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Open Sources: Yes, it’s going to be another hungry year in North Korea

For some time, I’ve been reading reports that North Korea has been stricken by foot-and-mouth disease, which doesn’t directly affect human beings, but kills cattle. According to Radio Free Asia, the disease has now spread across North Korea, including Pyongyang. Previously, I hadn’t attributed too much significance to the reports; after all, how many North Koreans can afford to eat meat anyway? But then there’s this: North Korea’s medieval agriculture relies on oxen. If the oxen die, farmers can’t plow or sow their fields.

This year’s severe cold is another reason why aid agencies are warning that North Korea is headed for another very lean year, although you can doubtless find a post in my archives (start here) for every single year saying that it’s going to be a tough year for some reason or another, usually flooding. Could all of these reports of impending disaster really be true? Of course. It’s just that there’s little reason to believe that international food aid can do anything to ameliorate it.

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Marcus Noland writes that the widespread American perception that China accounts for 70% of North Korea’s bilateral trade is grossly overstated, due to the accounting methods of South Korean sources. When this argument comes from a source like Noland, it’s hard to be dismissive of that. The point I take from this is that South Korea is content to lay all of the blame on China for propping up Kim Jong Il, when its own contribution to that result (Kaesong) remains substantial. Even so, there’s ample evidence that China has great economic leverage against North Korea, and that it continues to willfully aid its weapons trafficking, proliferation, and human rights atrocities, and that it continues to funnel enough cash to the regime to keep it afloat.

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Chris Green comes through with a report from a North Korean soldier who defected recently: “All the training I got in 12 years of Army life was marching every Saturday, winter drills for two months and summer training for one month. My memories of special forces training are of mountain warfare, a little bit of marching, some target practice, studying topography and swimming.

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In Seoul, an NGO exhibit on North Korea’s prison camps has attracted an astonishing 20,000 visitors, including South Korea’s First Lady. This is yet another example of something that couldn’t have happened in Seoul even two years ago. I’m not going to go so far as to say that North Korea’s recent behavior has shattered South Korea’s apathy about what happens in the North, but it has cracked it. Hat Tip: Dan Bielefeld and Justice for North Korea.

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Video: North Korean refugee kids graduate from high school, and Robert King is there. Well, good for him!

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North Korean defectors plan to celebrate Kim Jong Il’s birthday with another leaflet balloon launch.

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So Christine Ahn Has Her Work Cut Out for Her: North Korea is tied with Iran for the honor of being America’s least favorite country, at 11 percent. I’d guess that at least half of the 11 percent are thinking of South Korea.

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Mike Chinoy may be the last man on earth who still bothers to ask why Agreed Framework II fell apart, and 38 North has to be the only forum that would host that tired discussion: “It would be nice to believe that only Pyongyang was responsible, but that is not the way it was and the North knows it.” (Sigh ….)

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I can’t wait to see what Kushibo does with this one: “I heard from a reliable source in China that Kim Jong Il and Kim Ok have a 7-year-old son,” she tells Korea Real Time. “They got married about two years ago.“

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Kim Jong Il Death Watch: In this edition of our ghoulish vigil, we look at largely baseless speculation about Kim Jong Il’s liquor-sodden kidneys, his black little heart, and his stroke-addled cranium.

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Don Kirk isn’t terribly excited about the revolution in Egypt, fearing that things will only get worse. And now that the Egyptian military is in power, be sure to read his lengthy explanation of its links with the North Korean arms industry, a/k/a Bureau 99.

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15 Responses

  1. Another recent South Korean exhibit on North Korea’s prison camps includes a couple of sketch drawings by refugees that Daily NK deemed only appropriate for those who can read Japanese. Fortunately translating the Japanese language just happens to be Spelunker’s hobby, so I now bring these pictures from Hoeryong No. 22 prison camp to your attention:

    Daily NK (Japanese version) Feb. 9, 2011

    The 4 scenes of torture are most disturbing: From left to right the first one shows what is called the “pigeon position”…; prisoners crouched down with arms shackled behind their back. The second one shows prisoners hauling away corpses. The third one shows a rough naked body cavity search and the fourth one is of a starving prisoner in solitary confinement actually trying to lure a rat within grasp.

  3. how fitting/fairytale-like would it be if the catalyst that really got the downfall of the regime moving was not:

    – a rogue worker party member/rogue military official beginning an uprising
    – an attempted assassination
    – too many balloons dropping leaflets at the right places
    – a timisoara like event up in hamheung
    etc.

    but rather foot and mouth disease……

    now that would be one for the history books/time life dvd

  4. Hoof and mouth disease is not lethal.

    We in the West treat it by culling (or killing) herds because the fever kills some bovines, greatly weakens others, and generally results in poorer quality herds, while causing great pain and using valuable feed for a non-productive animal. But it is not lethal in itself. It’s a virus: it needs to keep its hosts alive to survive itself.

    So perhaps 3% of infected cattle will die — but the great majority will be in pain for weeks or months, of little farm use, and just hungry mouths. When they recover, some will have continuing problems with their hearts, while others will recover fully. But in the DPRK their period for recovery will have been a serious drain on a marginal farm economy. It is a huge drain, but not necessarily a permanent or terminal one.

    Think of it like rheumatic fever or meningitis in humans.

  5. Don Kirk says that “Egypt remains the largest foreign investor in North Korea” because of the deal made by Orascom. But is this true? I thought China launched a 10 billion investment strategy last year in conjunction with North Korea opening 12 new foreign investment zones.

    If Egypt really is their largest investor that would be something else indeed!

  7. That link to Donald Kirk in Asia Times Online was pretty interesting. Don says, “… American politicos and envoys, in a long-running saga of supreme diplomatic casuistry, incompetence and all that, preferred to downplay if not ignore Egypt’s ever-tightening ties to North Korea in the overriding interests of guaranteeing a shaky peace in the Middle East.” And “… George W Bush somehow forgot Egypt when he named Iran, Iraq and North Korea in 2002 as members of his infamous ‘axis-of-evil’.” So is Egypt part of asix-shmaxis? How about Egypt’s peaceful neighbor? And how about the super power that pays them for peace? Axis-shmaxis rules!

  8. I can’t wait to see what Kushibo does with this one

    Ha ha! I did start writing up something on this, but for now I’ll just say that if you’re going to have a figurehead, a seven-year-old is as good as a twenty-seven-year-old. It’s time to make that kid the head of the Navy or the Air Force.

    Seriously, though, it may be that Kim Ok is the answer to what I think is an important question: Who was Kim Jong-il’s Edith Wilson?

  9. kushibo, it is up to us in the “free world” to help Koreans in the north realize that only Beijing. and it’s puppet Pyonyang is holding the Korean Race. The Russians; former masters of North Korea; are also ready to dispose of him. Russia and the United States have VERY close ties. Hopefully Beijing would realise that pissing either off , would be a very bad thing for CHINA.

  10. Can you repost the Chris Green link? That’s a story USFK OSINT collectors will be interested in, but the link as is takes you to a Blogspot in Hangul…

  13. Oh kushibo, one doesn’t have to go back to the days of Woodrow Wilson. Some of us believe that Ronald Reagan was dead and embalmed in the White House for the last two years of his presidency, and that Nancy ran the gummint.

    All attempts at humor aside, there appear to be two succession crises going in the DPRK. The first, and most obvious, is who will succeed Little Kim when he dies. The second, and more dire, is the one you’ve alluded to — who gets to govern for an irascible and demented despot, now, today?

    Assume that, as secretary to his father, and then as ruler, Kim Jong Il was a superior administrator, vindictive but polite, diligent, all-knowing, with a full measure of self-control and courtesy. A system of older men can live with such a younger person.

    Reports now are leaking out that, as a result of his stroke, he has become inconsistent, querulous, difficult and contradictory — but only on occasion. Still, he is governing badly. Most despotisms accommodate wholly irrational acts by the despot in three ways — they replace the despot openly, they supersede his powers secretly, or they suffer. In all three systems, anger and resistance builds up. It looks as if there is an attempt to mix up the first and second routes — to promise a successor, and to correct the obvious errors silently. That may be the source of continuing power for his sister and brother-in-law, but I doubt that any one really wants Jang to take over now, as the regent and Kingmaker.

    I think we are seeing two struggles (one for power to rule as if he was Kim Jong Il, and the other to rule when Kim Jong Il dies) and neither is yet resolved.