July 18, 2009

The Iranian Revolution: On Again

Two weeks ago, I had resigned myself to the view that it was all over except for the show trials. But the discontent just won’t go away. After the sermon, downtown Tehran erupted in violence. Security forces attacked demonstrators, older and grayer than recent gatherings, who were chanting “Death to the dictator!” and “God is great.” Tear gas filled streets as protesters sought to enter the gates of the university, which riot police had locked. The crowds swarmed through downtown,...

Categories Iran
July 17, 2009

Kim Jong Il Death Watch

Here at OFK, many posts and comments have ruminated about whether the North Korean regime really cares about how it’s portrayed in the foreign media.  That may be a silly question to ask in light of South Korea’s unnatural obsession with its image:  the ridiculous Tokdo evangelizing, the many Chosun Ilbo stories about the popularity of Korean food overseas, or the mischaracterization as a “Korean Wave” of Korea carving out its own proportionate market share of global culture.  An obsessive...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
July 17, 2009

Was North Korea Really Behind the Cyber Attacks?

The London Times reports that a Vietnamese computer forensic company has traced the attacks from computers in North Korea back to UK, causing some papers’ headlines to strongly suggest that North Korea has been absolved.  Reading further into the Times’s piece, one reads that the attack was traced back to a “master computer” operating from a Brighton, UK ISP, but makes no conclusions as to who was controlling that computer. The New York Times explains why it can be so...

Categories Technology
July 16, 2009

Still Having Trouble Reading this Site With Firefox?

Firefox has been all I ever use since shortly after I got a computer pre-infected with Vista.  Vista causes IE to crash and ate several of my posts.  With Firefox, there are far fewer crashes, but if there is one, I can usually restart and the half-finished post will still be there in WordPress. So with that said, try going to your upper toolbar under Tools/Clear Private Data and then check all of the boxes except “Saved Passwords” and “Offline...

Categories Blogs & Blogging
July 15, 2009

A Glimpse at the Growing Pains Connected with Reunification

While living in Korea, I was always surprised at some South Korean citizens’ belief that reunification, whenever it should happen, will be smooth sailing. Indeed, one would think that is the message the ROK government is trying to sell. Has anyone seen the video they play at the DMZ? I’m not sure if they’ve since changed it, but when I saw it, they had smiling, well-fed, healthy children running around a grassy field with butterflies and flowers and a little...

Categories Korean Law/North-South
July 15, 2009

Gary Samore on North Korea Policy

In addition to his comments on North Korea’s HEU program, Gary Samore talked about President Obama’s North Korea policy.  As someone who found Bush’s North Korea policy to be incoherent and disappointing, but who didn’t have high expectations for Samore’s boss, either, I could not be more pleased to read things like this: I think we have to create, in the case of both North Korea and Iran, a narrative by which, if the big powers work together, and if...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Sanctions/Six-Party Talks/Uncategorized
July 14, 2009

Suzanne Scholte: A War Crimes Tribunal for North Korea

With the mounting evidence that Kim Jong Il won’t burden this world for long, the civilized world faces the prospect of inheriting jurisdiction over people who’ve done some pretty awful things: On a recent trip to Seoul, a North Korean mother told me she and her 14-year-old daughter fled North Korea but were separated in China. The mother waited in China to reunite with her daughter only to discover that Chinese security agents had forced the girl back to North...

Categories Human Rights/Reconstruction
July 14, 2009

On Second Thought, Let’s Not Talk to Our Enemies Without Preconditions!

As someone who openly seeks the violent overthrow of the regime by cultivating and arming an internal opposition, I never thought I’d see the day when the Obama Administration moved to in a diplomatic direction at least as extreme as mine, and possibly more so: American diplomatic efforts on North Korea are coming under fire within the Obama administration from officials who consider talks futile and instead want to focus on halting the regime’s trade in nuclear weapons and missile...

Categories Diplomacy/Uncategorized/Washington Views
July 14, 2009

China Agrees to Sanction North Korea

Not much time to comment on this as I’m running late, but it seems China has agreed to sanction the DPRK over its nuclear test conducted earlier this year. From Bloomberg: China agreed for the first time to punish senior North Korean government officials for defying United Nations resolutions barring nuclear and missile tests, China’s deputy ambassador said. Ambassador Liu Zhenmin said his government would support imposing a travel ban and asset freeze on a “large percentage” of 15 North...

Categories China/Uncategorized
July 14, 2009

The HEU Debate Is Officially Over

From December 2002 until March 2009, it was the shared narrative of the shrill left, mainstream Democrats, and much of the spin circus in tow behind them that Kim Jong Il’s successful development of nuclear weapons was really George W. Bush’s fault.  This narrative held as infallible dogma that Agreed Framework I was successfully containing Kim Jong Il’s nuclear programs until Bush showed up to wreck it with suspect claims about WMD programs — specifically, the accusation that North Korea...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD
July 13, 2009

Treasury Should Block “Arirang” Funds

I think it’s now fair to say that guiding groups of tourists through exhibitions of soul-crushing North Korean mind control has lost most of the arguments that justified its existence.  Rather than changing the character of the North Korean regime, it’s reenforcing it by making a profitable industry of it.  It’s become a source of hard currency to the regime, something that the world has collectively decided to cut off in the interest of the world’s security.  And finally, there’s...

Categories Propaganda/Sanctions/Sunshine
July 13, 2009

S. Korean Sources Claim Kim Jong Il Has “Serious Disorder” of the Pancreas (Updated, Bumped: Pancreatic Cancer?)

This report comes from “a South Korean intelligence official” to “a Japanese television network” to AFP, and contains no detail about the alleged condition, so the uncertainties about the accuracy of this should be obvious: The TBS network reported that Kim has been resting and is being treated at his villa in the southeasten area of Wonsan by a team specialists.  The unidentified official told TBS Kim would be aware of the disorder which was made known to US and...

Categories Kim Jong Il
July 12, 2009

Some Levity

From a very funny blog called “Lowering the Bar,” we learn that nothing good comes of trying to put a fool and his money back together: Please note: All values in this post have been converted (very roughly) to U.S. dollars from the original South Korean currency, the won, to spare you any confusion over how much won he won or, more accurately, did not win. (There is no additional charge for this service.) Currently, a U.S. dollar will get...

Categories Humor/Satire
July 11, 2009

ROK Intel Blames N. Korea for DDOS Attacks, But You Already Knew That

This, from the now-familiar ROK Intel Leak Ticker — unnamed members or staffers from the intelligence committee of the South Korean National Assembly, quoting unnamed members of the National Intelligence Service: A North Korean army lab of hackers was ordered to “destroy” South Korean communications networks — evidence the isolated regime was behind cyberattacks that paralyzed South Korean and American Web sites — news reports said Saturday, citing an intelligence briefing. Members of the parliamentary intelligence committee have said in...

Categories Korean Politics/NK Military/Technology
July 11, 2009

Burmese Dissidents Worry About Junta’s Purchases of North Korean Weapons

The Burmese diaspora has become one of our best sources of information: One of the first signs of warming relations was a barter agreement between the two countries that lasted from 2000 to 2006 and saw Burma receive between 12 and 16 M-46 field guns and as many as 20 million rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition from North Korea, according to defense analyst Andrew Selth of Griffith University in Australia. In exchange, Burma bartered food and rice.  [….] The two...

Categories Proliferation/Southeast Asia
July 10, 2009

Even the Chinese Tell Jokes About North Korea

It’s a little old, but if I hadn’t seen it before, I figured not all of you had, either.  You’d think that the humor wouldn’t translate, but actually, it does, though grimly: 一个英国人，一个法国人，一个朝鲜人在一起聊天。英国人：最幸福的事情就是冬天晚上回家，穿着羊毛裤坐在壁 炉前面。法国人：你们英国人就是古板，最幸福的事情是和一个金发女郎一起去地中海度假，然后我们好和好散。朝鲜人：最幸福的事情就是半夜有人敲门，开门 后：” 康成美，你被捕了。””你弄错了，康成美在隔壁。” A Briton, a Frenchman, and a North Korean are having a conversation. The Briton: “I feel happiest when relaxing before the fireplace on a winter night. Frenchman: “You guys are too old fashioned. I feel happiest when I go on vacation with a beautiful...

Categories Humor/Satire