Search Results for: border crackdown

~ 1 ~ DON’T CRY FOR JANG. With all the talk about Jang Song Thaek being a “reformer,” I thought I should remind you that Jang was in charge of the Kuk-Ga Anjeon Bowi-Bu (roughly, National Security Protection Bureau), the secret police organization that runs the North’s prison camps and arrests people for political crimes. If Jang and others associated with this organization wind up before a firing squad, personally, I’d only regret that they didn’t face a more legitimate...

~          1          ~ QUICK! TO THE VANKMOBILE! I hate to break it to “Jonathan Smith,” but no, South Korea is not known as the “PRK,” which I assume is supposed to stand for the “Peoples’ Republic of Korea.” Smith has set up a web site intended to reassure readers that their travels in North Korea will be perfectly safe (Ken Bae and Park Wang-Ja were not available for comment). His choice of a Q&A format–along...

CALL ME OLD FASHIONED–it’s fine, really, I’m used to it–but I fail to see what’s so hard-line about the idea, most recently advanced by John McCain, that restarting six-party talks ought to be contingent on North Korea demonstrating its seriousness about disarming, such as by beginning to disarm. That’s pretty much the same view the Obama Administration had stated publicly, although it seems necessary to clarify it when North Korea has, more times than I could count, said it will never give up its nukes, when...