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Monthly Archive: May, 2010

May 19, 2010

Kim Jong Eun Becomes a Focus for North Koreans’ Anger

Interesting report from the Chosun Ilbo: Nonetheless, starving families are said to have swarmed local party headquarters and protested, and even local party officials are openly complaining. Provincial party officials in Chongjn, North Hamgyong Province, and Hamhung, South Hamgyong Province, effectively stopped working, telling party headquarters there is nothing they can do if there is nothing to eat. With rumors spreading that Kim Jong-un led an unpopular “100-day struggle” and “150-day struggle” that pressed people into service on the farms...

Categories Kim Jong Un/Resistance
May 18, 2010

“Decisive” Evidence Implicates North Korea in Cheonan Sinking

As news reports suggest that an international investigation will soon announce that North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan, South Korean military sources are leaking information that, if true, seems reasonably conclusive: “In a search using fishing trawlers, we recently discovered pieces of debris that are believed to have come from the propeller of the torpedo that attacked the Cheonan,” a high-ranking government source said Monday. “Analysis of the debris shows it may have originated from China or a former Eastern-bloc country...

Categories Cheonan Incident/China & Korea/Korean Politics/Useful Idiocy
May 18, 2010

Balloon People Keep Up the Pressure

“We’re going to send 500,000 propaganda leaflets, 1,000 CDs showing footage of a skirmish between South and North Korean Navies in waters off Yeonpyeong Island, 1,000 radios, and 3,000 one-dollar bills on three to four occasions until June 7,” said Choi Sung-yong, the leader of a group named Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea. “We have to let North Koreans and the international community know that the explosion of the Cheonan was a terrorist attack launched at Kim Jong-il’s orders....

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
May 17, 2010

17 May 2010

Did China Refuse Aid for Kim Jong Il? I’ll believe that when North Korea runs out of money for yachts, cars, and glass for the Ryugyong Hotel. At most, they may have delayed it to express their annoyance over the sinking of the Cheonan. This could also be disinformation for the foreign press. ___________________________ China will supply North Korea with cheering fans for the World Cup so that Kim Jong Il can keep his people at home. Remember, it’s all...

Categories Anju Links
May 17, 2010

Someone Isn’t Feeling That Unification Spirit (And We’ll Find Out Who!).

North Korea threatens to cut off access to Kaesong over leaflet balloons, which don’t just carry leaflets anymore: The head of a North Korean delegation to inter-Korean defense talks sent a letter to the South which read, “Despite our repeated requests, the South Korean government goaded and tacitly permitted activists to send propaganda leaflets that castigate our ideology and regime, small radios, US$1 bills and DVDs [via helium balloons] from May 1.” An anonymous South Korean official speculates that the...

Categories North-South
May 17, 2010

North Korea Calls Israeli Foreign Minister an “Imbecile”

North Korea has reacted, and predictably, to the allegations of the Israeli Foreign Minister that it’s arming terrorists: A spokesman for Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry described Lieberman as an “ultra-rightist” and “an imbecile in diplomacy.” The spokesman, quoted by the North’s official news agency, said Israel was itself being criticized for its nuclear program and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. He also said it would never pardon Israel for “daring slander the dignified (North) by faking up sheer...

Categories Axis of Evil/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
May 17, 2010

Global Outrage as African Animals Are Treated Like North Korean Human Beings

It’s not just elephants that Zimbabwe is capturing and shipping to North Korea: Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe has ordered that two of every animal species in the Hwange National Park be sent to North Korea as a gift to that country’s leader, Kim Jong Il. [Johannesburg Times] Conservationists say the President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, will send a modern-day ark, containing pairs of giraffes, zebras, baby elephants and other wild animals taken from a national park, to a zoo in...

Categories Africa/Interviews/Refugees/WTF?
May 17, 2010

North Korea Cracks Down on Border Crossings Again

Open News reports that North Korea’s latest crackdown on border-crossing has made it difficult to get out of the country for any price: Around the mid-1990s when North Korean defectors first emerged, the fee for crossing the river was 300-500 Yuan, about 50,000-80,000 Korean Won. The fee for crossing the river continued to rise as more and more North Koreans were escaping. In early 2009, the fee was 5,000-6,000 Yuan (800,000-1 million won), which is a 10-fold increase compared to...

Categories Border Control/Refugees
May 14, 2010

Selig Harrison: Lee Myung Bak “Invited” Cheonan Attack

I don’t know whether North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Lee Myung Bak has invited retaliation by repudiating the commitment to coexistence and eventual confederation enshrined in the two summit declarations negotiated with Kim Dae Jang and Roh Moo Hyun. [Selig Harrison in the Hanky] Did this widely-quoted North Korea “expert” just excuse an unprovoked sneak attack that killed 46 South Korean sailors? This is not meant as an excuse for the North...

Categories Cheonan Incident/Useful Idiocy
May 14, 2010

Rumor: Chris Hill to Retire

Just a year after the Senate confirmed failed North Korea negotiator Chris Hill as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, NHK is reporting that Hill plans to retire this summer. There has been occasional grumbling about Hill’s performance in office in Baghdad, though nothing approaching the criticism of his performance as a negotiator with North Korea. One of those who apparently didn’t much care for Hill was Gen. Ray Odierno, one of the architects of the military strategy that stabilized Iraq in...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq
May 14, 2010

14 May 2010

So, I suppose some of you probably have questions for Laura and Lisa Ling: ask them here. My own comment is in moderation as I write this. _______________________ We are all necons: Colin Powell says that Kim Jong Il will face the judgment of history. It would have been better yet had Powell done less, as Secretary of State, to defer that judgment. _______________________ In China, that paradise of socialist equality, the price of female human beings is soaring: Young...

Categories Anju Links
May 13, 2010

Can you say, “kokiri kalbi?”

This is the cutest picture I could find. Two baby elephants intended as a gift to North Korea are unlikely to survive the journey by air, Zimbabwean conservationists said Thursday. The independent Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said the 18-month-old elephants were being held in pens in the western Hwange National Park, along with pairs of most of the park’s other animal species bound for North Korea. The country is a longtime ally of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. [L.A. Times] As...

Categories Africa/WTF?
May 13, 2010

Cheonan conclusions will mean tougher N. Korea policies … for a while, anyway

It certainly looks like every government official outside Beijing who has seen the evidence now believes that North Korea sank the Cheonan and killed 46 members of its crew. Among those who have drawn their conclusions are the South Korean government, the Obama Administration, and the Republicans in Congress. The multinational investigation is now sufficiently advanced that the official Yonhap News Agency says that the findings could be released as early as next week. One interesting leak references a stray...

Categories Cheonan Incident/North-South/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views