Anju Links for 3/19

*    Radio Megumi.  An international body has granted Japan  permission to increase broadcasts into North Korea.  The broadcasts will be directed  at a small audience:  its abducted citizens.  I tend to think that Japan would see them home again sooner if it broadcast words of dissent and subversion to the North Korean people.

*   Short-Selling Appeasement.   Japan now stands alone in standing up to the North Koreans in Beijing:  not one Yen until you give us back our people.  I have to wonder whether Japan will have much success on its own, but Japan’s leaders are probably calculating that this deal will not last.  The question is how long, when the U.S. side has developed an Uri-like willingness to indulge mendacicty, intransigence, and crime.

*   One Million Bottles of Extra-Strength Sudafed, Please.   Japan has identified three factories — apparently of its own colonial-era contruction — that are now used to produce the  high-quality meth  now sold on its streets.   If you know where to look, you can find them in Chongjin,  Wonsan, and Nampo.  There may also be a fourth in the  area of Sinuiju.

*   Al-Yahoo Watch.   Jules Crittenden  fisks pro-terrorist media spin.   Meanwhile, the big home-front story of the week was the impressive turnout of counter-protestors, which clearly  surprised the organizers of the original “surrender now” demonstration.  I don’t think anyone will ever outcompete the hard left and its prepackaged cadres of professional activists at a game they invented, but this does suggest more effective mobilization by those who oppose them.

*   Killing the Goose.   For those who think the  Kaesong Industrial Park  is teaching North Korean apparatchiks about capitalism, observe their latest extortionate demands on the business tenants there.  Recall that Kaesong hasn’t proven to be all that profitable for all of its tenants, despite slave labor wages (most of which the workers may never even  see) and financial help from South Korea.  So if the North Koreans remain ignorant of how balance sheets work, just what lesson do you suppose they’ve learned?