January 31, 2011

Kim Jong Nam denounces his family’s rule

There is one North Korean who enjoys a measure of freedom of speech: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s eldest son says the North should abandon the “Songun” or military first doctrine and pursue reforms and open up. Kim Jong-nam (39), who was passed over for the succession in favor of his 20-something brother, made the remarks in an interview with the Tokyo Shimbun. He also commented on the North Korean artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island, referring to the waters surrounding...
Categories Kim Jong Il/Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
January 30, 2011

Open Sources

So when I read last week that according to an anonymous “senior South Korean official,” a North Korean admission that it sank the Cheonan and an apology for shelling of Yeonpyeong Island would not be “a precondition to the resumption of the six-party nuclear disarmament talks,” I decided to wait for the clarification before concluding that the Lee Administration had been neutered. Those clarifications haven’t really cleared much up. One one hand, there’s the newly hard-line Unification Minstry: Unification Minister...
Categories Anju Links
January 27, 2011

Someone Has to Fact-Check Glenn Kessler’s Fact-Checking

I cringed when I saw that someone at The Washington Post let Glenn Kessler fact-check President Obama’s SOTU mention of North Korea, given how many corrections Kessler still owes his readers: President Obama: “Because of a diplomatic effort to insist that Iran meet its obligations, the Iranian government now faces tougher and tighter sanctions than ever before. And on the Korean peninsula, we stand with our ally South Korea, and insist that North Korea keeps its commitment to abandon nuclear...
Categories Anju Links
January 26, 2011

North Korea Suffers Record Cold Amid Coal Shortage

In a worrisome new sign of catastrophic climate change, a record cold winter in North Korea suggests that the mere presence of two Current TV reporters may be enough to invoke The Gore Effect: Citing data from the North’s meteorological research unit, the KCNA reported that between Dec. 24 and Jan. 19, the average daytime high temperature had been minus 4.9 degrees Celsius while the morning low averaged minus 15.6 degrees. Both figures, it said, were 3.2 degrees lower than...
Categories Inside NK
January 26, 2011

Open Sources

Among reporters who aren’t terribly experienced as North Korea watchers, there’s been much recent excitement about the prospect of North Korea and South Korea talking again. I see little harm and some good in working-level talks between generals, but I think the exuberance of these cub reporters is misplaced. Look more closely, and all of the obstacles to Agreed Framework III are still in place. South Korea is still demanding that North Korea apologize for sinking the Cheonan and shelling...
Categories Anju Links
January 25, 2011

Kim Jong Il Can’t Feed His Army this Winter

The last 12 months have been unusual, even for North Korea, on several levels. There has been the rise in aggression against the South, the accelerating loss of economic control by the regime, an unusually cold winter, unusually severe electricity shortages, and now, an apparent erosion of control over the military. I’ve read a lot of stories about this being a hard year for North Korean soldiers, and for the most part, this is something new. In the past, the...
Categories NK Military
January 24, 2011

Open Sources

Open News has published a whole series of articles about the conditions at Camp 12, Chongo-Ri, based in part on interviews with a newly escaped female prisoner: – Female prisoners at the camp make wigs and false eyelashes for export. – Visitation rights afforded to prisoners. – How prisoners are stripped of their dignity. – How prisoners are prepared for release. I believe these are images of Camp 12, although the lack of a perimeter fence surprises me, and it’s...
Categories Anju Links
January 24, 2011

Blood and Libel

Some 500 people in North Korea attended a public execution of a man and a woman caught reading South Korean propaganda, an activist claimed Sunday citing sources in the North. Choi Sung-yong, the head of Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea said security services rounded up some 500 people including 50 family members of South Korean prisoners of war and abduction victims and made them watch the execution. The victims were a 45-year-old woman accused of reading a South Korean...
Categories Human Rights
January 24, 2011

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

The point man for the Obama administration’s financial wars on Iran, North Korea and al Qaeda, Stuart Levey, has decided to leave his senior U.S. Treasury Department post at what is turning out to be a particularly critical time. Someone wake me up now, dammit! Senior Obama administration officials disclosed Mr. Levey’s departure, after nearly a decade in government service, but stressed that it doesn’t signal a shift in U.S. policy or a slackening of Washington’s financial campaigns against Tehran,...
Categories Money Laundering
January 21, 2011

Open Sources

“In the order, the party stressed that soldiers standing guard over the border are surviving on canned cornmeal porridge and threatened to assess the amount of donations by individual entity,” the RFA said, adding the North failed to attain its goal of securing 1.6 million tons in provisions for the military last year.” [Yonhap] Whoever can smuggle food into North Korea now can trade it for information, the use of a truck, weapons, or ammunition. Just use your imagination. __________________________________...
Categories Anju Links
January 20, 2011

Celebrating Seven Years of Obscure Futility

On this day, way back in 2004, I published the first OFK post. Had you asked me then what I’d be blogging about now, I’d have have said that I wouldn’t be. Then, I might have suggested reconstruction efforts, or possibly a low-intensity conflict between Chinese “advisors” and North Korean insurgents. Seven billion dollars in South Korean aid, Chinese money, and unsteady American policies have prolonged the inevitable, but it still looks inevitable, if different. Then, I imagined that a...
Categories Blogs & Blogging
January 20, 2011

South Korea’s Credibility Problem

China’s plans for the economic colonization of Rason in North Korea have set off a great deal of fretting in South Korea about China grabbing up North Korean resources. In my experience, those who fret about this are usually setting up an argument for South Korean investment in the North. But we know how that’s always ended. Instead of pouring more money into this bottomless pit, South Korea ought to let it be known that after reunification, Korea will invoke...
Categories North-South/Sunshine
January 19, 2011

Open Sources

Did North Korea cheat, you ask? North Korea has been developing a uranium enrichment programme — a potential second way to make nuclear bombs — since the late 1990s, a senior defector was Wednesday quoted as saying. The defector, quoted by South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper, said centrifuges for the programme are being made at the city of Heechon, 57 kilometres (35 miles) northeast of its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon. [AFP] More here. Selig Harrison was unavailable for comment....
Categories Anju Links
January 19, 2011

Open Sources

The Obama Administration’s China policy has come full circle from its deferential beginnings.____________________________________ President Lee wants to bring North Korea to the Security Council over its uranium enrichment program.____________________________________ Well, this story is rich in revelations. Apparently, Iran has sent payments to North Korea from the previously sanctioned Hong Kong Electronics to the Seoul branch of Iran’s Bank Mellat. Less shocking are more reports of China’s assistance to North Korea’s ballistic missile program. If you’re keeping count, that would violate...
Categories Anju Links
January 18, 2011

The Great Wall of Rason: Kim Jong Il’s Grand Sell-Out

Over the weekend, as I was poring over relatively recent new imagery on Google Earth, I spotted the chilling sight of a fence line — the kind of fence line that until now, I’ve only seen around North Korea’s political prison camps. This was a mystery to me, since I believed that I’d located and delineated the last of the large prison camps years ago. I followed the fence line, wondering what I’d found, until I’d traced it for the...
Categories China & Korea/NK Economics
January 17, 2011

U.S. Increases Diplomatic Pressure on China, North Korea

Last week’s rumors that the Obama Administration was pressuring South Korea to talk to the North left many of us confused, wondering to what extent the rumors were true, and wondering if this augured a weakening of the administration’s policy (third item). The following days, however, saw leading members of the administration threatening a direct use of force against North Korea, suggesting that U.S.-Chinese relations are at a critical stage because of its failure to restrain North Korea, and reaffirming...
Categories Korean War II
January 16, 2011

Kim Jong Il’s Biggest Enabler Is Coming To Town

Passing on an email from Henry at the NK Freedom Coalition (note newly redesigned website) about what they’ll be up to in D.C. the night Kim Jong il’s biggest enabler will be dining at the White House.  For those not in or near D.C., we can participate, too: On the occasion of the White House State dinner that President Barack Obama will host for President Hu Jintao of the People’s Republic of China on January 19, 2011, the North Korea...
Categories Activism/America/China/Human Rights