Now, if someone can only hunt down the elusive Fatbeard, the seas will be safe for commerce again.
Archive for January 2011
Open Sources
“In the order, the party stressed that soldiers standing guard over the border are surviving on canned cornmeal porridge and threatened to assess the amount of donations by individual entity,” the RFA said, adding the North failed to attain its goal of securing 1.6 million tons in provisions for the military last year.” [Yonhap]
Whoever can smuggle food into North Korea now can trade it for information, the use of a truck, weapons, or ammunition. Just use your imagination.
The Japan Times reports that the Japanese government believes that another Japanese abductee, whom the North Koreans claimed was dead, was seen in Pyongyang recently with some South Korean abductees:
Provided by informed North Korean sources, the account said Taguchi was living in an apartment complex on Changgwang street in Pyongyang’s Mangyongdae district and was seen spending time with two South Korean abductees, the sources said. One of the South Koreans was Ko Sang Mun, a former high school teacher who disappeared from Norway in 1978, and the other is possibly married to Taguchi, they said. Taguchi was abducted to the North in 1978, and Pyongyang has claimed she married Tadaaki Hara, another Japanese abductee, and died in a traffic accident in 1986.
North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.
I’ve been fascinated by the story of the Stuxnet virus, and I’d like to believe, as this story reports, that it was also designed to hinder North Korea’s uranium enrichment program in the same way it hindered Iran’s.
In February 2005, Selig Harrison alleged “that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the data” to falsely accuse North Korea of running a secret uranium enrichment program. Harrison has still not retracted that article. In an August 2009 interview with the Associated Press, Harrison was quoted as saying, “Everything I’ve ever said about North Korea since 1972 has seemed at the time like screaming into the wilderness, and everything I’ve ever advocated has come to pass. Discuss among yourselves.
They’ll sell China their land, and they’ll sell China their daughters and sisters.
So notwithstanding its recent boorishness, China does see the downside of all of this adverse publicity it’s attracting in America, or it wouldn’t be investing in an expensive PR campaign here. The problem with this is that Americans are inherently suspicious of propaganda, and that’s particularly true of propaganda sponsored by a foreign dictatorship that uses censorship and propaganda to managed public opinion at home. And because China thinks that the Chinese people believe its propaganda at home, it may not grasp the skepticism with which its message will be received here.
I agree with Dana Rohrabacher that China’s recent behavior doesn’t merit the kind of lavish welcome President Obama gave to Hu Jintao: “Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher condemned Obama for welcoming Hu ‘as if he had the same stature and acceptability here as a democratic leader’ and said the United States should build bridges to China’s people directly. ‘Those are our allies. What do we do to them when we welcome their oppressor, their murderer, the one who’s murdering their children, here to the United States with such respect?’”
Celebrating Seven Years of Obscure Futility
On this day, way back in 2004, I published the first OFK post. Had you asked me then what I’d be blogging about now, I’d have have said that I wouldn’t be. Then, I might have suggested reconstruction efforts, or possibly a low-intensity conflict between Chinese “advisors” and North Korean insurgents. Seven billion dollars in South Korean aid, Chinese money, and unsteady American policies have prolonged the inevitable, but it still looks inevitable, if different.
Then, I imagined that a broad-based popular uprising would eventually bring this horrible episode to an end. Today, I see little possibility of this anytime soon. Time has changed my idea of regime collapse to a more gradual concept in which regions, markets, constituencies, and units slowly drift away from central control, in which chaos arises from totalitarian order, and in which the regime will be forced to choose between extorting its neighbors and controlling its subjects. It could take years for that process to play out, depending on how long Kim Jong Il lives, and there will be much more needless misery and more crises before it does. But at least it can’t go on forever.
South Korea’s Credibility Problem
China’s plans for the economic colonization of Rason in North Korea have set off a great deal of fretting in South Korea about China grabbing up North Korean resources. In my experience, those who fret about this are usually setting up an argument for South Korean investment in the North. But we know how that’s always ended. Instead of pouring more money into this bottomless pit, South Korea ought to let it be known that after reunification, Korea will invoke the doctrine of odious debt and nullify those contracts.
There are multiple reason for South Korea to be concerned about Chinese investment in North Korea, including the stripping of resources, the danger of creeping colonization setting the stage for future boundary disputes, and most immediately, China’s tendency to perpetuate and reward North Korean aggression against the South. Those issues are fundamental to Korea’s nationhood.
And yet it’s hard to take South Korean concerns about China’s plans for Rason seriously when South Korea’s trade at Kaesong continues, inexplicably, to grow. South Korea is trying to mask this colossus of a contradiction by closing down massage parlors there — as Robert would say, “The humanity!” — and investigating firms that trade with North Korea without going through Kaesong.
But this is mostly cosmetic. I have stronger views about the right of North Korean workers to organize unions than I do about access to hand jobs there, but since when does anyone really believe that Kaesong is going to be a harbinger of political change in North Korea? And if the original justifications for Kaesong are now nullities, can any honest person reconcile this unconditional and unaccountable subsidy to Kim Jong Il’s regime with the financial accountability provisions of UNSCR 1874? South Korea can hardly criticize China for bailing out Kim Jong Il while it’s paying for the shells that land on its towns and the torpedoes that sink its ships. And why should the United States spend its diplomatic and financial capital to protect South Korea as long as that’s the case?
Open Sources
Did North Korea cheat, you ask?
North Korea has been developing a uranium enrichment programme — a potential second way to make nuclear bombs — since the late 1990s, a senior defector was Wednesday quoted as saying. The defector, quoted by South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper, said centrifuges for the programme are being made at the city of Heechon, 57 kilometres (35 miles) northeast of its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon. [AFP]
More here. Selig Harrison was unavailable for comment.
John Bolton and Christian Whiton call for tightening sanctions, increasing radio broadcasts, and augmenting U.S. forces in Northeast Asia. There is also a call for the redeployment of tactical nukes.
No meat soup for you: North Korea moves the goalposts on its predictions of prosperity by 2012. More here.
Have you ever noticed how North Korea, which spends one-third of its national income on its military while children literally starve in the streets, is never the object of leftist cliches about the military-industrial complex?
I think I’ve found the solution to our trade deficit.
North Korea is suspected in a denial of service attack on Radio Free North Korea.
Open Sources
The Obama Administration’s China policy has come full circle from its deferential beginnings.
President Lee wants to bring North Korea to the Security Council over its uranium enrichment program.
Well, this story is rich in revelations. Apparently, Iran has sent payments to North Korea from the previously sanctioned Hong Kong Electronics to the Seoul branch of Iran’s Bank Mellat. Less shocking are more reports of China’s assistance to North Korea’s ballistic missile program. If you’re keeping count, that would violate at least three U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Yonhap profiles Joseph Bermudez, who may be America’s foremost expert on the North Korean military. He lives in Colorado, the lucky man.
North Korean soldiers, including its special forces, are said to be freezing from a shortage of uniforms.
Skepticism about North Korea’s latest predictions of prosperity.
The North said it spent $570 million on its military in 2009, but the real amount, calculated on an exchange rate based on purchasing power parity terms, was $8.77 billion, the state-run Korea Institute of Defense Analyses (KIDA) said in a report. The North’s gross national income stood at 28.6 trillion won ($25 billion) in 2009, compared with South Korea’s 1,068 trillion won ($958 billion), it said.
The Great Wall of Rason: Kim Jong Il’s Grand Sell-Out
Over the weekend, as I was poring over relatively recent new imagery on Google Earth, I spotted the chilling sight of a fence line — the kind of fence line that until now, I’ve only seen around North Korea’s political prison camps. This was a mystery to me, since I believed that I’d located and delineated the last of the large prison camps years ago. I followed the fence line, wondering what I’d found, until I’d traced it for the astonishing distance of 25 miles, as the crow flies, from the Russian border to the coast south of the port city Rajin (Najin in the South Korean dialect).
The area thus isolated from the rest of North Korea is almost large enough to be a small country in its own right. This is the Rajin-Sonbong Special Economic Zone, now known as Rason, where North Korea claims to be prepared to relax its tight economic control to attract foreign investment. But then, this has been the announced intention for years, and none of this has ever really amounted to much.
As with all of the images in this post, click them to see them in full size.
Up close, there’s little question that this is a fence line. No road would have such sharp curves, and no power line would thread such a circuitous path. The gates where the railroad and the main highway pass through are clearly visible.
There are relatively few breaks in the fence line, which in some places appears to be double- or triple-fenced, with a strip of raked gravel to catch any attempts to trespass.
In some of the more remote areas, the fence appeared (at least at the time these images were taken) to be still under construction.
Why would a state go to such extraordinary effort and expense to isolate such a large part of its own territory? The New York Times tells us:
[T]o let in the air of foreign currency without also letting in the mosquitoes of democracy, North Korea wants to confine capitalism to the Rajin-Sonbong Free Economic and Trade Zone in the isolated northeast corner of the country, near the borders with Russia and China.
A barbed wire fence, electrified in places, separates the 288-square-mile zone from the rest of North Korea. This despite the fact that a brochure prepared by North Korea’s Committee for Promotion of External Economic Cooperation touts that the zone will become “˜’a crossroad of human transport and traffic.” [N.Y. Times, Sept. 15, 1996]
Did I mention that a South Korean businessman sold Kim Jong Il the barbed wire, and wanted to sell him tasers and high-voltage current generators? The reality of doing business with this regime is even more absurd than Lenin’s vision of noose-peddling capitalists.
Clearly, the North Korean regime wanted to isolate all but those deemed reliable from the infection of Rajin’s investors. This wouldn’t be novel behavior for this regime. In 2002, the L.A. Times’s Barbara Demick reported on the regime’s plan to create a special economic zone in the northwestern city of Sinuiju. According to Yan Bin, the Chinese businessman behind the plan, the Sinuiju Zone would have forcibly relocated up to 700,000 people, about 3% of the country’s total population. And in 2005, the State Department reported that workers at Rason were to be “carefully screened and selected.”
None of which suggests a regime sincerely ready to accept economic or political reform. Instead, it’s suggestive of a regime that wants cash, and is willing to sell its land and move its people to get it. North Korea had already ceded parts of Mount Paektu, the highest mountain in Korea and a sacred place to the Korean people, to China in the 1960′s. More recently, it reportedly leased several islands in the middle of the Yalu River to China — islands that contain rich farmland that could help feed hungry people.
Just hours after I’d traced this line, I also read the reports, via a conservative South Korean daily that China had sent its military into Rason to protect its interests there:
Chinese troops have been stationed in the special economic zone of Rajin-Sonbong in North Korea, sources said Friday. This would be the first time since Chinese troops withdrew from the Military Armistice Commission in the truce village of Panmunjom in December 1994 that they have been stationed in the North.
“Pyongyang and Beijing have reportedly discussed the matter of stationing a small number of Chinese troops in the Rajin-Sonbong region to guard port facilities China has invested in,” a Cheong Wa Dae official said. “If it’s true, they’re apparently there to protect either facilities or Chinese residents rather than for political or military reasons.” How many of them are there is not known. The move is unusual since North Korea is constantly calling for U.S. forces to pull out of South Korea and stressing its “juche” or self-reliance doctrine.
A China-based source familiar with North Korean affairs said, “In the middle of the night around Dec. 15 last year, about 50 Chinese armored vehicles and tanks crossed the Duman (Tumen) River from Sanhe into the North Korean city of Hoeryong in North Hamgyong Province.” Residents were woken up by the roar of armored vehicles. Hoeryong is only about 50 km from Rajin-Sonbong. Other witnesses said they saw military jeeps running from the Chinese city of Dandong in the direction of Sinuiju in the North at around the same time.
China has since denied the reports, saying that it had only sent “negotiators” to Rason. That’s an interesting term. But as with most reports from North Korea, it’s difficult to corroborate or refute this report independently.
What interests could China be so desperate to protect? To China, none of this is really about the development of local industry or investment. It’s about buying access to Rajin’s port. It’s not hard to see why. China’s northeastern rust belt is otherwise landlocked and has to import and export goods by rail, via Shanghai and other ports far to the South. To make matters more concerning, this area used to be Chinese territory, suggesting the danger that China could try to resurrect “historic” territorial claims.
Yet the plans to restore the port facilities have made little apparent progress. China’s lease of the Rajin port has been variously reported as lasting for 10 years or 50 years. In 2008, North Korea is said to have expelled some inactive Chinese firms from the zone. And looking down at the small facilities, you have to wonder whether this small harbor is worth so much fuss.
Yet the same port has also drawn interest from Russian investors.
Further North, the city of Sonbong has even less of a harbor, but shows more evidence of recent construction than most North Korean cities.
In these images, you can see the main transportation links from China. In red, I’ve mapped the main road link from China. In blue, Curtis Melvin has mapped the rail networks in the area. Notice that the rail lines skirt the edge of the Tumen River rather than passing through the North Korean interior. That may be because of the area’s difficult terrain, but also because of the presence of political prison camps in that area.
But the single-track rail lines, on which a strong export trade would depend, do not seem to be up to this new challenge.
Where the highway crosses from China into North Korea, you can see trucks ready to cross the Tumen River into North Korea.
Here’s the bridge over the Tumen …
and the North Korean customs post, where several more trucks are stopped while their drivers undergo inspection, and quite possibly offer gratuities to lubricate the process.
Imagery of Rajin, Sonbong, and the surrounding areas does not suggest a stampede of investment in Rajin. No new factories are in evidence. The only noticeable new industry is a Chinese casino.
The fence that’s clearly visible in these images is designed to keep North Koreans out. The clientele is almost exclusively Chinese.
China has mixed feelings about the casino. The Chinese government managed to shut it down for three years after a public official gambled away half a million dollars in public funds there. You can see some great photos of the Emperor at that last link, but by most accounts, business is slow. You wonder who could ever have believed otherwise about a casino in North Korea that depends on business from one of the poorer regions of China. How could anyone believe this could be profitable? With whose money?
Not far from the casino, we see the answer. This appears to be a ferry terminal, most likely designed to bring in tourists from Japan, or perhaps from South Korea. Yet the Kim Jong Il regime’s abduction of Japanese nationals, and its more recent attacks against South Korean sailors and civilians, have foreclosed both possibilities for the foreseeable future.
So the ferry sits unused, the pier is taken over by fishing vessels, and what appears to be a very expensive terminal sits empty.
The only factories you can see in the area are old. There is slight evidence of new construction, but no smoke coming from any of the stacks.
Not far away, you can see the foundations of what appear to have been homes. Could this have been the beginning of a forced relocation, or are these just homes where no one lived anymore?
The contradictions between the socialist ideal and the North Korean reality couldn’t be more stark. Some live in splendor …
others live in squalor …
and others do not live at all.
If the reports of the Chinese troops in Rajin are accurate, one would certainly expect it to be accompanied by a surge of business investment and infrastructure reconstruction. That will be evident in the new imagery within the next year, and could well mean that the Great Wall of Rajin becomes, in effect, an international border around a massive area of North Korean territory. And perhaps a flash point for future territorial disputes.
Assuming the report is accurate, the most intriguing question may be just what Chinese troops are needed to protect Rason from. If true, the report implies that North Korea is not as stable as we’ve believed it to be.
Update: Curtis writes in to say that the Ferry Terminal is actually the “Korea Rason Taehung Trading Corporation,” which exports … food. As all nations with starvation and malnutrition undoubtedly do. Anyway, I’m not about to question Curtis, who does exhaustive research and detective work to reach his conclusions.
Update 2: More here on China’s plans for Rason:
A Chinese firm has signed a letter of intent to invest $2 billion in a North Korean industrial zone, representing one of the largest potential investments in Kim Jong Il’s authoritarian state and a challenge to U.S. policy in the region. [....]
The letter of intent involves China’s Shangdi Guanqun Investment Co. and North Korea’s Investment and Development Group. An assistant to the managing director of Shangdi Guanqun, who identified himself only by his surname, Han, said his company’s planned investment is focused on the Rason special economic zone, situated near North Korea’s border with Russia. [....]
Mr. Han said the plan is to develop infrastructure, including docks, a power plant and roads over the next two to three years, followed by various industrial projects, including an oil refinery, over the next five to 10 years. He said the company was waiting for a response from the North Korean government before applying for approval from China’s Ministry of Commerce.
“It’s all pending at this stage, and it’s really up to the Korean side to make the decision,” Mr. Han said. He added that the $2 billion figure was what the North Korean side had hoped for, not necessarily what his company could deliver. The company’s Web site says the company was “under the administration” of a state-owned enterprise, Shangdi Purchase-Estate Corporation. Mr. Han, however, said his company was “100 percent private.”
I’m sure any company with a few billion dollars laying around has assets in banks with U.S. correspondent accounts. Those assets can — and should — be frozen under Executive Order 13,551.
U.S. Increases Diplomatic Pressure on China, North Korea
Last week’s rumors that the Obama Administration was pressuring South Korea to talk to the North left many of us confused, wondering to what extent the rumors were true, and wondering if this augured a weakening of the administration’s policy (third item). The following days, however, saw leading members of the administration threatening a direct use of force against North Korea, suggesting that U.S.-Chinese relations are at a critical stage because of its failure to restrain North Korea, and reaffirming that the United States isn’t interested in talking with North Korea just for the sake of talking. Let’s begin with the comments of SecDef Gates in Seoul:
Mr. Gates also held out the possibility of direct talks between the South and the North as a precursor to the resumption of multiparty talks to end the crisis on the peninsula. The Obama administration has been trying to choreograph a resumption of the talks with the North that include China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
But a senior South Korean government official said that no bilateral talks were possible until the North agreed to preconditions from the government in Seoul about the agenda, which would include a discussion of the sinking of a South Korean warship last March, the North’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November and North Korean nuclear activities. He spoke privately because of the delicate nature of the issue during Mr. Gates’s visit. [....]
The official said the United States was not pressing South Korea to resume the six-party process, which ended in 2009 when North Korea withdrew. Nor did he expect that any significant announcements about a resumption of the talks would come from the trip by President Hu Jintao of China to Washington next week. [NYT]
Gates also talked about that uranium enrichment program that Dick Cheney and John Bolton made up:
The official, who has close knowledge of the so-called six-party talks aimed at dismantling the North Korean nuclear programs, suggested that the recent revelation of a new uranium enrichment facility in the North was “a very, very serious challenge and a real provocation.
“They must stop it immediately,” he said of the facility, which North Korean officials have said is operational. [NYT]
For its part, China seems to think that Sig Hecker is a part of the neocon conspiracy. That’s not a view shared by anyone who’s familiar with Hecker’s political leanings, but China has lately become accomplished at denying the undeniable:
“About the so-called uranium enrichment activities by North Korea that you’ve raised, it’s my understanding that Chinese people have not seen the site,” Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said at a forum hosted by China’s foreign ministry in Beijing.
“It’s some American experts who have seen the site, but even they did not see clearly… So this matter is still not very clear.” [Reuters]
Gates’s clarification on North-South talks gives credence to Slim’s suggestion that the United States is re-routing North Korea to South Korea to apologize for sinking the Cheonan and shelling Yeonpyeong.
“The DPRK leadership must stop these dangerous provocations and take concrete steps to show they will begin meeting their international obligations,” Gates said at an open session with his South Korean counterpart, Kim Kwan-jin.
“With regard to next steps on North Korea, diplomatic engagement is possible, starting with direct engagement between DPRK and the South.” [....]
The secretary said negotiations are still a viable option. “When or if North Korea’s actions show cause to believe that negotiations can be productive and conducted in good faith, then we could see a return to the six-party talks,” Gates said. [CNN]
Rather than pressing the South to talk to the North, Gates seems to be forcing North Korea to make nice with the South before the discussion of the next payoff even begins.
The Commanding General of U.S. Forces Korea also made the first direct threat of force against North Korea’s ballistic missile program from a sitting U.S. government official:
Appearing on the US public broadcaster PBS, General Walter Sharp, the commander of US forces in South Korea said while deterrence is the first and utmost priority against Pyeongyang’s provocations, Washington will also be “prepared to respond” if deterrence fails to refrain the North.
Such remarks follow the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ forecast earlier in the week that North Korea will likely develop intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the US within the next five years.
The general went further to say that Washington and its allies could consider demolishing Pyeongyang’s missile sites if circumstances forced them to do so.
The Kim Jong-il regime has already test-launched three intercontinental ballistic missiles, the last in April 2009, which traveled more than 3-thousand kilometers to land in the Pacific Ocean.General Sharp, meanwhile, spoke negatively about the North’s recent proposals for talks with Seoul, adding there is no evidence of the regime’s sincerity towards the denuclearization process. [Arirang News]
To which I’d only say that a combination of financial sanctions and subversive asymmetric warfare is far less likely to provoke a direct all-out conflict — including one that might involve China — than the military options that U.S. and South Korean officials are now threatening openly. I know you’re probably wondering how that can be done plausibly. I’m writing a detailed answer and will publish it when it’s ready, as time permits.
I’ll leave you with the full text of a speech by Hillary Clinton at the State Department last week, where Clinton made it plain enough that China’s enforcement of U.N. Security Council sanctions falls short of her expectations. Read it yourself, below the fold, or read Yonhap’s condensed version. All of these words are just that, of course. We’re not going to have China’s full attention until we show our willingness to impose sanctions on the Chinese entities that are propping up North Korea financially.
Kim Jong Il’s Biggest Enabler Is Coming To Town
Passing on an email from Henry at the NK Freedom Coalition (note newly redesigned website) about what they’ll be up to in D.C. the night Kim Jong il’s biggest enabler will be dining at the White House. For those not in or near D.C., we can participate, too:
On the occasion of the White House State dinner that President Barack Obama will host for President Hu Jintao of the People’s Republic of China on January 19, 2011, the North Korea Freedom Coalition cordially invites you to join us for a Candlelight Vigil to remember the North Korean refugees who have been repatriated against their will by the Chinese authorities to North Korea to face certain torture, certain imprisonment and even death for fleeing their homeland. We will begin gathering at Lafayette Park at 6 pm on Wednesday, January 19, 2011, for the candlelight vigil at 7 pm.  We will walk in front of the White House for a quiet ceremony carrying a coffin to remember all those who have died because of this policy, and we will read THE LIST of all the names known to us of the North Korean refugees who have been forced back to North Korea. Special guests will include North Korean defectors.
Please join us for this event by RSPVing to Henry Song at henry@defenseforum.org.
If you are not able to join but want to participate, there are two ways that you can help:
1) please send your letters — both personal appeals and letters from NGOs are welcome – to President Hu to stop repatriating the North Korean refugees by email to Henry Song at henry@defenseforum.org  – your letter will be delivered with many other letters at an undisclosed time to ensure receipt to the Chinese embassy on January 19.
2) please consider a donation in support of this event by donating to the North Korea Freedom Coalition at
http://www.nkfreedom.org/Donate/Donation.aspx
Hope to see you on January 19 or have your letter to President Hu Jintao to save the refugees in solidarity.
Candlelight Vigil Poster (PDF)
If the reason you can’t make it to the candlelight vigil happens to be that you’re in Seoul like me, mark your calendars for North Korean Freedom week here April 24-30, 2011.
Open Sources
You’re kidding me. Even the New York Times has written a perfectly sensible editorial about North Korea?
When President Obama and President Hu Jintao of China meet next week in Washington, this must be one of the top items on their agenda. Mr. Obama will have to forcefully argue the case that an erratic neighbor armed with nuclear weapons is anything but a recipe for the stability Beijing so prizes, or for an American military drawdown in the region.
The United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia need to vigilantly enforce sanctions on North Korea and find new ways to increase the pressure. It also makes sense to test the North’s intentions, so long as Washington and its allies go in with their eyes open.
We are all neocons.
Talks for thee, but not for me?
“When or if North Korea’s actions show cause to believe that negotiations can be productive and conducted in good faith, then we could see a return to the six-party talks,” Gates said. “But the DPRK leadership must stop these dangerous provocations and take concrete steps to show that they will begin meeting their international obligations.”
Contrast this with the New York Times editorial above, which says that the U.S. side has “nudged” South Korea back to talks with the North. If those are just talks at the DMZ or over hot lines meant to reduce tensions, I say fine. If we’re now opening up multiple tracks for nuclear disarmament negotiations, that’s a recipe for divide-and-chaos.
A report on South Korea’s plans to increase and toughen military exercises. Let’s hope they’ll get out of the habit of killing their trainees, though.
Ha Tae Kyung, founder of Open News / Open Radio for North Korea, has produced a graphic novel about Kim Jong Eun. I’m sticking to my doubts that Jong Eun is the mastermind behind Korean War II, even if the regime is spreading that story to build a myth around him. But in the myth-making contest between North and South Korea to shape Jong Eun in the popular consciousness, the South seems to be taking a decisive lead. I don’t doubt that Ha’s Open Radio is playing a significant role here.
One of the North Korean Reconnaissance Bureau officers sent to Seoul to murder Hwang Jang Yop has been sentenced to ten years in prison. North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.
There’s something almost uniquely North Korean about this combination of tactical perfection and strategic incompetence. The Reconnaissance Bureau successfully infiltrated two of its officers into South Korea, had them join up with an agent who’d been in the South for decades, and then botched a plot that would have created a global outcry — and all of this over a man who was then 87, and only a few months from dying of natural causes. Think of all the work the North went to to counterfeit a perfect C-note, only to realize a relatively paltry profit and incur devastating financial sanctions as a result. This doesn’t suggest a picture of a hyper-competent leadership directing its lesser minions, does it?
