Anju Links for 30 April 2008
MUST READ: Andrei Lankov talks about North Korea’s food situation in the Asia Times.
BETTER THEM THAN US, PT. 2: Ten North Koreans were killed in that Israeli air strike on a nuclear reactor in Syria:
The intelligence officers told NHK the 10 killed North Koreans, who were helping build a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria, were believed to be officials from the Munitions Industry Department (No. 99 Department) of the North Korean Worker’s Party and North Korean sappers, or engineer soldiers. They said the bodies were cremated in Syria and their remains transported to North Korea the following day. [Chosun Ilbo]
I find it even more intriguing that two or three more North Koreans can’t be accounted for. In light of previous reports that Israeli commandos were on the ground in Syria at the time, my initial thought was to wonder if that has anything to do with how we got those photographs from inside the reactor. The Daily NK, however, reports that South Korean intelligence is trying to track down some of those unaccounted-for North Koreans.
MARCUS NOLAND AND STEPHAN HAGGARD predict lean times for North Korea this year:
“The country is in its most precarious situation since the end of the famine a decade ago,” said the paper from the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Stephan Haggard, who wrote the paper with Marcus Noland, said the sharp increase in world prices for commodities had sent ripples through the communist state’s economy. [….]
“The North Korean rice market is much more integrated with world markets than most people think,” Haggard, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, said by telephone. [Reuters, Jon Herskovitz]
UNICEF is also reporting that the food situation is worsening, although their report doesn’t add much detail that you haven’t read here before.
NORTH KOREA’S REJECTION of a South Korean plan to exchange permanent liaison offices with the North could mean a reduction of overall contacts. Perhaps not coincidentally, South Korean subsidies for the Kaesong Industrial Park are declining, and there are signs that investor interest is also fading.
SOME PICTURES OF A PROTEST at the Chinese Embassy for North Korean Freedom Week, courtesy of the Daily NK. This time, the Chinese didn’t throw rocks or bottles.
I HAD TO MISS A SPECIAL SCREENING of the new South Korean film, “Crossing,” because of work obligations, and I especially regret that after reading this:
The screening was a somber affair. The audience began shedding tears during a scene in which the main character, Kim Yong-soo (Cha In-pyo), a former player for the South Hamgyong provincial soccer team, leaves his sick and starving wife (Suh Young-hwa) and his 11-year-old son Juni (Shin Myung-chul) and sets out for China in search of food.
More tears came as Kim’s wife succumbed and a distraught Juni chased after the truck carrying off his mother’s body, crying that she not be taken away. Kim eventually makes his way to South Korea, but it’s there, through a refugee settlement broker, that he learns of his wife’s passing. “Why does Jesus exist only in the South?” he laments. “Why do you neglect North Korea?”
An In-ok, a former North Korean refugee, cried bitterly in the back of the theater, watching as the film told a story reminiscent of her own. An was separated from her 13-year-old son Lee Myung-ju while being chased by Chinese police after fleeing from the North in 2003. Eventually the audience, which had been quietly wiping tears away, started crying together. Even after the film finished at around 5 p.m., many in the theater sat frozen in their seats, overcome with sadness.
Dennis Halpin called the film a “masterpiece,” and said it made clear the North Korean tragedy. He compared the film to “The Diary of Anne Frank”, saying the movie could reveal to the world the miserable fate facing millions of North Koreans just as “Diary” exposed the horrors of the Holocaust. Peter Beck called “Crossing” the best film yet made about the subject, and said he hoped many people would see it to gain a better understanding of the situation in the communist country. [Chosun Ilbo]
Dennis Halpin is the former U.S. Consul General in Pusan and a senior Republican staffer in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Halpin, the House’s top Korea expert, works closely with Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and who worked for Henry Hyde before her. Peter Beck, a fluent Korean speaker and avowed liberal, now leads the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.