February 4, 2008

Kaesong Workers Recoup Stolen Wages on the Black Market

With all the questions about how much pay  Kaesong workers actually collect, we’ve always  suspected that their earnings  must be  far  more than most of their North Korean neighbors.  For one thing, the workers are hand-picked loyalists; the regime  must want to keep them relatively content.   Yet no one really believed that the workers received the “official” wage of around $60 a month, after “voluntary” deductions and the bite of the inflated official exchange rate. I figured it was just...

Categories Human Trafficking/NK Economics
February 4, 2008

U.S., ROK Forces Will Draw up Contingency Plans for N. Korea Unrest

It’s about time: The Defense Ministry is planning to create a joint plan with the United States to cope with possible internal unrest in North Korea after the Lee Myung-bak administration comes into office.   According to military sources, the ministry reported last month a US-Korea joint plan to the transition committee in preparation for possible contingencies in North Korea from March to the end of this year. [….]   “The current administration was too conscious of North Korea to...

Categories An Alliance?/Reconstruction/Uncategorized
February 4, 2008

N. Korea Demands Japan Drop Abductions Issue

Does this sound like a nation that has renounced terrorism? North Korea-Japan relations will never improve if Japan continues to link their improvement with a bilateral dispute over North Korea’s past abductions of Japanese nationals, North Korea’s state-run media said Thursday. In a lengthy commentary, the Korean Central News Agency said that North Korea has not forgiven Japan for forcing many Korean women into sexual slavery and taking many Korean men to Japan during World War II, and that it...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Terrorism (NK)
February 3, 2008

Advantage, Lefkowitz?

The latest Bush Administration official to return from Pyongyang empty-handed is Sung Kim, who spent three days in Pyongyang and got no nuclear declaration for his trouble.  It’s a well known fact of diplomacy that even when no translation is necessary, it can take 72 hours to comprehend the utterance of the word “no. The latest Bush Administration alumnus to denounce its failing last-ditch appeasement of North Korea is former speechwriter Michael Gerson, who writes in the Washington Post about...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
February 1, 2008

Anju Links: Food Woes, A Lefkowitz Resignation Rumor, OPCON, and Reforming the HRC

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE WEATHER IN CHINA? Dozens are dead and thousands of travelers have been stranded. It’s severe enough that the Chinese government is worried about its own food supply later this year. “The impact of the snow disaster in southern China on winter crop production is extremely serious,” said Chen Xiwen, the government’s leading expert on the agricultural economy. “The impact on fresh vegetables and on fruit in some places has been catastrophic.” [Daily Telegraph] Add this...

Categories Anju Links
February 1, 2008

KCTU Declares Jihad Against Lee M.B., Scores Meeting With Nancy Pelosi

On Tuesday, I wrote that President-Elect Lee was about to meet with the leaders of South Korea’s largest, most radical, and most violent labor organization — the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. There was, however, the matter of KCTU Chairman Lee Sok-Haeng’s outstanding arrest warrant for an “illegal” rally last October. President-Elect Lee, showing more interest in public order than his predecessor, was not willing to let this slide or grant Chairman Lee the special privilege of being questioned at...

Categories Anti-Americanism/U.S. Politics
January 31, 2008

N. Korea: We Won’t Budge

As State Department official Sung Kim heads for Pyongyang  to try to  save  Chris Hill’s  failing deal, North Korea is trying to be unambiguous about just how much it’s willing to give. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a Chinese Communist Party official Wednesday that there is no change in Pyongyang’s stance of implementing a six-party agreement on the North’s denuclearization, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported.  Kim made the remarks when he met with Wang Jiarui, head of...

Categories China & Korea/Six-Party Talks
January 29, 2008

Anju Links for 29 Jan 08

BRING OUT YOUR  NOT-QUITE-DEAD:  “UN agency to conduct its first census since famine killed millions.”  If things don’t quite add up, try looking here. NOT LOOKING GOOD  FOR KEVIN G. HALL:  A reader e-mails a detailed article — co-written by Bradley K. Martin,  no less –that  drives a few 3-inch  sheetrock screws into the coffin of Hall’s piece of work.  If you’re not yet saying “enough already” to all of this, the updated post is  here. DAVID ALBRIGHT, CALL YOUR...

Categories Anju Links
January 28, 2008

SOTU Speech Fails to Mention North Korea

I heard “Korea,” and I think I  probably heard  “North” somewhere, but I did not hear “North Korea.”   It’s  nice that President Bush stands against genocide in  Sudan.  Seriously.  It would be better than “nice” if  Bush would do something meaningful to stop it.  It’s too bad, of course, that he chose to end his term as  an abettor of  a genocidal regime  in North Korea.  North Korea was even left out of his catch-all  list of repressive  nations  abroad. ...

Categories Appeasement/U.S. Politics
January 28, 2008

Anju Links for 28 Jan 08

OUR  FIFTEEN SECONDS:  I’m extremely pleased to see reader and friend CPT Jon Stafford getting great circulation for his must-read article, “Finding America’s Role in  a Collapsed North Korean State.”  Richardson had previously linked to a  video  discussion between the online editors of The Weekly Standard and Foreign Policy that scratched the surface of the problem, just.  Today, Bradley Martin, author of “Under the Loving  Care of the Fatherly Leader” has an article discussing it in somewhat greater depth at...

Categories Anju Links
January 26, 2008

Anju Links for 26 Jan 08

THE STREETS ARE NOT PAVED WITH GOLD: North Korean refugees talk about working two jobs, missing their families, immigration paperwork, English, and surviving. It’s not perfect, but it sure beats the alternatives: “During the March of Starvation 10 years ago, I lay in my bedroom after having had nothing to eat for three days and thought, ‘So this is how people die.’ For me to be here is like a dream. I do not have anything in North Korea and...

Categories Anju Links
January 26, 2008

Fox: White House May Accept Incomplete N. Korean Declaration

“Foreign diplomatic sources” have told Fox News that Chris Hill has floated the idea of accepting a declaration that omits information about North Korea’s proliferation — to Syria, for  instance —  or its suspected uranium enrichment programs. With North Korea almost a month overdue on its obligation to provide a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs and materiel, the Bush administration — under increasing pressure from American conservatives to take a harder line with Pyongyang, or abandon the...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
January 26, 2008

Jane’s: N. Korean Regime Near Collapse

[Update: Digg it here] [Update 2: A reader points out that Reuben F. Johnson is the source of both the Weekly Standard and Jane’s stories. I admit that I’m not familiar with Johnson’s work, but when a story comes with specifics, it’s more persuasive than when it comes without.] Kim Jong-Il’s regime could collapse within six months, bringing chaos to North Korea, observers and intelligence sources in Asia have told Jane’s. [. . . .] I know, I know: saying...

Categories Uncategorized
January 25, 2008

Anju Links for 25 Jan 08

HEY, MEND THIS FENCE:   President-Elect Lee  Myung Bak has sent Chung Mong-Joon  to the United States to “mend fences” which implies the obvious — relations between the United States and South Korea have deteriorated.  The Hanky runs down how it went.  While I’m sure Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel won’t be a tough audience, if Lee wants to  repair some of South  Korea’s well-deserved reputation for anti-Americanism,  he can start with his own damn side of the fence.  HOSTILE POLICY: ...

Categories Anju Links
January 25, 2008

Kevin G. Hall’s Counterfeit Journalism (Updated)

[Update 28 Jan 08:   I’m going to keep flogging this story until I’ve corrected the record.  A reader (thank you)  directs me to this Bloomberg story by none other than Bradley K. Martin and Hideko Takayama.  This one is second only to Steven Mihm’s  for  the quality of its  investigative reporting.  If you’ve read Martin’s book, you’ll  already know  that he’s no neocon collapsist, to say the least.    Takayama and Martin interviewed Yoshihide Matsumura, “whose Matsumura Technology Co....

Categories Counterfeiting/Media Criticism/Money Laundering
January 24, 2008

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Senate Subcommittee Finds Massive Irregularities in UN’s North Korea Development Aid

[Scroll down for updates.] The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has just released its report on the UN Development Program’s North Korea scandal.  Previous postings here concern the U.S. Ambassador’s original complaint,  Ban Ki Moon’s unrealized promises  of a full investigation, and the suspicious  termination of a whistleblower.  First, the main findings: 1. UNDP operated in North Korea with inappropriate staffing, questionable use of foreign currency instead of local currency, and insufficient administrative and fiscal controls.   2. By preventing...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/U.S. Politics
January 23, 2008

Just What We Needed: Our Very Own Ministry of Unification.

From a White House press briefing today:  Q       Is the administration about to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism?      MS. PERINO:  No.  Right now where we are is waiting on the North Koreans to provide a complete and accurate declaration of their nuclear activities.  So we’re continuing to wait for that.  We still have people on the ground helping with the disablement of the Yongbyon nuclear facility.  So at this...

Categories Diplomacy/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views