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October 3, 2014

Australia-Korea FTA causes Kaesong backlash

I couldn’t have said it any better than this, and Jay Lefkowitz may be the last person who did: “We can’t see how the Australian government in good conscience could bring such goods into the country,” he said. “It’s absolutely appalling, it basically would make the Australian government and Australian consumers complicit in the exploitation of North Korean workers by their government, and would ensure that Australian dollars are going directly into the pockets of the North Korean regime. Let’s...

Categories Kaesong
October 2, 2014

Park: Human rights are part of “our core agenda” with North Korea

I wonder whether, when, and how these words might actually translate into tangible policy: On Tuesday, Park made it clear that the North’s nuclear and human rights issues are “our core agenda in our policy toward North Korea. “We should not be passive in these issues out of fear of North Korea’s backlash,” Park said in a Cabinet meeting, a comment that marked a clear departure from her liberal predecessors who rarely spoke about the human rights issue as they...

Categories Human Rights/North-South
September 25, 2014

Seoul to Pyongyang: Let’s talk about human rights.

“Not only in high-level talks but also in any occasions of inter-Korean dialogue in the future, (Seoul) expects to have comprehensive discussion on all sorts of humanitarian issues including human rights,” unification ministry spokesman Lim Byeong-cheol said in a briefing. “If high-level talks are held (between Seoul and Pyongyang), I think it is desirable that they discuss all the issues they want to discuss including this (human rights) issue,” Lim said. [Yonhap] I’m not terribly impressed with Park Geun-Hye’s attention...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/North-South/Sunshine
September 3, 2014

What if the capitalist North Korea is just as bad as the communist North Korea?

There are many reasons why the Sunshine Policy failed, most of them rooted in the character of the men who rule in Pyongyang, and in the character of the men in Seoul who conceived and executed it. And in that conception, the flaw that was obvious to some of us from the very beginning was that Sunshine — and its surviving derivatives — invested its monotheistic faith in economic reform, yet in practice (and to a large extent, in theory,...

Categories Capitalism/Engagement/NK Economics/Sunshine
August 27, 2014

North Korean workers at Kaesong show symptoms of exposure to toxic chemicals …

including benzene. If you wonder why people such as myself rail against slave labor and the lack of labor rights at Kaesong, this is why. A real independent union would have stood up for the workers and raised this issue long ago. I can’t say I have much confidence in the desire of either of the governments involved — much less the employers — to tell the truth about the exposure of help the victims; after all, that wouldn’t serve the financial or...

Categories Kaesong/Sunshine
July 2, 2014

RFA: N. Korea tells overseas trade reps not to use the internet

In our latest of edition of North Korea Perestroika Watch, Radio Free Asia, citing identified sources speaking on condition of anonymity, reports that Pyongyang has instructed its overseas money-men to stop using the internet. The regime is even threatening to seize their work and personal laptaps to enforce the order. The trade workers tell RFA that the order, which even includes the use of e-mail, is impeding their ability to do their jobs and earn foreign currency. A source living in China along...

Categories NK Economics/Sunshine
April 30, 2014

Eagerly awaiting Christine Ahn’s reaction to North Korea’s sexism and homophobia

Now that North Korea’s state media have called South Korea’s female president a “whore,” a “prostitute,” a “crazy bitch,” and a “comfort woman,” no one will ever have to invent sexism again to deflect criticism of North Korea’s crimes against humanity, and whoever does will, from this date forward, have to argue her away around real, vicious, state-sponsored misogyny. What Park did before Obama this time reminds one of an indiscreet girl who earnestly begs a gangster to beat someone or a capricious whore who asks her...

Categories Anju Links/North-South/Propaganda/Useful Idiocy/WTF?
April 5, 2014

If Kaesong “wages” aren’t used to pay workers, what are they used for? (The Unification Ministry won’t comment.)

In yesterday’s post about Kaesong, I argued that by any reasonable definition, its North Korean workers are forced laborers, and that the best evidence we have suggests that the vast majority of their “wages” are probably stolen by the Pyongyang regime, through a combination of direct taxation and confiscatory exchange rates. My argument relied heavily on a recent study by the economist Marcus Noland, who has done an excellent job researching questions that most journalists have overlooked, addressing the ethical...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/North-South/Sunshine
April 2, 2014

Why would North Korea fly a UAV over the Blue House? Why else?

Arirang News has video of one of the suspected North Korean UAVs (unmanned air vehicles — we didn’t say “drone” in the Army) that crashed on Baekryeong Island. The Baekryeong UAV has a conventional high aspect ratio wing, for greater stability and longer range. According to this report and this one, its engine was made in Japan, and other components were from China. This suggests that if the UAV really did come from North Korea, it’s an indigenous design. The other UAV, which crashed...

Categories NK Military/North-South
March 31, 2014

Dear President Park: He’s not that into you (updated with N. Korea’s rejection)

In every successful relationship, there are certain things one must not ask the other party to the relationship. No matter how much you may desire it, the answer will never be “yes.” The request itself will not be received well. Depending on the request, the special equipment it would require, and the identity of the other participants, it may even lead to the destruction of property or violence. In the relationship between North and South Korea, it is apparently no...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
February 25, 2014

Royce goes to Seoul, calls for cutting off Kim Jong Un’s cash

So Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was in Seoul last week, and sat down for an interview with Yonhap to talk North Korea: “It seems that the strategy that slows down North Korea the most is not allowing them access to the hard currency which they use in order to create their offensive nuclear weapons capabilities,” said Royce in an interview with Yonhap News Agency in Seoul.  Royce is now in Seoul along with a delegation...

Categories Sanctions/Sunshine/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
February 4, 2014

Post-Sunshine South Korea is sober, pragmatic, and grouchy.

In this post last week, I cited polling data showing how South Koreans’ views of North Korea have hardened in recent years, representing a dramatic swing since the fervent anti-Americanism and pro-appeasement sentiment of the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun years. I reckoned that the 2010 Cheonan and Yeonpyeong attacks were the tipping point in this shift, but a wealth of polling data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project changes my mind about this. I wish the data...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Sunshine/U.S. & Korea
November 13, 2013

Charm Offensive Update: N. Korea calls S. Korea’s female president a “political prostitute.”

  Yonhap has taken note of North Korea’s rather nasty reaction to Park Geun Hye’s visit to Europe, attacking her for such things as … traveling abroad, and … speaking foreign languages. Spin that one, Perestroika watchers!: Park Geun Hye again let loose a whole string of rubbish malignantly slandering the DPRK, urging it to “dismantle its nukes” and settle “human rights issues” during her recent trips to various countries of Europe. It is a fact well known to all...

Categories North-South
November 7, 2013

Kaesong running at half-capacity as investors trickle away

When Kaesong reopened after a five-month shutdown, I speculated that the shutdown would have lingering adverse effects on some of the operations there — that some of the manufacturers would have lost suppliers and customers, experienced workers would not return, credit would be overextended, and machinery and materials would have degraded. Sure enough, Kaesong still hasn’t recovered from the shutdown. Contrary to South Korean government claims that it’s running at 80% capacity, the true figure is just 50%. That may be as good...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
October 24, 2013

Ambassador Gifford’s Trojan Rabbit

Just in time for North Korea’s latest nuke test scare, Mike Gifford, the British Ambassador to North Korea, takes to the pages of the L.A. Times to urge readers to support “engagement” with North Korea, although not very convincingly. Gifford begins with a litany of reasons why we either shouldn’t, or can’t — human rights (reason enough to isolate South Africa and Sudan, but not North Korea, apparently); WMD proliferation, attacks, and threats (followed by U.N. sanctions that impose financial transparency requirements North Korea...

Categories Anju Links/Europe/Sunshine
October 18, 2013

Kaesong was not shut down properly. Would you like to restart Kaesong in safe mode?*

Like most people, I don’t know what the genius behind this shutdown strategy realistically expected to accomplish with it. Its sudden, and apparently pressured, abandonment suggests that its mastermind didn’t think through its potential economic or political consequences, and that the decision was largely motivated by emotion and impulse, most likely egged on by a few yes-men in an echo chamber. He will (and should) pay significant economic and political costs for it. Potential investors, foreign governments, domestic government officials,...

Categories Sunshine
October 11, 2013

N. Korea says Park GH’s father “smelled of elderberries,” S. Korea responds with “large wooden badger” plan

I don’t know about you, but I sure got tired of Park Geun Hye’s hippie Earth mother act last summer, after North Korea started making nice, right after banks all over China and Europe started blocking North Korean accounts. Thank God that’s over with. We’re back to steaming reactors, spinning centrifuges, war drums, nasty taunts, and all the things we’ve grown to love and miss about North Korea. The North was uncharacteristically quietly during August’s Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises, but for reasons known only...

Categories North-South/ROK Military/Sunshine/U.S. Military