Comments on: 21 December 2009 http://freekorea.us/2009/12/21/21-december-2009/ Wed, 23 May 2012 15:07:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Adam Cathcart http://freekorea.us/2009/12/21/21-december-2009/comment-page-1/#comment-70045 Adam Cathcart Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:07:52 +0000 http://www.freekorea.us/2009/12/21/21-december-2009/#comment-70045 Apparently Hu Jintao has invited Kim Jong Il to Beijing. It strikes me as noteworthy, too, that Chinese VP/Vice-Chairman/heir apparent Xi Jinping even took the bait on the refugee question. To my knowledge, that's one of the first public instances of a CCP figure taking it on -- even if we're talking about one sentence. Since it is a bit unprecedented -- and awfully brief -- it might not be considered rude to parse his words for a moment. According to the Daily NK English the sentence is: “China is solving these problems from a humanitarian perspective according to domestic and international laws." Great! But what he actually said was this: “将根据国际法、国内法及人道主义原则处理,” which I render as: "[China] will handle [the refugee issue] according to international law, domestic law and humanitarian principles." Call it nitpicking, but if we accept my translation as authoritative, Xi does a couple of things here: 1) He places international law at the foreground, mentioning it first. His remark opens the possibility (of which NK is probably terrified) that China could at some point lean upon the various international conventions which have been mentioned at multiple points in this blog. Again, I think that's fairly remarkable, particularly given how scripted and bland the CCP leaders tend to be. In other words, this isn't an off-the-cuff remark, it represents a kind of party consensus and should make the North Koreans rather nervous. 2) Xi mentions adherence to "humanitarian principles" but that's last on the list rather than his #1, and Xi said nothing about "perspectives." Xi met Obama at the Beijing airport and I would imagine they talked earnestly about North Korea. China-US coordination on the DPRK is a major headache for Kim Jong-Il; Hwang Jang-yop says the man might go "anti-Chinese" at some point. Anyway, back to the original quote thing: once again we have the Daily NK doing a tremendous service, but with a couple of slight kinks that need to be ironed out or added to, ideally by cross-checking their English stuff with the Chinese and/or Korean pages. There was another story recently on Daily NK about starvation in Kapsan where the Chinese version has a little more detail as well, detail which helps make the case that change of some kind is needed in North Korea. <a href="http://http://adamcathcart.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/sino-nk-developments/" rel="nofollow">http://adamcathcart.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/sino-nk-developments/</a> By the way, you continue to impress with this blog. After just a few months of floating in the online world, I'm becoming aware of the various crackpots (I suppose these are the infamous "trolls" that the Marmot also recently shut out?) who are out there with about zero facts and lots of invective. Which is by way of saying thanks for keeping your comments section open, and for the slabs of new info. Apparently Hu Jintao has invited Kim Jong Il to Beijing. It strikes me as noteworthy, too, that Chinese VP/Vice-Chairman/heir apparent Xi Jinping even took the bait on the refugee question. To my knowledge, that’s one of the first public instances of a CCP figure taking it on — even if we’re talking about one sentence.

Since it is a bit unprecedented — and awfully brief — it might not be considered rude to parse his words for a moment.

According to the Daily NK English the sentence is:

“China is solving these problems from a humanitarian perspective according to domestic and international laws.”

Great! But what he actually said was this: “将根据国际法、国内法及人道主义原则处理,”

which I render as:

“[China] will handle [the refugee issue] according to international law, domestic law and humanitarian principles.”

Call it nitpicking, but if we accept my translation as authoritative, Xi does a couple of things here:

1) He places international law at the foreground, mentioning it first. His remark opens the possibility (of which NK is probably terrified) that China could at some point lean upon the various international conventions which have been mentioned at multiple points in this blog. Again, I think that’s fairly remarkable, particularly given how scripted and bland the CCP leaders tend to be. In other words, this isn’t an off-the-cuff remark, it represents a kind of party consensus and should make the North Koreans rather nervous.

2) Xi mentions adherence to “humanitarian principles” but that’s last on the list rather than his #1, and Xi said nothing about “perspectives.”

Xi met Obama at the Beijing airport and I would imagine they talked earnestly about North Korea. China-US coordination on the DPRK is a major headache for Kim Jong-Il; Hwang Jang-yop says the man might go “anti-Chinese” at some point.

Anyway, back to the original quote thing: once again we have the Daily NK doing a tremendous service, but with a couple of slight kinks that need to be ironed out or added to, ideally by cross-checking their English stuff with the Chinese and/or Korean pages.

There was another story recently on Daily NK about starvation in Kapsan where the Chinese version has a little more detail as well, detail which helps make the case that change of some kind is needed in North Korea.

http://adamcathcart.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/sino-nk-developments/

By the way, you continue to impress with this blog. After just a few months of floating in the online world, I’m becoming aware of the various crackpots (I suppose these are the infamous “trolls” that the Marmot also recently shut out?) who are out there with about zero facts and lots of invective. Which is by way of saying thanks for keeping your comments section open, and for the slabs of new info.

]]>