Note: Video link fixed! Scroll down for updates. And a big welcome to all the readers from the Command Post and MSNBC! From the North Korean exile newspaper DailyNK, via Kommentariat, comes this remarkable video. The tape, which is the third to emerge from North Korea in two weeks, appears to be the first ever of an anti-government organization in North Korea. Those who made the tape would almost certainly have faced a firing squad had they been caught. Because...

Note: Video link fixed! Scroll down for updates. And a big welcome to all the readers from the Command Post and MSNBC! From the North Korean exile newspaper DailyNK, via Kommentariat, comes this remarkable video. The tape, which is the third to emerge from North Korea in two weeks, appears to be the first ever of an anti-government organization in North Korea. Those who made the tape would almost certainly have faced a firing squad had they been caught. Because...

Inauguration Sledding Day: My Election Day foray into politics was enough for me. Driven not so much by an affection for George Bush as my abject terror of a Kerry presidency (pretty well encapsulated in this image), I did it as one might crawl into a sewer to save a trapped child. Much showering followed later, until I used it my poll-watching stint as a way to con my way into one of the best seats in the Ronald Reagan...

Every man has a price; but mine is higher than this. What better way to mollify a blogger’s widow than a nice little check to cash, right? Yes, I spend plenty of time maintaining this site, and I wouldn’t normally see much of a moral conflict in accepting ads, but I drew slashed a deep line in the sand when I saw what one of the ads was selling–Kim Il Sung collectables! Not here, not ever, no way, and not...

Here’s a little social experiment for you. See if you can guess which of these acts the Korean left would not consider to be the slightest bit exploitive or morally reprehensible: 1. Lawn bowling with Marie Antoinette. 2. Box seats next to Uncle Adolf at the 1936 Olympics. 3. A golf tour of Kim Jong Il’s favorite courses while this is happening outside the city limits. Yep. You guessed it. Next week in OhMyNews–a tour of Dachau’s finest shuffleboard courts,...

Every man has a price; but mine is higher than this. What better way to mollify a blogger’s widow than a nice little check to cash, right? Yes, I spend plenty of time maintaining this site, and I wouldn’t normally see much of a moral conflict in accepting ads, but I drew slashed a deep line in the sand when I saw what one of the ads was selling–Kim Il Sung collectables! Not here, not ever, no way, and not...

Here’s a little social experiment for you. See if you can guess which of these acts the Korean left would not consider to be the slightest bit exploitive or morally reprehensible: 1. Lawn bowling with Marie Antoinette. 2. Box seats next to Uncle Adolf at the 1936 Olympics. 3. A golf tour of Kim Jong Il’s favorite courses while this is happening outside the city limits. Yep. You guessed it. Next week in OhMyNews–a tour of Dachau’s finest shuffleboard courts,...

I’ve posted some observations about United States v. Graner, the first Abu Ghraib case, here.

I’ve posted some observations about United States v. Graner, the first Abu Ghraib case, here.

Condi Rice’s comments on Korea contained no major surprises. We want talks; we have no intention of invading. A nice word in there about the South Korean deployment to a safe location guarded by Kurdish militia Iraq. All things you’d expect a diplomat to say. She was generally prepared, but even when she was, her answers sounded canned and tinny. My overall impression, however, was dissatisfaction that she didn’t really answer some of Babs Boxer’s tough questions on Iraq, but...

Whose Hostile Policy? According to one former North Korean intel agent, the regime kidnapped another 40 people from China between 1999 and 2001– most or all of them defectors–and dragged them back across the Tumen to the Workers’ Paradise. A few were Japanese nationals. UPDATE: The Chosun Ilbo accuses China of turning a blind eye to the North Korean kidnappers’ activities on their soil. As reprehensible as the Chinese are for intentionally repatriating thousands of North Koreans to the gulags...

Condi Rice’s comments on Korea contained no major surprises. We want talks; we have no intention of invading. A nice word in there about the South Korean deployment to a safe location guarded by Kurdish militia Iraq. All things you’d expect a diplomat to say. She was generally prepared, but even when she was, her answers sounded canned and tinny. My overall impression, however, was dissatisfaction that she didn’t really answer some of Babs Boxer’s tough questions on Iraq, but...

Whose Hostile Policy? According to one former North Korean intel agent, the regime kidnapped another 40 people from China between 1999 and 2001– most or all of them defectors–and dragged them back across the Tumen to the Workers’ Paradise. A few were Japanese nationals. UPDATE: The Chosun Ilbo accuses China of turning a blind eye to the North Korean kidnappers’ activities on their soil. As reprehensible as the Chinese are for intentionally repatriating thousands of North Koreans to the gulags...

That North Korean along the border with China has apparently become the final (at least as far as China is concerned) resting place for billions of yuan in Chinese public funds. In what must be the week’s most delicious irony, China is now asking the North Koreans to close it down, despite the fact that it has to be one of Kim Jong Il’s prime sources of foreign exchange. North Korea, in addition to receiving most of its fuel and...

DO NOT MISS Rebecca MacKinnon’s article on how cell phones are breaking down North Korea’s information blockade. New readers may not know that Rebecca founded the must-read group blog NKZone, where I’m a regular contributor.

No, they’re not “officially” taxes; they’re merely mandatory payments the state collects from citizens. Whatever nomenclature you choose, North Korea is sharply increasing them, having already raised prices dramatically in the course of what it has euphemistically dubbed “economic reform.” In actuality, North Korea is a society with deep state-imposed class divisions, which means that the poor inevitably do most of the starving and dying when the state changes its systems for the collection and distribution of capital. This Amnesty...

I am Kim Jong Il, and I want you to repeal the North Korean Human Rights Act. Please.

Apocalypse Watch: The United Nations has said poorly-led nations mired in poverty like North Korea should not be given huge aid packages. . . . The report, titled “Investing in Development”, classified North Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Belarus as badly led, poverty-stricken states widely condemned for human rights abuses, and advised they should not receive large amounts of international aid. Is the United Nations actually growing a pair . . . of standards?