December 1, 2012

Did Obama Buy North Korea’s Pre-Election Silence?

I’m not fond of conspiracy theories, and I’ve credited President Obama with a “not bad” North Korea policy so far, but when the evidence right before your lying eyes begs for an inference … well, I’ll stop short of answering my own question and say that Congress ought to inquire further.  Exhibit 1: SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Yonhap) — A White House delegation made a secret trip to North Korea in August in what might be an attempt to discourage it from taking...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
November 30, 2012

So … does this mean KCNA believes in unicorns?

America’s finest news source, The Onion, is presented as parody but can be mistaken for reality. North Korea’s finest news source, KCNA, is presented as reality but can be mistaken for parody. But if you compare the best work of each news source, KCNA is clearly funnier: Pyongyang, November 29 (KCNA) — Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom...
Categories AP Watch/Unintended Humor/WTF?
November 29, 2012

Done Your Christmas Shopping Yet?

Here’s the perfect gift for that hard-to-please someone who needs to assassinate a few meddlesome dissidents, defectors, and human rights activists. Made in North Korea, and probably not available on Amazon: Background on North Korea’s poison needle attacks here and here. (But really, they just want to be loved.) North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.
Categories Terrorism (NK)
November 27, 2012

ChiComs Behaving Stoopidly: Peoples’ Daily Falls for The Onion’s Award to Kim Jong Un of “Sexiest Man Alive”

As funny as I thought the original parody was at the time, it’s infinitely funnier when humorless authoritarian propagandists don’t realize it’s a parody and put it on Page One.  And while the Onion guys aren’t exactly ruthless in the we-send-children-to-the-gulags-on-Mondays-and-Thursdays sense, they didn’t show the Peoples’ Daily much mercy with this hat tip: UPDATE: For more coverage on The Onion’s Sexiest Man Alive 2012, Kim Jong-Un, please visit our friends at the People’s Daily in China, a proud Communist subsidiary of The...
Categories China/Unintended Humor/WTF?
November 20, 2012

Open Sources, November 20, 2012

CAMP 22 UPDATE:  Radio Free Asia is doubling down on its report of the liquidation and re-purposing of the camp, but after reviewing the satellite imagery and seeing Joe Bermudez’s interpretations reenforce my own conclusions, I find this very difficult to believe.  The truth we can more-or-less prove is horrible enough. ——————————————— HITCHENS HASN’T BEEN DEAD A YEAR and I miss him already: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is, as Christopher Hitchens once described the occluded realm ruled by the Kim family in Pyongyang, a...
Categories Anju Links
November 19, 2012

Open Sources, Nov. 19, 2012

SCOOPING THE AP YET AGAIN, The Onion names Kim Jong Un 2012’s Sexiest Man Alive. —————————————- CHRIS GREEN OF THE DAILY NK writes that the North Korean regime seems concerned about the loyalty of its soldiers. —————————————- WHY SOUTH KOREA’S SWITCH TO DIGITAL TV is bad news for North Koreans. —————————————- I FAULT MYSELF for having been too alarmist in predicting a North Korean famine in 2006, but when Andrew Natsios sounds the alarm, we should take his warning seriously. —————————————- I DON’T DISAGREE...
Categories Anju Links
November 7, 2012

Escape from North Korea: An Incremental Review

Nov. 7, 2012.  Early in Melanie Kirkpatrick’s Escape from North Korea, you start to find powerful phrases that stay with you — phrases that make you stop reading and chew on them, to extract the full significance of some aspect of life in another reality.  I couldn’t help quoting two of them.  The first is illuminating: So accustomed are North Koreans to the lack of light that when I asked a North Korean who had settled in an American city...
Categories Books & Films/Defectors/Human Trafficking/Refugees/Useful Idiocy
November 2, 2012

Open Sources, November 3, 2012

SO HOW DID WEN JIABAO’S FAMILY amass a family fortune of $2.7 billion? The difficulty of answering that question causes China to block the New York Times. The corruption of China’s politicians seems endemic and universal, but the prosecution of their corruption seems to have more to do with factionalism than morality.  I loved the close: “When a country is so corrupt that one lightning strike can cause a train crash … none of us are exempt. China today is a train...
Categories Anju Links
October 26, 2012

Open Sources, October 26, 2012

I THINK THIS SAYS IT ALL: “This story may or may not be true.” ——————————————————- CAMP 22 UPDATE: The Daily NK reports on who it believes now occupies the camp, but I still have questions. ——————————————————- USFK TRIES TO REJOIN U.S. ARMY by expressing interest in joining off-peninsula exercises. And in other USFK news, I’m glad to see that Leon Panetta and Kim Kwang-Jin are putting some thought into how to respond to limited North Korean provocations, more than two...
Categories Anju Links
October 25, 2012

UK production company making animated feature of Nothing to Envy.

Nothing to Envy was a terrific book – maybe the best book about North Korea I’ve read – but … animated?  Well, yes.   From the production company: THE FILM Directed by BAFTA-winning filmmaker Andy Glynne, Nothing to Envy is a new animated feature length film about life inside one of the most impenetrable and brutal regimes in the world – North Korea. Told through the true stories of defectors, this film will combine testimony with rich and vivid animation to provide...
Categories Books & Films
October 24, 2012

HRNK publishes Camp 22 imagery

HRNK seems to have gotten its hands on imagery of Camp 22 without the restrictive end-user license terms that came with the imagery I’d analyzed here.  Now, you can examine it for yourself at HRNK’s site and compare it to Google Earth imagery on your own.  If you spot something, say it in the comments. For what it’s worth, I see at least one change at Camp 22 that’s significant enough to be worth continued watching, to see what other...
Categories The Camps
October 23, 2012

End of Bureau 39 Wouldn’t Mean the End of N. Korea’s Criminal Enterprises

Reports last week claimed that, according to “sources familiar with North Korean affairs,” North Korea had shut down Bureau 39 of the Workers’ Party — responsible for obtaining hard currency by any means necessary, including illicit activities — and Bureau 38, responsible for managing the regime’s overseas funds. Are any of the reports true?  My default position about any “insider” reports from Pyongyang is skepticism, and a quick Google search reveals that we’ve heard many versions of this story before.  For example, Office...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions
October 22, 2012

Syria, the next Afghanistan?

The Flock isn’t moving that way now, but I still defend the Obama Administration’s military and diplomatic approach to the Libyan civil war.  Qaddafi was mentally unstable, mentally unstable people are dangerous, and his regime was an ideal breeding ground for extremism.  If things hadn’t changed, they’d only have continued to get worse. Better for us to have supported the more moderate elements than to have allowed the extremists to make Libya their own, as would have eventually happened (and...
Categories Geopolitics
October 19, 2012

Open Sources: North Korea threatens to fire on South Korea; South Korea says it will fire back

NORTH KOREA THREATENS to fire on people, many of them North Korean refugees, for floating leaflet balloons into their former homeland.  Here’s the original, from KCNA: The Western Front Command of the KPA issues following notice upon authorization: 1. Rimjin Pavilion in Phaju City, location from where the puppet forces made public they would send leaflets and its surrounding area will become targets of direct firing of the KPA from now. The location is the origin of provocation which can...
Categories Anju Links
October 18, 2012

North Korean Reform Watch 8

CHINA ELECTRIFIES its border fence with North Korea, reportedly with a below-lethal 220 volts (for now). ————————————————– NORTH KOREA WARNS ITS CITIZENS against contact with foreigners: According to the source, “The lecturers put it like this: ‘foreigners are envious of our ideology and will try to undermine it,’ and emphasize that ‘we should not communicate with them because they could be enemy forces in disguise trying to attack our socialist ways and spread bad ideas.’” The source continued, “The lecture...
Categories Anju Links
October 17, 2012

Open Sources, October 17, 2012

THE ONION: Seed Of World War III Planted In Beijing Middle-School Gym Class. ————————————————– AGREED FRAMEWORK III WATCH:  North Korea still isn’t interested in nuclear disarmament, and our diplomats are still secretly chasing a deal, knowing full well that North Korea won’t disarm.  But for what conceivable purpose?  I repeat my suspicion that these contacts wouldn’t be happening if the Obama Administration wasn’t laying the groundwork for more “flexible” post-election diplomacy.  Those involved (Bosworth, Wit, etc.) are connected with the...
Categories Anju Links