May 19, 2014

The resurrection of Hyon Song Wol

Last August, the Chosun Ilbo reported that Kim Jong Un had ordered the executions of former girlfriend Hyon Song Wol and the other members of the all-female performing group, the Unhasu Orchestra, for making porn videos. Media around the world leapt all over the story, but as you will recall, I reacted skeptically. I mocked the sensationalism of it, writing, “Three million deaths is a statistic, but a dead porn star is a headline.” I then explained the reasons for...

Categories Anju Links
May 18, 2014

If a building falls in Pyongyang and AP doesn’t hear it, why the fuck is it even there?

This weekend, we hear news of a terrible tragedy in Pyongyang, the collapse of a 23-story apartment building in the central Phyongchon District. The building was still under construction, but apparently, North Koreans move into apartment buildings before the construction is completed. Sources in South Korea’s Unification Ministry told Reuters that hundreds may have died, and KCNA’s expression of “profound consolation and apology … to bereaved families” seems to corroborate that there were many dead. KCNA says the accident “claimed casualties,” but doesn’t...

Categories AP Watch/Inside NK/Media Criticism
May 16, 2014

Nuclear blackmail watch

As Pyongyang may be about to nuke off, and then again may not be, Glyn Davies is pleading for Agreed Framework III. A U.S. envoy on Tuesday suggested Washington could accept “reversible steps” from North Korea on denuclearization in order to jump-start frozen negotiations. “What they do, quite frankly, in the initial stages would be perfectly reversible steps that they would take, declaratory steps,” said Glyn Davies, the Obama administration’s special envoy for North Korea policy. He emphasized, however, that Pyongyang could only...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
May 15, 2014

Open Sources, May 15, 2014

~   1   ~ LiNK WILL HOLD ITS ANNUAL SUMMIT from June 12th through 15th, at Pepperdine University, in Malibu, California. Here’s the agenda and list of speakers. You have just over two weeks to register. ~   2   ~ IF YOU’RE READING THIS FROM SEOUL, THE FREEDOM FACTORY, under the able leadership of Casey Lartigue, has a full schedule of events in your area for the next few months. On May 14th, it will screen, “North Korea: Life Inside...

Categories Anju Links
May 14, 2014

N. Korea: “enemies [will] pay a dear price whenever an opportunity presents itself.”

I’m slightly ashamed to admit this, but when I awoke yesterday morning, the first thing I looked forward to was KCNA’s reaction to the mild Tourette’s episode of a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman the other day, in which he questioned the stability and legitimacy of the illegitimate and possibly unstable regime in Pyongyang. Pyongyang, May 13 (KCNA) — The National Defence Commission (NDC) of the DPRK Tuesday released a crucial report in which it declared it would finally settle...

Categories Anju Links
May 13, 2014

Open Sources, May 13, 2014

~   1   ~ GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN TELLS TRUTH, WORLD GASPS IN HORROR: In a rare direct attack on the North Korean regime, South Korean Ministry of Defense spokesman Kim Min-seok said the North’s statement was “deeply regrettable” and that Pyongyang regularly lies so deserves to be discredited. “North Korea isn’t a real country is it? It doesn’t have human rights or freedom. It exists solely to prop up a single person,” Kim said at a briefing in Seoul. “It...

Categories Anju Links
May 12, 2014

N. Korea doubles down on racism (plus, our latest op-ed at CNN.com)

Evidently, North Koreans are unfamiliar with The First Rule of Holes:     Pyongyang, May 12 (KCNA) — The spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry gave the following answer to a question put by KCNA on Monday accusing U.S. officials of pulling up the DPRK over its residents’ criticism of Obama reported by its media:     The resentment expressed by individuals of the DPRK at Obama recently was a proper reaction to him who malignantly insulted and slandered the dignified DPRK during his...

Categories Propaganda/WTF?
May 12, 2014

N. Korea bans celebrated photographer Eric Lafforgue

North Korea has banned the French photographer Eric Lafforgue, who in recent years had captured some of the most remarkably unfiltered images of North Korea not taken from outer space. At Business Insider, Lafforgue explains how a group of North Korean sympathizers from Spain ratted him out over a careless comment about their Kim Jong-Il t-shirts (really!), which shows you how freely some citizens of liberal societies imbibe the local quisling culture in the name of solidarity. As with so much...

Categories Censorship/Foreigners in N. Korea
May 9, 2014

Full translation of racist North Korean attack on President Obama, now posted

Here. Some of the North Korean vernacular is quite a struggle to translate, and upgrades are welcomed. What’s most surprising about it, aside from the fact that it was published at all, is how crude and silly it is. Some will dismiss it, some will infantilize it, and some will trivialize it, but what we should do is confront and understand it. This is North Korea’s government — not as we want it to be, but as it is.

Categories Anju Links/Racism
May 9, 2014

N. Korea threatens annual missile, nuke tests

Our setting is a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the prevention of WMD proliferation, last Wednesday. Ironically, a diplomat from South Korea, a non-permanent member of the Security Council, chaired the meeting. The turn of North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador, Ri Tong Il, came. When it did, Ri added further evidence to support the Theory of North Korean Exceptionalism — that is, North Korea is neither inclined nor expected to follow the simplest of rules that apply to everyone else on earth. Ri...

Categories "United" Nations/WMD
May 9, 2014

In North Korea, flood -> hunger, drought -> hunger, bumper harvest -> hunger

Last year, after two decades of almost interrupted crop failures, North Korea experienced its first good harvest since at least 2005, and possibly since 1992. Unfortunately, it looks like North Korea is regressing to the norm again, with KCNA claiming that North Korea is experiencing “its worst spring drought in more than three decades.” It’s seldom wise to accept KCNA’s claims at face value, but even if one does, it’s worth remembering that none of the floods and droughts that...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
May 7, 2014

Really? North Korea called President Obama “a wicked black monkey”? (Update: It’s worse than that; Update 2, now with full translation)

Oh, yes they did: Park made waste water-like reckless remarks slandering the DPRK’s line on simultaneously developing two fronts after inviting her American master reminiscent of a wicked black monkey to visit south Korea on April 25…. The people are unanimous in deploring the fact that there is no remedy for curing Park’s mental disease as she has gone so mad with hurling mud at the nuclear deterrence of justice which the fellow countrymen in the north have had access...

Categories AP Watch/Diplomacy/Racism/WTF?
May 7, 2014

China leaks contingency plan for N. Korea collapse

Last week, North Korea unexpectedly announced that Hwang Pyong So had replaced Choe Ryong-Hae as North Korea’s top military officer and number two official. Choe had held this status since the December purge of Jang Song-Thaek. It may be a complete coincidence that Kyodo News has since reported on allegedly leaked contingency plans by the Chinese Army to seal the border and protect North Korean officials from, shall we say, summarized judicial proceedings in the event of a collapse of...

Categories China & Korea
May 6, 2014

Open Sources, May 6, 2014

~   1   ~ EVENT AT THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, TOMORROW AT 10: “With China characteristically blocking UN action, what can be done to address human rights violations and improve conditions for the North Korean people? Join us as distinguished panel of human rights experts discuss potential follow-on actions.” The panel will include Greg Scarlatoiu of HRNK and John Sifton of Human Rights Watch. Jared Genser, unfortunately, can’t appear because of a scheduling conflict. Bruce Klingner will host and moderate....

Categories Anju Links
May 5, 2014

Dennis Rodman, back from rehab, recounts hallucinations from last visit to Pyongyang

So Dennis Rodman is out of rehab and talking to the media again. In this interview, he’s described as “a potential source of information about a country that is inaccessible to most of the world,” so let’s test that. Rodman’s first major revelation is that Jang Song Thaek wasn’t really executed several weeks before Rodman’s last trip to Pyongyang. In fact, Rodman says that on his last trip, Jang was “standing right behind me.” Also, Kim Jong Un is “doing...

Categories Kremlinology/Useful Idiocy
May 2, 2014

Americans hate foreign policy, and also, the lack of one

One lovely April morning, the world awakened to find that its greatest power has fallen under the control of a cabal of perky Starbucks baristas. As it turns out, I am not alone in ridiculing the weaponization of tweets and hashtags as a substitute for tough and substantive national security policymaking as the world’s predators seize the day. Conspiratorial minds will suppose that this is all somehow coordinated, and maybe some of it is, but I assure you that I’ve been...

Categories Geopolitics/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
May 1, 2014

And now, a brief Marxist-style criticism of North Korea’s class struggle and internal contradictions (Updated)

Yonhap reports that North Korea has cut its grain imports from China by more than in half in the first quarter of this year “due to an increase in the country’s grain production last year.” A fall in market prices for corn corroborates that there is a greater supply of corn than usual; ordinarily, spring is the leanest time of year for poor North Koreans. Despite Pyongyang’s decision to buy and import less grain, the World Food Program, which recently...

Categories Class Warfare/NK Economics