26 June 2010

Japanese activists have joined South Korean activists and North Korean defectors in that wonderfully quixotic leaflet campaign against Kim Jong Il:

“We’d like to punish the Kim Jong Il government by spreading the truth written on these leaflets,” said Seo Jung-gab, president of the National Action Campaign, one of the participating groups.

Also among groups participating was the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea, a group supporting the families of Japanese abducted by Pyongyang’s agents in the 1970s and ’80s. The leaflets contained a message to the abductees and contact information for organizations in Japan and China working to assist them.

“North Korean citizens don’t even know that their government kidnapped people worldwide,” said Tsutomu Nishioka, chairman of the group.

If you make enough people mad enough at you, they’ll eventually hurt you. The leaflet operations are growing bigger and bolder in their scale and content, and they make for sublime media theater.

Oh, great:

Bruce Bechtol of the Marine Corps Command and Staff College will deliver, next Monday at Brookings in Washington, a paper contending that North Korea is now or will soon be capable of building a uranium-core bomb. [Gordon Chang, Forbes]

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Would it be so wrong if the South Korean authorities just told North Korean propaganda star and traitor Han Song-Ryol not to bother coming home and gave his apartment to some deserving family of North Korean refugees? It seems like a much better idea than arresting him and giving the Hankyoreh and the Rodong Sinmun something to talk about.

The GAO has just released this rather extensive report on the progress of federal executive agencies in complying with the asylum facilitation provisions of the North Korean Human Rights Act. Summary here; highlights here.

On North Korea’s west coast, a possible missile launch.

The Wall Street Journal thinks someone should give the North Korean soccer team asylum. Well, I suppose someone should, if the North Koreans ask first. And after a final 3-0 clubbing at the hands of the Ivory Coast, maybe they should reconsider. I’m sure there must have been a strong temptation to shout some impolitic words into that invisible cell phone.

In Seoul, five police are under arrest for torturing suspects. In light of the number of stories like this I heard from fellow prosecutors, CID agents, and clients, I’m most surprised by how seldom stories like this are actually reported.