To all of the regular and not-so-regular OFK readers–

Thank you for your regular visits, comments, criticisms, and interest over the last nine years. This morning, I begin work on an important project that is incompatible with continued posting, so I must suspend posting for a few months. That won’t be easy for me. This site had become an outlet for recreational thinking, and for beliefs I hold strongly. It had also become a part of my daily mental equilibrium (I’m prone to bouts of crankiness when I don’t post). I expect, like a few of you, I’ll go through a period of withdrawal, but the hiatus isn’t permanent. I’ll be back in August.

No, this is not an April Fool’s joke.

Until then, I’ll leave this post as a moderated open thread for all of you to carry on the conversation among yourselves. Fortunately, the list of terrific North Korea blogs has grown in recent years, and if you continue to check back here by sheer force of habit, you’ll see updates to some of the best of these in my sidebar feed. Finally, if you agree that some of issues, particularly human rights issues, deserve greater attention, then by all means start your own blog, write a Wikipedia page in English or in another language, join LiNK, or contribute to the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea or the North Korean Freedom Coalition.

Good bye for a while, stay safe, and keep the people of North Korea in your thoughts. They need you.

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR PROFILES Alejandro Cao de Benos, who was interviewed for OFK by our friend Enzo in 2010.  For a starving country, North Korea certainly does a brisk trade in size 52 extra-fat uniforms.  What’s most striking about Cao’s claims that North Korea has no hunger or human rights violations isn’t their blatant mendacity, really. It’s the fact that a KCNAP consumer could easily believe every word of it.

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ROUND UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS:  According to Chinese customs data, China exported no oil to North Korea in February of 2013, February 2012, or February 2011.  Make of that what you will, but I doubt it means serious or sustained pressure.

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ANOTHER FAKED PHOTO?  Really, this one isn’t 100% convincing to me, but we have reason to question everything from North Korea.

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DAILY NK, YONHAP, RADIO FREE NK, AND YTN hacked on the anniversary of North Korea’s sinking of the Cheonan.  Not that it matters as much, but I suspect they also hacked me in December.

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THE ONION:  ”Kim Jong-Un Comes Out In Support Of Gay Marriage: ‘I’m Not A Monster’”

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CRACKED:  ”4 Requirements of North Korean Propaganda Videos”

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CHUCK HAGEL URGES US, nonetheless, to take North Korea seriously.  He’s right, but it’s not always easy.  There’s a fine line between parody and trivialization.

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HOW DID I FIND MYSELF IN RARE AGREEMENT with Iran, Syria, and North Korea?  Because I remember how well that whole arms embargo concept worked in Srebrenica, and because you can’t overthrow governments like those in Iran, Syria, and North Korea without arms, after all.  North Korea, of course, is already subject to an arms embargo by multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, and we can see how well that’s worked.

If that’s not enough glaring irony for you, consider the very fact that these three states are not just members of the U.N. in good standing, they’re able to block U.N. action.  Offhand, I can’t think of a better example of the U.N.’s impotence, or why that’s not a completely bad thing.  The U.N. cannot and should not be the universal guarantor of our human rights — people are their own guarantors.  Ideally, they do that peacefully through representative governments and civil societies that allow free expression and assembly.  Lacking that, they must protect their rights with weapons.  People don’t rise against good governments.  Too often, they can’t rise against the bad ones.

MUST SEE: Marcus Noland, speaking to the Lowy Institute in Australia, thinks that North Korea is slipping back into famine.  He thinks that the North Korea people have adapted enough that a 1990s-scale famine can be avoided, but consider this in the context of Noland’s finding that the regime itself has probably had a current account surplus since 2011.

On the other hand, Kim Jong Un loves Mickey Mouse, amusement parks, the NBA, and dolphins, so reform, prosperity, and perestroika are probably just around the corner.  Right?

Update:  This was fed to me by my Google search-bot, but on rare occasions, those bots feed me old links, and I assumed this was new.  The video is still worth watching, and the predictions have (to a degree) been validated, but note the date.

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NO, CHINA ISN’T going to enforce sanctions against North Korea, and here’s why.

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BUT WHAT TOOK THEM SO LONG?  The U.N. Human Rights Council votes to begin an inquiry into human rights violations in North Korea.

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SAY, THIS KENNETH BAE FELLOW is still in North Korean captivity, in case you’d forgotten.

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JOE BIDEN VISITS WITH THE AUSTRALIAN FM to talk sanctions enforcement.  Good — that’s exactly what we should be doing.

Correction:  A previous version of this link said that Biden was the visitor; in fact, the Australian FM is the one who visited Biden.  Thanks to a reader for pointing that out, and my apologies for the carelessness.

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VIA NEW FOCUS, the story of Camp 55.

WATCH THIS: HT to LiNK and to Rodney.

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YES, JAY, like Hitler.

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ANOTHER NORTH KOREAN SPY has been caught posing as a defector.  She claims to have been coerced into spying for the North.  And two other North Korean spies, whom I believe I’ve written about before, are now facing two-year (!) prison terms.  A South Korean prison still probably beats the hell out of a North Korean village.

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NORTH KOREA CAN’T POSSIBLY THINK its forces are capable of mechanized warfare if they’re this poorly trained, and given the generally terrible quality of their armor.  I think they plan to use other capabilities, sadly.

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HWANG WOO-YEA IS STILL TRYING to get a human rights bill passed in the South Korean National Assembly.  Given the obsession of some South Koreans with past atrocities against fellow Koreans, you wonder why some of them are so dead-set opposed to responding to the atrocities of the present day.  One day, these people will hide their actions from their grandchildren, or lie to them and say they didn’t know.

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NORTH KOREA, WHICH WAS REMOVED from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has threatened to attack U.S. military installations in the Pacific and to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against Japan if it passes a sanctions law.  I wish they’d quit with the terrorism for a few days.  I have an article on this subject that’s nearly ready for publication, it’s right at the word limit, and they keep making me revise the damn thing.

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SO IF IT TURNS OUT North Korea really was behind a massive cyber-attack against South Korea, the appropriate response would be (1) name, shame, and take legal action against the Chinese entities that provided material support for the North Korean hackers, and (2) finally, at long last, get serious about broadcasting free internet and cell signals to the North Korean people.

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WE’VE SEEN LESS EVIDENCE of a high volume of state-sponsored drug trade by North Korea recently, but the regime and its diplomats continue to be involved in the trade nonetheless.  The extent remains uncertain, as is the degree to which some meth cookers have “turned pro” and gone independent to supply the Chinese market.  Follow the links.

THE PIANIST KIM CHEOL WOONG, whom Melanie Kirkpatrick wrote about in “Escape from North Korea,” will be here in the D.C. area to play two performances this weekend.  One will be at the “home theater” of conductor Lorin Maazel, of all people, in Castleton, Virginia, on Saturday evening.  The other will be on Sunday, March 24th, and will be sponsored by a new group, NKUS (site in Korean only).  Henry Song of the North Korean Freedom Coalition calls them the “first [North Korean] defectors-led organization in the US.”

Korean language links here, and on Facebook, on Facebook.  Unfortunately, plans have already been made for me this weekend, but if you go, kindly drop a comment.

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BECAUSE SAYING IT ONCE ISN’T ENOUGH, let me just restate that this nonsense about importing North Korea-made goods from Kaesong into the United States duty-free while we’re supposed to be coordinating financial pressure against Kim Jong Un–and while he’s threatening Baeknyeong–is crazy talk.  We don’t know how much (if any) of the wages the workers receive.  They have no rights to strike, organize, or get a full paycheck.  We have no idea how the money stolen from them is used. Kaesong should be shut down yesterday, and the person who suggested this idiocy should be caged and poked with sharp sticks.

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THAT’S RIGHT, COORDINATING FINANCIAL PRESSURE:  ”U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen visits South Korea on Tuesday. He will meet with officials in the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Trade and of Strategy and Finance on Wednesday to discuss how to implement sanctions against North Korea under UN Security Council Resolution 2094.”

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MEANWHILE, IN BEIJING:  ”In his first meeting with any foreign official as China’s new president, Xi Jinping discussed trade issues with U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Tuesday, underlining the importance of U.S.-China economic ties….  The 45-minute meeting in Beijing marks the first trip abroad for Lew since taking his position. In an e-mailed statement afterward, a U.S. official not authorized to speak by name, described Lew as ‘candid and direct in his comments.’ The meeting also covered North Korea …, the official said.”

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YOUR HUMAN RIGHTS INDUSTRY AT WORK:  Amnesty International picks up on Curtis Melvin’s Camp 14 find, yet the Reuters and CNN reports on Amnesty’s “discovery” somehow fail to credit Curtis as the original source.  I don’t know for certain where the fault lies for that–with the press or with Amnesty–but this and this suggest that Amnesty ripped Curtis off. The oversight would be more understandable if Amnesty really devoted more attention to what is, after all, the world’s worst human rights crisis, and led rather than followed in addressing it.  (Don’t even get me started on Human Rights Watch.)

It’s sad enough that the big names in the Human Rights Industry conduct less useful original research on the world’s worst human rights crisis than tiny NGOs and self-funded, independent bloggers writing in their pajamas (or in Curtis’s case, in a frilly pink nightgown and a feather boa, not that there’s anything wrong with that).  It’s sadder to see them get splashy press and publicity because of the hard work that others have done. Amnesty has done some good work on North Korea, and more publicity for this issue is certainly a good thing, but Amnesty’s work compares poorly to what HRNK, Rimjingang, and the Daily NK, to name just a few examples, have done with a fraction of the resources.  This wasn’t a very classy move, and Amnesty should make it right.

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NORTH KOREA’S FORESTS HAVE SHRUNK more than 30 percent in the two decades since the Great Famine.  And remember, this is a country where a lot of people depend on wood not only for heating and cooking, but also as a motor fuel.  You have to wonder how accessible the remaining forest are.

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Update:  The item on Amnesty, above, received a speedy response, pointing me to this other report, which does credit Curtis, way down in endnote 2, for what that’s worth.  For extra fun, see this statement from the inside front cover of Amnesty’s report:

All rights reserved. This publication is copyright, but may be reproduced by any method without fee for advocacy, campaigning and teaching purposed, but not for resale. The copyright holders request that all such use be registered with them for impact assessment purposed [sic]. For copying in any other circumstances, or fur [sic] reuse in other publications, or for translation or adaptation, prior written permission must be obtained from the publishers, and a fee may be payable. To request permission, or for any other inquiries, please contact copyright@amnesty.org.

My thought was that maybe Curtis might like to do his own “impact assessment.”  I know I get satisfaction from that sort of thing.