Search Results for “luxury”

May 5, 2010

Has the Teflon Finally Worn Off the Wok?

For well over a decade, the South Korean street and government have let China get away with murder — literally — of North Korean refugees, and South Korean POW’s and their families. Koreans quickly forgot their anger after hundreds of Chinese “students” rioted in downtown Seoul and beat and kicked Korean citizens (but, said the Chinese government that bused the mobs in, they really meant well). But for once, I’m gratified to see South Koreans sharing my sense of outrage...

China & Korea/Kim Jong Il

April 28, 2010

“Collective Spirit” Update

The Chosun Ilbo reports that despite international sanctions, Kim Jong Il still manages to import ample quantities of rice and infant formula add “between $200 and $300 million every year” to his personal slush fund: With the money, North Korea would be able to import between 400,000 to 600,000 tons of rice, which would be enough to cover half the country’s food shortage of 1 million tons of rice per year. What? Since when isn’t cognac food anymore? Isn’t it...

Kim Jong Il/NK Economics/Sanctions

April 15, 2010

China Helps North Korea Import Infant Formula New Cars Despite U.N. Sanctions

I dedicate this post to John Feffer and Christine Ahn, who may now rest in the security of knowing that U.N. anti-proliferation sanctions aren’t causing starvation in North Korea: Around 100 Chinese-made cars have been brought into North Korea through a checkpoint on the border with China, probably for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to give to favored officials. The delivery was made on Tuesday, two days before former leader Kim Il-sung’s birthday, which is the biggest holiday in the...

China & Korea/Sanctions

April 10, 2010

Of Fools and Their Money, Pt. 3: Thoughts on the End of Kumgang

North Korea has announced that it will make good on its threat to confiscate the South Korean property at the Kumgang tourist project. In a statement on Thursday, the North’s Guidance Bureau for Comprehensive Development of Scenic Spots, which is in charge of the tourism, said it is seizing a meeting hall for separated families built by the South Korean government, and a cultural hall, a hot spring spa, and a duty-free shop owned by the Korea Tourism Organization, as...

NK Economics/Sunshine

March 24, 2010

23 March 2010

Collective Spirit Update: Open News reports a rising number of kkotjaebi (homeless orphans) in North Korea, even as the elite continue to snap up expensive luxury goods imported from China. And this: “According to sources, Pyongyang has more than 1,000 millionaires.” Those sources may or may not be wrong, but what more evidence do you need than this that North Korea has a profound economic imbalance? You know, if Christine Ahn really hurries, she might be able to arrange a...

Anju Links

March 5, 2010

Kim Il Sung’s Personal Shopper Writes Tell-All Book

Kim Jong Ryul, who spent 16 years under cover in Austria, also described how the “great leader” and his son and successor Kim Jong Il spent millions pampering and protecting themselves with Western goods — everything from luxury cars, carpets and exotic foods, to monitors that can detect heartbeats of people hiding behind walls and gold-plated handguns. The colonel’s account — told in a new book by Austrian journalists Ingrid Steiner-Gashi and Dardan Gashi — shows the deep divide between...

Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il/Sanctions/Useful Idiocy

February 24, 2010

The History of North Korea’s Political Prison Camps

Open News has an interesting history of the camps that, among other interesting educated guesses, suggests that 50% of the largest camps’ (kwan-li-so) population is composed of people who are merely family members of those accused of disloyalty to the state: The North Korean regime, as it consolidated its power, killed religious leaders, the pro-Japanese, and landowners, while imprisoning their family members in the so called “forced labor camps. In 1947, there were 17 of these forced labor camps. Between...

History/Human Rights/The Camps

February 13, 2010

Axis of Evil Watch

South Korea has told the Security Council that it seized garments “deemed to have military uses for chemical protection,”Â according to a report from Turkish Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan, chairman of a committee that monitors implementation of UN sanctions against North Korea. The incident was one of four brought to the attention of the Security Council because of possible violations of sanctions intended to halt North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs. Apakan also reported on Italy’s seizure of two luxury yachts...

Axis of Evil/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD

February 12, 2010

Alejandro Cao de BenÃ³s Interview â€“ Part 3

This week, Cao informs us how he maintained his porcine figure even as he watched North Koreans starve to death all around him, and explains that The Great Confiscation was designed to foil widespread foreign counterfeiting of the North Korean won, for which there would seem to be as much incentive as inventing imitation tofu. Cao also says that the food situation in North Korea these days is just peachy, which is rather remarkable statement, given that not even Kim...

Interviews/Useful Idiocy

February 7, 2010

Great Confiscation Updates and Aftermath; Demonstration Reported in Dancheon

It’s still premature to say that the North Korean regime has retreated in its attack on the system of markets, known as jangmadang, on which the majority of the people had come to depend since the collapse of the state distribution system in the 1990’s. The best available information — and the qualifiers to the aforementioned phrase should be obvious — suggests that the regime has decided against pressing the attack in certain specific places for now. For the time...

NK Economics/Resistance

January 24, 2010

Great Confiscation Updates: Current Trends Cannot Continue

The wire services continue to report that conditions just keep getting worse for North Koreans, but the latest dispatch from Good Friends adds extensive detail to the hyperinflation story, and how it’s affecting the ability of people to get food: This is the sort of reporting that Good Friends typically does well. We’re used to seeing North Korea’s corn-eaters going hungry, but I always watch for signs that the elite, the military, and other rice-eaters are sharing in the misery:...

NK Economics

October 18, 2009

Extortion for Domestic Consumption

This, coming from a regime that offers little more than propaganda for its people to consume: Upon seeing signs that the food situation is becoming serious, factory managers are moving to soothe workers, saying, “Great amounts of food will come from foreign countries in January, so don’t worry so much. However, the workers reactions are not ones of great relief, because it is not clear whether that foreign food aid would be distributed to workers even if it did arrive....

Famine & Food Aid/Propaganda

September 15, 2009

And Yet, Christine Ahn Wants You to Know that Sanctions Kill North Korean Babies

Italian customs recently confiscated 420 bottles of expensive liquor on their way to North Korea. Italian newspaper Vivere Ancona said customs in the eastern port city seized 150 bottles of brandy and 270 bottles of whisky in containers destined for North Korea at the end of last month. The confiscation follows a UN Security Council ban on the export of arms, high technology and luxury goods to North Korea after the communist country’s nuclear test in May. The liquor is...

Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il/Sanctions/Useful Idiocy

September 5, 2009

Kim Jong Il Death Watch

The Daily Mail has republished photos, released yesterday by KCNA, showing Kim Jong Il visiting what’s described elsewhere as the Kim Jong Suk Sanitarium. The report doesn’t specify what city it’s in, but Kim Jong Suk is Kim Jong Il’s mother and a native of Hoeryong in North Hamgyeong Province. Many of the sites in Hoeryong are named after her. You’d think that a country that’s trying to show the vigor of its geriatric oligarch wouldn’t dress him in funereal...

Kim Jong Il

August 13, 2009

The Winding Road to Redemption

It may be the ultimate case of paving someone else’s road to hell with good intentions. You may have heard it reported that on a lark, Laura Ling and Euna Lee crossed into North Korea and were captured while carrying video showing the faces of refugees and rescuers, whom Chinese police duly rounded up to send back to a firing squad or worse in North Korea. Intentional? Of course not. Reckless? Yes, perhaps fatally; yet it’s damage that can’t be...

Human Trafficking/Ling/Lee Incident/Refugees

August 7, 2009

In What Sense Is John Choe Morally Distinguishable from a Neo-Nazi?

John Choe, personifying the appellation “useful idiot” as pictured here, won’t shift U.S. foreign policy if he’s elected to represent a district in Queens in the New York City Council. Technically, Choe is correct when he evades questions about his sympathies with North Korea’s regime and demurs, “I’m not running for secretary of state–I’m running to represent the 20th district in the City Council,”Â Choe said. That is true in the same sense that David Duke ran for governor of...

Activism/Human Rights/The Fifth Column/U.S. Politics

July 27, 2009

Yachting the River Styx and the Lies of Christine Ahn

Several of you e-mailed me about the story of the luxury yachts that North Korea had attempted to purchase from the Italian manufacturer Azimuth-Benetti. I started a post and didn’t finish it, partially because that post became something long-winded, disjointed, and unpublishable. Meanwhile, a few more details have trickled in about the boats and the purchase. Contrary to doubts expressed in earlier reports, Italian authorities have concluded that the boats were indeed for His Withering Majesty, although you have to...

"United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Sanctions

July 7, 2009

North Korea’s Great Leap Backward

It’s not just on this blog where the ill-informed and the self-deluded continue to defy years of bitter experience and advocate “engagement” with the North Korean regime as a way to encourage economic reform. You can still hear academics in Washington cite the potential for economic reform in North Korea as a reason not to impose sanctions after North Korea’s nuke and missile tests. Some day, we must make a point of tabulating the amount of money spent on this...

China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics

Search Results for: luxury