15 April 2010: Birthday Balloons

On Kim Il Sung’s birthday, North Korean defectors defied the threats of their former masters and launched
leaflet balloons:

In a South Korean town just south of the heavily armed border, about 150 activists floated balloons containing leaflets denouncing the Kim dynasty, a thousand U.S. dollar notes and DVDs showing life in the more affluent South.

The move came after North Korea threatened last week to take unspecified “decisive measures” if the South does not stop the activists from flying the leaflets across the border.

“Kim’s family has starved its people to death and stabbed the southern people in the back by provoking war,” Park Sang-hak, head of the group, said by phone, snubbing the renewed threat from Pyongyang. “North Koreans need to wake up and rise.” [….]

The activists say the leaflets let ordinary North Koreans know about their leader Kim Jong-il’s luxurious lifestyle and womanizing and his health that noticeably worsened in recent years. [Yonhap]

And of course, there were obscenely expensive official celebrations, and a hundred generals were promoted.

Kim Jong Il is a no-show at the Supreme Peoples’ Assembly.

North Korea has gone ahead with plans to confiscate South Korean assets at Kumgang, ejecting four Chinese-national employees of the South Korean facility owners, and putting “frozen” warning stickers on the doors of the buildings. At least two Hyundai Asan employees remain at Kumgang.

Suddenly, North Korea isn’t asking trading companies to bring in foreign currency. It’s asking them to bring in food.

I predict unintended consequences: Part of what North Korea is offering China in exchange for that bailout is cheap labor.

Only 20%?

The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt interviews Lee Myung-Bak

Thanks, but I didn’t actually call for abolishing USFK.

As I see it, the lack of beans may be a more serious deficiency than the lack of fart jokes.

The legacy of the Sunshine Policy:

Grand National Party lawmaker Chung Jin-suk expressed worries that South Korea’s ability to gather intelligence was weakened by fiber optic cables which the South Korean government supplied to the North in the past. “I suspect that some of the 45 km-long fiber optic cables may have been diverted to lay a communications network between frontline Army units in the North,” he said.

Hyun said Seoul has “no plan as of now to comply with an additional request from the North for more fiber optic cables.” [Chosun Ilbo]

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I often find myself comforted by the fact of our President’s insincerity: “‘If we can prove that a biological attack originated in a country that attacked us, then all bets are off,’ Clinton said in an interview with CBS’s ‘Face the Nation.'”