Search Results for: Fifth Column

~          1          ~ I HAVE A GREAT DEAL OF SYMPATHY FOR family members who want to bring their abducted loved ones from home North Korea after so many years, especially as we read that some of them are nearing the end of their lives, but it’s hard for me to concede that paying ransom—and just look how Jeyup S. Kwaak struggles, not quite successfully, not to use that word—is the right answer. First, the...

~          1          ~ THREE CHEERS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST: Ever since Blaine Harden, Chico Harlan, and Max Fisher have covered the story, the Post‘s North Korea coverage has been leagues beyond that of any competitor, especially The New York Times. What’s really commendable is that the Post‘s editorial board draws the necessary conclusions from what its journalists are reporting: A COMMON illusion held by dictators is that they need only to shut the borders, turn...

PRAISE BE TO ZEUS, I DON’T HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THAT IMBECILE DENNIS RODMAN again, because Sung Yoon Lee has already done it so much better than I could. It’s not an easy thing to write a fat joke with the subtlety a respected academic must use to get invited back on the PBS News Hour to (polemically speaking) deflower those paired with him–or to the Oval Office. Lee not only manages this, he begins with a silly-yet-tragic story about...

Fighting Words, Part I: In an “only in North Korea” moment, soldiers go on TV to boast about shelling a village full of civilians: On Friday, North Korean soldiers appeared on a state TV program marking Kim’s appointment anniversary and bragged of participating in the artillery barrage. “Our eyes were full of fire right after we saw the enemy’s shells being fired into our sacred waters,” soldier Kim Moon Chol said, clinching his fists and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with three uniformed...

Now that Bush is safely out of the way, the truth can finally be told: Siegfried Hecker says that North Korea is building its own light-water nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. ___________________________ North Korea bites the hand that feeds it: Rodong Shinmun, the daily publication of the Chosun Workers’ Party, asserted in an editorial on the 11th, “We should wake up to western countries’ aid diplomacy,” citing a quote attributed to Kim Jong Il, “There is no more stupid and dangerous...

So North Korea claims to have detained four South Korean “trespassers.” Even worse, KCNA denies us the amusement of the term “relevant organ.” I was waiting to post on this until I actually knew who they were or where they were detained, but several days later, the North Koreans are still the only ones who do know. Then there is still the matter of the American whom the North Koreans claim defected to them several weeks back. Assuming this isn’t...