March 4, 2008

Of Geography and Mortality: The Food Crisis Worsens, Again

All of the worst stories that hardly anyone ever hears happen in North Korea, and here is one of the best worst stories I’ve heard.  It’s  an object lesson in how  useless  good intentions  can be when bad intentions have all the spine.  In 1997, at the peak of the Great Famine, documentary filmmaker Mark Davis  accompanied a Care  aid worker  — and two North Korean minders — into the North Korean countryside.   They went there to  looking, in vain,...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
March 2, 2008

North Korea Has a Meth Problem

North Korea’s government has long been suspected of producing illicit drugs for export. In 2003,  a high-level defector testified that the goverment is deeply involved in producing and exporting opiates,  including heroin, and amphetamines. North Korea’s official ideology, really “crude, race-based nationalism” thinly veiled in socialism, would have had no problem justifying the poisoning of Japanese and Australian kids, but it was just a matter of time before North Korean drugs found their way into North Korean society. Until recently,...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Inside NK/Regime Change
March 1, 2008

May This Be the Last N.Y. Philharmonic Post

I am really, really tired of blogging about this, but I have two more links that I can’t pass up (thanks to the readers who forwarded them). Both have to do with the N.Y. Philharmonic’s financial backers, and both reflect very different ways of viewing the orchestra’s visit — with and without its moral context. The first story, from long-time Korea hand Don Kirk, is mildly inspiring: During one of the carefully scripted tours of the capital prior to Tuesday’s...
Categories Appeasement/Deprogramming/Korean Society
February 29, 2008

Angelina Jolie: Stay the Course

Will she ever eat lunch in Hollywood again? My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis. Today’s humanitarian crisis in Iraq — and the potential consequences for our national security — are great. Can the United States afford to gamble that 4 million or more poor and displaced people, in the heart of Middle East,...
Categories Terrorism/Iraq
February 29, 2008

Do Not Resuscitate

You know it’s time for Plan B when even the New York Times deems Plan A comatose. The concert would have had even more significance if it could have celebrated continuing progress toward shuttering North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. That effort unfortunately has stalled, and the fault — at least this time — is undeniably Pyongyang’s. [….] North Korea has said it would produce the accounting, but first it wants Washington to remove it from the list of state sponsors...
Categories Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks
February 28, 2008

Louise Arbour, an Exceptionally Ineffective U.N. Bureaucrat, to Step Down as High Commissioner for Human Rights

I would like to think that on defending human rights, the U.N. may soon become a little less worthless, but we might have said so when Mary Robinson stepped down, too. Recent history isn’t encouraging. You can’t defend something you can’t define. Still, Rep. Ileana-Ros Lehtinen is pleased: (WASHINGTON) ““ The announcement that United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour would not be seeking a second term is “the first step toward saving the broken UN human rights...
Categories "United" Nations/The Camps
February 28, 2008

Anju Links for 28 Feb 08

SUSTAINING THE CHARADE: She can’t pretend that the six-party scheme is working, so Condi Rice wants a timetable for North Korea to comply with its agreements. Had Secretary Rice insisted on and gotten a well-structured deal back in 2005, there would have been some chance to accomplish something, though we should remember that unless non-performance has harsh consequences, deadlines mean little to the North Koreans. Too late, she realizes that the original deal was too amorphous to accomplish much of...
Categories Anju Links
February 28, 2008

When did pining for the collapse of a genocidal tyranny become a bad thing?

Somewhere in Washington, Joshua is no longer smiling. Nam Joo-Hong, the nominee to be Unification Minister whom I had called “my kind of guy,” has withdrawn from consideration after becoming a lightning rod for those on the left who lost the election by a landslide. Nam Joo-hong, the unification minister-designate, and Park Eun-kyung, the environment minister-designate, stepped down as they were grilled by opposition parties over their accumulation of wealth and alleged misconduct. Nam does not qualify for the unification...
Categories Korean Politics
February 27, 2008

The Clapton Gambit

Say you’re the beleagured tyrant of a certain Northeast Asian country.  In a moment of financial duress, you signed an agreement in which you agreed to disclose and eventually give up  a nuclear arsenal in which you’ve invested a great deal of money, pride, and prestige.  You know that in a year, there’s an even chance that you might be dealing with the most naive and pliable U.S. President since Jimmy Carter.  You also know that if too many people...
Categories Appeasement
February 27, 2008

Shafted: Winners, Losers, and Casualties of the North Korean Mines

As the North Korean regime struggles to sustain an already marginal economy that actually shrank in 2006, it is accelerating its sell-off of its mineral resources. Again, China appears to be the main buyer, again, corruption is throttling the state’s earning potential. As mineral prices soar on world markets, foreign access to mines in the North is accelerating at a rate unseen in the more than five decades since the division of the Korean Peninsula, according to South Korean government...
Categories China & Korea/Human Rights/NK Economics
February 26, 2008

S. Korean Intel Questioned Executed Refugees in Groups

The 22 North Koreans found drifting in South Korean waters in the West Sea on Feb. 8 were interrogated by South Korean intelligence agents in groups of five or six, rather than one at a time as regulations require, it was learned on Tuesday.   [Chosun Ilbo]   This was a violation of National Intelligence Service rules.  Richardson, who has debriefed North Korean defectors,  nailed it days ago when he explained why  North Koreans  must only  be questioned individually: If they...
Categories Refugees
February 26, 2008

Anju Links for 26 Feb 08

DO NOT MISS NK Econ Watch’s recent postings (here and here) analyzing whether a recent North Korean anti-corruption drive is just another purge or a signal of a policy change. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY? As the regime’s economic power fades, the regime’s once-treasured Kim Jong Il birthday gifts can no longer compete with the items available in the markets. The source relayed the public sentiment as “Goods more valuable than his gifts are all over the place...
Categories Anju Links
February 25, 2008

N. Korean Refugees Arrested in Thailand

Two Thais have been arrested for allegedly helping 14 North Koreans to illegally enter Thailand’s northern border town Chiang Saen, local police said Monday. Nikom Chaikul, 36, was arrested last Thursday when he was driving a minibus carrying eight North Koreans — four men and four women aged 19 to 66 — heading to Chiang Saen, according to marine police in Chiang Saen. [Kyodo] The fourteen North Koreans were charged with illegal entry. President Lee’s rhetoric about refugees and human...
Categories Refugees/Southeast Asia
February 25, 2008

The Long National Nightmare Is (Officially) Over

[Update: Now that I’ve read LMB’s inaugural, I’ve posted more detailed comments / ridicule below the fold and the video.] The 17th presidency of Korea started as Lee Myung-bak formally took over presidential authority from former president Roh Moo-hyun at midnight on Monday, with the Bosingak Bell in downtown Seoul tolling the momentous hour. Lee now embarks on a government of pragmatic conservatism after putting an end to the decade-long leftwing rule. [Chosun Ilbo] Judging by Lee’s inaugural address and...
Categories Korean Politics
February 24, 2008

The Olympics, China, and N. Korean Refugees

Update: Another call to boycott the Beijing Olympics: Pro-democracy activists in Myanmar called Monday for the world to boycott this year’s Beijing Olympics over what they said was China’s continuing support of Myanmar’s military dictatorship. The 88 Generation Students group, which was instrumental in last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations in Myanmar, urged “citizens around the world … to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics in response to China’s bankrolling of the military junta that rules our country of Burma with guns and...
Categories Activism/Refugees
February 23, 2008

What’s the Russian Word for “Pueblo?”

A Russian cargo ship has been detained and boarded by armed coastguard agents in North Korean waters, Russian maritime officials say. The Lida Demesh, carrying a consignment of cars from Japan, was heading for the Russian port of Vladivostok when it was stopped by patrol near Cape Musudan. [BBC] Musudan-ri is absolutely the wrong section of North Korea’s coastline to approach. The area is infamous for such attractions as a missile test site, a nuclear test site, and a large...
Categories NK Military/Russia & Korea/Russian Far East
February 23, 2008

Agreed Framework 2.0: The Shelf Life of Happy Talk

There are probably several good reasons I’ve never really enjoyed a musical except while looking at the lovely France Nuyen, who does not sing. If legacy was its object, Agreed Framework 2.0 won’t be a positive contribution to one. President Bush must know this, or he would have mentioned it in his State of the Union speech. Events turned against the agreement during the last quarter of 2007: specifically Syria, uranium, North Korea’s false declaration, and its failure to give...
Categories Proliferation/Six-Party Talks