One point I’ll note is that the fires are burning in places that are reported to be hungry this year, so I’m going to stick with my guess that people are slashing and burning forest land for growing crops. After all, if these were just fires started by lightning or cigarette butts, you’d expect them to have happened in July and August.

Those poor wretches are going to find poor soil and a slightly shorter growing season up there, but they might be pretty desperate. It’s just sad.

These are some pretty big fires, from the looks of it. Compare this type of satellite imagery with a satellite picture of the massive fires in Southern California two years ago. Seems something’s up, that’s for sure.

Maybe if the wind were going in the other direction we’d hear something from the Chinese about it, but anyone who lives in South Korea or Japan knows, come Yellow Dust season, that the winds tend to blow east.

I think the fact that Daily NK has yet to report on these fires in either English or Chinese indicates the limits of their sources. Either they have no one currently willing to talk in Ryanggang or that part of North Hamgyong or somehow the DPRK cell phone ban in Sinuiju is implemented and working all along the border. (I think the former is more likely than the latter.)

Incidentally, today’s Daily NK headline story “Battle Propaganda All Lies!” is also slightly revealing and a bit feeble. (Having spent some time today oscillating between Chinese communist propaganda and Falun Gong counter-propaganda in San Francisco, headlines like this make it fairly clear that for the English language audience, the Daily NK sometimes acts as propaganda rather than news.) The Chinese version of the story is titled in a slightly more measured way: “Did the Hyesan Mine Really Achieve 140% of its Production Plan?”

However, at the end of the day, it’s still one of the best sources we have under these circumstances. I very much hope they will report something, as the most flawed Daily NK kernel may at at least give some direction as to the origins of what appears to be a slightly catastrophic situation.

Our intel assets should have the story (or horrifying details) behind this as well as China’s complicity in not covering it (the question is, are they doing something about the continuing atrocities) – looking for any word from the recent defectors, Open Radio, Radio Free Chosun, Good friends, PSCORE, or Daily NK.