Open Sources
Damn. It’s still Groundhog Day! “Military talks between the rival Koreas have “collapsed,” a unification ministry official in Seoul said on Wednesday, dealing a setback to efforts to restart international aid-for-disarmament talks.”
“The United States policy is that when we provide assistance, humanitarian assistance, it is based on need and no political consideration should be involved. That’s the first condition,” King said in an exclusive interview with Yonhap News Agency in Seoul. The two other principles are to balance demands and requests as resources are limited, and to ensure transparency in aid distribution “to be certain that aid we provide goes to those who are most vulnerable, those who are most in need,” King said, adding that any aid request should meet those criteria.
A Strong and Prosperous Nation!
North Korea is reportedly importing animal feed grain from China to distribute on the market for human consumption as the regime struggles with food shortages. According to Radio Free Asia, Pyongyang gave the animal feed to its military as well as to merchants, bringing down the surging cost of rice.
Sure, you may scoff at the idea of importing animal feed for human consumption, but in the case of North Korea, we should at least be thankful that it’s not the converse. And any money Kim Jong Il spends on feeding human beings is arguably an improvement in his fiscal priorities.
Don Kirk has a much longer piece on North Korea and Egypt in the Asia Times. I hope they’re paying Don something for his work, because its standards and talent have reached such a nadir that without Don’s contributions, I’d drop them from my RSS entirely.
A report on the spreading of corruption in North Korea. North Korea may be the only place in this world where one woman’s travelogue is newsworthy. Reports of this kind are often inconsistent in their finer details, reflecting the fact that North Korean society is like an ice cube tray.
The latest Good Friends dispatch is here.
The Onion profiles a courageous Chinese dissident.
This Good Friends despatch, and earlier ones, explain that, in September 2010, the Party stopped the military from collecting its tithe of farm produce because the farmers were starving. (That suggests the city workers were even worse off.) The DPRK had made alternative arrangements for purchasing rice from China. But thereafter China failed to supply the rice, and so, as a matter of necessity, the Army has been allowed to take food, notwithstanding that it is now “technically” illegal for it to do so. This is anarchy. The price of rice has shot up to reflect genuine scarcity. This means even further inflation. Good Friends indicates that there are essentially no significant government food distributions to urban populations. This is a breakdown.
Good Friends further explains there is now a directive to kiss up to China. This is an unusual response to the non-delivery of essential foodstuffs and internal disarray.
Why and when did China stop the food export? Perhaps after the bombing of Yeonpyeong Island in November? The kiss up directive suggests that the Chinese have cancelled all DPRK credit, that international sanctions are really working and that China is now the only source of supply. China now only works on cash, it seems. A total credit cancellation (and that really appears to have occurred) means that China gives the present regime no ability to get itself out of the mess it is in.
Within the government, the less-than-octogenarian Army generals must really despise the incompetence of the Party and the Kim Family Regime. Is China really trying for internal regime change, with a military takeover?
One can run a country’s foreign debts by paying cash on the barrelhead — so long as the cash is available, and is not imprisoned in offshore sanction-controlled accounts. Did the DPRK try to pay China with supernotes? Anything’s possible, I suppose — but something occurred to cause China to cut all food transfers (and supposedly about the time they were pushing ahead with Rason.) To my mind, this suggests Rason is a local initiative of Chinese business generals, whereas the credit cutoff is Beijing policy.
It certainly suggests that sanctions are really working, and that they should not be relaxed, at all, for any reason.
Off-topic, but http://38north.org/2011/02/six-party-talks/
I really have to put Chinoy in the DPRK apologist department.
For what it’s worth, I have drawn many similar conclusions to David. But I do urge caution, as ever, on the use of Good Friends material as a basis for wider, or indeed any, deductions.
obviously HUUUGGEEE news re: Mubarak resigning and handing power to the military.
of course the general population in NK doesn’t know……but i’m sure the military and the elite are watching every step.
what a fantastic way for little KJE to learn.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/02/military-vows-free-election-offers-conditional-end-to-emergency-law/1
Not just Good Friends: this is from the Asahi Shimbun article referenced today, 11 Feb—
“Sources said that when Kim Jong Il visited China last year, he heard about complaints from Chinese companies that they were not receiving payments from North Korean trade agents.
“After returning to North Korea, Kim Jong Il is said to have ordered trade officials to settle the unpaid accounts to restore trust in North Korea.
“The sources said sudden payments of such unsettled accounts became more frequent from late last year.
My perspective is that China has put the DPRK on a cash-and-carry basis.