Open Sources, February 24, 2014

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THE NORTH KOREAN GOVERNMENT has finally gotten around to dismissing the U.N. Commission of Inquiry Report with some classic KCNA prose that (sadly) fails to deploy either “madcap” or “brigandish” for this special occasion:

The Commission was set up highhandedly at the meeting of the Council last year by the U.S. and its satellite forces out of inveterate repugnance towards the DPRK. The DPRK, therefore, has never recognized its existence as it is no more than a marionette under their clutches.

The DPRK categorically rejects this “report” as it does not deserve even a passing note. The “report” misrepresents the true picture of the Korean people enjoying genuine rights and is peppered with sheer lies and fabrications deliberately cooked up by hostile forces and riff-raffs such as some “elements with ambiguous identities who defected from the north”, criminals escaped from it after committing crimes against the country to earn money. [KCNA]

Elsewhere, however, the civilized world continues to take stock of it. Most recently, the editors of The L.A. Times and The Miami Herald have written about it, and MacLean’s has advocated North Korea’s expulsion from the U.N.

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LUXURY SPENDING RISES SHARPLY UNDER KIM JONG UN: Time and The Daily Telegraph have picked up on passages in the report accusing Kim Jong Un of spending a whopping $645.8 million on luxury goods, more than double his father’s luxury goods budget, and more than six times the amount ($98 million) that the U.N. World Food Program asked other nations to contribute in 2013 to feed hungry North Koreans for the rest of that year. For context, the WFP and the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization recently found that 84% of North Korean households have “borderline or poor food consumption.”

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YOU STAY CLASSY, HOLLYWOOD. One way we’ll be able to assess the cultural impact of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry report will be whether better judgment and good taste prevail on the Hollywood asshats who are seriously considering making a movie about Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un.

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I REALLY DON’T GET WHY, despite all that they know, people keep going to North Korea and getting themselves arrested. As you’ve no doubt heard, the latest victim is a 75 year-old missionary from Australia named John Short, who insisted on reading his Bible in front of his minders on the tour bus. I’m constantly amazed by how naive some travelers to North Korea are — whether missionaries, unethical businessmen, washed-up athletes, tourists, diplomats, reporters, or bureau chiefs for major wire services. No matter how often I tell people this, they just can’t learn to stay the f**k out of North Korea. This must the inevitable genetic consequence of societies that shield everyone from the vengeful hand of Darwin.

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KOREA REAL TIME publishes a list of stuff that Lee Seok-Ki was plotting to blow up. North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.

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YOU DON’T HAVE TO AGREE that those North-South family “reunions” are really reunions to weep at the words of people who no longer recognize loved ones, or hostages who feel compelled to say things like, “I am living a good life with consideration from the party,” because all the tables and rooms are bugged, and the North Korean “waiters” and “staff” are spies. I’m glad things like this can happen now and then, even if I’m not sure whether it’s worth it. I grit my teeth wondering how much the South Korean government paid into Kim Jong Un’s coffers to arrange this.

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NORTH KOREA’S SKI RESORT HAS NO VISITORS — imagine that. According to The Economist, shockingly, hardly any North Koreans actually know how to ski, few foreign tourists are visiting, and I can’t imagine that the global outrage over the U.N. COI report is going to help matters much. Click, if for no other reason, than to see the photograph of the empty chair lift.

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ANOTHER SUNSHINE SHOWPIECE FAILS:

Choi Won-ho was once the head of a chicken franchise with over 100 restaurants. In 2007, he drew worldwide attention by opening North Korea’s first fried chicken restaurant in Pyongyang. But soon his whole business was foundering as inter-Korean exchange was cut off by the South Korean government. Today, Choi, now 55, has just a single chicken restaurant in Seoul’s Gangseo district to his name — and dreams of a comeback.

Neither Choi nor The Handkerchief bothers to mention why South Korea cut back on inter-Korean exchanges, or why South Korea is somehow responsible for the suitability of Pyongyang’s business climate. I suspect that any of the mothers of those who died aboard the ROKS Cheonan could answer the first question.

In a related development, in 2013, inter-Korean trade hit an eight-year low, mostly due to Kim Jong Un’s four-month closure of Kaesong.

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BRING THE SLANDER!

“Issues on human rights have nothing to do with slandering the North. The rights situation is seen from the perspectives of the mankind’s universal value,” said a senior official of Seoul’s unification ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs. [….]

“Advocating the (human rights) value cannot constitute slandering Pyongyang in nature, and I believe that Pyongyang also will not link the two separate issues,” he added. [Yonhap]

I just knew that any inter-Korean agreement to a mutual cessation of “slander” would degenerate into what all agreements invariably degenerate to. On one hand, North Korea interprets the other side’s commitments broadly. On the other hand, it isn’t exactly keeping its side of that bargain, at least if the same interpretation applies with equal force on both sides of the DMZ. What South Korea has done is to ask Park Sang Hak to stop floating leaflet balloons into North Korea, and not surprisingly, Park told the ROK government where to stick that. I do hope, for Park’s own safety, that he will keep his launches at a lower profile, to avoid making himself such an inviting target for North Korean gunners.

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THE DPRK MAPSCAN page is now on Facebook.