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March 15, 2012

WaPo Editors, Andrew Natsios on the Post-Groundhog Day Agreement

I’d say it’s more than slightly significant to see the editorial page of the Washington Post accusing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of (as Robert Gates put it) buying the same horse all over again: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was careful not to oversell the agreement, calling it “a modest first step in the right direction. Officials said it would allow inspectors to get a first look at the uranium enrichment facility constructed at Yongbyon while letting the...

Diplomacy/Famine & Food Aid

March 14, 2012

Fisticuffs now officially more likely to save innocent life than appealing to the U.N.

Sure, we can complain that the United Nations has become a farce, but hey, we all elected for ’em, right? So you’ve heard that there are lives to be saved, and international conventions that would save them, if only some effective international body was capable of enforcing those conventions. Enter a group of members of the South Korean National Assembly, who flew to Geneva to make an appeal to the U.N. Human Rights Council to save about 30 North Korean...

"United" Nations/Human Rights/Refugees

March 13, 2012

AP Editor compares N. Korea’s surveillance of journalists to U.S., Germany

In my lonely critique of the AP’s sketchy relationship with the North Korean government, throughout its recent absorption into North Korea’s official propaganda apparatus, I’ve often observed that its new Pyongyang correspondent, Jean H. Lee, isn’t very good at asking obvious questions. As it turns out, her editors aren’t very good at answering them, either. In a new article in Foreign Policy, Isaac Stone Fish becomes the first actual journalist to question, however gently, this new relationship and its potential...

AP Watch

March 10, 2012

Wanted: Photos & Video of AP’s Kim Il Sung Glorification Exhibit in New York (Updated with Location, Hours, Photos)

Yonhap is reporting that the Kim Il Sung commemorative photo exhibit to be co-sponsored by the Associated Press and the official North Korean “news” service, will open next Thursday: A group of North Korean journalists left for the United States Saturday to attend a photo exhibition set to open next week, marking the centenary of the birth of the North’s late founding leader, Kim Il-sung, the country’s media said. The North’s delegation, led by Kim Chang-gwang, vice director of the...

AP Watch/Media Criticism

March 9, 2012

Did Iran test a nuke in North Korea?

It would be a very serious matter if Iran had tested a nuclear weapon in North Korea in 2010, as this German language report in Die Welt claims. The claim has received much less attention in the U.S. press than it would seem to merit, and most bloggers who have picked up the story have merely wondered aloud whether it could be true (the notable exception being Stephan Haggard). I’ll add my summation of the evidence to Stephan’s, but I’ll...

Axis of Evil/Iran/Proliferation

March 7, 2012

Anju: Congressgnome Kucinich goes down

Last night, Dennis Kucinich (D-Middle Earth) was defeated by fellow Democrat Marcy Kaptur after redistricting pitted them against one another. The defeat of Kucinich is not entirely good, because for Kucinich to advocate a cause is to easily identify it as a fringe position. On the other hand, his long-standing ties to Christine Ahn (Kucinich wrote a foreward to a book she wrote years ago) gave a congressional voice to some extreme policy positions on North Korea. Also, the man...

Anju Links/Useful Idiocy

March 6, 2012

WTF? AP and KCNA co-sponsor “Day of the Sun” Kim Il Sung propaganda exhibit in New York?

Ever since the Associated Press signed an MOU with North Korea’s official “news” agency establishing a bureau in Pyongyang, I’ve tracked a disturbing trend in the AP’s coverage, starting with its global distribution of a doctored photograph designed to finagle food aid out of potential donors. The other day, the latest in a series of reports echoing KCNA’s propaganda caused me to say that it had turned its AP propaganda amplifier up to eleven. In retrospect, I should have saved...

AP Watch/Media Criticism

March 5, 2012

Col. David Maxwell, on why the North Korean people don’t rebel

It’s funny how life moves in oddly circular ways sometimes. I first met Col. David Maxwell more than a decade ago on Okinawa, when I was an Army defense counsel and he was commanding a Special Forces battalion. This unequal juxtaposition of his cred versus mine makes me begin this post feeling sheepish about disagreeing with one of his conclusions here, that the North Korean people are so thoroughly indoctrinated that they would not consider rising against the system. I...

Resistance

March 4, 2012

AP’s coverage of North Korea strikingly similar to The Onion’s

So once again, KCNA has turned its AP propaganda amplifier up to eleven, informing us of that, according to “rare interviews … with Pyongyang residents,” North Koreans don’t trust the Americans to keep the post-Groundhog Day Agreement. The correspondent quotes a grand total of five North Koreans, including one soldier, one lieutenant colonel, a Foreign Ministry official, and two women whose occupations are not listed. Typically for the AP’s recent reports from Pyongyang, it invites more questions than it answers,...

AP Watch

March 2, 2012

For some of us it’s already March; at Foggy Bottom, it’s forever Groundhog Day

Let’s drill down into the Post-Groundhog Day Agreement, starting with the text of the nearest thing we have to a written agreement, a State Department press release, which I produce here in its entirety: A U.S. delegation has just returned from Beijing following a third exploratory round of U.S.-DPRK bilateral talks. To improve the atmosphere for dialogue and demonstrate its commitment to denuclearization, the DPRK has agreed to implement a moratorium on long-range missile launches, nuclear tests and nuclear activities...

Appeasement/Diplomacy

February 29, 2012

It’s still Day One. Have they reneged yet?

The Obama Administration, pretty much as I’d guessed, has struck a deal that’s transparently aimed at keeping the North Koreans quiet until mid-November. Wish them luck with that if you wish. Below the jump, you can read a press “availability” event (thanks to a friend) at which the Administration’s mouthpieces, no doubt mindful that we’re in an election year, try very hard to depress expectations that this is leading up to Agreed Framework III. From what little we know about...

Appeasement/Diplomacy

February 24, 2012

China abets the murder of nine North Korean refugees

South Korean legislators on Friday condemned China’s repatriation of fugitives from North Korea after Beijing reportedly sent nine back despite pleas from Seoul. A resolution passed by the committee on foreign affairs and unification urges China to follow international rules in handling North Koreans who flee their impoverished homeland, and seeks outside help to halt the returns. [AFP] Seoul says it might (gasp) raise this with the U.N. Human Rights Council — without mentioning China by name. But despite all...

AP Watch/China/Human Rights/Refugees

February 21, 2012

Entertainers Join Effort to “Save My Friend,” South Korean Lawmaker Launches Hunger Strike

Across the street from the Chinese Embassy in Seoul today was a busy place. At 2 p.m. South Korean National Assemblywoman Park Sun Young of the Liberty Forward Party launched a hunger strike (I took the photo above around 5:40 p.m.). In a statement on Tuesday, Park said she plans to launch an “indefinite” hunger strike in front of the Chinese embassy in Seoul to protest the forced repatriation of North Korean defectors by China. “At this very moment, China...

Activism/China/Human Rights/Refugees

February 21, 2012

Seoul, 1949, in color

See the rest of them here.

History

February 19, 2012

North Korean Refugees in China in Grave Danger of Repatriation

Update 2 (2/20): In addition to the letter to the Chinese government in the original post below that you can email, fax, or mail, there’s an online petition to the UNHCR and the UN Special Rapporteur that you can sign that’s rapidly collected almost 25,000 signatures. I also just read a related email sent on behalf of several groups saying that a) they’re on Twitter @savemyfriend (in Korean and English) and Facebook and b) are gathering across from the Chinese...

Activism/China/Human Rights/Refugees

February 19, 2012

Anju, February 19, 2012

I just can’t understand why South Koreans who ostensibly support the idea a free society so fundamentally misunderstand that idea. Rather than make free-speech martyrs out of imbeciles, wouldn’t it make more sense to engage in the war of ideas on both sides of the DMZ? Are they really so afraid that a majority of South Koreans are going to prostrate themselves toward Pyongyang? Is such a majority even capable of self-government anyway? Are they really so afraid to speak...

Anju Links

February 18, 2012

How do you suppose Kim Jong Nam would like Vegas? (Update: Or not?)

I figured something bad was going to happen to Kim Jong Nam after that book came out. Well-known playboy and occasional critic of his father’s regime, Kim Jong-nam has been kicked out of luxury hotel in the Chinese gambling hub of Macau, according to a Russian newspaper. The Arguments and Facts weekly claimed Jong-nam ran up a bill of Â£9,500 but was unable to pay because his credit card had been cancelled. Jong-nam’s decadent lifestyle saw him ditched as the...

Anju Links/Kremlinology

February 18, 2012

Agreed Framework III Watch

Whenever I mention Glyn Davies, I like to remind readers of the time he tried to pressure a State Department colleague into airbrushing a report on North Korea’s human rights atrocities for “the cause” of Agreed Framework II. Davies is about to fly to Beijing for talks with North Korean negotiator Kim Kye Gwan next week, and Kim wouldn’t have booked his ticket if he didn’t see a payday at the end of the journey. There isn’t a doubt in...

Appeasement/Diplomacy