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
November 6, 2009

So Far, Few Hints that Japan’s N. Korea Policy Will Shift

Sure, there’s been plenty of cross-Pacific bitching about U.S.-Japan alliance and basing issues, but there’s no sign that Prime Minister Hatoyama will shift Japan’s North Korea policy yet.  Japan is showing off its ability to shoot down North Korean missiles, and for now, Japan’s government is adhering to a hard line on North Korea and discouraging America from departing from one. The abduction issue is highly emotional in Japan, and Hatoyama probably couldn’t provide aid, loosen trade restrictions, or open...

Categories Japan & Korea
November 6, 2009

Michael Green on Bilateral Talks and Sanctions

Beyond Christine Ahn’s alternative universe, the insiders are unanimous for now, whether on or off the record:  for the foreseeable future, the Obama Administration intends to sustain — if not intensify — sanctions until North Korea disarms.  Like most of you, I suspect that eventually, we’ll lift them for another promise to disarm, but for now, the unanimous message I’m hearing is to the contrary: A major factor in Washington’s reluctance to rush into talks, Green says, is that “the...

Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions/Washington Views
November 4, 2009

Christine Ahn: Above Criticism! (Or, “Help! Help! I’m Being Repressed!”)

Christine Ahn is feeling picked on, reports the Oakland East Bay Express, an alt-lefty rag with a room-temperature circulation.  Writer Kathleen Wentz informs us that Ms. Ahn guards the privacy of her views jealously when she’s not on CNN, a book tour, the lecture circuit, or hectoring congressional staffers: As a longtime peace activist and progressive, Christine Ahn was used to being on the ideological fringe. But even she wasn’t prepared to be red-baited and called a supporter of dictatorship....

Categories Media Criticism/Useful Idiocy
November 4, 2009

4 November 2009

HOPE, CHANGE, AND PEACE IN OUR TIME: Kim Jong Il announces that he’s reprocessed another 8,000 fuel rods, enough to make at least one more bomb. Thank goodness Chris Hill came along in time to end this d*ck-measuring contest with the give-and-take of compromise. Thank goodness our president isn’t afraid to talk to his enemies. Now please send Philip Goldberg to freeze the bank accounts of Orascom, Koryo Tours, and the Korean Friendship Association. CYBER ATTACKS UPDATE: After some doubts,...

Categories Anju Links
November 3, 2009

Ban Ki Moon Is to Human Rights What Roman Polanski Is to Child Welfare

It was a horror that came from within, that consumed and devastated entire communities and families. It was a horror that left you as survivors of a trauma which to the world beyond your borders was unimaginable, even though we all now know it happened.We will not pretend to know how you must overcome the unimaginable. We can only offer, in humility, the hope and the prayer that you will overcome — and the pledge that we stand prepared to...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 2, 2009

Yongbyon Reprocessing Plant “Restored to Its Earlier Conditions”

Who remembers the heyday of Agreed Framework II, when the foreign policy establishment united to educate the hoi polloi about all of the great unfolding achievements of diplomacy with the North Koreans? They told us that North Korea was removing fuel rods and dismantling in earnest.  Siegfried Hecker went to Yongbyon and returned to report, with a few qualifications, that “the DPRK leadership has made the decision to permanently shut down plutonium production” and that “the disablement actions taken to...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/WMD
October 31, 2009

Sorrow for a friend I’ve never met

It’s been a terrible thing reading Kevin, a/k/a The Big Hominid, describing the terminal cancer of his mom, someone he obviously loves and respects very much. Kevin is a founding father of the Korea blogosphere, one who never really fit into any of the standard categories — who else could manage to bridge the spiritual, philosophical, and scatological the way Kevin does? I’ve never quite managed to meet Kevin, and yet I’m really at a loss to explain just how...

Categories Blogs & Blogging
October 31, 2009

Hope in Unlikely Places

In North Korea such things are absolutely forbidden, so naturally the people learn to enjoy crude humor instead; not because of the optimistic and humorous nature of the people I must point out, but because of the nature of North Korean politics. In North Korea, it is not an exaggeration to say that there is at least one meeting every 24 hours. Every week contains studies, lectures, self-criticism and evaluation meetings in each work unit, and a further two or...

Categories Inside NK
October 30, 2009

Kim Jong Eun: On Again?

According to the Daily NK, the succession propaganda has resumed. In the long run, however, I agree with the assessment of North Korean defector Kim Kwang Jin, who spoke at the Brookings Institution this week: he doesn’t have the cred to pull it off: WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korean efforts to install one of ailing leader Kim Jong-il’s sons as a hereditary successor are likely to fail, a senior defector from the communist country said on Tuesday. Kim Kwang-jin, a...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
October 30, 2009

Did Bill Clinton Meet Kim Jong Il’s Double?

Even for North Korea, this would be the WTF story of the year: A number of analysts here are convinced that not all the photos being released of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, are really photos of Kim Jong-il. Instead, they say, a look-alike has been standing in for him on some of the 122 trips he’s reportedly made this year to the countryside, factories, cultural events, military units, and all sorts of other venues. Some observers say the North...

Categories Diplomacy/Kim Jong Il/Ling/Lee Incident/WTF?
October 30, 2009

Another South Korean Professor Caught Spying for the North

A South Korean university lecturer accused of spying for North Korea since the early 1990s has been indicted on espionage charges, prosecutors said Thursday. The suspect, identified by the surname Lee, was charged with giving North Korea confidential information, including the locations of key South Korean military facilities and an army operations manual, prosecutors in Suwon, south of Seoul, said in a statement. [MacLeans] They could have waited a few years and gotten it all from Google Earth. Anyway, if...

Categories An Alliance?/The Fifth Column
October 30, 2009

Daily NK: Rising Divorce Rates in North Korea

Iif there is any element of Korean society that I’d have thought indestructible even to Kim Jong Il, it’s the strength of Korean families. Korean society strongly encourages marriage, children, and family loyalty. Divorce and out-of-wedlock births are strongly discouraged. The single exception is its traditional tolerance for male promiscuity, whether by single or married men (who are nonetheless expected to keep their dalliances casual and remain with their wives and children). With that being said, South Korean society is...

Categories Korean Society/NK Military