April 17, 2008

U.N. World Food Program Reports Skyrocketing Food Prices in Pyongyang

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today that time is running out to avert looming food shortages and a potential humanitarian crisis in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) following confirmation of a critically low national harvest stemming in part from last year’s heavy August floods.  “The food security situation in the DPRK is clearly bad and getting worse,” said Tony Banbury, the World Food Programme’s Regional Director for Asia.  “It is increasingly likely that external assistance...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
April 17, 2008

John Bolton Condemns Bush’s “North Korea Capitulation”

I think “Singapore Surrender” has a more alliterative ring, but I take no issue with Bolton’s argument: Last week in Singapore, U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill and his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye Gwan reached a deal that rests on trust and not verification. According to numerous press reports and Mr. Hill’s April 10 congressional briefing, the U.S. will be expected to accept on faith, literally, North Korean assertions that it has not engaged in significant uranium enrichment, and that...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
April 16, 2008

Get Your Kremlinology Fix Here

Interesting speculation presented for your consideration, although I don’t know how much it is actually true: The KWP has been scrutinizing the ideologies of high-ranking officials of the party and officials at various organizations, and making new appointments and dismissals in an unprecedented scale. Playing the central role in this undertaking is Kim Johng Chol, the second son of Kim Jong Il and deputy chief of the all powerful Leadership Division of the party, who is said to have been...
Categories Japan & Korea/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
April 16, 2008

The Death of an Alliance, Part 68

Here is a delicious pairing of cause and effect: The U.S. has notified the South Korean government it will withdraw one squadron of some 20 F-16 fighters by the end of this year. [….]   The Defense Ministry is reportedly busy working out a response. They take the view that the abrupt notice of the withdrawal has something to do with the U.S.’s demand that Korea bear more upkeep cost for the USFK. [Chosun Ilbo] If you happen to believe...
Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
April 16, 2008

A Google Earth Mystery: Kim Jong Il’s Big Dig

Yesterday, while MiG-spotting over  North Korea at an altitude of  about 20 miles, the highest altitude at which it’s easy to spot airfields, I saw something that caught my eye and went down for a closer look.  I’ve overflown that area multiple times previously and ever noticed it.  At first glance, it looks like a runway going through a mountain.  And that was my first guess.  (Click images for full size and coordinates.)   Move in closer, and you can...
Categories Google Earth
April 15, 2008

Anju Links for 15 April 2008

A HUMANITARIAN SPIRIT that would have seemed unimaginable in Japan half a century ago is taking root: No Fence in North Korea, a Tokyo- based association, started campaigning to release political prisoners from camps in North Korea, where as many as 250,000 people are subjected to torture and summary execution. The group, headed by Shojun Sunagawa, a former Japanese diplomat, held its first meeting in Tokyo yesterday and plans to raise awareness of the camps in North Korea and rescue...
Categories Anju Links
April 15, 2008

The Six Two One Party Talks, or Masturbatory Diplomacy

[Update:   The White House accepts this stinker.  Remember what Chris Hill said last year?   “We cannot have a situation where (North Korea) pretends to abandon their nuclear program and we pretend to believe them.”  That sure sounds like that Hill wants us to do.]   So have you heard that  Kim Jong Il will celebrate his removal from the  list of state sponsors of terrorism … by firing off more missiles?  U.S. military authorities have been closely watching the...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
April 15, 2008

Keeping the Pressure on Beijing

South Korean and American  are pushing the issue of North Korean refugees as the Olympics approach, as as other issues focus intense pressure on China.  Here’s what’s happening in Seoul: Onlookers watch as a man tied up in ropes is led down a crowded pedestrian street by a woman holding a plastic assault rifle. Another man holding a megaphone explains that the re-enactment depicts a scene that has become an everyday occurrence in China. A multinational coalition of activists, calling...
Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
April 14, 2008

A Wing and a Prayer: Google-Earthing Pyongyang’s Airport

The Google Earth gods have bestowed more blessings on us in the form of more high- and medium-resolution images of North Korea.  One place I’ve wanted to see in hi-res is Pyongyang’s Sunan Airport, and I’m happy to report that that’s now possible.  Even with low resolution, it was possible to see the curious two-runway layout of the airport.  That is probably in part because Sunan is a dual-use airfield, one that hosts military and civilian craft.  (Click images for...
Categories Google Earth
April 13, 2008

Kim Won Ung: A Most Joyous Political Obituary

Imagine an America  in which  Cynthia McKinney chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and holds regular meetings with Osama Bin Laden,  and you can  be begin  to grasp the national embarrassment of Kim Won Ung’s tenure as leader of the Korean National Assembly’s Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee.  Perhaps this analogy will also illustrate  the depth of my ambivalence at confirming that Kim  has lost his bid for reelction.  Kim Won Ung at Kim Il Sung’s Birthplace in North...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics
April 11, 2008

All Quid, No Quo: How Agreed Framework 2.0 may soon become immeasurably worse

I declined to do  a posting on Chris Hill’s latest meeting with the North Koreans — the latest in a long series of last chances — because it was pretty clear that North Korea wasn’t going to admit to having a uranium enrichment program or to having engaged in nuclear proliferation to Syria.  Here, I was right.  I had also concluded that lacking any political room to make further concessions to the North Koreans, State wouldn’t agree to water down...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks
April 10, 2008

Good Friends: Rations Suspended in Pyongyang; Population Survives on Savings, Markets

A new Good Friends dispatch is up on the Web.  The obvious caveats apply:  it’s 100% hearsay. Good Friends reports that  the traders who feed the northeastern city of Chongjin  are now wandering from town to town  to find food.  Many are going to Sinuiju and finding nothing; the place is in the middle of a major crackdown on markets.  Although Good  Friends does not say so explicitly,  protests in Chongjin appear to have ended, possibly with the dissenting  female...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
April 10, 2008

Representatives Ask Rice About ‘Consular Emergencies’ During Beijing Olympics

Last month, three members of Congress — Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of  Florida, Ray Lahood of Illinois, and Darlene Hooley of Oregon —  anticipating just how ugly things could will get if  when U.S. citizens protest during this year’s Olympics in Beijing, wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to ask what instructions  she had given to our  diplomats in China  about “consular emergencies” during the games.  The members also broached the sensitive subject of whether State should issue a travel advisory...
Categories China/U.S. Politics
April 9, 2008

A Good Election for Korea

Well, what can I add to what Andy and Robert have done here?  Let me start with this complete listing (in Korean) of the results and just add some notable points: *   Defeated presidential candidate “Comrade” Chung Dong Young, originator of the die-in-place policy  toward North Korean refugees,  was trounced and failed in his bid to win a  seat in the National Assembly.  Chung was a superficial, anti-American demagogue.  I despise him so deeply  that I  hope he tries...
Categories Korean Politics
April 9, 2008

Did North Korea proliferate to Iran, too?

An Israeli news site reports that North Korea aided Iran’s nuclear program with nuclear technology and material, according to the Israeli news site Haaretz (ht to a reader): According to information obtained by Washington and Jerusalem, North Korea transferred technology and nuclear materials to Iran to aid Tehran’s secret nuclear arms program. U.S. and Israeli officials agreed last week that the talks between the U.S. and North Korea, scheduled to take place in Singapore tomorrow, should be used to pressure...
Categories Proliferation/WMD
April 9, 2008

America: Now 16% Less Hated!

We have some more results for the OFK poll archive on South Korean anti-Americanism. Koreans’ attitudes toward the U.S. are improving, according to a poll by Britain’s broadcaster BBC late last year. A survey of 17,457 people in 34 countries on U.S. influence in the international community shows that the number of positive respondents outnumbered negativists only in South Korea and Portugal. Among 1,031 South Korean respondents, 49 percent showed a mainly positive attitude toward the U.S. The number of...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Society
April 8, 2008

Anju Links for 8 April 2008

MORE TRAIN WRECKS in North Korea have injured hundreds, according to the Daily NK. Recall that an explosion that may have killed hundreds in the town of Ryongchon in 2006 was triggered by a train accident. SPEAKING OF THINGS THAT SOUND DANGEROUS, I wonder where these North Korean soldiers were getting the scrap iron they were selling to China. Even in the United States, there are idiots who deliberately drive into live-fire zones of U.S. military bases to collect scrap...
Categories Anju Links
April 8, 2008

Do you suppose China is having second thoughts about that whole ‘Olympics’ idea?

[Update: A new Zogby poll finds that 70% of likely voters believe the IOC was wrong to award the Olympics to China, and 48% believe that “U.S. political officials should not attend the opening ceremony due to China’s poor human rights record.” Dissatisfaction with the IOC’s choice is strong across the political spectrum, with 70% of Democrats and Republicans, and 68% of political independents who said they disagree with the decision to have China host the summer games. A Zogby...
Categories Activism/China/Human Rights