March 13, 2009

13 March 2009

THE HANKYOREH IS PLEASED TO REPORT that North Korea has become marginally less hellish in some ways! But read the fine print: “North Korea’s human rights situation is wholly poor. Economic, social, and cultural rights are growing notably worse, while there have been institutional improvements in civic and political rights. Also, the human rights situation is different by social group and region, with continually deepening disparity. Wait! It gets better, I swear! The document notes that there have been systemic...

Categories Uncategorized
March 13, 2009

This is not the Dennis Blair I knew

Dennis Blair, who tried to put diplomacy’s own Jeremiah Wright in charge of writing our national intelligence estimates, has just thrown the entire Obama Administration off message on North Korea’s upcoming missile test. (Mark your calendars for April 4th, though April 15th seems at least as likely). Blair, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee no less, mused that North Korea’s missile test is probably just what the North Koreans say it is: “I tend to believe that the North...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
March 12, 2009

And there was much wailing in Riyadh

Tienanmen Massacre defender Charles Freeman has withdrawn his name as the Obama Administration’s nominee to head the National Intelligence Council. Freeman’s nomination did not require Senate confirmation. As he withdrew, Freeman blamed “the Israel lobby” for spiking his prospects, and while it’s apparent that friends of Israel like Sen. Charles Schumer weren’t fond of Freeman, the decisive veto came from Nancy Pelosi because of Freeman’s extreme apologist views for the Chinese regime’s atrocities. The Washington Post later editoralized that Freeman...

Categories U.S. Politics/Washington Views
March 12, 2009

Brownback: Chris Hill was ‘evasive and unprofessional’ in his dealings with Congress

Senator Sam Brownback has come out against Chris Hill’s nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to Iraq: I am deeply concerned about the possibility of Assistant Secretary Hill serving in the crucial post of Ambassador to Iraq,” Brownback said. “While I commend Mr. Hill for his long and dedicated career in the Foreign Service, I believe that his lack of any Middle East experience, and his evasive and unprofessional dealings with Congress, make him a poor choice for leading our largest,...

Categories U.S. Politics/Washington Views
March 11, 2009

11 March 2009

JAPAN WILL GO TO THE SECURITY COUNCIL if North Korea tests a missile. If they’re shivering in Pyongyang, it’s probably just cold there. ARBEIT NICHT FREI: If the prospects for the Kaesong Slave Labor Park were bleak enough already, briefly imprisoning its South Korean business managers there can’t have helped matters. UH OH: The new U.S. Trade Representative calls the U.S.-ROK FTA “unfair” as negotiated. Pretty much as I’d predicted — South Korea let the issue become toxic in the...

Categories Anju Links
March 11, 2009

David Asher: How to Talk to North Korea

If Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard are the world’s foremost experts on the North Korean economy, David Asher may be the world’s foremost expert on its illicit side — drugs, counterfeiting, arms trafficking, and the recouping of its ill-gotten gains. Asher served as the Coordinator of the State Department’s North Korea Working Group and the NSC’s North Korea Activities Group from 2003-2005. In that capacity, he was a key architect of the financial constriction strategy that briefly forced the North...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
March 10, 2009

안주 Links for 10 March 2009

NORTH KOREA has serial killers? EVERYONE ACT SURPRISED: Kim Jong Il is reelected with 100% of the vote — which even beats Obama’s margin in Takoma Park. But whereas free elections are noted for saturating voters with information, North Korea’s election was accompanied by a crackdown on illegal cell phones. More here. KIM JONG IL AND I MAY AGREE ON ONE THING: Can I infer that he detests Vista, too? THE LEAKY BLOCKADE: Open Radio has more on the proliferation...

Categories Anju Links
March 10, 2009

Succession Watch

Open Radio reports that among North Korean military officers and high-ranking Workers’ Party officials, it is widely rumored that Kim Jong Un has been designated to succeed His Porcine Majesty. The rumor was first reported by Yonhap back in January. After several weeks without much evidence to support that rumor, a Rodong Sinmun editorial last week made references to “[t]he tradition of the three-generations of Mankyungdae heroes,” which suggests that at least one of Kim’s brood is being groomed. (How...

Categories Kremlinology
March 9, 2009

N. Korea: ‘Satellite’ Shootdown Will Mean War

We will retaliate (over) any act of intercepting our satellite for peaceful purposes with prompt counterstrikes by the most powerful military means,” the official Korean Central News Agency quoted a spokesman of the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army as saying. If countries such as the United States, Japan or South Korea try to intercept the launch, the North Korean military will carry out “a just retaliatory strike operation not only against all the interceptor means involved but against...

Categories Terrorism (NK)/WMD
March 9, 2009

WaPo on Hunger in North Korea: Change Comes Despite the Regime, Not Through It

The Washington Post certainly has become a better paper now that someone other than Glenn Kessler is covering North Korea. A year after this excellent report, Blaine Harden follows up to explain how in North Korea, change comes to North Korea from the bottom up, despite the regime’s best efforts, through the desperation of starving people unwilling to accept their expendable status, rather than because the regime is receptive to reform or openness. Change is coming to North Korea, but...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
March 5, 2009

North Korea threatens to shoot down South Korean civilian airliners ‘near’ its airspace

Updated below. North Korea is threatening South Korean civilian planes flying near its airspace amid heightened tensions on the divided peninsula. The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland issued the threat Thursday, claiming upcoming joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises are preparations to invade the communist nation. The statement said the North could not “guarantee the safety of South Korean civilian planes passing near our airspace.” [AP, via IHT] Not just in their airspace, mind you, but near it...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
March 4, 2009

Japan Threatens to Shoot Down North Korean Missile

I wonder how this would play on the Korean street, North and South: The Japanese government could deploy two arsenal ships equipped with the latest Aegis radar system and interceptor Standard Missile in the East Sea if North Korea continues to prepare for a missile test, the Kyodo news agency reported Tuesday citing a senior official at the Japanese Ministry of Defense…. Tokyo warned North Korea it would intercept not only missiles but also a satellite launched by the communist...

Categories Japan/Japan & Korea
March 4, 2009

안주 Links for 4 March 2009

FREE AT LAST: “A South Korean fisherman who was abducted by North Korea while fishing in the East Sea in August 1975 has arrived safely home after 34 years…. Yun attempted to escape North Korea with his 68-year-old wife and 26-year-old daughter, but his wife and daughter were reportedly caught by the North Korean police. Out of 33 fishermen abducted along with him back then, only three others — Koh Myung-sup (65), Choi Uk-il (69) and Lee Han-seop (61) —...

Categories Anju Links
March 4, 2009

NIS Seeks Direct Power to Eavesdrop on Foreigners

The bill before the Legislation and Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee would have the law changed to make it possible for the NIS to eavesdrop on all current communication formats like mobile telecommunications and the Internet, as well as all communications networks that take form in the future. It would also require communications companies to maintain records of all communications for at least one year keep user location information as part of those records. In addition, the bill would allow the NIS...

Categories Korean Law
March 3, 2009

Succession Watch

Two new reports from the Daily NK, here and here, provide the first evidence that the North Korean regime may be preparing its subjects for one of Kim Jong Il’s brood to inherit the throne. The Rodong Shinmun additionally waxed, “We do not know of such zealous and revolutionary patriots as the heroes of Mankyungdae, who have walked solidly the path of history for three generations for the future of a country and a nation. The tradition of the three-generations...

Categories Kremlinology
March 3, 2009

안주 Links for 3 March 2009

LiNK’S LATEST NEWSLETTER is here. THE MOST RECENT GOOD FRIENDS UPDATE is also online, reporting a hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Chongjin, more mixed news on the food situation, and the ongoing decay of the command economy’s control over food supplies. Even in Pyongyang, more state workers are turning to the black market in pilfered state commodities to survive. One dispatch describes a man who survived 20 years in a reeducation camp; another reports on the theft of weapons from some...

Categories Anju Links
March 2, 2009

Haggard and Noland: North Koreans Still Hungry

We’ve seen a great deal of conflicting information about the food situation inside North Korea recently, but Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard have a new paper out that claims that the situation is still precarious for many in the provinces. They conclude that last year, the food situation was as bad as at any time since the famine, and that despite a slightly improved harvest, people are still going hungry because the food is being allocated unevenly. Read the whole...

Categories Famine & Food Aid