Monthly Archive: February, 2006

It never ceases to astonish me how many sober-minded people in Washington see no alternative but to wait around for China to force North Korea to reform and disarm, if only marginally. My response to that idea has always been a less precise version of what the ICG reports here: China’s influence on North Korea is more than it is willing to admit but far less than outsiders tend to believe. Although it shares the international community’s denuclearisation goal, it...

Andy Jackson, a/k/a The Flying Yangban (and OFK co-blogger) is now a dad. More pictures of the littlest Yangban here. We eagerly await a similar announcement from Brendan Brown.

Via the excellent Suburban Dissident blog, here’s the newest detailed report on the food situation in the North. The executive summary is that even accepting North Korean estimates of an improved harvest, it’s dramatically insufficient. . . . North Korea’s grain production rose 5.3 per cent to 4.54 million tonnes in 2005, helped by better harvests and fertilizer shipments from South Korea, South Korean data showed today. The 2005 harvest was still far short of the impoverished country’s annual demand,...

Yeah, admittedly this is geostrategery from a 19 year-old girl, but how functionally distinguishable is that from the Korean government’s policy? Said government is now removing the anti-tank barriers that ring the northern edge of Seoul, and which had been one of the only uncongested kill zones impeding an unlikely-but-still-not-unthinkable North Korean armored advance.

Incredibly, the National Human Rights Commission is saying it will do exactly that, specifically citing the constitutional provision conferring citizenship on North Koreans. There is a loophole. Sort of: “It is impossible for Seoul to exercise jurisdiction over North Koreans residing in North Korea or in a third country, but if a North Korean has his human rights violated by a ROK national agency in a third country, he may file a petition with the NHRC. It also added, “Though...

This SFGate article is completely unremarkable for those familiar with how things are in North Korea, up until the very end of the story: Even government officials privately say things need to change in North Korea. “I say I don’t believe in God, but every day I pray to God for change,” said a North Korean who requested anonymity. “I hope God is more powerful than those who don’t want any change.”

The document discussed the developing U.S. doctrine of “strategic flexibility.” The leaker is still unidentified, and plumbers have been called. With the number of Korean leaks of sensitive documents recently, it’s hard to be shocked about this. There’s almost the appearance of a policy of leaks as a negotiating tactic.

This summation from the Chosun Ilbo sounds about right to me: The U.S. is the only counterpart the North’s foreign policy recognizes. Seoul, for Pyongyang, is just a pawn to help it maneuver into a better position vis-à-vis the U.S. The result is that the U.S. no longer listens to Seoul and the North regards it as a mere foil in its dealings with Washington. The moment when the U.S. takes unilateral action to deal with all the problems it...

We have a test case for North Korea’s bellicosity about counterfeiting sanctions. KCNA has confirmed a meeting with Japan in Beijing on Saturday, reference normalization of relations. Presumably, abductions will be an issue, as they have always been. Meanwhile, Japan has just announced its own sanctions against banks that launder Kim Jong Il’s money, starting with Banco Delta Asia, but not stopping there, either . . . . The majority Liberal Democratic Party on Wednesday set up a working group...

The Chosun Ilbo is expressing relief. So, presumably, is Roh. Hopefully, this won’t deny us the pleasure of a good KCNA rant.

Seoul Mayor and current presidential front-runner Lee Myung-Bak is dipping his toe into new waters–the hitherto unpopular issue of human rights in North Korea . . . . “We can talk about the importance of human rights as much as we like and it does not mean that we deal with the issue as if we were fighting a battle,” Lee, 65, said. “It is not a matter of whether or not to do it, but a matter of how...

The Flying Yangban is still not finished documenting Freedom House’s Seoul conference on human rights in North Korea (you can read his excellent OFK posts on the subject here, right below my own posts on the FH Washington conference). Andy’s latest is the text of a speech by the Korean politician I most admire, and one of a very few I admire at all: Kim Moon Soo. New readers with a deep interest in Korean politics may want to read...

Nothing in the story connects it to North Korea, although the Bank of China has been the subject of published reports in connection with the “supernote” money-laundering investigation. From the Justice Department . . . . WASHINGTON, D.C. ““ A federal grand jury in Las Vegas has indicted two former managers of the Bank of China, their wives, and a relative of one of the couples on charges of racketeering, money laundering and fraud, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher...

A prediction: this traffic accident will not be viewed as an insult to national pride, and there will be no politically motivated demands to extradite the driver. Having taken my life into my hands on innumerable occasions to cross that very same street, I think it’s safe to say 40 mph was excessive. Fortunately, it sounds like the pedestrian will be OK.

I honestly don’t know how Rescue the North Korean People (RENK) would be able to receive reliable information that a North Korean is infected, but it’s interesting that the North Korean regime is now forced to respond to RENK’s reports. As usual, the UN is reduced to echoing the statements of the North Korean government without so much as telling us what access they were granted or denied to the allegedly infected area. The Food and Agriculture Office head who...