Kim Jong Un Buys up Luxuries; Christine Ahn Attributes Famine, Cannibalism Reports to “Political Bias”

When North Korea tried and failed to launch its Unha-3 rocket this year, it not only chose that launch instead of a big shipment of American food aid as the price of keeping quiet until November, it also lost the six-month supply of grain it could have bought with the money it cost to build the damn thing to begin with. But it’s good to see that those choices haven’t cramped the lifestyles of any North Koreans fortunate enough to live within range of an Associated Press camera:

Ten thousand rolls of tobacco, 12 bottles of Sake, and a handful of second-hand Mercedes-Benz cars are among the latest reported breaches by North Korea of a U.N. ban on luxury goods sales to the reclusive state, according to a confidential draft U.N. report.

Japan told a U.N. panel of experts that Pyongyang also imported thousands of computers and thousands of dollars worth of cosmetics and that almost all the goods were shipped through China, it was reported in the draft seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The five North Korean violations reported to the panel by Japan during the past year took place between 2008 and 2010. [Reuters]

China voted for U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874, which prohibit North Korea from importing luxury goods. Discuss among yourselves.

Here at OFK, we always try to present a balanced perspective, so I’ll just let you watch as much of this as you can endure.

10 Responses

  1. Wow. She takes a real beating there, polemically speaking. The interviewer may not have followed the issue as closely as Ahn has, yet he manages to make her look ludicrous. I love how she propagates the 3/26 conspiracy theories, too.

  2. Here’s Christine Ahn Part Two on the Stream. I like to help out whenever I can.

    No-one involved in the discussion even considered the Glans Plan for Korea. What a tragedy.

  3. I respectfully disagree. She didnt take much of any kind of beating as The Stream, worthy and welcome as it is, habitually suffuses the world of hard fact with the mist from the tweetosphere in order to retain fealty to its form statement. The presenter has some chops but the two sofa surfers are the kind of very pleasant, very inoffensive early post grads who always have one eye on latte time. Ahn is a tenacious enabler of one of the most perfected helot states in the history of anti-civilizations and ought to be there for the taking, maybe in interview by the operator of this blog. She must sleep in a state of agitated righteousness because there is other way she could get any significant kip.

  4. this is just a hunch, but it seems that when Christine Ahn was in grad school, she took the most alienating position possible for the most alienated regime in the world, as a means of getting attention for herself:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWTzyU5MFgM

    and she’s still only an “analyst” after how many years of touting the party line with derivative analysis? hopefully she’ll at least be an assistant director when the communist revolution takes over

  5. nevermind, she’s exec director of north korea’s fifth column here in the states, the korea policy institute

  6. I thought it was a good interview. If someone knowledgeable about North Korea had kept interrupting her, I wouldn’t have learned anything, and I might even have sympathized with her. Because she was allowed to speak, I could understand her position, and I could see for my self that she’s full of dirt.

  7. I meant “through” of course. Second thoughts, best not to think about her in bed at all