March 4, 2013

The Fulcrum: 39°24’43.50″N, 125°53’25.70″E

Nearly all of the North Korean aircraft you can see on its airfields are ancient MiGs — 60s vintage or older.  But Sunchon Air Base, the home of the 57th Air Regiment, is where North Korea keeps some of its more modern aircraft — its Su-25 ground attack aircraft, and its MiG-29 fighters. On October 14, 2010, the North Korean ground crews rolled their wares out of their underground hangars.  It was a bright, clear day, giving us an excellent...
Categories Google Earth/NK Military
March 3, 2013

Rodman on North Korean gulags: “We do the same thing here.”

Update: Video: OH, AND HE ALSO SAID, “DON’T HATE ME”:  Hearing those words makes me wish we could fast-forward through whatever remains of Dennis Rodman’s biography and go straight to the perfect epitaph.  One of the drawbacks of our age is the constant mind-rape we endure from the forcible penetrations of unwanted information.  I’ll eventually die regretting all I know about Dennis Rodman because so many people enjoy watching the moral and financial despair of other people.  Thanks to those...
Categories Useful Idiocy
March 2, 2013

The Road Not Traveled: 40.013N, 126.154E

North Korean public works priorities are a thing to behold. Not far south of Huichon, in central North Korea, I followed a modern-looking superhighway northward to this dramatic terminus at a Bridge to Nowhere. Older (and newer) images on Google Earth show this project has been stalled for a decade. You can scan north from here and see miles of disused roadbed overgrown with farm plots, punctuated by the pilings of the unbuilt bridges. Now have a look at this...
Categories Google Earth
March 1, 2013

Say, do you think Kim Jong Un might just be a complete doofus who happens to have nuclear weapons?

SO THE FIRST WELL-KNOWN AMERICAN to meet with Kim Jong Un is not an AP interviewer, a tribute-bearing Bill Richardson, a ransom-bearing Jimmy Carter, or first choice Michael Jordan.  It is this man: Strain, if you must, to make this into some sort of soft power diplomatic coup; it really looks like a tragic sequel to “Being There.” The very weirdness of it all is evident in some priceless exchanges from yesterday’s State Department daily press briefing. Delectably, the AP’s part-time Pyongyang...
Categories AP Watch/Kim Jong Un/WTF?
February 27, 2013

This Just In: North Korea fails to absorb any of Dennis Rodman’s tact, class, gentility, or gravitas.

So yet again, we learn that visitors do not change North Korea. The tricky part is getting out before North Korea changes the visitor. Since I broach the engagement-versus-isolation debate, it’s been argued enough times that I seldom hear any new arguments, but this one by Michael Totten, in response to the reliably trite Nick Kristof, is a terrific deconstruction of mirror-imaging by both the North Koreans and the Americans who don’t understand how they think. The answer to the debated question,...
Categories Appeasement/Humor/Satire/Useful Idiocy
February 27, 2013

Would Dennis Rodman have played Sun City?

Visit Pyongyang – An idiom used to describe a desperate plea for media attention (see also Jump the Shark) by a washed-up celebrity or politician (see Jimmy Carter, Bill Richardson, Ric Flair) who, lacking the residual talent to attract such attention by any other means or device, visits the one place on Earth where any publicity-seeker whose name is vaguely recalled by persons over 40 can be assured of making global headlines without being arrested, indicted, or otherwise worthy of...
Categories Human Rights/Propaganda/Useful Idiocy
February 26, 2013

Birth control, Pyongyang Style: Lady-Mullets!

Sure, you say, a list of 18 state-approved hairstyles certainly seems generous and libertine, but on closer examination, it’s actually more like 18 pictures of three hairstyles — three hideous, man-shriveling hairstyles — one of which (6, 10) is a mullet, and the rest of which appear to have been inspired by the 80s metal band Queensrÿche. According to late-breaking news from New York, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has demanded an inquiry, but China has blocked it. And at the...
Categories Humor/Satire/WTF?
February 26, 2013

N. Korea builds new pad, support facilities at Musudan-ri

Although it’s certainly possible (maybe even inevitable) that someone else has already noticed this, the first one who pointed it out to me was Jacob Bogle, who posted about it here and emailed me (thanks, Jacob). Here’s an overview of the area showing the old launch gantry and support areas. The new pad is marked with the orange arrows. The new pad clearly shows the flame channel, similar to the one at the Seohae launch facility.  In April 2010, there...
Categories Missiles
February 25, 2013

Open Sources, Feb. 25, 2013

CONGRATULATIONS, MADAME PRESIDENT.  It’s already looking like five hard years ahead. *          *          * ISN’T THAT HOW EINSTEIN DEFINED INSANITY?  Robert Gallucci cannot possibly have said, on one hand, that “[t]he policy we have pursued over the last 20 years — engagement, containment, whatever — has failed to reduce the threat posed by North Korea to the security of the region,” and also, in the same speech, said, “It’s my conclusion that the best...
Categories Anju Links
February 23, 2013

Plan B Watch

Via the Chosun Ilbo, and according to “a diplomatic source:” The U.S. government is considering labeling North Korea as a money-laundering state to pave the way for sanctions after Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test.  [….] Article 311 of the Patriot Act was created following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and authorizes the U.S. Commerce Department to identify an individual, financial institution or state as a “primary money-laundering concern.” This would ban the target from transacting business with any system that handles...
Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
February 22, 2013

The Continuum: U.S. Army film from South Korea, 1945-1948

It’s interesting to look back at history from the perspective of what we did not yet know: The Japanese Army surrenders: Like all propaganda, these films withhold unpleasant truths.  The sight of these South Korean kkotjaebi in Seoul is just heartbreaking. North or South, videos like this are just hard to watch.  What bothers me almost as much as seeing this kids crying alone is seeing so many people walk without even stopping to help. I often marvel at how...
Categories Korean History
February 21, 2013

Open Sources, Feb. 21, 2013

NORTH KOREA PERESTROIKA WATCH: Funny, as of 3 p.m. on Inauguration Day 2009, the Nobel Committee seemed so sure our enemies would all love the guy.  How could so many distinguished European humanitarians be so wrong? President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors on October 11, 2008 for verifiably dismantling its nuclear weapons programs, renouncing terrorism, making peace with South Korea, returning its Japanese abductees, and closing down its concentration camps.  Unlike President Obama, however, President...
Categories Anju Links
February 20, 2013

Open Sources, Feb. 20, 2013

NORTH KOREA, WHICH WAS REMOVED FROM THE LIST of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has threatened South Korea with “final destruction,” … at the U.N. Conference on Disarmament.  I don’t have the original Korean, so I won’t opine on how similarly it translates to “endlossung.”  Discuss among yourselves. *          *          * GALLUCCI:  IT DIDN’T WORK: “The policy we have pursued over the last 20 years — engagement, containment, whatever...
Categories Anju Links
February 19, 2013

How North Korea evades international financial sanctions

There is no such thing as a perfect plan, and the idea of pressuring North Korea through international financial sanctions is no exception.  Like money launderers everywhere, the North Koreans have adapted to get around anti-money laundering controls.  Reuters has an excellent, must-read report on North Korea’s use of bulk cash transactions to avoid the scrutiny of banks and law enforcement.  The report features an interview with Kim Kwang Jin, who defected and revealed his role in an international re-insurance...
Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
February 18, 2013

Nuclear physics isn’t exactly brain surgery, … or rocket science, you know.

In the pages of the L.A. Times, Barbara Demick interviews Sig Hecker, who reassures us that North Korea is years away from having a nuclear weapon that it can deliver to its target.  As welcome as that reassurance would be if it were credible, Hecker is not exactly a rocket scientist. Sig Hecker is a nuclear scientist and a metallurgist, but he isn’t an oracle.  Hecker spent most of the decade leading up to 2010 explaining how far North Korea...
Categories Anju Links
February 17, 2013

Open Sources, Feb. 17, 2013

THE POOL IS STILL OPEN:  It’s no longer Kim Jong Il’s birthday in Pyongyang, but there will be more opportunities for North Korea to make good on its threats to conduct more nuke or missile tests, including Park Geun-Hye’s inauguration and Kim Il Sung’s birthday. *          *          * A COUPLE OF STARK-RAVING PAULIES were the only members of Congress to vote against a non-binding resolution condemning North Korea’s nuclear test. *  ...
Categories Anju Links
February 16, 2013

China Plays Rope-a-Dope

OFK REGULARS KNOW that I view Shen Dingli as the living, breathing embodiment of everything about China’s government that’s maleficent, loathsome, arrogant, and neo-imperialist (to re-expropriate a term from the Marxists).  Shen, a professor of “American studies,” regular visitor to Pyongyang, and frequent contributor to influential publications abroad, often appears to represent the views of his government, which ordinarily spares no effort to censor even the most insignificant weibo. In this murky capacity, Shen publicly green-lighted North Korea’s 2006 nuke test and reacted...
Categories China & Korea