North Korea Calls Off “Arirang”

No Arirang  for you. 

North Korea has suspended its large-scale gymnastic and artistic performance due to damage from recent heavy rains, the country’s state media reported Monday.

“It has now become hard to continue the performance as working people in different parts of the country are all out to recover from the flood damage these days,” the Korean Central News Agency said. “The performance is expected to be staged again after the flood damage is cleared away.”

The “Arirang” festival, named after a famous traditional Korean folk song, was held in 2002 and 2005, but was cancelled last year due to floods.  [Yonhap]

I accept cash (See Also,  fourth item).   The only other person who had suggested that the North Koreans would call off this monstrosity was  Daily NK writer Kim Song-A, who also explains why that wasn’t as easy a  decision to make  in North Korea as it would have been anywhere else:

In 2005, the Arirang performance profited $11mn and having cancelled the show last year, many argue that it would be difficult to abandon the show two years in a row. It’s also possible that this was a measure to inhibit disturbances amongst the North Korean people while further exemplifying the systems prosperity.  [Daily NK]

Never mind that going ahead with Arirang and cancelling the summit would have been almost the height of bad manners.  Almost, but not quite.

See also:

*   Kim Jong Nam is back in Pyongyang, just in time for a severe shortage of all kinds of food, even those  pan-friend Chinese donuts he seems to  have been  living on.

*   North Korea can’t give its all to flood recovery when it’s forced to expend construction equipment, fuel, labor, and materials on border fencing  to keep its people inside.

*   Karan Bhatia, who helped negotiate a pretty lousy FTA with South Korea that Congress may not pass, is leaving.  It may not be fair to blame Bhatia, because I don’t know what his instructions were.  He may have done his best with a bad hand.

*   Roger Simon talks about how American companies that had recently agreed to a Code of Ethics are back to helping China censor blogs and comments.  He wonders what bloggers can do, which is an ambitious question that may  impute too much importance to us.  He  has decided on a blog boycott of the Beijing Olympics, except for plenty of writing about their censorship.  I’d be agnostic about the Olympics  no matter where they held them — I was an atheist in the  three-channel days  before cable —  but China’s dissent-smothing tactics are par for their repellent course.  I guess I’ll do what I would have done anyway, then.  Rebecca MacKinnon thinks that the corporations helping the Chinese government lack “cojones,” but finds that the Chinese crackdown isn’t really scaring Chinese bloggers that much.

*   Here’s an interesting study in visual contrasts that pretty much speaks for itself:

*   I wasn’t much of a Park Geun-Hye fan.  I think she would have been an unimaginative, reactive, reactionary “stewardship” president at a time when South Korea needs to be led toward reunification by bolder leadership (I fear Lee Myung Bak will lead it sideways, which is at least better than backwards).  But during the campaign, Park displayed her  intellect, gravitas, and extraordinary cool under extreme stress.  She has now added another favorable quality to that list — class —  with her gracious acceptance of defeat in the Grand National Party primary.  Lee’s camp has also reached out to Park’s people, perhaps sensing that they include some talented minds who could serve the country well.  Next step:  the campaigns should drop their libel suits against each other (!).

*   I’m all for  cultural exchanges that reach audiences of ordinary North Koreans and which don’t provide the regime inordinate financial benefits.  What would the North Koreans think?  “What, no horns?”  “I expected their noses to be larger and more hook-like.”  If you’ve actually met some North Koreans, you see how deeply ingrained this fear/hate propaganda is.  They often act terrified of foreigners; they’re quite literally xenophobic.  I’ve long believed, at least since I started this blog, that this was  one important reason to insist on direct distribution of international food aid. 

*   Chris Hill and his North Korean counterpart  will meet in Geneva this weekend to talk “next steps.”  If the recent Tokyo Shimbun report is true, that step ought to be very clear. 

While North Korea last month shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, analysts believe Pyongyang will be reluctant to carry out the next phase of the accord in which it must make a complete declaration of all its nuclear programs and disable all existing nuclear facilities.

“This will be looking at the next steps in the process and how we can … come up with the next set of items for us to take forward as we move into the disablement phase of the six-party talks,” said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.

“I wouldn’t look for this meeting to produce specific conclusions,” he added, saying it was likely to work on recommendations for all six countries to consider.

While the U.S.-North Korea working group is ostensibly to discuss normalization of relations, Casey made clear that North Korea keeping its commitments to give up nuclear weapons was a precondition to the full establishment of diplomatic ties.  [Reuters]

A complete and truthful declaration of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and programs is not something that should take more than 24 hours.  But just watch it take all year, and for that matter,  just watch us give them all year.