Archive for February 2011

Mesh Networking: Another Way to Bring Cell Phone Service to North Korea?

February 20, 2011 Subversion, Technology 10 comments

This video gives a simple explanation of the concept of mesh networking, which allows android phone users who download some additional software to connect with each other wirelessly without a base station or cell phone towers. An Australian group known as The Serval Project is trying to raise funds to test and prototype the technology, and OFK reader Josh Hansen wrote me a few weeks back to start a discussion about the potential this technology could have for bring cell phone service to North Korea, without the obvious involvement of any foreign government.

Here’s how the Serval Project’s founders explain the potential for mesh networking to penetrate closed societies:

Mesh Networks in Authoritarian Regimes, with Dr. Paul Gardner-Stephen, founder of the Serval Project by salimfadhley

Several months ago, I wrote about the potential of cheap portable base stations to cover much of North Korea with a cell signal. The obvious drawback to that concept is that this system still depends on a centralize network with base stations, which would have to be hosted on South Korean territory. South Korea probably still lacks the testicular fortitude to allow that.

Personally, I lack the technological knowledge to say whether or not this could work. I’d be interested in your thoughts below, in the comments.

Open Sources: China blocks U.N. report on NK uranium program

February 19, 2011 Anju Links One comment

Guess which responsible rising power is enabling Kim Jong Il again?

China has told U.N. Security Council members it plans to block publication of a U.N. special report that accuses North Korea of violating sanctions on its nuclear program, Western diplomats said. [....]

Diplomats told Reuters that China informed council members it would block the publication and transfer of the report to the full council. They said China’s move was odd since one of the experts who prepared the report, Xiaodong Xue, is Chinese.

I sure hope Mr. Xue’s family isn’t in China right now.

The panel’s report, which was seen by Reuters, says that North Korea almost certainly has several more undisclosed enrichment-related facilities. It also says that Pyongyang’s uranium enrichment program and its development of a light-water reactor are serious violations of U.N. sanctions. [....]

The panel also voiced concern that North Korea might “transfer fissile materials or the means of producing them” to foreign countries due to its shortage of hard currency. The panel has previously suggested that Pyongyang may have aided Syria, Myanmar and Iran with nuclear or missile technology.

The panel concluded that the North’s enrichment program, which Pyongyang says it began in April 2009, must have been developed much earlier, over the course of “several years or decades” and appears mainly to be for military purposes.

In February 2005, Selig Harrison alleged “that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the data” about North Korea’s uranium enrichment program to scuttle the first Agreed Framework. In August 2009, Harrison told an Associated Press reporter that, “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.

And since you may also be reading, Mr. Chinoy, isn’t it time for you, too, to concede that critics of both agreed frameworks were right after all?

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Whatever you think motivated the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong attacks, I see no sign that those motivations have changed. Hence, I wouldn’t discount this:

North Korea may stage another attack “in months and not years,” said Navy Admiral Robert Willard, the top U.S. commander in the Pacific.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il appears to be training his son “on a compressed timeline” in “coercive measures” like the attacks last year that killed 46 sailors on the South Korean Cheonan warship and four people on the island of Yeonpyeong, Willard told a forum sponsored by the Asia Society in Washington today.

“We may very well be facing the next provocation in months and not years,” Willard said in remarks that also touched on China and Southeast Asia.

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Who the hell still believes this crap?

A “big and bright halo” floated above Mt Paektu, revered by North Korea as the sacred birthplace of leader Kim Jong-il, to mark his birthday on Wednesday, state media reported.

KCNA news agency, the secretive state’s main news outlet and renowned for its colorful propaganda, said the “mysterious natural wonder” occurred at the break of dawn.

“The bright sun rose up, throwing its brilliant rays and the area of the Paektusan Secret Camp turned into a fascinating picturesque of spring. Then rarely big and bright halo persisted in the sky above Jong Il Peak for an hour, starting at 09:30,” it said.

I doubt anyone in North Korea believes this, including the people who write it. The only purpose for forcing people mouth this nonsense is intellectual subjugation — a rape of the human mind that crushes hope and self-worth.

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A BBC video report on the deteriorating food situation in North Korea. But really, is the situation this year really any different from the grim indications we see around this time every year? With North Korea, it’s always something.

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North Korea has completed its missile launch site on its West coast.

Open Sources: Two Thumbs Up for P.J. Crowley

February 17, 2011 Anju Links, Diplomacy 5 comments

The week’s most interesting North Korea rumor relates to Kim Jong Chol, who was recently spotted at a Clapton concert in Singapore, occupying a seat whose price could have fed every homeless orphan in Chongjin for a month:

Japan’s Fuji TV caught up with Jong-chol at an Eric Clapton concert in Germany in June 2006. The broadcaster reported that he appeared to suffer from a condition where his body secreted abnormally large amounts of female hormones, causing his physique and voice to become feminine, possibly as a result of steroid abuse prompted by his fascination with Belgian actor Jean Claude Van Damme.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that! The news of Jong-Chol’s night on the town seems to have revived the Obama Administration’s campaign promise to talk to our enemies anytime, anywhere. Yet somehow, I don’t think the hippies right-thinking people who applauded then were expecting these tweets from the poison thumbs of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley:

#KimJongIl’s son attended an #EricClapton concert in Singapore? Actually, the #DearLeader himself would benefit from getting out more often.”

Now that’s my kind of diplomacy! And there’s more:

“Of course, there is nothing preventing #KimJongIl from opening up #NorthKorea so his people could enjoy #Clapton, and maybe get more to eat.”

How much do you have to hate peace to be so impudent? This is no less devastating than “hellish nightmare” or “axis of evil.” Just imagine the howls if John Bolton had said that! But this year, crickets and Selig Harrison will chirp, and that will be all. As it should be.

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Put this one in your “the sanctions are working” file:

As North Korea suffers from drought and food shortages, Kim Jong-Il may be turning to rip-off luxury goods for his gift bag. The Associated Press reports that for the past three months North Korean officials have been purchasing clothing and textiles, including fake Gucci and Armani suits, in bulk from Beijing’s Silk Street market.

Yeah, well, I guess they need the money for animal feed (for the soldiers, no doubt). In North Korea, that’s called progress. More here.

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How do you walk through a mine field without blowing yourself up, unless you know where not to walk?

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I don’t care what your political views are: Justin Beiber’s Obama impression is spot on. It cramps my fingers to say this, but the kid (I mean Bieber) isn’t completely untalented after all.

Open Sources: Lugar Sounds Cautious Note on Food Aid

February 15, 2011 Anju Links 8 comments

I hope he means it:

“Any resumption of U.S. food aid to North Korea should be contingent on North Korea allowing access and accountability by monitors in accordance with international standards,” Sen. Richard Lugar (R-In) said in a statement. “It is essential to ensure that the U.S. assistance is actually received by hungry North Korean children and their families rather than reinforcing the North Korean military whose care is already a priority over the rest of the population.”

More here. I like Dick Lugar as a person, but he sometimes acts like the Junior Senator from the State Department. I wonder if the rising threat of a primary challenge from the right is causing him to take more strident positions. I can’t imagine that the people of Indiana would think highly of the idea of feeding the North Korean army this year. In the past, of course, we’ve extracted some modest concessions from the North Koreans on monitoring, only to see North Korea renege on those concessions within a few months and refuse further aid. North Korea’s obstructionism of foreign food aid has been so determined that I’ve long inclined to the view that North Korea wants to keep certain political classes of its population on the verge of starvation (or worse) as a tool of political control.

We’ll know that the regime is serious about transparency when it allows aid workers to distribute and monitor aid distribution, and — key point — to stay long enough to conduct long-term nutritional surveys. Until then, we’d be better off organizing and assisting money smugglers who can harness the power of the market to draw food toward those North Koreans who need it most.

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Here’s another story on the contracting city limits of Pyongyang, which offers varying explanations about why North Korea is doing this.

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Over to you, Kushibo: “Meng Jianzhu, China’s public security minister, congratulated Kim’s youngest son Jong-un on his appointment as vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission last year, “hailing the successful solution of the issue of succession to the Korean revolution,” KCNA news agency reported.” This is followed by some “expert” interpretations of what “succession” means in this context, but I don’t find those interpretations very persuasive.

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Wow. That’s a lot of snow.

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Have a look at the leaflets that are presently falling on North Korea.

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Veterans remember Chipyeong-ni: “In the aftermath of Chipyong-ni, the (Chinese) Army limped north,” he said. “It was the last Chinese offensive of the Korean War, and within four months the Chinese high command requested truce talks. The next time an American president goes to Beijing, we should ask Yo Yo Ma to play a sonata in remembrance of their bravery.

The Sanctions Are Working

February 15, 2011 Sanctions, Uncategorized 5 comments

In April of 2009, I laid out a series of ten tough non-military options that I didn’t believe President Obama would have the spine to apply to North Korea. At the time, North Korea was about to test our new president by launching a Taepodong II missile in the general direction of Hawaii. I can’t fail to begin this article without conceding that Executive Order 13,551, signed on August 30th of this year, ought to count as full or partial credit for at least items 1 and 2.

At lunch with a journalist friend earlier last fall, my friend asked me if I saw any evidence that what I like to call Plan B was working at exerting useful pressure on North Korea. I answered that I saw no direct evidence of that yet, but that I expected to in the coming months. I attributed this confidence to the past success of the sanctions applied to Banco Delta Asia in 2005, no matter how much some sanctions opponents would like to deny that success. But if asked the same question today, I’d give a very different answer.

So how do you detect financial duress in a place that’s been starving for years? By looking for signs of shortages in those segments of the North Korean economy and population that have always been high economic priorities, even while everyone else was starving. Those priorities include showpiece industries, the military, the elite, and of course, Kim Jong Il’s own opulent lifestyle. There is now some evidence that each of these priorities has recently been underfunded.

First, North Korea has revived Bureau 38, which manages the personal assets of Kim Jong Il. Yonhap thinks this means the regime is under financial pressure. The Chosun Ilbo adds some context:

“It seems the North in 2009 merged Room 38 with Room 39, another special department that handles a network of business operations, but separated them again in mid-2010,” a ministry official said.

According to a North Korean source, Room 38 handles the private slush funds needed to buy luxury goods for Kim Jong-il and his family as well as gifts for officials, while Room 39 deals with executive funds to pay expenses for party events.

A source in the North said the regime merged Room 38 with Room 39 in March 2009 to simplify management of Kim Jong-il funds but apparently restored Room 38 in September last year, since it had become difficult for Room 39 alone to earn enough hard currency due to tightened international sanctions against the regime. [Chosun Ilbo]

I have already noted the evidence that the regime is having an unusually difficult time feeding its army this winter. While some soldiers have been going hungry for years — I’ve noted examples regarding North Korea’s border guards with particular interest — the recent evidence suggests that airborne and “special forces” units are also suffering. That is unprecedented, even if we can agree that “special forces” is a somewhat imprecise term, and that most of these reports are anecdotal.

Then there are the key industries. North Korea’s steel mills and coal mines are largely idled.

Finally, the regime has been forced to reduce the size of the capital and home of the elite:

North Korea has halved the size of Pyongyang in a possible bid to ease the burden of keeping the loyal residents of the capital well-fed amid deepening food shortages, sources here said Monday. According to the sources that cited 2009 and 2010 almanac maps from North Korea, the city of 3 million has relinquished most of its southern half and a portion of its west to surrounding areas.

“We believe about 500,000 people have been excluded as Pyongyang citizens since 2009,” one source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the maps were obtained through intelligence means. [Yonhap]

Ordinary North Koreans have been hungry since the early 1990′s, but last year was much worse because of the Great Confiscation. The markets have only partially recovered from this disastrous series of policy decisions. Evidence of rising food prices has to be put in context; food prices tend to rise every year around this time, as winter stocks are depleted. The fact that the regime has gone begging for aid means that this year may be different, and adds weight to suspicions that the elite and the military are sharing some of the pain.

To this evidence, we might as well add the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong outrages. Extortion certainly seems to have been one plausible motive for these, and much as North Korea might have wanted, some would now offer North Korea a payoff for this conduct. But despite some signs of impatience with “strategic patience,” the Obama Administration continues to tell North Korea that refusing to negotiate in good faith only means more isolation. And despite the North’s insistence that it won’t talk until we lift sanctions, the administration’s answer — for now, at least — is that it has “no intention of removing those sanctions as an enticement for dialogue.”

Let’s hope they stick with it. We’ve seen this pattern before: North Korea shows an unexpected (to some) interest in diplomacy when we apply economic pressure. This isn’t to say that talks are likely to get us anywhere in the foreseeable future, but it by backing our diplomacy with real force, it might create the conditions for diplomacy to work. Some day.

By any objective measure, the Obama policy toward North Korea is tougher than that of his predecessor. This still isn’t saying much. In any event, North Korea’s recent behavior arguably forced President Obama to impose sanctions, something his foreign policy team never intended to do when it came into office. On paper, the new executive order is a very powerful tool, but it’s still not clear how determined the administration will be about enforcing it. As it becomes increasingly clear that China is circumventing U.N. sanctions toward both Iran and North Korea, Treasury has yet to take action against any of the Chinese entities funneling funds and technology in violation of the sanctions resolutions China voted for.

At least to my eyes, the President’s policy still lacks a coherent and plausible objective. A negotiated disarmament of the Kim Dynasty isn’t that. I harbor the hope that perhaps the administration has seen the light, but isn’t ready to step out of the regime change closet. But at least give President Obama the credit he is due for finally attaching consequences to Kim Jong Il’s actions.

Open Sources: Yes, it’s going to be another hungry year in North Korea

February 14, 2011 Anju Links 15 comments

For some time, I’ve been reading reports that North Korea has been stricken by foot-and-mouth disease, which doesn’t directly affect human beings, but kills cattle. According to Radio Free Asia, the disease has now spread across North Korea, including Pyongyang. Previously, I hadn’t attributed too much significance to the reports; after all, how many North Koreans can afford to eat meat anyway? But then there’s this: North Korea’s medieval agriculture relies on oxen. If the oxen die, farmers can’t plow or sow their fields.

This year’s severe cold is another reason why aid agencies are warning that North Korea is headed for another very lean year, although you can doubtless find a post in my archives (start here) for every single year saying that it’s going to be a tough year for some reason or another, usually flooding. Could all of these reports of impending disaster really be true? Of course. It’s just that there’s little reason to believe that international food aid can do anything to ameliorate it.

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Marcus Noland writes that the widespread American perception that China accounts for 70% of North Korea’s bilateral trade is grossly overstated, due to the accounting methods of South Korean sources. When this argument comes from a source like Noland, it’s hard to be dismissive of that. The point I take from this is that South Korea is content to lay all of the blame on China for propping up Kim Jong Il, when its own contribution to that result (Kaesong) remains substantial. Even so, there’s ample evidence that China has great economic leverage against North Korea, and that it continues to willfully aid its weapons trafficking, proliferation, and human rights atrocities, and that it continues to funnel enough cash to the regime to keep it afloat.

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Chris Green comes through with a report from a North Korean soldier who defected recently: “All the training I got in 12 years of Army life was marching every Saturday, winter drills for two months and summer training for one month. My memories of special forces training are of mountain warfare, a little bit of marching, some target practice, studying topography and swimming.

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In Seoul, an NGO exhibit on North Korea’s prison camps has attracted an astonishing 20,000 visitors, including South Korea’s First Lady. This is yet another example of something that couldn’t have happened in Seoul even two years ago. I’m not going to go so far as to say that North Korea’s recent behavior has shattered South Korea’s apathy about what happens in the North, but it has cracked it. Hat Tip: Dan Bielefeld and Justice for North Korea.

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Video: North Korean refugee kids graduate from high school, and Robert King is there. Well, good for him!

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North Korean defectors plan to celebrate Kim Jong Il’s birthday with another leaflet balloon launch.

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So Christine Ahn Has Her Work Cut Out for Her: North Korea is tied with Iran for the honor of being America’s least favorite country, at 11 percent. I’d guess that at least half of the 11 percent are thinking of South Korea.

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Mike Chinoy may be the last man on earth who still bothers to ask why Agreed Framework II fell apart, and 38 North has to be the only forum that would host that tired discussion: “It would be nice to believe that only Pyongyang was responsible, but that is not the way it was and the North knows it.” (Sigh ….)

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I can’t wait to see what Kushibo does with this one: “I heard from a reliable source in China that Kim Jong Il and Kim Ok have a 7-year-old son,” she tells Korea Real Time. “They got married about two years ago.“

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Kim Jong Il Death Watch: In this edition of our ghoulish vigil, we look at largely baseless speculation about Kim Jong Il’s liquor-sodden kidneys, his black little heart, and his stroke-addled cranium.

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Don Kirk isn’t terribly excited about the revolution in Egypt, fearing that things will only get worse. And now that the Egyptian military is in power, be sure to read his lengthy explanation of its links with the North Korean arms industry, a/k/a Bureau 99.

Open Sources

February 11, 2011 Anju Links 17 comments

The Donga Ilbo carries this heartbreaking photograph of the homecoming of South Korean POW who escaped after 61 years in captivity: “He escaped from North Korea in March last year and returned home in November. He settled at his sister`s home in Seoul after spending three months at a government-provided safe house.”

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In an article co-authored by our friend Chris Green, the Daily NK looks how the regime works to prevent a coup d’etat in North Korea. Unless the subject is soccer, I seldom disagree with Chris, and the article is well worth reading, but would have been even more interesting had it assessed the evidence of deteriorating morale and discipline (maybe he’ll give us his assessment in the comments). Certainly a coup is far more likely today than a broad popular uprising, but it’s also far less likely to give the North Korean people the government they deserve, at least in the short term. It may well be that a coup could weaken the regime’s control machinery enough that a popular uprising might be possible another day. The other plausible path to reunification? An insurgency.

Note to Chris: I’ve been trying for going on a year to put a feed of your excellent Destination Pyongyang blog on my sidebar, but my old version of WordPress doesn’t seem to like your feed.

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Speaking of great North Korea blogs, Marcus Noland has rolled out a new blog to accompany “North Korea: Witness to Transformation.” Just perusing the entries, I can see this one will be one of my daily reads, starting with Marcus’s entry about remittances, which he calls “the revenge of the politically unreliable.”

I hope WordPress likes his feed.

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The Asahi Shimbun has a very interesting profile of the life of a North Korean overseas trader: “Although they feel responsible for the future of their country, they generally work alone in a foreign land. Their family members are kept “hostage,” and they must resort to secretive tactics to bypass international sanctions to feed their leaders’ voracious appetite for Japanese products. Yet being a trade agent is a favored occupation among North Koreans. The job allows individuals to live a fairly free life outside of North Korea and can lead to the accumulation of wealth. That is, if everything goes well.”

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Nice: “Former Cincinnati Reds shortstop Barry Larkin will travel to South Korea and meet North Korean defectors next week as part of U.S. efforts to use baseball as a tool of diplomacy. The State Department said Larkin and former Montreal Expos pitcher Joe Logan will visit Seoul, Gwangju and Jeju Island to hold clinics, meet defectors and speak to students.”

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Just for the wonks: The Federation of American Scientists links to a CIA report that assesses the impact of floods on North Korean agriculture. I hope I’ll find the time to read this, because I’ve often suspected that the effect is (a) exacerbated by ill-advised on-the-spot guidance, particularly those that caused deforestation, and (b) exaggerated at moments of convenience, to bring in food aid, which is invariably misallocated.

Open Sources

February 10, 2011 Anju Links 5 comments

Damn. It’s still Groundhog Day! “Military talks between the rival Koreas have “collapsed,” a unification ministry official in Seoul said on Wednesday, dealing a setback to efforts to restart international aid-for-disarmament talks.”

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Robert King on food aid:

“The United States policy is that when we provide assistance, humanitarian assistance, it is based on need and no political consideration should be involved. That’s the first condition,” King said in an exclusive interview with Yonhap News Agency in Seoul. The two other principles are to balance demands and requests as resources are limited, and to ensure transparency in aid distribution “to be certain that aid we provide goes to those who are most vulnerable, those who are most in need,” King said, adding that any aid request should meet those criteria.

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A Strong and Prosperous Nation!

North Korea is reportedly importing animal feed grain from China to distribute on the market for human consumption as the regime struggles with food shortages. According to Radio Free Asia, Pyongyang gave the animal feed to its military as well as to merchants, bringing down the surging cost of rice.

Sure, you may scoff at the idea of importing animal feed for human consumption, but in the case of North Korea, we should at least be thankful that it’s not the converse. And any money Kim Jong Il spends on feeding human beings is arguably an improvement in his fiscal priorities.

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Don Kirk has a much longer piece on North Korea and Egypt in the Asia Times. I hope they’re paying Don something for his work, because its standards and talent have reached such a nadir that without Don’s contributions, I’d drop them from my RSS entirely.

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A report on the spreading of corruption in North Korea. North Korea may be the only place in this world where one woman’s travelogue is newsworthy. Reports of this kind are often inconsistent in their finer details, reflecting the fact that North Korean society is like an ice cube tray.

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The latest Good Friends dispatch is here.

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The Onion profiles a courageous Chinese dissident.

What Don Rumsfeld Got Right

February 9, 2011 An Alliance?, Anju Links, Anti-Americanism 5 comments

Writing at Korea Real Time, Evan Ramstad quotes from a memo written by Don Rumsfeld in late 2002, shortly after Roh Moo Hyun was elected President of South Korea on a wave of anti-American rage:

“As you know, the new President-elect [Roh] has stated that he wants to review the relationship,” Mr. Rumsfeld wrote. “Rather than pushing back, I think we ought to accept that as a good idea. If we had recommended it, we could be accused of destabilizing the peninsula, but he recommended it.

Over the next two years, Mr. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon and Mr. Roh’s defense ministry negotiated a substantial drawdown of U.S. troops in South Korea, from about 39,000 to about 28,000. As well, they began the discussions that led to an agreement in 2006 for South Korea’s military to take control of its own troops in wartime. Since the Korean War of the 1950s, U.S. commanders have had wartime control of South Korean troops.

Mr. Rumsfeld so wanted to see a change in the U.S. position in South Korea that, in 2005, he quickly agreed to Mr. Roh’s request for wartime control. “You’re pushing through an open door,” Mr. Rumsfeld told Mr. Roh’s defense minister at the time.

Mr. Roh initially wanted the wartime control transfer to happen in 2009, but later agreed for 2012. Last year, current South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, representing conservative forces who were alarmed by Mr. Roh’s aggressive push to reduce South Korea’s reliance on the U.S. military, forged a new agreement with the U.S. to delay the transfer of wartime control until 2015.

But Mr. Rumsfeld’s desire for change in the U.S.-South Korea alliance was clear in that December 2002 memo.

“We have been there since 1950,” he wrote. “It is time to rearrange the relationship and put the burden on the South Koreans.

The irrational, manipulated anti-Americanism of the bleating herd isn’t directly mentioned here, but it’s the subtext of the whole discussion. A few months later, Rumsfeld was in Korea, telling American soldiers there that the Pentagon was thinking about “making some adjustments” to USFK force levels. Suddenly, the same Roh government that had whipped up and exploited anti-Americanism for its political advantage (and would do so again) began telling the protesters to dial it back. Rumsfeld went forward with the troop cuts anyway, in a move that apparently shocked Roh’s people.

If it were up to me, the Eighth U.S. Army would be commanded by a Staff Sergeant stationed on Cheju-Do. But given the power and influence of the Korea lobby in Washington, Rumsfeld probably did as much as he could. Events have proven Rumsfeld right. The shelling of Yeonpyeong and the sinking of the Cheonan have shown the limits of U.S. deterrence, notwithstanding its financial cost to American taxpayers. In the meantime, South Korea spent about seven billion dollars extending the survival of the North Korean regime and financing its capacity to threaten not only the South Korean people, but Americans who might one day be the victims of weapons proliferated by Kim Jong Il.

South Korea should close Kaesong and encourage remittances.

February 8, 2011 Famine & Food Aid, NK Economics, Refugees, Regime Change, Subversion 8 comments

The Chosun Ilbo reports that as the North Korean diaspora swells, those who have escaped are forming stronger financial links with their hungry families in the homeland. And this has some people concerned:

North Korean defectors settled in South Korea are sending some US$10 million a year to their families back home, it was reported on Sunday. The amount is expected to grow as there are more than 20,000 North Korean defectors in the South and the number is increasing, a government intelligence official said. Now the government is investigating what the effects of these growing remittances may be.

After noting the potential positive effects of capitalism spreading in the North, the article finds that this threatens to punch a gaping hole in international sanctions against Kim Jong Il’s regime.

At the same time there are concerns that the increased money wired by defectors back to the North could undermine international sanctions against the communist country. North Korea earned around $300 million a year by selling seafood and sand to South Korea, but all trade was suspended after the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan last year. And tours to North Korea’s scenic Mt. Kumgang resort, which generated $500 million in revenues over 10 years, were halted in July 2008.

A South Korean government source said, “We cannot rule out that money is being wired to North Korea by pro-North factions in the South who are aware that it is difficult to crack down on money transfers.”

Uh huh. And just who are these devious agents of Kim Jong Il?

Some 3,000 to 5,000 of 20,000 defectors settled in South Korea are sending W1-5 million (US$1=W1,117) each to their families back home through middlemen every year, the government and defectors’ organizations believe. The North could import about 18,500 tons of Thai rice ($540 per ton) or some 43,000 tons of corn ($230 per ton) for $10 million.

I appreciate that the Chosun adds that necessary context, to which I’ll add some more: the Kaesong Industrial Park is still “pumping $50 million per month into the collapsed North Korean economy.” That’s $600 million a year, every penny of which goes directly to the regime. Maybe I missed where the Chosun Ilbo and the Administration it supports have called for Kaesong to be closed.

If there are concerns, then, about undermining sanctions — not to mention South Korea’s own credibility in calling on other nations to enforce sanctions — that’s where the concern should begin, not crumbs for hungry kids. Why, after all, would Kim Jong Il bother to tap into small-time illegal remittances when he’s raking in $600 million a year, directly from South Korean taxpayers? If South Korea is worried about complying with the spirit and letter of UNSCR 1874, let it close Kaesong. Unless it has reason to suspect that the remittances are being diverted away from starving family members — like with, say, much of our international food aid — it should keep its hand off what North Korean refugees send home.

Also interesting is who isn’t participating in this debate — that is, all of the people who were telling us during the Sunshine years that pouring aid into Kim Jong Il’s bank accounts would change North Korea. Subsequent events have resolved that question. But now we have a kind of engagement that really is transforming North Korea, because it largely circumvents Kim Jong Il and reaches the North Korean people. In that light, shouldn’t South Korea latch onto remittances to help break the economic dependency of the people on the regime, break down the socialist economy, and allow for the financing of alternative institutions and organizations? Remittances could play as important a role in the subversion of the regime as DVD’s, radios, or cell phones. The supply chains for North Korea’s markets are providing most of the other electronic instruments of subversion that are breaking North Korea’s information blockade. This is to say nothing of the humanitarian impact.

If South Korea wants to change North Korea — in exactly the way we were once told that the Sunshine Policy would — it would do everything it could to encourage these remittances. First, it could legalize money transfers to North Korea, provided they’re done through licensed transfer brokers. Licensing would be done at the advisement of the National Intelligence Service, which would help establish a registry of “reliable” money smugglers. Second, it could set up a simple insurance system to protect remitters against financial losses (you know, like it did for Kaesong). Third, it could regulate and monitor transfers to ferret out those that were in fact regime subterfuges, and to ensure (to the extent possible) that the money was sent to recipients who were in legitimate financial need. Establishing cell phone links to North Korea could eventually prove helpful to this verification. In the meantime, if you’re looking for economic inducements to transform North Korea, then find a way around Kim Jong Il. The money smugglers are showing us the way.

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