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We’ve probably had more fun than is healthy batting around the Elders. Now Henry Parham sends along the message that he is leaving his post and enclosed the recruitment notice below for his replacement. Applications due in a little more than two weeks: Senior Policy Officer, The Elders Foundation The Elders are an independent [...]
It’s been so long since I wrote one of these, and have such a backlog of material, I don’t even know where to start. Well, let’s start with some important stuff. The North Korean penal system plays a significant role in Witness to Transformation and is an important ongoing concern of this blog. In his [...]
The European Commission decided over the weekend to provide a €10 million food aid package to North Korea. The program will consist of two components. The first, and no doubt largest, is a standard food assistance program targeted at 650,000 people in vulnerable categories: “mainly children under five, pregnant and lactating women and elderly people [...]
The Elders have released their trip report, and it is a sad testament to how brazenly the North Koreans are willing to embarrass those who are working to get things moving. But the Elders are not blameless either. Among the headlines: After failing to meet with Kim Jong Il, the Elders were called back for [...]
The revelation by the North Korean National Defense Commission (NDC) that North and South Korea had held secret meetings in Beijing last month has created a political firestorm in South Korea. Blue House officials allegedly turned off their cell phones in order to duck the press until the Ministry of Unification released an announcement that [...]
When I tease Professor Haggard about his obsession with foot-and-mouth disease, he responds that I am equally or more obsessed with cyber warfare. One of the odder emails I received this week was a request from the chief information officer of a prestigious Washington think-tank for the contact information of a law enforcement official with [...]
Posturing has long been a staple of North-South relations, and the South is often as guilty as the North. But Lee Myung Bak’s recent offer, outlined while on his recent trip to Germany, has a particular irony that has gone unnoticed. Some elements of the invitation, as elaborated by a government spokesman,are sensible. The summit [...]
As we sort through the aftermath of the Elders’ visit to Pyongyang, we thought it would be worthwhile to provide a non-random sample of some of the opinion on the food aid question, moving from left to right. In a short feature on the initial release of the FAO/WFP report, NPR stresses the evidence of [...]
Former President Jimmy Carter’s recent claim that the United States and South Korea were violating North Korea’s human rights by denying it food aid produced a firestorm of protest, and a counterargument that China has massive grain stores, and if North Korea needs aid, it can easily be supplied by China. (Ergo if Carter wants [...]
The hits just keep on coming. Former President Jimmy Carter has released his trip report from the Elders less-than-excellent adventure in North Korea. Whatever one thinks of the former president (and as you know from our previous post, there is no shortage of critics), the report makes interesting reading, providing insight into both conditions in [...]
