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November 18, 2009

Defector Describes Construction of DMZ Weapons Bunkers

The defector, who goes by the alias Kim Ju Song, is visiting Washington and attending closed-door sessions with congressional members and staffers, but he found time to tell Radio Free Asia about the construction of hundreds of weapons-storage bunkers along the DMZ at the height of the Sunshine Policy: Pyongyang built at least 800 bunkers, including an unknown number of decoys, to prepare for a possible invasion of South Korea while the late South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun was...
Categories NK Military/North Korea
July 8, 2009

High-Level Defector Describes Regime’s Illicit Income

I’d previously mentioned that I recently had the opportunity to meet Kim Kwang Jin, a high-level North Korean defector with detailed knowledge of North Korea’s illicit financing and money laundering.  Now, Kim adds much to our understanding of how North Korea pays for all those Mercedes-Benzes and missiles.  Having guessed that most of the cash came from flipping houses and the inventing some of the novel kitchen applicances I’d seen Billy Mays selling on my TV, this was a cruel...
Categories Deprogramming/Money Laundering/NK Military/North Korea/Refugees/Regime Change/Religion/Uncategorized
June 28, 2009

In the case of a DPRK regime collapse, what power would South Korea have?

Had an interesting conversation this weekend with a North Korea watcher where for the first time, the idea of reunification seems realistic and within reach, yet at the same time, also at risk. It all has to do with the current health of Kim Jong Il who appears to be hanging on by a thread, the relatively short grooming period of his son to succeed him, and of course, China and the U.S. But not South Korea interestingly…
Categories China/North Korea/Regime Change
September 29, 2008

Do the Koreans Have a Future?

We’re all familiar with many of the ways in which the lives of North and South Koreans differ.  The Economist has published an interesting new piece describing some of these way, but which eventually focuses on the demographics of both nations and the greater region.  No doubt, from those differences arise very different reasons why the populations of both nations are declining. As to why the South’s population is declining at one of the fastest rates in the OECD, it’s...
Categories China & Korea/North Korea/South Korea
August 27, 2007

North Korea Calls Off “Arirang”

No Arirang  for you.  North Korea has suspended its large-scale gymnastic and artistic performance due to damage from recent heavy rains, the country’s state media reported Monday. “It has now become hard to continue the performance as working people in different parts of the country are all out to recover from the flood damage these days,” the Korean Central News Agency said. “The performance is expected to be staged again after the flood damage is cleared away.” The “Arirang” festival,...
Categories NK Economics/North Korea
April 1, 2007

A Souvenir from Kim Jong Il

My comparison yesterday  between North Korean ideology, Nazism, and Stalinism led me to conclude that in terms of intrusive state control and deification of  its political leaders, North Korea was the outlier.  Speaking of deification, I nearly forgot this: (Click for full size) The protector of our race’s destiny, unification [gu-song,  possibly N. Korean vernacular] North and South shall bask together in the glow of General Kim Jong Il’s embrace We should follow our great general Kim Jong Il eternally!...
Categories North Korea/The Fifth Column/U.S. Military
November 6, 2006

What’s Joe Di Trani doing these days?

You may recall that  before he resigned from the six-party  negotiations  team,  Di Trani was one half of the New York Channel, along with Han Song Ryol (Han, who is a real bastard, has also moved  on).  Those were the bilateral talks that the State Department was pretending not to have while the Democrats and some Republicans were demanding we have them.  Di Trani, who was at the CIA previously, went to the Directorate of National Intelligence.  Now (via Richardson)...
Categories Diplomacy/North Korea/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
September 19, 2006

Kim Jong Il’s Man in Washington

The Washington Times has published another excerpt from Bill Gertz’s book, “Enemies: How America’s Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets — And How We Let It Happen.” Today’s installment is about John Joungwoong Yai, who was arrested for spying for North Korea in 2003 and charged with violating the Foreign Agents’ Registration Act. Yai’s sole occupation seems to have been some rather amateurish efforts to plant a spy with a security clearance inside the U.S. government. Yai appears to have targeted...
Categories North Korea/Washington Views
September 14, 2006

Must-Read! ‘The Natural Death of N. Korean Stalinism’

[Updated] With “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism,” Andrei Lankov, possibly the Western world’s single authentic North Korea expert, has just provided us with an impressive collection of empirical evidence to support his argument that the North Korean regime’s control apparatus is losing its grip (a big hat tip to Andy Jackson). Those whose interest in North Korea is inversely proportional to the availability of information about it will pore through this article, fascinated at the amount and quality...
Categories North Korea
September 12, 2006

Open Dissent in the North?

You may recall this post from a few days ago, in which a North Korean guerrilla cameraman filmed members of the military hauling away what was purported a year’s supply of South Korean food aid … after South Korean monitors certified that it had been distributed to hungry civilians. As it turned out, there was more to the film, reports the Daily NK. In the video, a bill is posted in a black market near Dancheon Station, which read “˜People...
Categories North Korea/Resistance
September 12, 2006

One Man’s Freedom Fighter…

“Congratulations! You are in a cage, Saddam,” witness Ghafour Hassan Abdullah said as he stared at the ousted president. Saddam listened silently but lost his temper when a lawyer described Iraqi Kurdish rebels as freedom fighters. “You are agents of Iran and Zionism! We will crush your heads!” he shouted. We will crush your heads! Remind you of anyone? Incidentally, none of my trials featured exchanges like that. Meanwhile, Havana, Cuba is hosting a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, the...
Categories North Korea/Terrorism (NK)/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Law/Uncategorized/Unintended Humor/WTF?
September 11, 2006

A 9/11 Demurrer

Every year, I have the same debate with myself: whether the ferocity of my thoughts about this day renders them unfit for public consumption. This year, absent the time or desire to write, save, and then delete my true thoughts, there is just one original thought I will add to so many others today — that for me, 9/11 is at least half the reason I began blogging about this topic. Since then, my greatest fear has been that Kim...
Categories Democracy/North Korea/Terrorism (NK)/Uncategorized
August 29, 2006

Be the First One on Your Block to Instigate a Missile Crisis (No, really.)

Update: Scroll down and tell me I didn’t find what I think I found. Yes, I had spent many hours “flying” over North Korea with Google Earth, but it took this article to tip me off to an entire online community of amateur photo intel analysts. The L.A. Times reports: An intrepid German poster named “wonders” has flagged more than 332 sites of interest. Most are military — the vast air defenses ringing Pyongyang, the artillery along the demilitarized zone,...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Korean Society/NK Military/North Korea/Technology
August 17, 2006

North Korea’s Marshall Plan

Thanks to a reader who forwarded this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Yale Professor Michael Auslin the other day. It ought to be one of the most-discussed articles about North Korea of the year, making it especially unfortunate that you can’t see it without a subscription, except for those excerpts I will publish here. It proposes developing a civil and financial plan for the reconstruction of North Korea, and then publicizing those plans to the North Korean people. The...
Categories North Korea/Reconstruction
July 29, 2006

A Bad Review for ‘A State of Mind’

[Update: Yonhap reports that this year’s Arirang Festival has been cancelled. Scroll down for details.] I haven’t seen the film, nor have I seen the promos for it, but this sounds like a fair criticism to me: You know you’re looking at propaganda when you see a cute little white dog prancing through the apartment of the physicist father of 11-year-old Kim Song-yon – as if dogs come with the nice kitchen and furniture for middle-class North Koreans. Or, judging...
Categories Media Criticism/Miscellaneous/North Korea
July 12, 2006

An Offer They Can’t Refuse

A few days ago, I offered a possible explanation for why North Korea launched seven missiles, despite the likely result that it would ultimately bring down an adverse response from the U.S., Japan, and other nations. According to my “Barrel of a Gun” Theory ©, North Korea launched those missiles to save face, to disguise an impending supplication as extortion for its domestic audience. And sure enough, North Korea is now demanding “protection” aid: North Korea’s Senior Cabinet Counselor Kwon...
Categories Appeasement/North Korea/Unintended Humor/WMD/WTF?
July 10, 2006

Leaked British Intelligence Report Accuses North Korea of Biowar Experiments on Infants

“Hundreds of prisoners die there each week, the victims of biological or chemical experiments to test out [chemical and biological] weapons for North Korea’s CBW arsenal,” claims an MI6 report. In one intelligence file is the allegation that newborn babies are taken from their mothers and injected with biological agents or given injections of chemicals that blister the skin, leaving huge keloids, the sores seen on the bodies of Hiroshima victims. Caveat: I’m lukewarm on WorldNetDaily as a source, but...
Categories Human Rights/North Korea/The Camps