21 December 2009

NORTH KOREA CONTINUES TO PROGRESS in its efforts to miniaturize nuclear warheads. Obviously, this means our sanctions aren’t sufficient.

THE SOUTH KOREAN GOVERNMENT is printing propaganda comics, not to influence North Koreans, but to influence its own ill-informed youth that North Korea isn’t a paradise on earth after all. While the idea of a government propagandizing its own people gives me some discomfort, previous South Korean administrations and more radical groups spent a decade doing the same, and their campaign made use of the country’s public school system. Ultimately, I subscribe to the idea that more speech is good speech, as long as it’s truthful, and particularly when the Korean left has used its complete ownership of the debate to misinform South Koreans for so long.

HWANG JANG YOP talks about leaving his wife in Pyongyang. My views of Hwang are deeply ambivalent — he was one of the high priests that created North Korea’s cult — but I don’t doubt that whatever his feelings at the time, it must have been a terribly difficult thing to leave her behind.

RANSOM FOR POW’s? That’s the subject of secret North-South talks. I can understand South Korea’s sense of urgency about this, but the price is apt to be high, so high that it would outweigh two other goals: compliance with UNSCR 1874, and freedom for 23 million other hostages held in North Korea. Meanwhile, China is feeling the pressure on its repatriation of South Korean POW’s and their families, enough so that it’s no longer ignoring South Korean views. Now, China’s Vice President is at least pretending to address the issue in a meeting with South Korea’s Prime Minister. I wonder whether those regular demonstrations in front of the ChiCom Embassy had anything to do with this.