Archive for March 2010

Don’t Know Much About History

March 26, 2010 Anti-Americanism, Korean Education, Korean History, Korean War, U.S. & Korea 4 comments

Just the latest example of historical myopia from the kids in South Korea.

As the university was announcing the plans, the Chosun Ilbo reported a Gallup poll in Korea that showed 62.9 percent of teens and 58.2 percent in their 20s did not know when the Korean War broke out. Also, only 43.9 percent of those surveyed said North Korea is to blame for starting the Korean War, with the figure among teenagers 38 percent and 36 percent for 20-somethings. Some 18 percent of teens and 25 percent of those in their 20s said both North and South Korea are responsible.

Until just a few years ago, some teachers who are members of the hardline Korean Teachers and Educational Workers Union have been teaching that the Korean War was a battle for liberation led by the North. During the Roh Moo-hyun administration, a state-run broadcaster aired a documentary on Memorial Day praising China’s Mao Zedong, who backed the North in the Korean War. [Chosun Ilbo]

One of the points I’ve made for years about the USFK is that it’s an impediment to South Korea’s progress toward political maturity, which is in turn impeded by its lack of a confident sense of self-sufficient nationhood. That may be the only thing North Korea has today that South Korea doesn’t, and you can see emotional hunger for this sense among certain demographics in South Korea, though no to the same extent as the North Koreans’ physical hunger for South Korean rice and ChocoPies. Somehow, I don’t think Koreans would be so prosaic about the genesis of their form of government if they had to mobilize to Israeli proportions to defend it.

Hooray for Google

March 26, 2010 China 2 comments

John Bolton writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Google’s decision to stop censoring searches on its China-based servers, rerouting search requests instead to its uncensored Hong Kong facilities, is historic. Google has shown itself unwilling simply to be on the receiving end of whatever Beijing dishes out–and highlighted the growing importance of Hong Kong and Taiwan in shaping the decisions that foreign businesses in China must make.

When an enterprise of Google’s global dimensions and visibility reverses course in China and is no longer a passive, compliant subject of government diktats, it sends a message to enterprises world-wide: You can do the same.

Related thoughts from Rebecca MacKinnon, here.

North Korea Threatens “Unprecedented Nuclear Strikes,”

March 26, 2010 Terrorism (NK) One comment

I wonder whether, if Jimmy Carter read KCNA more often, he’d be less woebegone about North Korea’s lack of avenues to dispel misunderstandings, seek out common ground, and show us all its softer side:

North Korea’s military warned South Korea and the United States on Friday of “unprecedented nuclear strikes” as it expressed anger over a report the two countries plan to prepare for possible instability in the totalitarian country, a scenario it dismissed as a “pipe dream.”

The North routinely issues such warnings. Diplomats in South Korea and the U.S. have repeatedly called on Pyongyang to return to international negotiations aimed at ending its nuclear programs.

“Those who seek to bring down the system in the (North), whether they play a main role or a passive role, will fall victim to the unprecedented nuclear strikes of the invincible army,” North Korea’s military said in comments carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. [AP, Kwang Tae Kim]

How different can North Korea’s private diplomacy be from its public diplomacy?

North Korea denounced the plans as “a pipe dream of a lunatic wishing for the sky to fall.” “Such a ‘contingency’ will take place in South Korea” rather than in North Korea, said an unidentified spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army, according to the official Korean Central News Agency, monitored in Seoul.

Anyone involved in overthrowing Pyongyang “will fall victim to the unprecedented nuclear strikes of the invincible army,” the spokesman said. [Yonhap]

And in other news from the state most recently de-listed as a sponsor of terrorism, North Korea is threatening defectors who broadcast uncensored news back to, and uncensored reports from, their homeland:

“We have been entrusted with issuing a strict warning in the name of the Republic (North Korea) and nation to those organizations which will be the first targets for severe punishment,” it threatened in a statement released on propaganda outlet “Uriminzokkiri. The phrase, “We have been entrusted,” implies that this warning is being delivered on the direct orders of Kim Jong Il.

“North Korea Reform Radio, Open Radio for North Korea and The Daily NK are throwing dirt at us under the banner of a propaganda front against North Korea,” it continued.

It called defectors “human trash,” “traitors,” and “fugitives” who have ungratefully run away from their families and the embrace of the Republic, and warned North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity and other defector organizations that they will “never forgive the human trash who have degenerated into informants for anti-unification reactionaries, the puppet conservative factions and American and Japanese anti-Republic schemes. [Daily NK]

The broadcasters answered with defiance.

President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, and on February 3, 2010, President Obama decided not to put them back on. Discuss among yourselves.

25 March 2010

March 25, 2010 Anju Links, Uncategorized 12 comments

Kushibo has posted his much-anticipated response to Lisa Ling.

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Kim Jong Il Death Watch: Mike Madden has the latest rumors in our grim vigil.

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Fears that Russia is preparing to repatriate that North Korean logger who tried to make a break for freedom.

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If famine, cannibalism, child labor, songbun, lousy education, and the risk of becoming a homeless orphan aren’t enough worries for a lifetime, North Korean kids also have to worry about child molesters.

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For those in the D.C. area, PSCORE will hold an event at Georgetown on Saturday, the 27th, on what life is like in North Korea.

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Only a racist would question the legitimacy of Kim Jong Il’s rule.

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Jimmy Carter calls on President Obama to hold direct talks with North Korea — also, Charles Manson, Jefferson Davis, and the San Andreas Fault.

I wonder who briefs Jimmy Carter on current events and what that job pays?

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Critics didn’t seem to like the new anti-American propaganda film about No Gun Ri.

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So you liked the book, then? “Every now again, a book comes round that is so brilliant it makes you want to take to the streets and press into people’s hands, urging them to read it.” Well, it was a good book.

Aijalon Gomes Doesn’t Sound Much Like a Defector After All

March 25, 2010 Aijalon Gomes, WTF? 13 comments

Associated Press photoUpdate, 24 March 2010: Well, KCJ’s first guess turns out to have been right.

A Boston man detained in North Korea is a quiet, devout Christian so concerned about an American missionary held in Pyongyang that he was moved to tears at rallies protesting the communist regime, fellow activists said Wednesday.

North Korea announced Monday that Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, would stand trial after entering the country illegally. The trial date was not mentioned in a brief report in state media.

It was not immediately clear why Gomes, who taught English in South Korea, went to the communist country. However, activists in Seoul said he was an acquaintance of Robert Park, a fellow Christian from Arizona who crossed into North Korea on Christmas in a bold bid to draw attention to the country’s human rights situation. [AP]

GI Korea has more here.

Original Post, 23 March 2010: Whatever his motives for crossing into North Korea, Aijalon Mahli Gomes certainly doesn’t fit the angry left personality profile the Donga Ilbo’s first quotation of him led me to believe — that is, the sort of American who’d want to join the North Korean army.

On the contrary, the information assembled by GI Korea’s readers and press reports suggests that he’s a nice, quiet, deeply religious, and somewhat awkward man. He may have belonged to some of the same religious groups as Robert Park. And like Park’s, his crossing is unlikely to have the intended effects, whatever those might be. Read more

Karmic Justice for Kumgang Investors

March 25, 2010 Appeasement, North-South, Sunshine No comments

North Korea’s threats to confiscate South Korean property at Kumgang are having predictable consequences for its investment climate:

In an interview with The Dong-A Ilbo yesterday, Ahn said the head of a conference member company recently died of a heart attack due to severe stress from his business in North Korea.

The suspension of the inter-Korean tours caused the late chairman’s company to teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, causing his death at age 55, Ahn said.

Ilyeon’s prospects are no better. Ahn has invested 14.7 billion won (12.9 million U.S. dollars) in his North Korea venture, including 13.4 billion won (11.8 million dollars) to build the hotel and additional facilities.

His company is six billion won (5.3 million dollars) in the red due to the suspension of the Kumgang tour. Its deficit slightly decreased in early 2007, but the killing of a South Korean tourist at Mount Kumgang in July 2008 by a North Korean soldier dealt another serious blow. [Donga Ilbo]

I suppose I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the family of someone who vapor locks at 55, but all in all, I have a lot more sympathy for Park Wang Ja and her family. Yes, enabling the repression and the occasional murder of other people can be risky, especially when your business partners turn out to behave just as unscrupulously toward you. Hat tip: Curtis.

Fear and Loathing Across the Tumen, Part 2

March 24, 2010 NK Economics, Resistance 11 comments

Two new reports today describe the accelerating outing of dissent in North Korea. The first, from the Washington Post’s Blaine Harden, cites this new study by Marcus Noland based on surveys of refugees from 2008, this study by the International Crisis Group, which I’d previously blogged, and more recent reports since The Great Confiscation:

There is mounting evidence that Kim Jong Il is losing the propaganda war inside North Korea, with more than half the population now listening to foreign news, grass-roots cynicism undercutting state myths and discontent rising even among elites.

A survey of refugees has found that “everyday forms of resistance” in the North are taking root as large swaths of the population believe that pervasive corruption, rising inequity and chronic food shortages are the fault of the government in Pyongyang — and not of the United States, South Korea or other foreign forces. The report will be released this week by the East-West Center, a research group established by Congress.

Read the rest on your own.

The second report comes from the L.A. Times’s Barbara Demick, from the Chinese-North Korean border, and much like yesterday’s Times Online report, finds evidence that North Korea’s food situation is deteriorating rapidly, food and other goods have vanished from stores and markets, and that popular discontent is rising rapidly. Beyond the widespread tendency for people to blame and lose faith in the regime, Demick found that not all of those she interviewed expressed or directed their discontent in the same ways:

“People are outspoken. They complain,” said a 56-year-old woman from the border city of Musan who gave her name as Li Mi Hee. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she added: “My son thinks that something might happen. I don’t know what, but I can tell you this — people have opinions. . . . It is not like the 1990s when people just died without saying what they thought.” [....]

“We were told that somebody decided he would burn the money instead of giving it to the government. The money had the picture of Kim Il Sung, and because he burned it he was shot to death for treason,” Song Hee said. [....]

Although Su Jong held North Korea’s own economic policies at fault, she said she had not lost her l”People are outspoken. They complain,” said a 56-year-old woman from the border city of Musan who gave her name as Li Mi Hee.

Lowering her voice to a whisper, she added: “My son thinks that something might happen. I don’t know what, but I can tell you this — people have opinions. . . . It is not like the 1990s when people just died without saying what they thought.”ove for Kim Jong Il. “If [Kim] was a good leader, we wouldn’t see children starving, people wandering the streets in rags, the markets with no food,” she said. “But I don’t doubt his good intentions. It is the people under him who are corrupt.”

It’s now quite possible that more people in Berkeley than in North Korea who blame America for North Korea’s misery. This is progress.

23 March 2010

March 24, 2010 Anju Links 7 comments

Collective Spirit Update: Open News reports a rising number of kkotjaebi (homeless orphans) in North Korea, even as the elite continue to snap up expensive luxury goods imported from China. And this: “According to sources, Pyongyang has more than 1,000 millionaires.” Those sources may or may not be wrong, but what more evidence do you need than this that North Korea has a profound economic imbalance? You know, if Christine Ahn really hurries, she might be able to arrange a trip to North Korea soon enough to retract everything she’s said over the course of the last ten years and salvage some shred of her reputation.

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Yodok survivor and Chosun Ilbo correspondent Kang Chol Hwan profiles the recent history of Kim Jong Il’s blunders, and the scapegoats who face firing squads for them.

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For once, the State Department gets it right, saying that it will consider resuming food aid to North Korea if Kim Jong Il stops refusing to accept it. There is an important condition: “‘If we (provide humanitarian assistance) in the future, just as we’ve done that in the past, our efforts will be to make sure that the aid actually goes to the North Korean people who need it most and is not diverted to other groups such as the military,’ Crowley said.” I’d go a step further and support food aid to the soldiers, too, as long as international aid workers distribute the food.

I’ve been blogging about North Korea for more than five years now, and I’m still struck by the madness of a government that can’t provide for its people, yet which denies them both food aid and the means to provide for themselves.

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Sixteen more North Korean refugees have made it to Thailand. Usually, refugees who get to Thailand are charged with illegal entry, interned briefly, and then flown to South Korea. Hopefully, this group is home free. The group, which includes three kids, had traveled for 20 days.

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And speaking of refugees, the increasing effectiveness of their reporting on events in their homeland has inspired this KCNA masterpiece — truly, one for the ages:

The puppet conservative group, obsessed by an anti-DPRK confrontation ruckus, is using even human scum including defectors to the south as a shock brigade in escalating it only to be jeered by the public at home and abroad.

The group whipped together such riff-raffs as defectors to the south, calling them “future forces for unification”. It is busy fabricating what it called the “Alliance for the Movement of Free North”, the “Solidarity of NK Intellectuals” and other anti-DPRK plot-breeding organizations. It is even contemplating organizing a preparatory committee for forming a political party called the “Solidarity of Persons for Unification” and letting its candidate to run for the elections to “local self-governing bodies.” [....]

What should not be overlooked is that the puppet group has made no scruple of hurting the supreme headquarters of the DPRK, not content with raising a hue and cry over its situation while working with blood-shot eyes to spy it with human scum involved.

And this:

It is as clear as a pikestaff that betes noires will make only vituperation just as a crow will never be whiter for often washing.

Um, say what?

Further on, the article threatens the exiles as “living corpses” and warns that they will face “stern trials,” no idle threat for a regime that has abducted and assassinated people inside South Korea. President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. On February 3, 2010, President Obama decided not to restore North Korea to the list. Discuss among yourselves.

Sure, it’s great to be featured in the Daily NK — it’s a favorite of mine, after all — but I will know I’ve arrived if KCNA ever talks about this blog. I could hope for no greater honor than to be called “brigandish.”

The Daily NK on OFK

March 24, 2010 Blogs & Blogging No comments

As a member of the U.S. military almost ten years ago, he was surprised by what he saw as the obvious contradiction between the public reaction to the deaths of two young South Korean schoolgirls in an accident involving a U.S. military vehicle and what he calls “the nearly unanimous apathy about the millions of North Koreans being starved by Kim Jong Il, or the hundreds of thousands of dead and dying in his political prison camps.

Thanks to the Daily NK’s Chris Green for the shout-out here, where he profiles this blog and NK Econ Watch.

Radio Free North Korea Issues Satellite Phones to Its Correspondents

March 24, 2010 Inside NK 4 comments

For a long time, I’d wondered if there was some way North Korea’s clandestine journalists could free themselves from the restrictions imposed by short-range Chinese cell phone networks. The only options I could think of were signal repeaters hidden on remote mountain tops, or satellite phones. I’d presumed the latter option to be too expensive, but I may have been wrong.

Free North Korea Radio, which broadcasts to the North on shortwave as well as running an Internet service, said the satphones give it access to information from more parts of the country.

“Three satellite phones, on top of cellphones, have been in use since last October to bring more live and direct news out of North Korea,” its head Kim Seong-Min told AFP. The three satellite phone operators are based in the capital Pyongyang and the southwest, Mr Kim added. He said they helped spread reports last week that Pak Nam-Ki, a top financial official, had been executed for a failed currency revaluation. [Radio Netherlands Media Network Blog]

The North Korean Freedom Coalition supports Radio Free North Korea with financial contributions.

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