February 18, 2009

Succession Rumors Spread Inside North Korea

There may or may not be any truth to rumors that third son Kim Jong Un will the figurehead successor to His Porcine Majesty, but word seems to have spread inside the kingdom: The source said, “People who have secretly been listening to South Korean radio seem to be circulating these stories but the Party in Pyongyang has not issued a special decree about it. Many people have an interest in the successor issue, so the rumors have been spreading...

Categories Deprogramming
February 17, 2009

Prof. Sung Yoon Lee in the Asia Wall Street Journal

One of the most consistently perceptive commentators on dealing with North Korea is Professor Sung-Yoon Lee, an adjunct assistant professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. By a very interesting coincidence, Stephen Bosworth, the next North Korea Special Envoy, is the Dean there. If Bosworth tolerates views this much at odds with his own, we can certainly hope he’s open-minded enough to take some good advice from Prof. Lee — if not...

Categories Diplomacy/Washington Views
February 17, 2009

Seoul to Open New Refugee Center by 2012

On its face, this announcement is both interesting, and perhaps, understated: The Ministry of Justice announced on Wednesday plans to build a retreat for refugees in Gyeonggi Province, aiming to open it in 2012. The ministry secured funds of W260 million in this year’s budget to design the facility, and is reportedly negotiating with the Ministry of Public Administration and Security for an appropriate site. [Chosun Ilbo] Nowhere in the article does it say that the new center will be...

Categories Refugees
February 16, 2009

Rice Prices Fall in Remote N. Korean Provinces

That’s good news, because those are the areas the government generally disfavors in its food distribution planning. According to a source in North Korea, rice prices in Pyongyang, Pyonsung, Nampo, Sin-ui-ju, Hyesan, and Chunjin fell sharply in mid-January. The rice price in Pyongyang at the end of January was 1700~1800 Won per 1 kg (the price used to be 2000-2100 Won), the price in Pyonsung and Sincheon was 1700won (the price used to be 2100 Won), and the price in...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
February 16, 2009

20% of Arriving N. Korean Refugees Need Psychological Treatment

It’s because of statistics like these that no one should underestimate the difficulty of Korean reunification: The most common ailments among North Korean refugees are dental disease followed by tuberculosis, according to Hanawon, the government-run institution for North Korean refugees. [….] Some 20 percent of inmates also need psychological treatment after leaving the institution, Hanawon said. Many also still owe money to brokers who arranged their defection to the South and experience discrimination. Here’s this week’s “we are one” moment:...

Categories Reconstruction/Refugees
February 13, 2009

Stephen Bosworth, Formerly Ambassador to S. Korea, to Be New Asia Assistant Secretary N. Korea Special Envoy

One of the legitimate complaints about Bush’s Korea policy that Democrats actually made was that one man cannot simultaneously be an Assistant Secretary for all of East Asia and a de facto special envoy to North Korea. The Special Envoy post looks to be going to Kurt Campbell, and now, it looks like the East Asia A/S post will go to former U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Stephen Bosworth, who was in Pyongyang recently displaying his prowess at forcing the North...

Categories Diplomacy
February 13, 2009

Missile Extortion Goes On, Gates Hints at Taepodong Shootdown, Worthlessness of U.N. Again on Display

Chinese fishing vessels have vanished from the region of the Yellow Sea near the Northern Limit Line, which means that the North may be preparing to test a few short-range missiles. The North’s preparations to test a long-range Taepodong II also continue. The likely launch site now looks to be Musudan-ri on the East coast, not the new West coast site I published images of here. According to the Chosun Ilbo, the missile has now arrived at the launch site....

Categories NK Military/Proliferation
February 12, 2009

안주 Links for 12 February 2009

U.S. AND ROK DEFENSE PLANNERS have finally gotten around to updating OPLAN 5027, the plan for the defense of the ROK in case of a North Korean invasion. That contingency seems rather unlikely today. FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME …. The DPRK was compelled to take an option for nuclear development which required huge funds, manpower and a lot of time. This was an inevitable security measure for self-defence taken to cope with the situation where the U.S. singled out the...

Categories Anju Links
February 11, 2009

안주 Links for 11 February 2009

EVERYONE, ACT SURPRISED: Voters’ meetings were held at all the constituencies across the country to nominate candidates for deputies to the 12th Supreme Peoples’ Assembly of the DPRK. The meetings nominated General Secretary Kim Jong Il as a candidate for deputy to the 12th SPA. Reporters and speakers at the meetings highly praised the immortal feats performed by Kim Jong Il, adding that it is the greatest happiness and glory of our country and the nation to have Kim Jong...

Categories Anju Links
February 11, 2009

You Tube Find: ‘Truth of the Border Area Between China and North Korea’

This Japanese documentary (with English subs) follows a camera crew that motored halfway across the Tumen River to a tiny, remote, impoverished North Korean island where the entire population has been mobilized for an irrigation project, yet lives hand-to-mouth on gleaning the fields and the river of things that the Chinese would not eat. We also learn what can happen to Chinese who cross the river. This is the only time I ever recall seeing film of foreigners entering North...

Categories Inside NK
February 11, 2009

Following the Money: The Economic Mysteries of North Korea

On Monday night, I had dinner with a distinguished group that included Andrei Lankov, Chuck Downs, Curtis Melvin, and a friend who covers North Korea for a major news service. Professor Lankov is here to speak at a think tank event and to promote some exciting ideas about getting subversive information into North Korea, which I hope to interview him about later. I asked Professor Lankov about those alarming reports from Good Friends about the food situation last year. With...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
February 10, 2009

KCNA Flays Flunkeyist U.S. Imperialist Newspaper’s Deceptive Headline!

“North Korea Tones Down Its Rhetoric” — N.Y. Times, Feb. 7, 2009 And here are some examples of the toned-down North Korea rhetoric we saw shortly thereafter: The frantic exercises staged by the Lee Myung Bak warlike forces who put the inter-Korean relations in total stalemate and drove the situation on the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war through their reckless anti-DPRK confrontational moves will only precipitate their ruin. — KCNA, Feb. 8, 2009 No one can predict what...

Categories Media Criticism
February 10, 2009

KCTU Politburo Resigns Over Rape Cover-Up

The executive board of the radical Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a violent organization with strong links to the pro-North Korean fifth column in South Korea, has resigned to atone for trying to cover up the attempted rape of a female union member by a “senior” union official: The Korea Confederation of Trade Unions says its entire executive board is stepping down to account for a sexual assault scandal. In a press briefing the KCTU said the leadership is resigning...

Categories The Fifth Column
February 10, 2009

Being Loved Is Overrated

Good morning, America — the world hates you slightly less! They took a poll shortly after Obama’s election: Views of the US showed improvements in Canada, Egypt, Ghana, India, Italy and Japan. But far more countries have predominantly negative views of America (12), than predominantly positive views (6). Most Europeans show little change and views of the US in Russia and China have grown more negative. On average, positive views have risen from 35 per cent to 40 per cent,...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Europe/Geopolitics
February 9, 2009

Keeping His Enemies Closer, Obama Steals a Trick from Nixon’s Book

A very interesting piece in the Washington Post reports that the Obama Administration will expand and restructure the National Security Council to make it the main circuit cable for all its national security deliberations. [National Security Advisor James] Jones, a retired Marine general, made it clear that he will run the process and be the primary conduit of national security advice to Obama, eliminating the “back channels” that at times in the Bush administration allowed Cabinet secretaries and the vice...

Categories U.S. Politics/Washington Views
February 9, 2009

You Tube Find: ‘Don’t Tell My Mother That I Am in North Korea’

I’ve had my fill of guided travelogues of Pyongyang’s mandatory sights, but occasionally, something irreverent and daring pierces the veil and gives you a few glimpses behind the facade. The “Vice Guide to North Korea” was one of these. Commenter Ditto 81 gets a big hat tip for “Don’t Tell My Mother That I Am in North Korea,” the observations of a group of French Canadian journalists who lied their way in by claiming to be actors and real estate...

Categories Inside NK
February 9, 2009

Extortion, Pure and Simple

Why do the North Koreans threaten other nations? The Washington Post’s Blaine Harden gets some surprisingly direct answers from them: Last year, the new South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, ended his predecessors’ “sunshine policy” toward the isolated North. For nearly a decade, that policy had soothed nerves on the Korean Peninsula by giving the truculent but poor government of Kim Jong Il large amounts of food, fertilizer and trade concessions, all without conditions and without asking questions about nuclear weapons,...

Categories NK Military/Terrorism (NK)