Open Sources, August 1, 2012
ON RARE OCCASIONS, I CONSIDER KCNA to be authoritative, and this is one of those occasions:
In a dispatch headlined “To Expect ‘Change’ From DPRK Is Foolish Ambition,” the North’s Korea Central News Agency in stark terms confronted and put down speculation and comments by outsiders that its authoritarian government might change its ways.
[….]
Then the spokesman said that South Korea’s government – which it blames for many of its problems – “let experts in the north affairs and others interpret the stirring situation of the DPRK in a self-centered manner, vociferating about ‘signs of policy change’ and ‘attempt at reform and opening.’”
He called that “ridiculous rhetoric” created with “sinister intent.”
“As far as ‘signs of policy change’ are concerned, there can not be any slightest change in all policies of the DPRK as they are meant to carry forward and accomplish the ideas and cause of the peerlessly great persons generation after generation,” the report added, in an apparent reference to the leadership of the Kim family, Il Sung, Jong Il and Jong Eun. [Evan Ramstad, Korea Real Time]
Even so, the BBC’s Charles Scanlon still tells us not to believe the North Koreans! Look, I certainly endorse a healthy skepticism of anything North Korea declares, but even in the absence of real evidence to support such a theory, the optimists still strain to salvage their ill-founded hopes … and the policies that can’t survive without them.
We’ve seen a lot of mostly baseless and wishful speculation* recently that Kim Jong Un is a reformer, based largely on superficial indicators and premised on the unproven (maybe unprovable) assumption that Kim Jong Un is really in charge. North Koreans aren’t immune to that speculation, either. I’ll believe that this speculation has merit when I see its effect on North Korea’s broader economy, especially the microeconomics of North Korea’s outer provinces. The reports from there tell us that the regime continues to suppress markets, which contraindicates reform. Reform can mean many things, but (unconfirmed reports about) one set of thugs muscling lucrative sources of income from another set of thugs isn’t reform; it’s just more institutionalized corruption.
* Drury lays out the best supported case I’ve seen for this optimistic view. Sure, it would be easy to knock down any number of completely unsupported views in this regard, but Drury — straining more mightily than the rest of them to assemble any evidence at all — give us a better demonstration of how thin the gruel really is.
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NORTH KOREANS LEARN TO HACK ORASCOM PHONES to take pictures and video … even to make international calls. Now, if there’s one significant, serious indication that North Korea is easing up, it’s the regime allowing some of its citizens to have cell phones. Sure, they’re all loyal “core class” citizens, the regime presumably monitors the calls, and it keeps its hands close to the kill switch, but still, I do find this surprising … even hard to explain. Let’s see how long those phones last now.
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STAGE FOUR WATCH:
The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has begun stripping his country’s powerful military of its lucrative export rights in a bold attempt intended to both rejuvenate its staggering economy and curtail top generals’ influence, according to a Seoul-based Web site run by defectors from North Korea.[….]
In a speech distributed by the state news media in April, he said he intended to keep a tighter control on minerals exports, some of which analysts believe are controlled by the military.
“Some people are now attempting to recklessly exploit the country’s valuable underground resources on the excuse of earning foreign currency by exporting them,” he said, without mentioning who the culprits were.
In addition, South Korean news media this week quoted unidentified government sources who said an apparent fight over the military’s hold on important exports might have been behind this week’s dismissal of a top army official, Ri Yong-ho. [N.Y. Times]
Like a lot of things we’ve heard from North Korea recently, this could be very consequential, if it’s true.
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MORE THEORIES FOR RI YONG-HO’S PURGE: He was marching troops around Pyongyang without authority; or maybe it was a fight about his hard currency business interests. Typical to see a lot of theories; not so typical to see them in at the same site in one week.
Someday, I suppose we’ll know the real answer.
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THE ONION: “Kim Jong-Un Volunteers For First Shift Of Wife’s Suicide Watch.” Hat tip: Slim.
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THE ATLANTIC: “The strange rise and fall of North Korea’s business empire in Japan.” I highly recommend this one.
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WHAT’S THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?: At the Olympics, in England for God’s sake, Assad’s flag is just fine, but Taiwan’s isn’t? This is why when it comes to the Community of Nations, my sentiments are so often secessionist.
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DUTCH FORMER PRISONER OF NORTH KOREA ASTONISHED at his own signed statement praising the fairness of North Korean elections.
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IF YOU CAN WRITE THE WORDS ‘NORTH KOREAN DREAM’ WITHOUT APPARENT IRONY, you must write for The New York Times.
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I FEEL COMPELLED TO LINK this Mainichi report that North Korea is relaxing its guilt-by-association system, because it contradicts other reports I’ve cited to support arguments that North Korea isn’t reforming. Having said that, this really, really smells like disinformation to me, given that it’s all based on an “official” North Korean document whose source we obviously know nothing about. The reports of refugees, clandestine reporters, and activists along the border about what the regime is actually doing carry more weight with me.
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INTERESTING:
A South Korean private committee said Wednesday that it will file a lawsuit against North Korean leader Kim Jong-un with the International Criminal Court in September.
The move is designed to put pressure on the communist country to repatriate the hundreds of South Korean soldiers taken prisoner and the remains of those killed during the 1950-53 Korean War, said Park Sun-young, a former lawmaker who has championed the rights of North Korean defectors and South Korean prisoners of war (POWs). [Yonhap]
The collective payback of millions of victims will eventually be their undoing.