Comments on: Once Again, More Slowly: Isolating the North Korean People Only Helps Kim Jong Il

By: Joshua Stanton

Joshua Stanton — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:56:27 +0000

Fine, now someone explain to me how to infiltrate the Chicom-NK border to smuggle in mass quantities of food, medicine, radios, foreign currency, and weapons. Any resistance organization capable of supplying food to the population of North Korea’s mountainous central core would stand a good chance to carving out a “liberated zone” from which it would be possible to strike at the roads, rails, pipelines, and power lines between P’yang and the Chinese border.

By: kumar

kumar — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:34:48 +0000

jack, that’s been happening for a long time.

By: Adam Cathcart

Adam Cathcart — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:41:45 +0000

Joshua, thanks for linking to your Feb. 2008 essays on Loren Maazel. You just made my day! Very, very interesting discussion there…and, particularly as we seem to be entering a phase where more cultural relations/Track II are going to play a significant role, probably still quite relevant at the core of it.

By: Jack

Jack — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:56:30 +0000

Anecdotal story: a friend of mine was “somewhere in Asia” a short while ago where North Koreans happened to stumble along. She happened to shelter them, and to pass away the enormous amount of downtime waiting for transit, popped in a DVD with Korean subtitles and told the North Koreans that this was one of the most popular movies to have ever swept the planet.

As soon as the film started rolling, the North Koreans immediately recognized the movie as one they’d already seen years ago. Title?

“Titanic”

Anecdotal, but the amazing power that cultural goods have in swaying the North Korean public. One wonders if there should be a “reverse underground railroad” – one that runs into the DPRK, funnelling such cheap (and carefully selected) cultural goods into a country that is both literally, and figuratively, starving. What’s the cost of creating a DVD copy of “To Kill A Mockingbird”, or “Schindler’s List”, or “Casablanca” or even “Sex in the City?” I’m sure if you tell the movie studios who hold these rights the object of such distribution they wouldn’t mind taking part in some clandestine activity.

By: Irene

Irene — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:57:14 +0000

Thank you Joshua for alerting me to LINK – a reminder to all of us this holiday season –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTclu43RfqU&feature=channel

By: Jason D McClain

Jason D McClain — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 10:12:44 +0000

This post (as was your previous post in re Australia’s decision) is, plainly put ::: dead on. Thank you for your continued compassionate, yet clear-minded and reasoned approach you take toward the N Korean people and how to handle their current abhorent regime.

Best blog I’ve read on N Korean issues on more than 5 years of looking.

[Thank you. - Joshua]

By: Natto

Natto — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:19:36 +0000

The visiting North Korean athletes to Japan will see traffic jams, forests of skyscrapers,etc.
But they will be excluded from any personal contacts with the local people except those from the Chongryon( General Association of Korean Residents), a pro-North Korean organization. They are permanent residents with the North Korean citizenship born, raised and educated at the Chongryon schools. They discourage their people to naturalize in Japan and brainwash them. I do not think the visiting North Koreans would change their minds if they are received and always attended by the Chongryon people while in Japan.