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Monthly Archive: May, 2008

May 23, 2008

Death Star

Throughout the year the animals worked even harder than they had worked in the previous year. To rebuild the windmill, with walls twice as thick as before, and to finish it by the appointed date, together with the regular work of the farm, was a tremendous labour. There were times when it seemed to the animals that they worked longer hours and fed no better than they had done in Jones’s day. On Sunday mornings Squealer, holding down a long...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
May 21, 2008

Two Dispatches from Good Friends

Blogging will have to be light for a while, but fortunately, I’m now on the distro list for Good Friends, which welcomes recipients to redistribute its dispatches. Ven. Pomnyun also said Good Friends will increase the volume of dispatches it publishes. I’m going to republish two of them today, one of which I’ve grafed before. The obvious cautions apply, but overall, the evidence suggests that trends are very bleak in the short term — famine is killing a lot of...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
May 20, 2008

Hungry N. Korean Bureaucrats Become Shakedown Artists

“After food distribution being halted, many low-ranking officials stopped showing up for work. Instead, they started picking on people. They carry out frivolous inspections anytime they want to extort people,” said a source from North Hamkyung Province in a phone conversation with Daily NK on May 15. “Nowadays, you see all sorts of inspections going on. Those with a shred of authority all come to carry out inspections. They try to find fault with people and fine them in order...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change
May 16, 2008

The North Korean People Are Dying

Good Friends and the Daily NK continue to be our only sources of information about what is happening to the North Korean people as famine stalks some areas of the country. This isn’t going to be pleasant reading, and if you’re not well-braced to confront the hard realities of a collectivist utopia in which some animals are more equal than others, read no further. With the food crisis worsening on farms in Gumchun County in North Hwanghae Province, the number...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
May 16, 2008

Korean Church Coalition Launches Ad Campaign on Behalf of N.K. Refugees

I’ve been encouraged about the direction of the movement to publicize the plight of the North Korean people since the KCC and its leader, Sam Kim, threw their weight behind it. They’re bringing much-needed money, manpower, organization, and clout to the fight, and now they’ve launched a modest ad campaign in Korean-language media: I can’t wait to see how the Chinese netizens react to this. It’s probably true — though not necessarily helpful to their cause — that the image...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Refugees
May 15, 2008

Today, In Some Parallel Universe

Addressing the Israeli Knesset today, President Bush apparently said some inflammatory things: “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this...

Categories Appeasement/Iran/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics
May 15, 2008

Sung Kim’s Sideshow

Yesterday, the State Department’s Sung Kim was paraded before the cameras with seven boxes of documents handed over by the North Koreans. For the most part, the media have glossed this story as a tangible sign of progress in disarming North Korea, a conclusion that doesn’t seem very well supported if you read the entire transcript of the press conference. The key points I take from this begin with the best question asked at the news conference, apparently by Arshad...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks
May 14, 2008

N. Korea Human Rights Bill May Have Passed in House

[Update: I can’t confirm the final outcome, but I’m led to believe that the vote on these bills was put off at the last minute.] Someone supplied me (thanks) with this press release from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s office, dated yesterday: (WASHINGTON) ““ The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to approve two North Korea-related bills today coauthored by U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), including an initiative to improve procedures for resettling refugees and funding programs to promote human rights. Separate...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics
May 13, 2008

U.S. Food Aid on the Way to North Korea?

Here’s what the Financial Times is reporting today: Washington will supply 400,000 tonnes via the World Food Programme while US non-governmental organisations will distribute another 100,000 tonnes. President George W. Bush is expected to approve the deal “within days,” according to one official. [Financial Times, Demetri Sevastopulo] That probably means that at least the 400,000 tons of WFP aid will be channeled through the North Korean Public Distribution System, which has become infamous for diverting aid from less privileged people...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
May 11, 2008

Honestly, Baby, It’s Not Mine

Sometimes, I’m tempted to pity some of the more fervent faith-based deniers of North Korean nuclear proliferation: “I don’t buy everything in the video,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a nuclear expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  Mr Wolfsthal, who has spent time monitoring the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon on which the Al-Kibar facility was allegedly modelled, said the evidence appeared to support the allegations that Syria was constructing a plutonium reactor. Mr Wolfsthal said the evidence pointing...

Categories Proliferation
May 9, 2008

Leaked to OFK: Internal House Memo on N. Korea’s Support for Terrorism

Update: Link fixed, sorry. A reader and friend has provided me with an unclassified memo (thank you) summarizing a more detailed report by Larry Niksch of the Congressional Research Service (CRS).  The memo is addressed from Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to fellow House Republicans.  The memo reveals details that do not appear in this December 2007 CRS Report.  Although the links  to the Japanese Red Army are old news, there  is some alarming information...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
May 8, 2008

Growing Congressional Opposition to De-Listing North Korea as a Terror Sponsor

Well, other than the omission of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, uranium enrichment, proliferation to other terror-sponsoring regimes, and an oddly low figure for fissile material, North Korea’s disclosure is a full disclosure. Other than the nearly complete 50-megawatt reactor and an unfinished 200-megawatt reactor, it (sort of) caps North Korea’s ability to produce one kind of fissile material.  Other than the unknown quantity of completed nuclear weapons left in Kim Jong Il’s hands, it’s a breakthrough for disarmament.  And other...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
May 8, 2008

Anju Links for 8 May 2008

JOSEPH HONG, ONE OF LiNK’s RISING STARS and one of this site’s most valued readers, writing in the International Herald Tribune, asks, “Where has all the courage gone?” After summarizing the current conditions both inside North Korean and for the refugees who have managed to flee, Hong says: In light of this, it is fair to say that international institutions have totally failed in their duty to protect refugees and curtail human rights violations. President George W. Bush has met...

Categories Anju Links
May 7, 2008

The Venerable Pomnyun, the New Famine, and the Regime’s Stability

Update: SAIS just cancelled Friday’s presentation. Sorry. It is not the nature of famines to make heroes of men, but if a hero emerged from North Korea’s last Great Famine, it is the Buddhist monk the Venerable Pomnyun. I first heard of this man’s humanitarian work in Andrew Natsios’s “The Great North Korean Famine,” a book that, sadly, is must-reading once again. The Ven. Pomnyun, who leads the charity Good Friends, was one of the few South Koreans to speak...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
May 6, 2008

Trailer for New South Korean Film, “Crossing”

Update: LiNK’s Joseph Hong sends: LiNK WILL ALSO HOST a private screening of “Crossing” in NYC on Thursday, May 8 at the ImaginAsian Theater, 239 E 59th St (Btwn 2nd & 3rd Ave.) New York, NY 10022. There are only a limited number of seats, but if you would like to attend, please RSVP to joseph@linkglobal. Shin Dong Hyuk will also be speaking in other locations, and I hope to get you more information on that soon. [End update] Over...

Categories Korean Society/Refugees
May 6, 2008

Anju Links for 6 May 2008

MORE PROTESTS  against China’s repatriation of North Korean refugees  are scheduled  to take place  in Seoul.  The theme: “No human rights, no Olympics.”  If you live in the area and have a good videocamera (riot gear would also help)  there’s probably  a time that’s convenient for you: * Tuesday, 5/6, 2 pm, Chinese embassy, Seoul * Every week Thursday candlelight demonstration * Thursday, Date: 5/8, 7 pm, Seoul City Hall square * Every day at noon at the Chinese consulate...

Categories Anju Links
May 6, 2008

Military Second?

The Daily NK continues to be our single best source of information from inside the North, despite the obvious limitations in confirmation, not to mention translation.  One pseudonymous interviewee, probably a trader, reports that food is still available in most of the cities  from Pyongyang  to Sinuiju, but for an exorbitant price (the most at-risk areas are along North Korea’s other coast).  It’s thinly sourced but interesting nonetheless.  So far, the interviewee says that food continues to be available for...

Categories Famine & Food Aid