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Category: North Korea

May 19, 2006

Daily NK President Talks to TKL about the New Right and North Korea

Recently, Newsweek’s BJ Lee reported on the emergence of South Korea’s New Right. One of the persons prominently featured in the article was Han Ki-Hong, President of the Daily NK, an online newspaper focusing on conditions in North Korea (DO NOT MISS their latest report on North Korea’s growing border control problems). The Daily NK differs from the South Korean papers in that it primarily focuses on events in the North. More remarkably, its reporters are often North Koreans reporting...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/Human Rights/Korean Politics/North Korea/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
May 14, 2006

Links of Interest

Richardson has already linked it, but I want to add is that this one could be very, very important to what happens in North Korea. The United States is considering economic sanctions on Chinese banks which have business transactions with North Korean companies allegedly implicated in the development or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), a news report said Sunday. ================= Rep. Henry Hyde, Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, has a message for President Junichiro Koizumi. Hyde,...

Categories Activism/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Censorship/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Democracy/Diplomacy/History/Human Rights/Korean History/Korean Law/Korean Politics/News Links/NK Economics/North Korea/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views/WMD
May 10, 2006

Review: ‘Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea,’ by Guy DeLisle

Please — not another travelogue of tyranny tourism in North Korea. In the last several years, dozens of con-men, apologists, and petty tyrants have described North Korea as a great place to golf, bowl, get rich quick, or profit by displaying the misery of others. Three U.N. aid workers published a fine dining guide, just as the last mass graves of the Great Famine were filled. A UNICEF worker recently lamented that North Korea was unfairly stereotyped. A Korean-American unificationista...

Categories Books & Films/Inside NK/North Korea
May 6, 2006

Why We Signed

I grow weary of sounding the death knell of the U.S.-Korea alliance now that it’s just a question of being how fast and how ugly. If anyone is smart and honest enough to offer a cogent defense of it, it’s U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, who has made plenty of enemies in Korea by speaking his country’s views plainly. Now we know that the best justification he can offer is as light, flavorless, and indigestable as styrofoam, and just as easily...

Categories An Alliance?/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/North Korea/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views/WMD
May 4, 2006

Refugees Update

[Update: Richardson picks up several other reports to the same effect. Things seem to be moving, and you have to wonder what could happen next now that the word has started to spread.] The Chosun Ilbo reports fresh signs of progress that the State Department is finally aboard the love train on North Korean refugees. A group of North Korean defectors in Southeast Asia is reportedly seeking asylum in the United States. In an interview with Korea’s Yonhap News, a...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Diplomacy/Human Rights/North Korea/Refugees/Southeast Asia/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
May 2, 2006

The Forked Tongue of Lee Jong-Seok, Part 2

“At least since 2000 when we began providing assistance to the North, no one there has been starving to death,” Lee said. — UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok (ht to Richardson) In sum, although the period of high famine has passed, North Korea continues to experience chronic food shortages that are hitting hard at an underemployed and unemployed urban working class in particular. . . . Moreover, given the political stratification of North Korea and the inability of the WFP to...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Censorship/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/North Korea/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
May 1, 2006

What’s the Deal With Kim Jong Nam?

I found this report interesting on two levels. First, a certain “East Asian intelligence agency” is either running a disinformation campaign or needs to shoot whoever leaked a good source of intel on North Korean kremlinology, specifically, “occasional drunken conversations that last more than an hour.” Isn’t that always the best kind, too? Second, the role of Kim Jong Il’s eldest son, Kim “Goofy” Jong Nam, whom I’d though had landed safely on the ash-heap, looks like it’s back in...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/North Korea
April 30, 2006

‘Barrel of a Gun’

During my recent trip to Korea, I was fortunate to have dinner and moderate quantities of alcohol with several other K-bloggers, including The Marmot, The Flying Yangban, Oranckay, The Drambuie Man (also a S. Dakota native), and Professor Andrei Lankov, who is working on a book on the Korean War, based on material from old Soviet archives. Oranckay picked a restaurant where I had some of the best kalbi I’ve ever eaten, and Robert knew of a beautifully restored old...

Categories Diplomacy/Inside NK/Korean Society/North Korea/Six-Party Talks/WMD
April 28, 2006

N. Korea Freedom Week Updates

First, please join us on the West side of the U.S. Capitol today, starting at 11:30. The rally will last well into the afternoon, with plenty of opportunities to frighten powerful and cynical people throughout the day. Some of us may even make a special appearance at the South Korean Embassy later this afternoon. At 6 PM, Suzanne Scholte of the North Korean Freedom Coalition will lead a rally at the Chinese Embassy that will become an all-night prayer vigil....

Categories Abductions/Activism/Appeasement/China & Korea/Defectors/Democracy/Human Rights/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean History/North Korea/Refugees/Resistance/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
April 12, 2006

One Big, Leaky Basket

South Korea has arrested a Taiwanese man for spying for North Korea. What’s not entirely clear is whether the man was spying for prodigal son Kim Jong Nam, and what JN’s relationship is to North Korea these days: The information sent to the North, according to prosecutors, included Newsweek Korea magazine’s coverage of the detention and expulsion of Kim Jong-nam from Japan in 2001 after he tried to enter that country on a fraudulent passport. The man also forwarded tapes...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics/Kremlinology/NK Military/North Korea/ROK Military/Washington Views
April 12, 2006

Shin Sang-Ok Dies

The South Korean film-maker and his actress wife were best known for having been kidnapped by Kim Jong Il to make movies in North Korea, most infamously the stoner cult classic “Pulgasari.” In Shin’s observations about the emperor and his court feature prominently in the writings of North Korea Kremlinologists, including Jasper Becker’s Rogue Regime. Apparently at the orders of Kim Jong-il, then North Korea’s heir apparent and a film buff, both he and his wife, the actress Choi Eun-hee,...

Categories Abductions/Kim Jong Il/Korean Society/Kremlinology/North Korea
April 6, 2006

Links of Interest

The Flying Yangban has lots of good stuff up today. If you’re in or near Seoul and aren’t working with LiNK yet, they’re holding another meeting Saturday afternoon. Andy also links to an analysis from the International Crisis Group, giving the encouraging conclusion that the U.S. will never allow anything made in Kaesong to be included in a free-trade agreement. He also informs us of the latest machinations in South Korean politics. Yet more calls for America to disengage from...

Categories Abductions/Activism/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/Geopolitics/Human Rights/Islam/Korean Politics/NK Economics/North Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
April 5, 2006

Who Is Ma Young-Ae, and What Does She Know?

[Updated 6 Apr 06; scroll down] Via The Flying Yangban, it looks like the U.S. may be on the verge of accepting its first North Korean refugee. Like the Yangban, I’m happy about it. Unlike the Yangban, I don’t see this as necessarily precedent-setting for the broader issue of accepting refugees fleeing persecution in North Korea. Reason: this refugee is also fleeing persecution in South Korea. No, that wasn’t a typo: Ma came to South Korea in 2000. In April...

Categories Abductions/An Alliance?/Appeasement/Censorship/Counterfeiting/Defectors/Human Rights/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Law/North Korea/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
April 3, 2006

Lefkowitz Denounces Kaesong Slave Labor; U.S. Continues to Squeeze NK’s Finances

It’s like they’re reading this blog . . . or perhaps great minds just think alike. You may recall that recently, I blogged about a media visit to the Kaesong Industrial Park. Piecing together several excellent reports allowed one to gather: (1) the extraordinary degree of control over the North Korean workers; (2) the extraordinary degree of supervision of the South Korean visitors; (3) the fact that the North Korean workers actually receive just $8 a month, not the widely-reported...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/An Alliance?/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Diplomacy/Human Rights/NK Economics/North Korea/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views/WMD
April 3, 2006

Gordon Cucullu on N.K. Tunnels

Well, I admit it. I’m jealous that GI Korea scooped me on covering Cucullu’s lecture at the Rayburn House Office Building last Friday, which I had to miss because of the demands of my day job. Fortunately, I did run into Gordon at a meeting the evening before, and I was able to join a group where he was being shown ground-penetrating radar images of North Korean tunnels that purportedly run beneath (among other places) Kunsan Air Base, at the...

Categories NK Military/North Korea
April 1, 2006

2ID KATUSA Escapes Captivity in N. Korea

Some translation is appropriate for non-military readers: KATUSA means Korean Augmentee to the U.S. Army, and 2ID means Second Infantry Division, a brigade of which remains stretched out in an arc perpendicular to the Northern approaches to Seoul. Hundreds of KATUSAs still serve with U.S. Army units there today, but the first KATUSAs served during the Korean War. Here’s what happened to one of them: Lee participated in the Korean War after enlisting in August 1950 as a Korea auxiliary...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/China & Korea/Defectors/Human Rights/Korean History/North Korea/Refugees/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
March 26, 2006

WANTED

Two U.S. senior congressional researchers say Washington could bring criminal charges against North Korean leader Kim Jong-il over his country’s alleged counterfeiting of U.S. dollars. The two authors of a Congressional Research Service report say the U.S.’s increasing keenness to back up its allegations with legal evidence is fueling speculation that it is considering going after Kim. Well, that would certainly mark a decisive policy shift — one that it would extraordinarily difficult for future presidents to reverse.  “Earthquake” might...

Categories Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/North Korea/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Uncategorized