North korea

Sunday

Clarissa Tan

Happy New Year from world leaders

It’s the New Year — a time when politicians all over the globe get on their soapboxes and preach to their people. From Merkel’s pledge to do everything for the euro, to North Korea’s vow to defend their new leader unto death, to Putin’s speech laden with sexual innuendo, here’s a selection of this year’s messages from world leaders: Barack Obama: ‘I promise to do everything I can to make America a place where hard work and responsibility are rewarded, one where everyone has a fair shot and everyone does their fair share. That’s the America I believe in.’ Angela Merkel: ‘Today, you can trust that I will do everything

Thursday

Alex Massie

Say what you will about North Korea, at least they’re authentically Korean

Drivel, of course, and the kind of thing you’d expect to find in the Guardian. One expects rather more from the Times but, nay, here is a piece of Simon Winchester’s column (£) today: The State’s founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be left alone. In that regard, the national philosophy of self-reliance known in North Korea as “Juche” is little different from India’s Gandhian version known as “swadeshi”. Just let us get on with it, they said, and without interference, please. India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s

Monday

Daniel Korski

Whither North Korea after Kim Jong-il’s death?

The photographs and video footage show North Koreans weeping in their hundreds at the news of Kim Jong-il’s death. But the departed leader, immortalised by Team America as a song-prone loner, remained a mystery to both his people and outsiders alike.   He came to power after his father, North Korea’s founder Kim il Sung, died in 1994. Reliable biographical information about him is scarce. He rarely appeared in public and his voice was seldom broadcast. What’s certain is that he spent lavishly on both luxuries and a nuclear programme, while millions of North Koreans starved. Kim Jong-il’s death comes at an awkward moment. North Korea had just agreed to

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Chinese burns

The latest cache of Wikileaks has done America no end of good. The Saudis urged the US to bomb Iran – a sign that the Arab world can make common cause with the States and Israel. It has also emerged that North Korea has sold the Iranians long range rockets – Moscow, Berlin and Istanbul are all within the Ayatollah’s range. But the most important revelation is that China has tired of North Korea’s lunatic machinations, recognising that the rogue state is an impediment to global and regional security. China is also convinced that the country will not survive Kim Jung-il’s death and favours a union of the two Koreas,

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Obama stands firm on Korea

There is no diplomacy with maniacs. North Korea has been the grip of one or another lunatic for 60 years; with the succession still unsettled, Pyongyang is now a salon for the insane. The escalation of posturing, violence and the nuclear programme is a brazenly mad strategy to bribe other countries in exchange for good behaviour; it’s piratical. The world’s geopolitics may be changing, but the US President remains supreme among leaders. Yesterday, Iain Martin argued that Barack Obama had to make a strong and unequivocal statement about the situation, at least to encourage China to reprimand its errant ally. The President did so. In a long interview with the

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

The mad hermit strikes

North Korea has again put itself at the centre of international relations. As the US pushed for a start to six-party talks, Pyongyang lifted the veil on a hitherto secret uranium-enrichment facility and launched an artillery barrage on a South Korean island,  injuring four soldiers, and damaging several buildings. The South Korean military scrambled fighter jets and returned fire and the situations remains tense. Conflict with nuclear-armed North Korea has intensified in recent years. North Korea launched nuclear and missile tests last year and sank a South Korean warship in March this year, killing 46 sailors. But the first ground-to-ground assault across the DMZ represents a new escalation in the

Thursday

David Blackburn

The world over, people trafficking is the result of not addressing illegal immigration

The journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee describe their experiences in North Korea in an article in the Times. I urge Coffee Housers to read it, but I was struck by the story that brought them to the Tumen River. ‘We wanted to raise awareness about the harsh reality facing North Korean defectors who, because of their illegal status in China, live in terror of being sent back to their homeland. Most of the North Koreans we spoke to said that they were fleeing poverty and food shortages. One girl in her early 20s said she had been told she could find work in the computer industry in China. After

Monday

Alex Massie

How to deal with a problem like North Korea?

As Yglesias notes, it’s uncanny how too many conservative pundits continue to believe that every problem is a nail and the only tool the United States possesses is a hammer. Now, like everyone else, I have no idea how we should deal with North Korea. And even that assumes that there is some kind of a deal that can be made. One thing I would ask, however, is that since NK seems to rather enjoy its pariah status – in as much as any paranoid regime can be said to enjoy anything – one wonders if increasing or tightening sanctions on NK is the most sensible tactic. In some sense,

Friday

Alex Massie

The Hermit Bugle: News from North Korea

Good to see that the North Korean Central News Agency is offering a different view of life inside the gulag that balances the imperlalist propaganda to which we are otherwise subjected. Among the top stories at their revamped website: Punishment of War Maniacs by Arms Urged U.S. Undisguised Scenario for Hegemony Flayed Minju Joson Snubs Traitors’ Anti-Reunification Ruckus Nice, punchy, tabloid style their sub-editors have too. It’s like everyone were still communicating by cables and cleft sticks.. [Hat-tip: Foreign Policy]