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Monthly Archive: September, 2008

September 30, 2008

Korean Kids Face Twin Perils: Poisoned Chinese Milk, Moms Who Use them as Human Riot Shields

Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode. BY NOW, WE KNOW THAT THERE WAS NEVER ANY SCIENTIFIC SUBSTANCE BEHIND all of those “Mad Cow” protests in Korea over the imports of U.S. beef.  So why so little protest over melamine contamination in food imported from China poses an actual, no-sh*t health risk to Korean kids who drink powdered milk?   It might even be a greater risk to the health of Korean kids than strapping them...

Categories Anti-Americanism/China & Korea/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
September 29, 2008

Interesting, in the unlikely event it’s authentic …

Just as I question those detailed reports on the progress of Kim Jong Il’s purported illness and recovery, I question the sourcing for this anecdote.  Still, it’s entertaining enough to warrant posting: On September 2nd, Chairman Kim of the National Defense Committee received a recent report on the food crisis. It was reported to him that many regions are suffering from severe food shortages. Apparently, he was even shocked to receive word that emergency measures are especially necessary because the...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il
September 29, 2008

Chris Hill prepares to sell us out one last time

[Update: I guessed right. Have a barf bag ready for this one, particularly when you get to the part where David Albright says that our proposed verification plan would have infringed on North Korea’s “sovereignty.” Remember Albright? He’s the guy who was accusing the Bush Administration of trumping up charges that the North Koreans were enriching uranium … until we found enriched uranium all over the same documents and aluminum samples North Korea submitted, in part, to prove that it...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
September 29, 2008

Do the Koreans Have a Future?

We’re all familiar with many of the ways in which the lives of North and South Koreans differ.  The Economist has published an interesting new piece describing some of these way, but which eventually focuses on the demographics of both nations and the greater region.  No doubt, from those differences arise very different reasons why the populations of both nations are declining. As to why the South’s population is declining at one of the fastest rates in the OECD, it’s...

Categories China & Korea/North Korea/South Korea
September 25, 2008

War on Prostitution Not Working So Well in North Korea, Either

As with their southern bretheren, the North Koreans are being reminded of the persistence of the oldest profession, largely because of the traditional confluence of state power and corruptable masculine hydraulics.  The Daily NK reports that some twenty North Korean officials in the city of Hamhung were removed from power — and several senior military officers were shot — over a whorehouse patronage scandal: The Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights (NKnet) reported in its journal “NK In...

Categories Kremlinology/NK Military
September 23, 2008

Anju Links for 24 Sept 08

YOU DON’T SAY! (Pt. 1): “Nuke Deal Not Likely by End of Bush Term.” The interesting take away from Nicholas Kralev’s piece is that the North Korean efforts to reconstitute their plutonium program are not focused on the old 5-MW reactor, but on the fuel fabrication plant. That would be consistent with my pet theory that the North Koreans are content to retire the old 5-MW model and start up the new 50-MW reactor instead. This also provided some amusement:...

Categories Anju Links
September 23, 2008

The Continuum: The Origins of Korean Politics

Before the allies arrived in Korea in September 1945, Korean politics existed only undergound and in exile, among  feuding  factions of various brands of radicals.  A search of Time’s  fascinating archives, which are completely free, shows that the American press paid little attention to events in Korea until American missionaries began reporting on Japan’s oppression.  This  attention increased in the 1930’s as  hostility rose between Japan and the United States, but exile politics received almost none of that attention. Less...

Categories Korean History
September 22, 2008

Grim Vindication: Predictably, Appeasement Fails to Disarm North Korea … Again

[Update:   Now they’re asking the IAEA to remove the seals and cameras.  More here.] There are some who can look back on decades of failure and learn nothing, while some of us looked into the future two years ago and foresaw everything.  One Agreed Framework should have been enough for any observer possessed of an average ration of common sense.  Crediting myself with that much, in March of 2007, I wrote a post in the form of news reports...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
September 19, 2008

Starving Soldiers Deplete North Korea’s Meager Harvest

I got too busy to keep an eye on Good Friends’ updates for a while,  but on my commute home last night, I managed to eke out the time to read some items that caught my interest.  Overall,  people continue to die by the dozens, though not yet by the hundreds or thousands.  The starvation seems localized, yet those localities are distributed across the country, including the regions surrounding Pyongyang.  But what I’m watching for most keenly is a sign...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Military/Regime Change
September 17, 2008

Ho Hum, North Korea Violates 2 More U.N. Resolutions, World Yawns

Remember that fancy new North Korean missile test site that was in the news the other day?  North Korea has reportedly conducted an engine ignition test for a long-range missile, presumably the Taepodong-2 missile with a range of 6,700 km, at a new long-range missile test site under construction in Dongchang-li, North Pyongan Province. For the test, the rocket engine of a missile is laid out horizontally at the test site and ignited to test its performance. The test confirms...

Categories "United" Nations/Proliferation/WMD
September 16, 2008

Joe Biden Is Blocking North Korea Human Rights Legislation, and You Can Help Un-Block It (Update: Biden’s Staff Denies, Predicts Bill Will Pass This Term)

[Update:   Not so, says Frank Jannuzi, who wrote in after I put up this post.  According to Jannuzi, Biden has never blocked this bill and has never opposed the two provisions mentioned in the post below.  As to the refugee provisions of H.R. 5834, Jannuzi says Biden supports them just as they are in the House version.  Jannuzi also says that not only does Biden support a full-time Special Envoy with ambassadorial rank, Biden offered the amendment to the...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
September 13, 2008

Anju Links for 13 September 2008

HELLO! ARE-YOU-THE-BRAIN-SPECIALIST!?   More rumors about Kim Jong Il’s health, and speculation about what might follow him, at the New York Times.  The Times doesn’t specify, but another report claims it was brain surgery. THIS TIME, I TEND TO AGREE WITH THE CONSENSUS VIEW of post-KJI North Korea, whenever that eventually should grace us all:  military junta with Dauphin figurehead to lend legitimacy to puppetmasters.  But with the regime so economically weakened and unpopular, one can’t help thinking that the...

Categories Anju Links
September 11, 2008

Wake Me Up When There’s an Unscheduled Military ‘Parade’

The latest report on Kim Jong Il’s condition — for what it’s worth — is that he is recovering but partially paralyzed on his left side. Foreign doctors, possibly from China and France, performed the operation after Kim, 66, collapsed about Aug. 15, the newspapers Dong-a Ilbo and JoongAng Ilbo reported, citing unidentified government officials. Kim’s condition has improved and he is not suffering from slurred speech, a disability often associated with a stroke, the reports said. [AP, Jae Soon...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
September 10, 2008

Also, In a Just World, Isaac Hayes Would Still Be Alive

That night there came from the farmhouse the sound of loud singing, in which, to everyone’s surprise, the strains of Beasts of England were mixed up. At about half past nine Napoleon, wearing an old bowler hat of Mr. Jones’s, was distinctly seen to emerge from the back door, gallop rapidly round the yard, and disappear indoors again. But in the morning a deep silence hung over the farmhouse. Not a pig appeared to be stirring. It was nearly nine...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
September 8, 2008

Verify Distrust: Kim Jong Il’s Next Move

No one exceeds Kim Jong Il at the production of belligerent and grandiose theater. So exactly what sort of kind of theater is he putting on for international monitors at Yongbyon? That may depend on what you’d rather believe. Do you remember a time, back when Roh Moo Hyun and George W. Bush were still the presidents of their respective nations, when South Korean leaks always cast the Americans as too suspicious and inflexible? My, how times have changed. North...

Categories Uncategorized
September 7, 2008

Hill: We Would De-List N. Korea Even Before Verification

Why, all we need is one more set of promises: THE United States will take North Korea off its terrorism list “immediately” if it can agree on a way to verify its nuclear facilities, America’s top nuclear envoy Christopher Hill said today. The renewed pledge followed a flurry of meetings here after North Korea said it had stopped dismantling its Yongbyon nuclear reactor and started taking equipment back to the site. “I want to stress that we’re not looking to...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
September 4, 2008

Congratulations to Suzanne Scholte

Suzanne Scholte, the President of the Defense Forum Foundation and head of the North Korean Freedom Coalition, has been awarded the Seoul Peace Prize, which comes with an award of $200,000: In a press conference held at the Seoul Press Center on Wednesday, Lee Chul-seung, chairman of the Seoul Peace Prize Cultural Foundation, said, “We selected Scholte as the winner this year for her contribution to improving human rights of North Korean residents and North Korean refugees, and bettering the...

Categories Activism/South Korea/U.S. & Korea