Archive for June 2010

Smart Diplomacy! Obama Commemorates Korean War Anniversary by Keeping N. Korea Off the Terror List

June 25, 2010 Terrorism (NK) 6 comments

I believe American citizens owe the presidents they collectively elect a clean-slate judgment that begins at the moment when they assume office. Never mind what they said during the campaign; it’s the actions of a president in office by which we judge him. And on North Korea policy — without comment on his other policies — I’ve tried to be objective in judging President Obama; perhaps because of my low expectations, I’ve found much to praise in his actions since North Korea’s May 2009 nuclear test. The honeymoon may have to end here. If this report proves to be accurate, President Obama has just lost me (hat tip: Curtis).

I’ve previously recounted the many reasons why North Korea should be on the list, so I’ll just summarize here and send you to other posts for the specifics: (1) North Korea, which then had a long history of carrying out or sponsoring terrorist attacks, was taken off the list in the first place for completely political reasons, while it held perhaps thousands of Japanese and South Korean abductees, because of disarmament promises it predictably broke; (2) North Korea was de-listed despite failing to account for a U.S. resident it kidnapped and murdered, despite then-Senator Obama’s promise to oppose de-listing until North Korea accounted for him; (3) since it was de-listed, North Korea has significantly increased the use of its state media as an instrument of terrorism, to include a threat to civilian air traffic and multiple threats of nuclear strikes; (4) since it was de-listed, North Korea has been caught, repeatedly, shipping arms to Iranian-backed terrorists, arms that included man-portable surface-to-air missiles; and (5) two North Korean majors have pled guilty to attempting to murder a dissident in South Korea on orders from their government.

(And lest we forget, North Korea is now threatening to inflict more punishment on poor Aijalon Gomes, the Massachusetts native who is unjustly imprisoned in North Korea because he made the foolish — yet hardly criminal — mistake of walking up to North Korean border guards and handing them a petition calling for the end of its human rights atrocities. If only Gomes’s senior Senator had half the diplomatic talent he images himself to have….)

If this isn’t the state sponsorship of terrorism, I really don’t know what is, although I suspect it’s the State Department’s General Counsel that hasn’t found the statutory definition for “international terrorism.” This isn’t just bad policy, it’s also incompetent lawyering. If the Obama Administration doesn’t have the analytical or testicular wherewithall to call these acts what they are, I question the seriousness of its policies with respect to North Korea or terrorism.

Worse, this is terrible diplomacy. De-listing North Korea may have been the obsessive pursuit of Chris Hill, Sung Kim, and the other nerds at the East Asia Bureau, but it badly damaged relations with Japan. Now, after we’ve just awakened from the bad dream of Hatoyama and Futenma, we’re going to kick the Japanese in the teeth. The issue of Japanese who are believed to be held (or buried) in North Korea is a matter of extreme emotional sensitivity to the Japanese people, one that transcends partisan affiliation. And if that’s not bad enough, Mrs. Clinton is letting word of this decision leak out as President Lee feels his impotence at the United Nations, is limited in his response to the attack because of North Korean threats, and needs a strong signal of U.S. backing after the sinking of the Cheonan. To send this signal, of all times, as the two nations mark the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, only serves to symbolize that in a moment of crisis, this administration doesn’t have South Korea’s back in one symbolically and financially important way that costs the United States nothing.

Just imagine the reaction if the Bush Administration had been so arrogant and inconsiderate toward longstanding U.S. allies. Now tell me what possible countervailing interest we will advance by keeping North Korea off this list, aside from helping Kim Jong Il evade the legal, financial, and diplomatic consequences of his sponsorship of terrorism. What a terribly dangerous time to send a signal of such profound weakness.

Great Moments in North Korean Fashion Design

June 24, 2010 WTF? One comment

In our last episode, we learned that Kim Jong-Il, cutting an “august” figure in his “modest-looking suits,” has “gripped people’s imagination and become a global vogue,” which I guess you can’t call entirely untrue. In today’s episode, women everywhere are tantalized by the thought of wrapping themselves in fashion designed by a government ministry. Da!

The Garment Institute of the Ministry of Foodstuff and Daily Necessities Industry has recently designed new models of dresses suitable for women’s aesthetic tastes. The institute, classifying women’s national dresses into gala and wedding ones, has developed them more beautifully and comfortably.

Holiday dresses have a mix of gorgeous and sober colors and different patterns, with girl’s skirt being a little shorter.

“Gorgeous” meaning olive drab, and “sober” meaning dark gray, with light gray and black currently under study for the next five-year plan.

Wedding dresses are charming with floral decorations for head and breast.

Two acronyms I’d never thought I’d see together: KCNA and NSFW. Now that’s something I have to see (Curtis? Naenara, perhaps?).

The institute has also designed suits, one-piece dresses, overcoats and other seasonal garments for women of different ages and figures.

Conspicuous in the designs of winter clothes is an overcoat with colorful sashes in its sleeves, collar and breast, fur-covered collar and woolen hat.

Meanwhile, the institute has made designs of various patterns including those of flowers.

Flowers, too? The decadence!

It is now widely acknowledged that orderly socialism has done much to advance the art of fashion. Here, we see some designs produced by the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Bulk Proletarian Commodity Production, Bureau of Textile Fabrication:

Didn’t Wendy’s just have the best commercials in those days?

Should the Goalkeeper Fear the Reaper?

June 24, 2010 Sports One comment

Should we fear for the North Korean soccer team? Professor Sung Yoon Lee, in a must read analysis for GQ, explains why (at least in North Korean terms) their fate isn’t likely to be a severe as some people fear — and if there is a Korea authority who truly belongs in GQ, it’s Sung Yoon Lee. I tend to think that if North Korea was using the World Cup as a propaganda ploy, then it has to know that if it does something terrible to the players or the coach, the word would get out. They’re not as good at keeping secrets as they used to be.

The history of repressive regimes using sports for propaganda purposes goes back at least as far as Berlin in 1936, and it was common knowledge that the Soviets sent minders to watch their traveling athletes carefully, prevent defections, and limit their exposure to our decadent ways:

In fact, I don’t think the World Cup turned out to be quite the propaganda success North Korea had hoped for, given the immediate speculation that its players would face punishment after the big loss to Portugal. This story, for example, says that the “World Cup seems like good publicity for the rogue state,” but then links to a photo essay called, “The Countless Luxury Mansions Of Kim Jong-il.” Nice.

In any event, I still question FIFA’s decision to invite the North Koreans to the game at all.

Update: Robert links to a very good essay in Newsweek that reaches conclusions similar to those I had here.

Lee, Bush Commemorate 60th Anniversary of the Korean War

June 24, 2010 An Alliance?, Diplomacy, Korean War, U.S. & Korea 5 comments

Golly, this was a nice thing of President Lee to say:

As we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, I offer our deepest, most sincere gratitude to all the American veterans and their families for what they did. The friendship and bond that we share is reinforced by the strong and robust military alliance, which in turn was the basis for the Republic of Korea’s remarkable twin achievements of the past six decades, namely achieving economic growth and becoming a true liberal democracy. [President Lee Myung-Bak, Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

If only President Lee’s own constituents actually believed this. I was ready to suggest that it’s them President Lee should be addressing until I saw that George W. Bush had emerged as our newest global goodwill ambassador. The former president, who is best known and loved by Koreans everywhere as the man who removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, was in Seoul the other day, also commemorating the anniversary, where he addressed a crowd of 60,000 (!) at a prayer meeting in a stadium:

“While South Korea prospers, the people of North Korea have suffered profoundly,” he said, adding communism had resulted in “dire poverty, mass starvation and brutal suppression”. “In recent years the suffering has been compounded by the leader who wasted North Korea’s precious few resources on personal luxuries and nuclear weapons programmes.” [....]

Bush, a devout Christian, described the 1950-53 conflict as an unforgotten war, saying “an act of unprovoked aggression” had led to an unnatural division in Northeast Asia. “It will never be forgotten by those who served and by those who were saved, and it must not be forgotten by the world,” he said.

The presence of US troops in South Korea showed Washington’s strong commitment to defending its ally, he said, adding the South’s prosperity is “a shining example of the power of freedom and faith”. [AFP]

As all 60,000 of those in attendance thought, as if with one mind: Just as long as our daughters stay out of Hongdae at night. Oddly enough, not all Koreans truly appreciate President Bush for his conciliatory outreach toward Kim Jong Il or his aid for the North Korean people, at least before he was ousted by a cabal of neocon hard-liners in 2009:

“It is just nonsense to bring to the Korean War prayer meeting the former US President Bush, who started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have him give testimony,” they said in a joint statement.

Funny how these people never seem to hold grudges against those who start wars in Korea. But then, they’re not really anti-war. They’re just on the other side.

And in related news, Foreign Policy Magazine has voted Kim Jong Il the world’s worst dictator this year, easily edging out Robert Mugabe.

On McChrystal and Petraeus

June 23, 2010 U.S. Military 11 comments

I can’t pass on the chance to say a few things about the firing of General McChrystal. I don’t think President Obama could have not fired him, leaving him in charge of our war effort in state where he clearly lacks the confidence of the President, his cabinet, the people, and quite probably his own soldiers. I knew few soldiers who had strong partisan views, but fewer who held much respect for conduct like this. More than a few must have mentally run through their checklist of the Army Values and realized that the first three are “loyalty,” “duty,” and “respect.” As many others have already said, the military leadership must respect and subordinate itself to the elected political branches. It is of no consequence that you might just agree with the substance of McChrystal’s views about, say, Joe Biden (if I’m guessing right, so does President Obama in his tiny sphere of privacy). The decision to fire McChrystal was an obvious one, and President Obama seems to have done it with about the right combination of force and tact.

The harder question was replacing McChrystal without confusing the command structure or the flow of operations, or suggesting a lack of commitment to the greater effort. Here, the choice of General Petraeus clearly satisfies the latter criterion, and probably both of the former ones.

Here, I marvel at how much this President’s views about Iraq have shifted since he, his Vice President, and his Secretary of State were senators using Petraeus as a campaign foil to please their anti-war base. To President Obama’s eternal credit as a patriot, he abandoned that base in their alternative reality, one in which their desperate quest for defeat does not have consequences for the rest of us. I can’t think of a more cogent statement about the state of matters in Iraq today than the choice of Petraeus as the man who might turn things around in Afghanistan, too. I hope he can do it. This time, we are unburdened of the silly post-hoc arguments that hobbled us in Iraq. This time, there’s no argument that Afghanistan has nothing to do with the security of the United States, no hyperventilation that some long-gone president and his oily cabal fed us all a lie to corner the global rug market. People plotted the murder of 3,000 of us from Afghanistan. They’ll do far worse if we choose to let them.

Still, we should remember that Petraeus’s success in Iraq is also a function of luck. He showed up at the right time. Most societies grow tired of wars after a few years, especially wars fought where they live. War fatigue almost defeated us, but it was probably a very big part of what made conditions right for the Awakening. Still, let’s not take away from Petraeus that he had the the savvy to sense opportunity and exploit it.

If You Want the U.N. to Fail, Then Ban Ki Moon Is Your Man

June 23, 2010 "United" Nations One comment

Let it never be said that Ban Ki-Moon’s U.N. can’t fail at more than one thing at the same time. While North Korea’s attack on a South Korean warship goes unanswered at the U.N. thanks to Chinese obstructionism and weak U.N. leadership, North Korea’s refugee crisis goes unaddressed due to … Chinese obstructionism and weak U.N. leadership.

When it comes to North Korea, the U.N. has proved a highly effective instrument for China to prop up its puppet, and just about nothing else. To the extent UNSCR 1874 has helped us gain the cooperation of some nations, China has redoubled its efforts to undermine the sanctions that give the resolution teeth. Besides which, the cooperation inspired by 1874 leaves plenty to be desired. According to one recent U.N. report, more than 100 members of that oxymoron called the “international community” haven’t reported to the U.N. Security Council on how they plan to implement sanctions against North Korea.

Although 1874, on its face, contains some good, strong provisions, I said when it was passed that it would only be as good as its implementation. I’m not yet prepared to say that the implementation of 1874 is a failure — there have been some high-profile successes at Bangkok and in the Persian Gulf — but it clearly leaves much to be desired, and isn’t going to be sufficient by itself (sufficient to do what is another topic for another day).

I suspect that the Obama Administration’s new awareness of these limits explains why it’s taking a good, hard look at legal and financial authorities that China and Russia can’t veto. Four years ago, the usual suspects would have called this “unilateralism,” but these initiatives are no more unilateral than coalition-based foreign policy ever really is. All that these initiatives would really represent is a shift to a foreign policy that acts in concert with allies, and away from foreign policy that’s the hostage of people who see themselves as our enemies.

The Cheonan Incident

After all these years, Kim Jong Il still loves making a fool of Ban-Ki Moon:

North Korea on Tuesday rejected international findings that it sank a South Korean ship, warning at the United Nations the dispute could lead to war.

“A war may break out any time,” Ambassador Sin Son Ho said, accusing South Korea of “fabricating” the results of the investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan. [....]

“If the Security Council releases any documents against us, condemning or pressuring us … then myself as diplomat, I can do nothing. … The follow-up measures will be carried out by our military forces,” he said. [CNN]

A brief side note is appropriate here. There’s little new, I suppose, in North Korean diplomats behaving like buffoons in public, but news consumers deserve better journalism than that which manages to make a North Korean “Ambassador” look relatively mature:

Speaking in English, Sin showed a jovial side at least twice during his hour-long briefing, in which he fielded numerous questions from reporters, many of them Japanese and South Korean. He laughed heartily when asked how North Korea’s soccer team would perform in the World Cup in South Africa.

“This is not a place to be concerned about a soccer team,” Sin said with a big smile. “I am not in a position to give you any answer to your question, because your question is not directly related to the sinking of the South Korean warship.

He also pointed out that he’d probably be sacked if the Security Council decides to condemn Pyongyang for a crime he insists his country did not commit.

“If any action is taken by Security Council against us, I lose my job,” he said. [Reuters Global News Journal blog, Louis Charbonneau]

Which worries me substantially less than the fate of the World Cup team. So what are the prospects for that actually happening? Well, last week, they were saying maybe this week:

Speaking to reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York, Mexican Ambassador Claude Heller, the rotating chairman of the 15-nation council this month, said that he expects council members to begin discussing the matter next week, as they just wrapped up months-long discussions on imposing new sanctions on Iran for its suspected nuclear weapons programs.

“I’m consulting and I am in the process of having bilateral consultations on Korea in order that next week we will be able maybe to start a process of exchanging ideas among all the members of the Council,” he said. “This process of consultation has been very fruitful and we expect that next week, we will go on with this process, looking for a response in an appropriate manner by the Security Council.” [Yonhap]

This week, China is saying it might go along with some sort of resolution that
doesn’t actually name North Korea.

The U.N.’s inability to respond to rogue states, enforce peace, or prevent proliferation isn’t really an epiphany, and the U.N.’s failure to respond to the Cheonan Incident won’t by itself, mark the end of the U.N. as a global money pit, as an obstruction to better diplomacy, or as an enabler by default of aggression and anarchy. The primary effect of this incident will likely be that nations will turn to ad hoc coalitions to do the important work that the U.N. can’t.

We’re already seeing this to an extent, with President Lee’s more aggressive participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative and Japan’s move to allow its ships to search North Korean vessels on the high seas. As President Obama continues to follow the path charted by (gasp) John Bolton, regional and global coalitions are already forming to do the important work that the U.N. won’t. Both Japan and South Korea have also imposed their own unilateral sanctions, knowing in advance that they probably shouldn’t count on an effective response from Ban Ki-Moon’s U.N., either. Within the next ten years, we’re likely to see a regional coalition — something on the order of a Pacific version of NATO — rise as a counterweight to China’s military buildup. All of which is fine by me: let a hundred coalitions bloom.

For now, China may be able to place barricades in the U.N. today and extract high tolls for every obstruction it lets us pass. But the eventual result will be that the U.N. generally and the Security Council in particular will lose influence, and its seat on the Security Council is one of the biggest cards China has to play. To those of us who would like to see the gradual decline of the U.N. into something that does whatever the U.N. actually does reasonably well, this isn’t an entirely bad thing.

Now, if someone would just remind me what the U.N. does reasonably well ….

Human Rights

Vitit Muntarbhorn, the former Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in North Korea, may have been the only U.N. official in that institution’s recent history who seemed sincerely interested in the welfare of the North Korean people. Vitit is gone now, and his replacement has been named:

The U.N. Human Rights Council appointed Marzuki Darusman of Indonesia as its new special rapporteur on the North’s human rights in Geneva Friday (local time). Darusman, 65, will succeed Vitit Muntarbhorn who has served in the job since its creation in 2004.

The new envoy, a former attorney-general who also served as chairman of Indonesia’s national human rights commission and a legislator, has been a co-chairman of the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism. ASEAN refers to the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

“Rapporteur Darusman is expected to perform his duties excellently in light of various activities he has engaged in to promote human rights not only in Indonesia, but also in Asia,” the ministry said. [Yonhap]

Chris Green has also written a good profile of Darusman for the Daily NK.

In the end, even Vitit’s strong words were of no real consequence, not even within the U.N. itself. For example, they weren’t enough to get the UNHCR or the Secretary General to really push Beijing on refugee policy. But then, the choice between confrontation and complicity is never hard when you’re Ban Ki Moon.

Between 30,000 and 300,000 North Korean migrants remain in limbo in China, according to different estimates, most of them women. “Some remain in hiding for a lifetime while others seek brokers or activists who will guide them along their journey out,” said LiNK Global, a US-based group helping the refugees inside China. [....]

As the United Nations High Commission for Refugees marks World Refugee Day today, it lists no North Korean refugees in China, though it designates them as “˜persons of concern’.

Got that? Nearly two decades into the North Korean refugee crisis, the UNHCR still hasn’t acknowledged that there is even a problem. And former UNHCR head Mary Robinson, who oversaw the worst of this failure, is still a darling of the global news media. I mean, what do you have to do? Break into a UNHCR office? Fat chance of that now. Beijing, in contravention of its obligation to grant the UNHCR “unimpeded access” to refugees, surrounded the mission with guards after that one. It keeps the refugees out and pens the UNHCR workers in:

The UNHCR has requested access to the North Koreans many times since they began flooding across the border nearly 20 years ago during a famine that was estimated to have killed more than one million people in their homeland. North Korea now has a population of about 23 million.

China continues to label the North Koreans “˜economic migrants’, refusing to grant them refugee status and repatriating those caught by the police.

Kitty McKinsey, an East Asian regional spokesperson for UNHCR, said her organisation was “quite disturbed” by reports of trafficking, sexual exploitation and other abuses of North Koreans in China. It also believes China should not send back North Korean migrants, she said. [Herald Scotland]

Perhaps because nationalism is so pervasive among Koreans, many of them have been slow to recognize the true extent of Ban Ki-Moon’s apathy about how some of them suffer. Take this group of defectors, who want to meet with Ban and tell him a lot of things he already knows:

Defectors who survived torture and near-starvation in North Korean prison camps say they want to meet the UN chief to press him to investigate crimes against humanity.

Their request, made on Monday, was supported by former South Korean president Kim Young-Sam and former Norwegian prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik.

Kim Tae-Jin, representing 105 petitioners, said in a letter to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon they were seeking his advice about potential remedies for rights abuses “so that our families, friends and neighbours still in North Korea will not have to suffer as we did”. [AFP]

You can read the text of their open letter to Ban here.

My guess is that China will tell Ban not to meet with these folks — or at best, to meet with them, smile politely, and say nothing of substance — and that Ban will do as he’s instructed.

It would be sufficient to earn Ban a place of revulsion in Korean history that he oversaw a series of South Korean abstentions from U.N. resolutions condemning North Korea’s human rights atrocities. But then, Ban could at least argue that he was, after all, a long-time career civil servant who was merely following the orders of his president. Today, Ban is the chief executive of an organization with a fixed tenure, and at least ostensibly, he doesn’t work for Hu Jintao. You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. If Ban Ki-Moon gave a damn about the murder and suffering of his fellow Koreans, he’d have spoken out and shamed Beijing into changing its contemptible enabling of Kim Jong Il years ago. This is one area where the U.N. isn’t impotent. It’s maddening to think that innocent people are being sent back to Kim Jong Il’s gulag now, and that in all probability, Ban could put an end to it all with a few strong speeches.

As badly as these failures reflect on Ban, they ought to mean an existential crisis of confidence for the U.N. itself. The whole point of establishing the U.N. to begin with was to preserve peace and prevent crimes against humanity. If that institution has become this useless for either purpose, why even have a U.N. at all? What does the U.N. still do that other institutions couldn’t do better?

Take a Drink!

June 23, 2010 Humor/Satire, Propaganda, Unintended Humor No comments

Hillary, U.S. secretary of State, was recently reported to have blustered during her junket of Middle and South American countries that the DPRK poses a threat to the world peace and it is necessary to “convince” the world public of this fact. Such sophism is intended to win the support for the U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK from other countries.

Her remarks about the DPRK’s “threat” to the global peace are brigandish sophism reminiscent of a thief crying “Stop the thief!” Rodong Sinmun Tuesday says in a signed commentary. [KCNA]

At times like this, I think back fondly on the Bush Administration, when we weren’t afraid to talk to our enemies endlessly, because I just can’t stand the thought that there are people out there who hate us. My careful parsing of KCNA’s tone worries me that the inflammatory rhetoric of Hillary and her fellow neocon hard-liners could even jeopardize the prospects for Selig Harrison’s next trip to Pyongyang.

Upcoming Human Rights Events

June 22, 2010 Activism, Human Rights One comment

June 22, Falls Church: There will be a free screening of the Korean film “The Crossing.”

__________________

June 25-26, Los Angeles: The Korean-American Coalition will hold its THINK Conference (Topple Hunger In North Korea).

__________________

July 13-14, Washington: The Korean Church Coalition will hold a rally and prayer vigil.

22 June 2010

June 22, 2010 Anju Links 2 comments

The Chinese are blocking U.N. action against their North Korean clients for sinking the Cheonan, and the Russians are playing dumb and stalling, but I’m sure that President Lee takes comfort that he has the full moral backing of the European Parliament and Central America. The Europarl resolution also “expressed disappointment with China and Russia for failing to take a clear position on the issue.”

___________________

South Korea will expand its role in the Proliferation Security Initiative:

“We have decided to join the Operational Experts Group (OEG),” an unnamed South Korean foreign ministry official told Yonhap, referring to PSI’s 20-member steering committee. Seoul believes signing up for the OEG in Japan in November will make sharing information on North Korea, a proliferator of illegal weapons, easier, the report said.

___________________


Congress commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Korean War. Here’s a statement on that from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (hat tip to her staff).

___________________

You already know just how little the World Cup interests me, but I thought this article by Karl Quinn about the possibility of an inter-Korean World Cup match was rather funny, until it ended on a completely tasteless note: “Oh, it would be one to watch, this match-up. But it would probably be best not to watch it from on board a South Korean ship. Just to be safe.” Sorry, Karl, that wasn’t funny at all. Not even a little.

In related news, the World Cup earned North Korea $10 million, which may be some consolation for the thumping its team took from the Portuguese.

___________________

Well, well. If it isn’t our old friends from Nodutdol, joining up with the 3/26 twoofers from the PSPD to demand that the U.N. have a more “fair and objective” discussion about the sinking of the Cheonan.

___________________

Here’s a cool web page on leaflet drops on North Korea in the ’60′s. I doubt we’d have the sac to try anything like this today.

Kim Jong Il’s on-the-spot guidance does for North Korean soccer what it did for North Korean agriculture and industry

June 21, 2010 Kim Jong Il, Sports, WTF? 13 comments

At last, something interesting has happened at the World Cup after all. The North Korean team was crushed by Portugal in the most lopsided World Cup score in eight years, eliminating North Korea from the competition, and greatly advancing my personal objective of ignoring the rest of the World Cup.

The question on everyone’s lips now is whether the North Korean players or their families will face retribution for this loss. I really don’t know the answer to that, and although the speculation is not completely groundless, it’s too real to be legitimately amusing. To the extent anyone has a basis to ask the question, you also have to question the sporting league’s decision to invite that country to participate in the tournament at all. A case in point would be Uday Hussein’s “management” of the Iraqi Olympic team. Saddam Husein’s Iraq shouldn’t have been invited to the Olympics at all, and the OIC was complicit with the torture of Iraqi athletes for extending the invitation. FIFA and the OIC owe it to the North Korean athletes to pursue any similar such questions that are legitimately raised.

With that being said, I don’t hesitate to identify one North Korean who should face a firing squad: the imbecile who provided strategy advice to the North Korean coach before the game:

North Korean manager Kim Jong-Hun reportedly gets coaching advice directly from the country’s diminutive dictator via an invisible cell phone.

According to ESPN.com the coach has claimed he gets “regular tactical advice during matches” from Jong Il “using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye.”

“Jong Il is said to have developed the technology himself,” coach told ESPN.com.

And to think that some people wonder why I blog about North Korea.

And not for the first time, the results of on-the-spot guidance speak for themselves. It certainly suggests some first-rate content for the next load of DVD’s those defectors and activists float into North Korea. Each would begin with Coach Kim’s statement about this unique medium of on-the-spot guidance, and then would cut straight to a montage of all seven Portuguese goals, and finally, the glum faces on North Korea’s rented ChiCom cheering section.

Updates: Let’s begin on a lighter note. A reader forwarded this link, which I thought was pretty damn funny, even if I can’t vouch for its authenticity.

And in retrospect, this may not have been the best occasion for North Korea to experiment with live broadcasting:

North Korea picked the wrong moment to allow its people to see a bit more of the outside world. The authoritarian regime was so proud of its soccer team in the World Cup that it allowed an unprecedented live broadcast back home of the match against Portugal — a rarity for the communist nation that normally exerts strict control over the media.

What ensued was a different sort of history: North Koreans, used to seeing only positive news about their reclusive country, watched as their soccer team received the worst drubbing so far in this year’s tournament and was prevented from advancing to the next round.

As the 7-0 loss to Portugal concluded, the North Koreans quickly halted Monday’s coverage. “The Portuguese won the game and now have four points,” the Korean Central Broadcasting commentator said. “We are ending our live broadcast now.” [AP, Jean H. Lee]

The only thing needed to make this conform perfectly to stereotype would be if state TV immediately switched to stock footage of happy workers praising you-know-who:

It then cut to factory workers and engineers praising North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

I wonder what stereotype will be validated next. From the report, it sounds like the North Korean players and coach left the field genuinely dejected. One can certainly image multiple reasons for that. To those of us who watch North Korea closely, the assurances of the North Korean coach that no one will be punished for playing badly aren’t really all that reassuring.

In a rather apt illustration of how the good intentions behind “engagement” often tend to do more harm than good for North Koreans, we’re reminded of a side of North Korean sports that sportswriters prefer not to write about. Incidentally, stop me if you’ve heard this reporter’s name somewhere before:

The 23 men training in Tembisa are their country’s most visible ambassadors, among the few North Koreans allowed to travel overseas. At home, they’re already heroes, bestowed with medals and merit citations and honored on postage stamps unveiled last week to commemorate the team’s success in qualifying for the World Cup.

With that honor comes pressure. Moon Ki-nam, a former national-level North Korea coach who defected to South Korea in 2004, said players are handsomely rewarded with coveted apartments if they win internationally but are punished, some sent to coal mines, if they lose.

Even some of the feted players from the 1966 team were said to have been sent to one of North Korea’s infamous labor camps for squandering a promising 3-0 lead to lose to a Eusebio-led Portugal in the quarterfinals. [AP, Laura Ling]

Hat tip to Theresa D for this one.

Leave aside the obvious comparison to the World Cup’s current host which, in the not-so-distant past, was isolated and ostracized globally for human rights abuses that never approached the severity of those in North Korea today.

Perhaps because I’m just not that into soccer, I can view it with some detached perspective and say that basic sportsmanship shouldn’t be negotiable, nor should the health and welfare of the players. That’s why any country caught doping its players or feeding them steroids would face a variety of sanctions, including team suspension, under FIFA’s rather intricate disciplinary code. And you mean to tell me that a country suspected of intimidating and possibly imprisoning its players wouldn’t? Well, let me know if you can see where that’s specifically prohibited.

Our speculation about our darkest fears for the North Korean players isn’t exactly groundless, but why speculate? FIFA can always ask for the right to do what the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Food Program can’t: inspect and monitor. If FIFA has the right to take blood samples from players for countries all over the world, what would really be so intrusive about it demanding the right to check in on the members of the team every few months? Doesn’t this concern actually dwarf those that justify FIFA’s aggressive and expensive anti-doping program?

Viewed in this context, you have to ask yourself just how responsible FIFA was to allow a low-ranked team representing a despotic regime with a history of sending losing players to the gulag into the World Cup.

« Older Entries   Recent Entries »