July 10, 2010

Debunking the 3/26 Conspiracy “Science”

I have not, until now, seen the report of the The Joint Civilian-Military Investigation Group linked elsewhere, so let’s begin there. You can read the whole thing for yourself, but for your convenience, I’ll reproduce something about the composition of the investigative group itself. Emphasis mine: The Joint Civilian-military Investigation Group (JIG) conducted its investigation with 25 experts from 10 top Korean expert agencies, 22 military experts, 3 experts recommended by the National Assembly, and 24 foreign experts constituting 4...

Categories Cheonan Incident/Useful Idiocy
July 10, 2010

If there was ever any cognizable justice in holding Gomes in a prison cell for peacefully presenting a petition to North Korean border guards, it ended months ago. North Korea says an American man being held for illegally crossing its border has tried to kill himself. A statement issued by the regime’s official Korean Central News Agency says Aijalon Mahli Gomes’ suicide attempt was “driven by his strong guilty conscience,” plus disappointment and despair that the U.S. government “has not...

Categories Aijalon Gomes/Anju Links/Deprogramming/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/NK Military/Propaganda/Reconstruction/Refugees
July 9, 2010

Yet Another Report of Anti-Regime Leaflets in N. Korea

It’s the second such report I’ve seen this week, which is pretty extraordinary for North Korea: North Korea’s National Security Agency (NSA) has launched a hunt for the individual or organization responsible for scattering 5,000 won bills scrawled with words criticizing the Kim Jong Il regime in Chongjin, North Hamkyung Province. A source reported on Thursday that around the Kim Il Sung statue in Pohang and parts of Shinan district in the city, large numbers of 5,000 won bills inscribed...

Categories Resistance
July 9, 2010

Food Supplies, Prices Stabilize Amid Slow Recovery of N. Korea’s Markets

The good news for North Koreans who’ve been written off the state’s dole is that food prices have mostly stabilized. The bad news is that quite a few of them have lost ground in their unending race against the Reaper: A source inside North Korea explained, “Since the redenomination, some people have dropped from ‘middle income’ to ‘poor.’ As a result, demand for corn has increased, and that is the reason why corn prices have gone up. Some people still...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
July 9, 2010

Kaesong Updates

A bus accident, apparently caused in part by bad weather, has killed 10 North Korean workers and injured 40 others at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which, by the way, subsidizes Kim Jong Il to the tune of $50 million per month. Give a thought to the poor families of the dead … and the wounded as well. I’m not sure how much of that substantial sum goes into providing suitable medical care for the North Korean people, but my best...

Categories Human Trafficking/NK Economics/North-South/Sunshine
July 8, 2010

Korean Church Coalition Events for Next Week in Washington

The Korean Church Coalition forwards this press release: KOREAN CHURCH COALITION for North Korean Freedom will be hosting a series of events in Washington D.C. on July 13, 2010 to July 14, 2010, to Speak on Behalf of the Voiceless. Irvine, CA ““Member pastors of the Korean Church Coalition (KCC) for North Korea Freedom will hold a series of events in Washington D.C. and its surrounding areas. The events are intended to bring awareness to the current plight of the...

Categories Activism
July 8, 2010

Anti-Government Leaflets Found in Hoeryong

Hoeryong, in North Korea’s far northeast, is the birthplace of Kim Jong Il’s mother, but with its low economic status and proximity to the Chinese border, it is also something of a hotspot for smuggling, capitalism, and dissent. Previous reports from Hoeryong have told of other leafleting incidents and at least one reported market protest. Now there is word of more anti-government leaflets found there: Quoting a source from Chongjin, Free North Korea Radio (FNKR) reported yesterday that a large...

Categories Uncategorized
July 7, 2010

Prostitution Said to Be Widespread in Chongjin

Next time one of North Korea’s apologists speaks of its pristine moral vales, gender equality, or absence of sexist billboards, someone remind me to point them to this: “The prostitution of teenage females is rampant, which has forced the security services of Chongjin to dispatch plain-clothed security officers to the station to crackdown on it. But the cleverly disguised prostitution of female university students is increasing, and some of them have close relationships with the same security officials who are...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Crime
July 7, 2010

Son Jong Nam, R.I.P.

It is a terrible thing to say, but I will say it: it is better that Son Jong Nam is dead than that he still endures torture in North Korean captivity. Truthfully, I had long assumed that Son had died, even by the time I wrote this post in late 2007. Now, Son’s brother has told an AP reporter that his brother is dead. Like most North Koreans, Son Jong Nam knew next to nothing about Christianity when he fled...

Categories Deprogramming/Religion/Resistance/Subversion
July 6, 2010

A Fond “Good Riddance” to Chris Hill: “The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and former envoy to South Korea Christopher Hill will retire from public service and become dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver from September.” If Hill had departed so soon after being nominated by a President the news media liked less, I have a feeling we’d hear a lot more media speculation — or even actual reporting — about why he’s...

Categories Anju Links
July 6, 2010

New Survey Suggests More New Defectors Listened to Foreign Broadcasts

I tend to wonder how anyone can put much stock in statistics that claim to reflect public opinion in North Korea, but I report, you decide: According to the poll conducted by InterMedia the majority of the 250 defectors who agreed to be surveyed ““ 57 individuals ““ responded that they listened to private radio broadcasts when they were in North Korea. This makes up over 20% of the respondents and shows that 1 out of 5 people listen to...

Categories Deprogramming/Propaganda
July 2, 2010

1 July 2010

Congratulations to Barbara Demick, whose wonderful book, “Nothing to Envy,” has just won Britain’s Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. _______________________ Closets Are for Clothes! Yonhap: “N. Korean leader makes robust outings amid tension with S. Korea” _______________________ The aid NGO Caritas claims that North Koreans will suffer from donor fatigue. I think donor fatigue has afflicted me, too. I’d long been a supporter of monitored food aid, but I’ve coe to doubt that Kim Jong Il will ever allow monitoring...

Categories Anju Links/NK Crime
July 2, 2010

Hwang Hit Team Members Sentenced to Ten Years

I wonder what the State Department’s finest legal minds will have to say about this. President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 1, 2008 to reward it for its progress toward complete, verifiable, and irreversible nuclear disarmament. President Obama reaffirmed the de-listing on February 3, 2010 and on June 23, 2010, citing a lack of evidence for North Korea’s recent sponsorship of terrorism. Discuss among yourselves.

Categories Terrorism (NK)
July 2, 2010

Washington’s “Conventional Wisdom” About North Korea Is an Oxymoron

Professor Sung Yoon Lee, writing in the Asia Times, says: [T]he North Korean regime is in the midst of the most serious internal political challenge in nearly 20 years. Facing severe economic stresses, increasing infiltration of information into North Korea, ever more North Koreans attempting to defect to the South, and the challenge of handing over power to an unproven son only in his twenties, the allegedly ailing North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, must wrestle with profound questions of regime...

Categories Diplomacy/Washington Views
July 1, 2010

What Sanctions Can, and Can’t Do

While President Obama expresses frustration at China’s refusal to support sanctions against North Korea for sinking the ROKS Cheonan, U.S. officials are also expressing their concerns that China will also undermine sanctions against Iran. For what it’s worth, I’m much less bullish about Iran sanctions than I am about sanctions against North Korea. The potential effect of sanctions is inversely proportional to a regime’s connections to the outside world and its possession of goods that have an export market. As...

Categories Iran/NK Economics/Sanctions
July 1, 2010

In Their Desperation to Meet With Ban Ki-Moon, N. Korean Gulag Survivors Try Borrowing a White Guy

North Korean gulag survivors are knocking on Ban Ki-Moon’s door, asking for a meeting to tell him what he’s known for a decade — that the North Korean prison camps they lived to tell about, no thanks to Ban, are the Mauthausens and Buchenwalds of our time. Odd thing is, it would be a lot easier for Ban to simply not answer if former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik weren’t knocking with them: “The profound suffering of the North...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
June 30, 2010

China, Korea, and the Persistence of Mendacity

It’s nice to see Koreans calling China on its P.R. blunders with greater frequency these days: In its feature on the 60th anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War, the International Herald Leader, a newsweekly of the Xinhua News Agency, said the North Korean army launched the war by crossing the 38th parallel and seizing South Korean capital Seoul in three days. The article immediately drew attention, with some placing significance on China’s first admission of military aggression...

Categories China & Korea/Korean War
June 30, 2010

President Obama talks to our enemies, and it does not end well

President Obama, speaking at the G-8 summit recently, sounded very much like his predecessor, saying that “shying away from ugly facts on North Korea’s behavior is, in his words, “a bad habit we need to break.” I don’t know if the similarity should gratify or worry me more, or whether those two sentiments are really mutually exclusive. The problem for President Obama is that China, Kim Jong Il’s financial backer and sponsor, is shielding North Korea from even the slightest...

Categories China/China & Korea/Diplomacy