Category: Miscellaneous

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:   ...

* John Bolton is now actively lobbying against Agreed Framework 2.0, drawing dozens of GOP congressmen  to speeches he’s giving to influential policy groups (ht: Evan).  His efforts appear to have gained new traction with the Syria revelations, and the Administration’s inordinate secrecy from Congress about those revelations probably isn’t doing any good for congressional relations (but may be fueling suspicions).  Yes, Bolton probably suspects that his enemies in the State Department torpedoed his confirmation, and he probably holds a...

*   North Korea is  building or repairing the fences around its nuclear test site in the northeast.   What  reports like these don’t mention, however, is that directly to the northeast of that test site lies  Camp 16, one of North Korea’s more horrendous concentration camps.  And  if the  Daily NK’s December 2006  report of a mass escape is true, it might be that the North Koreans are actually repairing the camp’s fences, not the test sites.  Hopefully, an intrepid...

*   Irrational Exhuberance, via the AFP’s P. Parameswaran:  “A team of US experts left Tuesday for North Korea to disable the hardline communist state’s nuclear weapons arsenal in a crucial phase of a six-nation disarmament pact.”  Mr. Parameswaran is a good enough fellow, but  the first sentence of his  report is absolutely false.  Not only are U.S. experts not on their way to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, North Korea has yet to declare what, specifically, that arsenal consists...

*   Canadian Oil-for-Food scandal figure Maurice Strong, who took $1 million  from Saddam Hussein as a senior U.N. official and confidant of Kofi Annan, has resurfaced in China.  You’ll remember that Strong was also Kofi Annan’s Special Envoy  to North Korea, and  that the North Korean-born Tongsun Park, now serving a five-year prison sentence, was his bag-man and informal  advisor on North Korea.  All of which may go far to explain why the U.N. stood  around performing a colonoscopy...

More Sunshine, But Overcast Later:   The Daily NK tracks the GNP’s North Korea policy.  I could more credibly  claim to do eye surgery with a whipsaw than say just what that policy is today, but good for them for taking that one on.  Although things can change very quickly in South Korean politics, Lee Myung Bak is clearly a heavy favorite to win.  In the increasingly likely event of Lee’s inauguration, I don’t expect that U.S.-ROK relations, or North-South...

*    As I write, the news is breaking on TV that the Afghan Army  has launched a rescue operation to save the  remaining Korean hostages.  By the  time I get home, I’ll know how things went.  If you’re practiced at prayer, this would be a good time.  *   The press is mostly talking about North Korea’s cooperation with the U.N. at Yongbyon, while failing to mention a shocking new report.  Chris Hill is making an impromptu visit to...

* Seven years after the last “breakthrough” with North Korea, here’s a complete list of what has been accomplished in reforming North Korea and reducing inter-Korean tensions: . Even symbolic achievements are getting hard to find lately. South Korean politicians still can’t visit Pyongyang, if at all, without being snubbed and shoveled out of the spotlight. At times, I wonder why the North Koreans make much of a distinction between the two main South Korean political parties. Here’s the “conservative”...

*   Can we really separate nukes from human rights?  North Korean defectors say that the regime used political prisoners to help prepare its nuclear test.  The report is given plausibility by the proximity of the nuclear test site to Camp 16.  You will recall that this site may have been the first to publish pictures of that camp on the Web, though it was no more than a matter of finding the place on Google Earth. *   This...