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Monthly Archive: February, 2010

February 18, 2010

Succession Watch

A valued reader and friend writes in to draw my attention to reports that North Koreans named “Kim Jong Eun” have been ordered to change their names, echoing a 1974 edict withholding the name “Kim Jong Il” from use by mere mortals. My churlish friend suggests “Chung Hee” as an alternative. Nice. Just to put this in perspective, it’s blasphemy for a North Korean to be called Kim Jong Eun, yet there are millions of kids named Jesus all over...

Categories Kremlinology/WTF?
February 18, 2010

North Korea Has a Meth Problem, Part 3

North Korea’s meth problem continues to worsen as meth gains cultural acceptance. According to interviews with residents of Heoryong and Musan, in North Hamkyung Province on February 5, North Koreans near the border area and Shin-ui-ju, Hamheung, and Pyongyang consume Crystal Meth like food. Especially near the border area, Meth is used by people of all ages, and even students aged 14-15 consume it. In these regions, Meth is served for guests, and the host invite guests to consume Meth...

Categories Drugs & N Korea/NK Military
February 17, 2010

“They are all bastards, and Kim Jong-Il should die soon.”

Via Open News, we learn that mandatory adulation on Kim Jong Il’s birthday isn’t quite unanimous: Based on the interviews from four regions of North Korea- North Hamkyung Province, Yanggang Province, South PyongAn Province, and Nampo city- between February 2 and 4, North Koreans are expressing their discontentment about Kim Jong-Il and his son Kim Jong-Eun. The expression of discontentment differs from region to region, however. Citizens near the border do not hesitate to express their discontentment, while citizens in...

Categories Resistance
February 17, 2010

How Will Chung Dong Young Answer a Truth and Reconciliation Committee?

After years of unproductive debate, the South Korean National Assembly’s Unification and Foreign Affairs Committee finally approved a bill on improving human rights conditions in North Korea last week, on a vote divided along party lines: The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) said the overall budget for its activities in 12 categories was cut by 5.38 percent on-year to 4.63 billion won (US$4 million) for the 2010 fiscal year. Funding for research into North Korean defectors and human...

Categories Human Rights/Korean Law/Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
February 16, 2010

Didn’t I Tell You? Yuan Becoming De Facto North Korean Currency

The Chosun Ilbo picks up this Open Radio report: The broadcaster quoted a North Korean source as saying North Korean banknotes are nothing but pieces of paper, and almost all goods are traded in yuan. “Not even cart pushers would accept won for their work,” the source said. Having watched their new currency plummet in value over less than a month after the reform, North Korean residents realized that the yuan is a safer asset, the station added. Just as...

Categories China & Korea/NK Economics
February 16, 2010

Kim Jong Il Death Watch: Birthday Edition

The AP’s newest report on Kim Jong Il’s health appears to add some confirmation to what Open Radio has reported recently — that Kim Jong Il’s is going through kidneys like Kennedys go through livers: Depressed and chronically ill, Kim relies on rare, costly and sometimes outlawed remedies such as rhino’s horn and the bile of bear gall bladder, one South Korean official told The Associated Press. Another intelligence expert said North Koreans have gone twice to Beijing since 2008...

Categories Kim Jong Il
February 16, 2010

17 February 2010

Not that they’d likely accomplish much anyway, but Kim Jong Il continues to balk at returning to six-party talks. The absence of any excuse to pay Kim Jong Il off is always a good thing, I suppose. Not that China needs one.________________________ North Korea launches another crackdown on cell phones. I don’t understand how Orascom hopes to establish itself in this sort of environment. A serious question for anyone who knows: why does North Korea think it can control Orascom...

Categories Anju Links
February 16, 2010

China Will Give Kim Jong Il $10 Billion, Violating the Spirit and Letter of U.N. Security Council Resolutions It Voted For

[Update: More here, at the Daily NK] Consistent with reports I’d linked previously, China is now offering a financially beleaguered Kim Jong Il a massive bailout, in obvious retaliation for America’s assistance in helping Taiwan to defend itself against the Chicom missiles aimed at its cities, and likely also as a way to bail Kim Jong Il out after the self-inflicted catastrophe of The Great Confiscation. China’s decision factors in the assumption that America lacks the spine to respond by...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions
February 15, 2010

LiNK Update: Now in 4th Place!

LiNK’s campaign to win $250,000 from Pepsi for a refugee resettlement facility has now moved into 4th place, up two spots from yesterday. The momentum comes just one day after GI Korea and Kushibo join in, calling for their readers to vote for LiNK. Coincidence? Of course, there could always be other possibilities. Lisa Ling is also calling for people to vote for LiNK. Lisa Ling: Cast Your Pepsi Refresh Vote for LiNK from LiNK Global on Vimeo. Two more...

Categories Activism/Refugees
February 14, 2010

China’s Loathesome Treatment of North Korean Children

I make no secret of my contempt for the Chinese dictatorship, because the Chinese dictatorship holds humanity in contempt. It cuts down the hopes of its people with machine guns and crushes them under tanks. It considers itself entitled to intrude into and oppress their aspirations anywhere on earth. It murders innocent refugees, then it forces their innocent and vulnerable children to live in terror: According to the foster father, who preferred to remain anonymous, “It is illegal [so] we...

Categories China & Korea
February 13, 2010

Great Confiscation Updates

Newspapers around the world are now coming to grips with North Korea’s most conspicuous policy disaster since the Great Famine, and the first one in which a state that has long claimed infallibility had to admit error: The policy backfired. Prices skyrocketed as market activities ground to a near halt, while state-run stores failed to meet the demand. In recent weeks, Web sites based in Seoul that collect news from sources inside North Korea have reported starvation in some towns...

Categories Uncategorized
February 13, 2010

Axis of Evil Watch

South Korea has told the Security Council that it seized garments “deemed to have military uses for chemical protection,” according to a report from Turkish Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan, chairman of a committee that monitors implementation of UN sanctions against North Korea. The incident was one of four brought to the attention of the Security Council because of possible violations of sanctions intended to halt North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs. Apakan also reported on Italy’s seizure of two luxury yachts...

Categories Axis of Evil/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
February 13, 2010

Thailand Deports Crew of Axis of Evil Express

Brokedown Palace is about to lose a few tenants. Thailand has decided to deport the Boratistani crew of the Il-76 caught carrying weapons from North Korea to Iran instead of prosecuting them. The crew may face prosecution in their home countries instead. The plane and the cargo will stay in Thailand for the time being: “We are waiting for the United Nations to recommend what to do with the weapons,” Mr. Panitan said in a telephone interview. “The plane is...

Categories Axis of Evil/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)
February 12, 2010

Alejandro Cao de Benós Interview – Part 3

This week, Cao informs us how he maintained his porcine figure even as he watched North Koreans starve to death all around him, and explains that The Great Confiscation was designed to foil widespread foreign counterfeiting of the North Korean won, for which there would seem to be as much incentive as inventing imitation tofu. Cao also says that the food situation in North Korea these days is just peachy, which is rather remarkable statement, given that not even Kim...

Categories Interviews/Useful Idiocy
February 12, 2010

12 February 2010: A Blissful Absence of Unifictions

I’m a sports agnostic and the Olympics especially boring to me, but I’m gratified there will be no wretch-inducing hippie unifiction of the Korean Olympic teams this year. The dishonesty of it — the moral decision to intentionally overlook what the North Korean regime really represents — always grated on me.________________ South Korea says the time is not ripe for cross-border tourism. A good case could be made that the exorbitant price the North Koreans charge for these tours triggers...

Categories Anju Links