27 January 2010

Some people never learn: After everything that’s happened in the last 20 years, we’re still trying to get Agreed Framework III.

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Which moment of truth is this? I lost count in 2007.
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A Kaesong Travel Advisory: Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air.
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Bangkok Update: Here’s the most detailed inventory I’ve yet seen of that North Korean weapons shipment intercepted last year:

Thai police discovered 40 tons of North Korean arms including multiple rocket launchers, 40 surface-to-air missiles, and hundreds of rocket-propelled grenades worth an estimated US$18 million on an Ilyushin cargo plane operated by Air West of Georgia, which landed in Bangkok on Dec. 12.

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Interesting: “Two South Korean rights activist groups on Tuesday released a list of 254 inmates at North Korea’s notorious Yoduk prison camp. In a press conference at the Korea Press Center in Seoul, Democracy Network Against North Korean Gulag and the Antihuman Crime Investigation Committee said that of the inmates on the list, 133 were confirmed recently and the other 121 around 2004. The groups compiled the new list based on testimony of four defectors who escaped from Yoduk camp between 2003 and 2005.”

Related: Kushibo links to an L.A. Times story about former inmates of Camp 15, Yodok.

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What’s behind North Korea’s demand for peace talks?
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Euna Lee tries to shift the focus back to where it belongs:

But the story the two journalists wanted to tell still gnaws at her, said Lee, 37, a producer for San Francisco-based Current TV.

“I’m glad I’m home, but the story we worked on will not get finished yet,” she said, adding: “I wanted to raise awareness about North Korean defections.”

Lee and Ling were seized March 17 by North Korea while they were near its border gathering information for a story about North Korean women who are forced into the sex trade while attempting to defect to neighboring China.

“They are sold like livestock without knowing where they’ll end up,” Lee said.

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Fears for the future of dateless Chinese men. This argument, I’ve observed, tends to really piss Chinese netizens off. Especially the single, male, dateless ones.