North Korea zone

THIS SITE HAS MOVED

For the benefit of people in China and South Korea, where typepad-hosted blogs are blocked, North Korea zone has now moved.
Please go to: www.NKzone.org

NKzone status update

North Korea zone would like to apologize for the long period of dormancy as we work to move NKzone to an independent server and which also requires conversion from Typepad to Moveable Type. Due to a lack of technical ability, the large number and size of files plus the complexity of some of NKzone's features, the conversion has proven to be technically much more difficult than anticipated. Fortunately, some kind people have donated their time. Hopefully NKzone will soon be back to full speed - unblocked in China and South Korea - at www.NKzone.org

We thank you for your patience.

Meanwhile, NKzone continues to face an uncertain future. We need several more regular contributors in order to keep the site humming with interesting information and perspectives on North Korea. If you are an expert in North Korean issues, have experience with North Korea and would like a forum for your perspectives, or want a platform from which to build your reputation as a North Korea expert, NKzone is an excellent place to appear in a more direct and immediate manner than through academic publications or mainstream media. Please contact nkoreazone@yahoo.com if you are seriously interested. All ideological/policy persuasions, nationalities, etc., are welcome.

NKzone is also seeking an institutional "home" - such as an institute for Korean studies somewhere. This would make it easier to raise a little funding so that we can hire two or three part-time North Korea-obsessed graduate students (or scholars or anybody else capable of doing the job) to help manage NKzone. These people would not only help locate and contribute new and interesting information about North Korea, but would also ensure that emails from around the world with new and original information about North Korea get properly processed and aired on North Korea zone. Due to the sheer volume of material and absence of help, much good material has recently fallen through the cracks. If you have any ideas on this, please also contact us at nkoreazone@yahoo.com

Once again, thanks very much for your continued interest and support for North Korea zone.

Announcement: www.NKzone.org

NKzone will be dormant for the coming week as we work to migrate the hosting to a new server. This is necessary because the current Typepad server is blocked in China and South Korea.
The new URL (which will continue directing to this site until the new site is ready) is www.NKzone.org

Meanwhile, the "Headline Feed" and "NK Updates" located in the right-hand column will continue to update automatically with the latest news headlines and blog posts on North Korea.

Those of you in China and S.Korea who can only receive NKzone content via email updates or RSS aggregation are encouraged to visit the following link directly for NK news updates:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/NKzone

Masumoto fails in Japan election bid

Teruaki Masumoto, the younger brother of a woman abducted from Japan by North Korea in 1978, failed in his bid to win a seat in Japan's upper house of parliament, the House of Councillors. With all votes counted, Masumoto had 381,771 votes to put him in seventh place in Tokyo. There were four seats up for competition in the capital. Kyodo has a full story here.

Big Brother in South Korea

NKzone has been blocked in China for some time. It is now blocked in South Korea also.

Note: due to South Korean internet blocks, the popular S.Korea expat blog, "Marmot's Final Hole," has moved to: http://blog.marmot.cc/

NKzone is going to move the server hosting soon, which should (hopefully) solve the problem. Nonetheless, while NKzone has always expected to have problems with Big Brother in China and North Korea, we never expected to face censorship problems in South Korea. If you know people in South Korea and China who are unable to access the NKzone site, please have them email nkoreazone@yahoo.com to sign up for the daily e-mail updates.

Brother Anthony of Sogang University wrote the following e-mail on the subject to the Korean Studies listserv:

"I believe that those subscribing to this list should know that we who live in Korea are being prevented by a government order from viewing North Korea Zone http://nkzone.typepad.com/nkzone/ a blogzone reporting on NK and run by Rebecca Mackinnon at Harvard, Martyn Williams in Tokyo and Dr Lankov from Australian National University. They are anything but apologists for that regime, as many will know.

This censorship, coming at a time when the GNP is reported to want to promote a law allowing South Koreans to view legally North Korean internet sites, coincides with the government's continuing blocking of access to any individual blog on all the main bloging sites worldwide, such as blogs.com, blogspot.com &
typepad.com, leaving millions of sites worldwide inaccessible to Koreans, including bloggers themselves
resident here. We are deprived of access to sites as various as Baghdad Burning (featured in a recent BBC Radio 4 programme "Letters from Iraq") http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ Silliman's Blog http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ FatMan Seoul http://fatman-seoul.blogspot.com/ and zillions of others.

The government's aim, we are told, is to prevent anyone downloading and watching the beheading of the
unfortunate Korean victim of recent terror. At least 12 people have so far been arrested for sending this
clip to a friend or friends. It must be stressed that viewing and sharing video clips of the beheading of
any other (non-Korean) victim is not subject to any such restrictions.

I would like to think that under the presidency of a former 'human rights lawyer' something less akin to
dictatorship would prevail but the facts suggest otherwise. I would be grateful if anyone reading this a
in a position to influence events could point out to the Korean authorities that such actions do not
promote the best interests of the country, to put it mildly.

Brother Anthony
Sogang University, Seoul"

North Korean children in China

Refugees International has a new report, No Chance to Dream: North Korean Children in China. The report is based on interviews with North Korean refugee children conducted during two assessment missions to the China-North Korea border over the past year.

The report says "many North Korean children live as virtual prisoners in China, unable to leave their homes out of fear of deportation." Here is how they describe the situation:

"Because of their vulnerability, North Korean children can easily fall into exploitative relationships. One teenage girl explained that her Chinese stepfather would force her to work very hard. She would have to collect firewood to sell in the winter and farm during the summer. Another girl explained that her Chinese stepfather, a man her mother was sold to, would severely beat her mother and her children, sometimes with the back of an ax. A 16-year old girl explained that she was starving in North Korea and couldn’t go to school. “I thought I would die if I stayed there.” She traveled to China with a friend. She didn’t have anywhere to go when she reached China. An old woman saw her wandering on the street and convinced her to take care of her sick son. The woman and her son verbally abused her and continually threatened to turn her into the police. She stayed with the woman for two years with no pay until the woman kicked her out. It is not known how many girls end up in brothels and karaoke parlors, or as underage brides."

Still, RI says the children interviewed say life in China is better than in North Korea. RI's policy recommendations are as follows:

- The Government of China, as party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, fulfill its obligation under international law to ensure the protection of North Korean children, especially by granting access to education.

- The Government of China grant citizenship to the children of North Koreans with Chinese spouses.

- The Government of China halt deportations of law-abiding North Koreans.

- The Government of China grant UNICEF and UNHCR unimpeded access to monitor conditions for North Korean children.

U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice is now in China for talks on Taiwan and North Korea, among other issues. This human rights issue does not appear to be on the agenda.

New column by Andrei Lankov

A new article from the Korea Times

Fate of Defectors

In September 1994, a young North Korean named Kim Hyong-dok arrived in Seoul. It was the end of a long trip: he had spent two years trying to secure a passage to the South. He succeeded against all odds and came to Seoul full of expectations.

Two years later Kim Hyong-dok made another escape attempt - this time he was trying to flee back to the North. He was apprehended and jailed, since an attempt to go to North Korea without proper permission is still a crime under South Korean law. In 2001 Kim Hyong-dok - by that time a university graduate and a clerical worker in parliament, remarked: ``I shall not escape any more. Utopia does not exist anywhere.'' Alas, comprehension of this fact comes to most North Korean defectors with great pain.

North Korean defectors do not fare well in the South. Between one third and one half of them are unemployed, and most others are relegated to low-level unskilled jobs.

Of course, the press sometimes reports remarkably successful adaptations. Lee Chong-guk has established his own restaurant chain in the South. Sin Yong-hui became a moderately successful actress. Her husband Choi Se-ung founded a highly successful company that deals in currency exchange. Yo Man-chol opened a small restaurant in Seoul (the restaurant industry for some reasons is especially popular among defectors).

However, a closer look at these stories begets an unpleasant discovery. Who are these lucky people? They are a far cry from the former loggers, peasants, or fishermen who form the majority of the defectors of the last decade.

Continue reading

More articles by Andrei Lankov

Soga, Jenkins meet set for Friday in Jakarta

Behold, the awesome power of nature:

July 5 (Bloomberg) -- Typhoon Mindulle, the first to make landfall in Taiwan this year, caused damage that could exceed NT$10 billion ($296 million), the China Times reported, without saying where it obtained the information. The death toll from the typhoon rose to 21, the United Daily News reported, citing Minister of Economic Affairs Ho Mei-yueh. (more)

Behold, the equally awesome power of an upcoming election in Japan (on Sunday)

TOKYO, July 5, Kyodo -- Japan and North Korea have decided to realize a reunion of repatriated Japanese abductee Hitomi Soga and members of her family living in the North on Friday in Jakarta, the Japanese government said Monday. Soga, 45, will initially meet her American husband Charles Jenkins, 64, and their two North Korean-born daughters -- Mika, 21, and Belinda, 18, -- at a Jakarta hotel, top government spokesman Hiroyuki Hosoda said at a news conference. (more)

Later in the story, Kyodo notes:

Hosoda brushed aside accusations by Japanese opposition parties that the government is trying to use the reunion issue to win public support for the governing coalition ahead of Sunday's House of Councillors election.

"We are absolutely neutral," he said. "It is a humanitarian issue of reuniting a family rather than a political issue, and is a result of our efforts to resolve the abduction issue."

Oh well, that's alright then.

What happens after the reunion is less than clear. The way I see it, the family have four options:

1) Stay in Indonesia or another third country - They'll be together if they go for this option but it's hardly ideal and would probably cause trouble for the Japanese government and possibly family since there are fears that North Korean government officials could interfere with their lives and try to persude them back to the North.

2) Return together to Japan - The preferred option for the Japanese government and probably many involved but there remains the problem over the circumstances underwhich Jenkins arrived in the North. The U.S. still regards him as an army deserter and isn't showing any signs of budging from its position that he should be brought in front of a court.

Last week at a press conference at the annual Regional Forum meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "Sergeant Jenkins, of course, is a deserter from the United States Army, and those charges remain outstanding on him."

3) Return together to North Korea - A decision that could damage Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and would also likely turn the Japanese media, and thus vast majority of its people, against Hitomi Soga. Charles Jenkins has said he doesn't want to go to Japan for fear of being handed to the U.S. military so this could be the best 'quick-fix' if the family can't stand being apart and the U.S. doesn't give any leeway.

4) Return individually to Japan and North Korea and live apart

Inside story on foreign media's trip to Pyongyang with Koizumi

Some of the Tokyo-based foreign media wasn't happy about the access it got to North Korea when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited in May, explains Jim Treece in the latest edition of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan's magazine. The problem wasn't with the North Koreans but the Kantei, the prime minister's office.

New article by Andrei Lankov

A new article from the Korea Times

Breakthroughs End in Naught

Once every few years the world media discovers that a new historical breakthrough has just taken place in North Korea. These lofty epithets are normally used to describe a new turn in the seemingly endless (and rather fruitless) negotiations between Pyongyang and Seoul or, alternatively, to inform readers that Pyongyang has finally decided to reform its economy.

Being a sort of Pyongyang-watcher for 20 years, I have grown very skeptical about these recurring statements. Indeed, we have witnessed a number of such ``breakthroughs’’ _ all of which ended in naught.

In the mid-1980s, Western journalists loved to speculate that North Korea was on the eve of dramatic changes; and so one of the first bouts of media hype about the forthcoming ``opening’’ of the North Korean economy occurred in 1984.

The reason for these hopes was a Joint Venture Law passed by the North Korean parliament in September of that year. The law was an obvious attempt to woo foreign investors. It was adopted at the same time that the new Chinese investment-oriented policy began to bear fruit, and it was only logical for North Korea to follow the example of its long-time ally and sponsor.

Continue reading...

More articles by Andrei Lankov