Archive for April 2010

25 April 2010: N. Korea Desperate to Plug News Leaks

April 25, 2010 Anju Links One comment

The North Korean authorities are hunting for those clandestine correspondents who give us those independent reports about events in North Korea as if the regime’s very existence depends on it:

A radio broadcaster run by North Korean defectors here reported this week that security guards in Hoeryeong, North Hamgyeong Province, directed its residents to turn in photos of their family members who have been missing from 2005. If the families say that these photos have been lost, security guards pay an unannounced visit to their homes to find out whether they are lying to them or not. [....] The move indicates that the North is making efforts to root out potential defectors-turned-democracy fighters with fear tactics. [Korea Times]

The desperation means those correspondents are having an effect. Unfortunately, some of the correspondents and their families have already paid the ultimate price for smuggling the truth across the borders of their homeland, and it’s certain that more will pay it. But by pushing even more phones into North Korea, and by giving the networks that move goods and information even more money, it would be possible to overload the system’s capacity to find all of the networks and correspondents operating from within North Korea. My guess is, the regime knows that. Hence the desperation, and the brutality.

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I fail to see the down side of this: North Korea conducts an “inspection” of Kaesong, as it did shortly before confiscating Kumgang, and then hints that it may “entirely reevaluate” the complex’s existence. The North Koreans really don’t have to make good on a threat like that to completely destroy Kaesong’s attractiveness to potential investors, but please don’t interpret this is as a complaint. If North Korea really is prepared to cut off one of its largest sources of external funding, I may have underestimated its subversive effect on the workers there. Or, the North Koreans may actually believe they’re doing the South Korean a big favor.

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Meanwhile, the South Koreans aren’t taking North Korea’s confiscation of its assets at Kumgang with degree of deference we’d come to expect of them in the past:

“The KNTO will not accept the decision to seize its assets in the resort, which is a violation of investment rules and respect for property rights,” [the head of the Korea National Tourism Organization] said.

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Park Nam Ki: Dead or exiled? In any other country on earth, we’d be reasonably sure of the answer to this by now.

A DIY Cellular Network: Could This Work in North Korea?

April 24, 2010 Subversion, Technology 7 comments

[A]n open-source project called OpenBTS is proving that almost anyone can cheaply run a network with parts from a home-­supply or auto-supply store. Cell-phone users within such a network can place calls to each other and–if the network is connected to the Internet–to people anywhere in the world.

The project’s cofounder, David Burgess, hopes that OpenBTS will mean easier and cheaper access to cellular service in remote parts of the world, including hard-to-reach locations like oil rigs and poor areas without much infrastructure. [link]

Does anyone out there have enough technological knowledge to tell me what it would take to adapt this idea to North Korea?

Absolute Must-See: Video of Onsung Market, Before and After The Great Confiscation

April 23, 2010 Famine & Food Aid, NK Economics 4 comments

I knew Onsung was a shit hole, but wow. Just, wow. Watch it here — English subtitles and all — and read about it in the New York Times.

Don’t miss the corrupt officials shaking down the merchants, or the South Korean Red Cross aid for sale. We’ve seen other video showing American aid being sold, too, as well as previous reports of South Korean food aid being confiscated and diverted for military use.

Could individual corrupt officials be responsible for all of this diversion? They could be, on a smaller scale, but large-scale diversion suggests that the “socialist” regime takes what it needs for itself, then sells the rest in the markets to raise cash. It’s yet another reason to refuse to send more food aid unless we’re able to do the only kind of monitoring that we can really be sure about — nutritional surveys of the recipients.

Is There Still a Case for Food Aid to North Korea?

April 23, 2010 Famine & Food Aid 7 comments

I’ve generally been underwhelmed by the performance of the Human Rights Industry when it comes to North Korea, but Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch is a bright light in this dreary landscape. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Seok finds the regime’s misappropriation of its resources on a Kimjongilia flower festival to be “outrageous” at a time when “North Koreans may face the worst food shortage since a famine claimed a million lives in the 1990s.” But if that is so — and most recent predictions of large-scale famine in North Korea, including mine, have been wrong — then how does Seok justify what follows: a call for the resumption of food aid that the donors don’t know will feed those who need it most?

Seok answers the obvious question by stating, a bit sheepishly, that “there is some precedent for meaningful, if not optimal, monitoring of food aid.” By setting the bar as low as this, Seok manages to make an arguably true statement, but the “meaningful” monitoring was short-lived, required very hard bargaining, and lasted no longer than the aid’s overall usefulness to the regime itself. Then, in late 2005, the regime slashed the program by two-thirds. Since then, of course, it has evicted American food aid workers and refused a large offer of U.S. government food aid.

More broadly, Seok cannot argue — even with the best of intentions — against a long history of North Korea resisting not only monitoring, but the aid itself. As Seok seems to acknowledge, food is cheaper that a lot of the other things North Korea prefers to buy with its money. North Korea has the means to feed its people; it’s the will that’s lacking:

The markets in North Korea have finally stabilized due to increased food rations which have gone up by 80% nationwide, according to a source on April 2. Except for those who work at farms, 80% of North Korean citizens receive rations, 600g for adults and 300g for students. Given farmers take up 20-30% of the population, 60% of the population is receiving rations.

This is unprecedented; such distributions have not been handed out since the Arduous March.

Our source stated that rations have been distributed since February 16 in almost all areas, including Pyongyang, Shin-ui-ju, Sariwon, Musan, and Chungjin. Additionally, the rations will be distributed at least until Kim Il-Sung’s Birthday on April 15, and the price of food will not rise for a month. The source stated that the food seems to have come from Storage #2 in order to support the public since the failed currency reform, which has caused famine in many parts of the country.

The price of food has dropped since the distribution of rations. On April 2, the rice price was 300g per kg. On April 1, rice was 280Won per kg in Pyongyang. Compared to the rice price on March 8 which was at 1,300 won, the rice price fell by 70%. Corn price has also stabilized at 120-150 Won per kg. [Open News]

No one knows if this will last, of course. Sadly, the regime’s will to feed the people is a function of its perception that the lack of food threatens the stability of the regime (Seok also draws this link). It probably isn’t coincidental that the outpouring of rations coincides with reports of rising discontent. In that case, might the regime be more inclined to feed its people if the people were more politically empowered to resist and destabilize the regime? And if North Korea lacks the will to feed its own people (the better to buy their allegiance), why would it let us feed them?

Regular readers of this site know that I’ve long been supportive, in principle, of giving food aid. Nothing that caused the misery of the North Korean people is their fault, after all, and monitored food aid is one of the few potentially effective means of “engagement” I can imagine. But the more time passes, the more convinced I become that food aid has little impact on North Korea’s food situation anyway, at least in comparison to markets.

Best Commentary of the Week (But It’s Still Thursday)

April 22, 2010 Anju Links 7 comments

Professor Sung-Yoon Lee, writing a lengthy Outlook piece for the American Enterprise Institute, predicts that history will be unkind to Kim Dae Jung (and if you read Don Kirk’s book, already is to a degree). I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but Lee is an all-time OFK favorite, and I’ve read enough to see that it’s up to Lee’s high standards of writing. What’s more, this article has fired up spittle-flecked fulmination from a lot of the right people — that is, people who are no doubt feeling the raw wound of having been discredited by the regime whose crimes they overlooked for so long. (It may be that Lee is less easily dismissed as a harmless crank than I am; to be thought of as dangerous is a high compliment I do not enjoy, sadly …). Lee’s argument is summarized thusly:

* The Sunshine Policy, an effort to engage North Korea initially implemented under South Korean president Kim Dae Jung, appears increasingly ineffective in light of North Korea’s continued nuclear threat and oppression of its people.

* Despite his work for human rights in South Korea, Kim Dae Jung chose not to address grievous human rights violations in the North in any meaningful way.

* In light of Kim Dae Jung’s failure to fight for basic human rights for North Koreans, future generations of Koreans are likely to see Kim Dae Jung and his Sunshine Policy in an increasingly negative light.

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Brian Myers catches us up on the latest North Korean propaganda messages.

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Aidan Foster-Carter smells a cover-up of North Korea’s role in the Cheonan Incident. I think that conclusion is premature, but Foster’s piece is very interesting and well worth a read nonetheless.

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Claudia Rosett talks about Bureau 39, sanctions, and nukes.

22 April 2010

April 22, 2010 Anju Links 14 comments

Things You Can’t Eat: “North Korea spent more than US$5.4 million on fireworks displays along the banks of the Taedong River in Pyongyang on Wednesday to celebrate former leader Kim Il-sung’s 98th birthday the following day. And President Lee Myung Bak, sounding more like an OFK guest blogger than ever, asks, “How much corn could you have bought with that money?” It’s on.

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Is North Korea expanding its army again?

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Did Kim Jong Il cancel his trip to China over the Cheonan Incident? But if my hunch is right, this development wasn’t entirely unanticipated.

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Kremlinology: Open News has more succession propaganda, via a North Korean army newspaper.

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Pictures of the very weird (even to the Chinese) North Korean exhibit at the Shanghai Expo.

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Off-Topic

Some cool pictures of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

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sp_mohammed.gifAl Qaeda calls for the murder of Trey Parker and Matt Stone over a South Park episode. And sadly, Comedy Central gives the terrorists a victory.

The Coming OpCon Debate

April 22, 2010 An Alliance? 2 comments

Rumors in Washington are building that the South Korean government will soon ask President Obama to delay the dissolution of Combined Forces Command, a/k/a OPCON in 2012.

The Stars and Stripes has a rather unbalanced piece on the preposterous idea of South Korea assuming the lead command role in its own defense, which this piece by Doug Bandow more than balances.

I think that on the one hand, most conventional thinkers on both sides of the Pacific still see America’s contribution to an alliance in terms of boots on the ground, but I think it’s politically outdated and a recipe for defeat for us to default to those terms. North Korea is clearly aware that it can’t match us conventionally, and is assuredly looking for unconventional and deniable ways to attack Americans — military and otherwise — in South Korea. This means that a war in Korea this time isn’t going to start with T-34′s rolling down the Western Corridor. It will start with truck bombs, subway bombings, gas attacks by sleeper agents using materials obtained locally, and God-knows-what horrible device transported into South Korea by tunnel. Having observed on a daily basis the easygoing vulnerability of our installations in South Korea, this could mean hundreds of American casualties on day one. I shudder at the thought of the South Korean casualties.

Such a turn of events remains unlikely as long as Kim Jong Il knows that the answer would be “thirty seconds over Pyongyang.” That’s why the alliance matters. Frankly, I see a U.S. Army presence in South Korea as doing little to deter North Korea’s likely strategy, but tying down at lot of manpower that’s needed elsewhere and endangering a lot of American lives for no clear military purpose. While I support the idea of a “lighter footprint” abroad generally, and default to empowering local forces before supporting U.S. troop commitments abroad, don’t mistake this for isolationism, which is usually just post-hoc escapism to justify surrender because war is, you know, hard, even when vital U.S. interests are on the line. In places like Afghanistan and Iraq, where we’re in combat against Al Qaeda, having an army on the ground combats a direct threat to the United States and its freedoms, and therefore serves our vital interests. That’s not the case, however, when (a) the host nation is physically and financially capable of raising a sufficient army, even if it chooses to spend its money on other things, and (b) there are other, more efficient and effective ways for America to contribute to the allied nation’s defense.

To that end, I think our commitment to South Korea should be modernized (and downsized) to match modern military and political realities. Our strongest “hard power” contributions to South Korea’s defense are air and naval power, logistics, intelligence, training, and communications — all of them relatively flexible and capable of being calibrated to meet whatever threat or crisis South Korea may face, in the context of America’s own hierarchy of interests at that moment. We can also make strong “soft” power contributions with financial and diplomatic pressure on North Korea, broadcasting and other forms of subversion, and giving South Korea strong financial and logistical support for the pacification of North Korea.

That’s why I think Bandow also goes too far when he suggests that even if North Korea has committed an act of war by sinking the Cheonan, that we pick this moment to unilaterally abrogate the alliance. I’m all for averting a second Korean War, but what Bandow proposes would signal weakness to North Korea at a time when it represents an indirect (proliferation) threat to the United States as well.

Things I did not know: There really is a Ministry of Silly Walks.

April 22, 2010 WTF? 4 comments

Every night when they close the Indo-Pak border, they hold a ceremony, and it’s a beaut:

Those damn North Koreans PUST us again!

April 22, 2010 North-South, Propaganda, Sunshine 3 comments

Suckers ….

A monument dedicated to Kim Il-sung was installed on the campus of the new Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). Built with donations from South Korean and US Christians, it could tank intra-Korean relations for good. The 20-metre granite monstrosity embodies the Juche idea, North Korea’s quasi-religious state ideology. [Asia News, Joseph Yun Li-Sun]

For good, he says? Hasn’t this guy ever read the Hankyoreh? As if the likely diversion of funds from Kaesong or Kumgang, or of some unknown percentage of South Korea’s unmonitored food aid, ever mattered to those guys, or to the Unifiction Ministry. For that matter, South Korea’s current government is no paragon of clear principle, either:

[B]uilding the monument has stopped the inauguration of the new university. The delay is due to protests by donors, who coughed up 40 billion North Korean wons (US$ 35 million) to put up the structure.

In the case of South Korean taxpayers who contributed to the project, they will have to rely on their country’s Unification Ministry for a response. An official with the ministry said, whilst “North Korea’s stance is that PUST cannot be an exception” to the rule that all educational facilities in the North have their “Yeong Saeng monument, if “the Yeong Saeng monument becomes a propaganda tool aimed at outside visitors, we will readily respond.

Put differently, what funds have ever been sent to North Korea that weren’t misused? In truth, no one really knows. The defense here, as I might have predicted, is an implicit recognition of North Korea’s “right” to divert some percentage of its education resources toward indoctrination, but that doesn’t answer the question of why South Korean taxpayers and donors must fund this, or how much actual education this “university” is really going to provide.

If North Korea’s Attempt to Kill Hwang Jang Yop Isn’t the State Sponsorship of Terrorism, I Don’t Know What Is

April 21, 2010 Defectors, Terrorism (NK) 16 comments

Two North Korean agents sent to South Korea to assassinate Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking official ever to defect from Pyongyang, have been arrested, intelligence and law enforcement authorities announced yesterday.

According to the National Intelligence Service and prosecutors, Kim Yong-ho, 36, and Dong Myong-gwan, 36, have been arrested. Both men were majors of the North Korean Army’s reconnaissance bureau, the authorities said.

The two agents were ordered in November by the bureau’s chief, Colonel General Kim Yong-chol, to assassinate Hwang, the former secretary of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party. [Joongang Ilbo]

According to the Chosun Ilbo, which has more on the Reconnaissance Bureau, the spies had orders to “cut Hwang’s head off.” The AP, quoting an anonymous prosecutor, reports that the instruction was to “slit the betrayer’s throat.”

As North Korean spies have often done in recent years, Kim and Dong posed as defectors; in this case, they came to South Korea via Thailand. This time, however, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service smelled a rat, and the two men confessed under questioning. The hunt is now on for the spies’ contacts in South Korea.

AFP puts the new revelation into the context of North Korea’s recent threats against Hwang.

You can find the legal definition of “international terrorism” at this section of the U.S. Criminal Code. The procedure for listing a government as a state sponsor of terrorism can be found here.

The assassins were trained in the Peoples’ Republic of China, which has long tolerated the presence of North Korean spies on its soil. Frankly, that may be the most sensational part of this entire story; after all, North Korea has assassinated people on South Korean soil before. I can’t foresee much support in Washington for the idea of listing China as a state sponsor of terrorism, but I certainly hope — this being an election year and all — that some members of Congress will hold hearings and ask the Congressional Research Service to investigate the question of what the Chinese government knew about the training and the plot. At a minimum, China’s support for the North Korean intelligence services is a crime against humanity, and China ought to pay a much higher price for it.

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