Category: Miscellaneous

INTOLERABLE SUFFERING, STARVATION, torture, almost universal suffering, yada yada: Thai jurist Vitit Muntarbhorn told the world body’s Human Rights Council that the situation in the communist-ruled country was “dire and desperate” with the population living in fear and pressed to inform on each other. “The country is under one-party rule. At the pinnacle there is an oppressive regime, bent on personal survival, under which the ordinary people of the land undergo intolerable and interminable sufferings,” he said. Diplomats said his...

JAPAN WILL GO TO THE SECURITY COUNCIL if North Korea tests a missile. If they’re shivering in Pyongyang, it’s probably just cold there. ARBEIT NICHT FREI: If the prospects for the Kaesong Slave Labor Park were bleak enough already, briefly imprisoning its South Korean business managers there can’t have helped matters. UH OH: The new U.S. Trade Representative calls the U.S.-ROK FTA “unfair” as negotiated. Pretty much as I’d predicted — South Korea let the issue become toxic in the...

NORTH KOREA has serial killers? EVERYONE ACT SURPRISED: Kim Jong Il is reelected with 100% of the vote — which even beats Obama’s margin in Takoma Park. But whereas free elections are noted for saturating voters with information, North Korea’s election was accompanied by a crackdown on illegal cell phones. More here. KIM JONG IL AND I MAY AGREE ON ONE THING: Can I infer that he detests Vista, too? THE LEAKY BLOCKADE: Open Radio has more on the proliferation...

FREE AT LAST: “A South Korean fisherman who was abducted by North Korea while fishing in the East Sea in August 1975 has arrived safely home after 34 years…. Yun attempted to escape North Korea with his 68-year-old wife and 26-year-old daughter, but his wife and daughter were reportedly caught by the North Korean police. Out of 33 fishermen abducted along with him back then, only three others — Koh Myung-sup (65), Choi Uk-il (69) and Lee Han-seop (61) —...

LiNK’S LATEST NEWSLETTER is here. THE MOST RECENT GOOD FRIENDS UPDATE is also online, reporting a hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Chongjin, more mixed news on the food situation, and the ongoing decay of the command economy’s control over food supplies. Even in Pyongyang, more state workers are turning to the black market in pilfered state commodities to survive. One dispatch describes a man who survived 20 years in a reeducation camp; another reports on the theft of weapons from some...

WHOOP DE DOO: Another one of those private delegations of North Korea “experts” is headed for Pyongyang. I’ll go out on a long limb here: in a few days they’ll return none the wiser to deliver more North Korean extortion demands to credulous American reporters. AND HOW IS THIS NOT A PROVOCATION? According to the Defense Ministry, North Korean artillery batteries deployed in Haeju and on the Ongjin Peninsula fired dozens of shells into the West Sea in the morning...

SOUTH KOREANS BLAME THE NORTH for the current downturn in inter-Korean relations by 63 to 27, according to a new poll. A solid majority supports aid to the North only on the condition that it gives up its nuclear weapons. Assuming this poll is accurate, it suggests that North Korea’s recent behavior has created a backlash in South Korean public opinion, creating support for Lee’s North Korea policy that didn’t exist when he was elected. MORE RESHUFFLING OF GENERALS in...

U.S. AND ROK DEFENSE PLANNERS have finally gotten around to updating OPLAN 5027, the plan for the defense of the ROK in case of a North Korean invasion. That contingency seems rather unlikely today. FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME …. The DPRK was compelled to take an option for nuclear development which required huge funds, manpower and a lot of time. This was an inevitable security measure for self-defence taken to cope with the situation where the U.S. singled out the...

EVERYONE, ACT SURPRISED: Voters’ meetings were held at all the constituencies across the country to nominate candidates for deputies to the 12th Supreme Peoples’ Assembly of the DPRK. The meetings nominated General Secretary Kim Jong Il as a candidate for deputy to the 12th SPA. Reporters and speakers at the meetings highly praised the immortal feats performed by Kim Jong Il, adding that it is the greatest happiness and glory of our country and the nation to have Kim Jong...

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...