I’m glad Aijalon Gomes is coming home, and I’m bracing myself for all of the addlebrained things Carter will now have an excuse to say on CNN between now and Sunday night. For now, I’ll just note the ingratitude of Kim Jong Il’s calculated snub by choosing this occasion to visit China. I predicted the other day that North Korea wouldn’t snub such a valuable enabler. I regret the error, as this was obviously an intentional snub. No doubt, the...

North Korea is on Twitter … unless you happen to be a North Korean, of course. ___________________________ The Washington Post looks at Jang Song Thaek’s emerging role as svengali to Kim Jong Eun. ___________________________ “I have a sneaking suspicion that Kim Jong-il’s son, who wants to take over, has to earn his stripes with the North Korean military,” Gates said at the U.S. Marines’ Memorial Club in San Francisco. “My worry is that that is behind the provocation like the...

Washington seems to believe that North Korea will return to the six party talks and stop its belligerent behavior if its sources of overseas funding are cut off. If that’s what “Washington” actually does believe, I think it’s wrong about that, but I do think that sanctions will do several other very useful things, like destabilize the power structure during the succession process, slow North Korea’s progress at proliferation, and break up the financial and logistical infrastructure of its proliferation...

The demographics of defection are shifting: since the currency reform, more middle-class North Koreans have been fleeing the North, a South Korean security official speculated. A North Korean source on Tuesday said the currency reform alienated many people from the regime, and the spread of South Korean pop culture through videos and CDs clandestinely circulated in the North has also encouraged some middle and higher-class North Koreans to flee. In recent days, many people who lost their savings due to...

North Korea has executed three leaders of a house church it raided in North Pyongan Province, and sent the remaining members to a labor camp. The report comes via North Korean Intellectuals’ Solidarity: According to the sources, the arrests and executions were carried out in mid-May. “At that time, right after the disastrous currency reform, police discovered 23 Christians in Kuwal-dong, Pyungsung County, in Pyongan Province, who met at an underground church. After their arrest, they were interrogated at length....