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Monthly Archive: September, 2009

September 20, 2009

North Korea Closes Largest Unofficial Market

But it can’t be! Victor Cha, Selig Harrison, Keith Luse, Frank Januzzi, and every Peace Studies professor in South Korea can’t all be wrong! North Korea has shut down its largest unofficial market in a sign that the Communist government was intent on quashing, or at least better controlling, market activities that it had tolerated for years, Seoul-based organizations monitoring the country said last week. The market, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, was closed sometime in June and vendors were...

Categories An Alliance?/NK Economics
September 19, 2009

Sanctions Are Good for Diplomacy, But Diplomacy Won’t Disarm North Korea

Despite warnings from the foreign policy establishment (most notably, Selig Harrison and Ralph Cossa, among many others) that sanctioning North Korea would drive North Korea away from disarmament talks, the opposite seems to be happening — the election of a seemingly liberal administration brought only provocations from North Korea, while tough sanctions are forcing them to feign interest in disarming: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told a visiting Chinese envoy he will work to end his country’s nuclear arms programme...

Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions
September 19, 2009

Bill Clinton: “What I Was Trying to Do Was Not Smile and Not Scowl”

So he said on the Daily Show yesterday, on his photo op with Kim Jong Il. The Puffington Host has video here. Of greater interest to me personally is whether a medical professional will ever get around to diagnosing Bubba as a sociopath. I once had a lengthy discussion about this subject with a psychologist whom I was considering as an expert for my defense team. Similar musings on Kim Jong Il, here.

Categories Diplomacy/Useful Idiocy
September 16, 2009

A Few Thoughts on North Korea’s Travel Pass System

Open Radio has a good primer on the system North Korea uses to keep people in their home provinces. The effect, intended I suppose, is to make North Korean society like an ice cube tray, where in theory, each area is isolated from the others, and from any news, rumors, grumbles, woes, and potential expressions of dissent that might emanate from there. It also serves to limit trade that could challenge the government’s control over the distribution of things the...

Categories Inside NK
September 16, 2009

What I Think of the Bilateral Talks Talk

I’ve let much of the sturm and drang over the announcement of a bilateral meeting with the North Koreans pass while I tried to acquire a sense of what this really means, and whether it necessarily suggests that Obama’s not-bad North Korea policy is going to revert to something weaker, something ironically like the policy George W. Bush ultimately adopted, and which failed so completely to achieve American interests. Conservatives have gotten into the habit of opposing bilateral talks with...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
September 15, 2009

North Korea Extends Mass Mobilization

That “150-day battle” which had caused such discontent among the wrung-out North Korean proles has been extended for another hundred dreary days. Interestingly, some reports have associated this campaign with the planned succession of Kim Jong Eun. With campaign tactics like these, Jong Eun risks alienating such key swing voting blocs, such as displaced factory workers, starving widows, labor camp prisoners, and homeless orphans.

Categories Inside NK
September 15, 2009

And Yet, Christine Ahn Wants You to Know that Sanctions Kill North Korean Babies

Italian customs recently confiscated 420 bottles of expensive liquor on their way to North Korea. Italian newspaper Vivere Ancona said customs in the eastern port city seized 150 bottles of brandy and 270 bottles of whisky in containers destined for North Korea at the end of last month. The confiscation follows a UN Security Council ban on the export of arms, high technology and luxury goods to North Korea after the communist country’s nuclear test in May. The liquor is...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il/Sanctions/Useful Idiocy
September 15, 2009

Rumor: N. Koreans May Have Disabled River Alert System

Well, this would be strong evidence for the “water attack” theory: North Korea may have disabled alert systems that monitor water levels before it opened floodgates on Sept. 6, killing six South Korean campers, the Korea Economic Daily said, citing unidentified government officials. Four automatic alert systems near South Korea’s Imjin river weren’t working three hours before North Korea opened the floodgates to one of its dams, the Korean-language newspaper said. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service is investigating the matter,...

Categories North-South
September 14, 2009

Another Nuke Test?

On Saturday, I had coffee with a very well-connected South Korean friend, who suggested in passing that North Korea might respond to this-or-that sanction with another nuke test. After having expostulated for the next 45 seconds about why such a move wouldn’t further North Korea’s interests at this time, I think I now understand why my friend just sat there and smiled while I yammered on: According to a high-level source in North Korea, Kim Jong-Il instructed at the meeting...

Categories Proliferation/WMD
September 12, 2009

Lisa Ling to Appear at LiNK Benefit Gala Tonight

[Liveblogging below. Paul Song is speaking, and Laura Ling will appear at the gala.] Wonderful. And you can watch it all here, live at 6 p.m. Eastern. For all the understandable criticism of Laura Ling, Euna Lee, and Mitch Koss for crossing into North Korea, a sentiment I’ve never understood has been the hostility by some toward Lisa Ling, whom to my eyes is guilty of nothing whatsoever here. Some have even appeared to criticize her for using her access...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Ling/Lee Incident/Media Criticism
September 11, 2009

That’s Going to Cause a Lot of Confusion at the Betting Windows

So, depending on which source you’ve just read, Kim Jong Un is now either officially confirmed as successor, or the succession has been suspended until further notice. One rumor has it that Jong Un’s undoing was his premature efforts to fire people, which happens to be exactly Ernst Rohm’s undoing (that, and the publication of his gay love letters in a Munich newspaper). For what it’s worth — and I’d say, very little — Kim Yong Nam denies the Mainichi...

Categories Kremlinology
September 11, 2009

Unification Minister: N. Korea Intentionally Caused Fatal Flood

Unification Minister Hyun In-taek told parliament that the government believes the North deliberately discharged some 40 million tons of water from its Hwanggang Dam north of the demilitarized zone on Sunday. [Yonhap] Well, who really knows? What I would say is the North Koreans aren’t the sort to let concern for the welfare of their own people or anyone else get in the way of sending a political message. For them, killing a few kids could easily be just another...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
September 11, 2009

Alleged Chinese Police Report Supports Allegations of 2003 Massacre of North Koreans

Writing in the Wall Street Journal in October 2006, Melanie Kirkpatrick first raised shocking claims about North Korean border guards’ massacre of a large group of people trying to flee from North Korea to China across the Yalu River. Her report was based on documents purporting to come from official Chinese documents, including a local police report from Badaogou Precinct, near Baishan City: “At 7 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2003,” Case Report No. 055 begins, “a report was received from...

Categories China & Korea/Refugees
September 10, 2009

Open Radio: China Prepares N. Korea Occupation Force

Open Radio, one of the broadcasting services that edits the reports of North Koreans and broadcasts them back into their homeland, claims that the force is being composed from ethnic Koreans in China: According to the source, Shenyang and Jangchoon districts have special force with a size of a brigade. There is also a force composed only of Korean-Chinese, while the size of this force has not been confirmed. These forces were created in order to respond to any sudden...

Categories China & Korea/Reconstruction
September 9, 2009

Seoul Train Screening, Weekly Demonstration, LiNK Gala Live Online

For those living in Seoul, a couple events of note.  Thursday, September 10th, 8-10 p.m., there is a screening of Seoul Train near Hapjeong Station (lines 2 & 6), take exit 5 to Yogiga Gallery.  After the documentary, a couple activists from the film will talk.  Translation will be provided, all are encouraged to attend.  (Disclosure – this is being organized by a member of Justice for North Korea, a group of which I am an active member.  We don’t...

Categories Activism/Books & Films/Human Rights
September 9, 2009

U.S. Sanctions More N. Korean Entities

The U.S. Department of State today designated under Executive Order 13382 the General Bureau of Atomic Energy (GBAE) and Korea Tangun Trading Corporation. Both entities were designated by the United Nations on July 16, 2009, for their involvement in North Korea’s WMD and missile programs. GBAE oversees the DPRK nuclear program and manages operations at the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center. Korea Tangun Trading Corporation is subordinate to North Korea’s Second Academy of Natural Sciences and is primarily responsible for the...

Categories Proliferation/Sanctions
September 8, 2009

Sunshine and Cold Water

Historians, take note. South Korea has actually demanded an apology from North Korea for something: South Korea demanded an apology and further explanation from North Korea on Tuesday over a sudden discharge of dam water that left six people dead or missing, saying the North’s response was not satisfactory. Some 40 million tons of water from the North’s Hwanggang Dam pushed through the Imjin River, which flows out to South Korea’s west coast, at pre-dawn hours on Sunday, sweeping away...

Categories North-South