Open Sources

The Donga Ilbo carries this heartbreaking photograph of the homecoming of South Korean POW who escaped after 61 years in captivity: “He escaped from North Korea in March last year and returned home in November. He settled at his sister`s home in Seoul after spending three months at a government-provided safe house.”

In an article co-authored by our friend Chris Green, the Daily NK looks how the regime works to prevent a coup d’etat in North Korea. Unless the subject is soccer, I seldom disagree with Chris, and the article is well worth reading, but would have been even more interesting had it assessed the evidence of deteriorating morale and discipline (maybe he’ll give us his assessment in the comments). Certainly a coup is far more likely today than a broad popular uprising, but it’s also far less likely to give the North Korean people the government they deserve, at least in the short term. It may well be that a coup could weaken the regime’s control machinery enough that a popular uprising might be possible another day. The other plausible path to reunification? An insurgency.

Note to Chris: I’ve been trying for going on a year to put a feed of your excellent Destination Pyongyang blog on my sidebar, but my old version of WordPress doesn’t seem to like your feed.

Speaking of great North Korea blogs, Marcus Noland has rolled out a new blog to accompany “North Korea: Witness to Transformation.” Just perusing the entries, I can see this one will be one of my daily reads, starting with Marcus’s entry about remittances, which he calls “the revenge of the politically unreliable.”

I hope WordPress likes his feed.

The Asahi Shimbun has a very interesting profile of the life of a North Korean overseas trader: “Although they feel responsible for the future of their country, they generally work alone in a foreign land. Their family members are kept “hostage,” and they must resort to secretive tactics to bypass international sanctions to feed their leaders’ voracious appetite for Japanese products. Yet being a trade agent is a favored occupation among North Koreans. The job allows individuals to live a fairly free life outside of North Korea and can lead to the accumulation of wealth. That is, if everything goes well.”

Nice: “Former Cincinnati Reds shortstop Barry Larkin will travel to South Korea and meet North Korean defectors next week as part of U.S. efforts to use baseball as a tool of diplomacy. The State Department said Larkin and former Montreal Expos pitcher Joe Logan will visit Seoul, Gwangju and Jeju Island to hold clinics, meet defectors and speak to students.”

Just for the wonks: The Federation of American Scientists links to a CIA report that assesses the impact of floods on North Korean agriculture. I hope I’ll find the time to read this, because I’ve often suspected that the effect is (a) exacerbated by ill-advised on-the-spot guidance, particularly those that caused deforestation, and (b) exaggerated at moments of convenience, to bring in food aid, which is invariably misallocated.