July 20, 2011

At least the News of the World didn’t publish doctored North Korean photographs

It’s hard to take at face value the public ostracizing of Rupert Murdoch as a cancer within journalism even as the world’s two foremost wire services have just associated themselves with the world’s most fraudulent news organization. I refer to the AP’s announcement late last month that it had made a deal with Kim Jong Il’s own Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) to open a bureau in Pyongyang, and the more recent announcement by Reuters that it had “expanded” its...
Categories AP Watch/Media Criticism
July 19, 2011

Reunifying Korea, One Shot at at Time!

You may remember that several years ago, a liquor distributor in the United States tried to introduce North Korean soju into the U.S. market. That effort failed long before President Obama reimposed trade sanctions on North Korea, partially because of the importer’s legal troubles, but probably also because the stuff supposedly tasted awful. Apparently, North Korean consumers share that assessment, because the same brand of South Korean soju that once kept me fully occupied as a prosecutor and defense counsel...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics/Subversion
July 18, 2011

Open Sources: Oh, You heard us say that?

The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Ramstad and the Joongang Ilbo notice that North Korea’s plea for the starving children needs some better message control: On a radio broadcast on July 4, a North Korean official said, “Our farming laborers will, with rifle in one hand and a scythe in the other like in the war for independence, make a decisive change this in year in agricultural production and serve to send more rice for our military, which will strike open...
Categories Anju Links
July 16, 2011

Open Sources: Another nuke test coming, says John Bolton

Things that Kim Jong Il is buying that you can’t eat, Part 1: As Allison Kilkenny once learned the hard way, John Bolton has a pretty good track record for predicting North Korean nuclear tests. He’s predicting another one soon, and I suppose it’s about time for one. Along with this, Bolton criticizes President Obama for his public silence on North Korea. But as we learned from George W. Bush, strident rhetoric is no substitute for a not-half-bad policy. This...
Categories Anju Links
July 16, 2011

Some Fascinating-if-True Reports from North Korea

Everyone knows that North Korea does a lot of things that we can’t explain without resorting to mostly groundless speculation about its internal power politics. This goes beyond cultural differences. I don’t know any South Koreans who can explain things like the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong incidents, which imposed real (if insufficient) financial and diplomatic costs on the regime. In our conversations, not even Kim Kwang Jin claimed to understand for certain why Kim Jong Il does things that appear to...
Categories Inside NK/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
July 15, 2011

Exclusive: Kim Jong Il Buys More Stuff You Can’t Eat!

By now, it seems clear that South Korea, Japan, and the United States will all refuse to contribute food aid to the World Food Program. Contributions from the EU, Sweden, and even China are minuscule in comparison to the WFP’s appeal, and to the amounts that the United States was providing during the Clinton and Bush Administrations, before North Korea itself rejected further aid out of apparent spite. Republicans who dominate the House again are dead-set against giving aid this...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
July 15, 2011

Just about everyone pans Sohn Hak-Kyu’s proposal to share the Olympics with N. Korea

It seems that I was not alone in my reaction to Sohn Hak-Kyu’s addle-brained suggestion of sharing the 2018 Winter Olympics with North Korea. The idea has since been rejected by the Chairman of the International Olympic Commission, the government of South Korea, and 73.3% of South Koreans. So that would seem to be that. Or so we can hope. Here, by the way, is what caused me to suspect that Sohn only proposed the idea to appease his hard-left...
Categories Sports
July 14, 2011

Sohn Hak-Kyu’s Olympic Folly

Why did I shudder when I heard that South Korea had won the winter Olympics? Because I knew it was just a matter of time before some imbecile had an idea like this one: Rep. Sohn Hak-kyu, chairman of the opposition Democratic Party, said Monday the party would push for “some events at the 2018 Winter Olympics to be staged in North Korea. He said he would also bring up the issue of forming a unified team with the North...
Categories Korean Politics/Sports
July 12, 2011

Hans Blix Goes to the Olympics

If I were pitching this as a script for a dark comedy, I describe it as combination of Boys Don’t Cry, Slapshot, and Team America: Professor Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC’s Medical Commission, has said he will look into the matter after North Korean defenders Song Jong-Sun and Jong Pok-Sim failed doping tests at Germany 2011. [….] Ljungqvist says he wants to know more about testing in North Korea, but is realistic about finding out more about doping checks...
Categories Sports
July 9, 2011

Kevin Dawes in Libya

Now, here’s someone who really deserves more traffic. Kevin Dawes, a “freelance battlefield journalist” from San Diego, reports from the middle of an artillery barrage east of Misrata, Libya, via his YouTube channel. Some of Dawes’s videos were uploaded as recently as two hours ago, but this was taken the day before yesterday: This kind of micro-reporting won’t give you the war’s broader context — something that’s often inaccurately reported in any event — but following Dawes’s channel makes you...
Categories Media Criticism
July 8, 2011

My Country, at Its Best

Regimes come and regimes go, but friendship with the people of a nation endures. You earn that friendship when you stand with them in their darkest hours: Hundreds of thousands of Syrians poured into the streets of the opposition stronghold Hama on Friday, bolstered by a gesture of support from the American and French ambassadors who visited the city where a massacre nearly 30 years ago came to symbolize the ruthlessness of the Assad dynasty. The citizens of Hama, who...
Categories Regime Change
July 8, 2011

Open Sources: North Korean Soccer Still a Rolling Train Wreck

Defenders Song Jong Sun and Jong Pok Sim tested positive after North Korea’s first two group games and were suspended for Wednesday’s match against Colombia that ended in a 0-0 draw. Both teams were eliminated. FIFA’s medical director Jiri Dvorak didn’t identify the substance involved. [AP] Would it be an understatement to say that this year’s Womens’ World Cup hasn’t been a net positive for North Korea’s image? Here’s a satirical view that expresses it rather well. I’m still waiting...
Categories Anju Links
July 6, 2011

Open Sources: The Economics of Extortion

North Korea, which was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has again threatened war against South Korea for its refusal to pay extortion money: North Koreans gathered Monday at a massive rally in Pyongyang to denounce the conservative government of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak as a “group of unparalleled traitors.” More than 100,000 citizens, soldiers and senior government and army officials flocked to Kim Il Sung Square, according to footage from Associated...
Categories Anju Links
July 6, 2011

Clinton Nominates Wendy Sherman

If Wendy Sherman is confirmed, I predict that she’ll screw up this administration’s North Korea policy — royally — but probably not until President Obama’s second term: Wendy Sherman, a former senior U.S. official on North Korea, was nominated to a lofty State Department post on Friday despite political controversy over her earlier handling of North Korea affairs. The White House announced that President Barack Obama picked her to serve as under secretary for political affairs, the No. 3 post...
Categories Anju Links/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
July 2, 2011

Interview: Marcus Prior of the World Food Program, on Food Aid to North Korea

This week, the Christian Science Monitor’s veteran Korea correspondent, Don Kirk, reported that U.S. and South Korean officials disagree with the World Food Program’s assessment that North Korea is on the verge of a food crisis: “There’s a need, but we don’t know how great it is,” says a knowledgeable western observer. “My hunch is it’s less about a shortage of food and more about unequal distribution. You can buy rice in the markets if you have the means. He...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Interviews
June 30, 2011

Who will defend South Korea? And why?

Even as President Lee’s government stokes fears of another North Korean attack, we’re seeing a steady stream of reporting that he may drop his demand that North Korea apologize for the attacks of 2010 before there would be any direct bilateral talks. So far, Lee has thrown cold water on those reports, all of them anonymous and all of them seemingly indicative of some internal debate in the ROK government. Here’s the latest such report. That this should be a...
Categories ROK Military
June 29, 2011

Open Sources: N. Korea Closes Universities for 10 Months

Reports in South Korea indicated that the government in Pyongyang on Monday ordered all universities to cancel classes until April of next year. The only exemptions are for students who will be graduating in the next few months and foreign students. The reports suggested that the students will be put to work on construction projects in major cities while there are also indications that repair work may be needed in agricultural regions that were affected by a major typhoon recently....
Categories Anju Links
June 28, 2011

Once again, North Korea makes soccer entertaining.

And to think people wonder why I blog about North Korea. North Korea’s coach blamed his side’s 2-0 loss to the United States on his players getting struck by lightning in the build up to the Women’s World Cup. Kwang Min Kim claimed that some of them were hospitalised with electrocution after a training match on 8 June. Maybe their treating physician had one of those special transmitters, too. This probably calls for some kind of criticism session, though if...
Categories Sports/WTF?