Search Results for: Lankov

April 19, 2009

Joining the Great North Korea Debate

I’m gratified to see that my latest New Ledger article has picked up so much linkage and circulation, including at Instapundit, Real Clear World, the Memeorandum, Pajamas Media, Rantburg, Google News, and even the Puffington Host.  I doubt that I’ve done much harm to Chris Hill’s chances of being confirmed, but it’s gratifying to see my ideas debated by people not necessarily predisposed to agree (which must be nearly everyone, given that I’ve been highly critical of Presidents Clinton, Bush,...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Missiles/Six-Party Talks
April 5, 2009

What President Obama Should (But Won’t) Do About North Korea’s Missile Test

[Update: The nations are not united. The U.N. Security Council fails to agree on the text of a very angry letter. You don’t say.] [Afterthought: So can we conclude that the Obama Administration views even “soft power” as excessive force?] Our Words Mean Nothing Even for North Korea, today’s missile test was an especially flagrant, telegraphed, and premeditated provocation. Whether the missile carried a satellite or not, to launch it was a clear violation of two U.N. resolutions. That the...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Missiles
March 30, 2009

One Man’s “Bargaining Chip” Is Another Man’s Hostage

Update: Uh oh: Two American journalists detained at North Korea’s border with China two weeks ago will be indicted and tried, “their suspected hostile acts” already confirmed, Pyongyang’s state-run news agency said Tuesday. The Korean Central News Agency report did not say when a trial might take place, but said preparations to indict the Americans were under way as the investigation continues. “The illegal entry of U.S. reporters into the DPRK and their suspected hostile acts have been confirmed by...

Categories Media Criticism/Refugees/Terrorism (NK)
March 10, 2009

Succession Watch

Open Radio reports that among North Korean military officers and high-ranking Workers’ Party officials, it is widely rumored that Kim Jong Un has been designated to succeed His Porcine Majesty. The rumor was first reported by Yonhap back in January. After several weeks without much evidence to support that rumor, a Rodong Sinmun editorial last week made references to “[t]he tradition of the three-generations of Mankyungdae heroes,” which suggests that at least one of Kim’s brood is being groomed. (How...

Categories Kremlinology
February 11, 2009

Following the Money: The Economic Mysteries of North Korea

On Monday night, I had dinner with a distinguished group that included Andrei Lankov, Chuck Downs, Curtis Melvin, and a friend who covers North Korea for a major news service. Professor Lankov is here to speak at a think tank event and to promote some exciting ideas about getting subversive information into North Korea, which I hope to interview him about later. I asked Professor Lankov about those alarming reports from Good Friends about the food situation last year. With...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
September 10, 2008

Also, In a Just World, Isaac Hayes Would Still Be Alive

That night there came from the farmhouse the sound of loud singing, in which, to everyone’s surprise, the strains of Beasts of England were mixed up. At about half past nine Napoleon, wearing an old bowler hat of Mr. Jones’s, was distinctly seen to emerge from the back door, gallop rapidly round the yard, and disappear indoors again. But in the morning a deep silence hung over the farmhouse. Not a pig appeared to be stirring. It was nearly nine...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
May 26, 2008

Of Hollow Men: Obama Flip-Flops on Removing N. Korea from Terror-Sponsor List

In March of 2005, I blogged about this letter from the Illinois congressional delegation to the North Korean government, in which all members of the delegation warned Kim Jong Il that they would firmly oppose removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism unless North Korea accounts for the fate of the Reverend Kim Dong Shik, a lawful permanent resident of the United States who had resided in Illinois. In 2002, Rev. Kim was in northeast China...

Categories Japan/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics
April 30, 2008

Anju Links for 30 April 2008

MUST READ:   Andrei Lankov talks about North Korea’s food situation in the Asia Times.  BETTER THEM THAN US, PT. 2:  Ten North Koreans were killed in that Israeli  air strike  on a nuclear reactor in Syria: The intelligence officers told NHK the 10 killed North Koreans, who were helping build a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria, were believed to be officials from the Munitions Industry Department (No. 99 Department) of the North Korean Worker’s Party and North Korean sappers, or...

Categories Anju Links
April 17, 2008

U.N. World Food Program Reports Skyrocketing Food Prices in Pyongyang

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today that time is running out to avert looming food shortages and a potential humanitarian crisis in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) following confirmation of a critically low national harvest stemming in part from last year’s heavy August floods.  “The food security situation in the DPRK is clearly bad and getting worse,” said Tony Banbury, the World Food Programme’s Regional Director for Asia.  “It is increasingly likely that external assistance...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
March 25, 2008

Anju Links for 25 March 2008

HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU HAVE TO KILL to get noticed by Amnesty International?  My theory is that it depends on how much you tell people you hate America, but it looks like North Korea may have exceeded Amnesty’s limit.  Let’s hope this turns out to be something sustained. NAMIBIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST DENOUNCES North Korea’s human rights record  on the occasion of Kim Yong Nam’s visit: Just about a week or two ago about 15 people were executed publicly...

Categories Anju Links
March 20, 2008

MUST READ: WaPo Predicts Food Situation Will Pressure Kim Jong Il (Updated and bumped)

The Washington Post is the latest news source to note the deterioration of North Korea’s food situation.  The  Post suggests that  this time could be different from the Great Famine, when millions died quietly.  A grim rite of spring in Northeast Asia is the calculation of how many North Koreans could starve before the fall harvest — and what the neighbors are willing to do about it.  This year, though, the famine bailout season is more urgent, more complicated and...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
February 27, 2008

Shafted: Winners, Losers, and Casualties of the North Korean Mines

As the North Korean regime struggles to sustain an already marginal economy that actually shrank in 2006, it is accelerating its sell-off of its mineral resources. Again, China appears to be the main buyer, again, corruption is throttling the state’s earning potential. As mineral prices soar on world markets, foreign access to mines in the North is accelerating at a rate unseen in the more than five decades since the division of the Korean Peninsula, according to South Korean government...

Categories China & Korea/Human Rights/NK Economics
February 21, 2008

North Korea’s Economy: Does Change Equal Reform?

The experts agree that North Korea’s economy has changed in the years since it shed a couple of million people, give or take a million. There’s some consensus that the survivors have learned to trade, and that markets have grown. There’s also some consensus that regime officials are participating to a degree. There ends the consensus: some claim that reform is again afoot; others claim that change is driven by necessity, and that official participation is mostly a matter of...

Categories NK Economics
February 12, 2008

Stage Four Watch: The Great Purge of 2008?

The Korean edition of the Chosun Ilbo is reporting on the impending execution of a beautiful 35 year-old North Korean woman, “Miss Kim,” who grew wealthy as a defection and reunion broker in Moosan, North Hamgyeong Province. To put this delicately, Miss Kim shared both her substantial wealth and (rumor has it) her substantial physical blessings with a number of senior North Korean officers and officials, so as to ensure that each passage through the border would be, erm, well...

Categories Inside NK
January 28, 2008

Anju Links for 28 Jan 08

OUR  FIFTEEN SECONDS:  I’m extremely pleased to see reader and friend CPT Jon Stafford getting great circulation for his must-read article, “Finding America’s Role in  a Collapsed North Korean State.”  Richardson had previously linked to a  video  discussion between the online editors of The Weekly Standard and Foreign Policy that scratched the surface of the problem, just.  Today, Bradley Martin, author of “Under the Loving  Care of the Fatherly Leader” has an article discussing it in somewhat greater depth at...

Categories Anju Links
January 22, 2008

Plan B: How to Disarm Kim Jong Il Without Bombing Him

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Albert Einstein Plan A, gentle diplomacy, has again failed to disarm Kim Jong Il. Whenever this happens (every time it’s tried) advocates of doing the same thing over and over again fall back on The False Choice, whether expressly or by implication: it’s their way or war. They know better, of course, which technically makes this a lie. And usually, this lie stands uncorrected: “People lambaste...

Categories Diplomacy/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks
December 22, 2007

Experts predict Lee Myung Bak’s behavior; Still no comment from Miss Cleo, Nostradamus, or KCNA

My “what to expect from Lee MB” updates have outgrown and seceded from this post. As for what we should expect from a Lee presidency, any prediction rows into some pretty treacherous water. Lee strikes me as a guy who begins with dry cost-benefit analysis, but one with an autocratic streak as wide as that asinine canal he’s proposing to build. Lee’s history and my gut suggest a term punctuated by emotional, stubborn, and vindictive behavior, which means that national...

Categories Korean Politics
November 27, 2007

Still Collapsing?

The Weekly Standard publishes a very non-specific, unsourced prediction that North Korea is on the verge of collapse.  Read it for yourself, but I don’t find it very persuasive.  While collapse is a distinct possibility for the reasons Andrei Lankov has recently repeated (see yesterday’s post), I don’t see signs that it’s more imminent today than it was a  year ago.  If anything, the North Korean leadership has gained strength from its acceptance by the Bush Administration.

Categories Inside NK/Kremlinology