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Category: Regime Change

September 19, 2008

Starving Soldiers Deplete North Korea’s Meager Harvest

I got too busy to keep an eye on Good Friends’ updates for a while,  but on my commute home last night, I managed to eke out the time to read some items that caught my interest.  Overall,  people continue to die by the dozens, though not yet by the hundreds or thousands.  The starvation seems localized, yet those localities are distributed across the country, including the regions surrounding Pyongyang.  But what I’m watching for most keenly is a sign...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Military/Regime Change
August 19, 2008

Richard Halloran Prognosticates on N. Korea Regime Collapse

Halloran knows how many predictions of North Korea’s collapse that have passed unrealized, and  he’s  wise enough to abstain from outright predictions.  Instead, he  walks us through  the factors that make it worthy of urgent-yet-careful planning: North Korean soldiers in a regime that gives priority to the military forces have been reduced to two skimpy meals a day. Factory workers nap on the floor for lack of food and energy. That has led to conjecture that North Koreans, despite the...
Categories An Alliance?/Regime Change
June 10, 2008

You’re Quasi-Evil. You’re Semi-Evil….

So Kim Jong Il sent Kim Jong Chol, his son with the (ahem) hormonal imbalance, to Chongjin to carry out some “inspections,” and things did not go well: In particular, for Kim Jong Cheol, who is being considered as Kim Jong Il’s leading successor, this seems to be an opportunity for on-site training and testing his leadership and insight. However, the source remarked that Kim Jong Cheol could not perform according to Kim Jong Il’s expectations. Another source said, “Jang...
Categories Kremlinology/Resistance
June 4, 2008

In Food Aid Talks, North Korea Reverts to Old Ways; Regime Thins Population of P’yang

A reliable source who asks not to be named e-mailed me yesterday to pass along a fly-on-the-wall  description of an “expert’s meeting” in Beijing.  The purpose of the meeting between U.S. and North Korean  officials  had been  to agree on the technical details of the U.S. food aid program — exactly how  the North Korean regime will and will not allow us to feed its population.  The meeting was described as “fairly downbeat” and  “contentious,” with the North Korean negotiators  predictably...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change
June 1, 2008

N. Korean Famine Spurs Broad Discontent But Little Resistance So Far

Several new reports inform us that the famine in North Korea continues to worsen, and to claim ever larger numbers of victims. Reports from Good Friends and the Daily NK suggest that discontent is spreading among all generations and political strata of North Korean society.  Dissent is expressed more openly than in the past, but aside from some isolated protests over market restrictions, it has not yet translated into active resistance. Andrew Natsios suggests that it may: “The North Korean...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change
May 20, 2008

Hungry N. Korean Bureaucrats Become Shakedown Artists

“After food distribution being halted, many low-ranking officials stopped showing up for work. Instead, they started picking on people. They carry out frivolous inspections anytime they want to extort people,” said a source from North Hamkyung Province in a phone conversation with Daily NK on May 15. “Nowadays, you see all sorts of inspections going on. Those with a shred of authority all come to carry out inspections. They try to find fault with people and fine them in order...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change
April 5, 2008

MUST READ: BBC on Clandestine Journalism in N. Korea

[Update: The Daily NK has more.  There is no English Rimjingang yet, unfortunately, but you can read a somewhat clunky google translation of their home page here.] The North Korean regime has a name for journalism that it does not control: espionage. I need not elaborate on the penalty for those caught. Seven months ago, North Korea reminded us (ht) of how seriously it takes the surreptitious possession and use of a camera, and we’ve seen relatively little of that...
Categories Inside NK/Resistance
April 4, 2008

N. Korea Food Situation Continues to Worsen: Protests Continue in Chongjin; Food Prices Skyrocket; Kim Jong Il Asks China for ‘Massive’ Food Aid

[Update: A reader — one you and I both respect — writes to warn that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on the reports of Good Friends. Well, yes, the obvious caveats apply here: this being North Korea, we tend to treat third-hand rumors and hearsay, possibly further garbled by translation, as news. What I try to do here that news sites don’t do is to put each report in the context of other facts reported by other sources, either previously...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change/Resistance
March 31, 2008

LiNK: Project Real Sunshine

[Update:  LiNK reports that they’ve extended the deadline to sign up for Project Real Sunshine through April 7th.]   [Correction:   A reader points out that I’ve confused two LiNK projects, “Project  Real Sunshine” and  the “Chollima Leadership Program.”  My apologies.  The Chollima  Leadership Program  is  actually the  one I  described in the post below; Project True Sunshine is an advocacy project,  which I should have remembered.  Fortunately, Andy Jackson didn’t get confused and put up a perfectly fine post.]...
Categories Activism/Reconstruction/Refugees/Regime Change
March 26, 2008

More Food Shortages Reported in N. Korea’s Main Grain-Producing Regions; A Grim Mood in Pyongyang

There are two new reports from the Buddhist NGO Good Friends, which has good sources inside North Korea.  You will see that I have already blogged about some of the material in these reports when details emerged in press reports, or in the Daily NK.  I will just add a few significant details that I gleaned from the reports, which you can find here and here. There are no rations, even in Pyongyang, except for the city center, where they...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change
March 25, 2008

Defector Newspaper Reports Food Protests in North Korea

Amid reports  that North Hamgyeong Province (among others) totters on the brink of famine,  the  North Korean regime is desperately trying to shut down markets and regain state control of the food supply.  The regime has long used food to sustain those it trusts and control those it doesn’t.  I’ve written about  North Korea’s accelerating food  crisis  in some detail recently.   Map of protest locations (click to enlarge) This year, food shortages are reported even in elite Pyongyang, a...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change/Resistance
March 24, 2008

North Korea Cancels Christmas?

Christmas as  North Koreans have  known it for decades has been the nativity of Kim Il Sung, the dead god-king, eternal president, founder of the state, and  father of Kim Jong Il.   His conception marked The Year Zero on North Korea’s juche calendar.   He  is idolized in statues; in portraits in every home, office, and classroom; and on the money.  Citizens must wear his likeness on pins that they can be punished for losing, and which  sometimes indicate the wearer’s...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics/Regime Change
March 20, 2008

The Beginning of the End: Food Shortages Reach Pyongyang (Updated)

[Update: Welcome to all of you who are coming in from Gateway Pundit and Best of the Web, and many thanks to James Hoft and James Taranto for linking.] Now that I’ve just spent five days writing this dissertation on North Korea’s worsening food situation, there’s dramatic new information that alters the entire analysis. This may be the single most significant event in North Korean history since the invention of blogs, because if it’s true, the regime is finished. North...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change
March 14, 2008

Collapse Watch: Have We Reached Stage Five Yet?

One of the most interesting experiences of my four years with the Army in Korea was a “collapse briefing” I was able to attend at USFK Headquarters. I had not been able to find a copy of the briefing summarized online until Robert Kaplan published one in The Atlantic, which I commented on in this post. So for the new readers, I feel obliged to remind you of what I mean when I refer to “Stage Four” and “Stage Five.”...
Categories NK Military/Regime Change
March 7, 2008

Can Kim Jong Il Outlive “Military First?”

In the last two months, I’ve come to believe that the decay of Kim Jong Il’s control of North Korea is accelerating. I’m not quite on board with Jane’s, which predicts imminent collapse, because regime collapse is not proceeding at equal rates in all areas of North Korea, and history tells us that there’s been plenty of dissent in North Korea that the regime was able to contain, localize, and suppress. There are, however, clear signs that chaos is taking...
Categories Kremlinology/Regime Change
March 2, 2008

North Korea Has a Meth Problem

North Korea’s government has long been suspected of producing illicit drugs for export. In 2003,  a high-level defector testified that the goverment is deeply involved in producing and exporting opiates,  including heroin, and amphetamines. North Korea’s official ideology, really “crude, race-based nationalism” thinly veiled in socialism, would have had no problem justifying the poisoning of Japanese and Australian kids, but it was just a matter of time before North Korean drugs found their way into North Korean society. Until recently,...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Inside NK/Regime Change
February 19, 2008

S. Korea’s Next Unification Minister Denounced as “Collapsist” and “Neocon”

The left-wing Hankyoreh is predictably disgruntled about the new Unification Minister: Nam [Joo Hong] is your typical member of the “school of collapse. He has consistently claimed that there are signs that a sudden situation could arise in the North, saying that it has problems in five major areas, including food, energy and succession. Immediately after the February 13 agreement was made, he said that the crisis management ability of the leadership in Pyongyang was reaching a breaking point. Naturally...
Categories An Alliance?/Korean Politics/Reconstruction/Regime Change
February 15, 2008

Are They Losing Their Fear?

When I spoke of the many recent signs that the erosion of state control is accelerating in North Korea, I said that the erosion of fear would be the decisive factor. So I watch things like his carefully: Discontent with the top leadership is growing in North Korea writes Lee Ki Dong, a Researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy. Lee published a paper entitled “An Analysis of Changes in the North Korean Political System Based on the Testimonies...
Categories Regime Change