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April 16, 2008

A Google Earth Mystery: Kim Jong Il’s Big Dig

Yesterday, while MiG-spotting over North Korea at an altitude of about 20 miles, the highest altitude at which it’s easy to spot airfields, I saw something that caught my eye and went down for a closer look. I’ve overflown that area multiple times previously and ever noticed it. At first glance, it looks like a runway going through a mountain. And that was my first guess. (Click images for full size and coordinates.) Move in closer, and you can...

Google Earth

April 15, 2008

Anju Links for 15 April 2008

A HUMANITARIAN SPIRIT that would have seemed unimaginable in Japan half a century ago is taking root: No Fence in North Korea, a Tokyo- based association, started campaigning to release political prisoners from camps in North Korea, where as many as 250,000 people are subjected to torture and summary execution. The group, headed by Shojun Sunagawa, a former Japanese diplomat, held its first meeting in Tokyo yesterday and plans to raise awareness of the camps in North Korea and rescue...

Anju Links

April 15, 2008

The Six Two One Party Talks, or Masturbatory Diplomacy

[Update: The White House accepts this stinker. Remember what Chris Hill said last year? “We cannot have a situation where (North Korea) pretends to abandon their nuclear program and we pretend to believe them.” That sure sounds like that Hill wants us to do.] So have you heard that Kim Jong Il will celebrate his removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism … by firing off more missiles? U.S. military authorities have been closely watching the North Korean...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics

April 15, 2008

Keeping the Pressure on Beijing

South Korean and American are pushing the issue of North Korean refugees as the Olympics approach, as as other issues focus intense pressure on China. Here’s what’s happening in Seoul: Onlookers watch as a man tied up in ropes is led down a crowded pedestrian street by a woman holding a plastic assault rifle. Another man holding a megaphone explains that the re-enactment depicts a scene that has become an everyday occurrence in China. A multinational coalition of activists, calling...

Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees

April 14, 2008

A Wing and a Prayer: Google-Earthing Pyongyang’s Airport

The Google Earth gods have bestowed more blessings on us in the form of more high- and medium-resolution images of North Korea. One place I’ve wanted to see in hi-res is Pyongyang’s Sunan Airport, and I’m happy to report that that’s now possible. Even with low resolution, it was possible to see the curious two-runway layout of the airport. That is probably in part because Sunan is a dual-use airfield, one that hosts military and civilian craft. (Click images for...

Google Earth

April 13, 2008

Kim Won Ung: A Most Joyous Political Obituary

Imagine an America in which Cynthia McKinney chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and holds regular meetings with Osama Bin Laden, and you can be begin to grasp the national embarrassment of Kim Won Ung’s tenure as leader of the Korean National Assembly’s Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee. Perhaps this analogy will also illustrate the depth of my ambivalence at confirming that Kim has lost his bid for reelction. Kim Won Ung at Kim Il Sung’s Birthplace in North...

An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics

April 11, 2008

All Quid, No Quo: How Agreed Framework 2.0 may soon become immeasurably worse

I declined to do a posting on Chris Hill’s latest meeting with the North Koreans — the latest in a long series of last chances — because it was pretty clear that North Korea wasn’t going to admit to having a uranium enrichment program or to having engaged in nuclear proliferation to Syria. Here, I was right. I had also concluded that lacking any political room to make further concessions to the North Koreans, State wouldn’t agree to water down...

Appeasement/Six-Party Talks

April 10, 2008

Good Friends: Rations Suspended in Pyongyang; Population Survives on Savings, Markets

A new Good Friends dispatch is up on the Web. The obvious caveats apply: it’s 100% hearsay. Good Friends reports that the traders who feed the northeastern city of Chongjin are now wandering from town to town to find food. Many are going to Sinuiju and finding nothing; the place is in the middle of a major crackdown on markets. Although Good Friends does not say so explicitly, protests in Chongjin appear to have ended, possibly with the dissenting female...

Famine & Food Aid

April 10, 2008

Representatives Ask Rice About ‘Consular Emergencies’ During Beijing Olympics

Last month, three members of Congress — Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, Ray Lahood of Illinois, and Darlene Hooley of Oregon — anticipating just how ugly things could will get if when U.S. citizens protest during this year’s Olympics in Beijing, wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to ask what instructions she had given to our diplomats in China about “consular emergencies” during the games. The members also broached the sensitive subject of whether State should issue a travel advisory...

China/U.S. Politics

April 9, 2008

A Good Election for Korea

Well, what can I add to what Andy and Robert have done here? Let me start with this complete listing (in Korean) of the results and just add some notable points: * Defeated presidential candidate “Comrade” Chung Dong Young, originator of the die-in-place policy toward North Korean refugees, was trounced and failed in his bid to win a seat in the National Assembly. Chung was a superficial, anti-American demagogue. I despise him so deeply that I hope he tries...

Korean Politics

April 9, 2008

Did North Korea proliferate to Iran, too?

An Israeli news site reports that North Korea aided Iran’s nuclear program with nuclear technology and material, according to the Israeli news site Haaretz (ht to a reader): According to information obtained by Washington and Jerusalem, North Korea transferred technology and nuclear materials to Iran to aid Tehran’s secret nuclear arms program. U.S. and Israeli officials agreed last week that the talks between the U.S. and North Korea, scheduled to take place in Singapore tomorrow, should be used to pressure...

Proliferation/WMD

April 9, 2008

America: Now 16% Less Hated!

We have some more results for the OFK poll archive on South Korean anti-Americanism. Koreans’ attitudes toward the U.S. are improving, according to a poll by Britain’s broadcaster BBC late last year. A survey of 17,457 people in 34 countries on U.S. influence in the international community shows that the number of positive respondents outnumbered negativists only in South Korea and Portugal. Among 1,031 South Korean respondents, 49 percent showed a mainly positive attitude toward the U.S. The number of...

An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Society

April 8, 2008

Anju Links for 8 April 2008

MORE TRAIN WRECKS in North Korea have injured hundreds, according to the Daily NK. Recall that an explosion that may have killed hundreds in the town of Ryongchon in 2006 was triggered by a train accident. SPEAKING OF THINGS THAT SOUND DANGEROUS, I wonder where these North Korean soldiers were getting the scrap iron they were selling to China. Even in the United States, there are idiots who deliberately drive into live-fire zones of U.S. military bases to collect scrap...

Anju Links

April 8, 2008

Do you suppose China is having second thoughts about that whole ‘Olympics’ idea?

[Update: A new Zogby poll finds that 70% of likely voters believe the IOC was wrong to award the Olympics to China, and 48% believe that “U.S. political officials should not attend the opening ceremony due to China’s poor human rights record.” Dissatisfaction with the IOC’s choice is strong across the political spectrum, with 70% of Democrats and Republicans, and 68% of political independents who said they disagree with the decision to have China host the summer games. A Zogby...

Activism/China/Human Rights

April 7, 2008

China Steps Up Efforts to Undermine U.S. and U.N. Sanctions Against N. Korea

The single most important provision of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, for which China cast a disingenuous “yes” vote, is the provision that requires member states to “ensure” that funds flowing into North Korea are not used for its WMD programs. Similarly, Resolution 1695 requires states to “exercise vigilance” against efforts to fund U.N. sanctions. Now, in the wake of U.S. Treasury sanctions that have put the North Korean regime under unprecedented pressure to meet its disarmament obligations, China is...

China/China & Korea/Money Laundering/NK Crime/NK Economics/Proliferation/WMD

April 7, 2008

Another Public Execution in North Korea

On the March 30, in Hyesan, Yangkang Province, three residents were publicly executed and 30 households were forcibly expelled after a public trial. Aggravated uneasiness and growing horror spread among residents. “Three residents were executed for human trafficking at a vacant lot in the Hyesan Airport while a crowd watched,” a source from Yangkang Province told Daily NK. [Daily NK] If the people of North Korea were better armed, the Chinese and North Korean authorities might have to consider alternatives...

Human Rights/Inside NK

April 7, 2008

Coreana Tries to Suppress Blogger Criticism of Nazi Ads

So instead of engaging in a moment of introspection about its tasteless Nazi-chic advertising, Coreana goes after Brian for putting the ads up on YouTube. And while they have removed Hitler’s name from the ad, the obvious Nazi symbols remain. Says CNN: A Korad official, Seo Sang-hee, confirmed the ad was meant to invoke a Nazi soldier and Hitler, which she said symbolize “revolution” in keeping with the lotion’s “revolutionary” dual functions. Seo said the commercial was not designed to...

Censorship/Korean Society/WTF?

April 6, 2008

KCNA Trips Over the Truth on Human Rights

Writing in the Asia Times, Professor Sung Yoon Lee describes reading KCNA in the original Korean and finding, among the hackneyed sloganeering, that the writers “inadvertently rang with uncommon common sense, not to mention striking validity:” A staple of the KCNA diet, such oft-stated claims [about Japanese abuses during colonial times] are indeed valid historical grievances that North Korea and Japan will have to resolve if the two are ever to normalize diplomatic relations. [OFK note: as if.] But the...

Human Rights/Korean History