Open Sources

Fighting Words, Part I: In an “only in North Korea” moment, soldiers go on TV to boast about shelling a village full of civilians:

On Friday, North Korean soldiers appeared on a state TV program marking Kim’s appointment anniversary and bragged of participating in the artillery barrage. “Our eyes were full of fire right after we saw the enemy’s shells being fired into our sacred waters,” soldier Kim Moon Chol said, clinching his fists and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with three uniformed colleagues. Their ranks were unknown. “At the order of ‘fire,’ we poured our merciless thunderbolt of fire at the enemy,” he said in a loud, oratory-style speech.

A soldier whose uniform was full of military decorations expressed his loyalty to Kim Jong Il. “Facing the enemy’s provocation, we shouted, ‘Let’s dedicate our lives to fighting the enemy and giving them a merciless death for our dear leader and supreme military commander,'” Kim Kyong Su said.
Their speeches constantly drew applause from the audience — mostly uniformed soldiers who spoke separately and vowed to get tougher with South Korea. They all later sang a military song together.

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Fighting Words, Part II: Take that, hippies!

“We can’t afford to have division of you against me in the face of national security, because what’s at stake is our very lives and the survival of this nation,” Lee said in a national radio address. Lee said it was divided public opinion in the wake of the North’s submarine attack on one of South Korea’s navy ships in March, killing 46 sailors, that prompted Pyongyang to bombard a South Korean island near disputed sea border last month, killing four people. North Korea denies attacking the naval vessel. “It is when we show solidarity as one that the North dares not challenge us. Their will to challenge breaks.”

If Lee’s objective is to shame the imbeciles and Fifth Columnists who circulated and supported Cheonan conspiracy theories, I’m with him. If his objective is to justify censorship of the imbeciles and Fifth Columnists, I’m most certainly not with him.

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Good evening, welcome, and remain indoors!

North Korea could fire missiles at South Korea next year, analysts predicted Monday, as the isolated North’s hostility toward the outside world deepens while it undergoes a hereditary transfer of power. [….]

Expect the pendulum to swing back in the other direction in 2011, the Institute for National Security Strategy warned in a report published last week and posted to its website Monday. The country could conduct a third nuclear bomb test and wage more attacks on front-line islands — like Yeonpyeong, which was bombarded in shelling that killed four South Koreans last month, the report said. North Korea may even fire missiles and more artillery at front-line South Korean islands, chief researcher Lee In-ho told The Associated Press after the report’s release.

You know, I can’t understand why the North Koreans made the horrendous propaganda blunder of attacking South Korean civilians. From their cold calculus, wouldn’t it have made more sense to shell some U.S. Army target to split South Korean and U.S. public opinion? By now, that window of opportunity has closed. It’s pretty clear by now that they’ve alienated South Korea’s silent majority. Even the Hankyoreh hardly dares to defend them.

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Fascinating: I guess I can take that FOIA request to the Office of Foreign Assets Control off my bucket list, since the New York Times has already done it. I’m going to append some of this information to my Litigation page, and see to it that the lawyers suing North Korea have this information. It might be a lucrative source for collecting on those judgments they’ve obtained. Big hat tip to Kushibo for this.
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Even the New York Times, which has the worst North Korea coverage of all major U.S. newspapers, occasionally delivers something of interest, if you can just skim past their they-just-want-to-be-loved narrative:

For nearly four years, an unrelenting barrage of government propaganda has promised that North Korea will be strong and prosperous by 2012, the centennial of the birth of Kim Il-sung, the nation’s founder and the father of the current leader, Kim Jong-il. That is now 18 months away. And prosperous is the last word one would use to describe North Korea’s shuttered factories, skimpy harvests and stunted children.

Thus, the Times concludes that what the North Koreans really want is trade and peachy relations with Earth. Hence, they went for a whole weekend without shelling any fishing villages. Is there some kind of chip they get for that, like in A.A.?

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The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Ramstad profiles Joe Bermudez’s fascinating KPA Journal.
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5 Responses

  1. Reuters has a story that says a train bound from China for Pyonyang bearing gifts for Baby Kim has been derailed and it could be an act of sabotage. Yet another sign that all is not well…

  2. “You know, I can’t understand why the North Koreans made the horrendous propaganda blunder of attacking South Korean civilians.”

    I learned in one of the many articles published soon after the shelling that the North Korean military was probably using old maps, for the concentration of their shells landed on sites that all used to be (or still were) military sites. The inference is that the North thought that its artillery would strike only military targets.

    If so, I think that this reveals how out-of-date the North’s intelligence is.

    Jeffery Hodges

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  3. > You know, I can’t understand why the North Koreans made the horrendous propaganda blunder of attacking South Korean civilians. From their cold calculus, wouldn’t it have made more sense to shell some U.S. Army target to split South Korean and U.S. public opinion? By now, that window of opportunity has closed. It’s pretty clear by now that they’ve alienated South Korea’s silent majority. Even the Hankyoreh hardly dares to defend them.

    US Army targets might shoot back and shoot a lot more than South Korean targets would? Although I also like the incompetence/old-maps explanation (I think we sometimes think too highly of North Korea because it’s so opaque).

  4. Off the top of my head, here are three possible explanations for the 2012 commitment. One, the regime is getting desperate and felt forced to promise something concrete in order to mollify dangerous segments of the population. Two, it believes its own propaganda and official ideology more than is good for it, and so expected that recent actions like the currency revaluation were going to bring prosperity. Three, it was hoping to shake a big aid bonanza out of the US or ROK by that date.

  5. Yes, well Mr. M.B., the DPRK has already established parts “One and Two” of your post for 57 plus years. Part “Three”, they have been given more of that than any nation in Northeast Asia. Yet the North Korean Government always demands more aid to appease it. China always agrees to pacify it. A spoiled child is made to be a spoiled child by it’s Protector. Such a spoiled child will kill anyone, even the hand that has always fed it.

    Beijing knows that it is dealing with a Rogue offspring from it by now. If China really cared about its interests, then they would stop propping up a spoiled monarchy that will drag China down. The Chinese people know that the Americans are not there enemies. Why does the PRC Government still propagate that the U.S. is the enemy to its public; while at the same time lay with the United States at night? And Every Night. Once Beijing straightens out its little brother, then the one they crawl into bed with every night will start to take them seriously.