Category: Anju Links

Well, that was nice while it lasted: a hiatus spent playing with my kids and the excess of gifts they got last month. A few things I can’t let pass without some mention, starting with this question: can it be a bad thing, from the perspective of North Korea policy, that Kim Jong Bill is too tainted to hold a cabinet position? Doesn’t competing with Chris Hill to see who can appease the North Koreans more put you in line...

AS FAMINE STALKS NORTH KOREA, A BUILDING BOOM hits Pyongyang.  So where is the money is coming from, and why are pastel pink apartment blocks and skyscrapers built on mud the best use for it in such times? What is mysterious is that North Korea appears to be as broke as ever. The country’s economy went into a free fall in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist allies, and it has barely recovered....

YOU DON’T SAY! (Pt. 1): “Nuke Deal Not Likely by End of Bush Term.” The interesting take away from Nicholas Kralev’s piece is that the North Korean efforts to reconstitute their plutonium program are not focused on the old 5-MW reactor, but on the fuel fabrication plant. That would be consistent with my pet theory that the North Koreans are content to retire the old 5-MW model and start up the new 50-MW reactor instead. This also provided some amusement:...

HELLO! ARE-YOU-THE-BRAIN-SPECIALIST!?   More rumors about Kim Jong Il’s health, and speculation about what might follow him, at the New York Times.  The Times doesn’t specify, but another report claims it was brain surgery. THIS TIME, I TEND TO AGREE WITH THE CONSENSUS VIEW of post-KJI North Korea, whenever that eventually should grace us all:  military junta with Dauphin figurehead to lend legitimacy to puppetmasters.  But with the regime so economically weakened and unpopular, one can’t help thinking that the...

MORE REGIME COLLAPSE PROGNOSTICATIONS from Strategy Page. What all of these articles are trying to describe is a gradual process whose pace we can’t really measure, although their high-altitude description of the process seems about right. What also seems likely is that the regime will last through the year, given the passage of the spring and summer without any significant incidents of unrest. Soon, the pre-harvested fall crops will come in, and the worst shortages may be over until next...

MEETING WITH HU JINTAO IN BEIJING, “[South Korean President] Lee [Myung Bak] requested Hu’s cooperation to ensure ‘North Korean defectors won’t be forcefully sent back to the North against their will,’ Lee’s spokesman Lee Dong-kwan told reporters.” [IHT] WORTHY OF ITS NAME: South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission is calling on the Unification Ministry to come up with some answers about those 22 North Korean boat people who arrived in South Korea earlier this year, only to be returned to...

NEXT SURRENDER, VERIFICATION?  Sung Kim has been in talks with the North Koreans in New York to break the latest impasse, which could only mean one thing.  I hope he brought enough lubricant. HERE’S AUDIO OF ADRIAN HONG on the Hugh Hewitt Show. THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAM HAS ASKED South Korea to provide $60 million in emergency food aid.  No word on when the U.N. will tender a similar request to the Ryugyong Hotel Building Fund. IN 1997, NORTH KOREAN...

OLD FAITHFUL ERUPTS, RIGHT ON SCHEDULE:   Remember that tantrum I predicted? ”The DPRK submitted an accurate and complete nuclear declaration,” the [KCNA] commentary said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.    ”The U.S., however, has not honored its commitment to write the DPRK off the list of ‘state sponsors of terrorism,’ a key political compensation in concluding the implementation of the agreement,” it said.    ”This is obviously a violation of the...

THAT’S  STILL LEAVES 40% DARWIN CAN’T EXPLAIN:  The number of tourists to North Korea plunged more than 60 percent last month following the shooting death of a South Korean tourist at Mt. Kumgang resort.  [Chosun Ilbo] So if you want to attract tourists, it’s probably a good idea not to shoot them.  Got it.  The same report, sourced to Arirang News, says that inter-Korean trade fell by 1.5% since last year, and that non-commercial transactions, which includes aid, fell by...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL wonders what it means that North Korea is still on the terror list, and adds this: At the beginning of his Administration, Mr. Bush spoke eloquently about the suffering of the North Korean people and the brutality of the regime that oppresses them. He and his Administration have been quiet on the subject for two years, in pursuit of a nuclear deal that is still more promise than reality. We hope they keep speaking up. BECAUSE...

THE END OF SUNSHINE:  North Korea has begun expelling “unnecessary” South Koreans from Kumgang, presumably meaning everyone but the cashiers and Brinks truck drivers. The South said 11 personnel including two from the state-run Korea Tourism Organisation and nine in charge of a newly built facility for reunions of separated families in the resort had been asked to leave by early Monday. “One left on Saturday and another two are supposed to leave today,” a spokesman for the South’s unification...

NO JUCHE FOR YOU: The South Korean government has refused permission for delegations from an unnamed  “local youth group” and the infamously extremist Korean Teachers’ and Educational Workers’ Union to visit North Korea.   The decision has reportedly caused a spike in the  prices of invisible ink, pen-shaped transmitters,  and cyanide capsules in college dormitories, faculty lounges, and union halls across South Korea. A SECOND SHIPMENT OF AMERICAN FOOD AID has arrived to feed North Korea’s needy army. FIVE NORTH KOREAN...

WHAT BETTER SYMBOL could there be of the complete intellectual and moral collapse of Bush’s North Korea policy  than this? (Hat tip to a friend.) THE KOREAN CHURCH COALITION, which I think has to be the single most dynamic activist organization promoting human rights in North Korea today, has amassed a very impressive list of supportive letters from politicians of both parties.  I’ve posted some quotes below the fold.  The obvious  question is whether those are more than mere words. ...

WHAT’S MISSING HERE? “For the past seven years, we’ve spoken out against human rights abuses by tyrannical regimes like those in Iran, Sudan and Syria and Zimbabwe,” Bush said in a speech here titled “the Freedom Agenda Introduction.”  “We’ve spoken candidly about human rights with nations with whom we’ve got good relations, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and China,” he said.  [Yonhap]   Of course, it’s not as if Bush did  much to materially advance freedom in any of...