June 11, 2014

Some advice for AFP, on the opening of its Pyongyang bureau

A reader (thank you) forwards me this French-language article indicating that Agence France-Presse will soon ink its own deal to open a bureau in Pyongyang. I’m sorry to have disappointed this reader by not expressing immediate and ferocious opposition to this, but then, I wasn’t opposed to the AP opening a bureau when it was first announced, either. I became opposed to AP’s experiment when I began to see troubling signs like this, and especially this. My opposition — and my...

Categories AFP Watch/AP Watch
June 10, 2014

Iraq taught us the cost of excess; Syria is teaching us the cost of inaction.

In The Wall Street Journal, Walter Russell Mead argues that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine was a favor in disguise, a wake-up call for weary Americans who’ve been wishing the world away. Unfortunately, I suspect it will take greater tragedies than this to show us the danger of withdrawing from the world. Yes, there is utility in deterring Putin, even in weakening him domestically, but it’s hard for most of us to see a border war over Russian-speaking parts...

Categories Geopolitics
June 9, 2014

Religious crusades to Pyongyang no more naive than any other kind.

By now, you know that it has happened again, and the unethical North Korea tourism industry has flung a third sacrifice into the bubbling, sulfurous maw of the North Korean penal system. The North Koreans identify the latest victim as Jeffrey Edward Fowle, who joins erstwhile tour guide Ken Bae,* and tourist and possible defector Matthew Todd Miller. (This obviously doesn’t include Merrill Newman, who was released not long after his arrest.) Despite State Department warnings and my own humanitarian pleas, some people still haven’t...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea
June 5, 2014

Park Geun Hye didn’t lose. That means she won. (updated)

Ruling parties are supposed to lose mid-term elections, especially when they look incompetent, uninspiring, visionless, and scandalous. I expected Park Geun Hye’s Saenuri Party to lose, and frankly, it deserved to. Despite all of this, it didn’t lose, which means it won. Saenuri’s opposition was the New Politics Alliance for Democracy, formerly known as the Democratic Party, the Uri Party, the Millennium Democratic Party, and before that, Prince. It has not weathered Korea’s modest political realignment well. At the moment, it...

Categories Korean Politics
June 4, 2014

Coalition against N. Korea crumbles due to U.S. incompetence, betrayal, and weakness

Last week, Japan and North Korea announced an agreement under which Pyongyang would “conduct a comprehensive survey” of the whereabouts of “Japanese spouses, victims of abduction and mission persons,” both dead and alive, and return them to Japan. In exchange, “Japan has announced that it is lifting sanctions against North Korea on travel, reporting remittances and humanitarian shipping.” Japan also agreed “to examine humanitarian aid to Pyongyang at an ‘appropriate time.’” Xinhua also reports that Japan may send monitors to...

Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Japan/Six-Party Talks
June 3, 2014

Open Sources, June 3, 2014

~   1   ~ MUST-READ: NK NEWS has obtained and analyzed recent satellite images of the site of that apartment collapse in Pyongyang. It’s too bad that there aren’t any images of the site from early May, so that they could draw some firmer conclusions, but it’s clear that either the regime (a) covered up the collapse for days (if not weeks) to protect it from unfavorable comparisons to the Sewol Ferry disaster, (b) hauled the debris away with no consideration of...

Categories Anju Links
June 1, 2014

N. Korea sells China fishing rights to S. Korean waters, just in time for Xi Jinping’s visit to Seoul.

North Korea, in a demonstration of its unique gift for sowing mischief, has just added South Korea to the long list of Asian nations involved in maritime disputes with China. According to Yonhap, Pyongyang has just sold the fishing rights to “its” littoral waters in the Yellow Sea to China. That’s a problem for Seoul because Pyongyang defines “its” to include waters south of the Northern Limit Line, the disputed maritime extension of the western side of the Korean DMZ. “Part of our waters...

Categories Anju Links/China & Korea
May 30, 2014

Open Sources, May 30, 2014

~ 1 ~ ANOTHER APARTMENT BUILDING in Pyongyang is near collapse, according to the Chosun Ilbo. The report claims that the building’s foundation is settling into the ground, its walls are cracking, and residents are selling their apartments to other families and moving out (which tells you a lot about the state of civic ethics in Pyongyang). I think just about every news service except the AP has now reported something newsworthy about this story. (hat tip: GI Korea) ~...

Categories Anju Links
May 29, 2014

Foreign Affairs Committee passes N. Korea sanctions bill, unanimously

The House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved H.R. 1771 today. Only two amendments were offered at the markup, by Congressman Connolly (D., Va.) and Congressman Castro (D., Tex.). Both were good amendments that made H.R. 1771 a better and tougher piece of legislation. You can read the current version, san amendments, here. I was struck by the bipartisan unanimity of the mark-up, compared to others I’ve seen. Several members called for Kim Jong Un’s overthrow, and some of the most strident rhetoric...

Categories Anju Links
May 29, 2014

The Parallelograms of Pyongyang, Sewol, and Accountability

When that apartment building crumbled into the earth in Pyongyang last week–thus becoming the probable tomb of several hundred wives, children, and parents of the elite salarymen who lived in them–I linked to a series of remarkable reports from a guerrilla journalist for Rimjingang, who was willing to risk torture and execution to practice journalism about his homeland. The reports, accompanied by photographs and video, described the shoddy construction methods being used there, and foretold the tragedy to come. Now,...

Categories Anju Links/Kim Jong Un/Media Criticism
May 28, 2014

No, China did not cut off N. Korea’s oil supply (corrected).

The Chinese government has announced that Xi Jinping will visit Seoul next month without having ever visited Pyongyang, a reversal of the usual sequence. Although Asian diplomats place great value on the symbolism of such things, it is also possible to make too much of it. Still, I draw a few inferences from the announcement that may be important. First, the announcement of Xi’s visit would pose significant complications for Pyongyang if it plans to nuke off soon. Xi would feel...

Categories China & Korea
May 26, 2014

OFK on the CBC

For those who may be interested, I was interviewed by the CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi this morning about media coverage of North Korea, and about the difficulty of separating truth from falsehood and parody. You can listen to the full interview here. I apologize for calling Ms. Hyon Song Wol, who is allegedly alive, “Ms. Han.” I attribute the error to my disbelief and consequent disinterest in the reports about her, except for what they say about the uneven quality of our...

Categories Interviews
May 23, 2014

Open Sources, May 23, 2014

~   1   ~ SO, TO SUMMARIZE yesterday’s NLL excitement, North Korea fired artillery “near” a South Korean patrol boat off Yeonpyeong Island (which North Korea shelled in 2010), South Korea (borrowing from the North Korean lexicon) threatened a “merciless counterattack” if provoked, North Korea said it never fired but South Korea did, and South Korea called that “a blatant lie.” Now tell me which Korea was more transformed by the Sunshine Policy. ~   2   ~ WHY BUILDINGS...

Categories Anju Links
May 22, 2014

N. Korea Perestroika Watch: Man executed for calling China

The Daily NK provides us some updates on Kim Jong Un’s ongoing crackdown on unauthorized contact with the outside world, via sources in North Hamgyeong Province, in the far northeast: The North Korean authorities recently added five extra clauses to Article 60 of the country’s criminal code, which pertains to attempts to overthrow the state. The additional clauses codify harsh punishments for acts including illicit communication with the outside world, which could in principle now incur the death penalty. [….] The...

Categories Border Control/Inside NK/NK Economics
May 21, 2014

China, State Dep’t stonewall family of missing American David Sneddon

Outside Magazine’s detailed story on the unexplained 2004 disappearance of American hiker David Sneddon in China — and suspicions that he was abducted by North Korean agents — has generated much interest among more conservative North Korea watchers here. The story is the fullest accounting of the Sneddon case that I’ve read thus far, but not by much. Melanie Kirkpatrick previously wrote about Sneddon’s disappearance here. (See also.) [via Outside Magazine] The theory is that North Korean agents in China,...

Categories Abductions
May 20, 2014

Open Sources, May 20, 2014

~   1   ~ BREAKING: N. KOREAN WARSHIPS CROSS NLL: “Three North Korean military vessels briefly crossed the western maritime border on Tuesday, prompting the South Korean military to fire warning shots to force their retreat, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. ‘Two patrol boats and one government ship from North Korea crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the Yellow Sea at around 4 p.m. in succession,’ the JCS said in a statement.” ~   2  ...

Categories Anju Links
May 19, 2014

Suzanne Scholte for Congress (bumped)

My friend, Suzanne Scholte, the leader of the North Korean Freedom Coalition, has won the Republican nomination to run for a seat in the U.S. Congress, representing Virginia’s 11th District, in the suburbs of Washington, DC. I’ve known Suzanne since October 2003, the same month I left active duty with the Army and started the antecedent to this blog at a long-forgotten place called Geocities. Suzanne Scholte, a well-known U.S. activist on the North Korean human rights problem, has become...

Categories U.S. Politics