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3 December 2009 (Updated)

THE GREAT CONFISCATION CONTINUES. The Wall Street Journal reports that in Pyongyang, the exchange has been “calm and orderly,” at least to the extent foreign observers have been able to tell. Meanwhile, the Daily NK explains who will be hurt most badly by this.

If markets are damaged as badly as I suspect they might be, there could be a new flood of food refugees into China this winter. Another effect will be the final collapse of confidence by the North Korean people in their government’s currency. Traders and households won’t want to hold large quantities of North Korean won, may refuse to accept it, and will soon start chasing dollars and yuan instead. With the black market looming ever larger over the official economy, the effect of this move will be to permanently depress the value of the North Korean won and ensure that hyperinflation accelerates as soon as the new currency is distributed. Suddenly, those dollar bills attached to balloons are more needed than ever.

Update: Must-reading from Marcus Noland, who places this event in the context of other recent examples of North Korea’s economically motivated brutality:

Surveys of defectors suggest that the repressive apparatus of the state is disproportionately targeting those involved in market-oriented activities. Participants in market activities are more than half again as likely to be detained as other citizens…. Prisoners enduring a typical-length incarceration in a low-level “labor training center” often used to house economic criminals observed horrific abuses at astonishing rates: execution (observed by 60%), forced starvation (90%) and death by torture or beating (20%).

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I HAVEN’T PAID ENOUGH ATTENTION TO THIS up to now, but here’s more about the growing movement to indict Kim Jong Il before the International Criminal Court. One complication is that the United States doesn’t accept the ICC’s jurisdiction, and in light of what has happened to international institutions recently, I can understand why.

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YOU DON’T SAY! “North Korea’s talk of a peace pact is aimed at buying time and continuing developing nuclear weapons so that it may be recognised as a nuclear state,” says South Korea’s Foreign Minister. So it took us 20 years to figure this out. But South Korea, having reverted to rational diplomacy and the protection of its national interests, also doesn’t want to be left on the sidelines of a U.S. peace treaty with North Korea, which is as understandable now as it was when Nguyen Van Thieu had the same fear.

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QUESTIONS NO ONE ELSE IS ASKING: Maybe the point is academic now that the soldier in question is being softened up for the firing squad safely home again, but what the hell was a North Korean soldier doing out at sea alone in a small boat if he wasn’t trying to defect? I suppose in due course North Korean military intelligence will have the chance to fully explore its theories for that.

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5 Responses

  1. The ICC route is a red herring. So what happens when the ICC does start an investigation? And starts prosecutions in absentia? Same thing that would happen if George W. Bush was indicted as a war criminal. Nada.

    With a myriad of different things NGOs can do to help the North Korean people, IMHO the opportunity costs of devoting time, coin and energy to this particular endeavour seem far too high.

    For instance, with the funds they’re going to use to travel to the Hague, a few more brokers could have been paid for at least a few more North Koreans to have been rescued. Last someone active in the underground railroad told me, it was around $500 a head – probably half the cost of the plane ride to the Netherlands from ICN.

    After giving a talk at a local church, someone came up to me and said that the $500/rescue figure reminded him of that last scene in Schindler’s List, where Liam Neeson’s character looks at his Nazi pin and rues the fact that if he had sold it, he could have saved one more life.

    Now I’m not saying spending money on advocacy is not important: as someone intimately connected with an advocacy group here in Canada, I’m not going to shoot my own horse. However, perhaps at times with our scarce resources we should put things into perspective. What’s the most effective use of the money that we have? Spending $1000 for a plane ride for a doomed mission, or using that to save two North Korean lives?

  2. Jack, this is an issue of strategy, of course, and I will not pretend to be an expert. I also am one of those Americans who is quite proud of the fact the US has not joined the ICC. But the “international community” — the Europeans and many other regions and countries around the world do care what the UN and its various wings do. If suddenly this becomes more of a “hot issue” (to use the Konglish term that is everywhere all of the sudden) in these circles, it can only bring more pressure on China. I’m not naive enough to think China will simply flip its stance, but it may very well help some. But your point is well-taken nonetheless.