Marcus Noland interview with Peterson Perspectives: North Korea’s “Freeze” Offers Hope for Progress
by Alex Melton | February 29th, 2012 | 04:40 pmListen to the interview with Marcus Noland here.
The Freeze
by Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland | February 29th, 2012 | 02:53 pmIn the wake of the death of Kim Jong-il, there were questions as to whether anyone was in charge in Pyongyang. Now we know that someone is capable of making decisions and their first one constitutes a conciliatory (indeed, concessionary), not belligerent, gesture. The agreement does not completely freeze the North Korean nuclear program but [...]
Debating History–and Bolton–with Josh Stanton
by Stephan Haggard | February 29th, 2012 | 07:00 amWe received a very thoughtful rejoinder to our entry on John Bolton from Josh Stanton and thought it deserved greater attention. Stanton’s One Free Korea blog is a rich source of information and he has been a thoughtful critic of our work. He has also been a tireless advocate of a tougher policy on North [...]
Cells phones and jamming failures: a combustible mix
by Stephan Haggard ,Marcus Noland, and Jaesung Ryu | February 28th, 2012 | 07:00 amIn his blog, North Korea Tech, Martyn Williams recently reported some interesting news on Koryolink, the joint venture between the Egyptian telecommunications chaebol Orascom (75%) and the government (25%) and North Korea’s only commercial 3G cell phone network. The company has recently signed up its 1 millionth subscriber. Yonhap also provided some interesting news related [...]
China and the Refugees: The Torture Convention Angle
by Stephan Haggard | February 27th, 2012 | 07:00 amWe have always argued that China is in violation of its obligations under the Refugee Convention (most recently here.) However, a recent overview of the China-South Korea standoff in Yonhap reminds us that there is a second international legal leg to stand on: the 1987 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment [...]
Socialist Realism for Fun and Profit
by Marcus Noland | February 26th, 2012 | 07:00 amThis week I received an invitation from Georgetown University’s Department of Art and Art History for a lecture, “Images of the Hidden City: Life and Art in Pyongyang, North Korea,” by Professor B.G. Muhn. Professor Muhn, an artist, recently visited North Korea and will discuss “North Korean contemporary art by presenting numerous slides of rare [...]
Unionists party down in Jo’burg, Kim Jong-un picks up tab
by Marcus Noland | February 25th, 2012 | 06:45 amBack in December we posted the “Mother of all ‘Not Satire’ Pieces,” the ANC Youth League’s extraordinary homage to the late Kim Jong-il. The piece elicited considerable feedback, most of it private, along the lines of “it’s amazing anyone is still around who could write like that” (except expressed in more vivid language—which maybe explains [...]
Penal System Update: Grand Amnesty or Shell Game?
by Stephan Haggard and and Jaesung Ryu | February 24th, 2012 | 07:00 amIn Witness to Transformation, we argued that the North Korean regime had dramatically expanded the scope of economic crimes. These legal “reforms” permitted incarceration in labor training camps—usually for relatively short periods of time–for virtually any market-oriented activity. We speculated that one possible motive for the horrible conditions in the short-term labor camps was the [...]
Exercises
by Stephan Haggard and Jaesung Ryu | February 23rd, 2012 | 07:00 amIt is once again the season of combined exercises, but with the added uncertainty of the transition in Pyongyang. Should we be concerned? An interesting bit of research by Vito D’Orazio at Penn State suggests that the North Koreans do not behave any differently around combined exercises than they usually do. But this could suggest [...]
Reading US Tea Leaves: Obama’s State of the Unions
by Stephan Haggard and Jaesung Ryu | February 22nd, 2012 | 07:00 amEvery January, North Korea watchers in the US grab their copy of the joint New Year’s editorial—typically in translation—and try to read the tea leaves; we plead guilty to this ritual. But I was listening to Ambassador Bob King at USC last week, and he suggested that we should be reading our own tea leaves. [...]