July 23, 2012

North Korea Increases Public Executions and Collective Punish…. Hey, Look! It’s Snoopy!

Writing in The Washington Post, Chico Harlan reports that as North Koreans try to flee its most recent avoidable food crisis, the repressive partnership of North Korea and China has been grimly effective in keeping North Koreans from escaping from their prison of a country: Last year, 2,706 North Koreans came to the South. During the first half of this year, there have been only 751 — a 42 percent decline compared with the same period a year earlier. The...

Categories AP Watch/Kim Jong Un/Refugees
July 21, 2012

Really, AP? You think there’s too much speculation about those North Korean coup rumors? Here’s a news tip.

If Kim Jong Un’s handlers, Jang Song-Thaek and Choe Ryong-Hae, really did just suppress an attempted coup in Pyongyang that killed 20 or 30 soldiers, it would have made a hell of a racket, and you’d think at least one diplomat or journalist would have heard it. That’s why I tend to doubt that the story is true, but if it is true, it might be the biggest North Korea story since the revelation of the concentration camps a decade...

Categories AP Watch
July 20, 2012

Open Sources, July 20, 2012

WELCOME BACK, SOUTH KOREA: Readers in South Korea and my visitors’ log tell me the site is now accessible from the ROK. With the assistance of my ISP and faithful reader, we traced the problem down to a bad node at Korea Telecom. KT actually sent a report back to my reader in English, and here’s where it gets interesting: After reviewing your request , we found that your requested IP address was blocked by our team member according to...

Categories Anju Links
July 19, 2012

A Mickey Mouse Monarchy: Thoughts on the Sacking of Ri Yong Ho (Update: A Gun Battle?)

North Korea watching is an inherently speculative hobby. How could it be otherwise when our most reliable information comes from satellite images and reports from KCNA, the world’s least credible news organization? The problem with having no solid facts to argue is that no one is really an expert, and anyone can pretend to be, present company included. Even “inside” sources are suspect; after all, much of their information is probably disinformation. That’s why you’ll see a lot divergent and...

Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
July 16, 2012

Reminder: Condi Rice’s North Korea Fiasco

A week ago, I really didn’t care who Romney chose as his a running mate — then came the rumor that Condoleezza Rice was the leading candidate. Having now established the limits of my apathy, I wonder what explains the excitement among certain Republicans about the idea that Rice would be the perfect Vice-Presidential candidate (for anything other than spending the next 100 days re-litigating Bush’s foreign policy).  One answer may be the dullness of the other alternatives, but another...

Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
July 14, 2012

North Korean Refugee Adoption Act

A reader writes in to ask for your support on a piece of pending legislation and asks for your support at the petition link below.  This legislation is similar to efforts that Sam Brownback had been pushing for years, so please give it a read. I know your blog is very active about matters related to North Korea, so I’m seeking your support for a cause I’m very passionate about, the passage of the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act (H.R....

Categories Refugees
July 13, 2012

Open Sources, 13 June 2012

COMMS CHECK:  Some of you are reporting difficulty accessing this site, particularly from South Korea, and my visitors’ log agrees.  I suspect shenanigans, and I’ve been in contact with my ISP, but I’ve just been too busy to pursue the problem.  If you’re reading anywhere in the Asia-Pacific region, I’d be interested in hearing whether you can access this site. —————————————- THIS TIME, THE WOLF IS REAL — HONEST!  I don’t doubt that this is an exceptionally dry year in...

Categories Anju Links
July 2, 2012

Sure, he’s shooting a lot more people, but their widows have cuter shoes!

ABC’s Joohee Choe has written the single dumbest, most superficial thing about North Korea ever to dress itself in drag as journalism. Attempting to forge a new image for himself and his country, North Korea’s youthful supreme leader Kim Jong Un is allowing women to wear pants, platform shoes and earrings, making more mobile phones available, endorsing previously banned foods like pizza, French fries and hamburgers — and he’s giving kids free trips to zoos and amusement parks. The 20-something...

Categories Media Criticism
July 2, 2012

No Pyongyang Spring

You may not believe that Kim Jong Un learned to drive at age three, but he has managed to perform one miracle — making North Koreans long for the libertine halcyon era of Kim Jong Il: The ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong Il’s sudden death in December of last year brought a tighter grip across the border.  Going even further, Kim Jong Un ordered a “guilt by association” system, which is a collective execution system which aims to terminate the entire...

Categories Human Rights/Inside NK/Refugees
July 1, 2012

Open Sources, July 1, 2012

AS REGIME FORCES SHELL REBEL-HELD SUBURBS of their own capital, reports emerge that the CIA is funneling anti-tank weapons to some rebel groups, who are steadily expanding their reach throughout the country. The regime, heavily armed with weapons of mass destruction that could hit one of America’s closest allies in minutes, is backed by China, Russia, and Iran. The war follows years of steady proliferation and a corresponding frustration of diplomatic efforts to disarm it and settle its territorial disputes...

Categories Anju Links
July 1, 2012

Open Sources, August 1, 2012

ON RARE OCCASIONS, I CONSIDER KCNA to be authoritative, and this is one of those occasions: In a dispatch headlined “To Expect ‘Change’ From DPRK Is Foolish Ambition,” the North’s Korea Central News Agency in stark terms confronted and put down speculation and comments by outsiders that its authoritarian government might change its ways. [….] Then the spokesman said that South Korea’s government – which it blames for many of its problems  –  “let experts in the north affairs and...

Categories Anju Links
June 29, 2012

AP Exclusive! Traitor to Fatherland Repents, Seeks Dear Leader’s Forgiveness! (Updated)

Scroll down for an update. In an news conference attended by such respected international news services as Russia Today, The Global Times, the Korean Central News Agency, and the Associated Press, a traitor to the fatherland revealed that brigandish South Korean puppets finagled her away from the loving and ample man-bosoms of Dear Leader Kim Jong Un. Pak Jong Suk made the account to local and foreign reporters Thursday at the People’s Palace of Culture in Pyongyang. The 66-year-old’s story...

Categories AP Watch/Humor/Satire
June 27, 2012

Flower Indeed: Lim Su-Kyung and the Bigotry of the Korean Left

For several days, I’ve hoped to find time to write about the new hit TV show in South Korea, “Now on My Way to Meet You,” featuring (and humanizing!) photogenic North Korean women: Each woman also entertains, some by singing and dancing. Others perform comedy skits, including several who mimic North Korea’s iconic, stern-faced female TV newsreader. But the ending turns sad as the women send video messages to family members back in the North. Everyone in the studio sobs...

Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society/Refugees
June 26, 2012

Open Sources, 26 June 2012

I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST being provocative to achieve some diplomatic or political purpose, but what exactly is the purpose we achieve by using the North Korean flag as a live fire target?  This looks like a case of the South Koreans involving our forces in their childish tit-for-tat.  Take this principle to its logical conclusion and you can see one of the reasons I’ve wanted our Army out of South Korea ever since I was a part of it....

Categories Anju Links
June 22, 2012

Open Sources, June 22, 2012

AP WATCH: Uh oh, I see that Jean Lee is back in Pyongyang. So what will it be this time? An exclusive report on how 100% of shoppers at the Kwangbok Area Supermarket blame America for the shortage of Cartier jewelry, an exhibit of oil paintings proving that there are no concentration camps, or Pak Won Il’s feature story about a darling five year-old girl who has learned to hit Uncle Sam’s hooked beak with a real AKS-74 at 460...

Categories Anju Links/AP Watch
June 19, 2012

Anju, 19 June 2012

U.N. + NORTH KOREA = KLEPTOCRACY: The U.N. is funneling millions of dollars worth of tradable carbon credits to corrupt nations worldwide, including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Uzbekistan in an attempt to encourage clean energy projects in the developing world. [….] North Korea is hosting seven hydroelectric dams, which may generate over $1 million in CERs annually. North Korea, Sudan, and Uzbekistan are among the 10 most corrupt nations worldwide, according to Transparency International’s 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index. It...

Categories Anju Links
June 18, 2012

Talking the Talk on Human Rights

After nearly four years of near-complete silence about North Korea’s human rights atrocities, Hillary Clinton is speaking truth to power: Clinton called on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and related programs and put the welfare of its people first. “Only under these circumstances will North Korea be able to end its isolation from the international community and alleviate the suffering of its people,” she said. A coalition of 40 human rights organizations and activists in April submitted a...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights
June 12, 2012

North Korean Engagement Strategy Transforms the Associated Press

For nearly 20 years now, proponents of “engagement” with North Korea have promised that commerce, aid, and economic interdependence would expose the North to new ideas and transform it into a more open society.  The reality has been much closer to the opposite of this.  Buoyed by a stream of regime-sustaining hard currency, North Korea became (if anything) more belligerent toward its benefactors, more brazen in its proliferation, and more brutal and exploitative toward its own people. Meanwhile, those in...

Categories AP Watch