December 22, 2014

What re-listing N. Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism would mean

The New York Times is reporting that President Obama is considering re-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism: As the United States moves closer to taking Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism, President Obama said he would “review” whether to return North Korea to the list, part of a broader government response to a damaging cyberattack on Sony’s Hollywood studio. “We have got very clear criteria as to what it means for a state to sponsor...

Categories Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)
December 20, 2014

We are all North Koreans now

As far as I know, I didn’t liberate a single North Korean during my four-year tour with the Army in South Korea, although I’ve argued their distant and forgotten cause ever since I came home. The crimes of Kim Jong Un were still distant just five weeks ago, when Professor Lee and I, writing in The New York Times, sounded a lonely warning about Kim’s efforts to censor his critics in the South with terror and violence, writing that “[c]aving...

Categories Censorship/Human Rights/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
December 18, 2014

If N. Korea hacked Sony and threatened us, here’s how we should respond

The New York Times, quoting “[s]enior administration officials,” is reporting that “American officials have concluded that North Korea ordered the attacks on Sony Pictures’s computers.” Senior administration officials, who would not speak on the record about the intelligence findings, said the White House was debating whether to publicly accuse North Korea of what amounts to a cyberterrorism attack. Sony capitulated after the hackers threatened additional attacks, perhaps on theaters themselves, if the movie, “The Interview,” was released. [N.Y. Times] The...

Categories Books & Films/Censorship/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
December 17, 2014

Max Fisher’s criticism of the Sunshine Policy is spot-on

Washington Post alumnus Max Fisher, now writing at Vox, presents a graph and data showing how, despite all of its abhorrent behavior, North Korea’s trade (most of it with China and South Korea) has grown, and how that leads to more abhorrent behavior. The way it’s supposed to work is that North Korea’s belligerence, aggression, and horrific human rights abuses lead the world to isolate it economically, imposing a punishing cost and deterring future misdeeds. What’s actually happening is that North...

Categories Appeasement/Kaesong/Sunshine
December 16, 2014

And then again, some rumors are true

In October, I posted about rumors that several senior North Korean officials had lost their jobs, including Ma Won-Chun, who showed up shortly thereafter. But another subject of the rumors, Gen. Ri Pyong-Chol, the Commanding Officer of North Korean People’s Air Force, has lost his job. ~   ~   ~ Update: A reader wonders whether Ri has necessarily lost his job, or might have been promoted. Technically, I suppose it’s possible that both of those things could be true....

Categories Kremlinology
December 16, 2014

Suki Kim responds to critics of her decision to go undercover

It’s ironic to read how the people at PUST–who’ve suppressed their religious, political, and moral beliefs to accommodate and assist the world’s most oppressive regime, and also, to suppress the truth about it–have challenged Suki Kim’s ethical decisions. But some of those criticisms might be more valid coming from other sources, so Kim addresses them on her web site. I can’t disagree with Kim’s justification that overt journalism has failed us. There is a long tradition of “undercover” journalism—pretending to be something one is not in...

Categories Books & Films/Foreigners in N. Korea
December 15, 2014

NK Econ Watch on Camp 15

For several weeks, we’ve read reports that North Korea had razed Camp 15 to “prove” to foreign visitors that survivors’  accounts of the camp were false. Curtis has since examined imagery from October 20th, and declared himself “unsure of the recent status of the camp.” Clearly, reports that said no trace of the camp still existed were incorrect. That story never made sense to me, for two reasons. First, North Korea understands that the whole world is watching it on Google...

Categories The Camps
December 15, 2014

Tokyo Shimbun: Another deadly collapse in Pyongyang

Oh, and wait till you hear where: Last October, a collapse accident at a construction site for a new National Defense Commission Building, saw 80 people lose their lives, according to a Tokyo Shimbun report from today. The paper, citing information obtained by a South Korean government official through a source in North Korea, reported the victims were mostly laborers and soldiers affiliated with the military. It added that in order to prevent the accident scene from appearing in satellite...

Categories AP Watch/Inside NK
December 15, 2014

Can peer pressure do what South Korea’s conscience couldn’t?

Did the U.N. have to care about human rights in North Korea first for South Koreans to care, too? What is it about Michael Kirby that gives him the capacity to move the South Korean government that, say, Ban Ki Moon, Park Geun Hye, and Moon Jae In all lack? Assuming that anything can make a majority of South Koreans give a damn about North Koreans, what would that say about Korean society and its leaders? South Korea’s unification minister...

Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society
December 14, 2014

The North Korea crazy train keeps on a-rolling

So the views of Arturo Pierre Martinez that interest me aren’t his views on Iraq, Ferguson, or even North Korea, but the views that explain him best, which were buried at the bottom of CNN’s report: He also talked about unidentified flying objects, CIA involvement in the cocaine trade, “ultrasonic” devices that cause people to hear voices and experience bodily discomfort and how the Western news media unfairly portrayed North Korea. [CNN] You can see a video clip here, if...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea
December 12, 2014

This is why no rational person would invest in Kaesong

North Korea has unilaterally raised those “wages” that South Korean companies pay the North Korean regime for labor at Kaesong—wages that the workers probably never see, and that for all the Unification Ministry knows, are used to buy iron maidens, centrifuge bearings, and 300-millimeter rocket fuses. The Unification Ministry isn’t happy, but only because wage hikes are bad for business: “Our firm position is that it’s impossible to revise the wage system without consultations between the South and North,” the...

Categories Kaesong
December 12, 2014

South Korea’s censorship problem isn’t just about chromosomes

One of the most bipartisan political traditions in South Korea’s young democracy is the tendency of its presidents to use tax audits, prosecutions, libel suits, and state-subsidized street violence to censor their political opponents. This has always been wrong, but in America, our condemnation of it has always been selective. Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae Jung used tax audits to harass conservative newspapers. His successor, the leftist* Roh Moo Hyun, sued four right-wing newspapers for $400,000 each over what...

Categories Censorship
December 10, 2014

I wonder how Air Koryo serves them their macadamia nuts (answer: very carefully)

Not only are the sons and daughters of North Korea’s highest-ranked elite wielding influence outside the sphere of leader Kim Jong Un  – they are also displaying it in public, a news outlet run by a high-profile defector said Tuesday. The people mentioned in the report have access to external trade and foreign currency and many officials bring money to secure an audience with them. They appear untouchable by law, the report said, even though political factions can be gravely...

Categories Class Warfare
December 10, 2014

Cougar Town, North Korea

Twenty years ago in North Korea’s outer provinces, heavy industry seized up. In short order, so did most of the beneficial functions of government, including the food distribution system. The state continued to do other things, of course, most of them mean or silly. In former industrial regions, it still enforced the primacy of men as breadwinners by forcing them to report each day to idled factories that couldn’t pay their wages. A consequence of this was that market-savvy wives supplanted...

Categories Capitalism/NK Military
December 10, 2014

Suki Kim will be on The Daily Show tonight

More on that here. In a separate interview, Ms. Kim says that “North Koreans are so oblivious of the outside world that even some children of elite families believe that Korean is spoken in the rest of the world.” “They, first of all, didn’t know anything about the rest of the world. If any of them did, they were fearful to admit that,” Kim said. “Some of the students really thought people spoke Korean in the rest of the world. So...

Categories Books & Films/Subversion