Opens Sources: North Korea Threatens “Nuclear Catastrophe”

North Korea, which was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has written to our Secretary of Defense to threaten a “nuclear catastrophe” if we don’t negotiate with them:

North Korea’s defense minister warned of a “nuclear catastrophe” in a letter sent to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month and demanded direct talks with Washington, a senior South Korean official was quoted as saying Monday.

Kim Yong-chun, the minister of the North’s People’s Armed Forces, stressed in the letter that the North and the U.S. should meet bilaterally because the nuclear standoff boils down to an issue between the two sides, the Seoul official said during a briefing at an annual conference of South Korean diplomatic mission chiefs, according to multiple participants.

Kim said in the letter that unless something is done about the deadlock in the North Korean nuclear issue, a “nuclear catastrophe will break out on the Korean Peninsula,” the senior briefer was quoted as saying at the diplomats’ conference that opened in Seoul for a five-day run.

Who else thinks North Korea is starting to sound desperate? Anyway, thanks to the brilliant diplomacy of Chris Hill, Condi Rice, and George W. Bush, there’s one less state sponsor of terrorism for us all to to worry about. Discuss among yourselves.

Our friend John M. Glionna profiles one of Kim Jong Il’s former bodyguards, who now runs a duck farm in South Korea:

For 10 years, until 1988, Lee was a personal bodyguard for Kim Jong Il, working among the phalanx of trained killers who protected the future North Korean dictator, infamous for, among other things, his fetishes for handguns, imported caviar and foreign-made limousines.

Lee oversaw the enigmatic strongman’s younger years as a leader in training, observing a privileged life played out inside grim fortresses and hideaway villas. Eventually, Lee came to detest what he now recalls as a farcical leader who enjoyed unparalleled luxury while his impoverished nation starved.

He watched high-ranking officials hide behind trees rather than face the mercurial “Dear Leader,” who was so fearful of duplicity that he constantly switched limousines, so fussy that he demanded his favorite perfume sprayed throughout his villas. Displeasing Kim could mean imprisonment, as it did for the guard sent to a gulag for using one of Kim’s favorite ashtrays.

“As time went on, I saw the real evil,” recalls Lee, who defected to South Korea in 2000 and wrote a tell-all book two years later about his experiences. “He’s a man who is not qualified to be a world leader.” [L.A. Times, John M. Glionna]

It only takes one brave man and one bullet to awaken a nation from a nightmare.

Yonhap has more on the Bureau 38 / Bureau 39 kremlinology:

Kim Tong-un, formerly head of Office 39 in the Workers’ Party of Korea, assumed the post in May last year, when North Korea revived Office 38, which was merged with Office 39 in 2009, the source said on condition of anonymity. Office 39 is believed to be another organ that governs a wide network of business operations both legal and illegal.

Both Offices 38 and 39 belong to the Secretariat of the Workers’ Party, which Kim Jong-il chairs, according to a diagram of the North’s power structure released by the Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs. Last year, the ministry had only included Office 39 in a similar diagram.

In a meeting with reporters last week, a ministry official said Office 38 has been spun off from Office 39 and is now running on its own again. The official, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity citing the sensitive nature of his comments, described “a stream of information” that has come through since mid-2010.

Office 38 mainly oversees transactions involving foreign currency, hotels and trade, the official said, while Office 39, headed by Jon Il-chun, drives revenue by dealing in narcotics, arms, natural resources and others.

Here’s the first semi-official semi-reaction to reports that China has sent its military into the Rason semi-autonomous zone:

A U.S. official, authorized to speak on intelligence matters, said “there are no indications at this point that China is moving forces to Rajin.”

Nevertheless, the State Department issued this caution: “We would urge countries to be vigilant in their business dealings with North Korea, given North Korea’s history of proliferation activities, but there is little (the U.S.) can say on a speculative question about the future use of Rajin port or potential Chinese or North Korean intentions there.”

A White House official, asked for comment on the port and the Chinese-North Korean development plans, said flatly: “We are reluctant to talk on this topic.” [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]

Is North Korea preparing for another nuke test? It wouldn’t shock me much if it did, unless this time it’s a uranium device. What may be more surprising is that the United States been worried about North Korean nuke tests since the early 1970’s.

North Korea asks for food aid:

Researchers and nongovernmental organizations disagree on the proportion of food aid the North Korean government diverts, with estimates ranging from 10 to 50 percent. Diverted food aid, according to experts, is given to the military, redistributed as gifts for elites or re-sold – at a steep profit – to vendors in the market. John Everard, the British ambassador in Pyongyang from 2006 to 2008, said he sometimes saw rice bags labeled “World Food Program” in the market halls.

In recent years, North Korea has often banned food aid monitors from traveling to the most vulnerable provinces. It also demands that monitors do not know Korean. Though North Korea makes exceptions, Prior said, it generally demands seven days’ notice before monitors can visit an area.

Kim Seong-min, a former North Korean army propaganda officer who defected, said he once saw a ton of rice aid arrive at a distribution center. The military distributed the food in a village at a monitor’s request but later went door to door retrieving it.

“I remember some of the collection officers were complaining about not being able to collect 100 percent of the rice,” Kim said.

I wonder if this is the same Kim Seong-Min who now runs Radio Free North Korea.

A Navy admiral calls on China to be “responsible and constructive,” which almost seems to imply that China’s behavior isn’t “responsible and constructive” now.

Let them eat cookies.

I realize that the OFK readership is underwhelmed by the significance of Kenji Fujimoto’s observations, and I generally join in that sentiment, but I couldn’t resist quoting this piece, by Sunny Lee, explaining why Fujimoto thinks Jon-Eun could be “a caring leader in the making.” I doubt that he’s likely to be either of those things, but I report, you decide:

“Jong-eun came to my cabin, saying ‘Can we talk’?” On that rare occasion, Jong-eun poured out his heart on the situation his country faced. “Compared to other Asian countries, my country is lagging behind in industrial technology. In terms of natural resource, my country probably can merely boast of uranium. The lack of electricity seems severe,” Jong-eun said. Fujimoto saw this as a sign that Jong-eun was no longer just a spoiled brat.

“As he traveled in developed countries, he also appeared to be eager to make his country the same,” said Fujimoto.

On China, Jong-eun said, “Compared to my country that has 23 million, China has 1.3 billion people and still seems to be managed well. How can they feed such a big population! China is strong in agriculture. Its exports are also good. Maybe we can learn from it?” The little prince, as Fujimoto recalled, took interest in China’s success stories of reform and opening up.

on building a cultural foundation for democracy in North Korea:

[T]here is no concept of “democracy” in the North Korean awareness, only class elements, the Suryeong system, guilt-by-association, prison camps, the Ten Principles and such like. These are the things that the people must be helped to cast aside, and the key is for the people to retrieve from the dictator their sovereignty.

In order to make that happen, the most important element is freedom of information. There are three steps to achieving freedom of information.

The first step is to provide the North Korean people with information on the outside world. The second is to release domestic North Korean information to the outside world. The third is for information to move between North Korean people within their territory. Thankfully, we have managed to conquer the first and second steps. Unfortunately, the most important one is the last.

Even Chosun Central Broadcast (a state-run radio station) does not report any internal news to the people. It is almost impossible for residents of North Hamkyung Province to know about what is happening in the markets of Hwanghae Province. So the infrastructure the democratization movement needs is for the horizontal circulation of information between people, some form of “social network.

There is no civilian broadcasting, no newspapers and no Internet or other tools for the people. Therefore, the task of sharing information is South Korea’s and the international community’s. Just as South Korean NGOs and U.S. broadcasters are trying to do, we should report what is happening in Hoiryeong to the citizens of Pyongyang and make citizens in Sariwon aware of what is happening in Chongjin.

I couldn’t agree more, which is why I continue to ask your views on the viability of ideas like portable base stations and mesh networking. Eventually, we may stumble across a combination of ideas that will give North Koreans’ discontent the chance to coalesce and focus.

You’d think that the shelling of Yeonpyeong would have ended this whole silly debate, but moonbat teachers in South Korea still cling to retarded Cheonan conspiracy theories:

One teacher protested, making a wry face, “This administration has been misleading the public.” The other teacher also said angrily, “The Cheonan was not sunk by the torpedo attack but by the mistaken bombing of a U.S. warship on maneuvers 100km away or it struck a rock. If it had been caused by the underwater explosion of a torpedo, all the dead soldiers would have been torn apart.”

I consider myself a strong proponent of free speech, and I would add that a teacher’s right to free speech ends if and when she begins to propagate this kind of nonsense in a classroom. Presenting this sort of nonsense to children wouldn’t be philosophically distinguishable from teaching 9/11 conspiracies, flat earth theories, or for that matter, any one sect’s version of creationism in a public school. While each of those points of view has its place within the wider debate that societies ought to tolerate and sometimes embrace — say, in Sunday school or private schools — the educational system that the taxpayers fund is a common space for the propagation of facts that have achieved general acceptance through objective, reasoned, empirically supported science. I have yet to see any Cheonan conspiracy theories that can meet that standard. Teachers who teach them should be fired.

Don Kirk worries that revolutions in the Middle East will only lead to the rise of radical regimes that will be great clients for North Korean proliferation. I happen to share that worry, being the sort who believes that democracy is the Hegelian end-state of political evolution, but that not all societies have evolved sufficiently for successful self-government. Here’s how I would rank the Middle East’s unstable countries’ readiness for democracy, in descending order: the UAE, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and in last place, Yemen. A cursory review of that list, and the literacy rates of the countries on it, suggests that 2011 probably won’t end as well as 1989.