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November 20, 2014

Kirby: “strategy of non-criticism” gained only “crumbs” for Japan, S. Korea

In an op-ed for CNN.com, Michael Kirby talks about North Korea’s crimes against humanity, the history of the U.N.’s attempts to “engage” Pyongyang on human rights, and the broader failure of strategies that sought to transform North Korea though scented candles, mood lighting, and Marvin Gaye music alone: The strategy of non-criticism, attempted friendliness and deference was singularly unsuccessful in securing either the goal of peace, national reunification or human rights compliance. For example, the meetings in Pyongyang in September 2002 with...

Categories "United" Nations/Anju Links/Appeasement/Human Rights
November 10, 2014

Camp 15: The Theresienstadt ploy?

The Daily NK reports that Camp 15, described by refugee-journalist Kang Chol Hwan in The Aquariums of Pyongyang and by more recent witnesses to The Washington Post‘s Chico Harlan, is no more, and that the prisoners have been sent to other camps: Detainees held until recently at North Korea’s notorious political prison camp in Yodeok County have been moved to two alternate camps, an inside source from North Hamkyung Province has alleged to Daily NK. “That political prison camp that used to be...

Categories Anju Links/The Camps
November 6, 2014

Donald Gregg’s weird, surreal, sad spectacle

In all the stages of North Korea’s reaction to U.N. action on the Commission of Inquiry report, none was quite so surreal as an event held on Monday, October 20th, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. There, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea and Cheonan conspiracy theorist Donald Gregg moderated a “conversation” about human rights with North Korean diplomat (I use the term advisedly) Jang Il Hun. If that seems about as wise as inviting Larry Flynt...

Categories Anju Links
November 4, 2014

How much should we worry about N. Korea’s missiles? Basho explains.

My post on North Korea’s alarming progression toward a nuclear missile capability inspires a knowledgeable reader and friend to send me an extended comment. Because he has asked me to withhold his name and where he works, we’ll call him “Basho, an observer of Things, and international affairs raconteur.” Without saying more, I’m confident that Basho has a basis to know what he’s talking about. I print his comments in their entirety, unedited except that I embedded his hyperlinks. ~  ~  ~ There are...

Categories Anju Links/Missiles/WMD
October 25, 2014

Must listen: Suki Kim, on teaching undercover at PUST

Kurt Achin, who hosts a series of outstanding podcasts for NK News, interviews Suki Kim, who went undercover as a teacher at the experimental Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. PUST teaches an elite, hand-picked group of male students, ostensibly as a strategy to open North Korea to the world, but the regime’s restrictions on both Kim and her students were so severe that Kim calls PUST “a five-star prison.” Among other verboten topics, Kim wasn’t allowed to mention the internet. At a...

Categories Anju Links
October 22, 2014

Kim Il Sung’s creepy quest to live to 100.

The delightfully named Kim So-Yeon was one of Kim Il Sung’s personal physicians before he defected in 1992. The doctor’s team devised many different ways to ensure a longer life. “We did a lot of research,” says Kim. “But we only gave him the treatments he had chosen from our list of options.” One treatment the late leader favored in his later years, according to Kim, was blood transfusions from citizens in their twenties. Those who had been chosen for...

Categories Anju Links
September 23, 2014

North Korean Gulag survivors call on Switzerland to freeze Kim Jong Un’s slush funds (Alternate title: Cursed are the Cheesemakers).

Switzerland has always been there for North Korea. When North Koreans were starving to death in heaps, Switzerland was there to receive Kim Jong Il’s personal shopper and sell him millions of dollars’ worth of its finest timepieces. When North Korea needed creative new ways to make money – literally! – Switzerland sold it the very same intaglio presses and optically variable ink our Bureau of Engraving and Printing uses to make money. When Kim Jong Un needed a place...

Categories Activism/Anju Links/Europe/Money Laundering/Refugees/Sanctions
September 21, 2014

Whether or not this is true of President Obama, it’s an insightful analysis.

Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal: His essential problem is that he has very poor judgment. And we don’t say this because he’s so famously bright—academically credentialed, smooth, facile with words, quick with concepts. (That’s the sort of intelligence the press and popular historians most prize and celebrate, because it’s exactly the sort they possess.) But brightness is not the same as judgment, which has to do with discernment, instinct, the ability to see the big picture, wisdom...

Categories Anju Links/Diplomacy
September 19, 2014

LiNK Fundraiser in Long Beach on Oct. 25: 5K for Freedom

From LiNK’s site: 5K for FREEDOM is an all ages event raising funds for Liberty in North Korea. You are welcome to walk, run, bike, rollerblade, jog, push a stroller, or whatever you’d like! This is a non-competitive 5K designed to encourage fun while raising money for a good cause. Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) is a non-profit working with North Korean refugees in hiding in China. These are families, grandmothers, children, daughters, etc. They risked their lives escaping North...

Categories Activism/Anju Links
September 18, 2014

What Bob King should have said about travel to North Korea.

Ambassador Robert King, whose title is Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues, has written to The Washington Post in response to Anna Fifield’s reporting on North Korea’s efforts to market itself as a tourist destination (which may be more accurately described as the efforts of foreign collaborators to sell North Korea as a fine place to go slumming). King wishes that Fifield had given more emphasis to what should be obvious to anyone with good sense — that “[t]ravel to...

Categories "United" Nations/Anju Links/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Foreigners in N. Korea
September 12, 2014

Malnutrition and disillusionment take their toll on the North Korean military.

Rimjin-gang reports that the NKPA is finding that after a full generation of hunger and depressed birth rates, there are fewer young North Korean men who meet its physical standards, and many of those who do dodge the draft. I’d assume that draft-dodging in North Korea requires one to have the financial means to pay significant bribes, and if the possession of such financial means is still largely a function of songbun (hereditary political caste), then the disillusionment has entered...

Categories Anju Links/NK Military
September 9, 2014

Former Obama Admin. official: Our N. Korea sanctions are weak and our policy is stuck

The Obama Administration’s North Korea team is stuck. Its thirst for fresh blood is so dire that it recently asked Keith Richards whether he still has the number of that secret clinic in Switzerland.* Don’t take my word for it. Last Friday, former Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as a friend and spy of mine was sitting in the audience (thank you). Campbell’s remarks are worth listening to in full, but the...

Categories Anju Links/Media Criticism/Sanctions/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views