December 10, 2009

My, How Times Have Changed: Human Rights Edition

South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission made itself infamous during the Roh years for the tangled logic by which it condemned America for overthrowing the genocidal Saddam Hussein, yet concluded that North Korea’s concentration camps, infanticides, smothering repression, and starvation of its subject were none of its concern. To the few of us who were then paying attention to any of this, the HRC became an international laughingstock and a symbol of the Korean left’s hypocritical anti-Americanism, its easy collaboration...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Useful Idiocy
December 10, 2009

On the Grand Peoples’ Study House

I ask you — what site that has better readers than this blog? In response to Enzo’s question about the Grand Peoples’ Study House, a reader and friend sends this response: This so-called NK’s central library (“Inmin Dae Hakseup Dang”) opened in April 1982 to mark the Great Leader’s 70th B-Day. It is open to the NK public (adults) as well as foreigners. You can find several good photos of the building and its interior on the web, including a...

Categories Inside NK/Propaganda
December 9, 2009

North Korea’s Ajumma Rebellion

[Originally published at The New Ledger, Dec. 9, 2009] A sort of tea party movement may be breaking out today in the least likely of all places. The unseen pillars of Korean society are its ajummas. “Ajumma” — literally “aunt” — is one of those wonderfully untranslatable Korean words — more colorful than “hausfrau,” less derogatory than “fishwife,” and probably not too far from “yenta.” In South Korea, “ajumma” is an inglorious term most associate with gargantuan red sun visors,...

Categories Anju Links
December 9, 2009

More Violence Reported in N. Korea

The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Ramstad, picking up on reports of the Ajumma Rebellion and fresh reports from Open Radio, writes: New reports emerged Tuesday of protests and deadly violence in North Korea as the country’s authoritarian regime over the past week seized most of its citizens’ money and savings via a new-currency issue. Open Radio for North Korea, a Seoul-based shortwave radio station that broadcasts news to the North, said police killed two men in Pyongsong, a market center...

Categories Resistance
December 8, 2009

7 December 2009

BOSWORTH ARRIVES IN PYONGYANG: I’ve paid as much attention to Stephen Bosworth’s visit as I think the likely outcome justifies, but North Korea Leadership Watch has it all covered. More here and here at Yonhap, which calls the talks “crucial,” thus causing me to slowly shake my head in pitiful dismay. FUNNY, THAT’S JUST WHAT DAVID ASHER WONDERED: Curtis Melvin looks at North Korea’s reported trade figures and wonders how it manages to close the immense trade deficit they suggest....

Categories Anju Links
December 8, 2009

In Geneva, North Korea Answers Atrocity Accusations with Bluster, Denials, and a Concession

For the most part, it’s what you’d have expected: Lies, all lies! A U.S. plot (with the EU) to overthrow us! The POW issue is resolved. There are no more Japanese abductees in North Korea, and there is no need for a U.N. Special Envoy to visit. Some of the denials almost must be seen to be believed. On the starvation of the North Korean people, particularly those in the lower political castes: According to The Independent, North Korean ambassador...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps
December 7, 2009

N. Korea Comes Up for Human Rights Review at the U.N.

North Korea’s “universal periodic review” before the U.N. Human Rights Council began today in Geneva. Nothing much will come of it, I suspect, but at least the human rights story will get a bit of media attention, and North Korea will be just a little more toxic to potential investors. “There is a difference between wanting to be isolated and not caring about the rest of the world. North Korea cares about the world and therefore it wants to be...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights
December 7, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates

The Daily NK reports that the regime is trying to blame the need for the Great Confiscation on foreign enemies and domestic capitalists: It continued, “Our people have suffered from famine due to natural disaster and imperialist anti-republic maneuvers and irrational residents’ attempted activities to gain not social and national benefit, but private benefit. “This phenomenon has been generated temporarily during the completion of our socialist country, and the Party and the Fatherland have been getting through these difficulties on...

Categories Inside NK/NK Economics
December 7, 2009

In the Mail: Korea Betrayed — Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine, by Donald Kirk

Kirk is a good enough friend that I’m pleased and a bit relieved that, so far, Korea Betrayed (available here) is good enough to present no challenge to my objectivity. Because the time I have for reading is so limited, I’ll review this is small increments as I have the opportunity to read a few pages (the last time I was sent a review copy, it took me months to publish my review). The first chapter covers DJ’s origins on...

Categories Books & Films
December 6, 2009

North Korea Completes Great Confiscation (Upated)

[Updated below.] By now, it is December 7th in Pyongyang, and the period for exchanging old currency for new has passed. By filling the streets with troops and police, the regime has, for the moment, managed to contain the “fury and frustration” of people who, robbed of their savings and deprived of food rations, no longer know how they’re going to make it through the winter. For now, only isolated outbreaks of dissent are reported. The people know that this...

Categories NK Economics/Resistance
December 4, 2009

Axis, Schmaxis, Part 11: Iran Equipping Terrorists With North Korean Weapons

This Washington Post article, in addition to being an interesting and entertaining read, confirms my immediate suspicions about that shipment of North Korean arms recently interdicted in the Persian Gulf: Inspectors from the United Arab Emirates quickly swarmed the ship and uncovered a truck-size container packed with small arms made in North Korea. Concealed deeper in the ship was the real find: hundreds of crates containing military hardware and a grayish, foul-smelling powder, explosive components for thousands of short-range rockets....

Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Proliferation/Terrorism (NK)/Terrorism/Iraq/Uncategorized
December 4, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates

Via the Daily NK and the North Korean-affiliated Chosun Sinbo, we can now see the new North Korean currency that will replace the hard-earned savings of millions of desperate people. Guess whose face is on the bill. You’ll be amazed. More here. Personally, I think the coins look like Japanese Yen. The Daily NK reports that the situation in North Korea continues to be chaotic and relays fragmentary reports of murders, suicides, and isolated outbreaks of dissent. The circulation of...

Categories Inside NK/NK Economics
December 4, 2009

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

Previously, I’ve posted about the lawsuit in a U.S. federal court by the crew of the U.S.S. Pueblo — heroes in my book, who resisted and humiliated their captors despite unendurable torture — and about the efforts of the plaintiffs’ lawyers to find and recover North Korean assets to satisfy the judgment. The plaintiffs took advantage of a 2001 amendment to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (see subsection (a)(7)) that allows the victims of “torture, extrajudicial killing, aircraft sabotage, hostage...

Categories Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
December 3, 2009

3 December 2009 (Updated)

THE GREAT CONFISCATION CONTINUES. The Wall Street Journal reports that in Pyongyang, the exchange has been “calm and orderly,” at least to the extent foreign observers have been able to tell. Meanwhile, the Daily NK explains who will be hurt most badly by this. If markets are damaged as badly as I suspect they might be, there could be a new flood of food refugees into China this winter. Another effect will be the final collapse of confidence by the...

Categories Anju Links/NK Economics/NK Military/North-South
December 2, 2009

My, How Times Have Changed

During my last last visit to the DMZ, the interpretive displays were all about the 2000 Summit and Kaesong. Not anymore: According to the AP’s caption: A South Korean child watches a television program reporting North Korean prisoners at a unification observation post near the border village of Panmunjom, the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, South Korea, Friday, Nov. 20, 2009. A key U.N. committee expressed ‘very serious concern’ Thursday at...

Categories North-South/Propaganda/Sunshine
December 2, 2009

More on North Korea’s Great Confiscation

Rather than updating yesterday’s post again, I’ll just do a roundup of the reports and reactions today. So far, the reports point to widespread tension, disbelief, and shock, but little violence or unrest. It is as if the entire country has been paused, or as though a crowd that has just witnessed something horrifying is standing there, watching, too dumbstruck to take it in. For many, the means to live through this winter has been swept away in one casual,...

Categories NK Economics