Category: Miscellaneous

YES, I HAVE YOUR ROCKET PORN: We’re apparently pretty close to North Korea’s missile satellite launch, judging by these pictures taken by an AFP photographer, this Reuters report, and this AP report, which ironically contains no visible input from the Pyongyang Bureau. You’ve probably heard by now that North Korea is already doing suspicious things around its nuclear test site at Mt. Mantap. Last night, a friend asked me when we could expect that nuke test. In the past, it’s...

TEAR DOWN THIS WALL: It’s too bad almost no one reported it at the time he said it: “The day all Koreans yearn for will not come easily or without great sacrifice, but make no mistake, it will come,” Obama said. “And when it does, when it does, change will unfold that once seemed impossible. And checkpoints will open, and watchtowers will stand empty, and families long separated will finally be reunited, and the Korean people at long last will...

FAIR AND BALANCED! See? The Associated Press doesn’t only fawn over mass-murdering despots, it’s capable of fawning over elected leaders, too — just slightly less enthusiastically. ___________________________________ WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Hugh Restall thinks we should shoot down North Korea’s missile. Had you asked me about this before March 26, 2010, I’ve have been categorically opposed. Now, I incline to the view that we need to demonstrate that we have limits, and this would not cross the line...

REVERSED POLARITY: North Korea is still denying to the world that it sank the Cheonan, but according to one recent defector, it’s proudly proclaiming its responsibility at home. On the other hand, former Ambassador Donald Gregg, who as far as I know hasn’t actually defected in the geographic sense, nonetheless is still getting ink from KCNA for his Cheonan conspiracy theorizing. Maybe one of the AP’s new North Korean “correspondents” should interview him. ____________________________________ MISSILE SATELLITE LAUNCH UPDATE: Despite the...

NO ONE REALLY KNOWS what the population of North Korea is, so I’m not sure how anyone can really claim to know that life expectancy in North Korea is 11 years less than in South Korea, or that two-thirds of its children are malnourished (and one-third of them stunted as a result). I do think it’s safe to say, however, that North Korea compares unfavorably to all of its neighbors with respect to the welfare and happiness of its people,...

Has it really been just two years?

CASEY LARTIGUE EVOKES the memory of Frederick Douglass in support of North Korean refugees. I think the comparison isn’t just apt, but overdue. _____________________________________ CHRIST! DID JOHN FEFFER REALLY SAY THIS? Although such a two-tiered society is not uncommon in the developing world, North Korea once prided itself on breaking free from this model of stratified development. True, the regime traditionally maintained a rather complex political hierarchy based on perceived loyalty to the system, but this neo-Confucian system is giving...

I just can’t understand why South Koreans who ostensibly support the idea a free society so fundamentally misunderstand that idea. Rather than make free-speech martyrs out of imbeciles, wouldn’t it make more sense to engage in the war of ideas on both sides of the DMZ? Are they really so afraid that a majority of South Koreans are going to prostrate themselves toward Pyongyang? Is such a majority even capable of self-government anyway? Are they really so afraid to speak...

The Daily NK writes about “The High Price of Idolatry:” We should perhaps remember with great concern the time when Kim Jong Il used $900 million to both permanently preserve Kim Il Sung’s body and then create Keumsusan Memorial Palace to keep it in. It is no simple task to erect a statue of anybody, let alone someone who presumably requires a large statue such as Kim Jong Il. In the South Korean city of Gumi, a mere 5m statue...

NORTH KOREA PERESTROIKA WATCH: State media claims that Kim Jong Eun could drive at age three, which is simply precious. Once, when my own son was three, he made a very spirited argument that I should let him drive us all home from Old Town Alexandria to Maryland. And to think that had I not restrained him so, he might have been the Last Emperor of some bleak and far-flung little puppet kingdom. Actually, I have more trouble with the...

Here’s something else the consumers of Selig Harrison’s next op-ed should try not to remember: North Korea on Wednesday upped its rhetoric against South Korean President Lee Myung Bak, branding him as a “pro-U.S. fascist maniac” and “chieftain of evils without an equal in the world” in view of measures his government took last month in the wake of the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The virulent name-calling came in a report released by the secretariat of...

So those North Korean coup rumors probably aren’t true, but when it comes to North Korea, it can be weeks before we know what small grain of truth led to the rumors.  Chico Harlan of the Washington Post must feel at least a little sheepish having to pass along those rumors, and to admit that he has no idea if they’re true, so soon after writing that Kim Jong Eun’s succession was going smoothly.  The conclusion was based entirely on...

There are a few things I can’t let pass without comment this weekend. The defection of a squad of armed North Korean soldiers — if true, as the compulsory caveat goes — could open a new chapter in the Kim Dynasty’s erosive dialectic. This sort of defection can’t happen on a mass scale despite the forceful suppression of the two fascist regimes that border the Yalu, but it does suggest that when North Korea eventually devolves into something like what...

Two  pieces of interesting news. First, there is now a way for people who are not in Seoul or Tongyeong to sign the petition to save Shin Suk Ja and her two daughters, and thus  maybe, just maybe, to close those dastardly prison camps that have been so comprehensively described right here in the past! Second, I have made the full text of ‘NK People Speak, 2011’ available on the Daily NK database for those of you who cannot wait...