May 19, 2009

North Korea Shoots a Messenger

Surely there is some sensible middle ground between these two extremes of personnel management — in America, diplomats who push for policies that fail get promoted.  We learn today that pressing for bold diplomatic initiatives turns out to be less career-enhancing in the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea: North Korea executed its pointman on South Korea last year, holding him responsible for wrong predictions about Seoul’s new conservative government that has ditched a decade of engagement...

Categories Diplomacy/Inside NK/Kremlinology/NK Economics
May 18, 2009

Does North Korea’s “Combative Behavior” Signal the Beginning of the End?

For years, I have heard predictions about the fall of North Korea. During my second year in Korea, a South Korean government official told me he thought the Kim Jong Il regime would crumble within two years and reunification would follow. That was in 2003. Since then, I have heard numerous predictions from Koreans and the international community alike regarding the state of the DPRK and how much longer it has to survive. With the Kaesong project in the dumps,...

Categories Regime Change
May 17, 2009

Kaesong: Dead or Just Pining?

[Updated below] The headline is pretty much what I’d predicted three years ago: “North Korea announces nullification of all ‘Kaesong agreements,’” and that’s from the Hanky: North Korea’s military leadership has made statements hinting they would demand a withdrawal of businesses from Kaesong, but this is the first time the Bureau has brought up the possibility. In this notification, North Korea said, “We announce the nullification of all Kaesong Industrial Complex agreements made between the two Koreas which gave preference...

Categories Appeasement/NK Economics/Sunshine
May 17, 2009

Victor Cha: Let’s Reward Terrorism!

If Victor Cha has ever persuaded me of anything, it’s  of the  paradox that some of the most  highly educated and  academically intelligent people  never learn.  Cha,  one of the  architects  of  the Bush Administration’s magnificently  unsuccessful opening to Kim Jong Il’s North Korea, draws on that disqualification to advise us who should bring Laura Ling and Euna Lee home, and how. Having participated in a mission to bring home the remains of American servicemen killed in the Korean War,...

Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Terrorism (NK)
May 15, 2009

Clinton Welcomes North Korean “Trial” of U.S. Journalists

So North Korea is about to subject two American journalists to one of the world’s most opaque, arbitrary, and harsh judicial systems. This would mark the first North Korean trial of an American in recent years, if ever. And although our Secretary of State calls the charges “baseless,” she sounds just thrilled to pieces at the prospect of two of her country’s citizens facing a revolutionary tribunal: At a press appearance with Malaysia’s foreign minister, Clinton cast the announcement as,...

Categories Abductions/Diplomacy
May 15, 2009

Court Trials in North Korea

Yes, the concept of a court trial is hard to fathom in the context of North Korea, but apparently, they do exist over there. Now that we have a court date set for the (questionable) accusations posed against U.S. reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling, what can we expect to happen in a North Korean court hearing? Slate has an interesting article exploring the topic. For those wondering if the trial will be public, Slate reports: Trials are supposed to...

Categories Inside NK
May 15, 2009

S. Korea Tightens Controls on Dual-Use Technology Transfers to N. Korea

I’ve long suspected that technology transfers to Kaesong included many dual-use items, including American technology, that the North Koreans would easily put to destructive uses.  South Korea finally seems to be doing something about this: South Korea’s audit agency expressed concern Wednesday that materials used to develop weapons of mass destruction may enter North Korea due to Seoul’s lax monitoring and advised the Unification Ministry to tighten rules. The ministry, in charge of overseeing personnel and equipment exchanges with North...

Categories Proliferation/Sunshine/Technology/WMD
May 14, 2009

North Korea Sets a Trial Date for Laura Ling and Euna Lee; NK Won’t Talk to Us

Why now?  All I can do is guess, but it’s probably a combination of diplomatic convenience and the likelihood that they finally gave their interrogators what they wanted. In announcing the trial date, the North’s state-run news agency, KCNA, gave no further details, such as what charges they faced. But Pyongyang had earlier said that it found evidence of illegal entry and unspecified hostile acts. Under North Korea’s criminal code, a person convicted of hostile acts against the state can...

Categories Diplomacy/Terrorism (NK)
May 14, 2009

Obama Cabinet Watch: Still No Hint of a Coherent NK Policy

Perhaps “ready on day one” was setting the bar a bit too high.  I dare anyone to find coherence within the dizzying crossfire of U.S. policy statements on North Korea this week. Special Envoy Stephen “Bud” Bosworth just returned from a trip to China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia to “convince the North to come back to the negotiating table” and “take the pulse” of the other four nations that supply the aid that sustains Kim’s misrule. Our diplomats never...

Categories Diplomacy
May 13, 2009

Robert Mugabe Hearts Kim Jong Il’s Missile

[Updated below.] I remember the Zimbabwe of July 1990 as a slightly behind-the-times but functioning country that managed to fix the roads, get the kids to school, grow and export food, and run some very good national parks … and little else.  What a difference 19 years of despotic oligarchy can make.  Today, North Korea’s number two, Kim Yong Nam, is in Harare as a guest of Robert Mugabe.  And how else should the leaders of two nations they have...

Categories Africa/Geopolitics
May 13, 2009

Open Source Center Details DPRK Leadership

Anytime someone claims to have documents that have not been approved for public release and then releases them, I get a bit nervous. Personally speaking, I would never publish anything classified on this site, or any other Web site for that matter, but after discussing this find with Joshua, I can justify sharing this bit of information with you since a) there are no classification markings on the document, and b) it’s already circulating the Internet on a public Web...

Categories Inside NK
May 13, 2009

Media, White House Slowly Catching Up with Social Media Coverage of Lee-Ling Case

With Roxana Saberi’s recent release from imprisonment in Iran, I have noticed an uptick in media mentions of Laura Ling and Euna Lee – a positive change of course coming from mainstream media. While I agree, what may work for Iran may not work with North Korea in terms of dealing with detained U.S. citizens, it’s good to see this case getting more media attention, even if it seems to be treated as an afterthought. (By the way, I have...

Categories Media Criticism
May 12, 2009

Hunger and Anger in North Korea

It’s not news to readers of this site, but North Koreans’ views about their overlords are a bit more complex than the invincible one-hearted unity of Arirang pixels: Public discontent is simmering in North Korea after the hardline communist regime imposed tighter restrictions on market trading in an attempt to reassert its control over the state, observers say. [….] The latest crackdown began after elections on March 8 for a new parliament, according to Good Friends, a Seoul-based research group...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
May 11, 2009

North Korean Isolation Creates Opening for Chinese Diplomacy

With all the drama going on so far this year concerning North Korea, there seems to be one thing missing: China. Whether this is a case of silent diplomacy that the rest of the world will never hear of or testimony to the fragility of the Mainland’s relationship with North Korea, I cannot say, but China’s influence on the DPRK has played a major role in how concerned powers have dealt with the Kim Jong Il regime in the past...

Categories China
May 11, 2009

John Kerry: Clueless About North Korea

History will deservedly remember John Kerry as a failed poseur, a man too self-important and detestable to unseat George W. Bush in 2004, and one of my least favorite American politicians of all time.  We are still burdened with Kerry as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which capacity he spirited the incompetent and congenital liar Christopher Hill to confirmation as the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq.  In that capacity, Kerry seems to have learned much from the nominee’s...

Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
May 10, 2009

N.Y. Times: It’s Safe to Ignore North Korea Again!

It’s odd, though, how my mind can’t let go of what’s gone down the New York Times memory hole — alarmist warnings about North Korean nukes, peddled with the meme that George W. Bush transformed a contained North Korea into a grave national security threat.   I still remember Nick Kristof warning us of a nuclear 9/11 if the Bush Administration failed to appease North Korea with aid, in the same way that worked so brilliantly for Roh Moo Hyun. ...

Categories Media Criticism/Proliferation/WMD
May 8, 2009

China’s “missing women phenomenon” fueling bride trafficking of North Korean refugees

I’ve been reading a few of the articles to come out of North Korea Freedom Week which was April 26-May 2 in Washington, D.C. and among them was particular story focusing on the bride trafficking industry in China. Not surprisingly, China’s history of favoring baby boys over girls, coupled with its one child policy, has resulted in a severe shortage of women for a generation of bachelors. This shortage is referred to as “the missing women phenomenon” by the World...

Categories Human Trafficking
May 6, 2009

Silent vs. Vocal Diplomacy: More Thoughts on How the State Department is Approaching the Saberi and Lee-Ling Hostage Cases

[OFK:  It’s my great honor to present this first guest post from Jodi, formerly the author one of my very favorite K-blogs, The Asia Pages.  The end of the Asia Pages left many of us missing the warmth, compassion, honesty, and elegance of Jodi’s writing. I hope this will be just the first of many posts, and I hope you’ll join me in welcoming her.] The United States is in an uncomfortable position: Three of its reporters have been detained...

Categories Diplomacy