Category: Miscellaneous

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...

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? Our U.N. Ambassador’s proposed response to North Korea’s missile launch was to add 42 companies to the sanctions list. China proposed two, and we compromised at … three. All of those entities — Green Pine, Amroggang Development Bank, and Tanchon Commercial Bank were already sanctioned by Treasury for their involvement in WMD proliferation. Back when John Bolton was at the U.N., the Security Council was passing tough and potentially effective resolutions against North Korea. People bitched...

PRESIDENT OBAMA, in a joint news conference with the visiting Prime Minister of Japan, says North Korea’s provocation are a sign of weakness, and this: “The old pattern of provocation that then gets attention and somehow insists on the world purchasing good behavior from them, that pattern is broken,” Obama said in a joint news conference with Noda at the White House. Let’s check back on that after November, when Wendy Sherman runs to the Oval Office with the blueprint...

EX-MILOSEVIC PROSECUTOR SAYS U.N. SHOULD “PUT NORTH KOREA ON TRIAL:” Unfortunately, this would require Security Council approval, so the precise means and moment of failure are completely predictable. This isn’t to say that the effort is unworthy. It would make a great thought experiment: The situation in North Korea is a clarion call for the Security Council and other U.N. members to show courage in a case of political complexity. There can be few places in the world where the...

THE ECONOMIST on North Korea’s gulag: Perhaps the scale of the atrocity numbs moral outrage. Certainly it is easier to lampoon the regime as ruled by extraterrestrial freaks than to grapple with the suffering it inflicts (The Economist is guilty). Yet murder, enslavement, forcible population transfers, torture, rape: North Korea commits nearly every atrocity that counts as a crime against humanity. A world that places any value on the idea of universal human rights should no longer overlook North Korea’s...

IF JIMMY CARTER HAS LOST RABBI SHMULEY BOTEACH, HE’S LOST … well, upper Westchester County I suppose, but still, it’s good to see things like this in the Huffington Post: So why haven’t we done more to help the innocent people of North Korea who must live under fear and tyranny, and who suffer the specter of state-organized famines? Many will say that our hands are tied due to the fact that the North has nuclear weapons, which just reinforces...

CHINA DENIES selling missile transporters (TELs) to North Korea, but the U.N.’s sanctions committee will investigate. Look for China to block the report if it comes up with any evidence that China, yet again, violated UNSCR 1874, 1718, and 1695. That’s how China responded to a previous report that it helped North Korea sell missiles to Iran. Last year, it also blocked a U.N. report on North Korea’s uranium enrichment program. Look for them to do the same when the...

CHINA ‘PAUSES’ DEPORTATIONS? The AFP, citing the Yomiuri Shimbun, reports that China has temporarily stopped sending North Korean refugees back to Kim Jong Il’s firing squads and concentration camps to punish it for its latest misadventure in rocket science: The Yomiuri Shimbun quoted two Chinese officials as saying the long-standing policy of swiftly returning any North Korean who made it across the border and into China — despite the punishment they face — had been put on hold. “If refugees...