SOMEDAY, I’D LOVE TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED HERE: Many of the details remained murky. The Beijing News said the boats were intercepted on May 8 in waters between China and North Korea. The report quoted one of the ships’ owners, Zhang Dechang, as saying that he had spoken by phone to a kidnapped sailor and that the captors were demanding about $189,000. Later reports said that had been reduced to about $142,000. Another newspaper, The Global Times, quoted Mr....

So barring some major technical problem, I hope I’m done messing with upgrades, themes, and plugins for a while, though I may set up another aggregator page and make some other organizational changes. There is one persistent problem that I can’t fix, however — the menus. As you can see, those link buttons are like U.N. resolutions. I’ve tried disabling the plugins, switching menus, changing and changing back the permalink settings, but nothing fixes the problem. I have a terrible...

IT’S BEING REPORTED THAT Chen Guangcheng is on his way to the United States. This is great news, and it won’t be lost on the Chinese people where Chen went when he feared the thugs of his own government. I suppose credit is due to the Obama Administration for negotiating this solution, but credit is also due to the Congress, which was making an election-year issue of the Administration’s initial bungling of the matter. In the end, China decided it...

SO FAR, NO NUKE TEST, and China is trying to take credit for that: “China is unhappy … and urged North Korea not to conduct a nuclear test near Changbai Mountain,” said the source, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Assuming this isn’t all disinformation — after all, China has openly encouraged North Korea to conduct nuclear tests until now — there’s also the question of what “near Changbai Mountain” means (Changbai Mountain, also...

NORTH KOREA LOSES A CUSTOMER, MAYBE?  The Burmese junta says it will stop buying weapons from North Korea, but that’s what you expect them to say, given that any such purchases would violate UNSCR 1874, and have previously attracted unwanted attention from the U.S. Navy. We’ll see soon enough if they’re serious about that.__________________________________ DO YOU SUPPOSE IT’S A COINCIDENCE that Kim Yong Nam recently chose to make a state visit to Indonesia, which also happens to be the home...

SPLITTERS! ________________________________ THE WORLD’S LEAST REASSURING THEME PARK: “It’s a shame that North Koreans are treated by their rulers as basically an expendable race of people. Before we were allowed on the ride, the guys in charge sent a few terrified farmers on test runs like a shipment of human flour sacks.” Read the whole thing. ________________________________ CAT-AND-MOUSE JOURNALISM IN CHINA: For all the kvetching I’ve done lately about junk reporting from Pyongyang, it’s easy to forget that some dedicated...

CHRISTINE AHN ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH KOREA: OK, it’s a few months old, but I can’t help myself. Have a wastebasket handy when you click this, preferably not one made of wicker or wire mesh. The fact that Ahn explicitly (if ever so briefly) acknowledges that there are human rights violations in North Korea somehow manages not to make her sound like any less of a tool. ________________________________ I DON’T KNOW HOW ANY HONEST FEMINIST COULD BE AN APOLOGIST...

NORTH KOREA’S BROADSIDE AGAINST CHUNG MONG-JONG, the centrist South Korean third-party candidate and Hyundai heir, is significant in two ways, given that Chung’s family has long been associated with economic aid to, and “engagement” with, North Korea. First, it’s significant that Chung has tacked away from North Korea since he last ran for the presidency in 2002, when he allied himself with arch-appeaser Roh Moo Hyun.  Second, it’s significant that North Korea seems to feel no residual affection for Chung,...