December 11, 2008

That’s Going to Buy a Lot of Cognac for Someone (Updated 7/2009)

How likely a story does this sound to you? The accident took place in April 2005 when, it is claimed, a helicopter owned by Air Koryo, the North Korean state airline, was dispatched from Pyongyang, the capital, to collect a woman who was in labour with triplets from a remote island. On the return flight it crashed into a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, causing a fire that destroyed a large amount of humanitarian relief goods. [Times of...

Categories NK Crime
December 11, 2008

U.S. Halted Food Aid to N. Korea in August

Not surprisingly, the North reneged on the agreements it made with USAID to get food aid. Its interest is in feeding its elite, our interest is in feeding those in greatest need, and there’s little overlap between those two groups. It’s more surprising to see Americans with the courage to hold North Koreans to their commitments. We are now learning that things broke down last August, and that most of the food aid was never delivered. A much-heralded U.S. program...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
December 11, 2008

No Deal on Verification

Chris Hill’s words to the press speak well enough for themselves, but the testiness of his tone tells us just as much. He has no one but himself to blame for his own humiliation, of course. It’s just unfortunate that his personal ambition created such risk and suffering for so many others. Christopher R. Hill ,Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs China World Hotel Beijing, China December 11, 2008 ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Good morning. Obviously we would like...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 9, 2008

Roh Legacy Death Watch

There are two entries in this merry vigil: – Roh’s brother ordered jailed over a bribery scandal. – A left-wing agitprop history textbook heads off for the ash-heap of …. Still, the counter-revisionism is going a tad too far when episodes like Kwangju are flat-out written out of history. The idea is to put historical events into their proper context. Kwangju no more defines South Korean history or its modern reality than the Pullman Strike defines American history or its...

Categories Korean Education/Korean Politics/Korean Society
December 9, 2008

Agreed Framework 2.0 Death Watch

Whoop de doo. The six-party talks have started again. China has circulated a draft protocol that strives mightily to top Chris Hill’s gift for vagueness by omitting the word “sampling.” I don’t think the people who designed this six-party concept, in retrospect, realized what a perfect venue this was for Chinese, Russian, and (often) South Korean back-stabbing. The concept may be with us for a while, at least as a superficial demonstration of Obama’s commitment to “multilateralism.”* With the clock...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 9, 2008

Food Situation Updates

A UN agency reports that North Korea’s food production this year will be up slightly over last year’s, which is a lot like predicting that the Nasdaq will perform better next year than this. The production figure of 3.3 million tons of cereals is still far short of the North’s total needs — 800,000 tons short — and lower than the average annual production of the post-famine period. At the same time, the WFP and FAO are both saying that...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
December 9, 2008

S. Korean Firms to Demand Compensation for Kaesong Losses

Why do I do this every day, you ask? (Again with those straw-man questions I plant in your heads.) I do it because of stories like this. South Korean firms that lost big on the Kaesong bubble are demanding compensation from, or possibly suing, the government. So would the government in the caption — where it says “defendant” — be the government that actually shut down their operations in breach of all of the written understandings and for no legally...

Categories Uncategorized
December 8, 2008

The Unmourned Death of Agreed Framework 2.0

Just as Washington seems to have almost forgotten the name of the current president, hardly anyone still remembers Chris Hill, a media hero for one brief while after he conned George W. Bush out of one part of the “cowboy diplomacy” they loved to loathe. Also mostly forgotten: for the brief interlude when it was tried, the cowboy diplomacy worked. Less so: what replaced it did not. Hill is now about to round up the six various parties for one...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 8, 2008

Seoul Mulls Ransom Payments to Bring POW’s Home

It sticks in the craw to even consider paying ransom to induce North Korea into doing what the 1953 Armistice requires it to do, and return at least 560 South Korean prisoners of war the North is still believed to hold. One can only imagine what ghastly uses the regime might find for the money. Still, when you consider that for years, South Korea had paid the North billions and received nothing in return, getting at least some quo for...

Categories Abductions/Korean War
December 7, 2008

Well, that’s just dumb

Activists have decided to suspend those propaganda balloon launches that were actually starting to have a tangible impact on the North Korean military right as they’re doing their winter training exercises. The balloon launches seem to have been pure P.R. brilliance. Instead of moderating their tactics, the activists ought to keep pressing on with more brazen ones. Imagine the effect a shower of these leaflets would have on Kim Jong Il’s birthday parade in February.

Categories Activism/Defectors/Deprogramming
December 5, 2008

Book Review: Escaping North Korea, by Mike Kim

[By Guest Blogger, Dan Bielefeld] A couple months ago I saw something about a new book by a Korean American who had lived in China for four years helping North Koreans.  This really caught my attention — I’ve heard of such people but I don’t know a lot about them since most of their work is done in secret.  To pique my interest a bit further, he’s from the same part of the country I am (he’s from Chicago, I’m...

Categories Activism/Books & Films/China/Refugees
December 4, 2008

Leaflets Balloons Prove Effective as Weapons of Economic, Political Warfare

It shows you the woeful condition of modern South Korea that some would show up to defend slavery and oppression from the non-violent propagation of truth to the oppressed. I can understand why, to a man whose life has been stolen from him by that oppression, that proved to me more than he could bear. This is the point at which things ceased to be non-violent: Here, encapsulated in one incident, is the ugly future of reunification. And the longer...

Categories Deprogramming/The Fifth Column
December 1, 2008

N. Korea Expels Half of the South Koreans from Kaesong.

North Korea has allowed 880 South Korean people to stay in the inter-Korean industrial complex in the border city of Kaesong, far less than expected by the South, South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman said Monday. North Korea verbally informed South Korea of its decision Sunday night, Kim Ho Nyoun told a press briefing. [Kyodo] You say that like it’s a bad thing. Updates: The better media reporting on this subject probes two questions: (a) how will this affect Kaesong and...

Categories Appeasement/NK Economics
December 1, 2008

Watch Your Back, Comrade

No, this is not a post about Hillary Clinton’s role in Barack Obama’s cabinet. I’ve read a lot of silly reporting about Kim Jong Il’s rumored stroke, but I’ve also seen and heard enough leaks from people who ought to be in the know that I’m actually starting to believe that he’s seriously debilitated. This latest one comes from former CIA officer Art Brown, and it makes it sound as though the power struggle to inherit all this is already...

Categories Diplomacy/Kremlinology/U.S. & Korea
November 29, 2008

The Wisdom of Kim Dae Jung: Slavery Is Prosperity, Censorship Is Freedom, Terror Is Peace

No matter what the North Koreans do with Kaesong next week or next year, their actions last week have already assured that it will fail to attract the international investment it needs to succeed. The North having demonstrated its willingness to hold potential investors’ capital hostage to their political whims, those investors will now stay away in droves. It’s worth reviewing just how grandiose the dream of Kaesong had become so recently. If you recognize the url stamped onto this...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics