September 16, 2014

North Korea doesn’t want defectors from South Korea or the U.S. anymore.

There was a time when North Korea would have welcomed a defector from the United States and, long after any intelligence value had been squeezed out of him, put him in propaganda films for a generation. Today, if you try to defect to North Korea, they’ll sentence you to hard labor until Jimmy Carter comes to make them a different kind of propaganda film. More surprising, however, is that North Korea doesn’t want South Korean defectors, either. There was a time...
Categories Defectors
September 16, 2014

MUST READ: WSJ on Bureau 39 and North Korean money laundering, post-BDA

The Obama Administration has never talked much, or done much, about North Korean money laundering. There is a tendency to assume that a problem that isn’t discussed isn’t a problem at all, but The Wall Street Journal‘s Alastair Gale has just interviewed some senior defectors with inside knowledge of North Korea’s money laundering, and the product of those interviews was some outstanding reporting. Gale’s interviews confirm the continued importance of Bureau 39 to North Korea’s regime, and that it continues to engage in...
Categories Money Laundering/NK Crime/Sanctions
September 16, 2014

Because that worked out so well in 2008 …

The International Olympic Committee is seriously contemplating giving the Olympics to China again — the same Olympics that caused a wave of thuggery, censorship, bullying, and even rioting, and were a public relations fiasco for China. More relevant for purposes of this blog, it also led to a wave of round-ups of North Korean refugees. That means that the International Olympic Committee’s award of the Olympics to China will likely cost hundreds, if not thousands, of North Korean lives.
Categories China/Sports
September 15, 2014

Another good discussion of North Korea, food aid, and donor fatigue

There are compelling arguments from defectors that suggest it’s time to cut loose, no matter how Machiavellian that may seem. The growing suspicion is that food aid inhibits the population’s ability for self-determinism and profligates the regime’s control. In other words, while we pump $200,000,000 of food aid into the country, Kim Jong-un can spend the national budget on 4-D cinemas, water parks and, you guessed it, nuclear armament (though, that, too, is unfounded hearsay—the kind of scaremongering required to...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
September 14, 2014

Travel in N. Korea “feels incredibly safe,” says tour company whose customer just got 6 years hard labor.

In a proceeding that took just 90 minutes — about as long as most arraignments I’ve done — North Korea’s “Supreme Court” has sentenced American tourist Matthew Todd Miller to six years of hard labor for “entering the country illegally and trying to commit espionage.” The AP omits the State Department’s easily accessible finding that North Korea’s “judiciary was not independent and did not provide fair trials,” but adds the amusing detail that Miller waived his right to a North Korean lawyer....
Categories AP Watch/Foreigners in N. Korea/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
September 13, 2014

On Think Tanks, Propaganda, the Foreign Agents’ Registration Act, and Korea

Washington is a marvelous city for someone like me. Where else could a foreigner, an outsider like myself, do the things I was able to do?                                           – Tongsun Park, to the House Ethics Committee, April 1978 A detailed story in The New York Times, examining grants and gifts by foreign governments to U.S. think tanks — and how those gifts influence scholars (and through...
Categories U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Washington Views
September 12, 2014

New Focus International predicts more power struggles in Pyongyang …

in the coming year: Hwang Pyong-so, director of the military’s General Political Bureau (GPB), has moved to politically corner Kim Won-hong, director of the Ministry of State Security (MSS). [….] Tensions of power between Hwang and Kim increased in magnitude as they moved up the hierarchy. Hwang rose more quickly, reaching to the level of Deputy Director in the Organization and Guidance Department (OGD), while Kim first remained in the military-political hierarchy as GPB Organizational Directorate Chief, then led the...
Categories Kremlinology
September 12, 2014

Malnutrition and disillusionment take their toll on the North Korean military.

Rimjin-gang reports that the NKPA is finding that after a full generation of hunger and depressed birth rates, there are fewer young North Korean men who meet its physical standards, and many of those who do dodge the draft. I’d assume that draft-dodging in North Korea requires one to have the financial means to pay significant bribes, and if the possession of such financial means is still largely a function of songbun (hereditary political caste), then the disillusionment has entered...
Categories Anju Links/NK Military
September 11, 2014

Anna Fifield examines the soulless imbeciles who visit North Korea as tourists …

here: “A lot of people don’t know they can even come here, and then when they get here they say it’s not what they were expecting,” said Rowan Beard, 27, an Australian who runs Young Pioneers. “They think it’s going to be all doom and gloom and death and sad faces.” That’s funny. I’m no Madonna expert, but if I ever met her, I’d expect to see cosmetics troweled over layers of cosmetic alterations and a vacuous personality, not running sores, lesions, or...
Categories Foreigners in N. Korea
September 11, 2014

An excellent panel discussion on food aid to North Korea …

here, via the snaggletoothed, rheumy-eyed old Trotskyites at The Guardian. I’m not sure how representative the sample is, but it’s a much more skeptical sample than we’d have seen even five years ago. At some point, you have to question why, after a decade of aid, more than 80% of the citizens of an industrialized nation with plenty of cash laying around can still be living hand-to-mouth. Clearly, the U.N. isn’t addressing the root cause of hunger in North Korea...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
September 11, 2014

Fifty a day, every Tuesday. Men. Women. Children.

“These days, China trucks about 50 North Korean defectors from its immigration detention center in Tumen to North Korea’s Namyang city just across the border every Tuesday,” an activist said, citing an unidentified Chinese official familiar with the matter. He did not elaborate on the official’s identity for fear of possible reprisal against her by the Chinese government. [Yonhap] Update: The title of this post was edited after publication, adding the words “every Tuesday.”
Categories China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
September 10, 2014

Self-described feminist Christine Ahn was not available for comment

”A deadly motorcycle accident involving drunken female college students linked to gambling and drugs in North Korea’s capital Pyongyang has led to a government campaign to promote ‘woman’s morality’ in the reclusive nation, according to sources.” [Radio Free Asia] That seems rather … patriarchal, if not sexist. But then, when it comes to North Korea, this is still low on the hierarchy of indignities, burdens, and horrors that women endure.
Categories Human Rights
September 10, 2014

A young Korean-American activist has started a campaign to push the BBC…

to start broadcasting to North Korea. His name is Youngchan Justin Choi, and I hope you’ll join me in supporting his campaign on Facebook and Twitter. According to Choi, the financial cost of broadcasting to North Korea would be just a few million dollars — a tiny amount. When a publicly funded global media conglomerate refuses to broadcast to a country where the need is as great as it is in North Korea, I start to wonder what other motives are left...
Categories Media Criticism/Subversion