January 28, 2013

Kim Jong Un personality cult now visible to space aliens.

I was snooping around the Hyesan area this weekend, taking in some very recent (October 2012) imagery, when I spotted a propaganda sign — clearly not one of those I’d posted about before. It was next to this reservoir: Look what happens when you switch to the next-most recent image, from October 2005: So all of this is new construction. It says, “Long live Songun Korea’s General Kim Jong Un!,” or somesuch nonsense. But at least they got the damn...
Categories Google Earth
January 27, 2013

Why Susan Rice’s new Security Council resolution is a great victory … for China and North Korea

The Obama Administration spin on the long-stalled U.N. Security Council Resolution 2087 is that it “tightened” U.N. sanctions against North Korea, and that securing China’s vote for that resolution represents some sort of diplomatic accomplishment for the U.S. and Susan Rice. Despite China’s rejection of proposals by the United States to add new sanctions, the Obama administration sought to characterize the vote as a tough response. “This resolution demonstrates to North Korea that there are unanimous and significant consequences for its...
Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
January 24, 2013

Open Sources, Jan. 24, 2013

I MAY HAVE A MORE COMPLETE REACTION TO UNSCR 2087 after I’ve had more time to read it and work through its provisions, but I’m not yet ready to accept the spin that this tightened sanctions on North Korea.  Frankly, I’m worried that it actually gives China a basis to argue that it narrowed the sweep of 1718’s financial provisions — the ones with the most potential to be effective, if enforced.  Not that any U.N. resolution matters if China...
Categories Anju Links
January 23, 2013

Camp 14 Update: Look What Curtis Found

Ah, North Korea — as gifted at publicity as it at humanity.  Perhaps just as Blaine Harden was sending the manuscript for Escape from Camp 14 to his publisher, shortly before the book would generate intense interest among those on the Outer Earth who still did not know about North Korea’s gulags, North Korea may have been scratching out a new prison compound contiguous to Camp 14’s northern boundary.  In due course, Curtis spots it: A few observations about this: 1.  The...
Categories The Camps
January 21, 2013

Teenage girl’s blog post more interesting, informative, and balanced than AP Bureau Chief’s report.

Nate Thayer does it again.  Don’t miss this one: Why then did an amateur teenage college student accompanying her father on the same Google trip deliver a knockout blow in her blog posting of the high profile top world story, putting to shame with substance, detail,  quotations from key participants, color, and written presentation the entire AP Korea coverage, despite the AP Pyongyang Bureau Chief, Ms Jean H. Lee being physically present at every event of the 4 day visit,...
Categories AP Watch
January 19, 2013

For refugees, “bittersweet” still beats “hell on earth”

I loved this Reuters video of a graduation ceremony for North Korean refugees in Seoul. LiNK also shares another happy story, about “Danny,” who resettled right here in America, and New Focus International writes about the difficulty many North Koreans have adjusting to the concept of credit in South Korea. I would concede that for the ten-year period following my own graduation from high school and a background of fairly severe poverty (by American standards), I, too had difficulty adjusting...
Categories Refugees
January 18, 2013

AP VP denies N. Korean censorship, says he’s being treated well, confesses to “brigandish madcap war crimes.”

“KIM JONG” BILL RICHARDSON’S FIXER, TONY NAMKUNG, is one of those people who is so thoroughly despised by some North Korea watchers that they hesitate to express their views without consulting their lawyers. I know I should explain, but I haven’t consulted my lawyer. Instead, I’ll again refer you to this piece by Nir Rosen that paints Namkung in an unflattering light (without even seeming to try to do so).  This week, Don Kirk convinces me that I don’t care much for Tony Namkung, either:...
Categories AP Watch
January 18, 2013

Xi Jinping Outsources Meeting With Park Geun-Hye to His Food Taster

China’s unhelpful behavior in the Security Council would have been reason enough for Park Geun Hye to follow the example of Shinzo Abe,* who deferred meeting with Chinese officials and instead met with the leaders of “countries sharing the same values, such as democracy and the rule of law.”  In retrospect, that might have been best: In her meeting with China’s Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun yesterday, President-elect Park Geun-hye said North Korea’s nuclear weapons development cannot be tolerated and that Seoul...
Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Diplomacy
January 17, 2013

Open Sources, Jan. 17, 2012

NORTH KOREA PERESTROIKA WATCH:  First it was lipstick, now it’s bicycles.  Where are Christine Ahn and Christine Hong to defend North Korean women against sexism? *          *          * I’VE HAD A LOT TO SAY ABOUT NORTH KOREA’S METH PROBLEM, but this article on North Koreans smoking pot was interesting.  You wouldn’t think pot would catch on in a place without freely available snacks, and where being mellow is strictly forbidden.  *      ...
Categories Anju Links
January 16, 2013

Ya Think? U.N. human rights chief suspects “crimes against humanity” in prison camp called “North Korea”

Nearly seven years after Jared Genser’s Failure to Protect and nearly nine years after David Hawk’s The Hidden Gulag, a senior U.N. official has gotten around to calling for “an in depth investigation” of what “may amount to crimes against humanity” in North Korea’s prison camps, and elsewhere in the larger prison sometimes called “The Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea:” U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay called on Monday for an international investigation into what she said may be crimes against humanity in North Korea, including torture...
Categories "United" Nations/Anju Links/Human Rights/The Camps
January 15, 2013

Daniszewski in Pyongyang for AP Bureau’s Anniversary

Today’s installment comes to us from KNCA, no less: “John Daniszewski, vice president of the Associated Press of the United States, and his party arrived here by air on Monday.” Yes, that’s the entire story. Yonhap also picks up the story, but has little to add. I suppose Daniszewski could have flown all the way to Pyongyang to ask KCNA to take his picture off its website, but I have to suspect that he’s there for more substantive discussions about...
Categories AP Watch
January 14, 2013

North Korea Glasnost Watch: Kim Jong Un’s Border Crackdown Is Working

The most superficial things you’ve probably heard about Kim Jong Un are the closely related ideas that he is, or must be, a latent reformer because he (a) appreciates aspects of Western culture, (b) has a fashionable wife, and (c) had a Swiss education. As examples, I’ll cite this report by Jean Lee, this and this from Joohee Cho of ABC, and this exercise in straw-grasping by John DeLury. The problem with this theory is that it isn’t supported by any evidence that the...
Categories Border Control/Famine & Food Aid/Refugees
January 12, 2013

Open Sources, Jan. 12, 2013

AP WATCH:  Judging by his bio and his Wikipedia page, Nate Thayer is one of the most cantankerous and accomplished freelance journalists of our time. I was going to write about some of the things Jean Lee didn’t say in her report about Eric Schmidt’s visit to Pyongyang, but Thayer beat me to it and saved me the trouble. Contrast Lee’s work to this, from David Chance and Park Ju-Min of Reuters. Has opening a bureau in Pyongyang made the AP’s journalism better or worse? Lee...
Categories Anju Links/AP Watch
January 11, 2013

Breaking: North Korea Still Poor, Ignorant, and Run by Narcissistic Assholes

I’ve never expected anything good to come from a Bill Richardson visit to Pyongyang, and this visit fulfilled my expectations. A lot of journalists, bloggers, and academics in Washington and New York made a big deal out of this. (It was good for our traffic.) But in the places that really count — in Chongjin and Hamhung and Uijongbu and even in Pyongyang — it didn’t change a thing.  It will not reduce the black market price of corn, it...
Categories Appeasement/Useful Idiocy
January 11, 2013

Camp 22 Update

A reader pointed me to these newer images of Camp 22, via HRNK.  The images show evidence of the destruction of at least one guard post and one guard tower.  I wouldn’t say this has completely changed my mind, but it’s significant and weighs in favor of the camp’s closure, alongside over signs such as the vegetable gardens and the continued reports of the Daily NK. You can add all of this to my analysis here and here.  All of this...
Categories The Camps
January 9, 2013

Welcome, Reuters and N.Y. Times Readers Entire World

Well, thank you, Reuters Asia Correspondent Paul Eckert.  That was a very nice story, and I’m glad to see that the Times picked it up. This story needs to be told, and unfortunately, right now, only a few of us are telling it.  My hope is that one day, reporters will work directly with defectors and professional imagery analysts to tell it instead, and I can find a new hobby. Update: Overnight, the Reuters story was picked up by news...
Categories Google Earth/The Camps
January 9, 2013

Over at Foreign Policy …

… Professor Sung Yoon Lee and I have a piece up discussing the world’s next, almost-certain-to-be-lost opportunity to respond to North Korea more effectively than having Susan Rice continue to beat her cranium against the Great Wall of China at the Security Council.  It’s a blend of Professor Lee’s prognostications about what the North will do next, and some of the financial constriction ideas I’ve been pushing as one of those Three C’s. I’ll say this about FP — it’s...
Categories Counterfeiting/Missiles/Money Laundering/North-South/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
January 9, 2013

Open Sources, January 9, 2013

PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE this side of Pyongyang seems to be unhappy with Kim Jong Bill and Eric Schmidt.  They’ve managed to unite the Obama Administration (“not helpful“) and John McCain (“useful idiot“).  I’ll only link some notable examples here, but Don Kirk thinks Kim Jong Bill has handed Pyongyang “a propaganda coup” and takes a shot at AP Pyongyang for the stories it isn’t covering.  John Bolton takes issue with Kim Jong Bill’s misuse of the word “humanitarian,” and tries...
Categories Anju Links