April 24, 2012

So is it terrorism this time?

North Korea threatens to destroy Seoul and reduce its elected government “‘to ashes’ in three or four minutes,” apparently for “defaming” its menacing Kim Il Sung birthday parade: North Korea’s military Monday threatened “special actions” soon to turn parts of the South Korean capital to ashes, accusing Seoul’s conservative government of defaming its leadership. The North has for months been criticising the South’s President Lee Myung-Bak in extreme terms and threatening “sacred war” over perceived insults. There have been no...

Categories Anju Links/Terrorism (NK)
April 23, 2012

See Kim Run!

It’s very rare that an election in any country is anything but a choice between the lesser of two evils. For a brief moment at least, South Korea’s election will be an exception to that dreary rule, because Kim Moon Soo has said he will run for president. Years ago, before he was elected as Governor of Kyonggi Province, I profiled Kim here and here. On Saturday morning, while conversing with my wife, I was lamenting that Park Geun Hye,...

Categories Korean Politics
April 23, 2012

AP Exclusive: Another Great Moment in North Korean Agriculture!

What’s all this I keep hearing from fringe organizations like the World Food Program that North Korea isn’t agriculturally self-sufficient? To mark what would have been Kim’s 100th birthday, thousands came to central Pyongyang to view elaborate displays, mostly of the violet orchid Kimilsungia named in his honor and the red begonia Kimjongilia named for his son and successor, Kim Jong Il. The Kimilsungia, named after Kim by the late Indonesian dictator Sukarno, has become an integral part of the...

Categories AP Watch/Humor/Satire
April 21, 2012

Anju, April 21, 2012

IF JIMMY CARTER HAS LOST RABBI SHMULEY BOTEACH, HE’S LOST … well, upper Westchester County I suppose, but still, it’s good to see things like this in the Huffington Post: So why haven’t we done more to help the innocent people of North Korea who must live under fear and tyranny, and who suffer the specter of state-organized famines? Many will say that our hands are tied due to the fact that the North has nuclear weapons, which just reinforces...

Categories Anju Links
April 20, 2012

Anju, April 20, 2012

CHINA DENIES selling missile transporters (TELs) to North Korea, but the U.N.’s sanctions committee will investigate. Look for China to block the report if it comes up with any evidence that China, yet again, violated UNSCR 1874, 1718, and 1695. That’s how China responded to a previous report that it helped North Korea sell missiles to Iran. Last year, it also blocked a U.N. report on North Korea’s uranium enrichment program. Look for them to do the same when the...

Categories Anju Links
April 18, 2012

Anju, April 18, 2012

CHINA ‘PAUSES’ DEPORTATIONS? The AFP, citing the Yomiuri Shimbun, reports that China has temporarily stopped sending North Korean refugees back to Kim Jong Il’s firing squads and concentration camps to punish it for its latest misadventure in rocket science: The Yomiuri Shimbun quoted two Chinese officials as saying the long-standing policy of swiftly returning any North Korean who made it across the border and into China — despite the punishment they face — had been put on hold. “If refugees...

Categories Anju Links
April 17, 2012

Anju, April 17, 2012

THERE, FIXED IT FOR YOU: “UN strongly [weakly] condemns North Korea rocket launch, warns of [no] further action if new nuclear test.” Seriously, guys, it’s a presidential statement — not even a resolution. It’s not just that, it’s the swiftness with which the U.N. collectively decided to imitate parody. ____________________________________ HOW TO REPORT FROM NORTH KOREA, from a critical consumer: It isn’t rocket science, really; just tell the reader what you saw and what you didn’t see, and if you...

Categories Anju Links
April 15, 2012

Client Number Nine Leaves the Eighth Floor

Until last week, the Associated Press and the North Korean regime had co-sponsored a photo exhibition in New York to commemorate the lives and legacies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. The exhibition appears to have been one of North Korea’s demands of the AP, part of a deal in which the AP secured permission to open a bureau in Pyongyang. I had previously posted some samples of the exhibition here and here, confirming that the photos exhibited...

Categories AP Watch
April 15, 2012

Who Else Flubbed N. Korea’s Rocket Launch? The Press, the U.N., and the Obama Administration

By now, everyone knows that the North’s missile test was a fiasco, but North Koreans don’t have this fiasco all to themselves. For example, until the day of the launch, the North had never done a better of job handling of the foreign press. It had successfully co-opted the largest wire service in the United States into a megaphone for its propaganda, and it had so effectively focused much of the rest of the U.S. media on its stage-managed rocket...

Categories "United" Nations/AP Watch/Media Criticism/Missiles
April 12, 2012

North Korean Rocket Launch Fails.

This just in: A U.S. official has confirmed that a North Korean long-range missile broke apart in air after launch. U.S. officials say they believe the missile is believed to have crashed into the sea, ABC News reports. South Korea’s Defense Ministry says that North Korea has fired a long-range rocket. Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told reporters in a nationally televised news conference that the rocket was fired at 7:39 a.m. Feel free to make your own bawdy dysfunction...

Categories Missiles
April 11, 2012

A New Approach to North Korea: Contain, Constrict & Collapse

Sometime in the next few hours, North Korea will launch a prototype for an intercontinental ballistic missile, in flagrant violation of three U.N. Security Council resolutions. The North Koreans announced the launch two weeks after agreeing to a deal to freeze their missile and nuclear programs in exchange for U.S. food aid. It now seems they will follow their missile test with a nuclear test. Traditionally, Chinese obstructionism delays U.N. Security Council action by about three weeks after a North...

Categories Diplomacy/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/Subversion/WMD
April 11, 2012

White House Warns Media Not to Be Tools for North Korean Propaganda

They didn’t mention the AP specifically, but they didn’t really have to: The White House is pushing back against the media for what it sees as oversaturated coverage of this week’s forthcoming North Korean missile test. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know this is a propaganda exercise,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told me. “Reporters have to be careful not to get co-opted. The long-range missile test, which Pyongyang is touting as a peaceful satellite...

Categories AP Watch/Media Criticism
April 10, 2012

Anju, April 10, 2012

YES, I HAVE YOUR ROCKET PORN: We’re apparently pretty close to North Korea’s missile satellite launch, judging by these pictures taken by an AFP photographer, this Reuters report, and this AP report, which ironically contains no visible input from the Pyongyang Bureau. You’ve probably heard by now that North Korea is already doing suspicious things around its nuclear test site at Mt. Mantap. Last night, a friend asked me when we could expect that nuke test. In the past, it’s...

Categories Anju Links
April 10, 2012

New Edition of “The Hidden Gulag” Adds New Imagery, Witness Accounts to Our Understanding of North Korea’s Prison Camps

Here.  Of personal interest to me is that witnesses have confirmed that this is indeed Camp 12, Chongo-ri, and this is indeed Camp 25, Chongjin.  There aren’t any new images of Camp 16 here, but in a few days, I’ll be posting an entire page of imagery of that camp, and the nuclear test site next door.  Thanks to David Hawk, Chuck Downs, Greg Scarlatoiu, and the HRNK board for giving me the opportunity to help with this.  David’s first...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
April 9, 2012

AP Exclusive: North Koreans say Kim Jong Il is like Jesus, only bigger!

I think we’ve just reached the point at which reality is just too absurd for parody, so I’ll just let you read the latest and judge for yourself. Somehow, I don’t think comparing Kim Jong Il’s birth to the nativity at Bethlehem is quite the angle KCNA should have chosen to win over the hearts and minds of middle America. I would, however, like to commend Jean H. Lee for (1) putting her byline on the story, (2) helpfully acknowledging...

Categories AP Watch
April 8, 2012

Kang Chol Hwan and Shin Dong-Hyok Petition the U.N. for the Release of Their Family Members

While researching an unrelated post, I stumbled on this brief (opens in .pdf), filed just this week on behalf of Kang Cho-Hwan and Shin Dong-Hyok, and authored by international human rights lawyer Jared Genser. Kang, for those not familiar with him, is a survivor of Camp 15, author of “The Aquariums of Pyongyang,” and now a correspondent for the widely circulated South Korean daily, the Chosun Ilbo. According to the brief, Kang’s sister and her 11-year old son disappeared last...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps
April 7, 2012

AP Exclusive: North Korea is a land of smiling, well-fed schoolchildren who all adore the Great Leader!

There are days when this blog almost writes itself: PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korean students in Pyongyang celebrated the first day of their new school year this week with flowers and confetti. It’s a moment marked by ceremony for students entering a school for the first time, whether it’s primary school, a university or something in between. It’s a tradition for the parents of primary school students to pin flowers on their new school uniforms. At middle school, older...

Categories AP Watch