Open Sources, October 17, 2013
PEACE IN OUR TIME, Part 1: South Korea says that the North is ready for another nuke test any old time, and reveals that at the height of Sunshine and Agreed Framework II, the North was building missile silos:
Several South Korean government sources confirmed yesterday that the North has numerous underground missile launch facilities around 2,000 meters (2,190 yards) south of Mount Paektu. The silos, they said, were constructed in the mid-2000s and were determined to have been completed recently.
Somewhere in my archives, there are Google Earth images of mysterious polygons cut out of the forest up in this area. I’ll have to go back and figure out if the location matches.
~ ~ ~
PEACE IN OUR TIME, Part 2: When I read threats like this, it makes me think the sanctions are starting to work:
In a thinly veiled threat to strike the United States, the North’s National Defence Commission (NDC), chaired by leader Kim Jong-Un, said the US government must withdraw its policy of hostility against the North if it wants peace on both the Korean peninsula and the “US mainland”.
“(The United States) must bear it in mind that reckless provocative acts would meet our retaliatory strikes and lead to an all-out war of justice for a final showdown with the United States,” a spokesman of the NDC was quoted as saying in a statement carried by Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency.
“We emphasize again that the United States must withdraw various measures aimed to isolate and strangulate us. Dependent upon this are… peace and security, not only on the Korean peninsula but the US mainland as well.”
Just as in 2006, Pyongyang seems very focused on getting sanctions lifted. North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.
~ ~ ~
AGREED FRAMEWORK III WATCH: When the Administration is entrusting Stephen Bosworth to represent it, get a tight grip on your wallet.
North Korea has dangled the prospect of suspending nuclear and long-range missile tests if aid-for-disarmament negotiations get back on track. But it’s not ready to declare a moratorium on space launches – the very act that derailed its last attempt to negotiate with Washington. [….]
“Washington’s position is that it’s not ready to come back to the negotiating table until North Korea demonstrates a somewhat more credible approach. Since they (North Korea) have been the ones that destroyed last year’s agreement, it’s up to them to create the conditions to show they are serious,” Bosworth said.
It’s still masturbatory diplomacy when we’re negotiating with ourselves — that is, we’re offering Pyongyang new concessions for things that it has already promised to do and reneged on, and for which we’ve already given previous concessions:
“We are prepared to have a peaceful relationship with North Korea, we are not engaged in regime change, we are prepared to sign a non-aggression agreement – providing North Korea decides to denuclearize and to engage in legitimate negotiations to achieve that end,” Kerry said during a visit to Japan.
So would we be prepared to threaten regime change by contain, constrict, and collapse if North Korea does not disarm? And would we still be willing to have a “peaceful relationship” with a North Korea that sells chemical weapons to Syria, menaces South Korea, arms terrorists, hold foreign abductees, and commits mass murder against its own people?
UPDATE: I’d meant to also weave in this Yonhap report:
The Obama administration is taking a longer-term approach toward North Korea, concentrating efforts on pressing the communist regime to realize that it has no other strategic choice but to abandon its nuclear program, a senior U.S. official said.
“This is not a process that aims at getting to the table. This is a process that aims at removing the North Korean nuclear program and any fissile material that they have. Tables are a means to an end,” the State Department official said during an in-flight background briefing for reporters, according to a transcript released by the department. [….]
“We have no objection to or problem with talking to the North Koreans, but talk is not the solution; negotiations are, and negotiations over how the North Korean nuclear program is ended and how that termination is verified,” said the official.
I’d be more reassured if it all didn’t sound so much like things I once hear Chris Hill say.
~ ~ ~
NORTH KOREA IMITATES “ANIMAL FARM” (again):
North Korea has revised the 10 fundamental principles of the ruling Workers’ Party to legitimise the hereditary succession of current leader Kim Jong-un and his family, reported South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo on Monday.
Pyongyang reportedly revised the principles in June – the first time since April 1994 when the late Kim Jong-il became North Korea’s leader.
The revised rules stipulate that North Korea and the Workers’ Party will be “kept alive forever by the Baekdu bloodline”. Baekdu Mountain is the highest on the Korean Peninsula and the ‘Baekdu bloodline’ refers to the Kim family. [S. China Morning Post]
They’re also warning people against foreign influences, “factionalism,” “regionalism,” and (most ironically) “familism,” but I guess some families are more equal than others.
The rewritten rules put less emphasis on “socialism and communism” and more on “juche revolution,” which pretty much fits my theory that North Korea is moving toward a variation of fascism in which church and state are one.
Not all change is reform. This doesn’t sound like the work of a regime that’s inclined toward reform, or one that feels secure about its stability.
~ ~ ~
THEY MUST BE RUNING OUT OF USUAL SUSPECTS TO ROUND UP: This AP report on the replacement of North Korea’s Defense Minister is striking for (1) the fact that it does not appear to rely at all on locally sourced reporting, and (2) this quote: “Nearly half of about 220 top government, Workers’ Party and military officials have been replaced since Kim took power, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry.”
~ ~ ~
“Pornographic videos produced in Japan began to enter North Korea back in the 1980s. They were carried into the North by people travelling on the Mangyongbong,” a source familiar with the internal workings of Chongryon, the association for North Korean residents living in Japan, told Daily NK on the 7th. “There were these Chongryon people who were responsible for procuring and delivering the videos to North Korea.”
“The pornography that came in this way was then passed down to high-ranking North Korean officials via Kim Jong Il. The watching of pornographic videos thus became common practice for officials around Kim,” the source continued. “Videos of North Korean performers also circulated privately within Chongryon in Japan. However, it has not been confirmed whether Ri Sol-Ju, like Kim’s former lover Hyon Song Wol, ever produced pornographic videos.”
~ ~ ~
WARNINGS NOTWITHSTANDING, South Korean goods continue to fetch high prices in Pyongyang.
~ ~ ~
NORTH KOREAN RESTAURANTS are accused of involvement in espionage in this story, hosted on Fox News, and written by the Washington Free Beacon. Although I don’t doubt that that’s the case, I suspect that their primary purpose is to collect cash that can be co-mingled with illicit proceeds and then smuggled, or deposited in accounts under fictitious names, to better facilitate money laundering.
~ ~ ~
HOLODOMOR UPDATE: Last year’s crop seizures brought famine, and perhaps even cannibalism, to North Korea’s rice bowl. This year, Pyongyang has just rescinded an order requiring farmers in Ryanggang to send most of this year’s bumper crop of potatoes to the Emerald City. It seems the recission was the result of popular opposition. I wonder how much more there is to that than we know, and how many other cases like that we aren’t reading about.
~ ~ ~
THE REGIME RESCINDS an order requiring its overseas agents to send their hostages kids home.
~ ~ ~
THE COMPANIES SHOULD SUE, AND COLLECT THE JUDGMENTS FROM KAESONG REVENUES: North Korean cyber-attacks have cost South Korea more than $800 million.