Category: Anju Links

Good morning! This is my first post on my shiny, wafer-thin new Macbook Air. So far, it’s everything I’d hoped it would be. I like the two-finger scrolling very much. Using the “command” key for cutting and pasting, not so much. We all love affirming our own decisions, don’t we? Change! Hope! Now let’s see how much I love this thing, say, in November 2012. ____________________________ Sorry for the light blogging of late, by the way. One of my very...

Several weeks ago, I blogged about the North Korean manager of a restaurant in Nepal who absconded with the till and defected. The Chosun Ilbo has several interesting updates to that story, including the fact this turns out to have been just one of two such restaurants in Kathmandu, that the manager has arrived in South Korea, and that Nepal has released the South Koreans who helped arrange the defection. Then there is this illustration of how small changes in...

Fighting Words, Part I: In an “only in North Korea” moment, soldiers go on TV to boast about shelling a village full of civilians: On Friday, North Korean soldiers appeared on a state TV program marking Kim’s appointment anniversary and bragged of participating in the artillery barrage. “Our eyes were full of fire right after we saw the enemy’s shells being fired into our sacred waters,” soldier Kim Moon Chol said, clinching his fists and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with three uniformed...

North Korea, which President Bush removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has threatened a “sacred war” against South Korea. Well, that’s just great — even godless atheists are getting in on the whole “jihad” thing.______________________________________________________________________ If your thoughts turn to the unfortunate people of North Korea this Christmas, LiNK is raising funds to help them.______________________________________________________________________ Hmmm. Can’t link it, but I’ve just been passed an assessment by a respected publication that says there’s...

But they’re still members in good standing: The UN General Assembly passed a resolution Tuesday condemning and expressing deep concern over human rights violations in North Korea. By a vote of 106-21 with 55 abstentions, the assembly backed a November 18 committee resolution condemning “torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment… public executions, extrajudicial and arbitrary detention” in the hermit state. It also condemned the communist nation’s use of capital punishment for political and religious reasons, as...

In an effort to put an empirical measurement on the immeasurable, The Washington Post reports that South Korea is creating a North Korea Situation Index. If this is what I think it is, it’s a series of survey questions the South Korean Embassy has sent out to people it considers “experts” on the subject (and through some grievous error, I was also asked to fill this out). The survey consists of a series of questions about North Korea’s economy, its...

So North Koreans also find South Korean dramas to be dull and formulaic? We have more in common than I’d ever suspected: “In South Hamgyong Province, only a few households are able to capture TV signals, but reception is quite good in Hwanghae or South Pyongan provinces,” Kim said. “People there look forward to the evenings when dramas are broadcast.” He said North Koreans also enjoy watching news and current events programs as well and power their TVs with their...

Former chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill was quoted by VOA as saying that the North’s disclosure of the uranium enrichment plant proves that the regime lied in the six-party talks. May these words be engraved on a tablet as the epitaph of all agreed frameworks. Still, it’s a bit hard to take Christopher Hill’s outrage that he was lied to at face value, given how much he helped them lie to the rest of us. __________________________________ South Korean-based broadcasters...

Treasury has blacklisted two more North Korean companies under Executive Order 13,551: The Department of the Treasury said in a statement that it “today designated Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation pursuant to Executive Order 13551 for being owned or controlled by Office 39 of the Korean Workers’ Party.” “As a result of today’s action, any assets of the designated entities that are within U.S. jurisdiction are frozen and U.S. persons are prohibited from conducting financial or...

South Korea is now reporting two civilian deaths from North Korea’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island yesterday, raising the death toll to four. Given that the North fired 80 shells onto the island and destroyed 60 homes, it seems miraculous that more people didn’t die. Korean language reports (hat tip to my wife) are saying that kimchee may have saved lives. It’s kimchee-making season, which means that most of the civilians were down in the markets buying cabbage, garlic, and pepper...

Now that Bush is safely out of the way, the truth can finally be told: Siegfried Hecker says that North Korea is building its own light-water nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. ___________________________ North Korea bites the hand that feeds it: Rodong Shinmun, the daily publication of the Chosun Workers’ Party, asserted in an editorial on the 11th, “We should wake up to western countries’ aid diplomacy,” citing a quote attributed to Kim Jong Il, “There is no more stupid and dangerous...

Interesting: The rapid ascent of Kim Jong Eun and the building of a new ruling cast in Pyongyang is causing ripples to be felt in North Korea’s foreign currency earning apparatus. In Beijing, it is clear that anyone considered a supporter of Kim Jong Nam or Oh Keuk Ryul faces a rough ride. [Daily NK] The purge of those linked to Kim Jong-Nam isn’t a surprise at all. Jong-Nam has publicly criticized North Korea’s dynastic succession and predicted the collapse...

If South Korea’s National Assembly can’t pass a North Korean human rights law now, I doubt there will be another opportunity anytime soon. But not surprisingly, the Workers’ Party, south Chosun Branch Democratic Party remains opposed, leading to this wonderfully expressive quote from Nam Sung Wook of the Institute for National Security Strategy: Therefore, he asserted, “Hoping to pass the North Korean Human Rights Law by the mutual consent of both opposition and ruling parties is the same as looking...

South Korea fires shots at a North Korean fishing boat near the NLL. ________________________ Kim Jong Nam predicts that the North Korean regime will collapse “soon.” ________________________ Our airborne laser system hasn’t been doing well in recent tests, but Japan has carried out a successful missile interception test. ________________________ Some observations on Kim Jong-Eun, from his former dietitian, Kenji Fujimoto: Added Fujimoto: “His chubby appearance is probably from eating a lot. In North Korea, those with power at the top...

The admiral in charge of Pacific Command calls on North Korea not to test another nuke. Personally, I hope the North Koreans test one. It’s one less they can use in an actual weapon, and it’s great for my traffic. Bonus points if the test a uranium bomb, since that will make plenty of the right people look really stupid. ____________________________ Selig Harrison call your office: Reuters has published a devastating chronology of all of the retrograde, statist, anti-reform confiscations...

Why does Marxist criticism seem to apply so much better to North Korea than to, you know, capitalist societies? To the Gypsy Scholar’s observation, I’d like to add this example: Wovon Lebt Der Mensch. It plays during the opening credits of The Threepenny Opera, a blunt instrument of 1920’s German Communist propaganda whose Brecht-Weill score still contained some good gritty, gripping songs that have outlasted the film. ___________________________ In the op-ed pages of Wall Street Journal, Melanie Kirkpatrick reports on...