Anju Links for 13 September 2008

HELLO! ARE-YOU-THE-BRAIN-SPECIALIST!?   More rumors about Kim Jong Il’s health, and speculation about what might follow him, at the New York Times.  The Times doesn’t specify, but another report claims it was brain surgery.

THIS TIME, I TEND TO AGREE WITH THE CONSENSUS VIEW of post-KJI North Korea, whenever that eventually should grace us all:  military junta with Dauphin figurehead to lend legitimacy to puppetmasters.  But with the regime so economically weakened and unpopular, one can’t help thinking that the loss of the god-king would break what little is left of the old theocratic magic and trigger a round of backstabbing intrigues that would put the Borgias to shame, or greed-driven reforms that would quickly get out of hand.  Big Man regimes seldom outlast the Big Man for long, and North Korea is already an outlier.

THE HANKYOREH ASKS THE SAME QUESTION I’ve been asking:  How the hell can people claim to know that today, the world’s most reclusive despot can brush his own teeth?  Read the whole thing and decide for yourself.  My own skepticism is undiminished, especially in light of past history.  Hey, a well-timed illness can be just the thing if you need to stall your way out of a promise to a lame-duck president.

IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL IT’S INEVITABLE:  The revival of U.S. and South Korean operational plans for the collapse of North Korea is taking on new urgency these days.  Recall that former President Roh backed away from the very idea of planning for such a contingency, for fear of offending a regime that has 10,000 artillery tubes pointed at South Korean cities and towns.

YOU CAN READ SOME RELATED THOUGHTS from Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation, although I found this quote to be the most interesting part of his Web memo:

The magnitude of the dispute between the U.S. and North Korea over the verification protocol will make it more difficult for diplomats to continue papering over differences. The Bush Administration is constrained in its ability to again capitulate to North Korean demands in light of rising criticism regarding its perceived over-eagerness to reach an agreement and secure a policy legacy. As such, there is declining potential for a breakthrough during the waning months of the Bush Administration.   [Bruce Klingner, Heritage Foundation Web memo]

I hope he’s right, but he may be underestimating the determination of the State Department, and the election-year disengagement of the entire elected portion of our government.

MEANWHILE, DON KIRK RELAYS THIS UNDERSTATEMENT from uber-appeaser Evans Revere of the Korea Society :

“We’re at a bit of an impasse now,” says Evans Revere, president of the Korea Society in New York, but “whether it has anything to do with reports [of Kim’s illness] is a matter of speculation.”  [Don Kirk]

No it isn’t.  Multiple impasses, including the most recent, all predated the reports of Kim Jong Il’s stroke (may Allah constrict his cerebral capillaries).  In any event, those impasses have only been broken by unilateral State Department capitulations.  The North Korean side of this negotiation has been at an impasse since at least September 2005, with the negligible exception of further disabling something that was used up anyway.  We’ve made all the concessions, and we’ve only negotiated against ourselves.  The North Koreans mainly just watched, and to a degree, tolerated the spectacle.

A GOOGLE EARTH PROJECT FOR YOU?

North Korea has been building a new long-range missile base, which is larger and more efficient than its existing intercontinental ballistic missile base, in Pongdong-ni, North Pyongan Province over the last eight years, AP quoted a military expert as reporting Thursday. At the moment, North Korea maintains a long-range missile base in Musudan-ni, North Hamgyeong Province.  [Chosun Ilbo]

Supposedly, it’s near North Korea’s west coast, not far from China.  The new facility is designed to allow the North to test long-range missiles more frequently than the older, smaller Musudan-ri facility.  You may want to scour this, this, this, this, and this for clues as well.*   Someday, I suppose, we’ll give the North Koreans another extended series of payoffs in exchange for some unverifiable promises to stop building missiles, too.

THE CORRUPTION-RIDDEN U.N. DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM, whose funds were diverted by the North Koreans, and whose accounts were used to conceal suspicious North Korean financial transactions, is considering a return to North Korea.  Aren’t there other countries with more potential for development than those that mercilessly crush every flicker of enterprise?  For a look at North Korea’s own development priorities, see the previous item.  Shouldn’t that be a factor in how these funds are allocated?

THE OUTRAGE!   Commie textbooks being pulled out of classrooms all over South Korea.

*   Curtis Melvin of NK Econ Watch, who has already published a comprehensive map of everything remotely interesting in North Korea, thus robbing all other Google-Earthers of any hope of “finding” anything new, is ineligible for this challenge, since he probably found it before Pike and Bermudez did anyway.   We are in awe, Curtis, and we curse you just the same for ruining it for the rest of us.