Open Sources, Aug. 23, 2013

NOW THAT EVERYONE HAS SUDDENLY DISCOVERED THAT North Korea has a meth problem, I thought I’d link this five-year-old post and let you read (or reread) what OFK readers read way back when. (There’s plenty more where that came from if you put “meth” or “heroin” in the search window.)

This is a perfect example of why we need sources like the Daily NK so badly.  They are the first harbingers of emerging social, economic, and political trends that will have important policy implications later.  Please consider giving them a few bucks.  (Yes, that problem with Indiegogo has been resolved.)

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TOTALITARIANISM + MILITARISM + NATIONALISM + PLUTOCRACY = FASCISM:  Time’s Angela Whitehead looks at the kinda-good life of Pyongyang’s elite and reports on North Korea’s growing class divide. Somehow, I don’t think this is Time’s year for getting permission to start a bureau in Pyongyang….

You’d think even the neo-Stalinists and -Trotskyists would know this math well enough to have written North Korea off years ago, but I’ve observed that if a regime is anti-American enough, all other ideological impurities are forgivable.

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I WONDER WHAT THE PANAMANIANS WILL DO with the Chong Chon Gang if North Korea doesn’t pay the $1.27 million fine.

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THIS MUST BE ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF KIM JONG UN’s “surprisingly good” domestic policy: North Korean comedienne sent to the coal mines for edgy humor.

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EUROPE HAS OFTEN TURNED A BLIND EYE TO feeding North Korea’s kleptocracy with luxury exports, so this report that the Swiss refused to sell the North Koreans ski lift equipment is a welcome sign that (at last) Europe may be taking U.N. Security Council prohibitions against such things seriously.

Better yet, take their money and ship them corn instead.  If enough people do this, maybe they’ll get the idea.

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BRUCE CUMINGS WOULDN’T APPROVE:  During the 1948 Yeosu Rebellion, a Life Magazine photographer accompanied a U.S. military observer and photographed the abuses of both sides — Communist prisoners who were beaten by their military captors, and whole families shot to death in their shops by the Communists.  The decade after liberation was a pretty grim time for Korea, to a degree that’s difficult to believe when you walk the streets of Seoul today.