October 24, 2006

‘Lips and Teeth’ No More?

You may recall the recent interview I did with Chuck Downs, in which Mr. Downs spoke of China’s  efforts to  court members of the North Korean military.  Downs suggested that this was a key concern to Kim Jong Il, and may have motivated him to test his officers’ loyalty.  According to this report, the North Koreans have just managed to roll up China’s spy network inside North Korea. CHINA’S People’s Liberation Army is pushing the Government to get tough with...

Categories China & Korea
October 24, 2006

More Grim News on N. Korea’s Food Situation

New reports are  predicting that things are looking bleak for North Korea’s food situation this winter. Millions of North Koreans are at risk of starvation this winter as humanitarian aid levels drop amid an international furore over the country’s nuclear bomb test. Aid agencies say much of the population is already surviving on basic rations and fear any further drop in food supplies could lead to a repeat of the 1990s famine that killed as many as two million people....

Categories "United" Nations/China/China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid
October 24, 2006

Proliferation Security Watch

*   Hong Kong authorities have detained a North Korean ship “Kang Nam I, a 2,035-ton general cargo ship,” which had arrived from Shanghai.  North Korean crew members and Hong Kong customs officials suggest that the inspection is related to a couple dozen safety violations, that the ship is empty, and that the inspections are not related to U.N.S.C.R. 1718.  Crew members claim that the ship will sail again in two days.  The Chosun Ilbo reports that the search didn’t...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/Money Laundering/Technology/Uncategorized/WMD
October 23, 2006

First Act, Last Laugh, Part 2

I have a message  for whomever tried to stop “Yoduk Story” from playing in Seoul:  read, weep, and know that you have failed. “Whomever,” according to producer Jung Sung-San and the daily Chosun Ilbo (which backed YS), is  someone  in the South Korean government.  Eventually, the South Korean government got around to denying this.  Personally, I wasn’t there.  All I can say is that the accusation is  consistent with other things the South Korean government has done to  cover for...

Categories Censorship/Human Rights/Korean Society
October 23, 2006

U.N. Envoy: N. Korea Sends Handicapped to Camps

[Update:   Welcome Powerline readers!] Since I began blogging about North Korea, one of my core philosophies  has been  that nukes, diplomacy, and human rights aren’t logically separable. That’s because you deal with governments that possess a basic regard for human life differently from those that lack one. Governments in the first category share our desire to preserve life by avoiding war. Governments in the second category seek only to preserve and expand their own power; their motivations are not...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps
October 23, 2006

So Much for a Nuclear-Free Korea

Update:   A well-informed reader says the Pentagon denies this story. This should get their attention in Beijing.  As ye sow: Seoul and Washington will add use of nuclear arms by U.S. forces in response to North Korean atomic weapons in a joint operation strategy codenamed OPLAN 5027, sources said Thursday. That would mean the return of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea 15 years after they were pulled out in 1991. At the 28th Military Committee Meeting (MCM)...

Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/WMD
October 23, 2006

Ban Ki-Moon’s Image Makeover?

Already, Ban can see that what was popular in Seoul won’t cut it in the General Assembly.  In the rest of the world, North Korea is a pariah.  Besides, the man is highly sensitive about what bloggers say about him. “Taking the advantage of the U.N. Secretary-general’s authority and the U.N.’s functions, I plan to make the utmost efforts to actually improve the human rights situation in North Korea,” he said. Citing reports from U.N. human rights envoys and related...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
October 21, 2006

Dance, Little Piggy! (Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 14)

Most observers had speculated, since at least 1994 or so, that North Korea has the capacity to create a crude nuclear weapon. That appears to be exactly what they demonstrated recently, meaning that the only real news was our need to recalibrate Kim Jong Il’s brass-to-brains ratio. I didn’t guess whether he’d actually go through with it, but I did believe that he’d try to time it just before the U.S. election if he did. I also guessed that if...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/China & Korea/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea
October 21, 2006

Fractured Monolith

The quality and quantity of the Daily NK’s reports from inside the North just seem to get better. This week, two new reports fill in gaps in our knowledge about economic and social conditions; both are absolute must-reads. The first is filled with pictures of gritty scenes of daily life in the North. It’s astonishing to see the extent to which the blockade has eroded when pictures like these come out. On this day, the brawl began as 2 young...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK/Korean Society
October 21, 2006

Another MUST-READ: NYT on the Erosion of the Information Blockade

Many thanks to a reader for forwarding. The Times is on an absolute roll with its recent Korea reporting. Here, we learn more of the underground network that can sow dissent, and that could eventually form the foundation of a resistance movement. The increasing ease with which people are able to buy their way out of North Korea suggests that, beneath the images of goose-stepping soldiers in Pyongyang, the capital, the government’s still considerable ability to control its citizens is...

Categories Refugees/Religion/Resistance
October 21, 2006

MUST READ: NYT on Korean Nationalism, North and South

Today, even though it has a highly advanced economy — more than 80 percent of South Koreans have broadband Internet access at home, the highest rate in the world — the country has a nearly provincial relationship to its local heroes, like Ban Ki-moon, the foreign minister who will be the next U.N. secretary general. The most famous South Korean of recent times was Hwang Woo Suk, a scientist who in 2004 and 2005 announced breakthroughs in cloning. At home,...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Korean History/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 21, 2006

To Slip the Noose

The New York Times has a very interesting piece war-gaming the enforcement the Proliferation Security Initiative. One possibility would be for North Korea to try to smuggle out weapons or weapons components across its land borders with China or Russia, and then to a Chinese or Russian port. The weapons could then be loaded on a vessel secretly owned by North Korea but flying another country’s flag — and perhaps not be closely watched by Western intelligence services as a...

Categories Anti-Americanism/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/WMD
October 21, 2006

Condi Rice Saves Thirty Minutes of My Life

[Update:   Senior State Department official Victor Cha flat-out says it aint so.] … by raising serious doubts about the hearsay report that Kim Jong Il had apologized to a Chinese envoy for his recent nuclear test, or promised not to do it again. I don’t think apology and regret are components of the emotional vocabulary of a psychopath or a malignant narcissist, except as a means of manipulating others.  Kim Jong Il had his reasons.  I don’t know what...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Russia/Russia & Korea/WMD
October 19, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 56

At the end of this post, there is big news, but  if I told you now, I couldn’t wring the last full measure of absurdity out of  it.  So please stick with me here.  I have  accused the South Korean government of promoting anti-Americanism.  When I do, I speak of things like  this: The chief presidential secretary for security Song Min-soon on Wednesday said South Korea would be the greatest victim in a war on the peninsula due to the...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD/WTF?
October 19, 2006

Interview: L. Gordon Flake, Executive Director, Mansfield Foundation

Gordon Flake (bio)  is two things that make his opinions interesting and valuable to me.  First, he’s a fluent Korean speaker, and those of us who aren’t are always at some disadvantage to those who do when we are gathering the facts we process into our views.  Second — and Gordon may not agree with this characterization — his views  strike me as classically  liberal. His views are probably more independent and less jaundiced by partisan bias or  ambitions  than...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/Famine & Food Aid/Google Earth/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Media Criticism/NK Economics/Proliferation/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views