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Monthly Archive: October, 2006

October 27, 2006

Kim Jong Il Saved by a Fortune Teller?

The idea had crossed my mind, since there don’t seem to be rational explanations for so many of the things he’s been doing lately.  Via the Daily NK: Explosives targeting Kim Jong Il were found set up at the Yongcheon explosion. They were small explosives that cannot be made with North Korean technology, leading people to believe that they came from outside the country, and causing Kim Jong Il to become concerned over his safety. At the time of the...

Categories Uncategorized
October 27, 2006

What a Dumb Question

Sorry, but I don’t recall anyone except a collection of has-beens suggesting “military action” against North Korea.  But if you ask registered or likely voters what that means, I suppose the most reasonable interpretations are invasion and air strikes.  If so,  please count me firmly among  the 56%  opposed.  If it means interdicting their boatloads of Iran-bound uranium, as authorized by a U.N. resolution (which apparently means a lot to some people), then that’s how the question should have been...

Categories Media Criticism
October 26, 2006

The Return of Comrade Chung!

Comrade Chung has returned from the state of seclusion with which he’d graced us all since his humiliating defeat  last spring.  The most recent sighting was at Cheongbuk National University (Korean link): The  Sunshine policy and the North Korean nuclear are separate matters, not related to each other.  America’s U.N. Ambassador said, “The North Korean regime should be changed,” but I think that doesn’t solve the problem, and North Korean regime change should not be the goal of alliance between...

Categories Uncategorized
October 26, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 57: Time to End the Screen Quota

I’m about to go all screedy  about this, but I  can be  brief, because  Robert Koehler has pretty much said everything I’d have said anyway.   I generally write  “DOA” posts after an action by  either  government documents some new low in bilateral relations.  The government isn’t responsible for the content of what Korea’s notoriously militant film industry makes, but it wasn’t responsible for the content of “Yoduk Story,” either.   So on one hand,  fictionalized movies about  No Gun Ri  or formaldehyde...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Society/NK Economics
October 26, 2006

Where Is That Other Shoe?

[Update:   A State Department official who asked not to be identified said the sanctions authority, bearing the name of Senator John Glenn, who sponsored it in the Congress, is open-ended in the range of sanctions available. That official predicted that all financial and economic transactions with North Korea would be ended, except for humanitarian aid. ] We’ve all been waiting for othe other shoe to drop — for the U.S. to announce what sanctions it will impose — since North...

Categories Diplomacy/Money Laundering/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
October 26, 2006

Police Suspect Ex-DLP Leader of Being a N. Korean Intel Asset

More linkage between South Korea’s radical left and North Korean intelligence. Police raided the homes and offices of three activists, seized electronic files and photos, and obtained arrest warrants. One of those arrested is Lee Jung-Hoon, 42, a former leader of the far-left Democratic Labor Party. That’s not all he was the leader of, apparently: Lee was a leader of Sammint’u, or the Struggle Committee for Liberation of the Masses, Attainment of Democracy and Unification of the Nation, and was...

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
October 26, 2006

Annual Treasury Report on Counterfeiting of U.S. Currency Abroad

The full report is here, but it’s a big, fat, nasty pdf. Here’s the section on North Korea: 6.5.7 North Korea and the Supernote Since 1989, the U.S. Secret Service has led a counterfeit investigation involving the trafficking and production of highly deceptive counterfeit notes known as supernotes. The supernote investigation has been an ongoing strategic case with national security implications for the U.S. Secret Service since the note’s first detection in 1989. The U.S. Secret Service has determined through...

Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering
October 25, 2006

S. Korean Cabinet Shakeup: Unifiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok Will Resign; Defense, Foreign Ministers Will Also Step Down

Reuters Photo:   UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok and Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon at the National Assembly, Oct. 6, 2006. [Scroll down for updates]   Roh has not confirmed that he will accept the resignation of the UniFiction Minister who replaced Comrade Chung Dong-Young.  Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok was soon expected to confirm his intention to step down during a meeting with reporters, according to the officials. With Lee’s resignation, if accepted, the president is expected to reshuffle all of his...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Korean Politics
October 25, 2006

Nuclear Blackmail

Update:   A couple  of delightfully  subtle KCNA  quotes: “If South Korea joins  the PSI,  it will pay.” “South Korea, if you want to have security, trust in those who share your blood.” And spill it. “If the South Korean authorities end up joining U.S.-led moves to sanction and stifle (the North) we will regard it as a declaration of confrontation against its own people … and take corresponding measures,” the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/WMD/WTF?
October 25, 2006

Three More N. Korean Refugees Headed to U.S. from China

We’re about to see another test of that oddly arousing “lips and teeth” analogy. Two boys in their early teens without family and a man about 18 or 19 years old were taken without incident into the consulate in Shenyang with a member of Liberty in North Korea, according to a spokesman for the grass-roots group who asked not to be identified for security reasons. The group, also known as LiNK, operates orphanages in China that provide for North Koreans...

Categories China & Korea/Refugees/Uncategorized
October 25, 2006

Marcus Noland on Sanctions and Engagement

He makes several good points, but this is probably my favorite: If I lived in Korea, I myself would also support the engagement policy. Engagement is very important as a tool to induce the fundamental changes of the North Korean regime. But from some time back, the South Korean government seems to have lost its perspective. Engagement is just a tool to achieving the goal of making changes in North Korea, but now it seems engagement itself has become the...

Categories Appeasement/WMD
October 25, 2006

North Korea Sold Ryongchon Relief Donations

The first clue should have been why they said they needed 50 televisions (background  and photos  of the still-not-quite-unexplained disaster; click the first link and scroll down for a before-and-after gif animation using satellite images).  A North Korean government-sponsored company has reportedly been selling products to North Korean citizens using the nonprofit aid products received from the international community, including South Korea during the Yongchon disaster of April 2004. Members of a North Korean aid organization located in Dandong City,...

Categories Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid
October 24, 2006

‘Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.’

Reports the Australian: An  underground resistance movement in North Korea, capable of smuggling out videos of executions and staging violent acts of defiance, has emerged as the Kim Jong-il regime faces international sanctions for testing a nuclear bomb. Let’s contain our exuberance long enough to ask ourselves if it’s irrational.  Break this down into its components.  I do believe that  organized networks of guerrilla cameras, missionaries, and people smugglers  are  operating; that  they’re increasing  their reach inside North Korea; and...

Categories Resistance
October 24, 2006

‘Lips and Teeth’ No More?

You may recall the recent interview I did with Chuck Downs, in which Mr. Downs spoke of China’s  efforts to  court members of the North Korean military.  Downs suggested that this was a key concern to Kim Jong Il, and may have motivated him to test his officers’ loyalty.  According to this report, the North Koreans have just managed to roll up China’s spy network inside North Korea. CHINA’S People’s Liberation Army is pushing the Government to get tough with...

Categories China & Korea
October 24, 2006

More Grim News on N. Korea’s Food Situation

New reports are  predicting that things are looking bleak for North Korea’s food situation this winter. Millions of North Koreans are at risk of starvation this winter as humanitarian aid levels drop amid an international furore over the country’s nuclear bomb test. Aid agencies say much of the population is already surviving on basic rations and fear any further drop in food supplies could lead to a repeat of the 1990s famine that killed as many as two million people....

Categories "United" Nations/China/China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid
October 24, 2006

Proliferation Security Watch

*   Hong Kong authorities have detained a North Korean ship “Kang Nam I, a 2,035-ton general cargo ship,” which had arrived from Shanghai.  North Korean crew members and Hong Kong customs officials suggest that the inspection is related to a couple dozen safety violations, that the ship is empty, and that the inspections are not related to U.N.S.C.R. 1718.  Crew members claim that the ship will sail again in two days.  The Chosun Ilbo reports that the search didn’t...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/Money Laundering/Technology/Uncategorized/WMD