June 1, 2010

Human Rights Updates

The former laughingstock called the National Human Rights Commission of Korea is planning to release a North Korea human rights “road map” this fall. On a related note, congratulations to Open News’s Young Howard, who now has the cred and the means to host a conference on human rights in North Korea. Open News also notes that Former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik has emerged as a leading advocate of this issue to the still-worthless Ban Ki-Moon and a...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights/Uncategorized
May 31, 2010

Robert Einhorn to Lead North Korea Sanctions Implementation Effort

The Joongang Ilbo is reporting that Clinton Administration alumnus and counter-proliferation expert Robert Einhorn is going to be put in charge of “streamlining the process by which it implements” international sanctions against North Korea, sanctions that are likely to be enhanced after an international investigation found that North Korea torpedoed and sank the South Korean warship Cheonan. “The U.S. administration was seeking more efficient management of implementation of sanctions, which had been divided between the State and the Treasury departments,”...

Categories Cheonan Incident/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law/Washington Views
May 29, 2010

Is the ROK Goverment Warming Up to N. Korean Defectors’ Leaflet Campaign?

The ROK government is still sending people to question the balloon people, but it’s not the Unification Ministry anymore. Even the Lee Administration clearly wasn’t comfortable with their activities. Now, however, it’s the boys from ROK Army psyops that are asking the questions. Although it’s not completely clear from this Joongang Ilbo article, I take this as a good sign: “Only a while ago, we had officials from the Unification Ministry telling us to refrain from sending leaflets,” said Park...

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
May 29, 2010

But the real question is how many South Koreans will actually believe this ….

Another day, another chutzpah record broken in Pyongyang: “The South Korean puppet regime’s faked sinking of the Cheonan has created a very serious situation on the Korean peninsula, pushing it towards the brink of war,” Maj. Gen. Pak Rim Su, director of the commission’s policy department, said at the press conference, according to broadcaster APTN. A number of people attended, including some foreigners who may have been Pyongyang-based diplomats, footage showed. A uniformed foreign military officer could be seen watching...

Categories Cheonan Incident/WTF?
May 28, 2010

Where’s the Outrage?

South Koreans’ unifiction mania may have cooled for the moment, but B.R. Myers tells us that public anger toward North Korea doesn’t approach that directed against America after the 2002 accident, and that plenty have made the decision to disbelieve the evidence that North Korea sank the Cheonan: It would be unfair to characterize these skeptics as pro-Pyongyang, but there is more sympathy for North Korea here than foreigners commonly realize. As a university student in West Berlin in the...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Cheonan Incident/Korean Society/North-South
May 28, 2010

28 May 2010

Axis, Schmaxis: “The seven-member panel monitoring sanctions against North Korea said in a report obtained by The Associated Press late Thursday that its research indicates that Pyongyang is involved in banned nuclear and ballistic activities in Iran, Syria and Myanmar.“ ______________________ Japan is moving to tighten restrictions on cash remittances to North Korea, and may authorize its coast guard to inspect North Korean ships in international waters. That would be a bold move, because North Korean vessels have previously refused...

Categories Anju Links/Cheonan Incident
May 28, 2010

Fareed Zakaria shows us how anyone can earn a living as a North Korea expert!

Next time my brother and I argue about why I’m not big a fan of Fareed Zakaria, I think I’ll point him to this CNN.com link where Zakaria gives us his “analysis” of the Cheonan Incident. The interviewer asks him a series of questions, which I rephrase. Zakaria then spits up State Department talking points and pulp he stole from wire service reports, and then blends this with his own analysis. I’ve hosed the pulp, talking points, and context off...

Categories Fiskings/Media Criticism
May 27, 2010

State Department Fights N. Korea Terror Re-Listing With Half-Truths

[T]he Obama team is clearly signaling that it does not intend to do what many lawmakers want: put North Korea back on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. The calculation is that the listing, which administration officials see as having been overly politicized during the George W. Bush years, is more trouble than it’s worth. [WaPo, The Cable] Not worth the trouble? Are you joshing me? This, from the same crowd that went all the way to...

Categories Cheonan Incident/Terrorism (NK)
May 26, 2010

On Second Thought, Don’t Keep Your Day Job, Either.

As a public service to OFK readers, I’d like to remind you that on Day Two of the Cheonan crisis, Noam Chomsky’s favorite Korea analyst and military expert, John Feffer, was quoted thusly: “I doubt that North Korea was involved in the incident,” said John Feffer, co-director of the Foreign Policy in Focus program at the Institute for Policy Studies. “It didn’t seem to involve any artillery fire from the North. Feffer disagreed with the assumption that North Korea attacked...

Categories Cheonan Incident/Fiskings/Useful Idiocy
May 26, 2010

26 May 2010

Belle, grosse linques for Curtis and me from Le Monde today. Bienvenue! ______________________ Or, maybe they’re just assholes: The Washington Post asks the timeless question of why the North Koreans behave like North Koreans. ______________________ A former North Korean army officer, now living in London, plots to overthrow the regime. ______________________ Bruce Bechtol thinks the North Koreans’ objective is to move the sea boundary south. Although the theories aren’t mutually exclusive, I continue to favor the B.R. Myers theory that...

Categories Anju Links
May 26, 2010

Mike Chinoy: Kim Jong Il Sank a South Korean Warship, Ergo We Should Negotiate With Him Now

Mike Chinoy was an absolutely, positively objective CNN reporter until he wrote a book accusing the Bush Administration of sexing up evidence of North Korean uranium enrichment to wriggle out of the first Agreed Framework. Poor Chinoy. Before his book even went to print, samples submitted by North Korea to the State Department began to test positive for highly enriched uranium, and in due course, Meltdown wasn’t just Chinoy’s title, it became . But because people like Chinoy are even...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
May 26, 2010

North Korea Saves Lee Myung Bak the Trouble of Closing Kaesong

[Update: So did they mean it or not? Damn Kim Jong Il never keeps a promise ….] President Lee can heave a mighty sigh of relief. Not only will the Kaesong Industrial Park be closed after all, but also, Chung Dong-Young, the Hankyoreh, and the usual suspects among Korea’s nationalist left can’t possibly criticize him for it without abandoning all pretense of logic. Oh, wait …. In any event, this is all proceeding very much like I’ve been predicting for...

Categories Appeasement/NK Economics
May 25, 2010

North Korean Milfspionage Takes a Scary Turn

What is it with the North Korean spy agencies’ recent proclivity for using “women of a certain age” to target horny South Korean men? First, there was Won Jong-Hwa, who seduced, inter alia, a young South Korean army captain for classified information, and possibly a lieutenant as well, assuming that both officers weren’t actually the same person. Now, there is the story of Kim Soon-Nyeo, whose targets included a 29 year-old college student, two travel agency workers, and her grand...

Categories Korean Law/The Fifth Column
May 25, 2010

Kim Jong Il Obviously Fears Rantings of Obscure U.S. Imperialist Running Dog

So no sooner do I publish my Capitalist Manifesto than I read that the Anjeonbu, notorious for operating all of North Korea’s large kwan-li-so prison camps except Camp 18, has been sent out among the provinces as a counter-subversion force: According to sources, special police squads have been formed in each province under the People’s Safety Ministry (PSM) to take action to block out information on foreign countries and root out anti-regime suspects. A source from Shinuiju reported on Tuesday,...

Categories Subversion
May 25, 2010

That’s More Like It: South Resumes Propaganda Broadcasting to North Korea

While most of the reporting has focused on the rather futile gesture of blaring propaganda from loudspeakers, it seems that South Korea is doing something else that’s more likely to reach a wider North Korean audience: South Korea’s military resumed radio broadcasts airing Western music, news and comparisons between the South and North Korean political and economic situations late Monday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military also planned to launch propaganda leaflets by balloon and other methods...

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
May 24, 2010

Overthrowing Kim: A Capitalist Manifesto

[Originally published at The New Ledger, May 2010; edited for brevity in October 2017] Within the next 48 hours, South Korea is expected to announce that North Korea torpedoed and sank the warship Cheonan and killed 46 of her crew. Among the evidence the multinational investigation will cite will be the North Korean serial number on the torpedo’s propeller, recovered from the ocean floor. The sinking of the Cheonan may be the most serious North Korean provocation since 1968 —...

Categories Capitalism/Regime Change