Category: Miscellaneous

Collective Spirit Update: Open News reports a rising number of kkotjaebi (homeless orphans) in North Korea, even as the elite continue to snap up expensive luxury goods imported from China. And this: “According to sources, Pyongyang has more than 1,000 millionaires.” Those sources may or may not be wrong, but what more evidence do you need than this that North Korea has a profound economic imbalance? You know, if Christine Ahn really hurries, she might be able to arrange a...

I regret that work obligations prevented me from meeting Lee Ae Ran during her recent visit to Washington, but the Mainichi Shimbun has a nice article about her here. ________________________ An Asian casino magnate with a multitude of sleazy associations has been denied a gaming license in Atlantic City: A March 2003 e-mail from a private investigation firm hired by MGM Mirage that found that “Stanley Ho was linked closely to the two major triads operating in Macau, the 14K...

A few days ago, I mentioned that North Korea was raising the rent at foreign embassies. I wondered at the time whether that would violate the Vienna Convention, but I don’t see how this comports with Articles 31 and 35: North Korea is also cracking down on the flow of information within foreign missions and agencies. The North rejected a request by a UN agency to use the Internet to send documents to UN headquarters. When diplomats make international phone...

Have you voted for LiNK today? Incidentally, LiNK wanted me to pass this along: Wanted to let you know about a promotion we’re having in March. Anyone who votes for LiNK at www.refresheverything.com/link (and gets 10 of their friends to vote) will get 10% percent off their order. Such a deal! ________________________ North Korea deploys more counter-intelligence agents to China to stop the flow of news out of North Korea: The men are said to be in charge of exposing...

Whoop-dee-doo: Rumor has it that North Korea will return to six-party talks next month, and if that’s true, it will only be under the duress of sanctions, and for the sole purposes of demanding that the sanctions be loosened and to issue a new list of demands that are mostly designed to prevent us from ever getting to the matter of its nuclear disarmament. The good news is that the sanctions must be working. The bad news is that our...

Here’s a very long, and very interesting report on the potential for social unrest in North Korea, from a North Korean’s perspective. ________________________ The story on how North Korea exports arms is worth a longer post than I have time to write today. ________________________ Kim Jong Il’s banker Ambassador to Switzerland is retiring. Hmmm. ________________________ A U.S. District Court has issued a summons for the Foreign Minister of North Korea. I’ll have much more to say about this another day,...

Have you voted for LiNK today? ________________________ Not for the first time, China has announced that it has leased part of the North Korean port at Rajin, a move that would give China’s rust belt access to the Pacific. I’m just not going to find the time to write about this in detail, but you can read more about this here. Given recent reports that North Korea had canceled the last lease, you have to wonder how much this really...

So I wasn’t able to make it to Korus House to see the Venerable Pomnyun speak, but the Hankroyeh, of all places, cites him as saying that two thousand people have starved to death in North Korea since The Great Confiscation. I’m tempted to fall back on ordinarily reliable maxim that everything the Hanky publishes is false just because it’s published in the Hanky, but in this case, it’s slightly more complicated than that. First, it’s likely that that many...

The Wall Street Journal’s Melanie Kirkpatrick, a very nice person with whom I’ve exchanged some e-mails, has an article on Christianity in South Korea. Interesting reading, even for those of us who prefer our religion much less organized. The statistic that 40% of South Korean Christians are Pentecostal is both remarkable and unsurprising. (Corrected, thanks.) ________________________________ Because I’m a sucker for such things, let me direct you to Coming Anarchy’s fascinating Google Map of drone strikes in Pakistan. The anti-anti-terrorist...

It may be almost as revealing as the White House’s concern about growing military (and nuclear?) cooperation between North Korea and Burma that David Albright, asked to comment by the Washington Post, takes a strikingly alarmist point of view about these new developments. Albright, you will recall, had said for years that the Bush Administration had inflated fears that North Korea had an undeclared uranium enrichment program. I don’t suppose that I will ever be in agreement with David Albright...

South Korea is still in the dark about the four alleged South Korean “trespassers” in North Korean custody: Yet no NGOs, religious organizations or defectors’ groups operating near the North Korean border with China say any of their members have been nabbed in the North. “Even a North Korean border official I spoke with over the phone recently had heard no rumors related to the latest announcement,” one NGO worker said. [Chosun Ilbo] _____________________________ Open News explains why it may...

So North Korea claims to have detained four South Korean “trespassers.” Even worse, KCNA denies us the amusement of the term “relevant organ.” I was waiting to post on this until I actually knew who they were or where they were detained, but several days later, the North Koreans are still the only ones who do know. Then there is still the matter of the American whom the North Koreans claim defected to them several weeks back. Assuming this isn’t...

Only a few more days left to vote for LiNK! ____________ Must Read No. 1: Christian Whiton, “How to Weaken Kim’s Grip” ____________ Must Read No. 2: B.R. Myers, “North Korea’s Race Problem” ____________ Must Read No. 3: Don Kirk writes on China and sanctions-busting. ____________ Despite all the food aid North Korea is receiving, one-third of North Koreans are still in need. ____________ Oh, No: I sense a great disturbance in the force. ____________ You Don’t Say, Pt. 1:...

Kim Jong-Eun still has a way to go to gain the adoration, much less acceptance, of the North Korean elites: According to a high-level source, the nickname of Kim Jong-il’s heir, Kim Jong-Eun, is “the little one.” According to multiple sources, the North Korean elites officially call Kim Jong-Eun “the great leader” and “successor of the great accomplishments of the military-first policy,” but inofficially, Kim Jong-Eun is referred to as “the little one. “The little one” is usually used in...

Some 56 percent of South Koreans have a negative view of North Korea and 70 percent feel threatened by the North’s nuclear arms, a poll suggests. But 87 percent support another inter-Korean summit. [….] “The percentage of people with a negative view of the North in the latest poll is now as high as before the Sunshine Policy,” said Choi Jin-wook, a senior researcher at KINU. “It seems that the poll reflects how people were affected” by the North’s second...