August 21, 2013

North Korea’s “charm offensive” coincides with growing international financial pressure

Observers in the West and South Korea tend to grasp (even gasp) at subtle or superficial changes in the tone of North Korea’s words, but the consistency of North Korea’s actions has always refuted the interpretations of these observers.  No charm offensive ever interrupted Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons or its willingness to proliferate nuclear or chemical weapons technology.  Even its provocations, often described as “unpredictable,” follow a cycle that has become familiar to Korea-watchers, including the President of South Korea....

Categories Anju Links/Money Laundering/Sanctions
August 19, 2013

Kaesong deal leaves more questions that answers

“Precisely what North Koreans do with earnings from Kaesong, I think, is something that we are concerned about.” – David Cohen, Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence I won’t conceal my disappointment that North and South Korea say they’ve reached an agreement to reopen Kaesong.  Doing so now would undermine that international financial pressure that will be necessary to disarm North Korea at a time when it’s showing signs of working, and when that pressure might help us achieve interests...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
August 15, 2013

Open Sources, August 15, 2013

HAVES AND CAN’T HAVES:  Two million North Koreans have “authorized” cell phones; meanwhile, the regime is cracking down on the unauthorized kind.  I default to skepticism of any self-serving claims that a transaction involving the government of North Korea will result in social or political changes in North Korean society, but Orascom may be the one exception I’m willing to acknowledge.  I don’t think any state can monitor that many phones, and in a society where money can buy anything, more...

Categories Anju Links
August 14, 2013

A hero, buried in the State Department’s memory hole

In case you were wondering, no, I’m still not over that whole North Korea / state-sponsor-of-terrorism thing.  The Weekly Standard has helped me nurse this old grudge by printing my fisking of the State Department’s latest annual country reports on terrorism.  I’ll give you the first paragraph and let you read the rest on your own: Even after a year of North Korean nuclear and missile tests, this year’s State Department “Country Reports on Terrorism” makes the risible claim that North Korea is “not...

Categories Anju Links/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
August 13, 2013

Kim Jong Un, Castro, and Homer Simpson form Apiary of Evil

The Panama weapons seizure happened last month, before I ended my hiatus, but let me offer these brief observations. First, good for Panama.  Second, North Korea still doesn’t care what the U.N. Security Council prohibits (surprise!).  Third, neither does Cuba.  Fourth, we’ll gauge whether the administration is serious about sanctions enforcement by whether it sanctions any North Korea, Cuban, or other entities under Executive Order 13,551, which would allow the blocking of the assets of any entities knowingly involved in...

Categories NK Military
August 12, 2013

The Daily NK: Keeping the promises that the Sunshine Policy couldn’t

In a land of scarcity, North Korea’s scarcest commodity is truth, and it is truth that is transforming North Korea.  In the last ten years, North Korea’s death-grip on the flow of food, consumer goods, and information across its borders was fractured, and probably for good.  This change is enormously consequential to how we ought to approach North Korea.  Even as inter-governmental “Sunshine” and engagement failed decisively–and probably exacerbated North Korea’s brutality–market-based engagement and information flows have been profoundly transformative....

Categories Activism/Media Criticism
August 10, 2013

AP Vice President Celebrates Great Fatherland Liberation War!

One of my favorite media experiments is to observe different reporters with different biases cover similar stories in very different ways. The anniversary of the end of the Korean War was our most recent occasion for this experiment, and Pyongyang was our petri dish. Not surprisingly for regular readers of this blog, reporters who were merely visiting Pyongyang covered it very differently from reporters beholden to its regime by business and professional entanglements. One perspective tells a story of former...

Categories AP Watch
August 8, 2013

Rep. Albio Sires and Rabbi Abraham Cooper on Human Rights in North Korea

I’ll begin a gradual return from my hiatus by linking to this excellent op-ed by Rep. Albio Sires, Democrat from New Jersey, on the imperative of addressing North Korea’s human rights abuses. It’s a welcome sign that this isn’t a partisan issue. This op-ed, by Rabbi Abraham Cooper, follows it logically and compares North Korea’s abuses to some of those that occurred during the Holocaust.

Categories Human Rights/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
August 4, 2013

Giving Back to the Daily NK: Amplify the North Korea Info Flow

The Daily NK has provided us North Korea watchers for the last 8.5 years with big scoops like the currency “reform” of late 2009 and lots of smaller stories that further our understanding of everyday life in North Korea. Last month they launched their outreach campaign to the international community with a Nightout and a Meetup in Seoul, and this month they’re doing their first crowdsourcing campaign (click image above). Traditionally, charitable giving was not practiced in Korean society. As...

Categories Media Criticism
July 17, 2013

I interrupt this hiatus (briefly)

Recently, I was pleased to learn that Miss Hannah Kim, about whom I wrote admiringly here and here several years ago, is now a staffer for Korean War veteran and Congressman Charles Rangel.  Because I have a certain weakness for Miss Kim’s inner beauty (I say this in all sincerity) I find myself unable to (resist embarrassing her or) refuse her kind request to post a link to her latest piece in the Huffington Post.  Here is the gist of it: As a...

Categories Korean War
July 3, 2013

#NIGHTOUT with Daily NK: Support Free Media in North Korea

Joshua’s still away, but this is a first attempt at getting back to posting at least occasionally here. — Dan Bielefeld Even infrequent readers of One Free Korea will recognize the important role the Daily NK plays in deepening and broadening our understanding of North Korea. For those of you in Seoul, I hope you can come out Friday night in Itaewon for their first “Nightout.” For everyone else, why not send them a few bucks with an online donation....

Categories Inside NK/Media Criticism
April 1, 2013

Good bye, for a while

To all of the regular and not-so-regular OFK readers– Thank you for your regular visits, comments, criticisms, and interest over the last nine years. This morning, I begin work on an important project that is incompatible with continued posting, so I must suspend posting for a few months. That won’t be easy for me. This site had become an outlet for recreational thinking, and for beliefs I hold strongly. It had also become a part of my daily mental equilibrium...

Categories Anju Links
March 30, 2013

Joel Wit: Agreed Frameworks “Worked Very Well”

Fortunately, Sung Yoon Lee is there to remind us of the reality of Mr. Wit’s sterling record. Depending on your perspective, you may wish to avert your eyes: Watch Kim Jong-un Orders Rockets Ready to Strike United States on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour. Some viewers may judge Wit a bit too boastful about the length of his experience dealing with the North Koreans, but on closer examination, he understates his experience almost as much as he overstates his...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
March 29, 2013

Open Sources, March 29, 2013

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR PROFILES Alejandro Cao de Benos, who was interviewed for OFK by our friend Enzo in 2010. For a starving country, North Korea certainly does a brisk trade in size 52 extra-fat uniforms. What’s most striking about Cao’s claims that North Korea has no hunger or human rights violations isn’t their blatant mendacity, really. It’s the fact that a KCNAP consumer could easily believe every word of it. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~...

Categories Anju Links
March 28, 2013

Power Hungry: 40.179N, 126.350E

You really can’t see any hint of it in this image, but this is the Huichon Number Two Power Station, the one that allegedly caused Kim Jong Il’s fatal vapor lock because the crappy concrete used to build it cracked when the reservoir was filled.  Or so the unverified rumor holds. You can see video of the dam here, a KNCAP report here that makes no reference to the dam’s problems, some cool pictures here (see #36), and more interesting stuff from Curtis here. I’m...

Categories Google Earth
March 27, 2013

New Focus on North Korea’s changing economy

They paint a vivid picture of an economy in a halting transition: * For better or for worse, loan sharks who trade in currency and their connections to the regime have become an important part of the new economy. * How businessmen make donations to regime projects to buy indulgences — letters of appreciation — from the regime, and use them as amulets against its enforcers of dependency. * The decay of the Public Distribution System (PDS) continues to progress....

Categories Drugs & N Korea/NK Economics
March 25, 2013

Open Sources, March 25, 2013

MUST SEE: Marcus Noland, speaking to the Lowy Institute in Australia, thinks that North Korea is slipping back into famine.  He thinks that the North Korea people have adapted enough that a 1990s-scale famine can be avoided, but consider this in the context of Noland’s finding that the regime itself has probably had a current account surplus since 2011. On the other hand, Kim Jong Un loves Mickey Mouse, amusement parks, the NBA, and dolphins, so reform, prosperity, and perestroika are...

Categories Anju Links