The Chosun Ilbo reports: The U.S. special envoy for North Korea Joseph DeTrani is quitting to take up a job in the office of the director for national intelligence next week. As the deputy head of Washington’s delegation at six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program and Washington’s man in the near-defunct Korea Energy Development Organization, DeTrani has been a point man in often informal contacts between North Korea and the U.S. since he took over as special envoy at...

Some interesting stats on South Korea’s protection payments to the North: Recently publicized material by the South Korean Unification Ministry revealed that a total of 340.6 billion won ($324.3 million) was spent on inter Korean cooperation projects from January until November this year, ranging from supporting the North Korean national soccer team to sending fertilizer aid to the North. Less than half of this amount was for fertilizer and rice. A total of 157.3 billion won was spent on fertilizer...

Mine Would Ask Why He’s the Only Fat Man in the Entire Country: “Open North Korea Broadcasting, a private radio station, says it is giving people a chance to send a message to Kim Jong-il. The Korean-language broadcaster, with offices here but with headquarters in Washington, D.C., said yesterday that starting on New Year’s Day and continuing for a week, it would broadcast free messages from South Koreans to North Koreans in general or to specific people there. Currently the...

Please Stop Doing What You’re Not Doing: “Continuing the administration’s high-wire balancing act yesterday, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told the Seoul Foreign Correspondents’ Club that Seoul is still unconvinced by purported evidence that North Korea is counterfeiting U.S. currency. Nevertheless, he said, he had told his counterpart at a North-South ministerial meeting earlier this month that if the North was behind the production of high-quality counterfeit $100 bills, it should stop immediately.” Chung will soon step down as Anti-Unification Minister...

Food Aid Update: “The World Food Program, a United Nations arm, will make a final decision next month on whether to shut down its office in North Korea’s capital city. Richard Ragan, the head of the relief agency’s office in Pyongyang, spoke by telephone to the JoongAng Ilbo yesterday. Mr. Ragan said his organization faces a choice between withdrawing and shifting the focus of its work in the North from food aid to longer-term agricultural development programs.”

From the Korea Times: Almost five in 10 people say they will vote for candidates from the largest opposition Grand National Party (GNP) in the local elections in May, according to the latest opinion poll. Roh Moo-hyun is expected to recognize by midyear that he will become increasingly powerless, political experts said. In the survey of 1,010 adults conducted Dec. 27-28, 46.3 percent of the respondents said they will give support to GNP candidates in the May 31 local elections,...

Just as his Asian deposits have fled Macau for China, his European assets have moved from Switzerland to Luxembourg, according to this: TOKYO (Yonhap) — North Korean leader Kim Jong-il switched a number of his secret bank accounts from Switzerland to Luxembourg several years ago, a news report said Tuesday. Luxembourg is a NATO member over which the United States should be able to exert far more influence than over Switzerland. North Korean officials, who have managed Kim’s money in...

[cue violin music] The early years of the 21st Century were a sad time for the diplomats of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea–eating at Denny’s, sailing the East River on a boat without stairs or a galley, shopping at Walgreen’s on Sundays, drinking instant coffee, moving from place to place to skip out on back rent and unpaid phone bills–in short, living like people in the Bronx (just kidding!). But the Chosun Ilbo reports that for our North Korean...

South Korean exploiters of slave labor investors are bracing for protests and riots across North Korea in the wake of a tragic fatal accident this week: A North Korean soldier died and two others were injured when they were run over by a car driven by a South Korean visitor in the North’s scenic Mt.Kumgang resort on Tuesday night. Just in case you’re wondering, this story actually produces a negative value on the OhMyNews scale. The driver identified as Jung...

Today comes word of more sanctions on Chinese state-owned companies, all with close ties to the military, for helping Iran with its nuke and missile programs. The sanctions, announced by the State Department, are part of a diplomatically complex effort to cut off the flow of technology into Iran that could aid its weapons programs, while pressing both China and Russia to threaten action against Tehran at the United Nations Security Council. Included in the latest sanctions, first reported Tuesday...

So just how stupid is Bashar Asad? Now that Syria has again been linked to a politically motivated assassination in Lebanon, and given how that all worked out for Syria the first time, you have to suspect that Bashar’s father married for something other than intelligence. I wonder just how much of a Doctor-Evil-and-Scott vibe there must have been in Damascus while wily old Hafiz was alive.

The Strain is Showing. A must-see live report from a journalist “embedded” with terrorists near Tikrit.

Andy Jackson, as seen on (Swedish) TV, continues his excellent blogging of events surrounding the Freedom House Conference over at his own blog. Although LiNK seems to have stolen the initiative from the Red Guards–as Adrian Hong’s confrontation with one of their sullen leaders illustrates–Andy’s objective analysis has some criticisms of how they’re organizing their organizers. Andy also has some excellent advice on how to treat the riot police when they show up. I emphatically echo his recommendation to invite...

South Korea’s president Roh Moo-Hyun may have entered office with the hope of a multifaceted agenda, but that agenda has only one surviving facet. His moves to create a more redistributive economy has sufficiently damaged the economy that Roh’s allies would dream of running on that record in the 2006 elections. The attempt to move the capital out of Seoul was a political disaster; it was blocked in the courts, and mostly succeeded in creating a dangerous new political enemy...

Thanks to the reader who sent me the link to this piece in the IHT: Now there are disturbing signs of a return to the command economy, with the revival of food rationing and a ban on trade in grain. There is evidence that the revived public distribution system is again being used as a tool of control, with favored state employees provided with enhanced access to food in preference to the vulnerable populations targeted by the WFP. The government...

(by guest blogger Andy Jackson) This the last of a series of posts on the Seoul Summit: Promoting Human Rights in North Korea and related events. Signing up When Joshua and I had talked about my guest-blogging at One Free Korea last summer, I ultimately decided against it for a couple of reasons. First, I was already writing for my blog, the Marmot’s Hole and (rarely) TCS Daily. Between those commitments and my day job, I just didn’t think I...

Joongang Ilbo: Seoul not buying U.S. case against North’s $100 bills Chosun Ilbo: Seoul Swings Behind U.S. in N.Korea Forgery Charge I report, you decide. Meanwhile, our Ambassador, envigorated by his new congressional attaboy and one-up, is making the case. Predictably, some Chinese and South Korean officials are raising the standard to “beyond a reasonable doubt,” (or even “absolute proof,” a standard that does not exist under the law) which only works when investigators have the option of getting a...

Influence Over Principle. This story mainly seems like a thinly sourced exercise in wishful thinking, but this sort of language just grates on me for the idea that all of the problems in the U.S.-South Korean relationship can be solved if the latter did more to “influence” us. To resolve the discord, Mr. Kim recommended that Seoul assure Washington of its position as a firm ally. “It is most important that South Korea earns U.S. trust on matters that Washington...