Category: Miscellaneous

YOU DON’T SAY: Actual North Koreans don’t think the New York Phil’s visit will mean much. “Most people…are busy trying to make ends meet and put food on the table, and what they truly need is rice and money, so they have little freedom to think about music . . . . Rather than sit around and listen to classical music, people have to spend that time to go out and pluck another bunch of weeds to sell or boil...

SUSTAINING THE CHARADE: She can’t pretend that the six-party scheme is working, so Condi Rice wants a timetable for North Korea to comply with its agreements. Had Secretary Rice insisted on and gotten a well-structured deal back in 2005, there would have been some chance to accomplish something, though we should remember that unless non-performance has harsh consequences, deadlines mean little to the North Koreans. Too late, she realizes that the original deal was too amorphous to accomplish much of...

DO NOT MISS NK Econ Watch’s recent postings (here and here) analyzing whether a recent North Korean anti-corruption drive is just another purge or a signal of a policy change. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY? As the regime’s economic power fades, the regime’s once-treasured Kim Jong Il birthday gifts can no longer compete with the items available in the markets. The source relayed the public sentiment as “Goods more valuable than his gifts are all over the place...

“SIX PARTIES, ZERO PROGRESS:” The Weekly Standard aptly describes the current state Bush Administration’s Korea policy: The real state of play, then, is that North Korea will not fully declare, much less disable or dismantle, its nuclear weapons programs, and it has continued to proliferate. To mask this noncompliance, the State Department will talk optimistically of the next phases of diplomacy, continuing to provide North Korea with heavy fuel oil, removing it from the list of state sponsors of terror,...

MY, WHAT BIG BRASS COCONUTS YOU HAVE: North Korea fires missiles toward and over Japan, Japan builds a missile shield, and then North Korea has the chutzpah to say — Their extreme hostile policy toward the DPRK is heightening the hatred of the army and the people of the DPRK toward Japan. Should the Japanese reactionaries persist in their moves for reinvasion, accelerating the building of missile shields targeted against the DPRK, this will entail catastrophic consequences. The Japanese reactionaries...

I’LL BELIEVE IT WHEN THEY SEE IT: The New York Times reports that the N.Y. Phil’s concert in Pyongyang will be broadcast live on North Korean TV. I doubt it. North Korea has perfected pulling away the football an instant before Charlie Brown kicks it. That would be as easy as letting the power go out. Then there’s this question: how will anyone really know? Does the fact that something shows on TV in the Koryo Hotel means that North...

MINISTER OF SILLY TALKS: Chris Hill is seen entering the North Korean Embassy in Beijing to try to rescue the deadlocked Agreed Framework 2.0. I’d say hopelessly deadlocked, except that we have no idea what Hill is prepared to offer in exchange for more of Kim Jong Il’s lies. Be very afraid. So far, however, the talks seem to have been unproductive. YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: The Chosun Ilbo links and quotes Pajamas Media’s interview with John McCain. Really,...

MAY IT BE HIS LAST: It’s Kim Jong Il’s birthday: The North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper ran a lengthy editorial full of praise for Kim for making the communist nation an “undefeatable strong country” by strengthening its “political and military force.” “We have to unite and unite again around the leadership, upholding the slogan ‘Let’s safeguard the revolutionary leadership led by Comrade Kim Jong Il with our lives!’” the paper said, according to the North’s Korean Central News Agency. It...

STALL ALERT: More dispatches from the hopelessly deadlocked Agreed Framework 2.0: – South Korea’s nuclear negotiator says North Korea still needs more time to give us its nuclear declaration. – “I suspect that North Korea will attempt to strike a deal with the new U.S. administration that will be inaugurated next year. In that case, it seems likely that there will be no progress in the North Korean nuclear issue until summer next year.” So says Roh’s former Foreign Minister,...

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE WEATHER IN CHINA? Dozens are dead and thousands of travelers have been stranded. It’s severe enough that the Chinese government is worried about its own food supply later this year. “The impact of the snow disaster in southern China on winter crop production is extremely serious,” said Chen Xiwen, the government’s leading expert on the agricultural economy. “The impact on fresh vegetables and on fruit in some places has been catastrophic.” [Daily Telegraph] Add this...

BRING OUT YOUR  NOT-QUITE-DEAD:  “UN agency to conduct its first census since famine killed millions.”  If things don’t quite add up, try looking here. NOT LOOKING GOOD  FOR KEVIN G. HALL:  A reader e-mails a detailed article — co-written by Bradley K. Martin,  no less –that  drives a few 3-inch  sheetrock screws into the coffin of Hall’s piece of work.  If you’re not yet saying “enough already” to all of this, the updated post is  here. DAVID ALBRIGHT, CALL YOUR...

OUR  FIFTEEN SECONDS:  I’m extremely pleased to see reader and friend CPT Jon Stafford getting great circulation for his must-read article, “Finding America’s Role in  a Collapsed North Korean State.”  Richardson had previously linked to a  video  discussion between the online editors of The Weekly Standard and Foreign Policy that scratched the surface of the problem, just.  Today, Bradley Martin, author of “Under the Loving  Care of the Fatherly Leader” has an article discussing it in somewhat greater depth at...

THE STREETS ARE NOT PAVED WITH GOLD: North Korean refugees talk about working two jobs, missing their families, immigration paperwork, English, and surviving. It’s not perfect, but it sure beats the alternatives: “During the March of Starvation 10 years ago, I lay in my bedroom after having had nothing to eat for three days and thought, ‘So this is how people die.’ For me to be here is like a dream. I do not have anything in North Korea and...

HEY, MEND THIS FENCE:   President-Elect Lee  Myung Bak has sent Chung Mong-Joon  to the United States to “mend fences” which implies the obvious — relations between the United States and South Korea have deteriorated.  The Hanky runs down how it went.  While I’m sure Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel won’t be a tough audience, if Lee wants to  repair some of South  Korea’s well-deserved reputation for anti-Americanism,  he can start with his own damn side of the fence.  HOSTILE POLICY: ...

WHAT HE SAID:  Richardson has a must-read commentary on State’s persistent clinging to the assinine  idea of removing non-complaint, non-performing, unreformed North Korea from the terror-sponsor list.  He does a terrific job on tracking how State airbrushes its justification for listing North Korea year-by-year.  I could only add that  the idea of rewarding people who do absolutely everything we want them not to do  has to be the dumbest idea since  Windows  Vista.  I have to wonder if Congress would...

NORTH KOREA FINALLY MENTIONS LEE MYUNG BAK, sorta:  “U.S. conservative hardliners broke into cheers upon hearing about the results of the “˜elections’ in South Korea … asserting that the power change in South Korea marks a new occasion of strangling North Korea.   Well, yeah, if he actually does.  Wow.  Did I really just agree with KCNA? TOO MANY NORTH KOREANS ARE HOARDING FOOD, so the  regime is cracking down with layer upon layer of bureaucracy and permits that are...

ISN’T IT TERRORISM when someone won’t release a captive without a payment?  Still, paying ransom is undeniably an improvement over paying the money and letting your POW’s and their families  die in place anyway.  I wonder how much this’ll cost. TAZE ‘EM AGAIN, BRO!    The Korean  police are finally talking about  arresting and using a degree of force against violent protestors.   No doubt, this has something to do with the change of government in Seoul.  I’d like to see...

STOP THE PRESSES!   Donga Ilbo:  Lee Says He’s Exceptionally Pro-Business LEAST UNEXPECTED HEADLINE OF THE DAY:   Joongang Ilbo:  “Lee Praises Anticipated U.S. Envoy.”   On second thought, unexpected and dull is just fine, thank you.   As for me, I have low expectations for the  ambassador-designate, Kathleen Stephens, for the simple (maybe too simple) reason that nothing good  or decent comes from the State Department’s East Asia Bureau.  But there is some hope that she won’t be entirely awful:   ...