1 May 2010
Must Read No. 1: Nicholas Eberstadt on the importance of striving for unification.
North Korea’s present leadership will surely wish to ratchet up its threat to America and the Western alliance in the years ahead. It is entirely reasonable to anticipate Pyongyang’s eventual sale of nukes to hostile powers or international terror networks. The regime has already marketed abroad practically everything in its nuclear warehouse short of user-ready bombs. Even worse, there are troubling signs–repeated nuclear tests, continuing missile tests, and attempts at cyberwarfare probing American and South Korean defenses–that the regime is methodically preparing to fight, bizarre as it sounds, a limited nuclear engagement against the U.S.
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Must Read No. 2: Christian Whiton on the sinking of the Cheonan.
Despite these serious threats, turning the other cheek to a likely North Korean act of war poses an even greater long-term risk. Nothing else could be seen as a stronger signal to Pyongyang and other undemocratic capitals throughout the region that free nations are on the run. Kim would feel vindicated in pushing the envelope around him further out, which he has attempted to do with a nuclear program, ballistic missile tests, and now likely conventional naval warfare. Beijing would logically be tempted to broaden its strategic goals further. Other bad actors would follow.
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China? A sanctions cheat? Say it aint so!
Scott Snyder, a senior associate of the Asia Foundation, claimed that Beijing’s decision to invest in the North is likely to be aimed more at helping Kim Jong-il maintain power by financing new sources for hard cash at a time when the nation is going through economic difficulties.
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GI Korea has put up some great pictures from his most recent visit to the ROK. It seems he really got around; there are pictures of Chunchon, Seokcho, Jindo, and Chinhae.
I’m going to miss Vitit Muntarbhorn when his mandate runs out next month:
“We must advocate,” he said, “fair treatment of all,” meaning North Korean citizens inside and defectors outside the country alike. He added that North Korea is “one big prison” which must be exposed to the world.
“It is incumbent upon the UN to act,” he concluded, “to heal, to support, to help” the world in the fight against North Korean human rights abuses.
The U.N. will be a far poorer (and quite possibly bankrupt) place without him.
In retrospect, Robert Mugabe’s invitation to the North Korean soccer team has worked out rather badly for him, but not as badly as his invitation of North Korean military advisors ended for the Zimbabwean people:
Plans to host the North Korean football squad have been condemned as a symbolic insult by opposition politicians and activists because of North Korea’s role in the mass killings of Zimbabweans in the 1980s.
Campaigners are threatening to target the visitors’ hotel and training camp and disrupt their preparations for the tournament, which kicks off in neighbouring South Africa on 11 June.
At least 20,000 people were slaughtered by an army brigade trained by North Korean instructors in western Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland province during a five-year uprising from 1982. The operation was known as Gukurahundi, meaning “the rain that washes away the chaff before the spring rains”.
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In the suit filed with the Seoul Administrative Court, the plaintiffs — a group of 200 residents of Pyeongtaek who live near Osan Air Base — accused the Korean government of approving the U.S. air base’s runway expansion project without conducting an environmental impact assessment or consulting the local municipal authority or residents.
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You can tell the North Korean people are hungrier than usual whenever KCNA starts trumpeting new scientific breakthroughs in Soilent Green production.
“My maid just asked for leave,” a friend in Beijing told me recently. “She’s rushing home to buy property. I suggested she borrow 70 percent, so she could cap the loss.
It wasn’t the first time I had heard such a story in China. Some friends in Shanghai have told me similar ones. It seems all the housemaids are rushing into the market at the same time.
There are benefits to housekeeping for fund managers. China’s housemaids may be Asia’s answer to the shoeshine boy whose stock tips prompted Joseph Kennedy to sell his shares before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.