Category: Anju Links

A South Korean lawyer sits down to dinner with a group of North Korean defectors and has an epiphany: “Listening to such painful stories, I naively wondered why the rest of the world is not doing more to help these desperate people. They are not some criminals or fugitives. Their only crime was to be born into a nation which is ruled by a dictatorship that cares more about the survival of its regime than the wellbeing of its people.”...

Some people never learn: After everything that’s happened in the last 20 years, we’re still trying to get Agreed Framework III. _____________________ Which moment of truth is this? I lost count in 2007. _____________________ A Kaesong Travel Advisory: Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air. _____________________ Bangkok Update: Here’s the most detailed inventory I’ve yet seen of that North Korean weapons shipment intercepted last year: Thai police discovered 40 tons of North Korean arms including multiple rocket launchers,...

The arch-“realist” Richard Haass has concluded that talks are going nowhere, changed his mind, and called for regime change in Iran. I wonder if, had all other things been equal but the outcome of the 2008 election, Haass would have had the same epiphany. I’ve always found irony and amusement in the idea that it is “realistic” to believe that pathologically mendacious regimes, regimes founded on the idea that rules are for subjects and enemies, would freely negotiate away the...

THE JOONGANG ILBO JUDGES VITIT MUNTARBHORN’S LEGACY rather harshly in this article, I’d say. While I agree that the situation has gotten worse, I’ve always gotten the impression that Muntarbhorn did the best he could, given the limited backing he seems to have had from his boss, Ban Ki Moon, to confront the Chinese. But of course, it would be too much to ask of a South Korean newspaper to render an honest criticism of Ban’s repeated and woeful betrayal...

CHILLING WORDS FROM KCNA, as it calls for “struggle against anti-socialist moves:” It is also important to struggle against allies and stooges of the imperialists. A fierce struggle should be waged against the class enemies within the socialist society. All those who try to destabilize the socialist society are the enemies of socialism. They include remnants of the exploiting classes who harbor antipathy towards the socialist system, those who work hard overtly and covertly to bring down the socialist system...

JEFFREY GOLDBERG IS READING “NOTHING TO ENVY” and contrasting the plight of its subjects with Lorin Maazel’s moral equivalence between America in North Korea. Like Karajan and Bernstein before him — try that for equivalence! — Maazel’s political views add more value to our discourse for the criticism they evoke than for their own substantive merits. THE H1N1 OUTBREAK CONTINUES in North Korea, although it’s very difficult, for the most familiar of reasons, for anyone to know how serious it...

SHE COULD HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT NORTH KOREA: One of the hallmarks of a regime in financial trouble is a complicated regime of “special” exchange rates aimed at getting around the problems caused by financial mismanagement. The devaluation that Venezuela announced last week may have been a good idea, given the country’s recession, and the problems of declining oil revenues. But the way Chavez has gone about the thing is typically ham-fisted. By Sunday, he was threatening to deploy the...

What is the objective of negotiating with North Korea at all? How you answer that question may depend on whether you believe North Korea cheated on the first Agreed Framework with Bill Clinton. Even before Clinton left office, the evidence that North Korea cheated by trying to build a uranium bomb was too compelling for any responsible president to ignore, yet during the last decade, true believers in diplomacy with Kim Jong Il invested themselves in denying that evidence and...

OBAMA TO OPEN EMBASSIES TO N. KOREAN REFUGEES? That would be huge, and I’ll have much more to say about that later. Also, Robert King says human rights will be on the six-party agenda. NORTH KOREA’S H1NI OUTBREAK has reached Camp 16. Meanwhile, the South Korean government continues to provide aid to the North despite its doubts about the data the North is reporting. TODAY’S “WE ARE ONE” MOMENT is brought to you by the Joongang Ilbo, and features North...

MORE REPORTS OF DRASTIC FOOD PRICE INFLATION in the North: Prices probably also vary dramatically between regions. The series of diktats I’ve called The Great Confiscation has the potential to become the grimmest and most unnecessary humanitarian tragedy since the Arduous March, but unlike the 1990’s, North Koreans know more about life on Earth, and there are no more obedient subjects left outside Pyongyang who’d just die passively. The question isn’t whether North Koreans will resist; it’s is whether the...

LESS BREAD, MORE CIRCUSES: In addition, Kim went on, “To become a strong and prosperous socialist state we must see a period of renaissance in military-first Chosun,” and stressed, “Movie studios should be established in each province in order to publicize the good conduct of local citizens, and local citizens themselves should also bring about an era where basically anyone can create movies or become a movie star. If I had to make a list of things the North Korean...

FOR THE EIGHTH CONSECUTIVE YEAR, the Christian NGO Open Doors has ranked North Korea the world’s worst place to be a Christian. You can’t understand North Korea until you grasp that it’s a theocracy — a cult with nuclear weapons and a seat in the General Assembly. Open Doors, by the way, has actively supported human rights in North Korea for years. They’ve long been one of the most dedicated groups working on this issue, often making their impact felt...

Next time you read a KCNA report about G.I.’s behaving badly in Itaewon or Hongdae, ponder this: According to the source, soldiers under Brigade #2 in PyungSan District, North HwangHae Province took away coals from the town residents. The soldiers commited the theft during daylight. These soldiers drove a Chinese 5-ton truck, Dong-Bang, and took away 8 tons of coals from three houses. They did not stop at stealing coals. Within the last month, soldiers stole radish from tens of...

ANOTHER GOOD REVIEW FOR “NOTHING TO ENVY,” from NPR’s Frank Langfitt, who also relates this second-hand experience: American journalists are rarely granted visas and all visits are carefully monitored, so I had to rely on the accounts of Chinese truckers who drove into the country to trade food for scrap metal. One trucker had a gash on his forehead from his latest trip. He told me a teenage boy had hit him with a rock as a crowd leapt on...

THE BALLOON PEOPLE ARE BACK! Supporters of American Christian missionary Robert Park, who is believed to have been detained in North Korea, launched hundreds of balloons on New Year’s day with texts calling for freedom in the isolated nation. The yellow balloons containing leaflets condemning the North Korean leadership were released from South Korea near the border, confirmed activist Choi Woo-won. “Greeting the New Year, we are delivering our messages of freedom and hope to North Korea,” he told reporters....

A WELCOME CHANGE: President Lee is giving $22 million to W.H.O. and UNICEF aid projects in North Korea so that at least a few more kids will outlive the Kim Dynasty. That is a vast improvement over how things used to be under Roh Moo Hyun, whose “Unification” Ministry used to give unmonitored cash and food aid directly to Kim Jong Il and his minions, with predictable results. This time, South Korea’s donations are flowing through the U.N., which at...

BRING IT ON: There’s speculation that North Korea may test yet another nuke, to which I say, that’s one less it can sell. MORE ON THE LOGISTICAL CHAIN behind the Bangkok weapons seizure, at the Wall Street Journal. Still no finality on the final destination for the weapons, however, though I’m sticking with my educated guess that it was Iran, in part because the shipment contained parts for long-range missiles. IF YOU CAN’T TRUST A FELLOW MARXIST OLIGARCH, WHO CAN...

NORTH KOREA CONTINUES TO PROGRESS in its efforts to miniaturize nuclear warheads. Obviously, this means our sanctions aren’t sufficient. THE SOUTH KOREAN GOVERNMENT is printing propaganda comics, not to influence North Koreans, but to influence its own ill-informed youth that North Korea isn’t a paradise on earth after all. While the idea of a government propagandizing its own people gives me some discomfort, previous South Korean administrations and more radical groups spent a decade doing the same, and their campaign...