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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 15, 2008

Will China Get Away With Murder Again?

China may be the O.J. Simpson of thuggish regimes. Gutter thugs like the rulers of Sudan and Burma have justly earned their international pariah status after calculating that the consequences of slaughter would be manageable and acceptable. China’s regime has learned from Saudi Arabia’s example, lining its avenues of commerce with expensive lobbyists and P.R. firms, thus escaping most of the consequences of its behavior and even buying its way to quasi-legitimacy. But even the Chinese know that this strategy...
Categories China
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
February 21, 2008

ChiComs Pissed at Spielberg

[Update: Hey, maybe the Chinese should hire this guy!] The nerve of the guy — objecting to China’s sovereign right to abet genocide. Why must people sully the Olympic spirit this way? What does hat say about their priorities? “A certain Western director was very naive and made an unreasonable move toward the issue of the Beijing Olympics. This is perhaps because of his unique Hollywood characteristics,” it said. Over the weekend, the Guangming Daily, also published by the Communist...
Categories China/Human Rights
February 16, 2008

Damn You, Henry Kissinger!

That bastard Kissinger … thanks to him, Gong Li will never knock on your door to borrow a cup of sugar, and all of our lives will be poorer in ten million ways: Amid a discussion of trade in 1973, Chinese leader Mao Zedong made what U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called a novel proposition: sending tens of thousands, even 10 million, Chinese women to the United States. “You know, China is a very poor country,” Mao said, according...
Categories China/WTF?
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
July 27, 2007

Watching You

I wanted to alk-tay about ina-Chay, but as it turns out, they’re listening to everything we say here.  China’s intelligence services are gearing up for next year’s Beijing Olympics, gathering information on foreigners who might mount protests and spoil the nation’s moment in the spotlight. Government spy agencies and think tanks are compiling lists of potentially troublesome foreign organizations, looking beyond the human rights groups long critical of Beijing, security experts and a consultant familiar with the effort said. They...
Categories Censorship/China
July 11, 2007

China Attacks Dissent in America and It Expands Its Power to Intimidate the Neighbors

Strategy Page says they are, and that the FBI is so busy looking for terror cells that China can get away with it: In the past year, many copies of the Epoch Times have been stolen and destroyed, and editorial staff have been physically attacked by men who appear to be Chinese. Editorial offices have also been attacked, often at night, to make it look like a burglary. China has also been putting pressure on Chinese language newspapers in the...
Categories Censorship/China/NK Military/U.S. Military/Washington Views
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