March 20, 2008

MUST READ: WaPo Predicts Food Situation Will Pressure Kim Jong Il (Updated and bumped)

The Washington Post is the latest news source to note the deterioration of North Korea’s food situation.  The  Post suggests that  this time could be different from the Great Famine, when millions died quietly.  A grim rite of spring in Northeast Asia is the calculation of how many North Koreans could starve before the fall harvest — and what the neighbors are willing to do about it.  This year, though, the famine bailout season is more urgent, more complicated and...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
March 19, 2008

Tibet Updates, and the Images China Doesn’t Want You to See

BARBARA DEMICK IS IN CHINA, filing reports about the spread of the protests beyond Lhasa and the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Tibetan activists said at least 15 more were killed near a remote mountain monastery in Sichuan province when paramilitary troops fired at a crowd of demonstrators who waved the Tibetan flag and chanted, “Free Tibet!” and “Bring back the Dalai Lama!” [L.A. Times] The surviving protestors then attacked a police station and government offices with Molotov cocktails. Guess which incident...

Categories China/Human Rights/Uncategorized
March 19, 2008

“Most of the film had to be kept secret for the past years.”

So says the director of a new South Korean film about a North Korean orphan living secretly in China. “Crossing,” a story directed by Kim Tae-gyun and starring Korean TV star Cha In-pyo, depicts an 8,000 km arduous and lonely journey made by an 11-year-old North Korean boy in search of his coal-miner father who ended up defecting to South Korea. [….] “I had to be very cautious in making this film because of the political sensitivity of the defector...

Categories Censorship/Refugees
March 18, 2008

Rule of Law or Rule By Law?

The Hanky has the vapors over President Lee’s plans to let the police use a bit more force against violent protestors. The plans include detailed rules on the use of force, and plans to arrest people who engage in violence and cross police lines. To this, the Hanky reacts with hyperbolic charges of a return to dictatorship: President Lee seemed to have been encouraging the police when he said, “If foreign television programs show the nation’s unlawful, violent demonstrators wielding...

Categories Censorship/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society
March 17, 2008

Anju Links for 17 March 2008

CONDI RICE, COMMENTING ON THE FAILURE of the bilateral nuclear talks in Switzerland last week, confirms that “substantive differences remain” with North Korea, and that “she does not expect any immediate breakthrough.” Not even Chris Hill can deny it: Top U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill indicated Sunday that North Korea has, for now, responded unfavorably to U.S. proposals he presented to his North Korean counterpart to resolve a snag in the six-party process for denuclearizing the country. But the U.S....

Categories Uncategorized
March 17, 2008

The Ides of 3ì›”

So why is Lee Myung Bak is avoiding ideological fights with the left?  Probably because he’s concentrating his energy on purging his own party of political enemies, including supporters of Park Geun-Hye.    The Grand National Party has as expected eliminated a large number of its 62 incumbent lawmakers from the Gyeongsang Provinces, the party’s political heartland, in the selection of candidates for the general election next month. Twenty-five lawmakers or 43.5 percent were eliminated, the largest number in the...

Categories Korean Politics/The Fifth Column
March 17, 2008

Bread, Peace, and Kalashnikovs for Tibet (Not Necessarily in that Order)

Those Tibet protests continue to spread, although more outside Tibet proper than inside. Lhasa looks like an armed camp: CNN reports on the spread of the protests to other regions: The Chinese are making the best traction they can by reporting on the excesses of Tibetan protestors, while effectively keeping their own excesses off the TV screens. One thing the Chicoms do with great efficiency is censorship. They’re blacking out CNN, too: And of course, the usual suspects — U.N.,...

Categories "United" Nations/China
March 16, 2008

Tibet Updates

Although protests against the Chinese colonization are spreading geographically, it looks as though a massive Chinese show of force has restored Chinese control to Lhasa, at a cost of about 80 dead. Here’s a good slideshow of news photos and some recent video news reports. The first is from Sky News: Another casualty of the protests has been democracy free speech in India, whose government is arresting Tibetan protestors. Here’s a report from Australia. I will warn you that these...

Categories China
March 16, 2008

Chinese Academic: Accept North Korea as a Nuclear Power

China has a habit of using academics and scholars to float foreign policy trial balloons. Dingli Shen, a Professor and Executive Dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, recently visited North Korea, something he would not have done unless he spoke for at least a part of the Chinese government. Shen, a physicist and a former Professor of “American Studies,” has also acted as a quasi-governmental mouthpiece on North Korea here and here. Here’s what now: The...

Categories China/China & Korea/Six-Party Talks
March 15, 2008

Chris Hill Resignation Watch

The Edsel has thrown a rod, so today, we inaugurate a new OFK feature, where I’ll be (I hope) regularly updating you on any hints that Christopher Hill will take responsibility for the increasingly undeniable failure of Agreed Framework 2.0. Now, I should note that this entire feature is pretty much baseless, grounded entirely on my own speculation, gossip that’s probably false, and the fact that it would make perfect sense. Hey, I can’t change history and I can’t predict...

Categories Six-Party Talks
March 15, 2008

Will China Get Away With Murder Again?

China may be the O.J. Simpson of thuggish regimes. Gutter thugs like the rulers of Sudan and Burma have justly earned their international pariah status after calculating that the consequences of slaughter would be manageable and acceptable. China’s regime has learned from Saudi Arabia’s example, lining its avenues of commerce with expensive lobbyists and P.R. firms, thus escaping most of the consequences of its behavior and even buying its way to quasi-legitimacy. But even the Chinese know that this strategy...

Categories China
March 14, 2008

Six Two-Party Talks Update: So Far, So Not Bad

Thus far, Chris Hill has failed to sell Hawaii to the North Koreans for a string of beads, though not for lack of effort. This should make you sad, of course, because it’s bad for peace, and because ancient Japanese maps prove that Hawaii is North Korean. Top U.S. and North Korean nuclear negotiators tried Thursday to resolve a snag holding up the six-way process for ending Pyongyang’s nuclear programs, and while the U.S. envoy reported progress, it fell short...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks
March 14, 2008

Collapse Watch: Have We Reached Stage Five Yet?

One of the most interesting experiences of my four years with the Army in Korea was a “collapse briefing” I was able to attend at USFK Headquarters. I had not been able to find a copy of the briefing summarized online until Robert Kaplan published one in The Atlantic, which I commented on in this post. So for the new readers, I feel obliged to remind you of what I mean when I refer to “Stage Four” and “Stage Five.”...

Categories NK Military/Regime Change
March 13, 2008

“On the Border”

Today, on Capitol Hill, I had a chance to see an excerpt of that Chosun Ilbo documentary on human trafficking in North Korea. As my friend had said, it does indeed depict drug smuggling. One smuggler is actually interviewed on night vision, just as he emerges from the freezing Tumen River with a load of drugs he is smuggling into China. His source? His brother, a soldier, who is pilfering from a state pharmaceutical factory in Nampo. I wasn’t able...

Categories Drugs & N Korea/Human Trafficking/Media Criticism