Category: Anju Links

COMMS CHECK:  Some of you are reporting difficulty accessing this site, particularly from South Korea, and my visitors’ log agrees.  I suspect shenanigans, and I’ve been in contact with my ISP, but I’ve just been too busy to pursue the problem.  If you’re reading anywhere in the Asia-Pacific region, I’d be interested in hearing whether you can access this site. —————————————- THIS TIME, THE WOLF IS REAL — HONEST!  I don’t doubt that this is an exceptionally dry year in...

AS REGIME FORCES SHELL REBEL-HELD SUBURBS of their own capital, reports emerge that the CIA is funneling anti-tank weapons to some rebel groups, who are steadily expanding their reach throughout the country. The regime, heavily armed with weapons of mass destruction that could hit one of America’s closest allies in minutes, is backed by China, Russia, and Iran. The war follows years of steady proliferation and a corresponding frustration of diplomatic efforts to disarm it and settle its territorial disputes...

ON RARE OCCASIONS, I CONSIDER KCNA to be authoritative, and this is one of those occasions: In a dispatch headlined “To Expect ‘Change’ From DPRK Is Foolish Ambition,” the North’s Korea Central News Agency in stark terms confronted and put down speculation and comments by outsiders that its authoritarian government might change its ways. [….] Then the spokesman said that South Korea’s government – which it blames for many of its problems  –  “let experts in the north affairs and...

I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST being provocative to achieve some diplomatic or political purpose, but what exactly is the purpose we achieve by using the North Korean flag as a live fire target?  This looks like a case of the South Koreans involving our forces in their childish tit-for-tat.  Take this principle to its logical conclusion and you can see one of the reasons I’ve wanted our Army out of South Korea ever since I was a part of it....

U.N. + NORTH KOREA = KLEPTOCRACY: The U.N. is funneling millions of dollars worth of tradable carbon credits to corrupt nations worldwide, including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Uzbekistan in an attempt to encourage clean energy projects in the developing world. [….] North Korea is hosting seven hydroelectric dams, which may generate over $1 million in CERs annually. North Korea, Sudan, and Uzbekistan are among the 10 most corrupt nations worldwide, according to Transparency International’s 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index. It...

BRIGADIER GENERAL NEIL TOLLEY, whose poor choice of words led to a myriad of (almost certainly) untrue reports that U.S. Army special forces were parachuting into North Korea, has been canned. ____________________________________ I’M NOT OPPOSED TO THE IDEA THAT THE United States should help its allies who seek to check China’s regional expansionism, but rather than asking whether America is serious about defending its allies in Asia, we ought to be asking just how serious our Asian allies are about...

NO ONE SHOULD EVER SAY “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY,” but everyone ought to be able to enjoy this day without feeling that it’s wrong or ungrateful to do so. This country exists to elevate the individual over the state, to be a safe place for the pursuit of individual happiness. Our obligation is simply this — to reflect on the fact that our happiness was secured by a few, who were willing to give everything away for our sake. ______________________________________ YES,...

SOMEDAY, I’D LOVE TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED HERE: Many of the details remained murky. The Beijing News said the boats were intercepted on May 8 in waters between China and North Korea. The report quoted one of the ships’ owners, Zhang Dechang, as saying that he had spoken by phone to a kidnapped sailor and that the captors were demanding about $189,000. Later reports said that had been reduced to about $142,000. Another newspaper, The Global Times, quoted Mr....

So barring some major technical problem, I hope I’m done messing with upgrades, themes, and plugins for a while, though I may set up another aggregator page and make some other organizational changes. There is one persistent problem that I can’t fix, however — the menus. As you can see, those link buttons are like U.N. resolutions. I’ve tried disabling the plugins, switching menus, changing and changing back the permalink settings, but nothing fixes the problem. I have a terrible...

IT’S BEING REPORTED THAT Chen Guangcheng is on his way to the United States. This is great news, and it won’t be lost on the Chinese people where Chen went when he feared the thugs of his own government. I suppose credit is due to the Obama Administration for negotiating this solution, but credit is also due to the Congress, which was making an election-year issue of the Administration’s initial bungling of the matter. In the end, China decided it...

SO FAR, NO NUKE TEST, and China is trying to take credit for that: “China is unhappy … and urged North Korea not to conduct a nuclear test near Changbai Mountain,” said the source, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Assuming this isn’t all disinformation — after all, China has openly encouraged North Korea to conduct nuclear tests until now — there’s also the question of what “near Changbai Mountain” means (Changbai Mountain, also...

NORTH KOREA LOSES A CUSTOMER, MAYBE?  The Burmese junta says it will stop buying weapons from North Korea, but that’s what you expect them to say, given that any such purchases would violate UNSCR 1874, and have previously attracted unwanted attention from the U.S. Navy. We’ll see soon enough if they’re serious about that.__________________________________ DO YOU SUPPOSE IT’S A COINCIDENCE that Kim Yong Nam recently chose to make a state visit to Indonesia, which also happens to be the home...

SPLITTERS! ________________________________ THE WORLD’S LEAST REASSURING THEME PARK: “It’s a shame that North Koreans are treated by their rulers as basically an expendable race of people. Before we were allowed on the ride, the guys in charge sent a few terrified farmers on test runs like a shipment of human flour sacks.” Read the whole thing. ________________________________ CAT-AND-MOUSE JOURNALISM IN CHINA: For all the kvetching I’ve done lately about junk reporting from Pyongyang, it’s easy to forget that some dedicated...

CHRISTINE AHN ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH KOREA: OK, it’s a few months old, but I can’t help myself. Have a wastebasket handy when you click this, preferably not one made of wicker or wire mesh. The fact that Ahn explicitly (if ever so briefly) acknowledges that there are human rights violations in North Korea somehow manages not to make her sound like any less of a tool. ________________________________ I DON’T KNOW HOW ANY HONEST FEMINIST COULD BE AN APOLOGIST...

NORTH KOREA’S BROADSIDE AGAINST CHUNG MONG-JONG, the centrist South Korean third-party candidate and Hyundai heir, is significant in two ways, given that Chung’s family has long been associated with economic aid to, and “engagement” with, North Korea. First, it’s significant that Chung has tacked away from North Korea since he last ran for the presidency in 2002, when he allied himself with arch-appeaser Roh Moo Hyun.  Second, it’s significant that North Korea seems to feel no residual affection for Chung,...

OH KIL NAM’S WIFE, Shin Suk Ja, has died after reportedly being imprisoned in Camp 15 with her daughter. It was Oh’s idea to defect to North Korea, and it’s a grievous moral (and Darwinian) injustice that Shin, who opposed the idea from the start, died for Oh’s stupidity.___________________________________ DELECTABLE IRONY OF THE YEAR: A Japanese human rights activist searches his country’s archives and finds evidence that one of Kim Jong-Un’s grandparents was a collaborator.___________________________________ HUMAN RIGHTS WITHOUT FRONTIERS publishes...