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According to several media sources [1-English] [2 - Korean] [3 -Korean], a South Korean court has granted refugee status to Mr. Kim, a Korean-Chinese who has assisted North Korean defectors in China. The South Korean justice ministry had initially denied his application on the grounds that he didn’t play a leading role in assisting the [...]
Remember Wikileaks? We’ve found it hard to keep up, too. But a cable from the US consulate in Shenyang from early 2010 has a number of interesting insights into the China-DPRK relationship. An unnamed informant—apparently Chinese—told a US consular official that China-DPRK trade and investment relations are rife with corruption, and at both ends of [...]
There is a lot of wishful thinking that North Korea is perennially on the verge of going the China route. To date, Abba Eban’s dictum holds in spades: Pyongyang never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. But if our suspicions about corruption are right, they are probably already going down China’s path in one [...]
North Koreans appear to be cooperating closely with international authorities on their outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). In addition to the FAO assessment team that recently visited the country, they have already filed a follow-up report with the World Animal Health Organization the initial notification was on February 7 and they have promised weekly updates. [...]
Joking aside (we all know we can design cooler robots), Su Park at The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea alerted us to a Korean language article in one of the main South Korean newspapers, JoongAng Ilbo, that around 200 North Korean workers are still on Libyan soil and are not exiting the country [...]
As turmoil continues in Libya, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi vowed through a televised speech a few days ago that he will fight on to the “last drop of blood.” It has been widely reported that in a desperate attempt to cling to power, Qaddafi has employed foreign mercenaries to repress his own people. And as if [...]
As we have indicated in a series of posts, signs point to a deteriorating food situation in North Korea. Now, a consortium of US NGOs who were involved in the last major relief effort in 2008 has completed an assessment which is sobering to say the least. They document a downward revision in expected spring [...]
Growing up in Texas one often heard the local politicians bragging about the state’s “healthy bid’ness climate” (that’s “healthy business climate” for readers who do not speak Texan). The local pols considered a healthy bid’ness climate pretty much a cure-all. Sadly, our survey of Chinese enterprises suggests that the business climate in North Korea may [...]
North Korea’s propaganda machinery is well-known for its iconography of the Great and Dear Leaders; as B. R. Myers argues in The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters, these images have strong religious overtones. Among our favorites is a postage stamp of Kim Jong Il, atop Mt. Paekdu—North Korea’s Sinai–with [...]
When the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1874 on June 12, 2009 following North Korea’s second nuclear test, it also empowered an independent Panel of Experts to monitor the sanctions effort. The Panel, which included members from the US, China, France, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the UK, is separate from the inter-governmental Sanctions [...]
