October 15, 2014

Kim Jong Un: Morbidly obese and infirm at 30, or merely puttin’ on the Ritz?

I realize John DeLury has a history of unrealistically sanguine interpretations of Kim Jong Un, but this is a bit surreal: And while the cane appears to be a frank acknowledgement of Mr. Kim’s vulnerability, it’s also a savvy way of turning any physical weaknesses into a source of strength, says John Delury, an expert on Korean issues at Yonsei University in Seoul. The choice of a cane has connotations of age and wisdom — in contrast to, say, a wheelchair...
Categories Kim Jong Un
October 14, 2014

If Yoon Sang-Hyun’s information is correct, North Korea spends six times as much on luxury goods as on food for its hungry (corrected).

South Korean Saenuri Party lawmaker Yoon Sang-Hyun, citing Chinese Customs data and “studies on North Korean trade patterns” compiled by the National Intelligence Service South Korean government,* has leaked a report alleging that in 2013, Pyongyang imported $644 million in luxury goods. Yoon says this is enough to buy “more than 3.66 million tons of corn or 1.52 million tons of rice, far more than the country’s food shortage of 340,000 tons estimated by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Sanctions
October 14, 2014

It’s too bad Kevorkian is no longer available.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who has made his first public appearance in five weeks, has been treated by “foreign doctors” because of an apparent leg injury, the South Korean ambassador to China said Tuesday. [Yonhap] Sure, you say, someone else would just replace him, but I agree with Scott Snyder on this — without an obvious successor, his incapacitation would trigger a fight for succession. More than that, it would represent the death of the last viable symbol of...
Categories Kim Jong Un
October 13, 2014

Life imitates The Onion: KCNA says Kim Jong Un appears in public

So says … KCNA, which also reported the discovery of a unicorn lair in 2012, and a series of supernatural events after Kim Jong Il’s death in 2011. Personally, I’m still skeptical. If Kim Jong Un is really as healthy as they want us to believe he is, why don’t they just do what Kim Jong Il did and release some oil paintings to prove it? ~   ~   ~ Update: Well, damn. Now I want to see him holding up the newspaper....
Categories Kim Jong Un
October 13, 2014

Chinese behave badly in South Korea, and it doesn’t end well for them (updated).

It looks like the South Koreans may have learned something from their northern cousins about how you deal with illegal fishing by the Chinese. For years, Chinese fishermen have entered South Korean waters illegally and violently resisted arrest by the South Korean Coast Guard. In 2011, a Chinese fishermen stabbed and killed a ROK coastie who was trying to board his vessel. This week, ten the Coast Guardsmen boarded a Chinese boat fishing illegally in Korean waters, and this happened: “At...
Categories China & Korea
October 13, 2014

More criticism of North Korea appears in the Chinese press

It will take more than this and this to convince me that China has tipped away from its support for North Korea, but a growing movement to take on North Korea’s crimes against humanity in the U.N., and a growing threat of secondary sanctions in our own Congress, have made North Korea a greater liability for China than ever before. In the same sense that North Korea has been forced to shift its tone on human rights and feign willingness to engage in sincere...
Categories China & Korea
October 11, 2014

Silencing Park Sang-Hak won’t end North Korea’s threats (updated)

For the first time since 2010, North Korea has fired across the border into South Korean territory, this time with 14.5-millimeter anti-aircraft guns. The North Koreans were shooting at the second of two launches of balloons carrying a total of 1.5 million leaflets, by North Korean refugee Park Sang-Hak and the Fighters for a Free North Korea. The North Koreans didn’t respond to the first launch of 10 balloons at noon, but at around 4:00 in the afternoon, they fired...
Categories Activism/Censorship/Korean War II/North-South/Terrorism (NK)
October 10, 2014

Seoul finally decides it needs a missile defense plan

South Korea and the United States are drawing up a joint contingency plan to employ Washington’s missile defense (MD) system against growing threats from North Korea’s ballistic missiles, a government source here said Tuesday. The joint contingency plan would employ not only missiles and surveillance equipment the U.S. Forces Korea and South Korea have been developing under their Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) project, but also key assets of the U.S. MD system, according to the source. The U.S....
Categories An Alliance?/Missiles/U.S. & Korea
October 10, 2014

The Asahi Shimbun looks at corruption in North Korea …

from the perspective of a former truck driver and chauffeur, tarnished by bad songbun. Along the way, the man relates a story of an act of symbolic resistance: Q: Is it true that you witnessed the defamation of a bronze statue of Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea? A: At Taeochon (near Hyesan in Ryanggang province), someone had thrown rabbit feces at the bronze statue of Kim Il Sung. I believe it occurred on Feb. 11, five days before...
Categories Inside NK/Resistance
October 10, 2014

Kim Jong Un is a no-show again (updated 11 Oct 2014)

TOKYO – The mystery surrounding the whereabouts and status of Kim Jong Un deepened on Friday, when the North Korean leader missed a celebration for the 69th anniversary of the founding of the Korean Workers’ Party. It is now more than five weeks since Kim was seen in public, and his absence, coupled with surprisingly frank official reports that he is suffering from “discomfort” have sparked rumors of every malady from obesity to overthrow. As with most things concerning North...
Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
October 10, 2014

The Nobel Committee finally gets one right.

The ferocious intellect and powerful soul of Malala Yousafzai may inhabit the body of a little girl, but she’s a remarkable young woman who is wise beyond her years. Malala represents what I wish I saw so much more of in the Muslim world — the courage to stand up to the thugs and psychopaths who are taking over its streets and villages. This is where Malala is informative of our own arguments about Islam. Would conservatives who argue that Islam itself is...
Categories Terrorism/Iraq
October 9, 2014

North Korean official, asked about human rights problems, cites … lack of public baths.

And even this is really the fault of imperialist sanctions, which prohibit the import of “luxury goods” to North Korea: When the North Korean officials at the U.N. briefing were asked Tuesday to identify human rights problems in their country, Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean responded, “We need some facilities where people go and enjoy a bath… Right now, due to problems in the economic field — that is due to the external forces hindrance — we are running...
Categories Human Rights/North-South/WTF?
October 9, 2014

Chris Hill’s North Korea legacy in three concise paragraphs

Here, via Yonhap, where Hill takes credit for the idea of blowing up the cooling tower at Yongbyon. The North’s destruction of the cooling tower briefly raised hopes for real progress in the six-party talks aimed at ending the North’s nuclear program, but the negotiating process later reached a deadlock over how to verify the North’s declaration of nuclear materials, facilities and activities. In exchange for blowing up the tower, the North was removed from the U.S. list of states sponsoring...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
October 8, 2014

North Korea denies having prison camps, admits “reform through labor camps”

Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean foreign ministry official in charge of U.N. affairs and human rights issues, said at a briefing with reporters that his country has no prison camps and, in practice, “no prison, things like that.” But he briefly discussed the labor camps. “Both in law and practice, we do have reform through labor detention camps — no, detention centers — where people are improved through their mentality and look on their wrongdoings,” he said. [AP] The...
Categories The Camps
October 7, 2014

Kim Jong Un misses another big meeting

North Korea held a national meeting Tuesday to mark the 17th anniversary of late leader Kim Jong-il’s election as general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). The communist nation’s leader, Kim Jong-un, however, was absent from the annual event to commemorate his father. [Yonhap] I don’t know if Kim Jong Un is sick or well, and North Korean emperors have a tendency to go missing for extended periods, but it’s starting to look like September wasn’t his best month. ~  ...
Categories Kim Jong Un