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...

Categories 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...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Refugees
December 29, 2009

Don Kirk’s Korea Betrayed is changing the way I think about Kim Dae Jung

And unless you already believe that DJ was a closet commie, Korea Betrayed might change the way you think, too. Kirk, whose research of his subject is extensive, describes in detail how in his early life, DJ flirted with a number of leftist political organizations and unions, some of which were also linked to North Korea, but none of those associations necessarily linked DJ to the North Koreans. After all, North Korean troops almost shot DJ in 1950, and only...

Categories Books & Films/Korean History/Uncategorized
December 29, 2009

29 December 2009: South Korea Channels N. Korea Aid Through the U.N., Blackouts, and Chinese Colonialism

A WELCOME CHANGE: President Lee is giving $22 million to W.H.O. and UNICEF aid projects in North Korea so that at least a few more kids will outlive the Kim Dynasty. That is a vast improvement over how things used to be under Roh Moo Hyun, whose “Unification” Ministry used to give unmonitored cash and food aid directly to Kim Jong Il and his minions, with predictable results. This time, South Korea’s donations are flowing through the U.N., which at...

Categories Anju Links
December 28, 2009

North Korea Says It Has Robert Park (Updated; Another Statement by Park)

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch Tuesday that the American was detained and under investigation after illegally entering through the North Korea-China border last Thursday. [AP] I suppose this comes as no surprise. The North Koreans don’t identify Robert Park by name, but I think we can assume it’s him. You don’t have to agree with Park’s methods to pity him now. There are two theories here: one, that North Korea will want to...

Categories Robert Park
December 28, 2009

28 December 2009: Another Nuke Test, Proliferation Updates, Hard Times for N. Korean Workers Abroad

BRING IT ON: There’s speculation that North Korea may test yet another nuke, to which I say, that’s one less it can sell. MORE ON THE LOGISTICAL CHAIN behind the Bangkok weapons seizure, at the Wall Street Journal. Still no finality on the final destination for the weapons, however, though I’m sticking with my educated guess that it was Iran, in part because the shipment contained parts for long-range missiles. IF YOU CAN’T TRUST A FELLOW MARXIST OLIGARCH, WHO CAN...

Categories Anju Links
December 28, 2009

Iran Rises Again

I confess that I’d written off the Iranian protest movement for this year, but I was wrong: the movement actually appears to be spreading to new places and attracting support beyond its traditional base among the students. Large-scale protests spread in central Iranian cities Wednesday, offering the starkest evidence yet that the opposition movement that emerged from the disputed June presidential election has expanded beyond its base of mostly young, educated Tehran residents to at least some segments of the...

Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Proliferation
December 27, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates

The Washington Post’s Blaine Harden writes today that popular discontent over the Great Confiscation isn’t going away: It was an unexplained decision — the kind of command that for more than six decades has been obeyed without question in North Korea. But this time, in a highly unusual challenge to Kim’s near-absolute authority, the markets and the people who depend on them pushed back.  Grass-roots anger and a reported riot in an eastern coastal city pressured the government to amend...

Categories NK Economics/Resistance
December 25, 2009

Korean-American Activist Crosses Into North Korea (Updated)

Oh God, not again. Reuters is reporting that Robert Park, a 28 year-old American, has walked across the Tumen River from China to the North Korean town of Hoeryong, which is infamous for being both the birthplace of Kim Jong Il’s mother and the town nearest to Camp 22. Park’s apparent objectives were (1) to get himself arrested and (2) thereby raise global attention about North Korea’s brutal political prison camps. Rest assured that Park will accomplish Objective Number One....

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Robert Park/Useful Idiocy
December 25, 2009

Korean American Robert Park Reportedly Enters North Korea

Updated Below Late last night (the night of December 25th, Seoul-time) a couple Korean media outlets reported a Korean American, Robert Park, crossed from China into North Korea. Twelve hours later I couldn’t find anything more on the story, and I wondered if maybe Park had not carried it out. But within the last hour Reuters also has the story, though no comment from the North Korean government as of yet. SEOUL (Reuters) – A U.S. human rights activist trying...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Robert Park
December 23, 2009

Treasury Issues Alert on Another North Korean Bank

Just days after Stephen Bosworth’s mostly unproductive visit to Pyongyang (it was, despite much spin to the contrary) the Treasury Department has issued a financial advisory against one of North Korea’s largest banks, Kumgang Bank, for “[i]nvolvement in [i]llicit [f]inancial [a]ctivities,” based on “publicly available information.” You can read Treasury’s advisory in full here, but you’ll find it terse and otherwise lacking in detail about Kumgang’s transgressions. The advisory updates this broader advisory against North Korean financial institutions, issued following...

Categories Money Laundering/NK Economics/Sanctions
December 22, 2009

You mean to tell me that seven people got into this open boat, drifted South “accidentally, braved nine-foot waves, and now want to go back to North Korea?

Seven North Koreans expressed their desire to return home after they were found drifting south of the Yellow Sea border, a government source here said Tuesday. The North Koreans were detected by South Korean Coast Guard officers Monday afternoon and have since been under investigation by intelligence and police authorities. “Roughly speaking, they appear to want it (repatriation),” the official, who is well-versed in North Korea-related intelligence, said on condition of anonymity because questioning is still under way. But the...

Categories North-South/Refugees
December 22, 2009

Biting the Hands that Feed Them

Via Open News for North Korea, we learn that the regime is blaming the H1N1 outbreak in North Korea — which has killed six students under 18 — on South Korea, the country that offered immediate and unconditional aid to help control said outbreak. After all, all bad things in North Korea come from beyond its borders. According to a source, North Korean Health Department has stated that the new strand of flu spreading in North Korea originated from South...

Categories Health & Disease/Propaganda
December 21, 2009

21 December 2009

NORTH KOREA CONTINUES TO PROGRESS in its efforts to miniaturize nuclear warheads. Obviously, this means our sanctions aren’t sufficient. THE SOUTH KOREAN GOVERNMENT is printing propaganda comics, not to influence North Koreans, but to influence its own ill-informed youth that North Korea isn’t a paradise on earth after all. While the idea of a government propagandizing its own people gives me some discomfort, previous South Korean administrations and more radical groups spent a decade doing the same, and their campaign...

Categories Anju Links
December 21, 2009

South Korea Clears Mines from the DMZ (and Why I Think That’s a Shrewd Decision)

You say you want reunification? Fine, then. Dig up the mines along the DMZ and open the border. No, I’m not kidding: The South Korean military said Monday it has removed some 1,300 land mines this year from the country’s rural areas bordering North Korea, a reminder of the tense 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a truce. In the operations that lasted from April to November, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) mobilized 3,300 personnel to remove mines from...

Categories NK Military/North-South/Refugees/ROK Military/Subversion
December 21, 2009

Obama’s “Liaison Office” in Pyongyang Would Be Appeasement, Pure and Simple

The Obama Administration’s new proposal to set up a “liaison office” in Pyongyang may be the most disturbing development of his administration’s entire approach to North Korea. It would, in effect, elevate diplomatic relations between the two governments just seven months after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, and just nine months after it tested an ICBM, all in flagrant violation of multiple U.N. resolutions. Now, after North Korea has made no meaningful concessions on disarmament and even demands recognition...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
December 18, 2009

New Images Reveal North Korean Bomber Base

Previously, I had located only one North Korean airfield with strategic bombers, in the far northwest, near Sinuiju. Today, new Google Earth imagery reveals that another airfield in North Korea’s remote central highlands is also home to a bomber squadron. (I suspect that there are more bombers at a third airfield in the southwest, but I haven’t seen the bombers there yet.) The airfield was visible in high resolution in previous images, but no aircraft were visible. Presumably, they were...

Categories NK Military