Topic: North Korea (Superthread)

[Thucydides]

(Drifts even farther away)

The ladies have some way to go to beat this:

[E.R. Campbell]

<dragging this important topic to new lows>

That's fine, but given the interminably boring nature of UN duty, with whom would you rather spend endless nights in some remote OP: those two or these young Chinese friends?

[zipperhead_cop]

I guess China doesn't teach their soldiers "Finger off the trigger..." 

[S.M.A.]

  Another naval clash.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091110/world/skorea_nkorea_military_clash

SEOUL (AFP) - North and South Korea were involved in a naval clash Tuesday off their west coast, a military official told AFP.
 
It was not known where the clash took place, but the disputed sea border in the Yellow Sea was the scene of deadly naval clashes in 1999 and 2002.


News agency Yonhap has stated that the North Korean boat involved in the clash has been badly damaged.


The North's navy last month accused South Korea of sending warships across the border to stir tensions, and said the "reckless military provocations" could trigger armed clashes.

[S.M.A.]

Economic chaos in North Korea as it sharply revalues its currency:

http//www.news.com.au/business/breaking-news/north-korea-sharply-revalues-currency/story-e6frfkur-1225805753994

North Korea sharply revalues currency
From correspondents in Seoul From: AFP December 01, 2009 1:22PM
NORTH Korea has sharply revalued its currency for the first time in 17 years in an apparent attempt to curb inflation and clamp down on black-market trading, reports said today.

The communist state's government implemented the change yesterday morning, causing panic and confusion in the markets, Yonhap news agency and other South Korean media reported.
Yonhap, reporting from the north-eastern Chinese city of Shenyang, said the exchange rate for the new currency was 100 to 1, with old-denomination 1000 won notes being replaced by new 10 won notes.

"Many citizens in Pyongyang were taken aback and in confusion," it quoted a North Korean source engaged in trade with China as saying.

"Those who were worried about their hidden assets rushed to the black market to exchange them for (Chinese) yuan or US dollars. The yuan and the dollar jumped."

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper and the Daily NK, a Seoul-based internet newspaper, carried similar reports.

Yonhap said the revaluation was the first since 1992.

It said the main aim appeared to be curbing inflation because the value of the North Korean won had slumped since limited economic reforms were introduced in 2002.

The reforms, to make wages and prices more realistic and introduce limited market freedoms, were largely rolled back in 2005.

Yonhap said the North may also have wanted to draw out funds from the underground economy, including money from citizens working abroad.

The country is mounting a national campaign to rebuild its crumbling economy by 2012, the 100th anniversary of the birth of its founder Kim Il-Sung.

Daily NK, in a story datelined from Shenyang, said Monday's move caused alarm in markets.

"When the news spread in the jangmadang (markets), people panicked," it quoted a source in the north-eastern province of North Hamkyung as saying.

A source in the western city of Sinuiju, on the border with China, told the paper: "Traders gathered around currency dealers. Chaos ensued when currency dealers tried to avoid them."

Seoul's unification ministry could not immediately confirm the reports.

Chosun Ilbo said the revaluation was to curb severe inflation and tighten control on society before an eventual power transfer from leader Kim Jong-Il to his son Jong-Un.

"Prices have gone up too high since the economic reform measures taken on July 1, 2002," a source told Chosun.

"The North Korean currency has been devalued too much, apparently causing the currency change."

North Korea Economy Watch said the won was officially worth around 2.20 to a US dollar before the reforms of 2002. After that the official exchange rate jumped nearly 70 times to 153.50 to one US dollar.

However, the black market rate is around 3000 to one US dollar, the blog reported earlier this year.

[Thucydides]

The DPRK need more socialism:

http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/09/yeah_north_koreas_problem_is_that_its_not_socialist_enough

Yeah, North Korea's problem is that it's not socialist enough
Wed, 12/09/2009 - 9:56am

As my boss U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth arrives in Pyongyang, I think it's worth noting that the North Korean government has not been endearing itself to its citizenry.  Hmmm... let me rephrase that -- the DPRK government has been acting with even more disregard fo its citizens than usual. 

The nub of the problem has been a currency revaluation/reform in which North Korean citizens will be forced to trade in their old notes for new ones -- and each citizen is limited in the amount they can exchange.  This move was designed to do two things:  lopping off a few zeroes of the North Korean won, and flushing out private traders along the Chinese border who are sitting on currency notes that will soon be worthless. 

It appears, according to AFP, that the DPRK regime has finally come up with a move that actually roils their population: 

Amid reports that some frustrated residents have been torching old bills, South Korean aid group Good Friends said authorities have threatened severe punishment for such an action.

Many residents would burn worthless old bills rather than surrender them to authorities, in order to avoid arousing suspicions about how they made the money, Good Friends said.

The banknotes carry portraits of founding president Kim Il-Sung and his successor and son Kim Jong-Il. Defacing their images is treated as a felony.

With nascent private markets for food collapsing because of the currency reform, citizens are finding it difficult to obtain basic staples. The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization is already projecting another grain shortage for the country. 

Over at the U.S. Institute for Peace, John S. Park does a nice job of explaining the political economy effects of this currency move: 

As North Korean people in key market-active regions benefited from growing commercial interactions, low- to high-level DPRK officials figured out ways to get a cut of the money made. These officials used most of these bribes (viewed by traders as a "cost of doing business") to line their own pockets, but also used a portion of these for their respective organization's operating budget. With less to skim from the markets due to this revaluation, these officials will have funding gaps to fill. Given that these officials also enjoyed a higher standard of living, the discontent of the North Korean people will be aligned with these "skimming" officials. New groups of losers from this revaluation may be more advanced and better organized than protesters during previous periods of government-initiated economic and currency reforms....

If the DPRK government had improved and restored the inconsistent Public Distribution System and other public services on a national basis (a massive undertaking), a revaluation may have triggered greater state control by minimizing the benefits from the non-formal market system and making the North Korean people dependent on the state again. It does not appear that the DPRK government has improved these national systems. In an apparent effort to restore discipline through this revaluation, the DPRK government may have initiated a period of economic, social, and political destabilization by undermining a widely used coping mechanism for the people, as well as a growing number of officials.

[So a buckling DPRK regime is a good thing, right?--ed.]  From a nonproliferation perspective, not so much, no.   

Any domestic instability in North Korea is bad for Bosworth, the Six-Party Talks, and nonproliferation efforts in general.   The June uprisings in Iran have led the Iranian regime to adopt a more hardline position on the nuclear issue, both to bolster the conservative base and engage in "rally round the flag" efforts.  I see no reason why this logic would not apply to North Korea as well -- indeed, domestic instability is the likely explanation for Pyongyang's bellicose behavior earlier this year.

Developing.... in a very disturbing way.

[Thucydides]

The real open question is who the North Koreans believe will come to help them? Considering the Obama administration abandoned its Eastern European allies, voted "Present" for the Iranian democracy protestors and seems eager to accomodate authoratarian regimes, no helpwill be coming from there...

Wounded or dying regimes like the DPRK are especially irrational and dangerous as they destabilize; this might actually be the story to watch.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/09/north-korea-obama-climate-opinions-columnists-claudia-rosett_print.html

Give North Koreans A Chance
Claudia Rosett, 12.10.09, 12:10 AM ET

While climate delegates are quarreling in Copenhagen, and President Barack Obama is collecting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, an important story is unfolding in relative obscurity, in North Korea. Furious over a confiscatory currency "reform," citizens of the world's most repressive state have begun publicly criticizing their government.

It is hard to overstate just how bold a move that is. North Korea's military "is on alert for a possible civil uprising," according to a major South Korean newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo. Reports have been filtering out of North Korea that the country's markets have become arenas of protest, with traders--many of them women in their 40s and 50s--publicly cursing the North Korean authorities.

Most of these reports attribute the information to anonymous sources. That's no surprise, given that North Koreans can be condemned to starve and freeze to death in labor camps for such acts as singing a South Korean song or failing to pay fawning homage to the ubiquitous portraits of their tyrant, Kim Jong Il.

That is exactly why these signs of unrest are so important. Dissent in North Korea carries individual risks even worse than the horrors that street protesters have been braving in Iran. But the stories are credible, and they suggest that North Korea's regime is approaching a fragile moment. This comes on top of Kim's questionable health, following what is believed to have been a stroke in 2008.

President Barack Obama, and other leaders of the democratic world, have a choice. They can dismiss the rising murmurs of North Korea's stricken people, and stick with the sorry tradition of bailing out and propping up the North Korean regime via yet another round of nuclear talks and payoffs. Or they can leave Kim to struggle with this nightmare of his own making, and maybe even notch up the financial pressure to nudge North Korea's totalitarian regime toward its rightful place in history's unmarked graveyard of discarded lies.

The immediate cause of the anger sweeping North Korea is a currency "reform" that amounts to the government stealing from its own deprived population. With its priorities on bankrolling the military and the production of missiles and nuclear weapons, while its people endure repression, cold and hunger, North Korea's government has produced runaway inflation. On Dec. 1, North Korean authorities imposed a surprise plan to revalue the country's currency, the won. The plan has entailed issuing new banknotes, lopping off two zeroes, so 1,000 won becomes 10. People were given just one week to swap old money for new, after which the old notes would become worthless. A limit was placed on the amount that could be officially exchanged, effectively confiscating all individual savings worth more than about $40 at informal exchange rates.

This caused so much outrage that the government then eased up slightly, raising the limits on how much old currency people could trade for new. But even with the adjustment, many North Koreans have been left with outright state theft of their money.

North Korea's government has done this before, most recently in the early 1990s, without major ructions. But that was back in the days when money was far less important, because there were no markets.

This time is different. Back in the early-1990s, when the Soviet collapse put an end to the Russian dole, North Korea's state-run distribution system largely collapsed. The result was a famine in which an estimated 1 million or more North Koreans died. Struggling to survive, North Koreans began defying the state by doing business with each other--setting up small markets. Since then, at least some market activity has been incorporated into the system. That is what many North Koreans depend on simply to eat. That is how some have been able to salt away a little cash, and a glimmer of hope for some control over their own lives.

That is what has just come under blitz attack by the North Korean regime. And though North Korea's state secrecy allows no way to know just how many people have been hit by this state thievery, the number is clearly large. "It is serious," says a North Korean defector, Kim Kwang-Jin, an expert in North Korean finance, currently a visiting fellow at the Washington-based U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

History suggests that while tyrannized people may endure astounding hardships before rising up, state plunder of their money is a particularly explosive gambit. In late-1987, Burma's repressive junta wiped out high denomination banknotes for Burma's currency, the kyat. That wholesale state larceny lit the fuse for the massive Burmese street protests of 1988.

China's government tried a variation on this sort of sweeping confiscation in the late 1980s, paying workers with state bonds that the state did not plan to honor anytime soon. That helped fuel the huge protest movement, which burst into public view in mid-1989 as the Tiananmen Square uprising.

Indonesia beggared millions of its emerging middle class with a currency devaluation in 1997, aggravated by a bungled bank cleanup, all of which turned into a route of the rupiah. In early-1998, stripped of their purchasing power, Indonesians rioted. That led to the resignation within months of longtime dictator Suharto.

None of these stories are pleasant. In China and Burma, the authorities regained control by gunning down protestors in the streets. Only in Indonesia, where Suharto ran a relatively benign autocracy compared with such places as China, Burma and especially North Korea, did the dictator go.

But if there is any likelihood of North Koreans rising up against their government, they deserve the chance to at least make a run for it. They live under the worst government on the planet--a racketeering, weapons-vending, nuclear extortionist regime that is a menace to the world and a horror to its own captive population. Kim keeps control by running a Stalinist gulag that has swallowed hundreds of thousands of North Koreans. Citizens caught trying to flee the country have been punished with everything from time in often-lethal labor camps, to execution--in some cases carried out in public, to deter others.

Officially, as consolation for the shock of having their money suddenly snatched away by the state, North Korea's people can turn to the usual programming of breathless affirmations of Kim Jong Il's glory. That runs to such stuff as this week's report by the state-run Korean Central News Agency that the People's Security Ministry has been giving art performances showing "the firm faith and will of the people's security men to share intention and destiny with Supreme Commander Kim Jong Il." The starring acts include a male guitar quintet performing such pieces as "Let's Defend Socialism."

Meanwhile, Obama's envoy, Stephen Bosworth, has just paid a visit to Pyongyang, trying to wheedle Kim Jong Il's regime back to the nuclear bargaining table. Both presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush trod this same slippery path, providing Kim with nuclear payoffs over the years that have amounted to massive handouts of food, fuel, hard cash and diplomatic concessions. North Korea, with an unbroken record of lying and cheating on such deals, has carried on with its weapons programs, plus such stunts as counterfeiting U.S. currency, and sending sanctions-busting arms shipments to Iran. This spring, Kim welcomed Obama's arrival in the White House by conducting North Korea's second nuclear test.

Real progress in coping with North Korea would begin with the refusal to do anything more to prop up Kim Jong Il's regime. That would mean an end to the haggling, concessions and handouts. In sheer humanitarian terms, anything leading to the end of Kim's regime would be an achievement on a par with liberating the concentration camps of Nazi Germany--as the world may one day understand, when the prison camps of North Korea are finally opened to public view and shut down forever. In terms of global security, it would send a healthy message to Iran's mullahs and other tyrannical nuclear wannabes, if North Korea were to provide a graphic demonstration that building the bomb is not, after all, the fast track to lifelong rule and out-sized leverage in world politics.

For North Koreans to curse their government in public requires not only anger, but astounding courage. Give these people a chance.

Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.

[sdpauoiuapdsf]

So, the main wealth-generating activity in North Korea is saber-rattling? Kim Po Ssible throws his nuclear tantrums so we hand him money and goods? Sounds remotely akin to paying a ransom.

Here's to the day when North Koreans finally throw off their chains.

Hope it's soon, for their sakes.

[Thucydides]

More on Korean protests:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/26/AR2009122600761_pf.html

In N. Korea, a strong movement recoils at Kim Jong Il's attempt to limit wealth

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 27, 2009; A16

SEOUL -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Il moved early this month to wipe out much of the wealth earned in the past decade in his country's private markets. As part of a surprise currency revaluation, the government sharply restricted the amount of old bills that could be traded for new and made it illegal for citizens to have more than $40 worth of local currency.

It was an unexplained decision -- the kind of command that for more than six decades has been obeyed without question in North Korea. But this time, in a highly unusual challenge to Kim's near-absolute authority, the markets and the people who depend on them pushed back.

Grass-roots anger and a reported riot in an eastern coastal city pressured the government to amend its confiscatory policy. Exchange limits have been eased, allowing individuals to possess more cash.

The currency episode reveals new constraints on Kim's power and may signal a fundamental change in the operation of what is often called the world's most repressive state. The change is driven by private markets that now feed and employ half the country's 23.5 million people, and appear to have grown too big and too important to be crushed, even by a leader who loathes them.

The currency episode seems far from over, and there have been indications that Kim still has the stomach for using deadly force.

There have been public executions and reinforcements have been dispatched to the Chinese border to stop possible mass defections, according to reports in Seoul-based newspapers and aid groups with informants in the North.

Still, analysts say there has also been evidence of unexpected shifts in the limits of Kim's authority.

"The private markets have created a new power elite," said Koh Yu-whan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. "They pay bribes to bureaucrats in Kim's government, and they are a threat that is not going away."
The third generation

The threat comes at a time of transition in North Korea. Kim Jong Il, 67, suffered a stroke last year. While he appears to have recovered, at least enough to maintain control, he has begun a murky process of handing power over to a third generation, in the person of his youngest son, Kim Jong Eun, 26.

The Kim family dynasty built and presides over a totalitarian state that has lasted more than six decades, far longer than its mentors, Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China. It is the only such state to have survived the death of the leader around whom a cult of personality had been built. Kim Jong Il assumed power in 1994, after the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, the state's founding dictator.

It was an exceedingly bumpy transition: Famine killed a million people, the state-run economy imploded and private markets began an inexorable spread across the country. Still, it was a transition that had been in the works for more than a decade and was elaborately rolled out to the North Korean people, unlike the current succession.

"It would seem to an outsider that much less care has been taken to ensure a smooth dynastic transition this time around," said Nicholas Eberstadt, author of several books on North Korea.

Analysts in South Korea and the United States say there is little evidence that Kim Jong Eun has been groomed for power -- or that he is equipped to deal with the regime-rotting challenge presented by the growth of private markets and the rise of a bribe-paying entrepreneurial class.

In the view of several outside experts, this month's currency revaluation was a preemptive strike against the markets by Kim Jong Il, an aging leader who is worried about succession and trying to buy time.

"This was one of the strongest measures he could take," said Cho Young-key, a professor of North Korea studies at Korea University in Seoul. "Kim is thinking that if he can't control the markets now, in the future it will get even harder, and then he will be handing power to the son."

Stripping wealth from merchants is consistent with Kim Jong Il's long-held abhorrence of capitalist reform. His government regards it as "honey-coated poison" that can lead to regime change and catastrophe, according to the Rodong Sinmun, the party newspaper in Pyongyang.

"It is important to decisively frustrate capitalist and non-socialist elements in their bud," said the newspaper.
Closing the marketplace

Kim's government in the past two years has closed some large markets, shifted Chinese-made goods to state-run shops and ordered that only middle-aged and older women can sell goods in open-air markets, to try to limit the number of North Koreans who abandon government jobs for the private sector.

But capitalism seems to have already taken root. U.N. officials estimate that half the calories consumed in North Korea come from food bought in private markets, and that nearly 80 percent of household income derives from buying and selling in the markets, according to a study last year in the Seoul Journal of Economics.

Private markets are flooding the country with electronics from China and elsewhere.

Cheap radios, televisions, MP3 devices, DVD players, video cameras and cellphones are seeping into a semi-feudal society, where a trusted elite lives in the capital Pyongyang. Surrounding the elite is a suspect peasantry that is poor, stunted by hunger and spied upon by layers of state security.

In the past year, the elites in Pyongyang have been granted authorized access to mobile phones -- the number is soon expected to reach 120,000. In the border regions with China, unauthorized mobile phone use has also increased among the trading classes. And unlike most of the mobile phones in Pyongyang, the illegal phones are set up to make international calls.

Chinese telecom companies have built relay towers near the border, providing strong mobile signals in many nearby North Korean towns, according to the Chosun Ilbo, a Seoul-based daily.

Those phones have become a new source of real-time reporting to the outside world on events inside North Korea, as networks of informants call in news to Web sites such as the Seoul-based Daily NK and the Buddhist aid group Good Friends.

Good Friends reported last week that security forces in the northeastern town city of Chongjin executed a citizen after he burned a large pile of old currency. He was apparently worried that police enforcing currency laws would investigate him to find out how he had gotten rich, the group said.

Affordable electronics are also cracking open the government's decades-old seal on incoming information. Imported radios -- and televisions in border areas -- are enabling a substantial proportion of the North Korean populations to tune in to Chinese and South Korean stations, as well as to Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, according to an unpublished survey of newly arrived defectors in South Korea. It found that two-thirds of them listened regularly to foreign broadcasts.

Special correspondent June Lee contributed to this report.

[S.M.A.]

NKorea calls for peace talks, end to sanctions

BY HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press Writer Hyung-jin Kim, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 41 mins ago

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea proposed Monday that a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War be signed this year, saying a return to negotiations on its nuclear program depends on better relations with Washington and the lifting of sanctions.

The North has long demanded a peace treaty, but President Barack Obama's special envoy for human rights in North Korea said in Seoul on Monday that the communist regime must improve its "appalling" human rights record before any normalization of relations.

Washington and Pyongyang have never had diplomatic relations because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, thus leaving the peninsula technically at war. North Korea, the U.S.-led United Nations Command and China signed a cease-fire, but South Korea never did.

The United States has resisted signing a treaty with North while it possesses nuclear weapons. Washington has said, however, that the subject can be discussed within the framework of six-nation negotiations aimed at ridding Pyongyang of atomic weapons. Those talks have not been held for more than a year.

But the North indicated Monday it won't rejoin the nuclear forum until talks begin on a peace treaty. The communist country pulled out of the nuclear talks last year to protest international sanctions imposed for its launch of a long-range missile.

South Korea is also suspicious of the North's calls for a peace treaty, calls for which Seoul has said are a tactic to delay its denuclearization.

The North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement the absence of a peace treaty is a "root cause of the hostile relations" with the U.S. The ministry called for a peace treaty to be signed this year, which it emphasized marks the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.

"The conclusion of the peace treaty will help terminate the hostile relations between (North Korea) and the U.S. and positively promote the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula at a rapid tempo," the statement said.

The proposal comes after a landmark visit to North last month by Stephen Bosworth, Obama's special envoy for the country. Bosworth said after his trip that the North agreed on the necessity of returning to the talks, though the country has not said when it would rejoin them.

"This appears to be an overture by the North Koreans to try and, in their own way, break through the logjam that we have seen for more than a year now in the (six-party) talks," said Peter Beck, an expert on North Korea currently conducting research at Stanford University.

During the talks, North Korea had agreed to disarm in exchange for economic aid, security assurances and diplomatic recognition.

North Korea also suggested that the withdrawal of sanctions could lead to a speedy resumption of the talks.

"The removal of the barrier of such discrimination and distrust as sanctions may soon lead to the opening of the six-party talks," the North's statement said.

Robert King, Obama's special envoy for human rights in North Korea, harshly criticized the communist country Monday and said that the situation is preventing a normalization of relations.

"It's one of the worst places in terms of lack of human rights," King told reporters after meeting South Korea's foreign minister. "The situation is appalling."

He added, "Improved relations between the United States and North Korea will have to involve greater respect for human rights by North Korea."

North Korea holds some 154,000 political prisoners in six large camps across the country, according to South Korean government estimates. Pyongyang denies the existence of prison camps and often reacts strongly to foreign criticism regarding human rights.

From the Associated Press via Yahoo News-

[S.M.A.]

So much for the peace treaty they were discussing last week.     

Associated Press article

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korean leader Kim Jong Il said his country must bolster its armed forces, state media reported Sunday, two days after his regime warned it was prepared to launch a war against South Korea if necessary.
(...)

On Sunday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said Kim had inspected a joint army, navy and air force drill that demonstrated the country's "merciless striking power" against anyone trying to infringe on its territory.

(...)
The report did not say when or where the joint drill took place.

Kim routinely visits military units and inspects their training to bolster his "songun," or "military-first," policy that rewards the 1.2 million-member armed forces — the backbone of his authoritarian rule of the country's 24 million people. He often calls for a stronger military during the visits.

(...)
 

[S.M.A.]

It's about time the South Koreans put their money (or in this case, their forces) where the defence minister's mouth was.

Associated Press article link

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea's defense chief called Wednesday for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea if there is a clear indication the country is preparing a nuclear attack.

The comments came as the two sides opened a second day of talks on further developing their joint industrial complex in the North, and were likely to draw an angry reaction from Pyongyang, which recently issued its own threat to break off dialogue with Seoul and attack.

South Korea should "immediately launch a strike" on the North if there is a clear intention of a pending nuclear attack, Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said at a seminar in Seoul.

Kim made similar remarks in 2008 when he was chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, prompting North Korea to threaten South Korea with destruction.

The North, which conducted underground nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, claims its nuclear weapons are not for use against South Korea, but rather are a security guarantee against what it claims is U.S. hostility.

Despite the rhetoric from both sides, officials held follow-up discussions Wednesday on the industrial complex in the North's border city of Kaesong, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry. It did not provide further details.
The South Korean delegation was scheduled to return home later Wednesday, said Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung.

On Tuesday, they met for nearly four hours to assess their joint tour of industrial parks in China and Vietnam undertaken in December.

Chun had described the talks as taking place "in a serious and practical atmosphere."

Seoul stressed the need for a quick and easy system for border crossings and customs clearance for South Koreans who travel to and from the industrial park, Chun said, in an apparent call on the North to improve the system.

The North said their recent surveys in China and Vietnam offered an opportunity to revitalize the complex, Chun said.

Kaesong, which combines South Korean capital and technology with cheap North Korean labor, is the most prominent symbol of inter-Korean cooperation. About 110 South Korean factories employ some 42,000 North Korean workers.
The complex came under a cloud in late 2008, however, when North Korea tightened restrictions on border crossings amid growing tensions between the two countries.

This week's talks came just days after Pyongyang threatened to launch a "sacred nationwide retaliatory battle" and vowed to cease all communication with the South following reports of a South Korean contingency plan to handle any unrest in the isolated North.

Meanwhile, South Korea's top nuclear envoy Wi Sung-lac left for the U.S. on Wednesday for talks with Stephen Bosworth, the special U.S. envoy to North Korea, and other U.S. officials on the North's nuclear programs, according to the Foreign Ministry.

The trip comes as North Korea has recently made repeated demands that international sanctions be lifted before it will return to stalled negotiations aimed at ending its nuclear weapons programs.

(...)

[S.M.A.]

Just another border "skirmish"?

Associated Press link

SEOUL, South Korea – North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire along their disputed western sea border on Wednesday, two days after the North designated no-sail zones in the area, the military and news reports said.

North Korea fired several rounds of land-based artillery off its coast, an officer at the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of department policy, said no causalities or damage were immediately reported.

South Korea, in response, immediately fired warning shots from a marine base on an island near the sea border, according to Seoul's Yonhap news agency.

Yonhap, citing an unidentified military official, said both Koreas fired into the air.

South Korea's YTN television network carried a similar report on the exchange of fire.
(...)

[old medic]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60R1RS20100128

North Korea fires artillery again toward South

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea fired several artillery rounds on Thursday in the direction of a South Korean island off the peninsula, a second day of shooting near a disputed sea border that has been the site of deadly clashes in the past.

Rounds landed on the North's side of the disputed maritime border off the west coast of the rival states, a Defense Ministry official said. The South did not return fire.

Some analysts said the North may be trying to provoke tension with U.S. military ally South Korea to drive home its demand for talks with Washington to reach a peace treaty to replace the armistice that halted the 1950-53 Korean War.

The two Koreas remain technically at war and share one of the world's most militarized borders.

North Korea has declared a no-sail zone in the Yellow Sea waters for two months ending in late March, a sign it might be preparing to fire artillery or test launch missiles.

"They were firing at their side of the border and unlike yesterday we did not have clear visual confirmation," the defense official said asking not to be named.

The mercurial North, which has made war threats against the South in recent weeks, has also agreed to Seoul's calls for dialogue on the operations of a joint industrial park that provides the socialist state with hard cash.

Separately on Thursday, the North said it had captured an American who was trespassing in its northern region that borders China. In the past Pyongyang has used foreign detainees as bargaining chips.

It already holds another American, activist Robert Park, who was caught at the border last month. He said beforehand he was crossing to raise awareness about the North's human rights abuses.

Clashes between the neighbors have been contained in recent years with impact on financial markets negligible or short-lived, but analysts said the North could further escalate tension by shooting across the sea border or firing short-range missiles.

North Korea fired about 100 artillery rounds on Wednesday and threatened to fire more as a part of a military drill. South Korea returned fire with warning shots and said the North's move was a cause for grave concern while urging Pyongyang to stop.

South Korea's won was down slightly after the initial reports of the firing. The main stock index was muted.

North Korea has more than 10,000 pieces of artillery aimed at the wealthy South and which could in a matter of hours destroy much of the capital Seoul, 25 miles from the border.

The firing came when President Lee Myung-bak was traveling to Davos in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum after a state visit to India.

The latest clash comes amid signals from Pyongyang it was ready to return after a year-long boycott to six-country talks on ending its atomic arms programme.

Earlier this week Pyongyang accused the South of declaring war by saying it would launch a pre-emptive strike if it had clear signs the North was preparing a nuclear attack.

[Thucydides]

Is this really how North Koreans think? If true, it is really worrying:

http://www.slate.com/id/2243112/

A Nation of Racist Dwarfs
Kim Jong-il's regime is even weirder and more despicable than you thought.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Feb. 1, 2010, at 10:01 AM ET

Visiting North Korea some years ago, I was lucky to have a fairly genial "minder" whom I'll call Mr. Chae. He guided me patiently around the ruined and starving country, explaining things away by means of a sort of denial mechanism and never seeming to lose interest in the gargantuan monuments to the world's most hysterical and operatic leader-cult.

One evening, as we tried to dine on some gristly bits of duck, he mentioned yet another reason why the day should not long be postponed when the whole peninsula was united under the beaming rule of the Dear Leader. The people of South Korea, he pointed out, were becoming mongrelized. They wedded foreigners—even black American soldiers, or so he'd heard to his evident disgust—and were losing their purity and distinction. Not for Mr. Chae the charm of the ethnic mosaic, but rather a rigid and unpolluted uniformity.

I was struck at the time by how matter-of-factly he said this, as if he took it for granted that I would find it uncontroversial. And I did briefly wonder whether this form of totalitarianism, too (because nothing is more "total" than racist nationalism), was part of the pitch made to its subjects by the North Korean state. But I was preoccupied, as are most of the country's few visitors, by the more imposing and exotic forms of totalitarianism on offer: by the giant mausoleums and parades that seemed to fuse classical Stalinism with a contorted form of the deferential, patriarchal Confucian ethos.

Karl Marx in his Eighteenth Brumaire wrote that those trying to master a new language always begin by translating it back into the tongue they already know. And I was limiting myself (and ill-serving my readers) in using the pre-existing imagery of Stalinism and Eastern deference. I have recently donned the bifocals provided by B.R. Myers in his electrifying new book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, and I understand now that I got the picture either upside down or inside out. The whole idea of communism is dead in North Korea, and its most recent "Constitution," "ratified" last April, has dropped all mention of the word. The analogies to Confucianism are glib, and such parallels with it as can be drawn are intended by the regime only for the consumption of outsiders. Myers makes a persuasive case that we should instead regard the Kim Jong-il system as a phenomenon of the very extreme and pathological right. It is based on totalitarian "military first" mobilization, is maintained by slave labor, and instills an ideology of the most unapologetic racism and xenophobia.

These conclusions of his, in a finely argued and brilliantly written book, carry the worrisome implication that the propaganda of the regime may actually mean exactly what it says, which in turn would mean that peace and disarmament negotiations with it are a waste of time—and perhaps a dangerous waste at that.

Consider: Even in the days of communism, there were reports from Eastern Bloc and Cuban diplomats about the paranoid character of the system (which had no concept of deterrence and told its own people that it had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in bad faith) and also about its intense hatred of foreigners. A black Cuban diplomat was almost lynched when he tried to show his family the sights of Pyongyang. North Korean women who return pregnant from China—the regime's main ally and protector—are forced to submit to abortions. Wall posters and banners depicting all Japanese as barbarians are only equaled by the ways in which Americans are caricatured as hook-nosed monsters. (The illustrations in this book are an education in themselves.) The United States and its partners make up in aid for the huge shortfall in North Korea's food production, but there is not a hint of acknowledgement of this by the authorities, who tell their captive subjects that the bags of grain stenciled with the Stars and Stripes are tribute paid by a frightened America to the Dear Leader.

Myers also points out that many of the slogans employed and displayed by the North Korean state are borrowed directly—this really does count as some kind of irony—from the kamikaze ideology of Japanese imperialism. Every child is told every day of the wonderful possibility of death by immolation in the service of the motherland and taught not to fear the idea of war, not even a nuclear one.

The regime cannot rule by terror alone, and now all it has left is its race-based military ideology. Small wonder that each "negotiation" with it is more humiliating than the previous one. As Myers points out, we cannot expect it to bargain away its very raison d'etre.

All of us who scrutinize North Korean affairs are preoccupied with one question. Do these slaves really love their chains? The conundrum has several obscene corollaries. The people of that tiny and nightmarish state are not, of course, allowed to make comparisons with the lives of others, and if they complain or offend, they are shunted off to camps that—to judge by the standard of care and nutrition in the "wider" society—must be a living hell excusable only by the brevity of its duration. But race arrogance and nationalist hysteria are powerful cements for the most odious systems, as Europeans and Americans have good reason to remember. Even in South Korea there are those who feel the Kim Jong-il regime, under which they themselves could not live for a single day, to be somehow more "authentically" Korean.

Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. (See this famous photograph.) Second, a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

But this is what proves Myers right. Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.

[S.M.A.]

China uses its economic power to prod N.Korea to get back to talks:

Canadian Press link

SEOUL, South Korea - China plans to invest billions of dollars in North Korea in an apparent effort to prod the impoverished country to rejoin international nuclear disarmament talks, a news report said Monday.


The news came one week after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a visiting high-level envoy from Beijing that he was committed to a nuclear-free Korea. Kim subsequently dispatched his top nuclear envoy to Beijing for talks on the resumption of six-nation negotiations on ending its nuclear program in return for aid.


Several state-run Chinese banks and other multinational companies neared an agreement to invest about $10 billion to build railroads, harbours and houses in North Korea following their negotiations with Pyongyang's official Korea Taepung International Investment Group, according to Seoul's Yonhap news agency.


More than 60 per cent of the $10 billion investment would come from the Chinese banks, Yonhap reported citing an unidentified source it described as knowledgeable about the situation at the North Korean investment agency.


(...)

[CANADIAN F0RCES]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,588342,00.html



SEOUL, South Korea —  North Korea's army said Monday it is ready to "blow up" South Korea and the U.S., hours after the allies kicked off annual military drills that Pyongyang has slammed as a rehearsal for attack.

South Korea and the U.S. — which normally dismiss such threats as rhetoric — began 11 days of drills across South Korea on Monday morning to rehearse how the U.S. would deploy in time of emergency on the Korean peninsula.

The U.S. and South Korea argue the drills — which include live firing by U.S. Marines, aerial attack drills and urban warfare training — are purely defensive. North Korea claims they amount to attack preparations and has demanded they be canceled.

The North's People's Army issued a statement Monday, warning the drills created a tense situation and that its troops are "fully ready" to "blow up" the allies once the order is issued.

The North also put all its soldiers and reservists on high alert to "mercilessly crush the aggressors" should they encroach upon the North's territory even slightly, said the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The communist country has issued similar rhetoric in the days leading up the drills. On Sunday, it said it would bolster its nuclear capability and break off dialogue with the U.S. in response to the drills.

South Korea's military has been closely monitoring Pyongyang's maneuvers but hasn't seen any signs of suspicious activities by North Korean troops, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier Monday.

"We see it as (North Korea's) stereotype denouncement," Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae told reporters.

About 20 anti-U.S. activists held a peaceful protest near a joint drill command center south of Seoul on Monday, chanting slogans such as "Stop war rehearsal."

About 18,000 American soldiers and an undisclosed number of South Korean troops are taking part in the drills, dubbed Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, according to U.S. and South Korean militaries.

The training comes as the U.S. and other regional powers are pushing for the North to rejoin international disarmament talks on ending its atomic weapons program in return for aid. The North quit the six-nation weapons talks and conducted its second nuclear test last year, drawing tighter U.N. sanctions.

The North has demanded a lifting of the sanctions and peace talks with the U.S. on formally ending the Korean War before it returns to the negotiations. The U.S. and South Korea have responded that the North must first return to the disarmament talks and make progress on denuclearization.

The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea.






hmm, any input on this?

[S.M.A.]

In addition to the possible latest skirmish between North and South Korean warships as described in this thread, this other update shows that the North Korean propaganda minister and his commissars are still smoking the same stuff: 

Associated Press link

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea's military warned South Korea and the United States on Friday of "unprecedented nuclear strikes" over a report the two countries plan to prepare for possible instability in the totalitarian country.

The North routinely issues such warnings and officials in Seoul and Washington react calmly. Diplomats in South Korea and the U.S. instead have repeatedly called on Pyongyang to return to international negotiations aimed at ending its nuclear programs.
"Those who seek to bring down the system in the (North), whether they play a main role or a passive role, will fall victim to the unprecedented nuclear strikes of the invincible army," North Korea's military said in comments carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The North, believed have enough weaponized plutonium for at least half a dozen atomic bombs, conducted its second atomic test last year, drawing tighter U.N. sanctions.

(...)

[S.M.A.]

Another update in the wake of the sinking of that ROKN warship that rose tensions earlier this week:

Reuters link

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea warned on Monday of unpredictable disaster unless the South and the United States stop allowing tourists inside a heavily armed border buffer that is one of the most visited spots on the peninsula. The warming comes as tensions were raised on the peninsula after a South Korean navy ship sank on Friday. Early reports that the North may have been involved spooked markets but were later played down when Seoul said it was almost certain Pyongyang had no part in the incident.


North Korea has made no mention of the ship-sinking incident in its official media.


An unnamed army spokesman of the North's Korean People's Army said South Korea was engaged in "deliberate acts to turn the DMZ into theater of confrontation with the (North) and a site of psychological warfare" by allowing tours inside the border zone.

(...)

 

[S.M.A.]

The South Korean President orders his military on full alert in the wake of the recent ROK warship sinking:

Associated Press link

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea's president ordered the military on alert Tuesday for any moves by rival North Korea after the defense minister said last week's explosion and sinking of a South Korean ship may have been caused by a North Korean mine.
The blast ripped the 1,200-ton ship apart last Friday night during a routine patrol mission near Baengnyeong Island, along the tense maritime border west of the Korean peninsula. Fifty-eight crew members, including the captain, were plucked to safety; 46 remain missing with dim prospects for finding any further survivors.

The Joint Chief of Staff said the exact cause was unclear, and U.S. and South Korean officials said there was no outward indication of North Korean involvement.

However, Defense Minister Kim Tae-young told lawmakers Monday that a floating mine dispatched from North Korea was one of several scenarios for the disaster. "Neither the government nor the defense ministry has ever said there was no possibility of North Korea's involvement," Kim said.
(...)

[S.M.A.]

An update from the Associated Press:

Analysts say NKorea hinting at 3rd nuke test
Updated April 22, 2010 03:00 AM

SEOUL (AP) – North Korea may be preparing to carry out a third nuclear test, analysts and a high-ranking defector said yesterday, citing language in state media hinting of an impending crisis on the peninsula.

Speculation that communist North Korea might conduct another nuclear test, in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions, grew after the South Korean cable network YTN reported Tuesday that the North has been preparing since February to conduct a test in May or June. YTN cited an unidentified diplomatic source.

Tensions are high on the Korean peninsula in the wake of the deadly sinking of a South Korean navy ship near the maritime border with North Korea.

Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said he had no information to suggest preparations for a nuclear test were underway.

However, analysts and a former North Korean official said recent statements hint of preparations for another nuclear test.

(...)

[S.M.A.]

So much for the South seeking retribution for the sinking of their warship, Cheonan, last month:

Wall Street Journal link

"Though the public favors punishing the North, there is little appetite for warlike action that would disrupt the South Korean economy or destabilize the North enough to require the South to take it over.

President Lee Myung-bak said last week he has no intention of invading the North. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday called for calm.

(...)

[Thucydides]

there is little appetite for warlike action that would disrupt the South Korean economy or destabilize the North enough to require the South to take it over.

Robert Kaplan wrote about this in the Atlantic, and pointed out that the projected costs of reconstituting the civil society and infrastructure of the DPRK after the fall was so horrendous that the ROK and United States are very hesitant to even move in that direction. The Japanese would be shut out of any meaningful role in the reunification for historical reasons, and China and Russia would both work to find ways to benefit at the expense of a tied down American/ROK nation building effort.

Greater Korea would probably discover the port and transport infrastructure of the Tumen River region have been absorbed by China or (long shot) Russia during the turmoil of reunification, and no doubt many other nasty surprises would be waiting for would be nation builders. On the other hand, "Downfall" is pretty much inevitable in brittle, authoritarian regimes, so someone, somewhere should be making plans.

[S.M.A.]

Greater Korea would probably discover the port and transport infrastructure of the Tumen River region have been absorbed by China or (long shot) Russia during the turmoil of reunification,

Thucydides,
Speaking of a "Greater" or "United" Korea, did you read this other recent thread on the future possibility of a united Korea as a superpower?(link)

Also, wouldn't China's claim on such a region be shaky, considering part of historical Korea actually extends into what is now northeast China?  (And in spite of the fact that Korea was recognized as just another "tributary state" by Qing Dynasty-era China later on) And there are still many Chinese citizens of Korean descent within the northeast Chinese border regions.

Look at this map below showing the old kingdoms of Korea:

  

This map shows the real extent of the ethnic Korean nation, regardless of present-day national borders. Millions of more peninsular Koreans moved into China during the Japanese annexation of 1910 and even before.

[Thucydides]

I'm not sure how the people of Korean ancestry will factor in China's plans if/when the DPRK collapses, just another variable in the complex calculus. What is a bit disconcerting is the fact that no one seems to have a coordinated response (or even a unilateral response) plan in mind. Perhaps there is one under reaps, we can only hope:

http://the-diplomat.com/2010/05/12/get-ready-for-dprk-collapse/

Get Ready for DPRK Collapse
May 12, 2010

The Six-Party Talks are looking hopeless, says Minxin Pei. It’s time for policymakers to start planning for the worst. Now.
By Minxin Pei

The motives behind North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s ‘unofficial’ visit to China last week may not be that hard to decipher. Most analysts suspect he went to see his most important patron to seek more aid and, in all likelihood, his Chinese patrons would have thrown a bone or two to him to bribe him back to the increasingly meaningless Six-Party Talks.  But if the stakeholders in East Asia’s peace and stability focus their attention on whether China’s prodding will lead to a more fruitful outcome in dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme this time, they’re simply wasting their time.

Pyongyang’s record on this issue speaks for itself: North Korea has no intention of honouring its commitments to the Six-Party Talks or abandoning its nuclear capabilities.

Judging by recent developments inside North Korea, however, clinging on to its nukes may not actually help prolong Kim Jong-il’s regime. The country’s unfolding economic catastrophe has clearly taken a toll on the regime’s legitimacy and durability—only the most desperate governments in history have resorted to outright confiscation of its people’s money. Seasoned analysts have also reported rising popular resentment against Pyongyang. Thanks to the sanctions imposed by the United Nations and other efforts to weaken Kim Jong-il’s regime, North Korea has failed to blackmail the international community into supplying more economic assistance.

More importantly, the Kim Jong-il regime, which has become a classic family dictatorship, is about to face its most difficult test of survival: succession. Stricken by a stroke not too long ago, Kim Jong-il is in frail health and his hold on power is certain to weaken. He appears desperate to install his 27-year old son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor. Unfortunately for the Kim dynasty, this process is likely to end in failure. A review of transfers of power in modern family dictatorships (excluding traditional monarchies) shows that the chances of a successful succession from the first-generation dictator to his son are roughly one in four, and no grandson of a first-generation dictator has ever succeeded in taking over a regime and consolidating his power.

Of course, the Kim dynasty may set a precedent. But given the worsening economy, the inexperience of the putative successor and the unknown reliability of the Korean military and security forces in the event of Kim Jong-il’s death, the rest of East Asia should be prepared for a scenario of rapid collapse in North Korea.

What is most worrying about a possible North Korean collapse is that the key players in the region are not talking to each other, even informally, about such an eventuality. It’s almost certain that these powers—China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and, possibly, Russia—have all drawn up their own contingency plans for Pyongyang’s quick collapse. However, they’ve done nothing to explore a collective response to what is without doubt a geopolitical game-changer.

As a result, many crucial questions remain unanswered. For instance, how should the United States and South Korea react if China sends combat troops into North Korea to conduct ‘humanitarian assistance’ missions? In all likelihood, Beijing will be tempted to do so if millions of refugees start fleeing into China. Which country will take the lead in securing nuclear materials? How will China respond to the crossing of the 38th parallel by South Korean and US forces? Who will take the lead in reaching out to Pyongyang’s post-Kim regime? What will be the collective security architecture after the Korean peninsula is reunified?

These critical issues are deemed too sensitive for US, Chinese, Japanese and South Korean government officials to discuss. As a result, few are thinking about these difficult issues, let alone exploring workable solutions that could help avoid a possible conflict between China and the United States over a collapsing North Korea and construct an enduring peace after the departure of the Kim dynasty.

Given the lack of strategic trust among the key players in this volatile region, it’s probably a bad idea to count on government officials to have a sudden change of heart. Instead, a track-two approach, which consists of well-structured informal discussions and scenario planning among former government officials, academics and policy specialists, may be a first step forward. If nothing else, such privately sponsored efforts should put the most important and potentially most de-stabilizing issues on the table.

For Kim Jong-il’s Chinese hosts, even such a modest proposal may be anathema. But they would be in denial. All they need to do is to take a look at the photo of the sickly Kim and ask themselves a simple question: should we have a Plan B?

Minxin Pei is Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and adjunct senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment.