those rare occasions to celebrate a small victory for karmic justice that precedes the afterlife.
It’s hard to figure out the exact status of the Rajin zone today, as North Korea makes a fresh effort to revive it. Some reports in late 2008 suggested that North Korea had evicted some or all of the Chinese companies that originally bought into Rajin. This is a curious thing; after all, the Chinese thought that they’d purchased an exclusive 50-year lease for the port as recently as 2005.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 14, 2010 at 10:38 am · Filed under Anju Links
Whoop-dee-doo: Rumor has it that North Korea will return to six-party talks next month, and if that’s true, it will only be under the duress of sanctions, and for the sole purposes of demanding that the sanctions be loosened and to issue a new list of demands that are mostly designed to prevent us from ever getting to the matter of its nuclear disarmament. The good news is that the sanctions must be working. The bad news is that our State Department’s stupidity is so limitless that it will probably relax the very pressure that brought North Korea to the talks, without having achieved anything of real value.
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Remember, kids: having an embassy in lovely Pyongyang is a privilege with paying tribute for:
North Korea has demanded a hike in rental fees for embassies and international organizations in Pyongyang, diplomats said Friday, in what could be a move to raise foreign currency amid tightened international sanctions. [….]
North Korea informed embassies and international organizations last year that it would raise rental fees for their offices and living accommodation by 20 percent beginning in January, a diplomat, who has knowledge of the matter, told The Associated Press.
The rent increases were being opposed by the missions. “It’s under dispute at the moment,” the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue and because it remains unresolved. Another diplomat, in Pyongyang, said the North cited rising oil prices as the reason for the increase, but all diplomatic missions and international organizations protested the hike, the first in about 20 years.
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LiNK will hold a screening of Lisa Ling’s excellent “Inside North Korea” in Hoboken, New Jersey. By the way, here’s a friendly reminder to vote for LiNK.
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Japan’s left-leaning government is instituting a new free tuition system, but it looks like the Chosen Soren juche schools will be excluded from the system. Me: you mean those backward, capitalist Japanese make people pay for high school tuition? But every civilized country knows that education is a fundamental right … like health care. And housing. And food. And clothing. And a car. And basic cable.
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The BBC has more from Kim Jong Ryul, Kim Il Sung’s personal shopper, who lived and later faked his own death in Austria. As it turns out, Austrian businessmen were always happy to help the North Korean dictatorship evade sanctions:
We found that Austria was easy to handle. We could purchase embargoed goods here. We labelled and packaged them and then shipped them from Vienna. That is how it worked. Austrian businessmen are very good at that kind of thing. North Korea always paid 20-30% extra and Austrian firms were quite interested in that. We used this interest.
We bought all sorts of things - such as Geiger counters, fingerprint readers from America and encrypted telephones for the two dictators [Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-Sung] to talk to each other on. Also, gold-plated pistols, hunting rifles and furniture and fittings for villas.
Because this would have been around the time of The Great Famine, I kept waiting for the part where Kim secretly bought infant formula to feed all those starving North Korean babies Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il couldn’t get because the Yankees were blockading and trying to starve the North Korean people. Maybe the BBC left that part out, you know, because the BBC is run by neocon lap-dog of the Pentagon.
There’s audio there, too.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 14, 2010 at 9:22 am · Filed under Kim Jong Il, Kremlinology
Yonhap is reporting that North Korea is busily printing portraits of the new emperor-in-waiting. If this is true, it would be the story I’ve been waiting for to convince me that Kim Jong-Eun is indeed being groomed as the spiritual successor to Kim Jong-Il, and it would also strongly suggest that Kim Jong-Il’s health is terrible. Jong-Eun is clearly unready to take real power, and probably is a net negative even as a spiritual figurehead. To elevate him is a rushed and desperate act. The regime wouldn’t do it this quickly if it expected to have Kim Jong Il around for more than five years.
Update: Meanwhile, R. Elgin at The Marmot’s Hole links to a series of KCNA pictures of Kim Jong Il giving on-the-spot guidance. I suppose if you’re reading this site, you may be one of the few people who finds this sort of thing interesting. I was actually looking for those spots on his face, which weren’t evident, although plenty of makeup was (#20, #27). It’s also curious to me why he’s wearing sunglasses in every one of these pictures, even indoors in dank factory floors, or when the lighting suggests that the weather is overcast. There isn’t one other person wearing sunglasses in any of the other pictures. I wonder what that means.
In an apparent gesture of mourning toward Michael Jackson, in #6, #13, and #24 Kim is wearing a glove on his left hand but not his right. His left hand is stuffed stiffly into his pocket in #20, but it’s partially visible in #16, #23, and #27.
The man in #11 wears an expression like he’s waiting for the announcement of his death sentence.
A few of the pictures look vaguely suspicious. Not being expert on such things, I suppose it’s possible that North Korea’s cotton crop is harvested in November (#7). Something is not quite right about #8, but I can’t put my finger on what it is. In #26 and #30, the lighting in the background doesn’t seem to match that in the foreground. Also, Kim is of suspiciously average height in #26, which might just mean that the photographers posed him with other short men.
Also, the girl in #23 might possibly be hot without that surgical mask.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 13, 2010 at 9:22 pm · Filed under Terrorism (NK), U.S. Law
Yes, you too can now read the complaints against North Korea filed in U.S. federal district courts — all four of them. At this new page, I’ve posted a summary and the status of each case, downloaded and posted the key court documents, and even linked to the statutes that strip North Korea of its sovereign immunity.
Hours for fun for North Korea watchers and plaintiffs’ lawyers.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 12, 2010 at 12:07 pm · Filed under Anju Links
Here’s a very long, and very interesting report on the potential for social unrest in North Korea, from a North Korean’s perspective.
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The story on how North Korea exports arms is worth a longer post than I have time to write today.
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Kim Jong Il’s banker Ambassador to Switzerland is retiring. Hmmm.
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A U.S. District Court has issued a summons for the Foreign Minister of North Korea. I’ll have much more to say about this another day, but the interesting point here is that the widow younger brother and son of Rev. Kim Dong Shik have indeed sued the North Korean government for his abduction and murder, something I’ve long been asking people who know Mrs. Kim to urge her to do.
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South Korea still doesn’t know the identities of the four South Koreans that North Korea claims to be holding.
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Remember him? Robert King says something: “We will continue to press human right issues as we’ve done in the past.” You know, it’s that “in the past” part that sucks all the credibility out of the entire promise.
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The President of Brazil is a hypocritical ass.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 12, 2010 at 8:31 am · Filed under NK Economics, Famine & Food Aid
Reuters, citing a study by the Korea Development Institute (KDI), reports that “North Korea’s international trade dropped last year for the first time in more than a decade.” The report suggests that this was mostly the consequence of sanctions, but a closer look at the evidence it was The Great Confiscation that really brought trade across the Chinese border to a standstill by paralyzing the economy, markets, and trade, and banning the use of foreign currency in the final months of 2009. As trade with South Korea, Japan, and other nations has declined in recent years, the great majority of North Korea’s international trade has shifted to China. The KDI report notes that “the largest impact came from a sharp decline in trade with China.” But if trade with China has declined, there’s little evidence that this is because China has tried in good faith to comply with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874. Reports from last year suggests that the new resolution had little if any impact on China-North Korea trade, and China has largely turned a blind eye to North Korean arms trafficking.
Instead, the decline in trade is more likely due to the regime’s own increasingly desperate efforts to destroy a rising underground market economy in North Korea, efforts that began with the state banning and confiscating Chinese imports in July, continued with the closure of its largest unofficial market in September, and culminated in The Great Confiscation — a series of draconian diktats that destroyed the working capital of millions of traders and the saving of millions of desperate citizens, banned the use of foreign currency, and destroyed confidence in the domestic currency. Despite some reports that that the crackdown on foreign currency has been eased out of necessity, according to this report, the regime is still cracking down on the use of the Chinese Yuan, and that this has caused food prices to soar.
A Daily NK source explained, “Lately, cadres have been claiming that the Chosun (North Korea) economy could be occupied by China, so dealing in Yuan is banned.” He added that he does not know whether this is just a pretext, or whether the North’s officials really are worried. Additionally, of course, the amount of foreign currency in the country cannot meet the overall demand. This is stoking inflation.
There are three measures the authorities are employing to block the inflow of Yuan. First and most obviously, they are blocking the channels of direct Yuan inflow. Since the redenomination, North Korean border guards have been cracking down on smuggling and drug dealing. One unintended result of the crackdown is that currency smuggling and drug dealing are now being led by border guards, but supplies of Yuan are still dropping as a result of the measure.
Secondly, due to regulations against the use of cell phones for reasons, nominally, of national security, dealings between North Korean traders and Chinese wholesalers have been seriously circumscribed. Now, less than half the previous amount of cross-border trading is being initiated via mobile phone.
Lastly, in the market, a ban on the circulation of foreign currency is still in force. As foreign currency dealing is more risky now, the costs associated with that risk are being added into the exchange rate while, simultaneously, the value of the North Korean won is deteriorating for a number of reasons.[Daily NK]
Another important factor in the decline of trade must certainly be the regime’s politically motivated interference with access to the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which we can assume is now in a state of slow but steady decline due to the vastly increased political risk of investing there.
The KDI report also notes that the decline in imports “indicates a foreign exchange shortage in the North.” Yet U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 exempts humanitarian aid and “lawful economic activities,” and as a practical matter, hasn’t affected most Chinese exports to North Korea. Thus, to the extent the decline in North Korea’s imports reflects the effect of sanctions, it likely means a decline in North Korean imports of things we don’t want it to import anyway — yachts and fancy cars, to name two — and the increased difficulty of generating foreign exchange by selling weapons.
(One complicating factor in this picture is China’s tendency to block all food exports when domestic food prices rise. This can cause food prices to rise in North Korea, which imports much of its food supply from China.)
Today, the South Korean government is worried about the sudden deterioration of North Korea’s food situation, citing declining food production and something South Korea’s leftist governments never mentioned: “disproportionate food distribution among different classes or regions.” But between the summer of 2008 and the beginning of The Great Confiscation in November 2009, there were no strong indications that North Korea’s food situation was much worse than usual. Although the 2009 harvest was a poor one, the statistics also show that it wasn’t significantly worse than in previous years. North Korea’s food situation did not change significantly after May 2009, when North Korea tested its second nuke and the U.N. responded with UNSCR 1874. Instead, reports of a rapidly deteriorating food situation and resulting public discontent are a very recent development that is largely attributable to The Great Confiscation.
U.N. sanctions certainly seem to have damaged to the Palace Economy, and to have scared away investors who don’t know or don’t care how their money will be used. That will make the world a safer place. But any damage to the Peoples’ Economy is largely the result of the regime’s own brutality and stupidity. For years, those two economies have largely performed as separate entities as the regime used the hard currency it generated for its own priorities and depended on international aid to feed the expendables. To the extent the hard times for the Palace Economy and the Peoples’ Economy are related, it’s likely because the former attacked the latter with confiscatory intent.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 12, 2010 at 8:31 am · Filed under Terrorism/Iraq
Korean-American Richard Cho has been hailed as a hero for helping subdue a terrorist and putting out a fire aboard a U.S. airliner heading for Detroit last Christmas. Cho, 40, immigrated with his family to the U.S. at age seven, and went to high school in Chicago. He majored in political science and sociology at Iowa State University, and since graduation has been working as a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines.
On Dec. 25, 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian with ties to al Qaeda, attempted to detonate a bomb aboard Northwest Flight 253, which was traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit with 290 passengers.
Jasper Schuringa, a director from Amsterdam, was the first to subdue Abdulmutallab after hearing a bang and seeing smoke. Cho rushed to help Schuringa. When the blanket that was covering the bomb caught fire, Cho quickly put it out with a fire extinguisher and prevented a major disaster aboard the flight.
U.S. President Barack Obama sent Cho a handwritten letter thanking him for his heroic act. Obama said in the letter that Americans will “forever remember” his heroism in saving the lives of passengers and protecting the U.S., and he offered his gratitude for Cho’s “dedication and courage.” [Chosun Ilbo]
I wonder if Cho had self-defense training. I will say this: passengers and crew certainly seem to been more effective than Federal Air Marshals at stopping things like this. Maybe instead of taking pointy things away from passengers, we should issue them.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 11, 2010 at 10:45 am · Filed under Inside NK
Kang Chol Hwan thinks that Kim Jong Il’s address to a mass rally in Hamhung — that is, if you’re convinced he really did address that rally –means that His Withering Majesty is determined to resist any reform of the system. That part of what Kang says is obvious enough and therefore less interesting than his description of Hamhung, which sounds post-apocalyptic:
Hooligans clustering at the railroad station glared at the goods carried by pedestrians and provoked quarrels if they thought you were looking at them. At construction sites in Pyongyang, the word was that Hamhung people were wild. Often there were gang fights at project sites where tens of thousands of youths from different regions had been mobilized, and Hamhung youngsters were always the most violent. The city was home to the greatest number of organized gangs, and even police officers couldn’t handle them. Hamhung also has more access to outside world as it is an intermediary place through which all things coming in through the northern border with China pass. [Chosun Ilbo]
Hamhung also appears to have the worst drug problem of any city in North Korea, and is believed to have suffered disproportionately during the Great Famine.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 11, 2010 at 7:12 am · Filed under Defectors, Russia & Korea, Russia
The defection of those two loggers at the South Korean consulate in Vladivostok inspires further thought from Claudia Rosett:
I’ve seen those North Korean lumberjacks–or at least their predecessors. In 1994 I was working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Moscow when a story turned up in the Russian press, saying that North Korea was running lumber camps in remote areas of Russia.
In Moscow, Russian officials confirmed to me that they had two big logging operations manned and policed by North Koreans. Both were in the Russian Far East, in areas once part of Stalin’s old gulag. One was based in a place called Tynda. The other was headquartered in a town called Chegdomyn, straddling a rail spur that ran a few hundred miles north from the major city of Khabarovsk, one of the main stops on the Trans-Siberian railroad.
These camps were the legacy of a 1967 Brezhnev-era deal between the Soviet Union and the North Korean regime of Kim Il Sung. The Soviets supplied the equipment and the forests, in rough terrain where during the long winters the temperature dives far below zero. North Korea supplied–and supervised–the lumberjacks. The two governments sold the lumber abroad and divvied up the profits.
In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. Surrounded by a freer Russia, these logging sites carried on as de facto slave labor camps, totalitarian outposts of North Korea. For the Russian foreign ministry at the time, this was a human-rights embarrassment. One Russian official told me there was “harsh treatment” in the camps, including “torture, beatings” and even “controversial” deaths. But the Russian Ministry of Agriculture, which was raking in money from the lumber sales, saw it as an excellent deal worth continuing. One of their spokesmen explained that Russians would not be willing to log such hostile turf for the pittance the North Koreans were paid.
Having heard this tale, I recruited the help of a young intern and interpreter in our bureau.
Read the rest here.
Latest word is that the loggers will actually demand to be sent to the United States. Under Article 2 and 3 of the South Korean Constitution, however, the men are South Korean citizens, and pursuant to long-standing principles of international and immigration law, an applicant for asylum must generally apply for asylum at the first country of refuge where asylum is sought. The natural place of refuge is the place where these men are already citizens, and let’s face it, Chung Dong Young isn’t the President of the Republic of Korea. It’s reasonable to assume that these men can live safely in South Korea.
Still, isn’t it interesting that after a lifetime of indoctrination that Americans are big-nosed, baby-bayoneting rapists, these men would still prefer to live in the United States, notwithstanding all of the linguistic and cultural barriers living here would mean for them?
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 10, 2010 at 12:41 pm · Filed under Korean History, Russia & Korea, Russia, History
Something tells me the Putinjugend Nashi web site isn’t going to feature, by popular demand, this newly released 1945 report by a Soviet Lieutenant Colonel who drove through Hwanghae and North and South Pyongyan provinces just after the war’s end. The officer’s detailed, 13-page report on the behavior of Russian soldiers in North Korea makes drunk G.I.’s in Itaewon look like Mormon missionaries by comparison:
The handwritten document in Russian was discovered by the Woodrow Wilson International Center, a U.S. think tank devoted to national security, and translated into English.
“The immoral behavior of our servicemen is horrible. Regardless of rank, they indulge in looting, violence and misconduct every day here and there. They continue to do so since few have been punished,” the document said. The lieutenant colonel described the atrocities of the Red Army, which described itself as “liberators” at the time. “The sound of gunfire never stops at night in areas where our troops are stationed,” he said.
“Drunk and disorderly soldiers commit immoral behavior and rape is prevalent.”
It added, “Drunk soldiers are often spotted on the streets in broad daylight and drinking parties in more than 70 inns and public buildings take place every night.” [Donga Ilbo]
Given the behavior of German soldiers on Russian soil, it’s possible to put the atrocious behavior of the Russians who invaded Germany in 1945 into some perspective, though it still doesn’t excuse the widespread mass rape of German women. It’s much harder to understand why the Russians could justify behaving like this toward Koreans, whom they themselves recognized as victims of fascism and colonialism:
A North Korean who tried to bring a drunk Soviet lieutenant to justice said, “I cannot forgive the Soviet soldier who raped my wife.” Many such perpetrators went unpunished. Though another lieutenant colonel urged the Soviet military police to punish the perpetrators to maintain military discipline several times, his words went unheeded, the report said.
The 25th Primorsky Krai unit commander of the Soviet Far East Army arrived at Pyongyang Airport on Aug. 26, 1945, and described the Soviet army as liberators. “Remember fellow Koreans! Your happiness is up to you. You have achieved freedom and independence. Everything is up to you now,” he said. The report, however, quoted the commander as threatening to “hang half of the Koreans” if they rise up against the Soviet army in protest of their abuses.
The commander held a party with his subordinates for 22 hours in a row in downtown Haeju on Nov. 16, 1945. A fire broke out and burned houses, but he said the fire was an act of arson committed by dissidents and received 300,000 yen as compensation.
The report quoted another Soviet colonel as saying privately, “The Korean people were enslaved for the past 35 years. It’s okay for them be enslaved a little longer.”
We all eagerly await the calls for an inquiry by some Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In fact, let me just put it out there that Charles J. Hanley, having recycled the No Gun Ri story at least three times now, might actually find some fresh material here.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 10, 2010 at 11:14 am · Filed under Famine & Food Aid
Original Post, 10 March 2010:
This week’s papers have several disturbing indicators suggesting that a sudden deterioration of the food situation is in the works. First was this report that even shops and hotels for foreigners in Pyongyang had run out of food; then, Robert linked to a report that kids can now seen begging even in Pyongyang.
Depending on what you choose to believe, however, this may not be an entirely new development. Our friend Christine Ahn, no less, reports seeing kids begging during a 2004 “solidarity” visit to Pyongyang.
“I went to North Korea as a peace activist. North Koreans were living in very difficult conditions. Eight-year-old children were loitering around the hotel, shaking because of hunger. Even soldiers were extremely thin.
From which she concludes:
One thing that surprised me was the mental strength of the North Koreans. I strongly felt their pride and urge to preserve their system.
So, Christine, you could feel the urge of starving eight-year-olds to preserve the system? Do tell! Still, I tend to think that a person who prefers to speak of North Korea’s “collective spirit” and complete absence of sexist billboards would not have mentioned the hungry kids unless she’d actually seen them. Ahn says the kids were “loitering.” To ask her to concede that they were most likely begging may be asking too much.
In other dreary news, at least one “leading” expert projects that North Korea’s grain production will continue to decline. Meanwhile, a regime crackdown on illegal border crossing has caused food prices to rise in North Korea.
The regime, for its part, thinks the answer to low food production is more state intervention, not less. It is offering financial incentives to party officials and their wives in Pyongyang to move to the countryside, something that would be tantamount to suicide for city folk unaccustomed to the hardships and privations of rural life.
Civic group North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity said the party held seminars at party chapters on Feb. 23 promising W10,000 in cash and 120 kg of food for households if they voluntarily move to farms.
The Workers’ Party recently distributed copies of a training manual for senior officials on fortifying rural bases. “To increase grain production the most important thing is to make up for a shortage in the rural workforce. This is why blue-collar workers and office workers in urban areas, senior officials in particular, should lead the vanguard in the campaign.” The regime is urging the wives of senior officials in the party and security agencies to set an example for others.
The regime is afraid of the possibility of mounting public discontent if it forces people to relocate at a time when they are seething in the wake of a disastrous currency reform. The regime is giving indoctrination classes to senior officials to move to rural areas and urging them to set an example, news media speculated.
But the group said such efforts would not be effective in persuading ordinary North Koreans to move to rural areas because living conditions there are very bad. “It’s very likely that the regime will end up forcibly relocating them,” it added.
The report goes on to predict that the regime won’t find many volunteers and will end up relocating people forcibly. But moving people from the top of the food chain to the bottom is a potential source of instability when it creates anxiety within the ruling class. This is a story worth watching.
Update, 12 March 2010: The Daily NK has more on the regime’s invitation to the elite to banish themselves to the countryside. The elite seem more interested in unloading their savings on expensive South Korean consumer goods before their money becomes worthless or gets confiscated.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 10, 2010 at 7:14 am · Filed under Terrorism (NK)
Thirty American victims of Hezbollah terror attacks have filed civil action in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against the government of North Korea. The plaintiffs, injured by Hezbollah rockets fired into northern Israel during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, allege that North Korea aided the militant group by training senior Hezbollah leaders and by providing networks of underground storage bunkers meant to house Katyusha rocket launchers. [Ha’aretz]
This would be the third recent civil suit against North Korea in a U.S. court of which I’m aware. The first, by surviving crew members of the U.S.S. Pueblo and the widow of its captain, won $65 million in damages over North Korea’s horrific torture of those men. The second suit, which is pending now, seeks damages for North Korea’s role in a 1972 terrorist attack at Lod Airport that killed 26 people, most of them religious pilgrims from Puerto Rico. Both suits took advantage of an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act for acts by states that were then listed as state sponsors of terrorism (meaning that Esther Kim should call her lawyer, but Robert Park need not bother).
Having observed, no doubt, that North Korea never defends these suits and inevitably ends up on the wrong side of a default judgment, the plaintiffs have asked for $100 million in compensatory damages, plus an unspecified amount in punitive damages. The suit cites this 2007 memorandum by the Congressional Research Service to support its allegations.
This is not to say that North Korea is completely beyond litigating its claims in foreign courts. In 2008, North Korea reached a 39 million Euro settlement with several insurers that it sued for refusing to pay on claims that the insurers suspected of being fraudulent. Those suspicions were later supported by the detailed account of former North Korean insider (and my friend) Kim Kwang Jin.
Here’s the plaintiffs’ lawyer, speaking about the newest lawsuit:
“Hezbollah’s underground facilities significantly improved their ability to fight the Israelis during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war,” the memorandum added.
Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said: “North Korea has become a major player in providing support and material resources to Middle East terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah.” It was North Korea which trained Hezbollah’s leadership and built the underground bunkers that permitted the terrorists to evade Israeli jets during the Second Lebanese War and to continue their rocket attacks targeting civilians,” she added.
Darshan-Leitner added that, “As a facilitator of the Hezbollah rockets, North Korea is financially liable to all those Americans injured by the terrorists. The lawsuit aims to secure a measure of justice for the terror victims and teach North Korea that it cannot continue to support Hezbollah with impunity.”
President Obama decided not to restore North Korea to the list of state sponsors of terrorism on February 3, 2010. President Bush removed North Korea from the list on October 11, 2008 as a reward for its “progress” toward nuclear disarmament. Discuss among yourselves.
Hat tip to a friend.
On a distantly related note, the plaintiffs will have one less source of North Korean assets to attach to satisfy their judgment. Pyongyang Soju has withdrawn from the U.S. market after discriminating drunks said “bleccccch.”
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 9, 2010 at 3:50 pm · Filed under Anju Links
Have you voted for LiNK today?
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Not for the first time, China has announced that it has leased part of the North Korean port at Rajin, a move that would give China’s rust belt access to the Pacific. I’m just not going to find the time to write about this in detail, but you can read more about this here. Given recent reports that North Korea had canceled the last lease, you have to wonder how much this really means.
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Two North Korean loggers have sought asylum at the South Korean consulate in Vladivostok. Kushibo has more here.
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North Korea inaugurates a new military unit to handle a newly developed medium-range missile:
The North’s People’s Army recently launched a division supervising operational deployment of missiles with a range of more than 1,860 miles (3,000 kilometers) that it had developed in recent years, Yonhap news agency reported citing an unidentified South Korean government source.
The missiles could pose a threat to U.S. forces in Japan, Guam and other Pacific areas that are to be redeployed in time of emergency on the Korean peninsula, Yonhap said. [AP]
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On corruption and higher education in North Korea.
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Don Kirk writes about Kim Jong Ryul, Kim Il Sung’s personal shopper.
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North Korea’s new scam: re-exporting cigarettes. But is this illegal?
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 9, 2010 at 7:31 am · Filed under Media Criticism, Korean Society
I’m going to add just one small bit to the fracas between the Korean Finance Ministry and two reporters with whose work I’m familiar — Don Kirk and Evan Ramstad. As to the questions themselves, sometimes, the function of a good reporter is to challenge official groupthink and corruption, especially in a place where groupthink is as prevalent as it is in Korea. I do not think that a country that aspires to be a hub of international business can nonetheless exempt itself, for cultural reasons, from ethical standards that have gained international acceptance. One of these is that governments ought not to ply interest groups or investors with prostitutes (which seems to be a reasonably good guess as to where the questions might be headed). If a reporter has a basis to believe that this has occurred, it seems fair to ask about it. The questions Kirk and Ramstad were at least as appropriate as the question that brought us this infamous episode of presidential mendacity. As for the context in which the questions were asked or the other issues between Ramstad and the Foreign Ministry, I have no particular knowledge and therefore nothing useful to add.
I will confess, however, that I am biased toward Kirk and Ramstad, am a fan of their work, and wish them both well. Long before this episode, I’d noted their role in a trend toward much-improved reporting about Korea lately. Some full disclosure would be appropriate: I consider Kirk a personal friend, and he arranged for his publisher to send me a free review copy of his excellent book about Kim Dae Jung. I don’t think this was enough to buy me off, but I put that out there for your consideration. Kirk’s book, like his original exposure of the 2000 summit scandal, are prime examples of questions that some Koreans no doubt considered pushy and inappropriate at the time, not just in spite of the fact that they contradicted Korean groupthink about DJ and North Korea, but because they contradicted it. Those who lived in Korea in those years know the extent to which those issues had become intertwined with Korea’s national pride and nationalism. For a time, it was blasphemy to challenge it.
Ramstad has featured my work, and Curtis’s, in the Journal. In addition to our lengthy conversation during which which he interviewed for that article, we’ve had a number of e-mail exchanges. These, in addition to my observation of his work, have been sufficient for me to get a sense of his subject matter knowledge, which is first-rate. His reporting has added a much-needed correction to past reporting of North Korea by reporting on conditions inside North Korea itself. Both Kirk and Ramstad are correspondents of the first caliber. To the extent that their questions drew attention to elephants that went unmentioned in a room filled with reporters, so much the better.
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