2 January 2010: Another Balloon Launch, and a Message of Thanks

THE BALLOON PEOPLE ARE BACK!

Supporters of American Christian missionary Robert Park, who is believed to have been detained in North Korea, launched hundreds of balloons on New Year’s day with texts calling for freedom in the isolated nation. The yellow balloons containing leaflets condemning the North Korean leadership were released from South Korea near the border, confirmed activist Choi Woo-won. “Greeting the New Year, we are delivering our messages of freedom and hope to North Korea,” he told reporters.

Further down, there are prayers for the safety of Robert Park. I’m already on record as saying that Park’s decision to cross into North Korea was counterproductive and irrational, but his emotional state only means he needs those prayers more than ever to make it through the situation in which he now finds himself. If you want to contribute to more balloon launches, the North Korean Freedom Coalition supports them.

YES, THANK YOU!: “New Year’s Statement Just Words.” And it probably took a North Korean to finally tell us how to recognize this. Pablum is bad enough without the added burden of junk analysis.

HOW (NOT) TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE: North Korea’s behavior turns a fisherman’s son into a defection broker, long after his father most likely died in North Korean captivity. The Roh Administation did its best to demonize defection brokers, and I don’t doubt that some of them and the people they deal with are shifty characters. But it seems to me that for all its flaws, brokering defections beats Chung Dong-Young’s suggested alternative: dying in place.

NORTH KOREA LEADERSHIP WATCH, which is already one of my favorite Korea blogs, has a write-up on Kim Jong Nam that I can only describe as phenomenally well researched and detailed. I had assumed that Jong-Nam was on the outs with his father’s regime, but there’s some evidence to the contrary. (I’ve tried to put up a sidebar feed for NK Leadership Watch, but I’m having trouble making it work.)

I WISHED YOU ALL A HAPPY NEW YEAR yesterday, but I’d also like to thank you for reading. This is a micro-blog — it focuses on a narrow range of issues of interest to a small group of people. OFK will never be more than a go-to for information about that narrow range of issues. Even so, more of you stop by each year and come back regularly to read more, and it isn’t to read about pop culture fads or look at cheesecakey pictures. Sometime during the last year, OFK got its millionth page view, not counting hits on my old Blogger site. Just shy of 40% of those page views were during last year alone. I don’t pretend that those numbers give me any bragging rights, but I’m very proud that it’s good traffic — from people with deep knowledge of, and interest in, events on the Korean Peninsula. Among my valued readers are correspondents from some of the world’s best news sources, some of the best scholars in the business, a few staffers in Congress, people who are making a difference in the lives of North Korean refugees, and some very good friends. I am honored that you come by regularly, and in numbers that continue to grow modestly but steadily. That is reward enough for a hobby done on my own dime and in my own time, which seems to grow more scarce with each passing year. Which brings me to Dan Bielefeld and Jodi Kiely, to whom I also owe a great debt for their terrific contributions over the last year, often at the very moments when I have the least time to post something myself (Jodi is on hiatus for professional reasons, but I miss her writing and hope she’ll start posting again when she can). To all of you, thank you.