November 10, 2014

In the NYT: N. Korea, extortion, freedom of speech, and freedom of information

Professor Lee and I are published in The New York Times today, expressing our disappointment at the South Korean government’s failure to stand up for freedom of speech for South Koreans and freedom of information for North Koreans, something the Universal Declaration of Human Rights speaks to quite clearly: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and...

Categories Censorship
November 10, 2014

Qatar, the sponsor of ISIS, is using N. Korean slave labor to build a World Cup village

One North Korean worker helping to build the high-rise said: “People like us don’t usually get paid. The money does not come to the person directly. It’s nothing to do with me, it’s the [North Korean recruitment] company’s business.” A project manager of the lavish development said the workers “don’t have a single rial themselves” and “borrow money from us if they need small things like cigarettes”. “The descriptions of the conditions North Korean workers endure in Qatar – abuse...

Categories Human Trafficking
November 10, 2014

Camp 15: The Theresienstadt ploy?

The Daily NK reports that Camp 15, described by refugee-journalist Kang Chol Hwan in The Aquariums of Pyongyang and by more recent witnesses to The Washington Post‘s Chico Harlan, is no more, and that the prisoners have been sent to other camps: Detainees held until recently at North Korea’s notorious political prison camp in Yodeok County have been moved to two alternate camps, an inside source from North Hamkyung Province has alleged to Daily NK. “That political prison camp that used to be...

Categories Anju Links/The Camps
November 8, 2014

No, this does not mean it’s safe to go to North Korea.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has left Pyongyang with U.S. hostages Kenneth Bae and Preston Somerset Matthew Todd Miller, who voluntarily presented himself to the North Koreans as both a prisoner and a spy. I’m somewhat sympathetic to Bae, who seems to have been moved to take undue risks by the suffering of the North Korean people around him. Bae has young kids, and nothing Bae did could possibly justify having his kids grow up without their father. As for Miller, his...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea
November 8, 2014

How to write like an expert on sanctions: Step 1, read the sanctions.

I don’t doubt that Stanford scholar Yong Suk Lee’s minor premise—that Pyongyang shifts economic pain to the proles and peasants—is correct. To extend this into a convincing policy argument, however, that Pyongyang would only shift the pain of sanctions to the North Korean people, requires a more convincing case for his major premise–that the deprivation of the North Korean people is a function of sanctions, rather than state policies that willfully impose that deprivation. It’s a case that Lee fails to make, in part because...

Categories Sanctions
November 7, 2014

How the mid-terms will affect foreign policy

I haven’t had time to finish this piece by Michael Barone at The American Interest, but what I’ve read so far is consistent with what I observed when I was on The Hill. I expect a big fight about Iran sanctions that will pit the President against a broad, bipartisan majority in Congress. At some point, I expect Kerry to be sacrificed for the President’s continued weakness on foreign policy (update: I mean as measured by the polls), just as Rumsfeld...

Categories U.S. Politics
November 7, 2014

NIS agent gets prison time for framing defector

A Seoul court sentenced Tuesday a mid-ranking state intelligence agent to two and a half years in prison for instructing other agents to forge documents to frame a North Korean defector as a spy. The 48-year-old National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent, surnamed Kim, was convicted of instructing other agents to fabricate the Chinese immigration records of Yoo Woo-seong, a 34-year-old defector who was then an employee of the Seoul municipal government, to charge him with espionage. “Kim routinely made excuses...

Categories Korean Law/Refugees
November 6, 2014

Donald Gregg’s weird, surreal, sad spectacle

In all the stages of North Korea’s reaction to U.N. action on the Commission of Inquiry report, none was quite so surreal as an event held on Monday, October 20th, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. There, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea and Cheonan conspiracy theorist Donald Gregg moderated a “conversation” about human rights with North Korean diplomat (I use the term advisedly) Jang Il Hun. If that seems about as wise as inviting Larry Flynt...

Categories Anju Links
November 5, 2014

Whatever you want to say about the election, say it here

I’m sad that my friend, Suzanne Scholte lost, but glad that she managed a credible performance despite having no history of running for, or holding, elective office, and despite lacking any money for TV or radio ads, or to raise a large and experienced campaign staff. She also did it despite redistricting that followed Connolly’s very close win in 2010, something I only heard about a few weeks ago, when a federal court held that the plan was unconstitutional. The...

Categories U.S. Politics
November 4, 2014

Another Kaesong firm folds

An unidentified small manufacturer for watch and mobile phones cases on Wednesday submitted an application for dissolution to the committee handling affairs at the joint park, according to officials from Seoul’s unification ministry. It marked the second case since June 2009 that South Korean firms operating at the Kaesong Complex have closed their businesses. It also marked the first time since the operation of the park had been halted briefly last year. The company, which had employed about 100 North...

Categories Kaesong
November 4, 2014

How much should we worry about N. Korea’s missiles? Basho explains.

My post on North Korea’s alarming progression toward a nuclear missile capability inspires a knowledgeable reader and friend to send me an extended comment. Because he has asked me to withhold his name and where he works, we’ll call him “Basho, an observer of Things, and international affairs raconteur.” Without saying more, I’m confident that Basho has a basis to know what he’s talking about. I print his comments in their entirety, unedited except that I embedded his hyperlinks. ~  ~  ~ There are...

Categories Anju Links/Missiles/WMD
November 3, 2014

Now, that wasn’t very smart, was it, Mr. Fowle?

My working assumption about Jeffrey Fowle had been that no believing Christian would have intentionally left a Bible next to a toilet, but evidently, I was mistaken about that. I wonder whether the Bible in question was even translated into Korean, but either way, Fowle’s tactical decision to waste thousands of dollars from his modest municipal salary to nonchalantly place one Bible next to a toilet … in Chongjin puts him firmly in the same category as the South Korean missionaries...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea/Religion
November 1, 2014

And in other news, North Korea now has nuclear warheads

So last week, when I was busy writing about the U.N. and human rights, the Commanding General of U.S. Forces Korea went to a press conference at the Pentagon and said, “I believe [the North Koreans] have the capability to miniaturize a device at this point and they have the technology to potentially deliver what they say they have.” The general added that even if we haven’t seen a test, we’re at the point where we have to operate under...

Categories Missiles/WMD
November 1, 2014

China arrests 11 more N. Korean refugees

Eleven North Korean defectors were arrested by Chinese police while seeking to cross the border with Myanmar, a source said Friday. Local police rounded up the defectors — 10 adults and a seven-year-old child — at around 3-4 a.m. on the day, shortly before they were to head towards the border in the southern region of Yunnan Province, according to the source. They were immediately put in custody in a police station there, added the source. A South Korean foreign...

Categories China & Korea/Refugees
October 31, 2014

Washington Post Editorial calls for International Criminal Court referral

The Editors of The Washington Post aren’t falling for North Korea’s so-called charm offensive, nor (thankfully) do they use that inapt cliché: [R]ecent maneuverings suggest that Pyongyang views the latest debate with alarm. North Korean diplomats have been attempting to head off any action that would lead to a referral to the ICC. The latest gambit was to invite Mr. Darusman to visit North Korea for the first time, a cynical gesture after the country refused to allow a visit by...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
October 31, 2014

North Koreans buying solar panels to generate electricity.

This trends is being driven by the falling price of Chinese solar panels, and no doubt, by growing demand as well. Solar panels have become among the assets considered essential for life in North Korea by allowing households to connect them to rechargeable batteries which can power lights and household appliances, according to a local source. “Now, it doesn’t matter whether we get power from the state. With these solar panels, we can use electricity,” The South Pyongan Province-based source...

Categories Inside NK