One of my regular readers is a teacher in Seoul who has visited North Korea and now volunteers his time to assist and teach English to North Korean defectors. Several weeks ago, I asked him if he would pose some questions to his students, contingent on them being comfortable answering. My correspondent asked me to be patient while he found the right circumstances to pose the question to the group. Today, I am pleased to report the responses of the...

Even I didn’t see this coming, and I’ve been salivating for it for years now. Nicholas Eberstadt sat down with the Chosun Ilbo today. He did more than take off the gloves; he’s swinging his numchucks. His comments seem to have scared even the Chosun, the proponent of what passes for “conservative” in South Korea–we hate you, but you’re very good for business. In today’s critical journalism consumer exercise, see if you can spot the interviewer’s sneer and the interviewee’s...

This week’s theme is “the winter marketplace.” Korean markets are sometimes warrens of tarpaulins, plywood, umbrellas, and neon; it can be hard to specify whether they are indoors or merely sheltering under a forest canopy of grimy plastic sheets stretched over narrow alleys. In winter, kettles of hot soup and gas burners warming noodles and fish cakes steam the air around this ancient commerce with ichteous perfume and give the bare yellow bulbs the glow of torches. Late at night,...

One of my regular readers is a teacher in Seoul who has visited North Korea and now volunteers his time to assist and teach English to North Korean defectors. Several weeks ago, I asked him if he would pose some questions to his students, contingent on them being comfortable answering. My correspondent asked me to be patient while he found the right circumstances to pose the question to the group. Today, I am pleased to report the responses of the...

Even I didn’t see this coming, and I’ve been salivating for it for years now. Nicholas Eberstadt sat down with the Chosun Ilbo today. He did more than take off the gloves; he’s swinging his numchucks. His comments seem to have scared even the Chosun, the proponent of what passes for “conservative” in South Korea–we hate you, but you’re very good for business. In today’s critical journalism consumer exercise, see if you can spot the interviewer’s sneer and the interviewee’s...

Even I didn’t see this coming, and I’ve been salivating for it for years now. Nicholas Eberstadt sat down with the Chosun Ilbo today. He did more than take off the gloves; he’s swinging his numchucks. His comments seem to have scared even the Chosun, the proponent of what passes for “conservative” in South Korea–we hate you, but you’re very good for business. In today’s critical journalism consumer exercise, see if you can spot the interviewer’s sneer and the interviewee’s...

This week’s theme is “the winter marketplace.” Korean markets are sometimes warrens of tarpaulins, plywood, umbrellas, and neon; it can be hard to specify whether they are indoors or merely sheltering under a forest canopy of grimy plastic sheets stretched over narrow alleys. In winter, kettles of hot soup and gas burners warming noodles and fish cakes steam the air around this ancient commerce with ichteous perfume and give the bare yellow bulbs the glow of torches. Late at night,...

This week’s theme is “the winter marketplace.” Korean markets are sometimes warrens of tarpaulins, plywood, umbrellas, and neon; it can be hard to specify whether they are indoors or merely sheltering under a forest canopy of grimy plastic sheets stretched over narrow alleys. In winter, kettles of hot soup and gas burners warming noodles and fish cakes steam the air around this ancient commerce with ichteous perfume and give the bare yellow bulbs the glow of torches. Late at night,...

Turkey has deported the two North Korean dope-dealing diplomats back to Bulgaria.

Score a point for the Marmot. This report suggests that foreign news stories describing Kim Jong Il’s brother-in-law as a more palatable successor led Kim to purge him. If true–and even this report casts it as speculation–it raises immediate suspicions of a cunning disinformation campaign intended to split the North Korean leadership. If so, good work.

I tend to treat the six-way talks as the irrelevancy they have proved to be. Odds are, if you’re reading this blog, you mostly agree. One hears honesty from a diplomat about as often as Soviet citizens read balanced reporting in Pravda. The analogy carries a step further; diplomacy, Pravda, and other carefully-crafted lies contain revealing omissions and nuances. A reference to party officials’ “mistakes” forecast their one-way ride to the Lubyanka just as surely as shifts in diplomatic positions...

OK, it’s not Bernie Kerik. I’m pretty disappointed to hear it, and I’m also deathly afraid that the next pick will be some cautious, squeaky clean politico too scared to bust heads.

Mr. Harrison published this bitter little diatribe today: Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration presented a worst-case scenario as an incontrovertible truth and distorted its intelligence on North Korea (much as it did in Iraq), seriously exaggerating the danger that Pyongyang is secretly making uranium-based nuclear weapons. I have to stop for a moment to wonder how far the name “Selig Harrison” got this guy. If my name were, say, Allistair J. Cockburn III, I’d probably be Undersecretary of...

Another day, another PR disaster for North Korea. Yesterday, we failed to learn the fate of Megumi Yokota, kidnapped in 1977 at age 13; DNA tests proved that the remains Pyongyang handed over and said were Megumi’s weren’t. North Korea also gave President Koizumi a set of remains it claimed belonged to Kaoru Matsuki, who was kidnapped in 1980 at the age of 26. North Korea claimed that Kaoru was killed in a car accident in 1986. DNA tests released...

Turkey has deported the two North Korean dope-dealing diplomats back to Bulgaria.

Score a point for the Marmot. This report suggests that foreign news stories describing Kim Jong Il’s brother-in-law as a more palatable successor led Kim to purge him. If true–and even this report casts it as speculation–it raises immediate suspicions of a cunning disinformation campaign intended to split the North Korean leadership. If so, good work.

I tend to treat the six-way talks as the irrelevancy they have proved to be. Odds are, if you’re reading this blog, you mostly agree. One hears honesty from a diplomat about as often as Soviet citizens read balanced reporting in Pravda. The analogy carries a step further; diplomacy, Pravda, and other carefully-crafted lies contain revealing omissions and nuances. A reference to party officials’ “mistakes” forecast their one-way ride to the Lubyanka just as surely as shifts in diplomatic positions...

OK, it’s not Bernie Kerik. I’m pretty disappointed to hear it, and I’m also deathly afraid that the next pick will be some cautious, squeaky clean politico too scared to bust heads.