Anju Links for 23 April 2007

*   The Ides of April.   I’ve previously blogged about the replacement of Premier  Pak Pong Ju with Kim Yong Il.  Now, we learn that Kim Kyok-Sik is taking over as the new “military first,” to borrow a tired  expression,  which technically makes him second only to Korigula himself (ht: Richardson).  Two other old party hacks have gone off to that Eternal Party Congress chaired by Mephistopheles himself, or soon will:  Foreign Minister  Paek Nam-Sun  and Marshall Cho Myong-Rok. 

All in all, plenty of North Korean bureaucrats must be plotting, conniving, and stabbing each other in the back for those top jobs now.  It’s a pity they can’t all end up here.

*   Just  in case anyone is still paying attention, it has now been ten days since North Korea first  violated its agreement to shut down its 5-MW reactor at Yongbyon.  Despite  the inconclusive signals of North  Korean satellite theater, there are no firm indications that North Korea even plans to shut it down.  To know for certain, we’d have to have inspectors there to verify that, but of course, North Korea also violated a concurrent agreement to invite those inspectors back to the North.  For that matter, North Korea also violated  every other commitment it made on February 13th. 

We just  never learn.

*   Confidence-Building, North Korean Style:

“The basic nature of the U.S. imperialists to bring down our socialism can not be changed,” the newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party was quoted as saying April 14 in a report by the (North) Korean Central Broadcasting Station, monitored in Seoul.

Referring to the country’s “strong war deterrent,” interpreted as meaning its nuclear capability, the newspaper said the people could look forward confidently with a guarantee for the nation’s survival and prosperity.  [Yonhap]

Somehow, this does not bespeak  a Pyongyang Spring of reform, perestroika, or coexistence.

*   DPRK Negotiations Manual, Chapter 6:   How to get anything you want from South Korea for free: 

Step 1:  Submit your list of demands.  Be sure to specify something useful to the core defenders of the revolution, rather than to class enemies (for example, insist on rice, and refuse corn, the food of expendable counterrevolutionaries).

Step 2:  When the South Korean puppets  meekly beg you to keep your last set of promises, stomp away in feigned outrage. 

South Korea’s chief delegate, Chin Dong-soo, urged North Korea to quickly implement the nuclear deal, saying it would be “a shortcut to draw firm support from the international community on inter-Korean economic cooperation,” South Korean spokesman Kim Jung-tae said, according to pool reports. The North’s chief delegate, Ju Dong Chan, made unspecified angry comments to South Korean officials and walked out, the reports said.

Ju objected to tying the nuclear deal to inter-Korean economic cooperation, Kim said.

The North also rejected calls from a Washington lawmaker to return a U.S. warship captured in 1968 while on an intelligence-gathering mission off the North Korean coast. “Return? What do you mean by return? [The ship] is such an important thing,” Ju told Chin, who asked about the USS Pueblo during a lunch meeting that preceded the economic talks. “As we already decided not to do that, that’s it,” Ju said, shaking his head.  [AP, Kim Kwang-Tae, via Time]

Step 3:  Enjoy the bounty of decadent capitalism.

South Korea appeared set to accept North Korea’s request for food aid on Saturday, despite Pyongyang’s failure to meet a deadline to shut down its nuclear reactor as part of a disarmament deal.  [AP, Jae Soon Chang]

*   Just When You Think It Couldn’t Get Any Worse ….  

At the economic talks, Ju proposed setting up a branch of a North Korean bank in an industrial zone jointly run with South Korea in the North’s border city of Kaesong. Twenty-two South Korean firms operate factories in the enclave, funneling $740,000 to the communist regime every month in unmonitored transactions that could be potentially diverted to weapons programs.  [AP via Time again]

Not  that anyone cares, but I’d just like to point out that  there couldn’t be a more obvious vehicle for laundering money and violating U.N. Security Council 1718.   Why is it only unilateralism when we do it, and when it’s done with dozens of other nations (but not the French)?  If you want to know why the U.N. is a worthless institution, just look at how quickly its members states, including the United States, forgot Resolutions 1695 and 1718.  I guess we can put their shards on the rubbish heap where they threw the U.N. Charter.

*   Writing in the Asia Times, Bertil Lintner  describes North Korea’s heroin trade, and its Burma connection:

Significantly, the heroin that was seized in Taiwan and Australia was of the Double-UO-Globe brand, the most infamous brand produced in laboratories controlled or protected by the United Wa State Army, a government-recognized militia that operates in the Myanmar sector of Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle, one of the world’s main drug-producing areas.

[….]

[A]  clandestine military cooperation program was re-established in 1999. In that year, Myanmar bought about a dozen 130mm M-46 field guns from North Korea, and since 2002 between 15 and 20 North Korean technicians have been stationed at a naval base near Yangon, believed to be helping Myanmar to equip some of their naval vessels with surface-to-surface missiles.

North Korean tunneling experts have also been spotted in the new Myanmar capital Naypyidaw. Military-ruled Myanmar is just as cash-strapped as North Korea and Western narcotics officials suspected a barter deal – weapons and technology for drugs – although that has never been proven.

Do not miss this one.

*    Projection, Continued.   What?  Foreigners experience (gasp)  discrimination in South Korea? 

Given this atmosphere, how would South Korean society react if an immigrant commited a crime similar to the Virginia Tech massacre?  [The Hanky]

I’m guessing it would probably be a lot like 2002 and 2003:

I mean, what kind of a society  would break out into mass  mobbery in reaction to one isolated tragic event?  Who would turn hatred of a friendly allied  nation into fodder for popular  movies and songs?  Who would use another nation’s most painful living memory  as an occasion to show its hatred?  Who would discriminate against  an entire national group, commit multiple acts of random violence  (here, here, here, here, here), or peddle hate to  the kiddies in school  (here, here, here,  with extra points for the  approving reference to 9-11)?  What nation would seek political  advantage  from one tragic event  by propogating hatred for  an entire  nation (here, here, and  here), much less  find it to be  a winning electoral strategy?  And where would such hatred find broad societal acceptance?  Surely not in an educated, developed, industrialized society.  No civilized people in our times could  subscribe to  the inspiration of the world’s most brutal and backward system of government, one that openly espouses racism and is willing to kill as many babies as necessary  to prove its commitment to that notion of  purity.  [Update 8]

Like that, only a lot worse.  And that’s why South Korea’s Asshat of an  Ambassador called for Americans not  to engage in the  kind of  reprehensive behavior the low characters of his own country engaged in, with the tolerance and (sometimes) the encouragement  of their elected leaders.  Lee Tae-Shik, with his  unique perspective on  intolerance in practice,  has a lot of chutzpah.