Category: Miscellaneous

THAT’S  STILL LEAVES 40% DARWIN CAN’T EXPLAIN:  The number of tourists to North Korea plunged more than 60 percent last month following the shooting death of a South Korean tourist at Mt. Kumgang resort.  [Chosun Ilbo] So if you want to attract tourists, it’s probably a good idea not to shoot them.  Got it.  The same report, sourced to Arirang News, says that inter-Korean trade fell by 1.5% since last year, and that non-commercial transactions, which includes aid, fell by...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL wonders what it means that North Korea is still on the terror list, and adds this: At the beginning of his Administration, Mr. Bush spoke eloquently about the suffering of the North Korean people and the brutality of the regime that oppresses them. He and his Administration have been quiet on the subject for two years, in pursuit of a nuclear deal that is still more promise than reality. We hope they keep speaking up. BECAUSE...

THE END OF SUNSHINE:  North Korea has begun expelling “unnecessary” South Koreans from Kumgang, presumably meaning everyone but the cashiers and Brinks truck drivers. The South said 11 personnel including two from the state-run Korea Tourism Organisation and nine in charge of a newly built facility for reunions of separated families in the resort had been asked to leave by early Monday. “One left on Saturday and another two are supposed to leave today,” a spokesman for the South’s unification...

NO JUCHE FOR YOU: The South Korean government has refused permission for delegations from an unnamed  “local youth group” and the infamously extremist Korean Teachers’ and Educational Workers’ Union to visit North Korea.   The decision has reportedly caused a spike in the  prices of invisible ink, pen-shaped transmitters,  and cyanide capsules in college dormitories, faculty lounges, and union halls across South Korea. A SECOND SHIPMENT OF AMERICAN FOOD AID has arrived to feed North Korea’s needy army. FIVE NORTH KOREAN...

WHAT BETTER SYMBOL could there be of the complete intellectual and moral collapse of Bush’s North Korea policy  than this? (Hat tip to a friend.) THE KOREAN CHURCH COALITION, which I think has to be the single most dynamic activist organization promoting human rights in North Korea today, has amassed a very impressive list of supportive letters from politicians of both parties.  I’ve posted some quotes below the fold.  The obvious  question is whether those are more than mere words. ...

WHAT’S MISSING HERE? “For the past seven years, we’ve spoken out against human rights abuses by tyrannical regimes like those in Iran, Sudan and Syria and Zimbabwe,” Bush said in a speech here titled “the Freedom Agenda Introduction.”  “We’ve spoken candidly about human rights with nations with whom we’ve got good relations, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and China,” he said.  [Yonhap]   Of course, it’s not as if Bush did  much to materially advance freedom in any of...

CONDI RICE WAS NOT AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: A South Korean NGO reports that North Korea carried out 901 public executions last year. Don’t expect to see this in State’s human rights report next year.  Boy, talking to the North Koreans really is changing them, isn’t it? JUST KILL YOURSELF NOW  IF YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE THIS: The protocol has to be one “that can give us confidence that we’re able to verify the accuracy of the North Korean declaration,” she said....

BUT WE MUSTN’T POLITICIZE THE OLYMPICS:  To further its pre-Olympic “cleansing” policy, China will shut down the bridges to North Korea until the Olympics are over.  Those who promised us  that the Olympics would mean more openness and liberalization have a lot of  refugee “cleansing,” oppression, censorship,  arrests, and  a tidal wave of state-inspired  Lebensraum rhetoric  (see comments) to answer for.  IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER (PT.1):  Pressed by a reporter last week, White House  Spokeswoman Dana Perino  said...

THE KOREAN CHURCH COALITION’S final prayer vigils will take place on July 20th.  Here are the details. ROH IS LONG GONE, and yet all is not well in  U.S.-Korean relations (imagine that).  Discord recently broke out over the premature announcement of a POTUS visit to Seoul. “Washington has offered an apology for making public Bush’s schedule for his South Korean trip without consultations with Seoul. But this is not the first time such an incident has occurred. It could be...

IT’S A FEW DAYS OLD, but this New York Sun report on Republican revulsion at President Bush’s appeasement of Kim Jong Il is worth a read, particularly because of the signals McCain is sending.  If McCain were to oppose this vocally, Bush would probably have a hard time keeping the Republicans togther, and some Democrats would probably also feel the need to pivot.  Related editorial here. ONE WAY YOU COULD help push public opinion (here, anyway) modestly in the right...

YOU DON’T SAY: “There is concern that North Korea might want to retain nuclear weapons that they have already produced so, in fact, they can be considered as a nuclear weapon state,” Lee Myung-Bak told Japan’s Kyodo News in an interview released on Monday.  “This is a very serious concern we all have,” said South Korean President Lee stressing the need for the six-party nuclear negotiations to tackle the weapons issue.  [Channel News Asia] Unlike Japan’s leaders, Lee doesn’t have...

NOT-VERY-FAMOUS LAST WORDS:  Most observers now rate the 100,000-man South Korean army as the best of its size in Asia. Its fast-moving columns have mopped up all but a few of the Communist guerrilla bands. And no one now believes that the Russian-trained North Korean army could pull off a quick, successful invasion of the South without heavy reinforcements. [Time, June 5, 1950]   MAD SHEEP DISEASE UPDATES: In a fine example of the unrealized expectations of government-funded media, KBS...

STARVING NORTH KOREAN WOMEN TURN TO PROSTITUTION:  “Around stations in big cities, you can see many pimps affiliated to inns . . . .  They approach pedestrians, euphemistically saying that “˜I am selling a bed,’ or “˜selling a flower.’”  Sadly,  some of those forced to survive this way are children.  IT’S CAUTIOUSLY ENCOURAGING to hear USAID official John Brause say something like this about the first shipment of U.S. food aid to North Korea  since 2005:  The agreement to provide...

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED the show.   That’ll be $2.5 million.  SORRY ‘BOUT THAT!   Yet again, the South Korean government endangers the families of its forgotten prisoners of war. DON’T THINK OF THEM AS LOVED ONES.  Think of them as hostages  (more). FOR THE FIRST TIME, senior South Korean officials have commemorated the anniversary of a 2002 sea battle with North Korean patrol boats that left six South Korean sailors dead. THE HOTTEST ITEM FOR SMUGGLERS in Sinuiju, along the...

THE KOREAN GOVERNMENT HAS PUBLISHED a guidebook for foreigners.  The guidebook contains a warning about the dangers of … fan death.   Have you heard of this “fan death?”  (ht).  BUT WE MUSTN’T POLITICIZE THE OLYMPICS:  China’s  anti-North Korean refugee pogrom  continues, though almost no one sees fit to mention it, and the people of South Korea still don’t really care about it.  I wonder if they’d care more if they felt completely safe criticizing China. AT TIMES, IT  ALMOST SEEMS...

STALL, STALL, STALL:  North Korea says it will halt the “disablement” of its nuclear facilities until it receives energy aid first.  Interestingly, food was not a high-priority demand. THIRTY-THREE YEARS after the North Koreans seized his fishing boat and took him and 32 of  his fellow crewmen hostage, South Korean fisherman Yun Jong-Su, 65,  has escaped and taken refuge in the South Korean consulate in Shenyang.   I had hoped to do a longer post on this, but there just wasn’t...

I REALLY HOPE THIS WOMAN WINS HER LAWSUIT, but isn’t her first claim against her own parents, for bringing her back to North Korea to begin with? MINISTRY OF IRONIC PROPAGANDA: Famine-plagued North Korea jumps on the anti-U.S. beef import bandwagon. I’m guessing this message is sort of like North Korean food imports — not to be consumed by ordinary North Koreans. MAYBE THEY SHOULD ASK THE ONES WHO ARE STARVING: The North Korean regime refuses to acCept a South...

THE DAILY NK HAS POSTED some pictures of rice-planting time in North Korea.  These appear to have been taken surreptitiously.  These, on the other hand, appear to be taken from the Chinese side of the border, and show North Korean soldiers and kids catching frogs to eat in the paddy fields. ONCE AGAIN, YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST:  More details of U.S.-North Korean food aid talks have leaked out: The United States is ready to ship 500,000 tons of food...