Open Sources, October 5, 2012

WHILE 30,000 STARVED IN CAMP 22:

Saenuri Party lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun, a member of the National Assembly`s foreign affairs, trade and unification committee, released Wednesday an analysis of closed trade data between North Korea and China, saying the North`s imports of luxury goods via Chinese customs reached 446.17 million U.S. dollars in 2010 and 584.82 million dollars last year. The figure was 272.14 million dollars in 2008 and 322.53 million dollars in 2009.

Kim Jong Un debuted in the Stalinist country`s political scene in September 2010, when he was appointed general of the North Korean People`s Army.

Imports were especially pronounced for high-end cars, TVs, computers, liquor and watches. Inbound shipments of luxury cars and associated components almost doubled to 231.93 million dollars last year from 115.05 million dollars in 2009. Ship exports increased more than 20 times from 17.48 million dollars from 840,000 dollars over the same period.

Artworks and antique imports reached 580,000 dollars last year, more than 10 times the figure of 50,000 dollars in 2009. Perfume, cosmetics and fur saw their inbound shipments double. Among items that saw sharp drops in imports were leather products and musical instruments. [Donga Ilbo]

No one who starves because the North Korean regime can’t afford to feed them. They starve because of the regime’s deliberate choices.

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SCOTT SNYDER SPECULATES on what election-year provocations North Korea has in mind, and Asia One explains North Korea’s voter intimidation strategy. Except for the part where it backfires.

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JUST DON’T COMPLAIN WHEN THE SOUTH RECIPROCATES: North Korea sends propaganda leaflets over the DMZ. This is a tactic that both sides should feel free to escalate.

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NEW FOCUS INTERNATIONAL: So after the Editor responded to my query, I had a look at their site and found a lot of interesting things about the ordinary details that make life in North Korea interesting for tourists and dreary for citizens. For instance — they write about the dangers of talking while intoxicated, or the fact that, in a country that’s rich in coal, their trains are running on old tires. I wonder whether (a) they’ve sold too many mines to the Chinese, or (b) they lack some key piece of equipment or technology to keep the mines running. My first guess would be pumps to de-water them. Note that coal mining was the main industry of Camp 22.

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THE ASIA SENTINEL AND FORBES REVIEW Melanie Kirkpatrick’s “Escape from North Korea.” A few pages into it, I can see that it finishes a few stories that have remained untold, at least to me. One of these is China’s arrest of Adrian Hong and a group of LiNK volunteers along with the Shenyang Six, and the shameful conduct of our Shenyang Consulate in refusing them entry, leaving them at the mercy of the waiting ChiCom police. How sad a statement it is when our government’s representatives put a greater priority on accommodating the host nation’s flagrant violations of international humanitarian law than the welfare of U.S. citizens, or the defense of our values and our national interests.

Kirkpatrick also crafts some beautiful phrases, like this description of how Gaddafi met his end:

His bloody final moments were captured on a grainy cellphone video that sped around the Web, Presumably even reaching the computer screen of Kim Jong Eun in Pyongyang. The Libyan strongman was pulled from his hiding place in a drainage pipe and battered by an angry mob before being shot by a young man wearing a Yankees cap.

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THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION’S BRUCE KLINGNER doesn’t sound very impressed by the evidence of “reform” in North Korea. Me neither, but hey, maybe we’ll eventually see evidence that there is reform, that it’s being implemented, that it’s not offset by some other combination of retrograde measures, and that it’s allowed to make a positive impact on the North Korean people. Some observers I respect see ample evidence of diktats being passed down to communes, telling them that they can keep more of their harvests, but it’s very early to make interferences about implementation and impact. I see much more evidence — gold sell-offs, inability to pay the security forces — that the regime is more financially desperate than it’s been since 2008 or so, and no doubt this regime would compromise ideology for the sake of its own survival, but I continue to believe that it still wants to keep most North Koreans hungry, tired, ignorant, and dependent. If that general state of affairs persists, then any changes in economic policy are better characterized as “consolidation” than “reform.”

I’ll leave you with this point — right now, “engagement” with North Korea is at a low ebb. Both the Lee and Obama administrations have sharply curtailed aid and trade relations. I haven’t heard so many optimistic predictions of reform in a decade, yet none of this is attributable to engagement. If there is reform, and if any external factor is driving it, then the driver is foreign — mainly American — economic isolation and pressure that’s forcing North Korea to make hard choices and abandon socialist inefficiencies. Kim Jong Il didn’t have to make those hard choices when Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun were still alive.