Open Sources
I’ve said that an uprising along the lines of what’s going on in Egypt is implausible in North Korea. In the case of China, however, it’s unlikely (for now) but not implausible. And apparently, the Chinese government agrees:
Newspapers can only publish accounts of the protests from the official Xinhua News Service, a policy often invoked on stories the government considers sensitive. Censors have blocked the ability to search the term “Egypt” on microblogging sites, and user comments that draw parallels to China have been deleted from Internet forums.
While there is little chance the protests could spark demonstrations in China, the extent to which the long-ruling Communist Party is censoring the story underscores how wary it is of any potential source of unrest that might threaten its hold on power.
“Of course, the government doesn’t want to see more comments on (the protests), because stability is what they want,” said Zhan Jian, a professor with the Media Department at the China Youth University for Political Sciences.
A favorite expression of mine is that to solve a problem, sometimes you have to make it bigger. One very nifty solution to the North Korean problem would be to quietly work toward bumping off North Korea’s sponsor. As an added bonus, a billion people would acquire the right to read whatever news they want.
But then, I’d assumed a few days ago that Mubarak was a goner and that we were headed for an Egyptian Hamasistan. Now, things look much murkier. For one thing, plenty of us probably underestimated Mubarak’s wiliness. For another, the military now holds the upper hand, and what began as a popular uprising is beginning to look more like a coup. If that creates some breathing space for a more liberal opposition or at least a less authoritarian regime to consolidate, it may be for the best. Chaos only helps the worst elements.
I don’t think all hope is lost, and the stakes are great. Egypt is the Arab world’s most populous country and its cultural heart. Whether it goes the way of Gaza or (for all its faults) the way of Turkey, the consequences would be vast. I pray that our State Department and CIA are quietly flooding the liberal opposition — the kind that would hold free elections even after it takes power — with cash and good advice between now and September, when presidential elections are scheduled.
The real question is whether Egyptian society has evolved to the point where it can create a sustainable democracy (unsustainable democracies — which begin with strong “revolutionary” mandates but which are based on angry, intolerant, and authoritarian impules — tend to become the worst tyrannies). Iraq, with its ethnic and sectarian curses, had to cull off a lot of angry young men and suffer some painful lessons to become a marginal case.
You know, I don’t get too worried when Lee Myung Bak talks about holding a summit with Kim Jong Il, because I’m fairly certain that the offer is strictly cosmetic. What worries me more is that a politician as shrewd and well-informed as Lee has concluded, so soon after the shelling of Yongpyeong and the sinking of the Cheonan, that such an offer has cosmetic value at all.
Speaking of things people say, and which I hope they don’t really mean ….
“We have 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula,” [Pentagon] spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters. “We’ve got, I think, north of 50,000 troops in Japan. So we have significant assets already there. Over the long-term lay-down of our forces in the Pacific, we are looking at ways to even bolster that, not necessarily in Korea and Japan, but along the Pacific Rim, particularly in Southeast Asia.
It’s possible, of course, to bolster a force somewhere without stationing more American infantry there. Yes, there are places (Afghanistan) where the hard slog of infantry combat is essential to protecting our national security. But in places like Korea, the mission is more about power projection and deterrence. My hope is that this statement is mostly aimed at persuading China that Kim Jong Il is a liability.
Case closed! Kim Jong Eun and Kim Jong Il wear matching hats and jackets! What else do you need to know?
It’s been a very cold winter in North Korea, and I believe that in spite of the fact that the Choson Sinbo is reporting it. The regime is preparing the people for another hungry year because the deep freeze may hurt food production. But what they never mention is that in today’s global economy, food is cheap, and even countries with rudimentary economies can import enough food to feed their people. The only real prerequisites are basic security and a distribution system that allows the supply to find the demand.
I’ve linked to articles about Song Byeok before (seventh item), but this report on him is so good that I can’t pass it up. Song’s art is subversive in a way that’s delectably churlish. Seeing it reinforces my faith in the irrepressible human spirit. Look at all of the experiences that have scarred this man, and imagine him as a Winston Smith figure at the very heart of North Korea’s mental regimentation. And let’s face it — not even South Korea typically does political satire this well. And yet here is a man within whom dissent and satire could grow from such barren earth.
This is also another step forward for the formation of a dissident culture in exile. Eventually, that culture will take root at its source. It may even pose a threat to the regime’s survival in a decade or two, if it’s still with us by then.
Sadly, that’s probably all they need to be convinced.
I did write a response at the Huffington Post’s offending post, but because it included a link showing how unsupported the Kim Jong-un ascension presumption is (shoulda gotten this one in, too), they probably won’t let it go through.
Thanks, Joshua, for letting me be a link whore. 🙂
1…What’s with the gloves in the picture? Only Little Kim is wearing gloves — and he appears slumped in his seat. Does Little Kim have a permanent dialysis shunt that he wishes to hide? I think the gloves are weirder than normal.
2… Food is no longer cheap. The U.N Food and Agriculture Organization said on Thursday that global food prices hit a record high in January. The FAO Food Price Index reached its highest level since records began in 1990, and topped the high of 224.1 in June 2008 that had occurred during the food crisis of 2007/08. The index measures monthly price changes for a food basket composed of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar. China, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan will inevitably be affected. North Korea is beyond hope.
3….I think Winston Smith eventually came to love Big Brother.
4…Finally US troops …”along the Pacific Rim…” means Taiwan or (gasp) even Vietnam? It would certainly be better if it meant North Korea.
Withdraw our troops from Japan and Europe.
To prove what point?
I’m a liberal Democrat, and even I know that removing U.S. troops stationed on proven success zones is an idea that never should be implemented. Adding to our inventory of expansion zones is another subject matter. Don’t blame us, blame our Brittanic Roman origins…
right on, ditto81. The Count of the Saxon Shores was a Good Thing. We later marauders would never have dared invade if there had been a Force in Place. That principle applies to Vikings and to DPRK Special Forces. Once one’s Taken Up the White Man’s Burden, one cannot just put it down in a fit of amnesia.
Being trillions in debt to China, the US can no longer afford military aid or foreign aid. Japan, Germany, Italy, Korea, Israel, and other rich countries can pay for it themselves. Or at least, take an across the board 50% cut in all military aid and foreign aid.
Greg wrote:
How much “foreign aid” (not military aid) does Korea actually get from the US?
Or, for that matter, Japan and Germany or Italy?
greg is entirely right to say that military aid is foreign aid. I disagree with him: we should not reduce it — but it is direct, expensive, important, utterly unarguable foreign aid.
We in the USA spend such aid because we have this strange idea that people should be able to vote for their government, to decide their own lifestyle, and to speak their minds without fear of arbitrary punishment. (This applies to why we should support Israel and not Mubarak’s Egypt, just as much as why we opposed Big Kim’s invasion of the South and sent our own troops to die in the mud and squalor of Korea.)
It is aid, the most important kind, and it is noble. I believe we can afford it and we must afford it, because the Four Freedoms and “our way of life” is what makes the distinction between a miserable life as a serf and an upright one as a free man. If we did not continue to give this aid, do you think that non-Soviet Russia would have intervened in favor of South Korea at any time in the past twenty years when Baby Kim and his Chinese masters invaded the South (which had forgotten how to defend itself)?
Yes, one could make the argument that military aid to countries is a form of foreign aid. But they are not the same type for a number of reasons, and therefore it muddles things to lump them together.
I would prefer if someone could answer my question before I go much further, but military aid to those countries (a) benefits the US as well as the “recipient” in a number of ways, including a dramatic long-term cost-saving effect as a preventive measure, and (b) is often concomitant with purchase of American weapon systems or aircraft, etc.
Non-military aid, though it also has intangible benefits to the donor, is a different animal, which is why I prefer to separate them for a discussion that would start with whether or not (and how much) Japan, South Korea, Italy, and Germany are receiving in terms of non-military “foreign aid.”
Marshall Scholarships? “Concomitant with purchase” — or buying into — the American way of life? Israel obtains a vast aid benefit inasmuch as State of Israel bonds are tax deductible against US income taxes. I believe also that Carnival Cruise Lines, a wholly Israeli company, obtains MarAd loans and benefits. We allow Japanese, Italian, German, etc., companies to purchase US companies and US land, and to obtain tax benefits thereby. These are simply ways in which the USA seeks to benefit governments and enterprises of which it approves. They are all paid for by the US taxpayer. They are not in any significant way different from military aid.
david woolley wrote:
You’ve lost me. Allowing persons and companies from other countries to purchase property is “foreign aid”?
I’m a US citizen and I own a company in Korea, and I own property from which that company has operated. So South Korea (of which I’m not a citizen) is giving the US “foreign aid”? And more to the point, are you suggesting (or is Greg suggesting) that we stop allowing citizens and companies of Italy, Japan, Germany, and South Korea to buy property in the US?
The more I ask for clear definitions, the murkier this gets!
Yes, kushibo, to your first question.
South Korean law did not allow foreign ownership of corporate stock at all until 1992; it opened up the stock exchange considerably in 1996, and only allowed foreign ownership of real property in 1999. Yes, to your second question.
The answer to your general query is only murky because you are looking only for one kind of foreign aid, the kind that answers your own rhetorical question — the donation of US funds to a foreign government. But there are many kinds; from an economist’s point of view, any provision of US law that allows a foreign country or its resident nationals to benefit directly is a form of aid.
And, before you say otherwise, remember that the purpose of exchange controls (which have existed since World War 2 in Japan, Italy, Germany, England, South Korea, and most countries except the United States) has been to avoid outflows of capital that diminish the national wealth.
No, to your third question, because I am a free marketer — and America’s insistence upon open and free markets is the greatest possible form of foreign aid where the US markets are free and open and the others (and I here include South Korea’s) are restrictive, controlled, unfree and nationalistic.
But, and most relevant to the DPRK, the entire premise of the embargo upon trade with the DPRK is that any form of trade in fact is an act of benefit to the recipient.
Ominously the link to the LA times has gone.
@david woolley “where the US markets are free and open” , There are not many of those that are truly free of import duty and tax. Certainly not agriculture and dairy.
Any word about Orascom shaking in their boots yet?
Ditto81: Roughly as I told Adam Cathcart when he asked that question; dunno if Orascom is secretly quaking, but its chairman sure has the right attitude;
Which was kind of how I assumed he saw it after I saw him stood between Kim Jong Il and Jang Sung Taek in Pyongyang last month.
david woolley wrote:
Yesterday I took “M” to the local Mini dealership because she has gotten it in her head that she wants a Mini Cooper Countryman, if she ever learns to drive. When we pointed to a red one and asked, “How much is this vehicle?” the salesman did not reply, “A vehicle can be many things: A bicycle is a vehicle, as is that bus that just went by, or the car you drove here in, perhaps even your walking shoes could be considered a vehicle…” without actually telling us the cost of the red Mini Cooper Countryman right in front of us.
While I don’t disagree that your broad-based definition of “foreign aid” works in some situations, I don’t believe that is what Greg meant by “foreign aid” when he said ” Japan, Germany, Italy, Korea, Israel, and other rich countries” should “take an across the board 50% cut in all military aid and foreign aid.”
So again, using a definition closer to Greg’s, how much non-military “foreign aid†does Korea (or Japan, Germany, or Italy) actually get from the US, the kind that could be cut 50%?
Song Byeok on page 3 of today’s Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-north-korea-artist-20110206,0,601364.story
the show has been extended through this coming Tuesday. it’s right at the top of Insadong (the Anguk Station end), very close to the GS25. Look for the Forever Freedom sign — then go to floors 2 & 3. Not a big show, but definitely worth seeing.
While you’re at it, there’s another Gallery just down the way maybe 50 yards on the opposite side of the street that has an exhibition on the NK political prison camp system. It was put together by Handong University (in Pohang) students — it’s really very well done. Every day from the 5th to the 14th this month at 4pm they have a Q&A session with an activist or a former camp survivor (probably no translation).
sorry, teh formatting of the press release below is going to be all messed up, don’t have time to fix it.
(Yes, I did go on teh 5th when Robert Park was scheduled, but they said he was in the hospital and could not make it.)
But the place was packed — and even after the professor who did the Q&A session to fill in (i believe she is the advisor to the sponsoring student group) — even long after she finished speaking it remained relatively full of new people coming in. From what I could tell, just people who wandered in to see what was in the gallery — an extremely effective tool for reaching the masses. Lots of young Koreans taking cellphone pictures of the shocking stuff on the walls. Amazing.