December 7, 2007

How Far to the Right has South Korea Moved?

Although the polls suggest that South Koreans have made a modest shift to the right on how to deal with North Korea, issue polls don’t measure the intensity of opinion or how candidates’ North Korea policies affect their appeal to voters. Those matters are key, however, when you try to whom the voters will choose to set national policy. It was this article, which I’ll quote extensively below, that brought me to the realization that I may have underestimated just...
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
December 6, 2007

Chris Hill Returns from Pyongyang; Bush Writes to Kim Jong Il

After returning from a weekend in bucolic North Korea, Chris Hill stopped to talk to reporters in the lobby of his hotel in Beijing. As before, I’ll post the full State Department transcript of the Q&A, but here are some highlights: Hill visited Yongbyon and pronounced himself satisfied with the progress of “disablement” activities there. Although Yongbyon was already at the end of its useful life, the work there now involves removing the fuel, cutting valves, and using heavy equipment...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 5, 2007

South Korean Campaign Speeches Broadcast into North Korea

You’re reading this now, which means that  South Korean politics probably interest you to at least some degree.  But imagine how much they interest North Koreans: A U.S.-funded radio broadcaster said Monday it will transmit speeches and debates of leading South Korean presidential candidates to North Korea beginning this week. The move, coming two weeks before the Dec. 19 election, could present an opportunity for North Koreans to learn about democratic elections, Open Radio for North Korea said in a...
Categories Deprogramming/Inside NK
December 4, 2007

A North Korean Refugee in Belgium

Human  Rights Without frontiers sends this refugee’s story, which I thought was interesting enough to pass along to you: HRWF Int’l  (26.11.2007) – Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ – Email: info@hrwf.net. Kim M. W., 31 years old,  arrived in Belgium this year.  He is one of the rare North Korean refugees to have requested asylum in Belgium, even though it is open to the repressed  people of North Korea.  Human Rights Without Frontiers met him in Brussels. HRWF:  What was your life like...
Categories Human Rights/Refugees
December 4, 2007

Liberation Through Litigation, Part 2

Way back in the very early days of this blog, I proposed that North Korean workers should be able to sue their government for coercive and abusive labor practices under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789.  In fact, the statute was recently used with success against Unocal Corporation for its use of forced labor in a pipeline project in Burma.  Just watch Kaesong empty out if that ever comes to pass. I had mentioned the idea once or twice since...
Categories Human Rights/U.S. Law
December 4, 2007

KCNA Announces Hill’s Arrival

Pyongyang, December 3 (KCNA) — Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of State, and his party arrived here today.  [link] That’s the entire story, not an excerpt.  Why so terse?  Maybe their friends in Seoul sent them this (ht: GI Korea): The U.S. government decided to impose three new conditions for removing North Korea from Washington`s list of state sponsors of terrorism, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Saturday. The new conditions are in addition to the current U.S...
Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/U.S. Politics
December 3, 2007

North Korea Faces the End of the South Korean Gravy Train

[Update:   The field narrows further, but could Lee Hoi Chang be thinking of sticking it out through the election to lead an opposition group from the right?  It’s starting to look that way.  If Comrade Chung continues to remain way back in third place, that would allow Lee H.C. to continue to have a (from my perspective) positive influence on Lee Myung-Bak’s governance.  On the other hand,  by drawing conservatives out of the GNP, it could  solidify the GNP’s...
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
December 3, 2007

Camp 14: An Other-Than-Human Existence

[Update:   I almost forgot this UPI link, and thanks to the friend who forwarded the link.  Sometimes, I think it’s your blog, and I just assemble it.  It’s certainly easier for me that way, and much more interesting.] If you have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, Camp  14 survivor  Shin Dong-Hyuk  has an opinion piece published describing life inside a place that no other  prisoner has ever escaped to describe.  If you don’t,  a number of other...
Categories Human Rights/The Camps
December 1, 2007

Hill the Hawk? Not This Year.

A friend was kind enough to pass along five transcripts of Christopher Hill’s remarks to the press during his current trip to Japan and the Koreas. There’s too much interesting information in there to graf and the remarks aren’t long, so I’m just going to upload them in full and let you read for yourself. These are State’s own transcripts; I’ve appended the  text to the bottom of this post. The key point is that North Korea is going to...
Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
November 30, 2007

Henry Hyde, R.I.P.

I last saw Henry Hyde at the  final hearing  at which  he presided as Chairman of the International Relations Committee.  Months later, despite the  passage of control to another party,  a larger-than-life portrait of  Hyde still hangs in hearing room of the re-named Foreign Affairs Committee.  Nearly all that has been written about Henry Hyde after his  passage yesterday  has focused on his role in Whitewater or his steadfast opposition to abortion — in other words, things about which the...
Categories U.S. Politics/Washington Views
November 29, 2007

Inter-Korean NLL Talks Deadlocked

The Northern Limit Line (NLL) is  the disputed martime boundary between the Koreas, the western extension of the Korean DMZ (map here).  The sea border was one of the issues that the 1953 Armistice talks never resolved, so the South Koreans drew a line.  Since then, the North Koreans have realized that the waters near the NLL are rich crab fishing grounds, and that crab bring in badly needed foreign exchange.  Thus, the North Koreans have developed a habit of...
Categories Appeasement
November 29, 2007

Clandestine North Korean Journalism: A Step Toward True Openness?

I have never believed that Kim Jong Il would actually permit openness, reform, or transparency to breach the blockade he has painstakingly placed around his people.   Fresh reports of the ghastly public execution of a factory manager for the “crime” of  making international phone calls (and the deadly stampede that followed)  make that point vividly enough.  Despite billions of dollars in South Korean aid — aid that is ultimately paid for by the American taxpayers who finance South Korea’s defense...
Categories Deprogramming/Inside NK
November 29, 2007

What is Condi Thinking?

It took the Annapolis Summit — not North Korea — to galavanize conservative suspicions about Secretary Rice and our State Department.  That part of the world doesn’t interest me much because I wrote it off as hopeless after visiting it in 1990 (I mean the Middle East, not  Annapolis).  My few days in Israel and a  Hamas-controlled village in  East Jerusalem have persuaded me that there isn’t going to be peace there until the Palestinians make the fundamental decision that...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
November 29, 2007

Unsafe Chinese Products

[This page is no longer being maintained] This page is a group effort.  If you spot a new report of a dangerous Chinese-made  product, please drop a link in the comments below, and don’t forget to click  here to  “Digg” and spread the word. The CPSC has started getting deeply involved in this, and now, they’ve demanded and gotten an agreement from Chinese regulators to do a better job of policing themselves.  Whether the Chinese are (a) willing and (b)...
Categories Uncategorized
November 28, 2007

How Times Have Changed!

I’ve very much enjoyed the first installment of reviews of World War Two-era Korean films at Gusts of Popular Feeling, and look forward to the next ones.  The first film reviewed was made in 1941, a pro-Japanese propaganda film called “The Volunteer,” surprising not only for its cinematic technique and  moments of artistry, but also for its mention of discriminatory treatment of Koreans by the Japanese. The Japanese character (the one who told Choon-ho about the opening of the military...
Categories History/Korean Society
November 28, 2007

The Unhappiest Place on Earth

A combination of last summer’s floods and political idiocy have again combined to worsen the lot of North Koreans: [I]n August, no food was distributed in the east Pyongyang area. In September, only a half of residents in the area received food rations. In the following month, all received their food. In November, not all received their rations as in September.  [Daily NK] When rations aren’t passed out, citizens have to rely on markets for their food supply.  But in...
Categories Famine & Food Aid