7 December 2009

BOSWORTH ARRIVES IN PYONGYANG: I’ve paid as much attention to Stephen Bosworth’s visit as I think the likely outcome justifies, but North Korea Leadership Watch has it all covered. More here and here at Yonhap, which calls the talks “crucial,” thus causing me to slowly shake my head in pitiful dismay.

FUNNY, THAT’S JUST WHAT DAVID ASHER WONDERED: Curtis Melvin looks at North Korea’s reported trade figures and wonders how it manages to close the immense trade deficit they suggest.

THIS SEEMS DUMB: The Australian government has denied visas to a group of North Korean artists. Perhaps there are facts I don’t know, perhaps relating to the financial arrangements behind the visit. And I’m not under any illusions that exchanges of this kind will have a very significant impact on North Korean society. But in principle, as long as they don’t finance the regime, what’s wrong with cultural exchanges that bring North Koreans into contact with a freer and more prosperous world?

DOES THIS MEAN THE SANCTIONS ARE WORKING? Iran is forced to delay a missile test because North Korean parts failed to arrive.

AN ENORMOUS TUNNEL SYSTEM UNDER PYONGYANG is described by Hwang Jang Yop, the Rudolf Hess of North Korea:

During a program on Free North Korea Radio, a Seoul-based anti-Pyongyang station, aired Monday, Hwang Jang-yop, a former secretary of the North’s Workers’ Party, claimed that there were secret tunnels built more than 300 meters below ground, linking Pyongyang with strategic locations within a radius of 40 to 50 kilometers. [Yonhap]

This isn’t exactly news to long-time Korea watchers, though I do wonder how they manage to grow grass in them.

PERSONALLY, I BLAME TOJO: In the New York Times, an American author breathes new life into South Korean conspiracy theories by blaming Teddy Roosevelt for the annexation of Korea, and by extension, Pearl Harbor. He makes a good case for Roosevelt’s affinity for Japan and his desire to support Japan’s claims there, if only as an apparent alternative to Russia dominating the weakening Korean state instead. What’s not explained is how Roosevelt was supposed to foresee the brutality of Japan’s occupation, the suppression of Korean culture, or what Roosevelt could have done to stop Japan’s ambitions had he been so inclined. In the end, all of this will attract far more attention from left-wing Korean scholars than, say, subsequent events in Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Leyte, Iwo Jima, or Incheon.