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17 March 2010

Have you voted for LiNK today? Incidentally, LiNK wanted me to pass this along:

Wanted to let you know about a promotion we’re having in March. Anyone who votes for LiNK at www.refresheverything.com/link (and gets 10 of their friends to vote) will get 10% percent off their order.

Such a deal!

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North Korea deploys more counter-intelligence agents to China to stop the flow of news out of North Korea:

The men are said to be in charge of exposing contacts leaking inside information outside the border and also collecting data on North Korean human rights groups based in Seoul. Quoting an unnamed Chinese official, RFA also said the counter-intelligence officials were working to find the names of those who help sources within the North contact people in South Korea.

The source of the information would seem to suggest official Chinese complicity.

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You have to love how the Chosun Ilbo calls for the U.N. focus on human rights in North Korea without once mentioning what’s-his-name, the General Secretary. If only someone with some influence there cared about Korean people ….

Related thoughts from Kushibo here.

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More on North Korea’s propaganda comics.

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Don Kirk’s latest Asia Times column is on OpCon transfer, and inspires the thought that beneath nationalism lies insecurity.

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North Korea doesn’t just demand ransom, it pays it:

Somali pirates freed a North Korean chemical tanker and its 28 crew Tuesday after the owners delivered a ransom, the European Union Naval Force said. The MV Theresa VIII was hijacked last November, northwest of the island nation of the Seychelles.

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The Joongang Ilbo profiles an organization of which Dan Bielefeld and I are definite fans: PSCORE, which helps North Korean refugees adjust to life in on Earth.

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Your Kremlinology fix: Ri Kwang-Gun, who was fired as minister of foreign trade in 2004, has returned to take charge of inter-Korean trade. His path to rehabilitation was the notorious Bureau 39, so we can only imagine that he raked in a fortune selling meth to Japanese schoolgirls or flamethrowers to Congolese child soldiers.

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Yep, South Korea wants nuclear weapons, too. As would I, were I in Lee Myung Bak’s place. Indeed, I see more good than harm in a nuclear South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Stable democracies with nukes just don’t scare me.

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7 Responses

  1. joshua, just curious about that ransom thing.

    are you sure the NKs paid it? or was it the owner of the ship?

    like KJI cares about 28 NKs being held.

  5. I’m all for the re-militarization of regional allies like Japan and Germany. Why waste American defense dollars on trying to man all of these cold war outposts? They’re not Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan anymore. The peace treaties preventing re-armament have become totally archaic. Plus, who will they buy all the defense technology from, and who will they hire to train all the new officers? Economic beneift and military exposure reduction.

  6. The Pax Americana has kept Northeast Asia and Europe — two areas where major wars tended to rage every few years — very, very calm and problem-free.

    Prudent countries tend not to think their formerly aggressive neighbor simply saying “oh, we’re different from the past” is a good enough reason not to arm themselves if that past enemy re-arms in its current form. And therein lies the problem.

    Imperial Japan may be gone, but Japan has several outstanding territorial disputes from the pre-1945 era which neither they nor the others in the disputes are willing to give up. Minus the Pax Americana, Northeast Asia would quickly turn into a powder keg, and it could easily be lit by any spark.

    And that would likely drag the US right back into it. The cost of Pax Americana is money well-spent on preventative medicine.