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January 14, 2014

Gates: Roh Moo Hyun was “anti-American” and “a little crazy,” and Lee Myung Bak wanted to bomb the crap out of Kim Jong Il.

This must be the most controversial understatement of the year, so far: Reading a new memoir by former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, South Koreans may be quite surprised by his characterization of the country’s late President Roh Moo-hyun as “a little crazy.” I estimate that approximately 63.8% of them won’t be in complete shock about that. Gates recalls a November 2007 meeting in Seoul with the liberal-minded president, whose diplomatic and security policy is still being debated. He calls...

An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/U.S. & Korea/Yeonpyeong Attack

January 14, 2014

N. Korea’s new “reign of terror” stirs fear, flushes out dissent

Rimjingang, the guerrilla news service that brought us the footage we’ll see in Frontline: Secret State of North Korea, has published a spate of reports that give credence to Park Geun-Hye’s prediction that a “reign of terror” would follow the purge of Jang Song-Thaek. The reports clearly rely heavily on third-hand rumor, so I wouldn’t necessarily consider them so much for the truth of the matters asserted as for what they say about the mood on the street. But amid...

Inside NK/Regime Change/Resistance

January 13, 2014

“Secret State of North Korea,” on PBS’s Frontline, Tuesday, January 14th

On Tuesday January 14th, PBS’s Frontline will air a one-hour program about the North Korea most foreign journalists aren’t allowed to see: Secret State of North Korea. Not only are North Koreans illegally smuggling information from inside North Korea out, a growing cohort of defectors are risking their lives to get information about the outside world in. “Pretty quickly, what surprised me the most wasn’t the poverty and poor conditions people live in—which are, undoubtedly, shocking,” says FRONTLINE director James...

Books & Films

January 11, 2014

Hey … isn’t that video of Dennis Rodman personally giving banned luxury goods to Kim Jong Un?

Skip to the two-minute mark. Well, that certainly looks incriminating. (Hat tip to a reader.) [I guess he picked the wrong week to quit drinking.] If you haven’t read my post explaining the ban on importing luxury goods to North Korea, you should probably start there.* And since you ask, yes, as a matter of fact, I do believe the bottles are engraved with likenesses of Kim and Rodman. Just to be clear, I don’t think Dennis Rodman should do time over five bottles of liquor,...

Sanctions/Sports/Useful Idiocy

January 9, 2014

So, Dennis — other than that, how is the trip going so far?

Dennis Rodman’s September trip to North Korea included a trip to Kim’s yacht near Wonsan, which Rodman described as “like going to Hawaii or Ibiza.” Evidently, this trip hasn’t been as pleasant: A day after the former basketball star sang “Happy Birthday” to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and led a squad of former NBA players in a friendly game, Rodman issued the apology through publicist Jules Feiler in an email message to The Associated Press. “I want to...

Sports/Useful Idiocy/WTF?

January 8, 2014

And now, a long list of people who think Dennis Rodman is a tool.

Update: Jesus wept (hat tip): ~ ~ ~ Charles D. Smith, one of the former players who went to Pyongyang with Dennis Rodman, is still in Pyongyang, but he’s already saying he feels “remorse” for going because of the public backlash against the trip, and because of Rodman’s mouth: “The way some of the statements and things that Dennis has said has tainted our efforts,” Smith said. “Dennis is a great guy, but how he articulates what goes on — he...

Sports/Useful Idiocy

January 7, 2014

Source: Dennis Rodman brought luxury gifts to Kim Jong Un (and that’s punishable by 20 years in prison).

Writing at The Weekly Standard today, Dennis Halpin informs us that Dennis Rodman (no relation) was bringing more than his august presence to Kim Jong Un’s birthday party. Halpin, citing a “diplomatic source” he understandably won’t name but says is reliable, claims that Rodman was also carrying “several hundred dollars’ worth of Irish Jameson whiskey,” “European crystal, an Italian suit for him, and Italian clothing, a fur coat, and an English Mulberry handbag” for Kim’s wife, Ri Sol Ju. The level...

Sanctions/Useful Idiocy

January 7, 2014

Lifestyles of the Deeply Stupid, Pyongyang Edition (or, Dennis Rodman, the accidental activist)

Despite the loss of his sponsor, Dennis Rodman is back in Pyongyang with several other NBA has-beens for what Rodman calls a “birthday present” basketball exhibition game for Kim Jong Un. Rodman appears to be taking his talking points directly from KCNA: “The marshal is actually trying to change this country in a great way,” Rodman said of Kim, using the leader’s official title. “I think that people thought that this was a joke, and Dennis Rodman is just doing...

Sports/Useful Idiocy

January 6, 2014

Christine Hong really should tell us what she thinks about Kim Jong Un’s sweet new ski resort.

Kim Jong Un’s reign must be a dark time for North Korea’s apologists on the far left. Those who elevate equality above all other values (or say they do) must be hard pressed to find solidarity with a regime that has imposed the world’s most obscene case of economic and social injustice. Under Kim Jong Il, North Korea was no paragon of socialist equality. Since his dynastic succession, Kim Jong Un has added the arch-heresies of gaudy consumerism and an...

Fiskings/Sanctions/Sports/Useful Idiocy

January 3, 2014

In case this isn’t self-evident, all analysis of North Korean New Year’s speeches is crap.*

In this year’s annual New Year’s Day message, Kim Jong Un boasted about his squalid little kingdom’s “brilliant successes in building a thriving socialist country and defending socialism,” its “upsurge … in production in several sectors and units of the national economy,” its “brilliant victory in the acute showdown with the imperialists,” and its “policies of respecting the people and loving them.” It’s crap like this that makes me proud of how little I’ve contributed to the torrent of junk...

Anju Links/Fiskings/Media Criticism

December 31, 2013

North Korea’s circular firing squad

The reaper has come for two more key North Korean diplomats: South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said that Pak Kwang-Chol, an associate of the young supremo’s uncle and political regent Jang Song-Thaek, was seen returning home after making a brief stopover in Beijing. The envoy and his wife were reportedly escorted by North Korean officials onto a flight to Pyongyang. Sweden is an influential diplomatic player in Pyongyang, AFP said. Since the United States and North Korea have no diplomatic...

Kim Jong Un/NK Economics

December 30, 2013

Open Sources, December 30, 2013

~ 1 ~ REPORT: KIM JONG UN PIMPED HIS PLEASURE SQUAD TO RODMAN: Well, this seems as easy to believe as it is hard to prove. It comes via a Taiwanese website I’ve never heard of: Chris Nelson, Washington’s top insider source on Asia, says Rodman’s real reason for visiting North Korea extends further than just helping to set up a domestic basketball league. According to the September edition of the private newsletter the Nelson Report: “Sources in the region...

Anju Links

December 25, 2013

Does this mean we can all forget about Dennis Rodman again?

Kim Jong Un has proven to be beneath the corporate image of the Irish online gambling company, Paddy Power, which has withdrawn from sponsoring Dennis Rodman’s basketball invitational, planned for Kim Jong Un’s birthday in January. Rodman’s mouthpiece says that he plans to continue with the game anyway, but The Simon Wiesenthal Center is asking other former NBA players to boycott the game: “Everyone it seems, except Dennis Rodman, understands that this is not a game to promote peace, but...

Human Rights/Kim Jong Un/Useful Idiocy

December 23, 2013

Open Sources, December 23, 2013

~ 1 ~ WHERE IS KIM KYONG-HUI? Last week, I posted about reports that she had left North Korea for medical treatment abroad, following a seizure brought on by the execution of her husband, Jang Song-Taek. A reader wrote in to ask how this could have happened without the Japanese press seeing her at the Beijing airport, and via The Chosun Ilbo, we have one possible explanation — the treatment is (or was) being performed in Russia. The Chosun Ilbo...

Anju Links

December 20, 2013

Open Sources: L.A. Times confirms defection; Daily NK reports mass arrests in Pyongyang

~ 1 ~ L.A. TIMES CONFIRMS HIGH-LEVEL DEFECTION: Several days ago, I posted about reports in the South Korean press that a senior North Korean official with extensive knowledge of North Korea’s offshore finances had defected, and was in the care of South Korean officials in an undisclosed location in China. South Korea later denied the reports, but today, The L.A. Times is reporting that, denial notwithstanding, the reports were true. The individual is a military officer, was a “confidant” of Jang...

Anju Links

December 19, 2013

Open Sources, December 13, 2013

~ 1 ~ LINK HAS RESCUED 204 NORTH KOREANS since 2010. Please support them if you can afford to. If you can’t — or even if you can — please go to this page and vote for LiNK’s “Project for Awesome” page. It helps to keep their fund-raising project where it gets more views. ~ 2 ~ SHIN DONG HYOK TELLS DENNIS RODMAN how he can help the North Korean people, in case Rodman actually cares about that. But in a way,...

Anju Links

December 19, 2013

Kim Kyong Hui leaves N. Korea for medical treatment, and the deeper meaning of Jang’s scapegoating

The Daily NK, citing “a high-level party cadre,” reports that Kim Kyong Hui (Kim Il Sung’s daughter, Kim Jong Il’s sister, Jang Song Thaek’s widow, and Kim Jong Un’s aunt) has left North Korea for medical treatment after having a seizure caused by the execution of her husband. Ms. Kim was noticeably absent from yesterday’s ceremony marking the second anniversary of her brother’s death, as Don Kirk’s report notes with almost uncanny prescience. Ri Sol Ju was there, however, looking...

Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology

December 18, 2013

Kim Jong Un is “reckless,” “dangerous, unpredictable, prone to violence and … delusions of grandeur,” and nuked up. Is that all?

North Korea, which was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has showered Baekryeong Island, a disputed South Korean-held Island in the Yellow Sea, and the site of the 2010 ROKS Cheonan attack, with leaflets threatening to turn the island into “a huge tomb.” [Screen grab from MBC, via the Chosun Ilbo] The leaflets did not explain why Kim Jong Un is not content to keep killing off his unwanted relatives, but a China-based,...

Anju Links/Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology