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Monthly Archive: February, 2007

February 8, 2007

Wiesenthal Center Condemns Anti-Semitic ‘Monnara Iunnara’ Comic Book

A few initial observations before I relate the rest of this story.  First, I predict that no embassies will be burned and no riots will ensue as a result of these comics. Second is a story that I may never have told here, but will tell now.  In February of 2004, when British newspapers first reported that North Korea was killing men, women, and kids in a gas chamber at Camp 22, near Hoeryong, North  Hamgyeong Province,  I (and others)...

Categories Korean Society/Racism
February 8, 2007

Watching Porn in Pyongyang

Question: How much can you get for a smuggled DVD of a South Korean soap opera in Pyongyang these days? Answer: Ten years in Camp 15. Still, in the latest of a flurry of signs that the Thought Police aren’t what they used to be, the DVD’s are wildly popular anyway (hat tip to Ampontan). “This year, North Korean authorities waged what they call ‘psychological warfare’ against ‘exotic lifestyles’ by cracking down on South Korean pop culture,” a senior government...

Categories Deprogramming/Inside NK/Korean Society
February 8, 2007

‘Asia’s Darfur’

The better the words Jay Lefkowitz speaks, the more the rest of this administration seems to be drifting toward appeasing the regime at any cost.  I admire his efforts to attach the plight of the North Korean people to a worthy cause that has received so much attention from the media, Hollywood, and the Human Rights Industry, but I’ve come to the conclusion that  Lefkowitz’s approach is all wrong.  What Lefkowitz and others need to grasp is this:   hatred of...

Categories Activism/Human Rights
February 7, 2007

OK, But in All Fairness, Chomsky Pyschosis Is a Diagnosis, Too

John Feffer could be more accurately described as a  hack  apologist for  its regime than an authority on North Korea.  Feffer recently won  himself a  Bruce Cumings  Prize  for the  year’s  most  spectacularly ill-timed defense of the indefensible.  What the Soviet archives did for Cumings’s academic reputation,  the Havel-Wiesel-Bondevik report  ought to have done for Feffer’s denial of Kim Jong Il’s culpability for the great famine  that sacrificed millions of lives for nukes and missiles,  had anyone actually read what...

Categories Media Criticism/Unintended Humor/WTF?
February 7, 2007

Also Translates to ‘Cleanse’

Hoeryong, North Korea,  labors under  some unenviable distinctions:  it is one of the worst, most blighted places in arguably the world’s worst, most blighted country; it sits near Camp 22, almost certainly the very worst place to be on this earth; it is a hot spot in  North Korea’s  spreading mystery-pandemic; it is a major transit point for people who are trying to sneak out of North Korea; and it contains some of North Korea’s most discontented and potentially rebellious...

Categories Inside NK/Refugees
February 7, 2007

Why Is North Korea Even in the United Nations?

Claudia Rosett asks some very relevant questions about North Koreans, who are very likely regime intelligence assets, being given the U.N. equivalent of civil service examinations.  Successful completion of those examination would bring them into the General Secretariat.  I wonder what unsuccessful completion of those examinations would bring.  But I digress. I suppose that spying on the U.N. would not make North Korea unique, but  giving the world’s most  tyrannical  and belligerent nation  a key to  the Secretariat … now...

Categories "United" Nations
February 6, 2007

Mass Escape at N. Korean Concentration Camp; 120 Escape

[For images of North Korea’s nuclear sites, click here; for updates and commentary on North Korea’s latest nuclear test, click here; for images of other concentration camps, click here and here; for more Google Earth imagery of North Korea, click here.] [Update 11 Feb 07:   North Korea denies it] The Daily NK reports: Sources residing in the district of Chongjin, North Hamkyung informed on the 1st and 5th “On December 20th, a mass group of 120 prisoners from the...

Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/Inside NK/Resistance/The Camps
February 6, 2007

Come Here and Let Us Hate You!

Don’t get me wrong; I actually like Dick Cheney.   He’s from Wyoming, which practically makes him a neighbor, and he  may be one of the few people out there who’s hard-line enough for my taste, particularly on North Korea, but you have to admit that he has lacked rock star appeal recently.  That’s why it’s puzzling to see even hypersensitive South Korea feel slighted by the fact that Cheney will give the place a miss in an upcoming Asia trip. ...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
February 6, 2007

Uri Officially Loses Plurality in National Assembly

Much sound of little rat paws scratching on wet  steel plate today: “With our deep regret and apologies to the public, which is against the Uri Party, we are determined to give up our current power and become a seed to form a new united party,” Lee Jong-gul said at a press conference, accompanied by other defectors. The mass defection reduced the ruling party to second place in the 296-member parliament with 110 seats. The helm was transferred to the...

Categories Korean Politics
February 5, 2007

Three Questions About ‘Monnara Iunnara’

A reader wants to know (I’m paraphrasing here):  First, the series was first published in June 2004, but are there any new developments,  other than  bloggers just catching on now?  Second, Gimm-Young looks like a reputable publishing house — they carry a lot of big American titles.  Does anyone else know anything else about them?  Third, are there any recent articles documenting the popularity of the series, whether in Korea or anywhere else? Your help is greatly appreciated.  I may...

Categories Korean Society
February 5, 2007

Disciplinary Erosion Hits N. Korean Border Guards

The Daily NK reports that two border guards were caught taking money to allow refugees to cross the border and will be executed.  Although the state can’t decide whether to hang or shoot the two unfortunates, or how to schedule it around the Dear Leader’s birthday,  past history suggests that  the deed  will be carried out publicly to make an example of the men.  Consider the  example set.  Of the two reported consequences, only one seems to have been intended: ...

Categories Inside NK/NK Military/Refugees
February 5, 2007

We Are (Not) One

When I reported to Korea for my first tour there, I recall walking around Yongsan with another Army officer looking at all the Korean civilians and wondering how many were North Korean  sleeper agents.  Hey, even paranoid people have enemies.   I remember that officer saying, “I don’t claim to be able to tell North Koreans from South Koreans.”  I laughed, but that was before I actually met any people I knew to be North Koreans.  My views have since...

Categories Korean Society/Reconstruction
February 5, 2007

Courage?

Plenty of other bloggers have already pointed out the logical fallacy of columnists characterizing Chuck Hagel as “courageous” for undermining our soldiers fighting al Qaeda and other terrorists and thugs  in Iraq while  the polls show overwhelmingly escapist  sentiment at home.   The latest  Orwellian suffix to “support our troops” is “deny them reinforcements.”   What  this shares with other such feel-good manipulations is that it could never survive utterance in a roomful of actual troops and a live audio feed.  Yet...

Categories Terrorism/Iraq
February 5, 2007

Wobble Watch: Kaesong

In a one-hour meeting with Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said that while it is unrealistic to recognize the goods made in the border city of Kaesong as South Korean, there is room left to negotiate within the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries, Unification Ministry officials said. “Lee stressed that U.S. recognition of the goods produced in Kaesong as South Korean will contribute to bringing about a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula....

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics