December 30, 2014

President Park’s unification plan is missing a Phase 2

For months now, we’ve heard Park Geun Hye telling us about how reunification would be a “jackpot” for both Koreas, but we’ve never heard her explain just how she intends to achieve this result. This left some rather important questions unanswered. Having heard so much from President Park about Phase 3 (profit!) and so little about Phases 1 or 2, at least we know that she’s asking us to resume the collection of underpants: South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said Wednesday that Seoul and Washington...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
December 29, 2014

Christine Hong has been curiously silent about North Korea’s racism

By now, most of you have probably read that North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency, referring to President Obama’s failure to censor “The Interview,” said that “Obama Reckless always in words and Deeds Goes like a Monkey in a Tropical Forest.” (KCNA.kp is unlinkable, but I’ve pasted the full article below the fold. The article in question is dated December 27, 2014.) This is the third racist attack on President Obama KCNA has printed, and the second it has printed...

Categories Racism/Useful Idiocy
December 29, 2014

If S. Korea’s missile defense worries China, just wait till the neighbors start nuking up.

The deployment of ballistic missile defense systems around North Korea by the United States and its allies could be an effective way to change China’s strategic thinking about Pyongyang, a U.S. congressional report said. The Congressional Research Service made the point in a recent report, “North Korea: U.S. Relations, Nuclear Diplomacy, and Internal Situation,” saying Beijing would find it not in its national interest if provocative actions by the North lead to increased military deployments in the region. [Yonhap] Here’s...

Categories China/Proliferation/WMD
December 29, 2014

Bruce Bechtol on the John Batchelor show

The title: North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era: A New International Security Dilemma. When you’re done with that, Bechtol has written a paper arguing that North Korea’s proliferation activity (contrary to some views) is increasing, and discusses ways to disrupt it. One of the many tragic consequences of the Syrian Civil War is that it has increased an old customer’s demand for North Korea’s wares.

Categories Proliferation/WMD
December 27, 2014

Hard times for North Korean mines, and miners

Please pardon me for taking a few days of rest with my family during the holidays. I’ll have much to say about The Interview, Nate Thayer’s intrepid reporting on the AP, and other exigent matters after we’re all played out on Legos and board games. Meanwhile, I have a few posts that I’d written last weekend and had planned to publish when North Korea hit the front pages. Here is the first of them. ~   ~   ~ A series of possibly...

Categories Human Trafficking/NK Economics