South Korea Launches More Feel-Good Exercises

Here we go again! South Korea moved hundreds of troops, fighter jets, tanks and attack helicopters near the heavily armed border with the North in preparation for massive new military drills as tensions continue to simmer following last month’s North Korean artillery attack that left four dead. “We will completely punish the enemy if it provokes us again like the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island,” said Brig. Gen. Ju Eun-sik, chief of the army’s 1st armored brigade, according to The Associated...

Open Sources

In an effort to put an empirical measurement on the immeasurable, The Washington Post reports that South Korea is creating a North Korea Situation Index. If this is what I think it is, it’s a series of survey questions the South Korean Embassy has sent out to people it considers “experts” on the subject (and through some grievous error, I was also asked to fill this out). The survey consists of a series of questions about North Korea’s economy, its...

Must Read: Gordon Flake on Uranium and Agreed Framework 3.0

In the endless loop of our nuclear diplomacy with North Korea, new facts, novel arguments, and original thoughts are scarce things for which we scour a hundred news stories and blog posts. Here, in this excellent two–part interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Ramstad, Gordon Flake of the Mansfield Institute explains why North Korea’s coming-out with an advanced uranium enrichment capability means that an enduring nuclear disarmament agreement is now next to impossible. With the public display of, and...

It’s Still “Business as Usual” Until Kaesong Closes

Hmmm: The government on Monday banned citizens from going to the Gaeseong Industrial Complex in North Korea, site of an inter-Korean reconciliation project, as tension on the peninsula remains taut. The Ministry of Unification, citing “security concerns” for South Koreans working there, said it would monitor the situation and decide on a day-to-day basis whether to recommence travel to the complex or other parts of the North. “If the situation gets any worse, the ban could be extended,” an official...

North Korea Furious About Leaflets That Only Reinforce Loyalty

So … if the leaflet drops merely reinforce the loyalty of North Koreans to the regime, then what is the regime so upset about? The North’s official Web site, Uriminzokkiri, said the bills are “nothing more than waste paper” and that the leaflets do little to undermine the pride of its people in the communist regime. “Such confrontational madness will only snap up the extraordinary alarm and ire of our army and people,” it said in a commentary. North Korea’s...

The Richardson Effect

After a weather-related delay, South Korea says it is determined to continue with live-fire exercises in the Yellow Sea islands. “The planned firing drill is part of the usual exercises conducted by our troops based on Yeonpyeong Island. The drill can be justifiable, as it will occur within our territorial waters,” said the JCS official. “We won’t take into consideration North Korean threats and diplomatic situations before holding the live-fire drill. If weather permits, it will be held as scheduled.”...

Open Sources

So North Koreans also find South Korean dramas to be dull and formulaic? We have more in common than I’d ever suspected: “In South Hamgyong Province, only a few households are able to capture TV signals, but reception is quite good in Hwanghae or South Pyongan provinces,” Kim said. “People there look forward to the evenings when dramas are broadcast.” He said North Koreans also enjoy watching news and current events programs as well and power their TVs with their...

Keep Calm and Carry On

OK, I know those of you in South Korea are probably feeling a bit edgy for now, amid all of the drills, exercises, and North Koreans threats, which I’m sure our State Department would say are absolutely, positively not terrorism in any way, shape, or form. Still, I doubt that things will be quite this bad in Seoul by Monday: I don’t think we’ve seen the end of North Korea’s escalation, and I also think Christmas is a fairly likely...

So, how exactly has Bill Richardson’s visit reduced tensions again? (Bumped)

North Korea has welcomed the has-been politician by reaffirming that it will never give up its nukes, preparing to test one, threatening to use others, and inspecting a military unit. Who feels safer already? Update: “North Korea Threatens More Attacks.” Huzzah for Kim Jong Bill! Update 2: It may be the worst photoshop ever, but I couldn’t help re-using it. Update 3, Dec 18: So, if Richardson is merely a private citizen who isn’t there to negotiate anything, and if...

Open Sources

Former chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill was quoted by VOA as saying that the North’s disclosure of the uranium enrichment plant proves that the regime lied in the six-party talks. May these words be engraved on a tablet as the epitaph of all agreed frameworks. Still, it’s a bit hard to take Christopher Hill’s outrage that he was lied to at face value, given how much he helped them lie to the rest of us. __________________________________ South Korean-based broadcasters...

Open Sources

North Korea, which was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 as a reward for its nuclear disarmament, looks to be preparing another nuclear weapons test. _________________________________ “It’s changed out there, and it’s dangerous. Increasingly dangerous,” Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during an informal question and answer session with troops in Iraq. What does it tell you that soldiers in Iraq are fretting about Korea? _________________________________ China has done...

Clandestine Broadcasters Want Access to Medium Wave Frequencies

Until now, I did not realize that the South Korean government’s practice of bogarting all the good radio frequencies was imposing such a high cost on dissident broadcasting to North Korea. This week, some of those broadcasters have joined to rally for access to medium-wave frequencies. In the current times, I can’t see why the South Korean government wouldn’t agree to this: Four radio stations broadcasting programs to North Korea joined hands in a live event at Cheonggye Plaza in...

Kim Jong Il, Unplugged Again

First, I’ll just say that I have nothing to say about Eric Clapton that I didn’t say more than two years ago. We’ve already heard Eric Clapton unplugged. The economic unplugging of Kim Jong Il is a more consequential thing, one that I see as closely related to domestic discontent inside North Korea. My suspicion, though it is not yet supported by much direct evidence, is that these recent developments have reduced him to new lows of extortionate desperation. When...

Co-Author Distances Himself from Selig Harrison’s Vicarious Surrender Plan

You don’t see the New York Times print a correction like this one every day: An Op-Ed article on Monday, about the sea boundary between North and South Korea, listed as an author John H. Cushman, a retired Army lieutenant general who commanded the United States-South Korean First Corps Group from 1976 to 1978. During the editing process, General Cushman asked that his name be removed as a co-author, but because of technical problems his request was not received before...

Libby Liu, the President of Radio Free Asia, writes: [M]ounting evidence suggests that there are cracks, through which North Koreans are able to get a glimmer of the world outside their own. Cell phone use has shot up, especially along the Chinese border where wireless signals are stronger. This also is just one of the means by which many relatives of the 20,000 North Korean defectors in the South keep in touch with their family members. Restricted technology such as...

Richard Holbrooke, R.I.P.

Breaking news this hour is that Richard Holbrooke, our uber-ambassador to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died. I remember laying awake half the night at the Exercise Barracks at Yongsan Garrison, reading his Bosnia memoir, “To End a War,” and gaining an appreciation for the superiority of Holbrooke’s brand of diplomacy as compared to Warren Christopher’s. By the end of the book, Holbrooke had become an advocate of pax Americana, and a skeptic of European diplomacy. His direct and forceful diplomacy...

From Cradle to Grave, So Goes the Expression

There is no food emergency in the country now and things can only get better. — Alejandro Cao de Benos Theresa forwards confirmation, via the Daily NK, of my worst fears for a 23 year-old woman who all but recited her own obituary for the guerrilla cameras of Rimjingang: “It was discovered that, without a home, she had been wandering in the market and on the streets, before dying in a corn field,” the Asia Press spokesperson explained, “Since then...

Lord Haw Haw of Pyongyang

Selig Harrison’s latest op-ed is such a bizarre departure, even by his own declining standards, that I had to read it for myself to really believe it. I have little to add to what Kushibo has already said about this, except to stare agape at Harrison’s use of language. He calls South Korea’s elected President Lee Myung Bak is a “hard-liner,” while hereditary tyrant Kim Jong Il is a “leader.” Deaths that North Korea caused with malice aforethought are attributable...