Anju Links for 3/19
* Radio Megumi. An international body has granted Japan permission to increase broadcasts into North Korea. The broadcasts will be directed at a small audience: its abducted citizens. I tend to think that Japan would see them home again sooner if it broadcast words of dissent and subversion to the North Korean people.
* Short-Selling Appeasement. Japan now stands alone in standing up to the North Koreans in Beijing: not one Yen until you give us back our people. I have to wonder whether Japan will have much success on its own, but Japan’s leaders are probably calculating that this deal will not last. The question is how long, when the U.S. side has developed an Uri-like willingness to indulge mendacicty, intransigence, and crime.
* One Million Bottles of Extra-Strength Sudafed, Please. Japan has identified three factories — apparently of its own colonial-era contruction — that are now used to produce the high-quality meth now sold on its streets. If you know where to look, you can find them in Chongjin, Wonsan, and Nampo. There may also be a fourth in the area of Sinuiju.
* Al-Yahoo Watch. Jules Crittenden fisks pro-terrorist media spin. Meanwhile, the big home-front story of the week was the impressive turnout of counter-protestors, which clearly surprised the organizers of the original “surrender now” demonstration. I don’t think anyone will ever outcompete the hard left and its prepackaged cadres of professional activists at a game they invented, but this does suggest more effective mobilization by those who oppose them.
* Killing the Goose. For those who think the Kaesong Industrial Park is teaching North Korean apparatchiks about capitalism, observe their latest extortionate demands on the business tenants there. Recall that Kaesong hasn’t proven to be all that profitable for all of its tenants, despite slave labor wages (most of which the workers may never even see) and financial help from South Korea. So if the North Koreans remain ignorant of how balance sheets work, just what lesson do you suppose they’ve learned?
One thing we could do is work with Japan on interdicting NK vessels believed to be transporting drugs in the Sea of Japan or near other Japanese ports.
Of course, this would cause a lot of people to go batshit. The talk of Japan rearming and moving toward regional domination again would flare up – as well as the idea the US is pushing it to prepare for future geopolitical conflict with China. It would set back Japan’s relations with Korea and China – when they are already terrible (on the surface) with South Korea. And it would damage US relations with those two nations. And it might lead to NK doing some bloody provocative things.
And that is the world we live in…..
Where moves to actively and publically combat a bad situation everybody knows is going on ——- NK as a state making and smuggling meth – one of the most destructive drugs around today (just come to Georgia to see) —- ….when moves to combat this drug smuggling would create a whole boat load of more bad blood between allies ————– than the bad acts themselves create for the enemy….among some of those allies …. and the world media…