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Category: Kremlinology

September 6, 2006

To Your Health!

[Updated] If there’s anything to a new report that Kim Jong Il’s liver is seizing up on him, I may have to admit that Madeleine Albright’s toast of a mass murderer contributed to the cause of world peace after all (the old soldiers’ rumor is that he just drinks colored water to extract cash from naive foreign diplomats). And although I don’t believe everything I hear from GNP lawmakers, I certainly hope we can get this rumor into circulation up...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
August 31, 2006

TKL Interview with Chuck Downs on the Alliance, Diplomacy, Nukes, and Why Kim Jong Il Tested Those Missiles

[Update 2: Thanks to the reader who pointed out that I had accidentally disabled the comments! That’s fixed now; please submit any questions or comments you have.] [Update: This post will “stick” at the top of the page for a couple of days; scroll down for new entries.] Chuck Downs is an author, independent consultant, and former Pentagon official who frequently appears on television news programs to discuss North Korea policy. He has held a number of important positions in...

Categories An Alliance?/China & Korea/Geopolitics/Japan & Korea/Kim Jong Il/Korean Politics/Kremlinology/NK Military/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views/WMD
August 26, 2006

Is He Crazy After All?

A big welcome to the new readers from Gateway Pundit, and as always, many thanks to Jim for his link and his support. All of us who wonder why Kim Jong Il has does some of the bone-headed things he’s done lately have shared a few common assumptions about him as we engaged in this speculative parlor game of ours: * He is sane, rational, calculating, and reasonably well informed about his foes’ thought processes (some, however, would also argue...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/WMD
July 23, 2006

Kim Jong Il Marries Yonsama in Private Vermont Ceremony

Hey … look at these pics and tell me I’m off base here. Tell me these are really two different people. Ever seen them at the same place and time? Didn’t think so! . . . . . . . . Oh, sure, you could decide to believe the “authorized” reports, like those from Chosun Ilbo (Korean only), the Joongang Ilbo (English) and Yonhap (English), but who are you going to believe? Them, or your own eyes? Big hat tip...

Categories Humor/Satire/Kim Jong Il
July 18, 2006

A Wedge Between China and North Korea?

Update 7/21: Senator John Voinovich, who cried when he previously announced that he couldn’t support John Bolton’s confirmation, now says he would. More. North Korea’s decision to test those missiles is looking more like a miscalculation today than it did two weeks ago. South Korea has halted the delivery of aid (for now), Japan is preparing for a new round of sanctions, the United States may do the same, and the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution that John...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Kremlinology/NK Economics/WMD
July 7, 2006

I May Have Figured This Out…

Why North Korea willfully pissed off the whole world by launching a rocket, that is. It’s a wrinkle on the “domestic consumption” theory: The regime is in desperate shape and is about to make some kind of face-losing concession, such as asking for food aid or agreeing to give up some weapon or activity. Kim Jong Il needed a garish display of belligerence to save face — to tell his people that any aid is really an extortion payment, or...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Kremlinology/WMD
July 7, 2006

On ‘Strategic Disengagement’

I don’t really know, of course, but what a discussion Richardson has started with one of this blog’s best-written and researched posts (pursued by James, with characteristic excellence, here). The topic: why North Korea would do something so counterproductive to its extortionate, mendacious, highly successful diplomacy as this ballistic tantrum. Richardson believes the main motive to be an intent to isolate itself from the world. He calls this Strategic Disengagement. I disagree with Richardson’s ultimate conclusion, that Kim Jong Il...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/WMD
May 1, 2006

What’s the Deal With Kim Jong Nam?

I found this report interesting on two levels. First, a certain “East Asian intelligence agency” is either running a disinformation campaign or needs to shoot whoever leaked a good source of intel on North Korean kremlinology, specifically, “occasional drunken conversations that last more than an hour.” Isn’t that always the best kind, too? Second, the role of Kim Jong Il’s eldest son, Kim “Goofy” Jong Nam, whom I’d though had landed safely on the ash-heap, looks like it’s back in...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/North Korea
April 12, 2006

One Big, Leaky Basket

South Korea has arrested a Taiwanese man for spying for North Korea. What’s not entirely clear is whether the man was spying for prodigal son Kim Jong Nam, and what JN’s relationship is to North Korea these days: The information sent to the North, according to prosecutors, included Newsweek Korea magazine’s coverage of the detention and expulsion of Kim Jong-nam from Japan in 2001 after he tried to enter that country on a fraudulent passport. The man also forwarded tapes...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics/Kremlinology/NK Military/North Korea/ROK Military/Washington Views
April 12, 2006

Shin Sang-Ok Dies

The South Korean film-maker and his actress wife were best known for having been kidnapped by Kim Jong Il to make movies in North Korea, most infamously the stoner cult classic “Pulgasari.” In Shin’s observations about the emperor and his court feature prominently in the writings of North Korea Kremlinologists, including Jasper Becker’s Rogue Regime. Apparently at the orders of Kim Jong-il, then North Korea’s heir apparent and a film buff, both he and his wife, the actress Choi Eun-hee,...

Categories Abductions/Kim Jong Il/Korean Society/Kremlinology/North Korea
February 14, 2006

Kim Jong Chol Reported Sidelined as Successor

Today’s WTF News  comes courtesy of the Donga Ilbo, which reports that Kim Jong Chol, previously named as the likely heir to Kim Jong Il, has been sidelined in the succession struggle. Kim Jong Chul (photo), the 25-year-old second son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his most likely heir, is reportedly suffering from a medical hormone problem, and there is speculation that he may have lost his spot in the country’s succession hierarchy. . . . ....

Categories Kremlinology/North Korea/WTF?