March 22, 2010

This Kumgang Nonsense, Explained

What is the meaning of North Korea’s sudden spate of demands that South Korea resume tours at Mt. Kumgang, which ended with the 2008 killing of one of the tourists? Most likely, that the sanctions are working, that China’s bailout isn’t expected to arrive in time, and that Kim Jong Il needs the money. Even for North Korea, this sounds a bit desperate: Accusing the south Korean puppet clique of making outcry, asserting the “incident of a tourist in Mt....

Categories NK Economics/North-South/Sunshine
March 22, 2010

N.Y. Times (Sort of) Reviews “Kimjongilia”

The reviewer, Mike Hale, dismisses the documentary “Kimjongilia” as the result of “a morbid obsession with Mr. Kim and the hellish country he oversees, shared by escaped North Koreans and Western filmmakers,” which is an attack on the film’s choice of subject matter, not its artistic merit. Hale begins his review, in other words, wishing that filmmakers would pay as little attention to this subject matter as the New York Times’s news bureaus and its editorial board have. Any judgment...

Categories Books & Films/Media Criticism
March 21, 2010

Old KGB Habits Die Hard: Russians Arrest North Korean Logger

In the war between Kim Jong Il’s regime and the people of North Korea, Russia has taken the regime’s side: The North Korean’s note, scrawled in pen, was simple: “I want to go to South Korea. Why? To find freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of life.” The ex-logger, on the run from North Korean authorities, handed the note over to a South Korean missionary in the Russian city of Vladivostok last week in hopes it would lead to political asylum....

Categories Russia & Korea/Russian Far East
March 20, 2010

Rumor: U.S., China Planning for “Upheaval” in N. Korea

The United States Thursday denied reports that it will soon have closed-door discussions with South Korea and China on plans for upheaval in North Korea. “I have not been told we are going to have this type of meeting at this particular point,” a senior State Department official said, asking not to be named. “If we are working on that in sort of an early stage, that could be possible.” [Yonhap] Normally, I’d be tempted to believe this because they...

Categories China/Reconstruction/Regime Change/U.S. Military
March 20, 2010

Axis? What Axis?

In the wake of reports that North Korea shipped raw uranium to Syria just before the al-Kibar strike, North Korea is now suspected of exporting yellowcake to Iran: Leonard Spector, a deputy director of the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, made the remarks Tuesday. Spector quoted reports as saying the 45 tons of what is known as “yellowcake” were then delivered to Iran via Turkey. The material would be sufficient for several nuclear weapons...

Categories Axis of Evil/Proliferation/WMD
March 20, 2010

North Korea Lures Rajin Investment as It Threatens to Confiscate Kumgang

If you want to understand precisely how Kim Jong Il has managed to lure billions of dollars into a money pit that has delivered little discernible return on billions of dollars in investment, look no further than Kim Young Yun’s recent op-ed in the Joongang Ilbo for an object lesson in how incapable of learning some people are, particularly while under the influence of nationalism: Should we just sit back and watch the port of Rajin being handed over to...

Categories China & Korea/North-South/Sunshine
March 19, 2010

Global Financial Body Blacklists North Korea

One of the most important offices in the subterranean warrens of the Treasury Department is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Center, or FINCEN, whose mission is to combat illicit finance and money laundering, and whose global power derives from its influence within a global body of counterpart agencies from governments worldwide known as the Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, which in turn has the power to exclude any bank and most countries from the global financial system, rendering the target...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
March 19, 2010

North Korea Shoots Great Confiscation Scapegoat

I suppose this at least implicitly acknowledges that The Great Confiscation didn’t quite earn “widespread support” from “[a]n absolute majority of workers from laborers, farmers and office workers” after all: North Korea has executed a ruling party official blamed for a botched currency reform, in a desperate attempt to quell public unrest and stem negative impact on Pyongyang’s power succession, a news report said on Thursday. The execution by firing squad in Pyongyang last week of Pak Nam-ki, Labour Party...

Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology/NK Economics
March 18, 2010

18 March 2010

A few days ago, I mentioned that North Korea was raising the rent at foreign embassies. I wondered at the time whether that would violate the Vienna Convention, but I don’t see how this comports with Articles 31 and 35: North Korea is also cracking down on the flow of information within foreign missions and agencies. The North rejected a request by a UN agency to use the Internet to send documents to UN headquarters. When diplomats make international phone...

Categories Anju Links
March 17, 2010

17 March 2010

Have you voted for LiNK today? Incidentally, LiNK wanted me to pass this along: Wanted to let you know about a promotion we’re having in March. Anyone who votes for LiNK at www.refresheverything.com/link (and gets 10 of their friends to vote) will get 10% percent off their order. Such a deal! ________________________ North Korea deploys more counter-intelligence agents to China to stop the flow of news out of North Korea: The men are said to be in charge of exposing...

Categories Anju Links
March 17, 2010

Must Read: Sanctions Could Cause N. Korean Regime to Collapse

The full report is here. I won’t have time to read it until this weekend, but here’s a teaser: The North “is facing several domestic problems that in isolation would each be manageable but together could threaten regime survival,” said Daniel Pinkston, the group’s northeast Asia deputy project director. “The North Korean government has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to survive, but the regime is under extreme pressure when it must also deal with looming succession issues.” The 68-year-old Kim, who...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Regime Change/Sanctions
March 17, 2010

Chinese Academic Admits what U.S. State Dep’t Won’t: Kim Jong Il Will Never Disarm

North Korea is using annual military exercises as an excuse to “bolster up its war deterrent,” the latter term being the traditional code-talk for nuclear weapons. This ought to put North Korea’s rumored return to six-party talks in context. So should this Asia Times piece by our friend, the seasoned Korea reporter Don Kirk (buy his book!), who quotes Beijing University professor Wang Jisi. Wang, speaking at a conference in Seoul recently, showed a much better appreciation of reality than...

Categories China & Korea/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Uncategorized
March 17, 2010

We Regret to Inform You That Your One-Way Ticket to Paradise is Non-Refundable

Back in late January, North Korea claimed that an American who feared becoming “cannon fodder in the capitalist [all-volunteer] military” had crossed over to the loving embrace of the relevant organ. Despite my own growing doubts about the story, the fact that the Swedes have since had two consular visits with him does suggest that he exists after all. The U.S. State Department says North Korea has allowed Swedish diplomats to meet a U.S. citizen who has been detained for...

Categories Defectors/WTF?
March 16, 2010

North Korea, Human Rights, and Diplomacy: When Hell Freezes Over

A series of bleak new reports shows that after more than a decade of attempts by the United States and South Korea to liberalize North Korea though aid and engagement, life is as cheap as ever between the Yalu and the Imjin. The system is less closed than it once was, although this is mostly the result of the fraying of the regime’s control over its borders, economy, and the flow of information. Yet these changes have occurred in defiance...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights
March 15, 2010

Meet Roh Jeong-Ho: Ex-Millionaire, Symbol of a Failed Policy, and Asshole

Please allow me to introduce Roh Jeong-Ho, ex-millionaire, former role model for the Sunshine Policy, and asshole. How does one achieve such distinction in life? In Roh’s case, this way: Roh was once touted by the South Korean media as one of the young leaders in his early 30s who were expected to lead the post-unification era when he exported 44 km of barbed-wire fences to Rajin-Sonbong in 1995. North Korea had asked Roh to supply the fences to isolate...

Categories Appeasement/NK Economics/Sunshine
March 14, 2010

14 March 2010: Here We Go Again

Whoop-dee-doo: Rumor has it that North Korea will return to six-party talks next month, and if that’s true, it will only be under the duress of sanctions, and for the sole purposes of demanding that the sanctions be loosened and to issue a new list of demands that are mostly designed to prevent us from ever getting to the matter of its nuclear disarmament. The good news is that the sanctions must be working. The bad news is that our...

Categories Anju Links