April 29, 2010

North Korea Freedom Week: Brief Update

Just got back from the demonstration across from the Chinese Embassy in Seoul. For those who have been wondering, they said the balloon launch will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow (Saturday) at Freedom Bridge. Full schedule available here. I’m off to the PSCORE event from 1 to 5:30 p.m. (Friday) at the Press Center in Gwanghwamun. But first, here’s a flier for the screening of Crossing in the basement of the chapel building at Yonsei Unversity at 4 p.m. I...
Categories Activism/China/Human Rights
April 28, 2010

“Collective Spirit” Update

The Chosun Ilbo reports that despite international sanctions, Kim Jong Il still manages to import ample quantities of rice and infant formula add “between $200 and $300 million every year” to his personal slush fund: With the money, North Korea would be able to import between 400,000 to 600,000 tons of rice, which would be enough to cover half the country’s food shortage of 1 million tons of rice per year. What? Since when isn’t cognac food anymore? Isn’t it...
Categories Kim Jong Il/NK Economics/Sanctions
April 28, 2010

27 April 2010

South Korea is considering cutting aid to, and trade with North Korea in response to the North’s seizure of assets at Kumgang: The government is reportedly considering limiting the volume of agricultural and marine products from North Korea or tightening regulation of imports in other ways. Certain North Korean items, such as sand, hard coal and mushrooms, already require the unification minister’s approval each time someone wants to bring them into the South. Seoul could expand the number of such...
Categories Anju Links
April 27, 2010

New North Korean War Plan: Grab Seoul, Negotiate

Via the Joongang Ilbo, North Korea’s on-the-shelf invasion oplan no longer calls for invading all of South Korea, but in recognition of stronger U.S. and South Korean military capabilities, now calls for quickly occupying Seoul and then negotiating favorable terms. With the new plan, the North would concentrate its early fire on Seoul and neighboring areas, where most of South Korea’s social and economic infrastructure is located. “North Korea would try to occupy Seoul early,” the source said. “And from...
Categories NK Military/ROK Military
April 26, 2010

Statement from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen on North Korea Freedom Week

Dear People of both South and North Korea, Members of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, Ms. Scholte of the Defense Forum Foundation, Members of the NGO Human Rights Community, Pastors, North Korean Defectors, Abductee Families, Members of the Korean-American Community and Friends of Korea: It is particularly fitting and proper that this year’s annual North Korea Freedom Week will be held for the first time on the Korean peninsula. This week of events also comes at a particularly critical time...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
April 26, 2010

Current TV Will Air Documentary on Ling-Lee Incident

You know, I was just thinking that it’s been a while since we’ve had a nice flame war over this. The network announced Sunday that Laura Ling and Euna Lee will tell their story in a 30-minute episode that will kick off the fourth season of the documentary series “Vanguard” on May 19. The journalists, both staffers for the series, were held captive by the North Koreans for more than four months after they briefly entered the country by crossing...
Categories Ling/Lee Incident
April 26, 2010

More Blockade-Running Technology: Cheaper Satellite Phones

After this post on DIY cell phone base stations generated interest from readers, I followed one suggestion in the comments to see whether satellite phones have gotten any cheaper recently. They have, and how. This model is currently selling for under $235 new on Amazon.com. I have to think that they could be acquired for even less in volume through sources in India or China. Can anyone out there find a better price?
Categories Subversion/Technology
April 25, 2010

North Korea Freedom Week, Day 1: NKHR Exhibit Opening Ceremony

North Korea Freedom Week 2010 is underway! At 3 p.m. Sunday the ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for an exhibit on North Korean Human Rights Exhibit that will run all week in two large rooms on the first floor of the Seoul Press Center. The first room primarily focuses on Gang Gil-su and his extended family, who lived in hiding in China for about three years from 1999-2001 after escaping North Korea. On display are dozens of crayon drawings depicting their...
Categories Human Rights/Refugees
April 25, 2010

25 April 2010: N. Korea Desperate to Plug News Leaks

The North Korean authorities are hunting for those clandestine correspondents who give us those independent reports about events in North Korea as if the regime’s very existence depends on it: A radio broadcaster run by North Korean defectors here reported this week that security guards in Hoeryeong, North Hamgyeong Province, directed its residents to turn in photos of their family members who have been missing from 2005. If the families say that these photos have been lost, security guards pay...
Categories Anju Links
April 24, 2010

A DIY Cellular Network: Could This Work in North Korea?

[A]n open-source project called OpenBTS is proving that almost anyone can cheaply run a network with parts from a home- ­supply or auto-supply store. Cell-phone users within such a network can place calls to each other and–if the network is connected to the Internet–to people anywhere in the world. The project’s cofounder, David Burgess, hopes that OpenBTS will mean easier and cheaper access to cellular service in remote parts of the world, including hard-to-reach locations like oil rigs and poor...
Categories Subversion/Technology
April 23, 2010

Absolute Must-See: Video of Onsung Market, Before and After The Great Confiscation

I knew Onsung was a shit hole, but wow. Just, wow. Watch it here — English subtitles and all — and read about it in the New York Times. Don’t miss the corrupt officials shaking down the merchants, or the South Korean Red Cross aid for sale. We’ve seen other video showing American aid being sold, too, as well as previous reports of South Korean food aid being confiscated and diverted for military use. Could individual corrupt officials be responsible...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
April 23, 2010

Is There Still a Case for Food Aid to North Korea?

I’ve generally been underwhelmed by the performance of the Human Rights Industry when it comes to North Korea, but Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch is a bright light in this dreary landscape. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Seok finds the regime’s misappropriation of its resources on a Kimjongilia flower festival to be “outrageous” at a time when “North Koreans may face the worst food shortage since a famine claimed a million lives in the 1990s.” But if that...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
April 22, 2010

Best Commentary of the Week (But It’s Still Thursday)

Professor Sung-Yoon Lee, writing a lengthy Outlook piece for the American Enterprise Institute, predicts that history will be unkind to Kim Dae Jung (and if you read Don Kirk’s book, already is to a degree). I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but Lee is an all-time OFK favorite, and I’ve read enough to see that it’s up to Lee’s high standards of writing. What’s more, this article has fired up spittle-flecked fulmination from a lot of the right people...
Categories Anju Links
April 22, 2010

22 April 2010

Things You Can’t Eat: “North Korea spent more than US$5.4 million on fireworks displays along the banks of the Taedong River in Pyongyang on Wednesday to celebrate former leader Kim Il-sung’s 98th birthday the following day. And President Lee Myung Bak, sounding more like an OFK guest blogger than ever, asks, “How much corn could you have bought with that money?” It’s on. _______________________ Is North Korea expanding its army again? _______________________ Did Kim Jong Il cancel his trip to...
Categories Anju Links
April 22, 2010

The Coming OpCon Debate

Rumors in Washington are building that the South Korean government will soon ask President Obama to delay the dissolution of Combined Forces Command, a/k/a OPCON in 2012. The Stars and Stripes has a rather unbalanced piece on the preposterous idea of South Korea assuming the lead command role in its own defense, which this piece by Doug Bandow more than balances. I think that on the one hand, most conventional thinkers on both sides of the Pacific still see America’s...
Categories An Alliance?
April 22, 2010

Those damn North Koreans PUST us again!

Suckers …. A monument dedicated to Kim Il-sung was installed on the campus of the new Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). Built with donations from South Korean and US Christians, it could tank intra-Korean relations for good. The 20-metre granite monstrosity embodies the Juche idea, North Korea’s quasi-religious state ideology. [Asia News, Joseph Yun Li-Sun] For good, he says? Hasn’t this guy ever read the Hankyoreh? As if the likely diversion of funds from Kaesong or Kumgang, or...
Categories North-South/Propaganda/Sunshine
April 21, 2010

If North Korea’s Attempt to Kill Hwang Jang Yop Isn’t the State Sponsorship of Terrorism, I Don’t Know What Is

Two North Korean agents sent to South Korea to assassinate Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking official ever to defect from Pyongyang, have been arrested, intelligence and law enforcement authorities announced yesterday. According to the National Intelligence Service and prosecutors, Kim Yong-ho, 36, and Dong Myong-gwan, 36, have been arrested. Both men were majors of the North Korean Army’s reconnaissance bureau, the authorities said. The two agents were ordered in November by the bureau’s chief, Colonel General Kim Yong-chol, to assassinate Hwang,...
Categories Defectors/Terrorism (NK)