February 21, 2007

Kim Jong Il Loses North Korean Soccer Mom Demographic

According to the Daily NK’s various sources, Kim Jong Il has  banned  either some or all Japanese cars, after one of them broke down on the road and blocked his path. So far, most of the middle-class North Koreans or low-ranking party officials have been using Japanese cars, whereas the richest riding Mercedes. Also, Korean-Japanese who immigrated into the North are fond of the cars they used to drive in Japan. So the number of Japanese-built cars is more than...

Categories Inside NK/Kim Jong Il
February 21, 2007

We’d All Love to See the Plan

The Korea Times tells us that the South Korean Justice Ministry, having felt the weight of criticism, has a new plan to protect the human rights of North Koreans.  It then proceeds to tell us absolutely nothing about  the plan  or provide a link to it (nothing on the MOJ site, either).  Now I  remember why I quit reading the Times.  Anyway, if it’s anything like the Human Rights Commission’s plan, I doubt  we’re missing much.

Categories Human Rights/Korean Law/Media Criticism
February 21, 2007

‘Paying the Clown’

[Corrected, Updated]   Harvard Professor Sung Yoon Lee  dissects the North Korea sellout  in the Daily NK and manages to say in one paragraph, with crisp eloquence, what it’s taken me about four posts to say less clearly. Energy, food, economic aid, and legitimacy are a necessary condition to the North Korean regime’s long-term survival, for the quintessential criminal regime of Kim Jong Il–despite its claims of juche (self-sufficiency)–is unable to function over the long-term without aid from abroad. At...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 21, 2007

The Two (South) Koreas

I have concluded that there must be some South Korean law against holding cabinet meetings. South Korea’s point man on North Korea said Wednesday that there is no evidence to support reports that North Korea may have a uranium-enrichment program. “We do not have any information on whether North Korea is carrying out a concrete plan to run a uranium-enrichment program,” Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung said at a meeting of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and trade.  [Yonhap] National...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 20, 2007

A Rumble at Kouvola

Fred Frey International brings us the story from this  remote Finnish border post, which  was recently the scene of two North Koreans going a bit overboard in protecting the diplomatic pouch they were carrying.  They weren’t carrying diplomatic passports, but the Finns were ultimately willing to overlook that.  None of this would have happened if the North Koreans had just shown their tickets. I wonder what was in the pouch…. Update:   See also Antti’s great blog with the unpronounceable...

Categories Diplomacy/Europe/WTF?
February 20, 2007

10,000th N. Korean Refugee Arrives in S. Korea

[Update:   No, this can’t be right.  Compare it to Andrei Lankov’s figures on Page 54 of this study.  I suspect that the total number of defectors living in the South has just exceeded the 10,000 mark, and that the reporter is misinterpreting that figure.] The arrival of 10 North Koreans here late last week heralds an era of 10,000 defectors a year arriving from the Stalinist country. Until the early 1990s, only a few dozen North Koreans fled the...

Categories Defectors/Refugees
February 20, 2007

Japanese NGO Delivers Aid Inside North Korea

OK, I’m amazed: The operation to distribute emergency supplies in Hamgyong-bukto, North Korea was a success. Through one of our clandestine local networks, we were able to provide extremely needy people with a total of one ton of rice, as well as clothing and antibiotics. The value of all items supplied equaled 300,000 yen (about US$2,500). The extra supplies were financed by recent donations. Late November of last year, five members of LFNKR’s local group JYO entered Hoeryong-si, North Korea...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
February 19, 2007

It’s Time for Jay Lefkowitz to Resign

I recently wrote a piece for publication on North Korea’s finances, the rumors of the then-prospective deal with North Korea,  and how to increase the pressure so that we could get a truly verifiable dismantlement of their nuclear program and a real and fundamental movement toward transparency.   If no favorable agreement could be achieved,  our financial strategy  showed real promise in  collapsing  the regime’s palace economy, and maybe even the regime  itself, something for which my aspiration is no secret. ...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
February 18, 2007

Holocaust Now: Looking Down Into Hell at Camp 22

Those who have lived to tell us about Camp 22, located in the bleak northeastern tip of North Korea, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and all of them are former guards or staff. Of all of North Korea’s numerous labor camps and detention facilities, large and small, Camp 22 is one of the largest, and almost certainly the most terrible, if only for the inhuman experiments witnesses say were done to the men, women, children, and...

Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/The Camps
February 18, 2007

Chinese Ex-Envoy Accused of Spying

Former Chinese ambassador to Korea Li Bin has been detained and questioned by Chinese police on charges of leaking state secrets, it emerged over the weekend. Li was the envoy in Seoul from September 2001 to August 2005. After returning to China, he was ambassador in charge of North Korean nuclear affairs. Li was suddenly summoned to Beijing last December while serving as deputy mayor of Weihai in China’s eastern Shandong Province and his name disappeared from the list of...

Categories China
February 17, 2007

Except for the Checks Being Written Out to ‘Herr A. Hitler,’ and The Dachau Industrial Park, Yes

Paying off Kim Jong Il is just like the Marshall Plan, says Roh. “There is frequent criticism that we are pouring out aid to the North,” Mr. Roh told South Korean residents in Italy. “After the war, the United States had several plans and investments, and among those the most efficient was the Marshall Plan. He noted the great benefits Washington had reaped from its investments: “Inter-Korean relations are being worked out, and we have the Kaesong Industrial Complex, but...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement
February 16, 2007

A Seven-Step Plan to Save NATO

First story: Senator John McCain, a Republican contender for the White House in 2008, chastised Europe on Saturday for failing to supply the troops and money to win in Afghanistan and said NATO’s future was at stake. In tough comments that singled out specific countries, McCain told NATO allies to move beyond the “false debate” over security and development priorities in Afghanistan — a dispute that dominated a defense ministers’ meeting earlier this week.  [Reuters] Second story: An Italian judge...

Categories Uncategorized
February 16, 2007

Why We Should Withdraw Our Troops from Korea: Just the Latest Reason

GI Korea has an update on the case of a female American soldier who was sexually assaulted by a Korean soldier during an exercise.  The soldier was found guilty.  And how much time did he get?  Zip.  The 2 1/2 year sentence is an insult by itself, but the court suspended the entire sentence.  And people ask me why I  consider Korean courts incompetent to try American soldiers.  Granted, the assault ended when the  young American woman gave her assailant...

Categories UCMJ & SOFA
February 16, 2007

The Han Breeds a New Monster: Anti-Semitism

[Update:   Little Green Footballs has a post up, and it looks like another beating for South Korea’s image, judging by the comments.  A few aren’t of much higher caliber than those on Naver, but it’s mostly a collective “WTF did Jews ever do to Koreans?“] [Update 2:   LGF readers take note.  More troops who need our support.] The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s reaction to  an anti-Semitic volume of the best-selling graphic  series “Monnara Iunnara” has hit the Chosun Ilbo. ...

Categories Korean Society
February 15, 2007

Escape from Munich

[Update:    The Washington Post declares a  conservative revolt against the Not-Quite-Agreed Framework.  E-mailing another activist today, I noted the irony that after years of being on President Bush’s side and getting no media traction, we’re far more likely to attract media attention now that we oppose his new policy.  Just watch.  This will be  a fascinating experiment in media behavior.] [Update 2:   More at MSNBC.  The Administration is now  furiously “clarifying” that it will  interpret the terms strictly, which...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Uncategorized
February 14, 2007

Bush’s Korea Sellout Rolls On

[Update:   Not Washington, but San Francisco, to meet with (presumably friendly) NGO’s,  and New York, to meet Chris Hill for bilateral talks.  I wonder if they mean this NGO, or this one.  We may soon test the old adage that all publicity is good publicity.] The chief nuclear negotiators of North Korea and the United States are planning to visit each other’s capital soon, a diplomatic source in Seoul was quoted as saying in a South Korean news report...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks