So I wasn’t able to make it to Korus House to see the Venerable Pomnyun speak, but the Hankroyeh, of all places, cites him as saying that two thousand people have starved to death in North Korea since The Great Confiscation. I’m tempted to fall back on ordinarily reliable maxim that everything the Hanky publishes is false just because it’s published in the Hanky, but in this case, it’s slightly more complicated than that. First, it’s likely that that many...

The Wall Street Journal’s Melanie Kirkpatrick, a very nice person with whom I’ve exchanged some e-mails, has an article on Christianity in South Korea. Interesting reading, even for those of us who prefer our religion much less organized. The statistic that 40% of South Korean Christians are Pentecostal is both remarkable and unsurprising. (Corrected, thanks.) ________________________________ Because I’m a sucker for such things, let me direct you to Coming Anarchy’s fascinating Google Map of drone strikes in Pakistan. The anti-anti-terrorist...

It may be almost as revealing as the White House’s concern about growing military (and nuclear?) cooperation between North Korea and Burma that David Albright, asked to comment by the Washington Post, takes a strikingly alarmist point of view about these new developments. Albright, you will recall, had said for years that the Bush Administration had inflated fears that North Korea had an undeclared uranium enrichment program. I don’t suppose that I will ever be in agreement with David Albright...

South Korea is still in the dark about the four alleged South Korean “trespassers” in North Korean custody: Yet no NGOs, religious organizations or defectors’ groups operating near the North Korean border with China say any of their members have been nabbed in the North. “Even a North Korean border official I spoke with over the phone recently had heard no rumors related to the latest announcement,” one NGO worker said. [Chosun Ilbo] _____________________________ Open News explains why it may...

So North Korea claims to have detained four South Korean “trespassers.” Even worse, KCNA denies us the amusement of the term “relevant organ.” I was waiting to post on this until I actually knew who they were or where they were detained, but several days later, the North Koreans are still the only ones who do know. Then there is still the matter of the American whom the North Koreans claim defected to them several weeks back. Assuming this isn’t...