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Category: China & Korea

April 15, 2008

Keeping the Pressure on Beijing

South Korean and American  are pushing the issue of North Korean refugees as the Olympics approach, as as other issues focus intense pressure on China.  Here’s what’s happening in Seoul: Onlookers watch as a man tied up in ropes is led down a crowded pedestrian street by a woman holding a plastic assault rifle. Another man holding a megaphone explains that the re-enactment depicts a scene that has become an everyday occurrence in China. A multinational coalition of activists, calling...
Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
April 7, 2008

China Steps Up Efforts to Undermine U.S. and U.N. Sanctions Against N. Korea

The single most important provision of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, for which China cast a disingenuous “yes” vote, is the provision that requires member states to “ensure” that funds flowing into North Korea are not used for its WMD programs. Similarly, Resolution 1695 requires states to “exercise vigilance” against efforts to fund U.N. sanctions. Now, in the wake of U.S. Treasury sanctions that have put the North Korean regime under unprecedented pressure to meet its disarmament obligations, China is...
Categories China/China & Korea/Money Laundering/NK Crime/NK Economics/Proliferation/WMD
March 22, 2008

China Arrests 40 More North Korean Refugees (Updated: Threatens UNHCR, Too; More Refugees Leave China and Thailand)

And the gold medal in brutality goes to … Chinese police have arrested some 40 North Koreans in a series of raids on a border area in Liaoning province, with others detained as they tried to cross the Tumen River into China, according to authoritative Korean sources.  [….] Plainclothes Chinese security agents conducted a large-scale raid March 17 on North Korean defectors in Shenyang, Liaoning province, arresting about 40 people, sources in China who spoke to RFA’s Korean service on...
Categories China/China & Korea/Refugees
March 16, 2008

Chinese Academic: Accept North Korea as a Nuclear Power

China has a habit of using academics and scholars to float foreign policy trial balloons. Dingli Shen, a Professor and Executive Dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, recently visited North Korea, something he would not have done unless he spoke for at least a part of the Chinese government. Shen, a physicist and a former Professor of “American Studies,” has also acted as a quasi-governmental mouthpiece on North Korea here and here. Here’s what now: The...
Categories China/China & Korea/Six-Party Talks
March 13, 2008

China Arrests 5 N.K. Refugees; Protest in Seoul This Friday

I’ve been receiving e-mails from a number of NGO’s about this incident, although I haven’t seen published reports about it. I’ll reprint the letter from the North Korean Freedom Coalition in full below. The protest will take place this Friday, March 14, at 10 a.m., in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul, near Exit No. 3 of Gyeongbokgung Station, subway Line No. 3. The group organizing the protest is called Christian Assembly. I haven’t heard of this group previously,...
Categories Activism/China & Korea/Refugees
February 27, 2008

Shafted: Winners, Losers, and Casualties of the North Korean Mines

As the North Korean regime struggles to sustain an already marginal economy that actually shrank in 2006, it is accelerating its sell-off of its mineral resources. Again, China appears to be the main buyer, again, corruption is throttling the state’s earning potential. As mineral prices soar on world markets, foreign access to mines in the North is accelerating at a rate unseen in the more than five decades since the division of the Korean Peninsula, according to South Korean government...
Categories China & Korea/Human Rights/NK Economics
January 31, 2008

N. Korea: We Won’t Budge

As State Department official Sung Kim heads for Pyongyang  to try to  save  Chris Hill’s  failing deal, North Korea is trying to be unambiguous about just how much it’s willing to give. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a Chinese Communist Party official Wednesday that there is no change in Pyongyang’s stance of implementing a six-party agreement on the North’s denuclearization, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported.  Kim made the remarks when he met with Wang Jiarui, head of...
Categories China & Korea/Six-Party Talks
January 8, 2008

MUST READ: ‘Finding America’s Role in a Collapsed North Korean State’

[Update:   Is this an invitation to Munich?  China promises to  “cooperate” with the West, but admits that it might move into North Korea to “restore order,” and for strictly humanitarian reasons, of course.  We all know what humanitarians rule the People’s Republic of China.] Not a moment too soon, as the Red hordes mass to  reclaim the Outer  Koguryo Autonomous  Zone, there is a much-needed advancement of the discussion of the future former North Korea.  It comes  from  U.S....
Categories China & Korea/Reconstruction
December 23, 2007

N. Korean Dissident Yoo Sang-Joon freed

To those who responded to my request to spam e-mail the Chinese government to demand Yoo Sang Joon’s release, reach up and pat yourself on the back. You just might have saved a life. Yoo’s wife and one child died in the Great Famine, and his remaining son, Chul Min, died of exposure trying to escape through the Mongolian desert. Not long ago, Yoo appeared to be headed for a post-mortem reunion with his family. He was under arrest by...
Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
December 7, 2007

Chinese tanker spills oil along the South Korean coast

Those waters, southwest of Seoul,  are some of South Korea’s most productive ones for producing shellfish, so this could seriously harm the livelihoods of a lot of people. A crane-carrying vessel collided with an oil tanker off of South Korea’s west coast on Friday, spilling more than 66,000 barrels of crude oil in what was believed to be South Korea’s largest offshore oil leak, officials said. Officials at the Maritime and Fisheries Ministry, citing Coast Guard reports, initially said about...
Categories China & Korea
November 24, 2007

Casualties of Banalities: The Arrest and Coming Death of Yoo Sang-Joon

One of the bravest men I have ever met is locked in a Chinese prison this weekend, facing the risk of being sent back to certain execution in his native North Korea.  His story stands for the human suffering that endures while diplomats craft a controversial agreement to disarm North Korea of its nuclear weapons and to grant its dictator, Kim Jong-il, the peace treaty and the recognition that his regime has sought for decades.  [The Sunday Times, Michael Sheridan]...
Categories "United" Nations/Activism/China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. Politics
November 20, 2007

Global Protest Against China’s Brutality Toward N. Korean Refugees — Nov. 30 – Dec. 1

The list of locations scheduled to hold demonstrations is impressive; organizers will target Chinese embassies and consulates in Washington, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Brussels, Toronto, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Oslo, London, Amsterdam, Seoul, and Madrid. That represents significant growth since past demonstrations, something that’s very welcome at a discouraging moment when the Bush Administration has pretty much sold out the entire cause. If you don’t know what we’re upset about, here’s a good introduction to the issue....
Categories Activism/China/China & Korea/Refugees
October 21, 2007

The Unstoppable Self-Destruction of Kim Jong Il

[Updated below]   We  often hear reports that China has curtailed or cut aid to the North Korean regime.  I’ve usually been skeptical of those reports because I believe that Kim Jong Il’s arch-patron  China wants us to believe that it’s being “helpful” in disarming North Korea of its nuclear programs, but actually considers  it a useful distraction  for  American power in the region.  Now,  a new report  claims that China is holding up cross-border rail traffic to the North  over...
Categories China & Korea/Diplomacy/Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il/NK Economics
September 14, 2007

My Kind of Spy Scandal

Tired of hearing about South Korean officials leaking our secrets and technology, or about North Korean agents gradually pulling  a smothering blanket of juche over the South?  Had enough Robert Kim already?  Take heart.  The bad guys have troubles of their own: For years, Ambassador Li Bin was China’s  go-to diplomat for the tense Korean Peninsula. After studies in North Korea, Li had served several tours in the Chinese embassies in Pyongyang and Seoul. Fluent in Korean and gregarious in...
Categories China/China & Korea/Diplomacy
April 24, 2007

Anju Links for 24 April 2007: China and South Korea Claim Their Largesse Has Limits, Another Fresh-Faced Septuagenarian Rises in Pyongyang, and Why the Defunding Debate Should Focus on the U.N., Not Our Troops

*   North Korea is now eleven days past the April 13th deadline by which  it agreed to shut down and seal the Yongbyon reactor, make a meaningful showing at another session of six-party talks,  begin discussions about the full extent of its nuclear programs, and invite U.N. inspectors back in.  As of today, it has failed to fulfill any of those conditions.  I  just  wanted to point that out in case Chris Hill is reading or Kim Jong  Bill...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Kremlinology/NK Economics
April 12, 2007

Law Enforcement Will Be Compromised

Correction:   I subsequently found the transcript for the February 27, 2007 hearing, and Chris Hill did not say, quote, “Law enforcement will not be compromised.”  On reading the full quote, you’ll probably agree that Hill found another way of saying the same thing; however, I regret the error, which was no doubt due to me scribbling notes of the hearing by hand, and transposing Rep. Royce’s question with Hill’s answer.  Here’s the correct quote from Hill: Ambassador HILL. Mr....
Categories Appeasement/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering
March 12, 2007

Kim Jong Nam’s Bachelor Pad Burgled, and How the Other Side Lives

The Zhuyuan Haoyuan villa complex is 15 minutes from downtown Macau and its 80 villas are among the territory’s most exclusive. The average price of each villa is estimated HK$15 million, roughly US$1.92 million. Yellow sunflower symbols adorning the doors of nos. 361 and 371 easily identify them as Kim Jong-nam’s.  [Chosun Ilbo] If Kim Jong Nam is really estranged from his father, you really have to wonder where this money came from.  Meanwhile, the Daily NK reports on the...
Categories China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology