July 20, 2007

Taliban Kidnap 18 South Koreans in Afghanistan

They were members of a church group, and readers may recall other church groups  from South Korea have also ventured into some very dangerous places. Taliban gunmen abducted at least 18 members of a South Korean church group in southern Afghanistan, and a purported spokesman for the Islamic militia said Friday it will question them about their activities in Afghanistan before deciding their fate. The Koreans were seized Thursday in Ghazni province as they were traveling by bus from Kabul...
Categories Korean Society/Religion
July 20, 2007

A License to Stall

If you read those breathless reports that North Korea was really, really  ready to fully denuclearize,  you can  catch your breath now:  “We had a big discussion about putting an overall deadline in,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator, told reporters after talks concluded today. “We had a consensus. Since we were not very successful in meeting the date in the spring, we decided that we should have working groups before we come up with a...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
July 16, 2007

Reminder: ‘Let My People Go’ Rally, Noon Tomorrow on the West Lawn of the Capitol

The Korean Church Coalition picks up an impressive and somewhat  surprising endorsement in advance of tomorrow’s rally.  As always, you need not be present to win.   If you have an  Internet connection or a phone, you can pester your Senators, your Representatives, and your pals at the Korean and  ChiCom Embassies: chinaembassy_us@fmprc.gov.cn / Tel.: (202) 328-2500 (Why should you do this?) http://www.dynamic-korea.com/embassy/meet.php / (202) 939-5600 (Why should you do this?)
Categories Activism/Human Rights/Religion
July 16, 2007

IAEA Confirms Yongbyon Shutdown

After much speculation, the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that North Korea has shut down its plutonium reactor at Yongbyon.  I have always expected North Korea to go through this part of the deal (full text here), as I expected them to let IAEA inspectors back into Yongbyon and the other  facilities near it.  But to simplify arguments I’ve made here  before, those things cost North Korea almost  nothing: It’s easy to kick inspectors out.  They’ve done it before....
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
July 14, 2007

If Jack Pritchard Doesn’t Believe Jack Pritchard, Why Should We?

Jack Pritchard probably comes to his role as South Korea’s  main policy mouthpiece honestly,  through a shared  belief that the next ten years of unrequited aid really will change North Korea into a peaceful, bucolic, union-free garment  district.  Pritchard is President of the Korea Economic  Institute, which  works  Washington’s Korea-watching and policy-making crowds through its regular sponsorship of social and academic dinner  events.  I’ve been to a few myself, and though I seldom agree with  what I hear there,  the...
Categories Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views/WMD
July 13, 2007

Law Enforcement Will Be Compromised, Part 2

Law enforcement will not be compromised. ““ Chris Hill, Feb. 27, 2007   [Update:   Welcome Wall Street Journal readers.]   The latest refutation of this whopper of diplomatic mendacity is an extensive new investigative report on North Korea’s criminal enterprises from Time  (thanks to a reader for forwarding).  The report suggests that our State Department’s incomprehensible  decision to return $25 million  of Kim Jong Il’s criminally derived funds,  now under GAO investigation as a possible violation of our own...
Categories Appeasement/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks
July 12, 2007

Korean Church Coalition Joins N. Korean Human Rights Movement, and an Appeal for a Condemned Man

[Update:   Barack Obama endorses  the rally and its cause with a nicely written letter.  Read it here.  Of course, it would be great to think that Obama will be as persistent and passionate on this issue  as Sam Brownback, who introduced this resolution  in the Senate.  That’s two presidential candidates, one from each party.  In a particularly  bipartisan gesture, one prominent  Republican staffer even  sent me a copy of Obama’s letter(!).  If the KCC turns out a good crowd...
Categories Human Rights/Religion/Resistance
July 11, 2007

China Attacks Dissent in America and It Expands Its Power to Intimidate the Neighbors

Strategy Page says they are, and that the FBI is so busy looking for terror cells that China can get away with it: In the past year, many copies of the Epoch Times have been stolen and destroyed, and editorial staff have been physically attacked by men who appear to be Chinese. Editorial offices have also been attacked, often at night, to make it look like a burglary. China has also been putting pressure on Chinese language newspapers in the...
Categories Censorship/China/NK Military/U.S. Military/Washington Views
July 10, 2007

‘Before she was executed, my mother looked at me.’

I’ve been blogging about stories like this for three years, and I still can’t believe human beings are capable of some of the things that my rational minds knows they’re fully capable of: On Nov. 29, 1996, 14-year-old Shin Dong Hyok and his father were made to sit in the front row of a crowd assembled to watch executions. The two had already spent seven months in a North Korean prison camp’s torture compound, and Shin assumed they were among...
Categories Human Rights/The Camps
July 9, 2007

All Quid, No Quo

If Andrei Lankov is right and most North  Koreans secretly  know that they don’t really live in an earthly  paradise, these must be confusing times.  Any of them who mull the oddities of the wider world in the privacy of  their own minds must be asking themselves:  “Why do they pay us?”  If North Korea has few natural resources and a  dwindling population of a few million, why does it seem that  everyone on earth lines up to pay tribute...
Categories "United" Nations
July 5, 2007

The FTA and ‘Fortress Korea’

It can be disturbing to find so  much to agree with in the writings of someone who doesn’t share your  outlook on  the bigger picture.  I generally favor the lowering of trade barriers and oppose the protection of domestic industries  from the competition of  a fair and open market.  Note the key caveat in that last sentence, for defining “fair and open” is where the devil is.  I suspect Alan Tomlinson defines it more narrowly than I do, and that...
Categories NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
July 3, 2007

Anju Links for 7/3

Forgive the light blogging of late, the result of competing obligations, a bigger project I hope you’ll see here soon, and frankly, a lack of interesting fodder in the news recently. *   When I read that South Korea was already preparing to ship fuel oil to North Korea (see also), even before Yongbyong is shut down, I thought that seemed a bit overconfident.  AF 2.0, as explained by Chris Hill to the Congress, specified that the first 50,000-ton delivery...
Categories An Alliance?/Anju Links/Appeasement
July 1, 2007

The War the Media Won’t Show You

When  our soldiers retook a  village  from al Qaeda near Baqubah, Michael Yon was there  to  show us, in extremely graphic  images,  what the terrorists did to the  men, women, and  childen who once lived there, and even to their animals.  The Times and the Post were not  there and  won’t show you images like this.  They won’t show you the  al Qaeda that kills Iraqis in Iraq,  Britons in Britain, Spaniards in Spain, and Americans in America. We seem...
Categories Terrorism/Iraq
June 30, 2007

Abductions Update: Volunteer Translators Wanted; a Rumor that Kim Jong Il Will ‘Investigate’ the Issue

A group of family members of Japanese abductees is looking for native English speakers to edit their  translations of a book on Japanese who were abducted by the North Koreans.  If you’re interested in helping, all they ask is that you translate one chapter.  From the summary, some of the stories look pretty compelling: Chapter 1: The Yokota family — Their 13-year-old daughter, Megumi, disappeared on her way home from school.  Her family made every possible effort to find her,...
Categories Abductions
June 26, 2007

Anju Links for 6/25

*   There’s another report that a  North Korean border guard has defected, only this time, he brought a few things with him: At the time of arrest, Kim was armed with an automatic AK rifle, 5 magazines, 30 cartridges and [a]sword.  [Daily NK]   Then, the Chinese caught him.  They’ll send him back to North Korea, where he’s certain to face a firing squad at 19 [because Koreans calculate age from the time of conception, he’s just 17 or...
Categories Anju Links/NK Military/Resistance/Uncategorized
June 25, 2007

House Moves to Cut Funds for UNDP, Human Rights Council

Each entity has recently brought particular discredit on itself, and in each case, there is a North Korea nexus.   The UNDP  recently failed a UN internal audit after U.S. diplomats outed the organization for allowing its Pyongyang operations to become, as a U.N. staffer put it, “an ATM machine” for the regime.  It turns out that North Korea used some of the funds to buy overseas real estate and dual-use equipment, and that the U.N. even had a stock of...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Korean Education