Anju Links: Food Woes, A Lefkowitz Resignation Rumor, OPCON, and Reforming the HRC

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE WEATHER IN CHINA? Dozens are dead and thousands of travelers have been stranded. It’s severe enough that the Chinese government is worried about its own food supply later this year.

“The impact of the snow disaster in southern China on winter crop production is extremely serious,” said Chen Xiwen, the government’s leading expert on the agricultural economy. “The impact on fresh vegetables and on fruit in some places has been catastrophic.” [Daily Telegraph]

Add this to previous reports we’d heard about existing food supply problems and high prices in China, and their effect on North Korea, and one begins to wonder what this will mean for Kim Jong Il. The Daily NK is now confirming a reduction or cutoff of food supplies from China, which has caused food prices to rise sharply in North Korea. With South Korea now saying its aid to the North will have to be more transparent, and with North Korea’s own food supply situation growing dire, we may soon be in a position of strength to negotiate a more transparent food aid system. We’ll blow it, of course. Just watch.

DID JAY LEFKOWITZ TRY TO RESIGN? Lefty WaPo columnist Al Kamen, who seems happily unconcerned that there really are human rights issues in North Korea, passes along the rumor. Apparently, President Bush talked Lefkowitz out of it. Yes, I’m sure he finds the cover useful. Here’s , which is quite good.

SO OBVIOUSLY, IT MUST BE A RAGING SUCCESS: “2 Koreas agree to cut back empty cross-border cargo trains.”

NO CHANGE IN OPCON: For now, anyway. Gen. B.B. Bell, speaking to the Korea Society, answers President-Elect Lee’s misgivings about transferring OPCON to the South Korean military with clarity, saying “there is no need” to renegotiate it because there’s “no military rationale” for it. It is good that we expect consistency from other nations in how they deal with us. Nations, like individuals, must learn to live with the consequences of their bad decisions or they’ll never learn to make better ones.

BAEKRYEONG ISLAND, the land that the UniFiction forgot.

ANOTHER ANTI-CORRUPTION DRIVE in North Korea, this time at the agency that manages foreign investment. Treat these reports with extreme caution, even though the report as a whole is very interesting and well worth reading. While I certainly believe that there’s plenty of corruption in North Korea, you never know when these reports are really mischaracterizations of purges.

WILL LEE M.B. REFORM THE HRC? At times, my attitude toward South Korea’s tragically laughable Human Rights Commission was that Complete, Verifiable, Irreversible Dismantlement was the only way. Still, with so many genuine human rights concerns in both Korea, but particularly the North, there is much good that it could do. One of my fondest hopes for adult government in South Korea is that it will make something useful of the HRC. Rumors that this may in fact happen are giving liberal lawyer Jeong Jeong-Hun a case of the vapors at the Hankyoreh. Jeong’s argument is all procedure and no substance. It would be minimally persausive if he faced the pink elephant in the room; instead, he never once mentions North Korea.

JAPAN AND THE SOTU: Bush’s complete failure to mention North Korea is the worst of all worlds to Japan. It shows how badly the diplomacy is going and reflects the shallowness of Bush’s interest in North Korea as a regional danger and as a threat to its own people. Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura actually ended up telling his countrymen not to panic.

IN THE DAILY NK, BRUCE KLINGNER of the Heritage Foundation offers advice so good it should be intuitive:

“When you negotiate, you have to set perimeters and expect that the other nation will live up to its previous commitments…. One of the flaws of the joint statements of last February and October was that the text was so vague. It did not clearly delineate the linkages, the timetables, or define the requirements. In the interest of getting North Korea to agree on something, U.S. negotiators have watered down the agreements.

“But even more importantly, … the reason for them missing the deadline is there is such a wide gap between the perception in the U.S. of what North Korea has to do and what it is willing to do. Because of the gap, right now, it is unlikely that North Korea will fully comply with the declaration. [Daily NK]

Klinger adds that “[v]irtually every analyst” he’s spoken with on any continent doubts that North Korea will ever denuclearize. And on Syria, he says that the Bush Administration’s silence does it no good. Read the whole thing.