Open Sources, January 15, 2014

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I’M GLAD I WATCHED “SECRET STATE OF NORTH KOREA” last night. I might not have stayed up late to watch it had I known that the next morning, I could watch the entire program online (Hat Tip), but it was still well worth seeing. I can’t say I learned much new information, but I can say that many things I already knew became much more real, believable, and tangible to me. And plenty of people who had been getting their information about North Korea from the Associated Press probably did learn a great deal.

The story of the man dragged behind a truck, as related by his sister, was the sort of horror we’ve been numbed to. As it always does, watching the kids got to me. All I could think was how much I wanted to take them home, feed them, and put them in warm beds. It’s horribly depressing stuff, but there was hopeful news, too. Take heart. I’ve never been more convinced that it won’t last long — between zero and four years, depending on how much Kim Jong Un’s ineptitude exceeds John Kerry’s.

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THE NUMBER OF DEFECTORS ARRIVING in South Korea last year was just 1,516, compared to 1,502 last year. That means that Kim Jong Un’s border crackdown continues to depress new arrivals at a level not seen since 2005, but at least he didn’t succeed in depressing it below last year’s levels, yet. That also means it’s time to update this chart:

[Prior-year data from here.]

Women accounted for 76% of the new arrivals. According to the Unification Ministry, there are now 26,124 North Koreans living in the South. Had past trends continued, we’d be at or above 30,000.

Unfortunately, the regime is cracking down harder than ever to re-seal the border:

“An ‘anti-Socialist inspection team’ has been created out of the graduating class of a university of politics under the Ministry of People’s Security in Pyongyang, and it’s making people very nervous,” a source from northerly Yangkang Province reported to Daily NK on the 15th. “Border security was tightened at the time they started their inspections, and I hear that the number of people getting caught trying to cross the border has been rising.”

“On the 13th a family attempting to go across the border was apprehended by a border patrol and some members of the inspection team,” the source went on to allege. “The students have fire in their eyes and really want to get some inspection results. Admittedly they’re just students, but because they are about to graduate they really want to show loyalty to the authorities. There’s little chance of avoiding punishment for people caught by them.” [Daily NK]

There’s much more information at that link, all of it bleak.

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YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE that Kim Jong Un is quickening his pace toward his Götterdämmerung, but the Obama Administration is (rightly) trying to quicken its own pace toward planning for it. The single most important thing those governments can do to prepare for the collapse of Kim Jong Un’s regime is to prevent a war between China on one side, and the U.S. and South Korea on the other. Unfortunately, the publicly available evidence doesn’t suggest that our discussions with China have been terribly productive.

The United States and China had discussions on the possibility of a regime collapse in North Korea and other contingencies well before the death of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, according to a U.S. congressional report. But it remains unconfirmed whether the two global powers are continuing such sensitive consultations. [….]

The CRS quoted a Peking University professor well versed in China’s policies as saying, “Beijing would not accept an implosion in Pyongyang or watch passively if other countries gain political and military control in North Korea.”  [Yonhap]

More here. If, by “other countries,” China means the U.S., I’d say we could make a mutual agreement to keep out. If China means South Korea, then conflict in some form is almost certainly inevitable. The North Koreans aren’t going to accept a Chinese occupation passively. For that matter, neither will the South Koreans.

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PARK GEUN-HYE IS WARNING KIM JONG UN that he’d be making a big mistake if he f**ks with her: “One thing that is very clear is that any provocations will be met very firmly. I cannot be clearer about that.” Kim Jong Un would be well advised to listen to her. If only he was.

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NEW BLOG FIND: Jangmadang, which comes to us via Jack Kim (formerly of Han Voice) and (this was a wonderful surprise) Seongmin Lee, with whom I had dinner a few months ago in Washington. Jack is Canadian, and Lee is a recent arrival from North Korea who is interning at the Canadian Parliament while taking a break from his studies in Seoul. I probably spent at least an hour asking Seongmin about trade, smuggling, sotoji farms, and recent changes in North Korean society. I’ve added this one to my main page feed on the sidebar, where I watch my very favorite North Korea blogs, because they produce great content.

(No, in case you’re wondering, I didn’t hork their name for my newly restored news aggregator page. I named it “The Jangmadang” about a week ago, before I saw Jack and Seongmin’s blog, although that was long after they’d set their blog up.)

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DEFECTORS, ACTIVISTS SEND USB DRIVES TO N. KOREA:

South Korean activists launched thousands of anti-Pyongyang leaflets and Wikipedia-loaded USB keys across the border Wednesday, despite past North Korean threats to shell the “human scum” involved. [….]

“USB keys are one of the most powerful tools, because they’re small, can be hidden and shared easily, and carry massive amounts of data,” he said. Each of the 1,500 USB flash drives launched on Wednesday had been loaded with the Korean-language version of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

The 500,000 anti-North leaflets in the packages were also accompanied by around 50 tiny transistor radios. [….]

“This is aimed at letting North Korean people know about (leader) Kim Jong-Un’s brutality… and deliver a message to North Koreans that now is time for them to rise up and finish the dictatorship,” said the group’s leader Park Sang-Hak. [AFP]

I wonder how many more like Park Sang-Hak are incubating inside North Korea right now.

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DENNIS RODMAN’S COLLEAGUES share their regrets about following him to North Korea.

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WHY NORTH KOREA NEEDS A SKI RESORT like Dennis Rodman needs a scanning electron microscope:

“It’s a place for people with lots of money,” the source assessed, before adding, “Normal people can’t enjoy a ski resort because they don’t have any leisure time. Of course, there are state field trips where one could go and not have to pay, but that kind of thing may only happen once in a entire lifetime, so no one is holding their breath.” [….]

Even if you wanted to visit, you need a travel pass.  It’s impossible to get such a pass if you don’t have relatives there,” the source explained. 

I think it was almost incalculably stupid for Kim Jong Un to mention this in his New Year’s speech. That’s why I hope he’ll keep it up.

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KIM JONG UN IS (BACK?) IN THE METH BUSINESS: The North Korean government probably manufactured and exported that New York-bound meth I wrote about here, based on the inferences I draw from this Daily NK report. According to the report, the regime controls the manufacturing facilities and the smuggling operations that would likely have supplied such a large quantity and quality of meth, and would have exported it through China. This fact was simply staggering to me:

“Around 60% of Hungnam’s population is involved in drug manufacturing,” he alleged. “It provides people in the area with cereals, sugar and oil in a bid to keep any competing forces at bay. Escort Command dominates all the distribution and sale of drugs currently being smuggled into China.”

North Korean-made drugs are “cheap and of reasonable quality,” the source revealed, before adding that, “The product is popular in China, and word has reached international brokers who are now importing it into South Korea, Japan and throughout Southeast Asia.”

In order for the regime to maintain a monopoly and boost its foreign currency earnings, the Ministry of State Security has been charged with cracking down on any production and sale operating outside of state-sanctioned channels, the source testified. “North Korea earns a lot of money by smuggling drugs into China.  The drug problem has become widespread, and now people are manufacturing it on their own.”

This is a one-source story, so the some caution is in order, but if confirmed, it would be our first evidence in years of North Korea profiting from large-scale exports of illicit drugs. Other reports from the last decade had suggested that the regime’s involvement had declined, as “free agents” took over.

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Much has been said about the astronomical short-term costs associated with reunification, and I’ve certainly never tried to minimize them. We should consider, however, that a pairing of the South’s technology and export industry with the North’s inexpensive labor, natural resources, good harbors, and favorable geography promises to make a reunified Korea a wealthy nation in the medium term. It’s good to see more discussion of this, too.

It provokes the thought that much of the cost of reunification could be paid with high-yield 30-year bonds, backed by a government with a high GDP, a relatively stable and interconnected financial system, and a solid credit rating. But then, I arrived in South Korea in 1998, shortly after the Asian Financial Crisis, so I’ve learned to take nothing for granted.

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PROFESSOR SUNG YOON LEE writes about his recent visit to the Yushukan War Museum, adjacent to to the infamous Yasukuni Shrine.

[J]ust a short stroll from the main shrine, the visitor finds a consecration of lies and half-truths that tarnishes Japan’s post-1945 ascendancy: the Yasukuni War Museum. Here are historical narratives that glorify Japan’s brutal colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945 and the 1937 invasion of China, which involved the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians. The attack on Pearl Harbor is even presented as contributing to “world peace.” [Prof. Sung-Yoon Lee, N.Y. Times]

Until I saw it for myself, I didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about. Lee continues:

An increasingly assertive China and belligerent North Korea — two states founded on the anti-Japanese revolutionary credentials of their respective leaderships — will surely exploit Japan’s perceived embrace of militarism, particularly at a time when Japan is bolstering its defense policy as never before in the postwar period. The image of an unashamedly bellicose Japan, however, has no benefit whatsoever for the United States, which is allied to Japan by a security treaty that grants the right to maintain military bases on Japanese territory.

The irony is that the Japanese people elected Shinzo Abe to protect them from their dangerous neighbors. Unfortunately, Abe’s stronger defense posture comes packaged with a lot of diplomatic incompetence that also weakens Japan. Each Yasukuni visit is a gift to the ChiComs and weakens Japan’s relations with allies and potential allies. Abe is to China what Dennis Rodman is to me — the perfect foil, a man whom it’s one of my sweetest pleasures to despise.

Dennis Halpin, who is quoted at length in Foreign Policy, also thinks the visit could harm Japan’s relations with the United States.

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I NEVER KNEW THIS ABOUT MYSELF, but apparently, I speak in a highly distinctive regional dialect. Take this quiz at the New York Times, which consists of a set of questions designed by a professor of linguistics. I took it twice, and both times it put a deep red spot right on top of the precise part of South Dakota I’m from. (The kids, interestingly enough, tested differently from each other, and inconclusively each time. We also tested my wife, but as a joke.)

I’d always understood that South Dakotans spoke “standard” American English. I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that the dialects in different parts of South Dakota were distinguishable (the Lakota people being one obvious exception — their dialect is very distinctive in daily speech). The precision and consistency of the result surprised and impressed me.