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January 6, 2010

Yes, Selig Harrison, North Korea Cheated

The revelations about North Korea’s highly enriched uranium program had already been falling like the snow on Seoul this week, and then I saw this: North Korea appears to have started a uranium enrichment program soon after it agreed in a 1994 deal with the U.S. to dismantle its existing plutonium nuclear weapons program, South Korea’s foreign minister said Wednesday. Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan’s remark, if accurate, suggests North Korea had no intention of giving up its atomic ambitions when...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Useful Idiocy

January 5, 2010

Succession Watch

Radio Free Asia, quoting various “sources,” speculates that Kim Jong Eun’s place as successor is being consolidated through a combination of public ceremony and private movements of the levers of power — most significantly, by giving him some authority over the dreaded Anjeonbu, or Peoples’ Safety Agency. Without getting into a chicken-and-egg argument, I see that the Daily NK and Open Radio are reporting the same thing: According to the source, Kim Jong-Il adjusted the power structure to enable the...

Kremlinology

January 5, 2010

North Korea’s Foreign Investment Strategy Explained

Reading of North Korea’s new plans for yet another trade zone, just as the Kaesong experiment collapses, must make some observers wonder what Kim Jong Il could be thinking: who could possibly expect to attract significant foreign investment with such uneven policies toward investment? My response: they don’t want to attract significant foreign investment. That would require some significant opening of their economy and the lowering of the state’s vigilance against the subversive power of ChocoPies. North Korea’s foreign investment...

NK Economics

January 4, 2010

4 January 2010: Another “Nothing to Envy” Review, and the Growing Urgency of Regime Collapse Planning

ANOTHER GOOD REVIEW FOR “NOTHING TO ENVY,” from NPR’s Frank Langfitt, who also relates this second-hand experience: American journalists are rarely granted visas and all visits are carefully monitored, so I had to rely on the accounts of Chinese truckers who drove into the country to trade food for scrap metal. One trucker had a gash on his forehead from his latest trip. He told me a teenage boy had hit him with a rock as a crowd leapt on...

Anju Links

January 3, 2010

North Korea’s New Currency Collapses

The Seoul-based Open Radio for North Korea (ORNK), citing unidentified sources along the Sino-North Korean border, said that merchants were exchanging one yuan for 1,000 new North Korean won as of late last month, plummeting from the 50 won traded for every yuan on Dec. 3, right after Pyongyang introduced the new currency. [Yonhap] If my math is right, that’s 1,000 percent in less than a month. Under the move, the communist country knocked two zeros off its currency without...

NK Economics

January 3, 2010

China Pursues Dual Strategy on Sanctions Compliance

For what little it’s worth, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice says that because of UNSCR 1874 sanctions, “North Korea is feeling far greater pressure to halt its nuclear weapons program than it has in the past.” Well, maybe. I think the sanctions are still insufficient to disarm North Korea, because Kim Jong Il still thinks he can either ride them out, or bait-and-switch our diplomats, just like he did to Madeleine Albright and Chris Hill before. And as I never tire...

China & Korea/Sanctions

January 3, 2010

Christian Groups Claim to Smuggle Food Into North Korea

Does anyone know anything about these people, and are they legit? I know some of you think I’ve been tough on Robert Park, but when I compare what he did to what these people are doing, there’s simply no comparing the relative capacity of the two techniques to change lives and minds. Even to plenty of us non-believers, things like this are so admirable that they’ve persuaded me that Christianity will be Kim Jong Il’s undoing and North Korea’s rebirth....

Famine & Food Aid/Religion/Robert Park

January 2, 2010

What, You Mean These Cartoons?

An ax-wielding Somali man with suspected al-Qaida links was charged Saturday with two counts of attempted murder after breaking into the home of a Danish artist whose Prophet Muhammad cartoon outraged the Muslim world three years ago. The suspect, who was shot twice by a police officer responding to the scene, was rolled into a Danish court on a stretcher, his face covered. [AP] Wow. Could it possibly have been these innocuous cartoons that he’s all upset about? People are...

Islam/Terrorism/Iraq

January 2, 2010

2 January 2010: Another Balloon Launch, and a Message of Thanks

THE BALLOON PEOPLE ARE BACK! Supporters of American Christian missionary Robert Park, who is believed to have been detained in North Korea, launched hundreds of balloons on New Year’s day with texts calling for freedom in the isolated nation. The yellow balloons containing leaflets condemning the North Korean leadership were released from South Korea near the border, confirmed activist Choi Woo-won. “Greeting the New Year, we are delivering our messages of freedom and hope to North Korea,” he told reporters....

Anju Links

January 1, 2010

Happy New Year (With Updates)

Yes, the recent past is littered with unrealized predictions of upheaval in North Korea, but if it’s possible to know anything about the North Korean Street, then things are clearly changing faster now than they have in the past. Reading updates from the Daily NK and Open News sounds more like the first chapters of “A Tale of Two Cities” every week. In 2009, the North Korean people pushed their country into the margins of Phase V. This year, 2010,...

Resistance

December 31, 2009

Mr. Lee, Tear Down This (Imaginary) Wall!

Happy New Year, from me and from the North Koreans.

North-South/WTF?

December 31, 2009

Man-Portable Surface-to-Air Missiles Found in Seized Bangkok Shipment

Brian McCartan, a freelance journalist based in Bangkok, has written an exceptionally detailed account of what is know and not known about the North Korean weapons seized in Bangkok. All of the many details McCartan relates are consistent with the better reporting I’ve read in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, but there is one thing in this article that I hadn’t read anywhere else: A search of the plane’s cargo after a tip-off from US intelligence sources found 35...

Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)

December 31, 2009

What Would Be a Good Crank Call for the North Korean U.N. Mission?

ReACH, the Japanese abductee advocacy group, sends: Call North Korea at UN in New York, USA 1-212-972-3105 Call North Korea at UN in Geneva, Switzerland 41-22-735-4370 Send fax to North Korea at UN in New York, USA 1-212-972-3154 Send fax to North Korea at UN in Geneva, Switzerland 41-22-786-0662 Don’t forget to copy and paste Kim Jong-Il’ s photo, (example) and write “Important Message to Chairman Kim Jong-Il”, so that they cannot throw it away and have to report it...

Abductions/Humor/Satire

December 31, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates: Regime Turns Attention to Foreign Currency

The North Korean People’s Safety Agency has declared a “complete prohibition of foreign currency usage. The decree was issued on December 26th and went into effect on Monday 28th. A source inside North Hamkyung Province reported, “A People’s Safety Agency declaration on banning the use of U.S. dollars, Yuan and the Euro was publicized on the 26th. The declaration was posted in public places and in every workplace starting this morning. The title of the declaration is, “On punishing severely...

Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics

December 30, 2009

North Korea Loots KEDO Site (Updated)

North Korea has been stealing trucks, cranes and other equipment from the site of a nuclear power plant where an American-led consortium stopped construction four years ago in a dispute over the North’s nuclear weapons development, the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reported Wednesday. [N.Y. Times] It gets better: “There is even suspicion that the North Koreans used the equipment when they conducted a nuclear test in October 2006 and in May,” the paper quoted a source as saying. North...

Appeasement/Diplomacy

December 30, 2009

Iran’s History May Be Decided This Friday

I continue to be astonished by the numbers, persistence, and courage of the Iranian people in coming out into the streets to protest the corrupt theocracy, even as that theocracy lowers itself to new depths of brutality to suppress their hopes. The other day, I framed the question that is key to Iran’s fate this way: “I wonder if the security forces can maintain their cohesion as long as the protesters can maintain their courage.” The stakes are rising. There...

Iran

December 30, 2009

Review: Nothing to Envy — Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick

December 30, 2009: I’ve been looking forward to this one. It arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon, and I’ll be nibbling away at this a few pages at a time during my commutes, posting short updates as I hit interesting passages (this way, I don’t labor under the guilt of having written nothing about it for weeks if work or family obligations prevent me from finishing it). Having flipped through a few pages, I see a work that sits...

Books & Films/Media Criticism

December 30, 2009

LiNK Needs Your Help to Rescue One Hundred North Korean Refugees

I’m always glad to post updates on LiNK fund-raisers; they’re one of the most dedicated, effective, smart-thinking activist groups working on North Korea issues. This season, they’re launching the One Hundred campaign: Up to 300,000 North Koreans are hiding in the underground today. Most are looking for an opportunity to escape but cannot fund their own journey. This is where we can help. LiNK will start with the rescue of 100 refugees. To launch TheHundred program in 2010, our goal...

Activism/Human Rights/Refugees