Open Sources, July 26, 2012

MYSTERY SOLVED? So, according to the world’s least credible TV news service — also, our most credible source here — the mystery woman standing next to Kim Jong Un is his wife, and her name is Ri Sol Ju. We know almost nothing else about her. Assuming the new report is true, contrary to previous reports sourced to South Korean officials, she is not married former entertainer Hyong Song-Wol. Or maybe, as the Daily NK reported, Hyong Song-Wol is actually this woman, and they really were having an affair.

We don’t know whether Ri is a perfectly nice person who really loves him, an innocent victim of droit du seigneur, or Marie Antoinette in faux Chanel. I don’t suppose there are many options if Kim Jong Un asks you to dance, or for whatever else that leads to. He’s no prize physically, and the search for his inner beauty is said to lead to . Still, Madame Ri looks happy enough in the pictures.

One thing we do know: despite all self-serving boasts to the contrary, corporate journalism has failed to provide us any sources of fresh and reliable information from Pyongyang, much less the rest of North Korea. Even so, frustrated optimists are positively agog, and much of the reporting is taking on the air of a report on the British royals (the NYT’s Choe Sang-Hun sees “all the trappings” — all! — “of a Kate Middleton moment”), having lost sight of the key distinction that Bobbies aren’t shooting refugees along the River Tyne, or holding 200,000 men, women, and children in political prison camps.

This story certainly hasn’t been a shining moment for the media.

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NO SNOOPY FOR YOU! North Korea’s cultural renaissance isn’t for the little people:

The Ministry of People’s Safety has been ordered to crack down on more than 500 popular songs that either have South Korean melodies with North Korean words or are deemed to be influenced by South Korean culture.

An inside source told Daily NK late last week, “The authorities have tried to ban more than 500 North Korean movie theme songs that are either of South Korean origin or influence. The Ministry of People’s Safety has declared them ‘anti-socialist’ and started a crackdown.” [Daily NK]

You can only really harmonize those conflicting signals by seeing any changes in Pyongyang as (a) largely meaningless, and/or (b) just another example of the amenities that the elite reserves for itself.

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GEE, YA THINK? South Korea warns that hot waitresses in North Korean restaurants may be spies:

“Whenever I visited the North Korean restaurant, I frequently felt that the waitresses were eavesdropping on what we were talking about behind the door,” one South Korean businessman told.

“They only let me in one specific room, even though there were a lot of vacant tables.”

The paper reports that one North Korean restaurant in Nepal was raided for tax-reasons, and a treasure-trove of documents about local South Korean guests was discovered.

This activity is why the restaurants tend to employ “young, good-looking women”, the paper reports.

“I witnessed that some North Korean restaurants’ waitresses offered sexual services to Southern businessmen working at conglomerates in the South in order to withdraw classified information on the companies,” the businessman told JoongAng Ilbo.

It would surprise me if any this “revelation” really surprised anyone, but I suppose editors love stories like this because they appeal to readers’ prurient side (you clicked, too, didn’t you?). Anyway, you might have heard that North Korea sees itself as uniquely pure and virtuous, which is the sort of thing that all people love to believe about themselves.

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I DON’T CARE HOW GOOD THE INTENTIONS are, and I don’t even care that the North Koreans oppose the idea, I don’t trust the U.N. to regulate who gets to arm himself. Especially in a world where the U.N. and various NGO “watchdogs” have been paralyzed (and have done their best to paralyze those who would protect themselves and their populations) by double standards, skewed priorities, corruption, and a largely unrealistic world view, there are really only two things left that people can use to protect their rights — free speech and, where non-violent options aren’t effective, guns. I would not want my children to live in a world where the U.N. gains control of either.

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FUN TO READ, AND MAYBE EVEN TRUE: The Chosun Ilbo writes about the plot to take down Ri Yong Ho. Read it now, before it comes out in paperback.

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ACTIVIST KIM YOUNG-HWAN, an ex-leftist who turned against North Korea, has returned from a Chinese jail after an unsuccessful bid to broker a “high-level” defection. If I had to guess, I’d say the whole thing was probably a trap.

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I’LL BE A LOT MORE IMPRESSED WHEN HE COMES BACK: Former sushi chef, who wrote a tell-all book describing Kim Jong Il’s feasting amid famine, returns to North Korea.

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A STUDY IN CONTRASTS: Personally, I like my news dry and factual and the editorials clearly marked, but it’s interesting to contrast the tone of this piece to, say, pretty much every story Jean H. Lee has ever filed from Pyongyang. At least CNN tries to tell the story that the regime doesn’t want it to see.

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RUN AHN RUN: Like too many South Koreans, Ahn Chul-Soo is incapable of drawing rational conclusions about North Korea from our experiences of the last 20 years. I still hope he runs for president. He seems to be a darling of left-leaning pseudo-intellectuals, and that’s either in spite of or because of the absence of much information about what he stands for. I’d just like to see him split the left-leaning vote, myself.