Lazarus rising: A former South Korean soldier captured by North Korea during the Korean War escaped to China and was arrested by Chinese police while seeking to enter South Korea, a Chinese source said Monday. . . . Another source familiar with North Korea said if South Korean POWs who escaped from the North were extradited to the communist country they were likely to be executed. Returning Han to Pyongyang would be tantamount to sending him to the scaffold, the...

The Korea Herald’s analysis, boiled down to its essentials: North Korea is stable–despite terrible conditions and the country’s dependence on outside aid, which isn’t coming–because its people are scared of the government. Just like they were in Albania, Romania, and East Germany. Prediction is a very dangerous business when the facts are out of your reach.

Anyone out there work for the U.S. Information Agency? I think I’ve solved America’s bad P.R. problem in South Korea. First, we need to take a tip from these boys to get more sympathetic TV coverage. Second, the student organizations on South Korean campuses have much to teach us about alternative printed media. You’re kidding me–Hanchongryon propogating the North Korean party line? Why, you could knock me over with a gnat’s wing right now. I’m all for letting South Koreans...

I kid you not. North Korea has declared war on long hair and politically incorrect clothing: Tidy attire “is important in repelling the enemies’ manoeuvres to infiltrate corrupt capitalist ideas and lifestyle and establishing the socialist lifestyle of the military-first era,” the radio says. . . . . “People who wear other’s style of dress and live in other’s style will become fools and that nation will come to ruin,” it says. Yep. I couldn’t have said it any better...

I finally banged out a response to Ralph Sato’s NKZone comment on the new video of the street children North Korea. My previous post on the subject is here. Please be nice to Ralph, because no matter how misguided I consider him to be, I think he’s an entirely better species of human being than, say, this guy.

OhMyNews recently ran an interview with Christine Ahn, a strong opponent of the North Korean Human Rights Act. As it turns out, there are a few things OhMyNews didn’t tell its readers about Ms. Ahn’s membership in a group called the Korean Solidarity Committee. You can see much, much more at this very long post. My apologies in advance; it took a week to research and write this. You have been warned. UPDATE: Dave at No Illusions has added much...

I kid you not. North Korea has declared war on long hair and politically incorrect clothing: Tidy attire “is important in repelling the enemies’ manoeuvres to infiltrate corrupt capitalist ideas and lifestyle and establishing the socialist lifestyle of the military-first era,” the radio says. . . . . “People who wear other’s style of dress and live in other’s style will become fools and that nation will come to ruin,” it says. Yep. I couldn’t have said it any better...

I kid you not. North Korea has declared war on long hair and politically incorrect clothing: Tidy attire “is important in repelling the enemies’ manoeuvres to infiltrate corrupt capitalist ideas and lifestyle and establishing the socialist lifestyle of the military-first era,” the radio says. . . . . “People who wear other’s style of dress and live in other’s style will become fools and that nation will come to ruin,” it says. Yep. I couldn’t have said it any better...

I finally banged out a response to Ralph Sato’s NKZone comment on the new video of the street children North Korea. My previous post on the subject is here. Please be nice to Ralph, because no matter how misguided I consider him to be, I think he’s an entirely better species of human being than, say, this guy.

OhMyNews recently ran an interview with Christine Ahn, a strong opponent of the North Korean Human Rights Act. As it turns out, there are a few things OhMyNews didn’t tell its readers about Ms. Ahn’s membership in a group called the Korean Solidarity Committee. You can see much, much more at this very long post. My apologies in advance; it took a week to research and write this. You have been warned. UPDATE: Dave at No Illusions has added much...

The Jews did it! The Jews did it! And the Americans, too, of course. Boy, did I nail this one or what? How depressing to bet on the stupidity, venom, and mendacity of mankind and be assured of raking in heaps of winnings like this: The earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean on December 26, triggering a series of huge waves called tsunami, “was possibly” caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which “Israeli and American nuclear experts participated,” an...

The Jews did it! The Jews did it! And the Americans, too, of course. Boy, did I nail this one or what? How depressing to bet on the stupidity, venom, and mendacity of mankind and be assured of raking in heaps of winnings like this: The earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean on December 26, triggering a series of huge waves called tsunami, “was possibly” caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which “Israeli and American nuclear experts participated,” an...

Color me completely unsurprised to learn that there’s prostitution in North Korea, given the fact of North Korea’s extreme poverty, suppressed values, and the failure of every other east Asian nation’s war on prostitution. Hell, Kim Jong Il has even turned Alejandro Cao de Benos into his international pimp daddy, letting him run his own profitable travel agency / dating service / kisaeng house for frustrated white leftists who otherwise couldn’t get a date in a cellblock full of violent...

Pennsylvania Republican Representative Curt Weldon is headed for Pyongyang again–that is, unless Condi Rice stops him again. Tension builds as statesmen everywhere wonder: “Can Curt Weldon find the key to Kim Jong Il’s soul, so that we can all get back to making money again?” Maybe Kim will show Curt his collection of companions of “utmost beauty and intelligence,” or they could toast each other with some Hennessy. You know, those things count as extraordinary diplomatic progress, because they build...

This absolutely floored me: Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported yesterday that North Korean laborers dispatched to Russia turned down a return to their homeland and formed quasi refugee camps, hoping to go to a third country. This, according to the Rev. Douglas Shin: “North Korean laborers working in construction sites or farms in the Maritime Provinces of Siberia rejected a return home after their contracts terminated or had escaped from their workplaces and lived in a camp in some places....

This today, via the Nomad: Among the more common suggestions is that eco-weapons which can trigger earthquakes and volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves were being tested. More outlandish theories include one that aliens caused the earthquake to try and correct the “wobbly rotation of the Earth”. “There’s a lot more to this. Why is the US sending a warship? Why is a senior commander who was in Iraq (news – web sites) going there?” whispered designer Mark...

Norbert Vollertsen e-mailed me to report that he’s joined a contingent of the Korean Medical Association to deliver tsunami relief supplies in Indonesia: In an combined international effort together with the Korean Medical Association and the Indonesian Doctors Corporation we desperately try to carry 7 tons of medicine from Jakarta to the Aceh province. On Jan. 7 a team of us with 20 medics will head to Banda Aceh and then to tiny former fisher villages at the West Coast....