Disturbing reports of a dramatically worsening famine continue to filter out of North Korea, notwithstanding the regime’s Maoist mobilization of schoolchildren and office workers to the countryside. It’s not working, according to South Korean agricultural expert Kang Jong-Man, via the L.A. Times: The rice paddies are thin and uneven. Potato plants are pale and stunted. The fields are not properly graded. Barley still on the stalks should have been harvested weeks ago so that the same fields could be used...

Chinese Communist Party=Evil Cult: More evidence that trade is not working its moderating magic.

We have a team missing in the Konar Valley, in eastern Afghanistan. Pray that the search for them is successful, and that they’re found alive and well.

I no longer know which is more assinine: the administration’s insistence that it won’t talk bilaterally with North Korea, or its critics’ insistence that it should. More from the NYT.

The rest of them are now posted here, including Nicholas Eberstadt, Ambassador Lilley, and my conversation with Ambassador Lilley last Wednesday, foreshadowing an angry reaction from the South Korean government.

Chinese Communist Party=Evil Cult: More evidence that trade is not working its moderating magic.

We have a team missing in the Konar Valley, in eastern Afghanistan. Pray that the search for them is successful, and that they’re found alive and well.

No connection whatsoever, right? Well, staking your argument on proving a negative is always exceedingly hazardous terrain, especially when there’s compelling evidence to contradict you. It’s not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but since when do we give secretive, opaque regimes the benefit of a standard that was designed for jury trials conducted after open-file discovery? The greater point, of course, is that as the Sunni insurgency slowly recedes, our enemy in Iraq is increasingly the same group that attacked...

Recently, a reporter named Chris Nelson, since retired and gone into the consulting business, made the mistake of preparing a confidential report for the South Korean Embassy in Washington, and then erroneously sending that report to his entire list of hundreds of e-mail newsletter subscribers. Two different anonymous sources sent me copies of the report, and the Washington Post has since covered the story of its accidental disclosure. I have decided that at least one section of the Nelson Report...

Tonight, I’ll be trying to crash a screening of a new film about Megumi Yokota, produced by Safari Media. Here, courtesy of Norbert Vollertsen, is an article about her in Christianity Today. Here is a previous blog post on North Korea’s handover of remains which it claims were hers, but weren’t. And one more. UPDATE: I have so much more to say about this film than I have time to say now. The fund-raiser last night was a spectacular success,...

Professor R.J. Rummell explains why. I may not have explained that when Prof. Rummell left a comment on this blog, I couldn’t figure out why his name seemed so familiar. Then I remembered citing some of his writings on genocide for a larger work I’m writing. His discussion of the EMP threat makes for some scary reading, too.

More bad news for the South Korean economy.

Did you realize that Roh Moo-Hyun was a founding shareholder of the far-lefty Hankyoreh? Or that he recently contributed 10 grand to the publication it help it through a rough spell? I didn’t, either. Naturally, it’s safe to assume that none of this impacted the independence of the Hanky’s coverage in the slightest. And all of this is completely coincidental, too, of course.

You heard it here first. Hat tip: my deep cover source, who I’ll just call Mister Bigglesworth. Nelson, a former UPI reporter and House and Senate staffer, rails at some reporters’ coverage — New York Times reporter David Sanger “is dishonest by omission,” Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz is “dishonest by commission.” He then referred to himself in the third person, saying that his work “has established a position of influence by sheer persistence and focus,” and ” ‘everyone’ talks...

There is a leaked report circulating in Washington today from the author of “The Nelson Report.” The Nelson Report is a Jack Pritchard’s-eye-view paid subscription version of what Korea bloggers give out for free, just not as well written or sourced. Apparently, Nelson was commissioned by the ROK Embassy in Washington to write a summary of who’s who in Washington’s Korea policy-making. My source informs me that the author, who wrote that he’d have to seek political asylum if the...

UPDATE: Welcome FARK readers. No, the full text of the Nelson Report is NOT here (it was dropped in a comment, which I deleted) although you can read part of it here, explaining the South Korean government is trying to influence American media against talking about the political cleansing of 2 million innocent people in North Korea. There are many more substantive posts relating to human rights in North Korea and regional policy here. UPDATE 2: Here’s something else the...

As predicted, the truth of what took place during the Bush-Roh meeting is starting to leak out from behind the U.S. and Korean governments’ message machine. The “left” faction of Uri, as represented by Anti-Unification Minister (of Silly Talks) Chung Dong-Young, appears to want a do-over, and Chung has stepped up and declared himself the man for the job. Seoul’s most pliable man is now on his way to Washington to bring fresh tidings of the reformed man formerly known...

More required reading from Jasper Becker. Thanks to Norbert Vollertsen for the hat tip. What is this nagging inconsistency about the region’s North Korea diplomacy? Becker articulates: Anyone proposing to offer Kim cast-iron security guarantees and unconditional aid thus has to engage in a kind of “double think.” They must ignore their better instincts in order to justify engaging him and simultaneously believe that, given his track record, he is capable of unleashing nuclear weapons. Chinese diplomats routinely claim that...