August 31, 2006

TKL Interview with Chuck Downs on the Alliance, Diplomacy, Nukes, and Why Kim Jong Il Tested Those Missiles

[Update 2: Thanks to the reader who pointed out that I had accidentally disabled the comments! That’s fixed now; please submit any questions or comments you have.] [Update: This post will “stick” at the top of the page for a couple of days; scroll down for new entries.] Chuck Downs is an author, independent consultant, and former Pentagon official who frequently appears on television news programs to discuss North Korea policy. He has held a number of important positions in...

Categories An Alliance?/China & Korea/Geopolitics/Japan & Korea/Kim Jong Il/Korean Politics/Kremlinology/NK Military/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views/WMD
August 29, 2006

Be the First One on Your Block to Instigate a Missile Crisis (No, really.)

Update: Scroll down and tell me I didn’t find what I think I found. Yes, I had spent many hours “flying” over North Korea with Google Earth, but it took this article to tip me off to an entire online community of amateur photo intel analysts. The L.A. Times reports: An intrepid German poster named “wonders” has flagged more than 332 sites of interest. Most are military — the vast air defenses ringing Pyongyang, the artillery along the demilitarized zone,...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Korean Society/NK Military/North Korea/Technology
August 29, 2006

30 More N. Koreans Seek U.S. Asylum

From the Korea Herald: About 30 North Korean defectors are seeking asylum in the United States, Radio Free Asia quoted a mission leader working with refugees as saying yesterday. In an interview with the Wasington-based news channel, Rev. Cheon Ki-won of Durihana Mission said, “A second group of North Korean defectors will soon be entering the United States following the first six in May.” Cheon did not specify the identities of the defectors or their current whereabouts. “The number of...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Refugees
August 29, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 6

From the AP: The financial noose is tightening around North Korea as international banks sever ties with the nation – a move championed by the United States, a top Treasury Department official says. [….] “There is sort of a voluntary coalition of financial institutions saying that they don’t want to handle this business anymore and that is causing financial isolation for the government of North Korea,” Stuart Levey, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in an...

Categories Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Money Laundering/NK Economics
August 28, 2006

Welcome Home

A missionary who was imprisoned for 15 months after trying to aid North Korean refugees in China has returned home to a greeting of balloons and flowers from delighted relatives and friends. Wearing a baseball hat and dark sunglasses Monday night on his arrival at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the Rev. Phillip Jun Buck, 68, said returning home was like being in a “dream state.” A son, Jamin Yoon, 35, holding flowers as his father was swarmed by reporters, said his...

Categories Activism/China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
August 28, 2006

Witness: Counterfeit Bills Came from N. Korea

If you don’t know the background, start here. One of the Chinese gangsters is apparently cooperating, and went to court yesterday: A Californian man indicted on charges of smuggling counterfeit dollars into the U.S. testified at his trial that the high-quality counterfeit US$100 bills or “supernotes” were manufactured in North Korea, the National Intelligence Service said Monday. The NIS reported to the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee that the man admitted conspiracy to smuggle the supernotes and admitted where the phony...

Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering
August 28, 2006

Miss Woods, Fetch My ‘Enemies List!’

Well, well, look who the new “centrist” candidate, Goh Kun, invited to his big political coming-out day: The group’s inaugural meeting was held at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry building yesterday. A list of 106 promoters of the group included mostly scholars and prominent figures, including former Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun, who is now a professor at Ewha Womans University, and theater actress Park Jung-ja. Mr. Goh said the group did not include active politicians. Yes, that Jeong...

Categories Human Rights/Korean Politics
August 26, 2006

Is He Crazy After All?

A big welcome to the new readers from Gateway Pundit, and as always, many thanks to Jim for his link and his support. All of us who wonder why Kim Jong Il has does some of the bone-headed things he’s done lately have shared a few common assumptions about him as we engaged in this speculative parlor game of ours: * He is sane, rational, calculating, and reasonably well informed about his foes’ thought processes (some, however, would also argue...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/WMD
August 26, 2006

China’s Game in Korea: Choose Your Own Reality

[Update: This new report says that the growth rate of Chinese-N. Korean trade fell last quarter, but there are varying explanations. During the first months of this year, however, South Korea’s trade with the North also showed a modest rise, but a decrease in South Korean products (including aid) going North.] As Richardson noted earlier, there has been much recent speculation about the state of Chinese-North Korean relations, particularly since China voted for weakened but potentially significant sanctions at the...

Categories China & Korea/NK Economics/WMD
August 26, 2006

Lefkowitz: N.Korean Refugees Welcome in America

Updates: This chatroom for English-speaking expats in Thailand has pictures of the refugees and pages of outraged, sympathic comments. One of them points to this BBC story. The Thai government’s reaction is to increase patrols on the Mekong to keep the refugees out. Look at this baby’s face. Then try to comprehend what will happen to her if she is sent back to North Korea. . . ====== (original post follows) ====== With somewhere around 175 North Korean refugees in...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 23, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 5

Stuart Levey’s visit to Asia last month is paying off. Yet another nation is cutting off Kim Jong Il’s finances. Vietnamese banks have already closed down North Korean accounts over the past few weeks, most likely forcing Pyongyang to move its money to its last remaining haven, Russia, said Peter Beck, head of the International Crisis Group’s Seoul office, on Tuesday. Beck said Nigel Cowie, general manager of North Korea’s Daedong Credit Bank in Pyongyang, e-mailed him last week and...

Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/NK Economics
August 23, 2006

An Open Letter to Ambassador Lee Tae-Shik on the 169 Refugees Held in Thailand

[Update: Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon is promising to take “appropriate measures,” which is encouraging in a vague sort of way. Foreign diplomats also sound optimistic. I infer that this was an underground railroad operation, and get the distinct idea that it was betrayed from within, as I also suspect in the case of a previous operation in Laos. Note also that various reports count as many as 179 refugees, most of them women and kids. Separately, Yonhap reports a...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Refugees
August 22, 2006

Maybe They Should Get Out of Iraq…

A LEBANESE student suspected of trying to paralyse the German railway network with a bomb concealed in a suitcase appeared in court yesterday, as a huge police hunt for a second suspect continued. The root cause of this is clearly that unequivocal German support for Israel, and for Bu$h’s war, which of course started this whole terrorism thing: [T]he case has rattled Germans, many of whom have clung to the belief that their government’s opposition to the war in Iraq...

Categories Islam/Terrorism (NK)/Terrorism/Iraq
August 22, 2006

NK Freedom Watch, No. 5

Courtesy of Freedom House (with a hat tip to the staff there), here. Portions of this issue read like an indictment, which mainly makes it painfully obvious how far away we are from seeing a real one. The same methods of execution are applied to political criminals and economic criminals. When the death warrant is issued for a criminal, he is immediately cut off from all food supplies and his arms and legs are broken at the joints so that...

Categories Activism/Europe/Human Rights/Washington Views
August 21, 2006

Ministry of Perfect Timing

Seoul Condoles [?] N.Korea on Death of Spymaster— Chosun Ilbo, August 21, 2006 Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok on Monday expressed his condolences to his North Korean counterpart Kwon Ho-ung on the death of Rim Dong-ok, the vice chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland[….] The North Korea committee happens to have another job in planning anti-South Korean operations like dispatching spies, in cooperation with the 35th office of the Workers’ Party. Chameleon N.Korean Spy Nabbed in...

Categories Appeasement/The Fifth Column/WTF?