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
February 14, 2007

A Bus Bombing Even I Can Like

A car loaded with explosives blew up near a bus carrying members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards in southeastern Iran, killing 18 of them, the state-run news agency reported today. The car stopped in front of the bus near Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan Province, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. It called the attack a terrorist operation and said the car’s occupants fled on motorbikes seconds before the car exploded.  [The Independent; ht Gateway Pundit] The Al-Quds are...

Categories Iran
February 14, 2007

Japanese TV Interviews Two of the North Korean Border Guards Who Deserted at Hoeryong

A remarkable new report, with video, strongly corroborates recent reports that 20  North Korean border guards defected, en masse, and fled into China.  On the 12th, Japan’s Asahi TV interviewed two North Korean border guards who successfully defected from North Korea to a neighboring village in China. On the 4th, the DailyNK reported that 1 platoon of border guards from the district of Hoiryeong had defected to China, and that secret agents had been sent to China in search of...

Categories Google Earth/Inside NK/NK Military
February 13, 2007

Mysterious Pits in a North Korean Field, 39.944 N, 125.471 E : Image Analysts Wanted

[Update: Coordinates corrected.] [Update 2:Digg the story here.] Reader “kdehead” dropped a comment on another post below, with a link to a Google Earth image of a field near of the “ghost cities” I’d described in this post. Here is part of the image he links (click for full size): Here is his comment: ::Here is : slightly OT”¦ but what is this? [link to image] are they trenches/pits with prisoners? note the bottom one – half full. the one...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Inside NK
February 13, 2007

The Not-Quite-Agreed Framework

[Originally, “Hill:  We Have a Deal.”] [Update:   I’ve pasted the full text of this “agreement” onto the bottom of this post.  Thanks to a reader.] Uh oh. The U.S. envoy to talks on nuclear program said Tuesday that a tentative agreement had been reached on initial moves for the communist nation’s disarmament. “I’m encouraged by this that we were able to take a step forward on the denuclearization issue,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said. He declined to...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 13, 2007

Definitely Not Gitmo

Chinese authorities in the far-west city of Urumqi today executed an ethnic Uyghur man for allegedly attempting to “split the [Chinese] motherland. “The execution was carried out at 9 a.m.,” Ismail Semed’s widow, Buhejer, told RFA’s Uyghur service. “They gave his body to us at the cemetery. Some of his relatives and friends joined us. When the body was transferred to us at the cemetery I saw only one bullet hole in his heart. Semed, a Uyghur political activist deported...

Categories China/Terrorism (NK)