Monthly Archive: July, 2011

Now here is a prom date you probably can’t turn down. __________________________________ Does anyone else find this sort of rhetoric eerily similar to what the Nazi press said about Britain and France in the 30’s? China’s humiliations at the hands of Western powers in the past centuries “left the Chinese people with the deep pain of having seas they could not defend, helplessly eating the bitter fruit of being beaten for being backward,” said a front-page editorial in the paper....

I can’t believe Kim Jong Il just got re-elected again! I don’t know a single person who voted for him! __________________________________ If current trends continue, however, and subversive information continues to pour across North Korea’s borders, Kim Jong Il’s approval rating could decline into the high nineties by the time of the next election. And in related news, North Korea’s borders are also a two-way street. Yonhap reports on how information is smuggled out of North Korea, and I don’t...

The Chosun Ilbo, citing an unnamed diplomatic source, says that China is holding two South Korean National Intelligence Service officers: According to a diplomatic source familiar with China, two senior NIS agents were arrested in August last year while operating in Shenyang, Liaoning Province after hiring local operatives to gather intelligence on North Korea. In accordance with diplomatic protocol, the government demanded their deportation, but China demurred and put them on trial. [….] A source familiar with North Korea said...

So I guess North Korea isn’t constitutionally incapable of importing food after all. The Daily NK pulled up some stats compiled by the South Korean government and Chinese customs (what, they publish those?) and broke it all down. In addition to importing $46 million worth of food last year, a whopping 4% of the total value of its imports, they bought a few other things: In comparison, around 10 million dollars were used to purchase high quality liquor, cigarettes and...

The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Ramstad and the Joongang Ilbo notice that North Korea’s plea for the starving children needs some better message control: On a radio broadcast on July 4, a North Korean official said, “Our farming laborers will, with rifle in one hand and a scythe in the other like in the war for independence, make a decisive change this in year in agricultural production and serve to send more rice for our military, which will strike open...

Things that Kim Jong Il is buying that you can’t eat, Part 1: As Allison Kilkenny once learned the hard way, John Bolton has a pretty good track record for predicting North Korean nuclear tests. He’s predicting another one soon, and I suppose it’s about time for one. Along with this, Bolton criticizes President Obama for his public silence on North Korea. But as we learned from George W. Bush, strident rhetoric is no substitute for a not-half-bad policy. This...