January 29, 2009

Korean Lawmakers Talk About Fight Club!

I’m at a complete loss to top the absurdity of Korean politics: Their political rivals had fled moments earlier through a secret back door. An incensed Lee smashed her colleagues’ nameplates to the floor. “If I had caught the GNP lawmakers running away, I would have shouted, ‘You bastards!’ ” the petite, bespectacled lawyer said later as she poured tea in her office. “My gesture was symbolic, to mark a moment when the values of democracy and the process of...

Categories Korean Politics
January 28, 2009

U.N. Special Rapporteur Soldiers On

He was seconded by a fallen government, gets no respect from the U.S. government, and works for the world’s most overrated entity, but Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea is making (in U.N. terms, at least) a creditable effort to do his job: An independent U.N. investigator on North Korea’s human rights situation Tuesday described the food shortage and rights violations in the country as ”very grim” and called on Japan to strengthen support...

Categories "United" Nations/Abductions/Human Rights
January 28, 2009

Kim Jong Il Still Unable to Hold Up a Current Newspaper

North Korea continues to want us to believe that Kim Jong Il is hale and healthy, and a surprising number of journalists continue to report the KCNA’s uncorroborated claims of his public appearances as “evidence” of his recovery: “When he appeared in the auditorium the audience broke into the stormy cheers of ‘Hurrah!’ and extended the warmest lunar New Year greetings to him,” KCNA said. While state media reported his appearance, they did not release any photos or footage of...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Media Criticism
January 28, 2009

Jimmy Carter Would Serve Mankind Best by Retiring

There is nothing so harmful to the interests of a nation as a politician desperate for a legacy: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says North Korea’s nuclear issue could be worked out “in half a day” given the right conditions. Carter told AP he believes North Korea would surrender its nuclear weapons in return for U.S. diplomatic recognition, a peace agreement with South Korea and the U.S., and new atomic power reactors and fuel oil. He said North Koreans “have...

Categories Appeasement
January 27, 2009

‘Kimjongilia,’ The Movie

A new documentary will play at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and this is one that I’m going to be watching very carefully: “Kimjongilia.” The film is about North Korea and those who have escaped it, their tortuous flights, and their often equally tortuous deprogramming as they adapt to life on Earth. The film’s subject matter focus is on the concentration camps, and the astonishment of the Director, N.C. Heikin, that world opinion has not arisen in outrage against them....

Categories Activism/Books & Films/Human Rights/Refugees/The Camps
January 26, 2009

That Rabbi was such a nice man. Maybe I should send him another ham.

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak, who as mayor of Seoul awkwardly offered the city to Almighty God, was recently rescued from the brink of a social and sectarian fiasco when a staffer prevented him from sending Chuseok gift sets of dried anchovies to a group of Buddhist monks (link is in Korean). Fact 1: Buddhist monks are required to abstain from eating living things. Fact 2: 22.8% of President Lee’s constituents are Buddhists. So many mouths. How can one...

Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society/Unintended Humor
January 26, 2009

Eberstadt: What Went Wrong

So over the weekend, I finally had a chance to read Nicholas Eberstadt’s fine summary of the Bush Administration’s eight years of drift and indecision on North Korea (hat tip to Robert Koehler). It’s hard to pick a favorite passage, but this one certainly struck a chord: In the absence of a coherent policy, though, the imperative of “success” in talks with North Korea suddenly took on a life of its own for the Bush team. (After all, there was...

Categories Money Laundering/NK Economics/Washington Views
January 24, 2009

Jay Lefkowitz: Requiem for a Bantamweight

To the limited degree history remembers Jay Lefkowitz at all, it should remember him as a good and well-meaning man who was unequal to the great task laid before him. I have sometimes suspected that this was the very design of those who appointed him. With the change of administrations this week, Lefkowitz departed as Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, leaving behind a final report that still clings obediently to the myth of constructive engagement with sociopaths:...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Washington Views
January 24, 2009

A Smaller Army, in More Ways Than One

Chronic food shortages will considerably reduce North Korea’s pool of military recruits in the coming years, with nearly a quarter of young adults unfit for service due to malnutrition-related mental disabilities, a U.S. intelligence report said. [Yonhap] Malnutrition may also be taking an intellectual toll on North Koreans: The famine of the 1990s has caused severe cognitive deficiencies among young North Koreans, said the report by the National Intelligence Council that used studies from several U.S. intelligence agencies. I doubt...

Categories NK Military/Reconstruction
January 23, 2009

Kim Jong Il Death Watch

He’s not quite dead, alas: North Korean television, monitored in Seoul, showed photos of Kim holding talks with Wang and hosting a reception for the Chinese official. Dressed in his trademark Mao suit, Kim appeared a little thinner, but generally in good health in the pictures. KCNA and the North’s TV said Wang delivered a personal letter from Chinese President Hu Jintao to Kim, but did not elaborate. [AP, via IHT] Or at least, that’s what he wants us all...

Categories Kim Jong Il
January 23, 2009

As KCTU Calls for ‘All Out War,’ Rally Attendance Declines

The thugs at the Korean Confederation of trade unions see opportunity in their country’s bad economic times, reports the sympathetic Hankyoreh: The KCTU plans to launch an “all out war” against the Lee administration in February, since it has again made known its intention to have the ruling Grand National Party pass revisions to laws on irregular workers and the minimum wage in the extraordinary National Assembly session scheduled for that month. The KCTU plans to launch its offensive with...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
January 22, 2009

Gullible’s Travels: The Selective Disbelief of Selig S. Harrison

Here’s the latest installment of North Korea’s hostile policy: The North Korean military declared an “all-out confrontational posture” against South Korea on Saturday as an American scholar said North Korean officials told him they had “weaponized” enough plutonium for roughly four or five nuclear bombs. American intelligence officials have previously estimated that the North had harvested enough fuel for six or more bombs, although it has never been clear whether the North constructed the weapons. The scholar, Selig S. Harrison,...

Categories Media Criticism/Proliferation/Washington Views/WMD
January 21, 2009

Megumi Yokota’s Mother’s New Book on Sale

Sakie Yokota’s meeting with President Bush in 2006 may have been one of my last optimistic moments about the GWB administration’s North Korea policy. Mrs. Yokota, whose daughter was kidnapped from the shores of her hometown at the age of 13, has just published an English language edition of her book. I’d be amazed if Mrs. Yokota didn’t express feelings of anger and betrayal toward the former president and his broken promises not to abandon her cause. All of this...

Categories Abductions/Activism
January 21, 2009

39.91 N, 127.55 E: Hamhung, Haunted City

In 1997, Washington Post correspondent Keith Richburg was allowed into the city of Hamhung, just inland from North Korea’s east coast, to try to find the truth behind fragmentary rumors of a famine inside the world’s most isolated country. Although Hamhung is North Korea’s second-largest city and a key industrial center, it was an isolated place with few foreign visitors, little commerce with the outside world, and at a great distance from any international border. This is what Hamhung looks...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Google Earth
January 20, 2009

National Geographic, ‘Escaping North Korea’

National Geographic’s February 2009 issue is out, and it contains an article about North Korean refugees. It’s written in the form of a narrative about three refugees — “Black,” “Red,” and “White” — and their escape through China to South Korea. “White” and “Red” survived victimization by the cross-border sex trade. After her arrival in the South, White was also diagnosed with and survived cancer. For “Black,” the deprogramming process began with his first exposure to the truth about Kim...

Categories Refugees