February 4, 2010

Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? Survivor of Kim Jong Il’s “Pleasure Squad” Talks

I’m not sure what pains me more — the thought of all the tawdry traffic this post will bring in, or knowing that a part of me actually wants the traffic. According to the account by Mi Hyang, a former member of one of Mr Kim’s “pleasure squads” ““ groups of attractive young women enlisted to provide entertainment and sexual services ““ the leader could be sentimental when drunk, and even shed tears. His favourite delicacy contains the reproductive organ...
Categories Kim Jong Il
February 3, 2010

We Demand a Sacrifice! North Korea Purges Economic Official

[Update: Kushibo notes that North Korea has started lifting market restrictions. Rice prices and exchange rates have begun to stabilize. The confiscation is done, but does this mean the regime is backing down? That would mean that change is irreversible, and that the regime has just surrendered much of its control over the economy. And just to thank Kushibo for re-posting his comment after I stupidly deleted it, I’ll recommend you read his post on the sacking of Pak Nam-Ki....
Categories NK Economics
February 3, 2010

“Hail Ants” View of China Is Politics, Not Economics

So goes the meme: America can’t press human rights in its diplomacy with China, or insist that China stop enabling and start pressuring Kim Jong Il, because China now owns a controlling interest in America. It’s not difficult to find examples of this view, though it turns out to a more prevalent theory among editorialists than economists. Our old friends at Al Gore’s Current TV sum up the argument this way: President Barack Obama will work hard to build trust...
Categories China
February 2, 2010

Daily NK: Angry North Koreans Attacking, Killing Secret Police

The Daily NK is reporting on “an explosion in the number of casualties resulting from popular resentment” of the series of draconian economic diktats I call The Great Confiscation. These include the cancellation and reissue of the currency, which wiped out the savings of millions of people overnight; the ban on foreign currency; and the closure of markets — first in Pyongyang, and if rumors are accurate, in Chongjin and Hamhung this spring. Via Curtis, we have North Korean confirmation...
Categories Resistance
February 2, 2010

Rand: South Korea Still a Military Parasite

Years ago, I quoted extensively from a Rand report on then-President Roh Moo Hyun’s plans to cut the ROK military budget and settle into a cozy military and economic parasitism on the country Roh’s supporters loved to hate. But now that Roh is a fading bad memory, the alliance stands on firm ground again, right? Wrong: The ROK has become one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with a strong economy. Yet despite this economic strength, the ROK still...
Categories An Alliance?/Reconstruction/ROK Military
February 2, 2010

DNI Releases Annual Threat Assessment

And it’s more bad news for the usual suspects — David Albright, Selig Harrison, and Mike Chinoy: After denying a highly enriched uranium program since 2003, North Korea announced in April 2009 that it was developing uranium enrichment capability to produce fuel for a planned light water reactor (such reactors use low enriched uranium); in September it claimed its enrichment research had “entered into the completion phase”. The exact intent of these announcements is unclear, and they do not speak...
Categories NK Military/Proliferation/Washington Views
February 2, 2010

Christopher Hitchens on Brian Myers’s “The Cleanest Race”

Hitchens writes: All of us who scrutinize North Korean affairs are preoccupied with one question. Do these slaves really love their chains? The conundrum has several obscene corollaries. The people of that tiny and nightmarish state are not, of course, allowed to make comparisons with the lives of others, and if they complain or offend, they are shunted off to camps that–to judge by the standard of care and nutrition in the “wider” society–must be a living hell excusable only...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Books & Films/Korean Society/Propaganda/Racism
February 2, 2010

Is This Kim Jong Il’s Private Train?

A reader recently directed my attention to these images at RailPictures.net, taken by Danish tourist Asger Christiansen while visiting Vladivostok in 2002. Christiansen believes they show Kim Jong Il’s unmarked private train taking him to a meeting with Vladimir Putin. I contacted Mr. Christian, who graciously allowed me to post the images here. Click for full size. Apparently, the Russians insisted on using their own locomotives and operators inside Russia. Interesting, too, that Russian and North Korean trains share the...
Categories Kim Jong Il/Russia & Korea/Russian Far East
February 1, 2010

1 February 2010

The Wall Street Journal has a feature about North Korea’s political monument export industry: This month, workers from Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies, a North Korean design firm, were putting the finishing touches on a giant copper sculpture of a family. Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade will inaugurate the African Renaissance Monument in April to mark the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence from France, a ceremony he expects the president of North Korea’s Parliament to attend. “Only the North...
Categories Anju Links
February 1, 2010

Great Confiscation Updates: Hard Times in North Pyongan

Why did North Korea believe that it could reestablish a socialist economy despite international sanctions? According to Open News, the men in the palace were expecting a substantial infusion of sanctions-busting cash from the Chinese: North Korea expected to receive a financial aid of more than a hundred million yuans from china once the currency reform was in place, so that it provides better supply of goods. And, this is why North Korea had informed China of how and when...
Categories NK Economics
February 1, 2010

Must Read: Daily NK Interviews Heritage Foundation’s Bruce Klingner

Klingner, formerly a CIA analyst and a private consultant with the Eurasia Group, has been with Heritage since 2007. He’s also a daily reader of this site. Here’s a sample of his assessment of the current situation: Pyongyang is increasingly desperate to have the UN sanctions removed. Obama administration officials have commented that the Banco Delta Asia (BDA) sanctions of 2005-06 were very effective and it was a mistake for the Bush administration to have removed them. This is, of...
Categories Washington Views
January 30, 2010

North Korea Threatens Senders of Leaflet Balloons as Messages “Gain Trust” of North Koreans

Balloon-carried leaflets sent by South Korean civic groups to North Korea are unnerving the North Korean authorities as the anti-Pyongyang messages are gaining trust among North Korean citizens, a local daily said on Saturday. In the past, when the anti-North Korean leaflets were spread in Pyongyang, North Korean residents didn’t believe their contents. However, the situation is different now. According to the Chosun Ilbo, civic groups’ leaflets these days are much more effective than in the past as they are...
Categories Propaganda/Subversion/Terrorism (NK)
January 30, 2010

Brian Myers Will Do Book Event in D.C.

I may have to find the time to attend this: Brian Myers is coming to The Wilson Center to discuss his new book. I’m going to withhold judgment until I read it. Myers has written much great work about North Korea, the state’s wierd pathology, and the problems with viewing it as merely a Stalinist state, but the thing is, the Great Confiscation looks awfully Stalinist to me, and I’m not yet persuaded why North Korea can’t be both racist...
Categories Books & Films/Racism
January 30, 2010

WTF? American Who Crossed Into North Korea May Have Defected

That latest American who crossed into North Korea looks more likely to be a Spartacist than Spartacus: South Korea’s Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said the man crossed into North Korea from China on Monday. It said an unidentified source in North Korea told the newspaper the 28-year-old man said he came to the country because he did not “want to become a cannon fodder in the capitalist military,” and “wants to serve in the North Korean military” instead. [Washington Post, via...
Categories Defectors/WTF?
January 30, 2010

Eagerly Awaiting Eric Sirotkin’s Fact Check

A year after President Obama’s inauguration, North Koreans continue to step forward to slander the Workers’ Paradise and act as willing agents of neocon propaganda about North Korea’s political rehabilitation system: Life under the regime took its toll on Kim’s family. Her parents died of hunger at Yodok, she said. One son accidentally drowned there. Another was executed in 1989 while trying to escape from North Korea. Kim’s husband was taken to a separate camp, which she calls “a place...
Categories Human Rights/Useful Idiocy