April 18, 2007

‘So many people died, they wrapped bodies in plastic sheets and buried them in a mountain.’

Human Rights Watch, one of the industry bigs that (until now)  had been mostly absent from the discussion of human rights in North Korea, has made an important entry into that discussion, via this  Washington Post op-ed by Kay Sok.  Ms. Sok makes several important points here, and the first of these is how North Korea’s version of socialism is a recipe for selective deprivation as a weapon of class warfare: Many of these North Koreans crossed the border because...
Categories Human Rights/Refugees
April 18, 2007

Is North Korea Shutting Down Yongbyon After All?

Update:   Or maybe just wishful South Korean thinking? Contrary to published reports, the United States has seen no signs that North Korea has begun to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear facility as called for in a February 13 six-country agreement, a senior U.S, official said on Tuesday. News reports in South Korean media are “just not accurate … We have seen no actions on the North Koreans’ part that at this point leads us to believe they are fulfilling...
Categories Six-Party Talks/WMD
April 17, 2007

Virginia Tech Shooter Was Cho Seung-Hui, a U.S. Permanenent Resident From Korea

Police identified the classroom shooter as  Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a senior from South Korea who was in the English department and lived in another dorm on campus. They said Cho committed suicide after the attacks, and there was no indication Tuesday of a possible motive.  [AP] Police also report, however, that Cho left behind a “disturbing” note that may give us some idea what kind of ideas took root inside this young man’s fevered mind.  I’ll post more when I...
Categories Miscellaneous
April 17, 2007

Where All of the Guilty Ones Get Fair Trials

I suspect that relatively  few  members or staffers had time to read the long-winded  written statement I submitted to the record with my September 27, 2006 congressional testimony.  Starting on page  Page 79, I described the many procedural and institutional reasons why  American soldiers do not receive fair trials in Korean courts.  I drew heavily on stories that GI Korea and USinKorea had originally linked in preparing it, along with the assistance of a good friend I asked to fact-check...
Categories Anti-Americanism/UCMJ & SOFA
April 16, 2007

Il Shim Hue Members Convicted, Sentenced, and Probably Confused

Somewhere, Kafka’s  spirit is smiling.   A South  Korean court  and has handed down guilty verdicts to five members of the Il Shim Hue spy ring  individuals who had coincidentally all  possessed similar loyalty oaths to the Lodestar of  the Great Korean  Race and  received their pay and instructions at a safe house at  3089 Dongxuhuayuan, 18 Shuangqiaodong-lu, Zahoyang-qu, on the outskirts of Beijing.  Bailiff!    Read  the verdict! A Seoul court convicted five people, including a Korean-American businessman, of spying...
Categories Korean Law/The Fifth Column
April 16, 2007

Anju Links for 16 April 2007

*  My latest K-blog discovery is “Six Happy Feet,” a superb photoblog with a great  name.  You’ll want to put this one on your blogrolls.  It’s hard to read  it without concluding that this is just a genuinely nice family. *   A Nation’s Conscience.   Some South Koreans are demanding freedom for those North Korean refugees in Laos — the ones the South Korean government refused to help.  *   Heal Thyself, Part 1.   I can understand why...
Categories Activism/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
April 15, 2007

Anju Links for 15 April 2007

*    We’ve Lost the True Meaning of Kim Il Sung’s Birthday.   It’s another OFK exclusive — I have the first video of North Korea’s Kim Il Sung Day parade.  In North Korea, where devotion comes from the barrel of a gun, the object of this  devotion  is now a side of preserved meat; thus,  I urge everyone to  pay their respects  with  a feast  appropriate for the occasion.  If only the people of North Korea were fortunate enough...
Categories Abductions/Anju Links/Appeasement/Korean War/Refugees
April 14, 2007

Agreed Framework 2.0: A Day 60 Scorecard

[Update:   I decided to  append various newsworthy or interesting reactions to the  passage of this deadline at the end of this post;  please scroll to the bottom to read.  For new readers, the man on the right is Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who  expended years of connivance on getting us to make this deal, and who personally negotiated its amorphous terms.  Hill has staked his reputation on the idea that North Korea is capable of abiding by...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
April 13, 2007

‘Kim Jong Bill’ Richardson and Camp 22

[Update:   The dissenting comments have been erased again.  Gov. Richardson’s fans want to create a cult of adulation in which all  dissent is stifled and concentration camps are never mentioned.   All of this is somehow  familiar to a North Korea-watcher.] [Update 2:   Help us keep “Kim Jong Bill” on Wikipedia until he asks Kim Jong Il to close down Camp 22.  I’ve put the text and code at the bottom of the post, below the line.  Everyone is...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/WMD
April 13, 2007

Agony and Ecstasy in Wonsan

When I put up my post on Kim Jong Il’s palace northeast of Pyongyang, Curtis Melvin  commented and pasted  in a link to this Daily NK article, a guide to Kim Jong Il’s various palaces and residences.  (If you haven’t seen it yet, by the way, we’ve revealed an interesting answer to our pyramid mystery.) One passage in the article sounded like something I’d seen: Wonsan Chalet Where Kim Jong Il and his relatives hunt guillemots or ful seals, enjoy...
Categories Google Earth/Japan & Korea/Kim Jong Il/NK Military
April 13, 2007

Anju Links for 13 April 2007

*   Matters of Life and Death.   The Chosun Ilbo reports that  Lao authorities have arrested six North Korean  women.   I’m not sure if it’s the same group I mentioned here.  Meanwhile, 53 others are still  in imminent danger of being sent back from Thailand.  If you haven’t already done so, please contact the Thai  Embassy (see previous link for e-mail address) and tell them not to send  these refugees  back to the gulag.  Recent reports suggest that...
Categories Anju Links
April 12, 2007

Anju Links for 12 April 2007

*   Shocking.   North Korea wants another 30 days to shut down Yongbyon, now that the deadline is half a week away.  Most media accounts are focusing on North Korea’s agreement to take back U.N. inspectors, though it’s not clear if they’ll have access to more than this one site, and we’ve certainly learned that the acceptance of U.N. inspectors is a highly reversible development.  The more time passes, the more this looks like something less than the first...
Categories Diplomacy/WMD
April 12, 2007

Law Enforcement Will Be Compromised

Correction:   I subsequently found the transcript for the February 27, 2007 hearing, and Chris Hill did not say, quote, “Law enforcement will not be compromised.”  On reading the full quote, you’ll probably agree that Hill found another way of saying the same thing; however, I regret the error, which was no doubt due to me scribbling notes of the hearing by hand, and transposing Rep. Royce’s question with Hill’s answer.  Here’s the correct quote from Hill: Ambassador HILL. Mr....
Categories Appeasement/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering
April 11, 2007

Anju Links for 11 April 2007

*   Are You Effing Kidding Me?   The Bush administration, reversing a six-year-old North Korea policy based on deep mistrust, said it will now rely on Pyongyang’s “good faith” to ensure that funds released yesterday from a Macao bank are not misused…. Mr. McCormack said the North Koreans had promised “to spend the money for the betterment of the North Korean people,” and not for the personal benefit of its officials. [Wash Times] Stupidity with malice aforethought is its...
Categories Activism/Anju Links/Appeasement/Kremlinology/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
April 10, 2007

North Korea by Google Earth: Kim Jong Il’s Largest Palace

[Updated; The Mystery of the Tangun Tomb] Remember my March 28th post,  a stream of consciousness  that washed against  the subject of EU sanctions against North Korea?   Among the items sanctioned were  pure-bred horses, which are the kind not even  North Koreans would dare eat — because of who owns them.   That led me  to the one location in North Korea where I suspected that such horses might be kept.  I had recently found that location on Google Earth  while...
Categories Google Earth/History/Kim Jong Il
April 10, 2007

Anju Links for 10 April 2007

* Tick, Tock. We’re only a few days from the deadline, but expect our government to be far more permissive with Kim Jong Il’s tardiness  than it will be with American taxpayers (Cha: You’re running out of time; Hill: I’m still hopeful!). If the State Department were in charge of tax collection, our streets would be unpaved and guarded by Canadian occupation forces. * Food Crisis Update. If the World Food Program is sounding increasingly dire about North Korea’s food...
Categories Anju Links
April 9, 2007

Peace in Our Time: Bracing for a Missed Deadline, and the ‘Good’ Unilateralism

If you wonder just how fundamental our policy shift on North Korea has been — fundamentally bad, that is — just look at the fact that Bill Richardson’s amateur diplomacy toward Kim Jong Il is no longer being ignored by the White House  [AP, Foster Klug].  Six months ago, a Bill Richardson visit to his friends in Pyongyang would have followed some White House statements that Richardson was acting  on his own as a private citizen.  Today, as President Clinton...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/WMD
April 8, 2007

Some Questions for David Albright (Which He Won’t Answer)

[Some Background for new readers:   When the U.S. and North Korea  signed a denuclearization agreement on February 13th, one of the major unresolved issues was the question of North Korea’s suspected uranium enrichment program.   When U.S. diplomats confronted the North Koreans in 2002 with  evidence  suggesting the existence of  that program, North Korea admitted, in effect, that it had a program and “so what of it?”  The United States then declared North Korea in violation of the Agreed Framework of...
Categories Media Criticism/WMD