Open Sources, Aug. 29, 2013

CALL ME OLD FASHIONED–it’s fine, really, I’m used to it–but I fail to see what’s so hard-line about the idea, most recently advanced by John McCain, that restarting six-party talks ought to be contingent on North Korea demonstrating its seriousness about disarming, such as by beginning to disarm. That’s pretty much the same view the Obama Administration had stated publicly, although it seems necessary to clarify it when North Korea has, more times than I could count, said it will never give up its nukes, when the administration’s former Special Envoy to North Korea is running around saying that we should talk to the North Koreans with no reasonable expectation of actual disarmament, and just as Bob King (what’s his job title again?) is about to visit Pyongyang where he’ll no doubt hear North Korea demand talks “without preconditions.”

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This seems as good a place as any to respond to Professor Haggard’s argument that Kaesong ought to be restarted because talking is better than not talking. Of course, the New York Channel was “talking,” too, and it was just one of several available ways to talk to the North Koreans when we weren’t paying them. I’m all for talking; it’s paying I’m opposed to, and I’m also opposed to talking about paying unless we have some very solid assurances that we’re getting what we’re paying for. If six-party talks aren’t about disarmament, and if North Korea is repeatedly allowed to renege on its commitments, then what else are we talking about except paying? You can’t have an effective counter-proliferation strategy based on financial pressure at the same time you’re paying the target of that pressure. That’s not a policy; it’s schizophrenia.

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NOW THAT SOMEONE HAS BLABBED TO THE PRESS–and I wish someone hadn’t–I’ll just offer my congratulations to Sung Yoon Lee, Andrei Lankov, and Marcus Noland for hitting the big time. If President Obama is listening to them, the odds are excellent that he heard better ideas than he could get from his own State Department, which has, after all, officially taken the risible position that North Korea hasn’t sponsored an act of terrorism since 1987.

Unless, of course, said advice involved Dennis Rodman in any way, shape, or form.

The White House doesn’t want anyone to think there’s a policy review underway, and maybe that’s true, but it’s also clear that the consensus has shifted away from the idea that financial inducements and talks for talks’ sake will make North Korea less dangerous.

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I SEE I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE who doesn’t buy Cuba and North Korea’s story (a non-sequitur in any event) that the Chong Chon Gang was merely carrying obsolete equipment to North Korea for repair. I’m just the first.  The authors of this piece reach their conclusions for many of the same reasons I did. I’m also gratified that it was this piece that appeared in 38 North, not an argument that importing weapons with sugar sprinkled on top is the first sign of a reformist trend. We should always thank a kind and loving God when life does not imitate parody.

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SOME REFUGEE/DEFECTOR UPDATES:  By now, you’ve probably heard about the 46 year-old North Korean who man swam across a narrow Yellow Sea strait to Gyodong Island, knocked on a resident’s door, and requested asylum. You may also have heard that a 68 year-old South Korean fisherman who was abducted by North Korea 41 years ago has escaped to “a third world country” and will soon return home.  You probably hadn’t heard that LiNK just rescued 17 more North Korean refugees.  China will allow a family who escaped North Korea together to go to South Korea, which probably isn’t so much a sign that China’s policies are changing as a sign that South Korea is increasingly willing to use its leverage to save its fellow Koreans.

I’ll briefly mention this Reuters report, claiming that North Korea has started “being nice” to repatriated defectors. The most obvious question is how the reporter knows how these people are treated out of sight of the cameras, but the better-documented trend is that North Korea is expending more resources cracking down on and hunting down would-be refugees.

You know what would I’d like to see? An AP interview with Park Jong Suk, investigating how she and her family are doing a year after her sham news conference.

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IN THE HIERARCHY of all that is unjust in this world–and for that matter, in the hierarchy of all that’s unjust in Japan–I reckon the Japanese government’s refusal to subsidize schools whose curricula substitute juche ideology for life skills must be one of the biggest wastes of journalistic outrage I’ve ever seen. The fact that these schools are operated by Chongryon, a North Korean front group implicated in money laundering, dope smuggling, and the kidnapping of Japanese citizens, ought to justify the seizure of the organization’s assets under some analog to 18 U.S.C. 1983 or RICO. The worst thing about the piece may be its implicit equating of juche with Korean identity.

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GREAT NEWS! Only 36% of South Koreans are …

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COMING SOON TO A BLOG NEAR YOU: North Korean trolls!