9 April 2007

PRESIDENT LEE CALLS FOR the release of a South Korean man held at Kaesong. Or, they could declare him to be a North Korean citizen and put him to work on the assembly lines for two bowls of rice a day.

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE: The Daily NK talks about targeting Kim Jong Il’s finances with sanctions. More here. Also, this bit of perspective:

The total amount that North Korea had spent developing nuclear weapons and missiles is placed at around 2.6 billion dollars. The cost of the latest test is guesstimated at 300 million dollars. 300 million dollars is the value of one million tons of rice even according to the high international grain prices of last summer. If this one million tons of rice plus grains domestically produced last year had been provided to the people, they could have been fed for a year or more.

During any freezing winter night, kotjebi who have lost their parents and homes die from cold, holding each other desperately for warmth. In April, when the snow thaws, young kotjebi corpses are revealed by the spring sunshine. Meanwhile, the government has just launched a long-range missile with that money for the sole purpose of preserving his dictatorship regardless of the desperate reality of his 23 million people. [Daily NK]

A PROGRESS REPORT on defector broadcasting to North Korea.

A VETERAN OF THE NORTH KOREAN SPECIAL FORCES describes the training regimen there. Grumbling about training must be universal for soldiers in every army.

NORTH KOREA’S BLACK MARKETS: Healthier than Kim Jong Il, anyway.

MEET SOUTH AFRICA’S VERY OWN Robert Mugabe. For someone who spent three glorious, hopeful months working in South Africa while apartheid was dismantled right before my eyes, this is very depressing stuff.