November 15, 2009

Move Along, Nothing to See Here

An unidentified North Korean consul who disappeared in Shenyang last month while on his way to the bank has been found dead: Chinese authorities are investigating the death of a North Korean diplomat whose body was discovered in late October after he went missing for nearly a month, sources here said Friday. The diplomat, identified only by his surname of Kim, was a consul at the North Korean consulate-general in this eastern city of China, according to the sources. Kim,...

Categories Money Laundering
November 15, 2009

Amb. James Lilley, 1928-2009

So much will be said about Ambassador Lilley in the next few days, at places of far greater consequence than this site, that I need only add a few personal observations. In Washington, Lilley was treated with greater respect than I’ve ever seen afforded to any other person in Asia policy circles. At public events where rooms were filled with well known and respected people, the whole room would rise to recognize Ambassador Lilley when he walked in. My wife,...

Categories Washington Views
November 13, 2009

North Korea Accuses South of Provoking Naval Clash

As predicted, North Korea’s account of this week’s Yellow Sea battle is jarringly at odds with what the South reports: When the [North Korean] patrol boat was sailing back after confirming the object at about 11: 20 a group of warships of the south Korean forces chased it and perpetrated such a grave provocation as firing at it. The patrol boat of the north side, which has been always combat-ready, lost no time to deal a prompt retaliatory blow at...

Categories NK Military/North-South/ROK Military
November 13, 2009

Euna Lee Gets Book Deal

In a statement on Thursday, Broadway Books said that Ms. Lee’s memoir, called “The World Is Bigger Now: A Memoir of Faith, Family and Freedom,” would detail “her 140 days of imprisonment, her ongoing interrogation and her efforts to protect her sources and the subjects of her reporting,” as well as the importance of her religious faith during this time. A publication date has not been announced. Ms. Ling is presently pitching her own book with her sister, the journalist...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident
November 12, 2009

Sanctions Update

The Chosun Ilbo reports that Ambassador Phillip Goldberg has kept himself busy crossing the globe, meeting with government officials and bankers in Russia and China, and shutting down North Korean accounts, even as Stephen Bosworth and others met with the North Koreans to talk nuclear diplomacy. North Korea invited U.S. North Korea envoy Stephen Bosworth on Aug. 4, when former U.S. president Bill Clinton was in Pyongyang to win the release of two American journalists. The same day, Goldberg was...

Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Sanctions
November 11, 2009

At the New Ledger: Thoughts on the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Sorry for forgetting to link this yesterday. Speaking of Europe, can anyone name one great and positive European contribution to global culture since the end of World War I? After weeks of thought, I’ve come up with just two: the Soviet composers of the 20th Century, and Legos. Sure, I guess it depends on your standards for artistic and cultural merit, but I’ve spent the last month mulling that over and coming up with a nearly blank slate. What also...

Categories Europe/Geopolitics/History
November 11, 2009

Happy Veterans’ Day

Sure, I could link to a sappy YouTube tribute, but my weakness for empirical data gets the best of me in my weaker moments, so I decided to link to the latest Brookings Iraq Index instead. If you’re like me, you also look forward to the day when Iraqis are banning GI’s from their booking clubs, protesting the SOFA, and bitching about the high price the Americans are charging for the biofuels that began to edge gasoline aside in 2015...

Categories U.S. Military
November 11, 2009

Latest Prediction of North Korean Perestroika Ends Badly

Ah, North Korea’s perestroika movement. I remember it like it was three months ago: Other symbols of Western capitalism are sprouting up — including a beer commercial on state TV and a convenience store that reportedly was visited in April by leader Kim Jong Il. [MSNBC, July 20, 2009] Predictions of North Korea’s imminent reform are as frequent and as unrealized as predictions of North Korea’s imminent collapse. I’m still betting that the latter will precede the former. I’m also...

Categories NK Economics
November 10, 2009

Nineteen Private Train Stations?

The Daily Telegraph looks at Kim Jong Il’s private train and stations. Feel free to express your outrage about … like you know, American sanctions that starve North Korean babies and, like, stuff: The traveling comforts of North Korea’s ailing Stalinist dictator come as a UN report estimated that at least 8m people are facing dire food shortages as a result of the militaristic regime’s “callous” disregard for ordinary citizens. Personally, I wouldn’t go to print with a story with...

Categories Kim Jong Il
November 10, 2009

Glamour Magazine Names Laura Ling and Euna Lee Two of Its “Women of the Year”

All emphasis mine: Current TV’s Laura Ling and Euna Lee went to Asia this spring to investigate a chilling situation: the plight of women who cross the border from North Korea into China to escape starvation, only to fall prey to human traffickers. Then, suddenly, the journalists became the story, arrested for stepping into North Korean territory and thrown into jail. [….] “Laura and Euna’s commitment to expose a terrible situation led to their arrest,” says Clothilde Le Coz of...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident
November 10, 2009

North Korean Ship “Wrapped in Flames” After Battle; No South Korean Sailors Hurt

The North Korean navy appears to have gotten the worst of it after an apparently calculated provocation along the Northern Limit Line, the Koreas’ maritime boundary in the Yellow Sea: According to Joint Chiefs of Staff officials in Seoul, a North Korean patrol boat crossed the NLL at 11:27 a.m. and attacked a South Korean one after ignoring several warning shots. The South Korean side suffered no casualties in the clash that erupted shortly after the crossing and lasted about...

Categories NK Military/North-South/ROK Military
November 9, 2009

Brookings Event with Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig on Tuesday

11/11 Update:   The program audio for this event is now available for free (and FAST) download as an MP3 file.  Just click the event link and look for the “Multimedia Downloads” section. Original Post: Stumbled on this earlier, but was in the middle of something, finally posting it now. It would have been late notice then, but now, oy… Tuesday, November 10th, 10-11:30 a.m. at Brookings in DC there’s what looks to be a very interesting program about a...

Categories Books & Films/Inside NK
November 9, 2009

North Korea Faces Review by U.N. Human Rights Council

And here’s a sample of what the council will hear: In the course of beatings, the guards broke all his teeth, leaving him toothless for four years. To deprive him of sleep, the guards at the underground prison at Hoeryong city near the Chinese border used “pigeon torture”. Jung was handcuffed and tied by his arms to an object behind him so he could not stand or sit. He felt as though his bones were breaking through his chest while...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 9, 2009

In the WSJ: What Obama Should Say to North Korea

On the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Melanie Kirkpatrick sees an opportunity for Barack Obama’s “tear down this wall” moment: In September, as required under 2004 legislation, Mr. Obama named his special envoy for North Korea human rights, Robert King, a former Capitol Hill staffer. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said, “We’re deeply concerned about the situation in North Korea, particularly the plight of North Korean refugees” in China. Human rights, he said, is a “big priority.”...

Categories Human Rights
November 8, 2009

8 November 2009

A QUOTE SOMETIMES ATTRIBUTED TO TROTSKY is that “revolution is impossible until it is inevitable.” On the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, my thoughts always return to just how impossible it all seemed up until the very moment happened. The fall of The Wall is among a few of those “I remember where I was” moments. Ironically, I was driving a Chinese student friend to the grocery store. Events in his country just months before gave plenty...

Categories Anju Links
November 8, 2009

Photos from Saturday’s March and Demonstration for NK Human Rights

I would love to write more, but at least for now, here are some photos from Saturday’s March from near City Hall (actually, just to the right of the Deoksu Palace) to Seoul Station, where we joined a somewhat larger collection of groups assembled to call for freedom for North Koreans and meant to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. The woman pictured speaking below is a North Korean survivor of sexual trafficking —...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Refugees