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March 14, 2010

Succession Watch

Yonhap is reporting that North Korea is busily printing portraits of the new emperor-in-waiting. If this is true, it would be the story I’ve been waiting for to convince me that Kim Jong-Eun is indeed being groomed as the spiritual successor to Kim Jong-Il, and it would also strongly suggest that Kim Jong-Il’s health is terrible. Jong-Eun is clearly unready to take real power, and probably is a net negative even as a spiritual figurehead. To elevate him is a...

Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology

March 13, 2010

All About Those Lawsuits Against North Korea

Yes, you too can now read the complaints against North Korea filed in U.S. federal district courts — all four of them. At this new page, I’ve posted a summary and the status of each case, downloaded and posted the key court documents, and even linked to the statutes that strip North Korea of its sovereign immunity. Hours for fun for North Korea watchers and plaintiffs’ lawyers.

Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law

March 12, 2010

12 March 2010: On the Potential for Social Unrest, Arms Trafficking, and Kim Dong Shik’s Widow Brother and Son Sue North Korea

Here’s a very long, and very interesting report on the potential for social unrest in North Korea, from a North Korean’s perspective. ________________________ The story on how North Korea exports arms is worth a longer post than I have time to write today. ________________________ Kim Jong Il’s banker Ambassador to Switzerland is retiring. Hmmm. ________________________ A U.S. District Court has issued a summons for the Foreign Minister of North Korea. I’ll have much more to say about this another day,...

Anju Links

March 12, 2010

North Korea Sanctions Itself

Reuters, citing a study by the Korea Development Institute (KDI), reports that “North Korea’s international trade dropped last year for the first time in more than a decade.” The report suggests that this was mostly the consequence of sanctions, but a closer look at the evidence it was The Great Confiscation that really brought trade across the Chinese border to a standstill by paralyzing the economy, markets, and trade, and banning the use of foreign currency in the final months...

Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics

March 12, 2010

Your Feel-Good Story of the Year, So Far

Korean-American Richard Cho has been hailed as a hero for helping subdue a terrorist and putting out a fire aboard a U.S. airliner heading for Detroit last Christmas. Cho, 40, immigrated with his family to the U.S. at age seven, and went to high school in Chicago. He majored in political science and sociology at Iowa State University, and since graduation has been working as a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines. On Dec. 25, 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old...

Terrorism/Iraq

March 11, 2010

Kang Chol Hwan on Hamhung

Kang Chol Hwan thinks that Kim Jong Il’s address to a mass rally in Hamhung — that is, if you’re convinced he really did address that rally –means that His Withering Majesty is determined to resist any reform of the system. That part of what Kang says is obvious enough and therefore less interesting than his description of Hamhung, which sounds post-apocalyptic: Hooligans clustering at the railroad station glared at the goods carried by pedestrians and provoked quarrels if they...

Inside NK

March 11, 2010

Claudia Rosett on North Korean Loggers in Russia

The defection of those two loggers at the South Korean consulate in Vladivostok inspires further thought from Claudia Rosett: I’ve seen those North Korean lumberjacks–or at least their predecessors. In 1994 I was working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Moscow when a story turned up in the Russian press, saying that North Korea was running lumber camps in remote areas of Russia. In Moscow, Russian officials confirmed to me that they had two big logging operations...

Defectors/Russia/Russia & Korea

March 10, 2010

Newly Released Soviet Report Details Atrocities in North Korea

Something tells me the Putinjugend Nashi web site isn’t going to feature, by popular demand, this newly released 1945 report by a Soviet Lieutenant Colonel who drove through Hwanghae and North and South Pyongyan provinces just after the war’s end. The officer’s detailed, 13-page report on the behavior of Russian soldiers in North Korea makes drunk G.I.’s in Itaewon look like Mormon missionaries by comparison: The handwritten document in Russian was discovered by the Woodrow Wilson International Center, a U.S....

History/Korean History/Russia/Russia & Korea

March 10, 2010

Bleak Signs for North Korea’s Food Situation (Updated)

Original Post, 10 March 2010: This week’s papers have several disturbing indicators suggesting that a sudden deterioration of the food situation is in the works. First was this report that even shops and hotels for foreigners in Pyongyang had run out of food; then, Robert linked to a report that kids can now seen begging even in Pyongyang. Depending on what you choose to believe, however, this may not be an entirely new development. Our friend Christine Ahn, no less,...

Famine & Food Aid

March 10, 2010

Yet Another Lawsuit Against North Korea in a U.S. Court

Thirty American victims of Hezbollah terror attacks have filed civil action in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against the government of North Korea. The plaintiffs, injured by Hezbollah rockets fired into northern Israel during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, allege that North Korea aided the militant group by training senior Hezbollah leaders and by providing networks of underground storage bunkers meant to house Katyusha rocket launchers. [Ha’aretz] This would be the third recent civil suit against North...

Terrorism (NK)

March 9, 2010

10 March 2010

Have you voted for LiNK today? ________________________ Not for the first time, China has announced that it has leased part of the North Korean port at Rajin, a move that would give China’s rust belt access to the Pacific. I’m just not going to find the time to write about this in detail, but you can read more about this here. Given recent reports that North Korea had canceled the last lease, you have to wonder how much this really...

Anju Links

March 9, 2010

Blasphemy in the Temple: Thoughts on Ramstad, Kirk, and the Finance Ministry

I’m going to add just one small bit to the fracas between the Korean Finance Ministry and two reporters with whose work I’m familiar — Don Kirk and Evan Ramstad. As to the questions themselves, sometimes, the function of a good reporter is to challenge official groupthink and corruption, especially in a place where groupthink is as prevalent as it is in Korea. I do not think that a country that aspires to be a hub of international business can...

Korean Society/Media Criticism

March 8, 2010

All Wars Should End Like This

Surely even the most determined opponent of the Iraq War would agree that this is a far better way for a war to end than this, or this. It’s not quite over, of course, but there’s no reason for it to go on. No one in Iraq wants it to go on, and most importantly, no one is afraid: One of trite bumper sticker slogans that became vogue in the last five years is that you can’t export democracy at...

Terrorism/Iraq

March 8, 2010

8 March 2010

The fact that Japan has its own Roh Moo Hyun now is both more and less troubling than Roh’s own presidency. On the one hand, Hatoyama wasn’t elected on a wave of anti-Americanism, but because voters were understandably tired of one-party rule. If Hatoyama doesn’t improve conditions in Japan, he may not hold power for long. On the other hand, we have much more air and naval power in Japan than in Korea, and whereas Korea is strategically expendable to...

Miscellaneous

March 8, 2010

The LiNK / Pepsi Contest Isn’t Over After All

I’m not sure of what the story is, or why Pepsi’s site used to say, “Voting ends on February 28th,” and now says, “Voting ends on March 31st,” but LiNK confirms they’re still in the running for $250K. I suppose that means I’ll have to fix that button and put it back in my sidebar. For now, vote here. They’ve dropped to number 7, so they definitely need your vote. And if anyone from LiNK can explain why the deadline...

Activism/Refugees

March 8, 2010

North Korea Re-Re-Declares War, Threatens “Merciless Physical Force,” Demands Peace Treaty

So Operations Key Resolve and Foal Eagle have started again. I boldly predict that this year, as has been the case for each year for the many decades we’ve had troops stationed in South Korea, the exercise will not end with an American invasion of North Korea. Just as predictably, North Korea is threatening the United States and/or South Korea. The challenge for North Korean propagandists is always how to make each year’s threat stand out from such previous-year classics...

Diplomacy/ROK Military/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Military/Useful Idiocy

March 7, 2010

Purported Video of Kim Jong Il Commemorating Reopening of Suspected Chemical Weapons Plant

Starting yesterday, several news outlets had reported that North Korea had released recent video of Kim Jong Il appearing in Hamhung to mark the re-opening of a textile factory in Hamhung, but to my intense aggravation, none provided a link to the actual video. YouTube, however, does not disappoint: The video shows Kim waving to an assembled crowd with his right arm, and moving his left arm slightly to applaud … himself, presumably. Heil me. There are no shots showing...

Kim Jong Il/WMD

March 6, 2010

Food Riot Reported Near Camp 12, North Korea

North Koreans, it seems, didn’t really feel much like celebrating on February 16th: One person was killed by armed guards on Feb. 16 when a group of people attempted to rob a food train at Komusan Railway Station in Puryong-gun, North Hamgyong Province, defector group North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity said. The attack came on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s birthday after a disastrous currency reform sent food prices skyrocketing. The train was loaded with rice imported from China, the group...

Resistance/The Camps