Anju Links for 3 Sept 08
MORE REGIME COLLAPSE PROGNOSTICATIONS from Strategy Page. What all of these articles are trying to describe is a gradual process whose pace we can’t really measure, although their high-altitude description of the process seems about right. What also seems likely is that the regime will last through the year, given the passage of the spring and summer without any significant incidents of unrest. Soon, the pre-harvested fall crops will come in, and the worst shortages may be over until next spring. In any event, I don’t see widespread famine as a danger to the regime; it’s hunger among the military and the elite that threatens it. For this year, I’m moving DPRK government bonds from “sell” to a cautious “hold.”
NONE OF WHICH MEANS THE NORTH KOREAN PEOPLE ARE CONTENT: Largely due to Lee Myung Bak’s new refugee policies, the number of North Korean refugees arriving in the South is expected to exceed 3,000 this year. That would be a tremendous jump — about double last year’s figure.
WFP OFFICIAL SAYS N. KOREA NOT IN A FAMINE YET:
Tony Banbury, the WFP’s regional director for Asia who has just spent a week in the reclusive country, said North Korea risked sliding back into famine if it did not get help now, with people already resorting to foraging to sustain themselves.
“We don’t believe it’s a famine. We are intent on making sure it doesn’t turn into one. The operation will have a huge impact in preventing a worsening of the situation,” he told a news conference in Beijing, referring to their new aid appeal. [IHT]
I tend to view WFP statements like this skeptically. On the one hand, Marcus Noland recently told us that the WFP had overstated North Korea’s annual food needs for years, thus inflating the amounts it asked of international donors. On the other hand, I suspect the WFP understates conditions the frank discussion of which could alarm or offend the regime. Banbury in particular has tended to go soft on the regime. That said, the food situation is still so opaque that no one really knows anything for sure. My general take, however, is to credit the repeated reports by Good Friends that there is significant starvation mortality in the southern provinces and the far northeast. And that would be a famine as I see it.
THE LATEST NORTH KOREAN SPY SCANDAL continues to unfold. Spyware has been found on a ROK Army colonel’s computer:
A military intelligence source on Monday said the e-mail was sent early last month to the colonel via China. The source added that the e-mail was programmed to automatically steal stored files if the recipient opened it.
But whether military secrets were actually stolen by way of this e-mail was not known. Military authorities are reportedly alive to the possibility that military secrets were leaked, considering that the recipient is in charge of the South Korean military’s central nervous system — Command, Control, Communication, Computer & Information (C4I). [Chosun Ilbo]
THE LONG ARM OF KIM JONG IL: Other defectors are worried about the regime’s infiltration of their circles and threats to their families back in the North with the somewhat alarming report that arrested North Korean spy Won Jeong-hwa “attempted … to kill high-profile North Korean refugees, including Hwang Jang-yup.” Funny how the South Koreans don’t seem to be nearly as prickly as the North Koreans about interference in their internal affairs.
SO FAR, THE U.S. GOVERNMENT ISN’T BACKING DOWN on verification:
Speaking to reporters in the week North Korea announced it is halting the disablement process, Vershbow said, “We need to be able to use well established verification techniques if we are to have confidence that the verification is accurate. Some of the things North Korea provided, such as Russian aluminum tubes samples and thousands of documents “raised as many questions as they answered,” he said.
ONE AREA IN WHICH LITTLE SEEMS TO HAVE CHANGED after Roh Moo Hyun’s departure is South Korea’s continued resistance to paying half the cost of keeping USFK on it soil:
The United States has asked the Korean government to pay at least 6.6 percent and up to 14.5 percent more for the upkeep of U.S. Forces Korea next year.
According to documents distributed by the ruling Grand National Party on Thursday, the U.S. wants Korea to increase its share from the current 42 percent to 50 percent in the long term, and immediately to reflect either last year’s inflation rate of 6.6 percent or the 14.5 percent, average inflation increase rate between 1999 and 2004.
The Korean share this year was W741.5 billion (US$1=W1,082). With a 6.6 percent raise, this will grow to W790.4 billion, and with a 14.5 percent hike to W849 billion. Korea is against the proposal, saying it can only manage a raise of 2.5 percent, which is last year’s domestic consumer price growth rate.
The two sides have a tough task ahead in the second round of high-level talks on the issue, which resumed Thursday. [Chosun Ilbo]
The Pentagon isn’t the State Department, and they’ve been very unhappy about this for years, but don’t expect any dramatic announcements in an election year.
THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM DOESN’T HAVE MUCH TO SAY about Korea, and what it does say is more significant for what it doesn’t say than what it does say, which is much like the Korea policy George Bush nominally held but never aggressively pursued during his first term:
Another valued ally, the Republic of Korea remains vigilant with us against the tyranny and international ambitions of the maniacal state on its border.
The U.S. will not waver in its demand for the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs, with a full accounting of its proliferation activities.
We look toward the restoration of human rights to the suffering people of North Korea and the fulfillment of the wish of the Korean people to be one in peace and freedom. [RNC Platform, opens in pdf]
Yeah, right. They could never get away with this if anyone was actually paying attention. For those who didn’t notice it, the Bush administration’s recent last-ditch efforts to appease Kim Jong Il and all that they never actually accomplished get nary a mention, which suggests (a) that foreign policy conservatives hate it; (b) that McCain isn’t a fan, either; and (c) that it’s blowing up in our faces. I hope that’s just a figure of speech. More at the Chosun Ilbo.