Archive for the 'ROK' Category

Food woes in the DPRK (Resources included)

Published
by
Jack
on December 17, 2007
in Defectors, Diplomacy, Economy, History, Humanitarian Topic, Interesting reading, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, North Korea, Policy Elites, Politics, ROK, Speculation, The region and United States
. 0 Comments

North Korea farmThis article got me thinking a lot, and the food shortages in North Korea seem to be getting worse and worse.

[...]

According to the survey results, which were announced Thursday, North Korea’s gross production of grains such as rice, corn and wheat, was about 4.01 million tons in 2007, down about 470,000 tons from the year before.

North Korea reportedly needs 6.5 million tons of grain to meet domestic demand, meaning it is facing a shortfall of about 2.49 million tons.

Especially devastating were torrential rains in August and a typhoon in September that hit the Korean Peninsula, which resulted in the flooding of about 11 percent of rice paddies in the country. As a result, rice production was 1.53 million tons, down by 360,000 tons from the previous year.

[...]

(Emphasis mine) North Korea’s food shortages are not new, and while I am not a farmer, I have read several places the land has been so overworked and the hills so stripped bare for fuel, the floods made the crops fare even worse. This article shows an eerie foretelling of the events of August 2007:

Photographs which depict a lush, rural environment are misleading. The country needs an average of 1m metric tonnes in food aid a year.

Yes, we have heard about the model farms before, but after the flooding, even some of the best crops were eradicated. Yes, in North Korea, image is everything, but it seems to me the facade is fading fast with the walls cracking and the real face showing behind it. The more that is shown, the bleaker it becomes. After a while, no amount of “spin” will make it better. In my mind, it is only a matter of time before everything is clear to everybody, and that will not be pretty for anybody.

“North Korea is not an agrarian country,” said Kathi Zellweger, a frequent visitor to the country with aid organisation Caritas. It is mostly rugged mountain terrain, and only about 18% is arable.

It is dependent on fertilizer and machinery to make that land productive, both of which are expensive.

Fertilizer and spare parts seem to be a very serious problem. With a growing population, the demand for more food rises (and you guessed it), the State cannot deliver when there is little to farm the land with. As the article goes on to suggest not only natural disasters takes its toll on food production, but decades of political central mismanagement of the Kims made things even worse (Among other things: see One Free Korea’s review of Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard’s book on the famine - Markets, Aid and Reform as must read):

[...]

“If their farm produces five times as much, they don’t get five times as much food,” he said. Instead, they concentrate on their own private plots, which they use to feed themselves and to produce food for the markets.

The problem with this system is that market reforms, instituted in 2002, have sent prices soaring at a higher rate than wages. “Who can afford this stuff in the markets?” asked Mr French.

The answer: only the elite. Government officials, senior managers of state enterprises, security forces, and the leadership of the army are all unlikely to go hungry.

But a typical urban family can now only afford to buy 4kg of maize - the cheapest commodity - a month.

[...]

As Children of the Secret State suggested, the poor are only left with crumbs. The article only goes further to show a bleaker picture:

The urban diet is partly made up of a ration provided by the government, but this has dropped from 300-250g of cereals per person per day. North Korean officials have told the WFP they expect it to slump to 200g a day.

“The rural folk have already learned how to cope,” said Tim Peters, director of aid agency Helping Hands Korea. “But the urban people are so dependent on the government for distribution.”

As a result, foreign donations that have helped to prop North Korea up in previous years are doubly important this year.

To date, only 270,000 of the 500,000 tonnes of food needed for 2005 has arrived, the WFP says.

Then the prediction comes:

And there is always the risk of natural disaster.

Floods exacerbated the extreme food shortages 10 years ago, and North Korea’s ability to cope with them “is now probably worse”, said Mr French.

Ongoing land clearance has destroyed natural water breaks, “so it all just comes flooding down”.

…and that is precisely what happened with the major floods of August 2007. Then a little while later, a typhoon hits making the situation even worse. Not a lot has been said as to the result of the 2006 floods and how many people are perishing as a result of it, but the ROK did deliver tons and tons of food/medicine aid to the stricken North. If that helped, I am not sure of. However, one thing is clear. North Korea cannot continue to go on like this, and the people at some point are going to rebel especially if the food shortages hit the elite and/or KPA. It seems like it is happening already.

The DailyNK also paints the same shortfall with some reservations. What was the reservation?

[...]

A North Korean expert observed, “Due to the flood this year, the overall crop yield was reduced, but the products from North Korea’s paddy fields which are spread all over the place do not count in official statistics. When considering the food support from the outside world, the food shortage is not at a worrisome level.”

[...]

So this quote suggests the aid seems to be helping some, but I have to say this is still only a band-aid. I simply cannot see this level of suffering going on much longer without a lot of problems. However, I could be wrong, and have been wrong before. Also:

A majority of defectors insisted that the agricultural production level from North Korea’s individually cultivated lands (including paddy fields and fields attached to homes) will surpass the cooperative farms’ 30% standard.

So again, time will only tell, but along with the other news and rumors floating around including a lot of “firsts” for the reclusive regime tells me volumes. Something is changing in North Korea, and it may be bittersweet.

Also, see:

Country Studies

Food Security in North Korea: Designing Realistic Possibilities (PDF)

Famine and Reform in North Korea (PDF - Marcus Noland)

Hunger and Human Rights- The Politics of Famine in North Korea (PDF Haggard, Noland)

Edit: See One Free Korea

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A letter to the Dear Leader and other news

Published
by
Jack
on December 16, 2007
in Kim Jong Il, News, North Korea, Nukes, Other Topics, ROK and United States
. 0 Comments

Kim Il SungBefore I begin the next blog post, let me say “welcome back”. I finally got some space for this thing, and it is good until sometime in July, so that means this site should be around a little while longer. As for the frequency of the posts, that may be another issue altogether, because the personal problems are still there. I do not know how it is going to work out, so I am in the dark as much as anybody else.

Also, the forums are there in case any readers would like to discuss things regarding North Korea, current news, politics, off topic threads and other things. None of the users that post here will be tied to the forums, so users will have to register before comments and/or threads can be made. I hope you will take the time to register, tell your friends and perhaps some interesting discussions can take place at the DPRK Forum Forums. There is nothing on there right now, and since I am way behind on the postings of this blog, I will have little time to post stuff on there, but I may make some posts as far as open threads and questions are concerned, will disable comments for that posting, and direct others to the topic at hand on the forums in the most likely feeble attempt to get others to sign up there and start the discussions. I do not know how that will work yet.

Now to the news.

A lot has been going on in the news, and one of them is the letter to the Dear Leader. From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Responding to a recent letter from President Bush, North Korea agreed on Friday to follow through on its pledge to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, provided the United States reciprocates by normalizing relations between the countries.

President Bush said Friday that his initial letter, which was delivered by Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, on Dec. 5, achieved its purpose.

“I got his attention with a letter and he can get my attention by fully disclosing his programs, including any plutonium he may have processed and converted some of that into whatever he’s used it for. We just need to know,” Mr. Bush told reporters in the Rose Garden after a cabinet meeting. “As well, he can get our attention by fully disclosing his proliferation activities.”

Emphasis mine. That’s as obvious as the sun rises, but what is not obvious is to what extent Kim will disclose his programs. In my mind, there is really no failsafe way to fully know if everything has been disclosed, and that kind of bothers me. Perhaps North Korea will do it, but if we look to the past, it has not happened before, and while promises were made over and over again, something happens and some ace is up the sleeve. My question is, what will the ace be if any?

Continue reading ‘A letter to the Dear Leader and other news’

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The ROK presidential race is kicking off (Update)

Published
by
Jack
on November 25, 2007
in News, Politics and ROK
. 1 Comment

There is a lot of Korea news to cover today, and one of those is the presidential race for South Korea. This is a race to watch closely, and I will post the changes as they take place. Current numbers:

In a sign of how voter sentiment is so strongly tilted away from Mr. Roh’s ruling party, the Lee Hoi-chang became the second-place contender in opinion polls after saying three weeks ago that he would join the race. Two surveys late last week put support for Lee Myung-bak at just over 40%, for Lee Hoi-chang at 20% and for Chung Dong-young, the ruling party candidate, at 14%.

Also, I did not know this:

The registration process also provided legal cover for frontrunner Lee Myung-bak, a former businessman and Seoul mayor who has repeatedly been accused of being involved in fraudulent activities. Under South Korean law, presidents and candidates for the office can’t be accused of a crime.

Last week, prosecutors questioned one of Mr. Lee’s former associates who claims the candidate was directly connected to a company that failed and defrauded investors. Prosecutors previously cleared Mr. Lee of any involvement in the failed company. But the new investigation could have damaged Mr. Lee if they leveled new charges before he was officially registered as a candidate.

“I hope prosecutors will find the truth through fair investigations as quickly as possible,” Mr. Lee said in a statement yesterday. He again asserted that he wasn’t involved in any illegal activity.

What is the story behind this, and if he were cleared of wrongdoing why is it an issue? Perhaps readers can help me understand this. In any case, it should be interesting to watch.

Yonhap has profiles for the candidates as well:

SEOUL, Nov. 25 (Yonhap) — The following are the profiles of South Korea’s three major candidates for the Dec. 19 presidential election. Each enjoys support ratings of more than 10 percent in opinion polls.

Lee Myung-bak — the opposition Grand National Party

Lee would become the first businessman turned head-of-state in South Korean history if he wins the presidential election in December.

The 66-year-old Lee, a former Seoul mayor and ex-CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co., commands a roughly 40 percent approval rating, the highest among presidential candidates. But some believe that Lee might falter in the run-up to the election because of suspicions that he was entangled in illegal stock manipulation involving an investment advisory company called BBK, now being investigated by prosecutors.

Before Lee enter politics, he worked for Hyundai’s construction company from 1965 to 1992, heading the company for more than half of the time he worked for it, and contributing to South Korea’s economic miracle after the 1950-53 Korean War.

Lee, who earned the nickname “bulldozer” for his aggressive style at Hyundai, won a seat in the National Assembly in 1992 and 1996. He was elected mayor of Seoul in 2002, with his four-year tenure ending in late June in 2006.

Lee Hoi-chang — independent

Conservative Lee, who is calling for a tough policy on North Korea, a pro-business environment and an end to the “leftist regime”, is running for president for the third straight time. He lost in 1997 and 2002 as a candidate of the conservative Grand National Party (GNP).

Lee, 72, an independent presidential candidate, enjoys about 20 percent support following the GNP’s standard-bearer Lee Myung-bak. Critics claim Lee Hoi-chang’s third presidential bid will divide the conservative vote.

Born to an elite family, Lee rose quickly to success in South Korea. He became a judge at the age of 25 and the youngest-ever Supreme Court judge at 45.

Lee entered party politics in 1996 as a lawmaker of the New Korea Party, the predecessor of the GNP, and was the GNP’s presidential candidate in 1997 and 2002. But he lost to underdog liberal candidate Roh Moo-hyun in 2002, in part because of allegations that his two sons dodged military service by fabricating data bout their health. After his defeat, Lee announced his departure from politics.

Chung Dong-young — the pro-government United New Democratic Party (UNDP)

The 54-year-old Chung, who supports rapprochement with North Korea, worked for local broadcasting company MBC as a reporter and an anchor until the early 1990s. His political career began in 1996 as spokesman for then opposition leader Kim Dae-jung, South Korea’s former president.

Chung served two terms as a lawmaker with the then-ruling New Millennium Democratic Party, and after losing in the party’s primary race ahead of the 2002 presidential election, threw his support to then-underdog contender Roh Moo-hyun.

Chung, named unification minister in 2005, transformed himself into an expert on inter-Korean relations. As unification minister, he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang while the North was boycotting the multilateral talks on its nuclear weapons program.

But his ties with Roh soured as the president’s approval rating fell, and Chung led dozens of lawmakers to defect from the now-defunct Uri Party. He played a key role in creating the UNDP.

Well, the huge surprise of the century: Looks like the GNP Lee is going to win by a large margin:

A former Seoul mayor who bills himself as a pro-business conservative is expected to become South Korea’s next president by an overwhelming margin when voters go to the polls on Wednesday. As VOA’s Kurt Achin reports from Seoul, Lee Myung-bak is appealing directly to South Korea’s tradition of economic pragmatism.

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Kim Jong Il will allow the Interwebs?

Published
by
Jack
on November 21, 2007
in News, North Korea, Politics and ROK
. 0 Comments

ChungI ran into this article regarding the campaign of Chung:

At a forum on IT policy in Seoul, he also pledged to offer cheap and fast Internet services to the North, if elected president.

“I learned the importance of IT through a recent reunion of separated families via video here,” Chung said. “I believe that the technology exchange can act like a blood vessel to connect South and North Korea.”

How? Cell phones, international periodicals, broadcasts and outside information are banned to the vast majority of North Koreans. With those things banned in the DPRK, how in the world does Chung plan to convince Kim Jong Il to allow Internet on a wider scale in his secluded worker’s paradise?

As from previous posts on DPRK Forum, the North has the Internet via satellite, and is limited to the policy elites. Also, the .kp domain is up and running with only a few sites. This is a nice feel good prospect, but that is about it. I do not see how this is going to work, how it is going to be hammered out, and of course, there is the cost. With that said, there are other obvious difficulties.

A vast majority of North Koreans do not have the barest of basic necessities such as food, medicine, housing or electricity let alone a computer. Sure, the infrastructure could be installed and more computer centers made (Some are already in North Korea), but what good will it do if the vast majority of folks cannot get outside information? Should human rights be considered before thinking about spending untold millions if not billions on Internet?

More on the Internet (older article)

But to the extent that students and researchers at universities and a few other lucky souls have access to computers, these are linked only to each other — that is, to a nationwide, closely-monitored Intranet — according to the OpenNet Initiative, a human rights project linking researchers from the University of Toronto, Harvard Law School and Cambridge and Oxford Universities in Britain.

A handful of elites have access to the wider Web — via a pipeline through China — but this is almost certainly filtered, monitored and logged.

This I was not aware of. I did know about the satellite link. The link also talks about the pipeline from China as well.

Some small “information technology stores” — crude cybercafes — have also cropped up. But these, too, connect only to the country’s closed network. According to The Daily NK, a pro-democracy news site based in South Korea, computer classes at one such store cost more than six months wages for the average North Korean (snipurl.com/DailyNK). The store, located in Chungjin, North Korea, has its own generator to keep the computers running if the power is cut, The Daily NK site said.

[...]

The problem is much more vexing for North Korea, Professor Zittrain said, because its “comprehensive official fantasy worldview” must remain inviolate. “In such a situation, any information leakage from the outside world could be devastating,” he said, “and Internet access for the citizenry would have to be so controlled as to be useless. It couldn’t even resemble the Internet as we know it.”

But how long can North Korea’s leadership keep the country in the dark?

Good question. Perhaps Chung should consider this as well. Because the North Korean regime relies on this Utopian view and keeping people away from outside influences, chances are, the normal populace will not have access to the Internet provided by the South.

Of course, there are no polls indicating whether the average North Korean would prefer nuclear arms or Internet access (or food, or reliable power), but given Mr. Kim’s interest in weapons, it is a safe bet it would not matter.

I would think the normal North Korean would prefer to have the latter than the former. However, that is just my opinion on the matter.

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UN has concerns about human rights in North Korea (update)

Published
by
Jack
on November 20, 2007
in Diplomacy, Humanitarian Topic, North Korea, ROK and The region
. 0 Comments

North Korea can give a rat’s ass about the U.N., and the latest resolution is just a piece of paper to them. I can see Kim Jong Il laughing right now as he orders more innocent people to be sent to the gulags.

A U.N. General Assembly committee adopted a draft resolution Tuesday expressing “very serious concern” at persistent reports of widespread human rights violations in North Korea including torture, inhumane conditions of detention and public executions.

The assembly’s human rights committee approved the resolution by a vote of 97-23 with 60 abstentions, including South Korea. The draft now goes to the 192-member General Assembly for a final vote.

Why does this not surprise me?

The draft resolution, co-sponsored by more than 50 countries including the United States and many other Western nations, also expresses “very serious concern” at North Korea’s refusal to cooperate with the U.N.’s special investigator on human rights in the country.

Yes, that would cause some concern, but words do not do much for those getting publicly executed, living in substandard conditions, or getting tortured does it? Of course North Korea is not going to be cooperative with the U.N’s special investigator on human rights. This is as obvious as the nose on your face.

North Korea said it “categorically resents” the draft resolution which it said is “filled with fabrications” and “cannot be justified in any case” because it does not also condemn human rights violations committed by the countries co-sponsoring it.

Yes, of course it is all a lie. Those risking life to leave the country is just doing it for heck of it. It is fun to cross the river and play “dodge the bullets” or “bribe that guard”. The strongly worded resolution includes the following:

The draft cites North Korea’s “all-pervasive and severe restrictions on the freedoms of thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association” by persecuting people exercising these rights and barring their freedom of movement and travel abroad.

It singles out “the persistence of continuing reports of systematic, widespread and grave violations of civil, political and economic, social and cultural rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea including torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including inhuman conditions of detention, public executions, extrajudicial and arbitrary detention…”

Yes, pretty strong words. One question. Why are these concerns not expressed in the many talks with North Korea? The issue is completely ignored. They just do not want to get Kim mad. Instead, it is easier just to write a mad letter. What a waste of time.

Another surprise:

South Africa, Syria, Sudan, Venezuela, Libya and Egypt were among countries opposing the draft.

Alright, maybe not a huge surprise there. It does not really matter anyway. North Korea is going to simply brush this off, give the international hand gesture and continue business as usual. In the meantime, the coddling continues, the unchecked aid gets sent, the untold billions of dollars gets poured into the cooperative projects, and millions are sent to Kim to agree to meetings. He does not meet anybody without a price.

The draft resolution “strongly calls on” North Korea to urgently resolve the issue, an appeal reiterated by the Japanese who said Pyongyang should let abductees return to Japan and other countries they came from.

Kim Jong Il: “I am right on it!”

Continue reading ‘UN has concerns about human rights in North Korea (update)’

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Sakhalin Koreans

Published
by
Jack
on November 11, 2007
in News, North Korea, ROK and The region
. 0 Comments

Exiled Koreans Return After 60 Years - Reading the story, it is pretty heartbreaking, and this is something I never heard about until now:

Starting in the 1920s, some 150,000 Koreans were brought 1,000 miles from Gyeongsangbuk province in Korea to the southern half of Sakhalin, off Siberia’s coast, then controlled by the Japanese. The province was chosen possibly to prevent the Koreans living near Japan from inundating the Japanese mainland to work.

The Koreans were pressed into coal mining, logging and construction. They worked in harsh conditions, amid the forests and mountains where brown bears roam and rivers teem with salmon.

After Japan lost World War II, the Soviet Union took over all of Sakhalin, including about 23,500 remaining Korean residents. Some of the Koreans had died in the war or from hard labor, while others had left.

Those still here were effectively stranded, since the Soviets had no diplomatic relations with what became South Korea, the U.S.-aligned country that was now home to their old province.

Sakhalin during the Soviet era was a “closed” border area, meaning outsiders needed special permission to enter. One of its many military bases housed the warplanes that in 1983 shot down Korean Air flight 007 for straying into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people aboard.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviets allowed communist North Korea to lure away several hundred of the Korean youth. Some of the brightest are believed to have gone, in the false hope they could get back to South Korea.

Sakhalin Koreans got a glimpse of their former homeland on television during the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Its broad highways and high-rise buildings amazed a people who had left the poor, agrarian peninsula, said Chi Bok I, an announcer for Sakhalin’s Korean-language TV station who returned to Korea in October.

Over time, many Sakhalin Koreans took Russian names — Pak called herself Masha — and tried to integrate into Soviet society. But they faced discrimination, with Moscow shuttering Korean-language schools in the 1960s. Only after the Soviet reforms known as perestroika in the 1980s were the Koreans allowed again to start learning their own language.

Today, some 30,000 Koreans live on Sakhalin, a harpoon-shaped island with an area roughly three-quarters that of South Korea but a population of only about 547,000. The Koreans include the descendants of the original group and some who came later from parts of the former Soviet Union and North Korea.

The Korean cultural presence is strong in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the island’s capital city of more than 170,000 people, nestled in a valley backed by mountains. Markets feature kimchi — Korean pickled cabbage _and restaurants serve Korean cuisine.

About 2,000 of the estimated 3,000 elderly who qualify for repatriation are choosing to go home, according to the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

Since I did not know much about this area, I wen to Google to look it up, and reading it leads me to understand the hostility towards Japan. DPRK Studies has an article about the controversy surrounding the comfort women described in this overview of Sakhalin Korean Documentary (which I would like to see by the way):

A dark shadow cast by Japan and its responsibility for the continuing predicament of the Koreans of Sakhalin looms over the film. The overwhelming anger towards the former colonizer felt by the interviewees some fifty years after liberation is more than palpable, and the narration itself appears to endorse the view that blame for the ongoing sadness of these people lies with the Japanese. Although Japan’s forcible conscription of “comfort women” has begun to command international attention, the plight of the Sakhalin Koreans continues to go largely unnoticed, and the documentary can be seen as advocating that the Japanese should offer compensation for their wartime misdeeds.

Wikipedia Entry on this topic

I plan to research this more, and anybody that has further information, I would be grateful.

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Have a look at the Cold War archives

Published
by
Jack
on November 7, 2007
in History, Korean War, Other Regimes, Politics, ROK, The region and United States
. 0 Comments

Kim Il SungI have been wanting to do this for quite some time, and while I should be finishing the propaganda series, I thought this would be something I want to post instead. The Cold War lasted for many decades, and while it is considered over by many people, for Korea, the Cold War never ended. The division is still there, and Panmunjom is the most visible of the division of ideologies.

I went ahead and looked around for some interesting tidbits in the Cold War Archives and other places to gain a better understanding of the thought process of North Korea and the Korean War.

Not only does this archive cover Korea, it covers other countries as well, and has a host of declassified documents and exchanges with leaders. It is a very interesting read, and it would do the site an injustice to highlight just a few things.

Some other stuff:

Cold War Studies at Harvard University

National Security Archive

CIA

Declassified Korean War Documents

More Korean War documents at Kimsoft

Enjoy the archives. If you know of any other archives that may be of interest to readers, please let me know and I will make sure to add it to the resources.

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Hog farms to cure the food shortages?

Published
by
Jack
on November 5, 2007
in Economy, North Korea and ROK
. 1 Comment

I ran into an interesting article:

? SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea and South Korea have decided to start a jointly operated hog farm in the North’s capital to help alleviate the communist nation’s chronic food shortages, a South Korean official said Tuesday.

The agreement came as a follow-up to a wide range of accords reached by the leaders of the two Koreas last month.

The farm will run for a two-year trial period in Pyongyang and aim to breed 5,000 hogs, with the South providing the animals, feed, equipment and building materials, and the North providing the land, electricity, water and labor, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said.

Will this really help the shortages caused by the recent flooding? From the reports, the flooding was pretty severe, and will 5,000 hogs over two years really meet that demand? Also, will normal folks be able to get the meat made? My guess is probably not because the situation is so dire. I guess this is in addition to the tons and tons of other aid.

Officials of the two countries negotiated the deal in talks in the North Korean border city of Kaesong on Monday and plan to meet again to map out details, such as when to open the farm, ministry spokesman Park Won-jae said in Seoul.

“The hogs are aimed at resolving the North’s food shortage problem,” Park said, adding that the animals would not be exported to South Korea or elsewhere.

I? seriously? doubt? that? will? fix? the? serious? food? problem,? because? as? some? of? you? recall,? Kim? looked into giant rabbits to fix the problem at one time. Also, one has to look to the long term when it comes to food production, and North Korea seems to falling seriously short because of the poor farming practices, flooding, and lack of equipment. It is going to take a hell of a lot more work than pig farms. I am also considering the feed needed to do this. I am not farmer, so somebody can probably help me understand this a little better.

North Korea suffers from chronic food shortages and has struggled to increase its grain production in recent years. The country was hit by famine in the mid-1990s that killed an estimated 2 million people.

The? numbers? vary,? and? Marcus? Noland? and? Stephen? Haggard? have? lower? figures. Also,? the? recent? flooding? does? not? help? any.

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More on the peace treaty question

Published
by
Jack
on November 4, 2007
in Kim Jong Il, Korean War, News, North Korea, ROK, The region and United States
. 0 Comments

lol, RohTwo pieces of news today. It is basically a rehash, but this may interest readers anyway. The first from Chosun Ilbo:

In an interview with Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper, President Roh Moo-hyun said mutual trust had to be established before a peace treaty could be concluded with North Korea. “(The concerned parties) are supposed to make promises that each can trust, declare peace and an end to the war when those promises reach a trustworthy level, and afterwards conduct peace talks and nuclear dismantlement simultaneously, aren’t they?” Roh said. (emphasis mine)

Huh? That does not make a whole lot of sense. He said earlier disablement and eventual dismantling can take a long time. So is this implying the peace talks can take just as long? I simply do not understand the line of thinking here. There are doubts that a peace treaty can be done before Roh is gone according to the Korea Times:

Continue reading ‘More on the peace treaty question’

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Nukes, Mt. Paekdu and peace treaties (Update)

Published
by
Jack
on November 3, 2007
in Diplomacy, Economy, Kim Jong Il, Korean War, News, North Korea, ROK, The region and United States
. 0 Comments

Kind of interesting news today which includes opening sacred Mount Paekdu to visitors via direct flights:

The decision comes a month after only the second summit between leaders of the two Koreas, divided by a fortified border since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

The North’s state-run news agency KCNA said South Korea’s Hyundai Group had been granted the right to conduct package tours to Mt. Paektu from May 2008 using direct flights from Seoul.

Personally, I never, ever thought something like this would ever happen, and this caught me by surprise. On the other hand, a lot of changes are happening in North Korea, yet at the same time, nothing changes. The DPRK is such a strange oxymoron.

A top Hyundai official met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang on Saturday, KCNA said.

At present, South Koreans can only visit the Chinese side of the 2,744 metre (9,000 feet) mountain, which Koreans consider sacred because they believe it is the place of their ancestral origin. The mountain is on the northern tip of the Korean peninsula.

…and of course the supposed birthplace of Kim Jong Il (Link and emphasis mine). This is just speculation on my part, but Kim looking elsewhere at different economic models (see Vietnam post), opening/planning special economic zones, and now opening places not previously opened to the outside world may be an inkling (and from my view obvious) of Kim’s need for more hard needed cash. Is this a foreshadow of more dire things to come? Is North Korea finally realizing the very serious problems it faces? That I cannot answer, but that trip to Vietnam and other globe-trotting has me wondering. As with everything in North Korea, I am not going to place any bets.

Continue reading ‘Nukes, Mt. Paekdu and peace treaties (Update)’

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