November 7, 2010

The Reaper Comes for Cho Myong Rok

Top North Korean military official Jo Myong Rok, a longtime confidant of leader Kim Jong Il who traveled to Washington in 2000 on a then-unprecedented goodwill mission, has died. He was 82. Jo, who was vice marshal of the Korean People’s Army and held the No. 2 post on the powerful National Defense Commission behind Kim, died Saturday of heart disease, the official Korean Central News Agency reported from Pyongyang. [AP, Hyun Jin Kim] Other experienced Asia hands will tell...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks
November 6, 2010

Rimjingang Takes Covert Journalism to the Next Level

The first English language edition of Rimjingang is about to come out. It will be a dead-tree quarterly, and thus far, Rimjingang has very little presence on YouTube. These are strange things to observe in a publication whose survival depends — literally — on its technological sophistication at hiding memory cards and playing cat-and-mouse with the regime’s cell phone trackers: The quarterly Rimjingang has been available in Korean and Japanese since 2008. The English edition will be published about twice...
Categories Inside NK/Resistance
November 5, 2010

NKDB Seminar in DC Nov. 11, NKnet DC Conference Wrap-up

Looks like the Seoul-based NKHRs groups are making the rounds in Washington, D.C., this fall.  Next up: North Korean Human Rights Advocacy: Making the Most of Scarce Data Thursday, Nov 11, 2010 – 02:00 pm Rome Auditorium, 1619 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20036 Welcoming remarks by: Jae H. Ku, Director, USKI Kim Sang Hun, Chairman, NKDB Panelists: Kim In Sung, Researcher and Lee Ja Eun, Senior Researcher, NKDB and Paula Schriefer, Director of Advocacy, Freedom House Thursday, November 11,...
Categories Books & Films/Human Rights
November 4, 2010

Congressional Research Service: China Ignoring U.N. Sanctions on N. Korea

A Foreign Policy blog links to what looks to be a very interesting report from the Congressional Research Service (in pdf) on the effect of, and various nations’ compliance with, international sanctions against North Korea. Considerate fellow that I am, I decided to link the report so you could start reading it before I even find the time to read it myself. Not surprisingly, China’s compliance gets low marks: The report makes clear that China has almost zero interest in...
Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
November 3, 2010

South Korea fires shots at a North Korean fishing boat near the NLL. ________________________ Kim Jong Nam predicts that the North Korean regime will collapse “soon.” ________________________ Our airborne laser system hasn’t been doing well in recent tests, but Japan has carried out a successful missile interception test. ________________________ Some observations on Kim Jong-Eun, from his former dietitian, Kenji Fujimoto: Added Fujimoto: “His chubby appearance is probably from eating a lot. In North Korea, those with power at the top...
Categories Anju Links
November 3, 2010

Open News on North Korea’s Drug Problem

Open News has a series of interesting reports on the rapid rise of drug use in North Korea, and a very worrisome rise in meth use in Sinuiju in particular. The government has responded with a crackdown, using specially selected Anjeonbu officers who aren’t stationed in the area long enough to “go native” and turn corrupt. North Korea’s idea of rehab is a bit severe, but there are no recidivists before firing squads. It’s worth remembering that North Koreans learned...
Categories Drugs & N Korea
October 31, 2010

Plan B Watch

Canada and Singapore have both imposed sanctions on North Korea: Singapore Customs said in a statement Friday that exports or transit of any nuclear equipment or missile materials to North Korea will be banned as of Nov. 1. Trading with North Korea of luxury goods such as cigars, plasma televisions and motorboats also will be banned. It said items no longer traded to Iran will include low-enriched uranium and military hardware such as tanks, artillery and warships. [AP] You know,...
Categories Sanctions
October 30, 2010

Ban Ki Moon calls on everyone (except Kim Jong Il) to cover North Korea’s grocery bils.

As I noted the other day, North Korea has announced its traditional million-ton food production shortfall for this year. True to form, its government has found a uniquely obnoxious way to address this that has nothing to do with increasing domestic food production or diverting foreign exchange toward the purchase of food: North Korea demanded massive food aid from South Korea in return for concessions over a reunion programme for separated families, a Seoul official said. The demand for 500,000...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
October 29, 2010

Shots Fired at the Border

“Two shots were fired from a North Korean military guard post (GP) toward our GP around 5:26 p.m., and we immediately returned fire with three shots as under the rules of engagement,” the official said. “There was no damage from the North Korean shots.” The GPs are 1.3 kilometers away from each other. The official said after returning fire, South Korea twice issued warnings that the North had breached the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. [Yonhap] Right. Because...
Categories NK Military/North-South/ROK Military/Uncategorized
October 28, 2010

President Lee Leases Tokdo to Japan for 100 Years to Build Porn Studio

Oh, wait — that’s not it. It was North Korea that actually leased two islands to China to build (what else?) casinos. Yes, casinos. File that one under “stuff Chinese people like.” It might also go under “stuff that North Korean money launderers like.” The difference being, the islands of Hwan Geum Pyong and Ui Hwa Do actually consist of arable farmland. Not that North has any shortage of that, of course. I eagerly await the Hankyoreh’s reaction and the...
Categories China & Korea/Korean Politics/Korean Society
October 27, 2010

You’d think that the perils of responding to public opinion polls in North Korea would be obvious enough already.

Open News is reporting that discontent with the “feudal” succession of Kim Jong-Eun is so great that people are even expressing their dissent publicly, with the presumed exceptions of the anjeonbu and bowibu. These agencies are now so concerned about the spread of dissent that they’re adopting an unusual method to reveal the heretics: “After the meeting of party representatives, public sentiment of North Korean citizens is low. The National Security Agency and party institutions have even ordered companies, village...
Categories Resistance
October 22, 2010

The admiral in charge of Pacific Command calls on North Korea not to test another nuke. Personally, I hope the North Koreans test one. It’s one less they can use in an actual weapon, and it’s great for my traffic. Bonus points if the test a uranium bomb, since that will make plenty of the right people look really stupid. ____________________________ Selig Harrison call your office: Reuters has published a devastating chronology of all of the retrograde, statist, anti-reform confiscations...
Categories Anju Links
October 20, 2010

Why does Marxist criticism seem to apply so much better to North Korea than to, you know, capitalist societies? To the Gypsy Scholar’s observation, I’d like to add this example: Wovon Lebt Der Mensch. It plays during the opening credits of The Threepenny Opera, a blunt instrument of 1920’s German Communist propaganda whose Brecht-Weill score still contained some good gritty, gripping songs that have outlasted the film. ___________________________ In the op-ed pages of Wall Street Journal, Melanie Kirkpatrick reports on...
Categories Anju Links
October 19, 2010

The Boy Who Cried “Sheep!”: One Man’s Mass Murderer Is Selig Harrison’s Reformer

For someone who judged the evidence of North Korea’s uranium enrichment program so skeptically, Selig Harrison sure doesn’t set a very high bar to perceive evidence of “reform” in North Korea. But Harrison’s latest op-ed in the Boston Globe is in equal parts breathless and baseless, and might just extend his dismal predictive record into the next decade. In his desperation to find some sign that North Korea’s new Inner Party is a hothouse of reforms, Harrison pounds the square...
Categories Humor/Satire/Kremlinology/The Camps/Useful Idiocy
October 18, 2010

A Tale of Two Cities

Why does so much of the American reporting from North Korea make me wince? Because so often, the reporters are content to describe the facade without a peek behind the curtain. Take the case of CNN’s Alina Cho, who, contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, tells the Huffington Post how ebullient, well-fed, and prosperous Pyongyang is now that Kim Jong-Eun is ascending daddy’s throne: Even with these constraints, Cho said she noticed seemingly small changes during her four...
Categories Kim Jong Un/Media Criticism
October 15, 2010

Lack of Money Is the Root of All Evil

While most of the media are fixed on the movement of stage props on reviewing stands in Pyongyang, mine remains in North Korea’s outer provinces, markets, and ratlines across the Yalu. These, after all, are the things that will drive real change in North Korea. A new report from the Korea Times suggests that increasingly, money smuggling has become an engine of regeneration for North Korea’s free markets: It is common for North Korean defectors here to send money to...
Categories NK Economics/Refugees/Subversion
October 12, 2010

China’s Cleansing Campaign

I want to begin this post by congratulating the Nobel Committee for awarding the Peace Prize, for once, to a person who has actually made sacrifices to improve the lives of others in a way that is likely to frustrate a belligerent state and prevent war. More precisely, by selecting someone who is not a terrorist, an unaccomplished politician, or a proven failure at making peace, Nobel may have extended its residual relevance a while longer. Better, it has returned...
Categories Uncategorized
October 11, 2010

Hwang Jang Yop Dies at 87

Hwang Jang Yop survived multiple purges and power struggles, a defection, at least one assassination attempt, and 87 years in some especially cruel places and times. I was ambivalent about Hwang, who became Kim Jong Il’s strongest critic, but who still defended the juche ideology as misunderstood and misinterpreted by its more recent oracles. We can appreciate what Hwang did to expose the system’s ruthlessness, even as we must recognize that he probably stepped on plenty of skulls to ascend...
Categories Defectors