Some reports coming out of North Korea indicate that people are beginning to openly question the regime’s explanation of why once again, starvation looms.

This article from The Daily North Korea, a publication headquartered in Seoul dedicated to reporting on the regime and getting word into the Hermit Kingdom about the outside world, reports:

“It appears that North Koreans are expressing increasing doubt about government claims that South Korea and the United States are responsible for the latest food crisis.”

According to one source, located in the North Korean Province of Ryanggang reported on a party meeting held recently in the city of Hyesan:

“During the conference, a speaker is said to have explained the state of international and domestic affairs by saying, ‘the U.S. and the puppet regime (the Lee Administration in South Korea) have overridden peaceful agreements between North and South (referring to the June 15th Joint Declaration and the October 4th Agreement) in order to create a serious food crisis in our Republic.’ … there was an awkward atmosphere in the hall after the chairperson of a People’s Unit from Hyehwa-dong in the city of Hyesan asked forthrightly, “We understand that the Americans and Lee’s puppet faction aren’t helping us with rice, but why won’t China help us, since it’s our closest ally?” The speaker’s face turned pale at the question and a silent tension filled the hall.”

By Lee Sung Jin

May 8, 2008

South Korea - Daily North Korea - Original Article (English)

Yanji, China: It appears that North Koreans are expressing increasing doubt about government claims that South Korea and the United States are responsible for the latest food crisis.

In a telephone interview on May 1st, a source from Ryanggang Province told The DailyNK, “At a conference of the Union of Democratic Women, called to commemorate the founding of the Korean People’s Army on April 25th, one speaker humiliated herself by blaming [South Korean] President Lee” for the crisis.

One of a series of meetings now being held across the country to extol the military, this meeting was held at the conference hall of the General Federation of Korean Trade Unions in Ryanggang Province.

The source reported that, “A lecture was given, entitled ‘Our revolutionary weapons are an invincible force for building a strong military-first country.’ During the lecture, he said that the politics of putting the military first were, “praised even more highly than the People’s Army itself.”

During the conference, a speaker is said to have explained the state of international and domestic affairs by saying, “the U.S. and the puppet regime (the Lee Administration in South Korea) have overridden peaceful agreements between North and South (referring to the June 15th Joint Declaration and the October 4th Agreement) in order to create a serious food crisis in our Republic.”

Then our source reports that there was an awkward atmosphere in the hall after the chairperson of a People’s Unit from Hyehwa-dong in the city of Hyesan asked forthrightly, “We understand that the Americans and Lee’s puppet faction aren’t helping us with rice, but why won’t China help us, since it’s our closest ally?” The speaker’s face turned pale at the question and a silent tension filled the hall.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing foreign press coverage surrounding American involvement with North Korea.

Yes, argues blogger Matt Dupuis; it’s high time that Pyongyang was pressured to adopt the Beijing model.

On the heels of news about food riots breaking out in Africa and Central America, the Washington Post reports that North Korea is in danger of a massive food crisis of its own.

TOKYO, April 16 — Food-starved North Korea is facing a humanitarian crisis this year and will likely need large food donations from the international community, the U.N. World Food Program said Wednesday.

“Major sources of food for North Korea are all going down and there is no very good prospect that any will go up soon,” said Tony Banbury, the regional director in Asia for the WFP.

This year’s food shortfall is projected to be 1.66 million metric tons, about double the need of last year and the highest since 2001, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

News tends to flow in and out of North Korea at a trickle, but this is nothing new. In the mid 1990’s an estimated two million people died in that country during a massive famine. As the article makes clear, the current problem is, at least in part, the fault of the North Korean government. They overestimated their own food production capacity, and the problem was amplified by floods and poor growing conditions last fall. At the same time, South Korea penalized them with decreased food donations because of the North’s failure to meet specific goals in nuclear disarmament and humanitarian concerns. China has also rolled back their donations, though the reasons for that appear to be based more on their own food production problems.

There may be an opportunity here. North Korea is a very closed nation and its citizens are unable to access news from international sources. The government has proven frustratingly stubborn in the face of diplomatic pressure to make improvements. Rather than threats and saber rattling, large scale infusions of food might be the leverage needed to apply a positive approach in opening that nation up. Clearly the people of North Korea should not be punished for the stupidity and evil of their leader, and richer nations blessed with abundent food resources should take this opportunity to help.

While Ms Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State, interacted with the Chinese leaders about the nuclear disarmament in North Korea, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra held a historic concert in the heart of North Korea — a nation still considered as an enemy by the US. The East Pyongyang Grand Theatre echoed with the strains of North Korean national anthem ‘Patriotic Song’, and followed by America’s ‘Star Spangled Banner” The concert was beamed live on the North Korean television.

The visit entailed the largest US presence in the reclusive state since the end of the Korean war, says the BBC. “The audience - made up of North Korea’s elite, as well as musicians and foreign guests - stood throughout both anthems, while the countries’ flags were displayed on the stage.

“Conductor Lorin Maazel said he and his colleagues were ‘pleased to play in this fine hall’ and told the audience in Korean to ‘have a good time’. The orchestra then played an opera prelude by Wagner followed by Dvorak’s Symphony Number Nine - known as the New World Symphony - and George Gershwin’s An American in Paris. The orchestra finished by playing the much-loved Korean folk song Arirang, and received a lengthy standing ovation.

“Mr Maazel told the audience that there might one day be a piece called An American in Pyongyang…”

Ms Rice, herself a classical pianist, struck a discordant note in China: “I don’t think we should get carried away with what listening to Dvorak is going to do in North Korea.” Well, if music diplomacy is not your cuppa tea then the other option is to start cleaning your guns!!! In any case the invitation to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra was extended by North Korea…and that certainly is a diplomatic triumph for a nation steeped in poverty and remains a closed society.

This week, North Korea was to have provided “a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs” as stipulated by the February 13th agreement. So where do things stand? Matt Dupuis has the scoop.

The man with the white walrus mustache is back in Washington after a European tour of touting war with Iran. He has a new book to promote and a new cause–rallying Republican Congressmen to oppose the nuclear agreement with North Korea by that left-wing softie, George W. Bush.

Last week he met with 42 GOP members at the invitation of Iowa Rep. Steve King, whose main legislative goal is to abolish the income tax, and argued that “North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons voluntarily, and that it is only a matter of time before their cheating is exposed, at which point one hopes that Bush will repudiate this charade.”

Bolton’s new book is titled “Surrender Is Not an Option,” reflecting the unyielding bellicosity of the man who calls himself a Goldwater conservative, as opposed to those parvenu Neo-Cons he considers “liberals who’d been mugged by reality.”

If he had his way, Bolton would solve all our world problems by bombing and invading, in contrast to his youthful aversion to warfare.

“I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy,” Bolton wrote in the 25th reunion book of his graduation from Yale about his decision to join the National Guard and go to law school. “I considered the war in Vietnam already lost.”

Unlike the war in Iraq today and whatever new ones he can instigate tomorrow.

Cross-posted from my blog.

If Michael Vick knew about this he could have sent his dogs that couldn’t do well in dogfights here:

NORTH Korea’s state media is talking up the virtues of dog meat, saying the controversial cuisine is a prized delicacy for coping with the summer heat.

Dog soup, called dangogi-jang or boshintang (health soup), is “the best cuisine” served over the summer season, the official Korean Central News Agency said, yesterday touting its nutritional properties.

Dangogi, literally meaning sweet meat, is an euphemism for dog meat that was coined by North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung in the early 1980s.

Dangogi-jang means dog meat soup.

“These days workers sweating to taste boshintang can be witnessed in any Dangogi houses and traditional restaurants in the capital of Pyongyang,” the agency said.

While dog meat restaurants are assuming a lower profile in South Korea, the reverse is true in the impoverished North.

So in North Korea, when they walk their dog they really wok their dog.

In North Korea, not only can life be a bitch, but your meal can be, too.

Despite widespread optimism that North Korea might agree to permanently dismantle its nuclear program, there have been some unnerving signs in recent days. Matt Dupuis, over at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has written up a must-read analysis of the recent developments.

From Yonhap (the South Korean news agency):

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Yonhap) — South Korean and U.S. military authorities are trying to verify newly obtained intelligence that North Korea test-launched in Iran a new kind of missile that was only revealed to the public last month, a source here said Tuesday.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity involved, the source said North Korea doesn’t appear to have tested the intermediate-range ballistic missile within its territory.

“But we did obtain intelligence tips that the missile was test-fired in Iran. I understand that the intelligence communities of relevant countries are tracking down the information,” he said.

The missile, named “Musudan,” is believed to have been developed from the former Soviet Union’s SSN-6 model. Its range is estimated at around 4,000 kilometers.

The missile was first made public on April 25 at a parade marking the anniversary of the foundation of the North Korean military.

In a time of war, of such loss of life of the young, or no end in sight, to see dignitaries bowing and laughing and joking, surely a long, serious table grace is called for.

SEED CORN SHALL NOT BE GROUND
Seed corn: The best qualities of each green living thing, kept for seed so the next generation on earth will flower.

I first worked at the VA as an aide
and I saw them come back from hell…
Hell! Hell was still smoking inside them:
Front line men, artillery, tank and tail,
helicopter, hand to hand,
med evac, nurses, chaplains, photographers.

But too often, civvies, media, politicians wanted ”war stories,“ from them,
to somehow share a suck at what they thought of as the heroic tit.
They wanted battle-frayed soldiers to say they were okay,
that the war enchantment cast over them by others
had magically worn off just because someone said ‘war’s over, go home,’
that the soldiers had magically returned to their pre-war selves:
just a boy, just a girl, magically looking forward
to settling down with a nice girl or boy somewhere near trees and water.
But the soldiers’ eyes said,
Still at Inchon,
Still at the Ardennes
Still at the Tet
Still in Cambodia.
Forever.

Governments tried to erase all images and words about the wars,
but, the real eye-witness reports ran every night on the dream newsreels.
There, in their own beds, the men and women dreamt Honor and Horror
were dressed as innocent children,
who played time and again with the unspent money
of shells and mines so deadly pretty.
And outside the VA, the sexual lustre of war
continued to swell the hearts
of so many who never saw war up close.

At the VA, the soldiers walked the halls
wearing crowns of thorns made of missiles
and unspeakable memories on fire.
And anyone who saw them, helped them,
soothed them,
anyone who had a heart
left hanging by even one hinge
wondered,
Isn’t there such a thing as patriotic anger?
Is it not true that there is such a thing as patriotic sadness and sorrow?
What about patriotic resistance? Can there be patriotic regret?
And, oh by the way, when did patriotic reluctance to kill
change from a holy thing to a hated one?
And what does war shatter besides bone?
And how can secret regret deserve so much public praise?

How can the maiming of human life, life that all say is so precious,
be given so much remembrance, as though to be harmed and die
is hard sought treasure
instead of so unbearably tragic?
How can anything be more valued, more memorialized, than those who still stand
with earned valour shining,
with eyes that say:
Still walking from Bataan
Still in Saigon
Still in Seoul
Still deployed into cold waters
under hundred pound packs
and struggling toward shore.
Forever.

Seed Corn shall not be ground,
else the next generation of miracles, dies.
The visionary demands:
Seed corn shall not be ground!

Amen
————————————-

excerpt from ”Seed Corn Shall Not Be Ground,“ ©1968, 1978, 1989, 2003, 2007, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved. The entirety of this poem is printed here at TMV under Creative Commons License by which author grants permission to copy, distribute and transmit this particular work under the conditions that the use be non-commercial, that the work be used in its entirety and not altered, added to, or subtracted from, and that it be attributed with author’s name and this full copyright notice. For other uses, contact copyright holder.

A.Q. Khan - “Dresed to Kill.” Photo courtesy The Economist

One of the big mysteries in the past decade or more revolves round Pakistan’s Abdul Qadeer Khan, described as ‘father of Islamic bomb’. The Economist raises more disturbing questions regarding nuclear black market. Why is there a conspiracy of silence on this important subject even in the West?

“To borrow a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush’s former defence secretary, when it comes to the illicit trade in bomb-useable nuclear materials and know-how, it is the unknown unknowns that keep people awake at night.

“The revelation in 2004 that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man still feted in Pakistan as the father of its bomb, had turned his country’s illicit procurement network into a private and hugely profitable supply chain, ready to sell all sorts of nuclear kit to others, was a huge blow to the global anti-proliferation effort. But exactly how far did the damage go?

“Three years on, Western intelligence agencies are still not really sure who was the next big customer being lined up, after Iran, North Korea and Libya—though Syria is one suspect. Mr Khan’s speciality was the wherewithal to enrich uranium (suitable, if enriched sufficiently, for the fissile core of a bomb); others in Pakistan did the real bomb-tinkering. But in Libya’s case, he also threw in a 95%-complete proven weapon design—one that had earlier been supplied to Pakistan by China.

“Iran was given instructions on how to cast uranium metal into spheres—a tricky step in bomb-making—but denies it ever used them. It is the stuff of nightmares, but did any of this know-how also fall into terrorist hands?

“No one knows—or no one is telling”…

To read the full story please click here…

And now another gem from TMV’s favorite artist of verse, Michael Silverstein, aka Wall Street Poet:

Should we outsource the printing of U.S. hundred dollar bills to North Korea? Heck, why not. They already make almost as many as our own Treasury, the quality of their product is excellent, it would bring them into the world economy in a big way, and think of the printing cost savings for American taxpayers!

Making Friends With North Korea

If we want a first rate job done
When it comes to C-note printing
Give the job to North Korea
On this work there’ll be no stinting.

They’re already in production
With presses running overtime
In the realm of counterfeiting
Here’s a country in its prime.

Yes, this idea is a new one
And may leave some in confusion
‘Bout a currency transaction
With its odd two-nation fusion.

But in truth the goal is simple
Turn relations far more sunny
Share the one thing we’ve in common
A shared love for Old Sam’s money.

To North Korea we’ve long said
Your phony bills we’re gonna purge
Why not now try a softer line
A smile, a hug, a moola merge.

Copyright 2007 Michael Silverstein

There apparently is good news coming out of the talks between the United States and North Korea. The BBC:

The US and North Korea have had “very good” talks aimed at normalising relations between the two nations, the top US negotiator has said.

US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill was speaking after the second day of the talks in New York.

He said there was a “sense of optimism” over last month’s deal on steps to end North Korea’s nuclear programme.

Earlier, a US official said the North must declare all aspects of its nuclear activities for the deal to hold.

“These were very good discussions,” Mr Hill told reporters after the second day of the talks with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan.

“I would say there was a sense of optimism [on] both sides that we will get through this 60-day period and we will achieve all of our objectives that are set out in the 13 February agreement,” he said.

According to Time, this represents a major shift:

Read the rest of this entry »

David Ignatius wrote an interesting column for yesterday’s Washington Post (I’m afraid that I didn’t have time to link to it yesterday - but because it’s about such an important subject I decided to link to link to it today) about sanctions. He starts off by writing that the conventional wisdom is that sanctions don’t work: just look at - for instance - Cuba (but also Iraq under Saddam may I add). However, it now seems that “a new variety of sanctions” are working in the “recent cases of North Korea and Iran.”

As you all know, I’m not exactly a firm believer in the effectiveness of sanctions. They have, quite simply, not worked well enough in the past. Recent developments, however, do - as David points out - indicate that sanctions can work, even in quite exceptional cases like that of Iran and North Korea. Obviously I’m still not a ‘believer’, but I am more open to it and believe that further sanctions should be persued in the case of Iran: it seems that the sanctions are encouraging reformers to oppose Ahmadinejad and to call for moderation in Iran’s foreign policy.

So, why are the new type of sanctions effective, where the ‘old type’ were not?

Keep reading this.

An important op-ed by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius:

Everybody knows that economic sanctions don’t work. Just look at the decades of fruitless pressure on Cuba. But guess what? In the recent cases of North Korea and Iran, a new variety of U.S. Treasury sanctions is having a potent effect, suggesting that the conventional wisdom may be wrong.

These new, targeted financial measures are to traditional sanctions what Super Glue is to Elmer’s Glue-All. That is, they really stick. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt doesn’t even like to call them sanctions, preferring the term “law enforcement measures.” Explains Stuart Levey, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence: “Sanctions are scoffed at. They have a bad history.”

Authority for the new sanctions, as with so many other policy weapons, comes from the USA Patriot Act, which in Section 311 authorizes Treasury to designate foreign financial institutions that are of “primary money laundering concern.” Once a foreign bank is so designated, it is effectively cut off from the U.S. financial system. It can’t clear dollars; it can’t have transactions with U.S. financial institutions; it can’t have correspondent relationships with American banks.

The new measures work thanks to the hidden power of globalization: Because all the circuits of the global financial system are inter-wired, the U.S. quarantine effectively extends to all major banks around the world. As Levey observed in a recent speech, the impact of this little-noticed provision of the Patriot Act “has been more powerful than many thought possible.” [emphasis added]

Treasury applied the new tools to North Korea in September 2005, when it put a bank in Macao called Banco Delta Asia on the blacklist. There was no legal proceeding — just a notice in the Federal Register summarizing the evidence: Banco Delta Asia had been providing illicit financial services to North Korean government agencies and front companies for more than 20 years, according to the Treasury notice. The little Macao bank had helped the North Koreans feed counterfeit $100 bills into circulation, had laundered money from drug deals and had financed cigarette smuggling. North Korea “pays a fee to Banco Delta Asia for financial access to the banking system with little oversight or control,” Treasury alleged.

Wham! The international payments window shut almost instantly on Pyongyang’s pet bank. Transactions with U.S. entities stopped, but the Treasury announcement also put other countries on notice to beware of Banco Delta Asia. The Macao banking authorities, realizing that they needed the oxygen of the international financial system to survive, took regulatory action on their own and froze the bank’s roughly $24 million in North Korean assets. And around Asia, banks began looking for possible links to North Korean front companies — and shutting them down.

A similar financial squeeze is being applied to Iran. Here again, the impact has come from the way private financial institutions have reacted to public pressure from Treasury. “As banks do their risk-reward analysis, they must now take into account the very serious risk of doing business in Iran, and what the risks would be if they were found to be part of a terrorist or proliferation transaction,” says Kimmitt.

Treasury began squeezing Iran last September, when it accused Bank Saderat, one of the largest government-owned banks, of financing terrorism by funneling $50 million to Hezbollah and Hamas since 2001. The Treasury order cut the bank off from any access to the U.S financial system, direct or indirect. A similar ban was imposed in January on Bank Sepah, which Treasury alleged was a key intermediary for Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization, the agency that oversees the country’s ballistic missile program.

Meanwhile, top Treasury officials began visiting with bankers and finance ministers around the world, warning them to be careful about their dealings with Iranian companies that might covertly be supporting terrorism or weapons proliferation. This whispering campaign was enough to convince most big foreign banks in Europe and Japan to back away from Iran.

The new sanctions are toxic because they effectively limit a country’s access to the global ATM. In that sense, they impose — at last — a real price on countries such as North Korea and Iran that have blithely defied U.N. resolutions on proliferation. “What’s the goal?” asks Levey. “To create an internal debate about whether these policies [of defiance] make sense. And that’s happening in Iran. People with business sense realize that this conduct makes it hard to continue normal business relationships.”

Thank you, Patriot Act.

Cross-posted at American Future.

The use of political rhetoric has played an important role in the recent nuclear deal with North Korea.

In the early years of his presidency, Bush’s rhetoric was often coarse, and sometimes straight-up nasty. Talking about North Korea, he famously referred to the nation back in 2002 as a part of the “Axis of Evil,” and he labeled its leader, Kim Jong Il, a “tyrant,” a “pygmy,” and “a spoiled child at a dinner table.” The effect of such rhetoric was disastrous. As the White House resorted to undiplomatic name-calling, animosity and mistrust grew between Washington and Pyongyang.

The North Korean government pridefully responded to the Bush administration’s bad language with some harsh words (and some counterproductive actions) of its own. Kim Jong Il called Bush a “dictator,” and he threatened (in 2003) to pull out of ongoing negotiations unless Washington changed its tone.

The appointment of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State in early 2005 was the first step in bridging the divide between the two countries. Upon taking office, Rice said that, in regards to North Korea, “the time for diplomacy is now.” She urged officials in the Bush administration to take a less hostile approach to Pyongyang and to be careful not to insult Kim Jong Il’s government.

Mr. Bush, in his State of the Union address in 2002, famously included North Korea in an “axis of evil,” along with Iraq and Iran, and Ms. Rice in January, before she became secretary of state, identified North Korea as an “outpost of tyranny.”

No such comments, however, have emanated from US officials in Washington since then, with the US making pointed statements that it respected the North’s sovereignty and had no intention of attacking the country. (The Christian Science Monitor)

The use of diplomatic, rather than hostile, language seems to have had an effect. Back in the fall of 2005, when an initial deal was reached (it eventually fell through over some technicalities) with North Korea, some of the credit seems to be due to the use of more polite rhetoric. An editorial in The New York Times, after the accord was announced, argued that only when “Washington abandoned the confrontational tactics and name-calling associated with its former top antiproliferation official, John Bolton, and gave serious negotiation a chance” was a breakthrough finally achieved.

Read the rest of the post at Foreign Policy Watch.

I bet that John Bolton is in hot water with the White House. Talking yesterday about the recent nuclear arms agreement reached with North Korea, Bolton said: “It’s a bad, disappointing deal, and the best thing you can say about it is that it will probably fall apart.”

Whoops. That’s probably not what the Bush administration had in mind for him to say. Indeed, during the President’s press conference today, an uncomfortable moment ensued when a reporter asked Bush to explain Bolton’s comment. “I strongly disagree - strongly disagree with his assessment,” Bush responded awkwardly.

Has the trend and tone of news events been broken? Is a deal in the offing with North Korea on nuclear weapons? It sounds that way.

The New York Times:

The United States and four other nations reached a tentative agreement to provide North Korea with roughly $400 million in fuel oil and aid, in return for the North’s starting to disable its nuclear facilities and allow nuclear inspectors back into the country, according to American officials who have reviewed a proposed text of the announcement.

While the accord sets a 60-day deadline for North Korea to accomplish those first steps toward disarmament, it leaves until an undefined moment in the future — and to another negotiation — the actual removal of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the fuel that it has manufactured to produce them.

In essence, if the North agrees to the deal, a country that only four months ago conducted its first nuclear test will have traded away its ability to produce new nuclear fuel in return for immediate energy and other aid. But it would still hold on, for now, to an arsenal that American intelligence officials believe contains a half-dozen or more nuclear weapons or the fuel that is their essential ingredient.

The BBC:

The BBC’s Daniel Griffiths in Beijing says the deal has yet to be approved by the leaders of each country involved.

Even then it would only mark the first step in what is likely to be a very long, slow process with further delays almost inevitable, he says.

The current round of talks - aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear programme - began on Thursday with a renewed sense of optimism from all sides.

But negotiations faltered over the amount of energy aid the North was demanding in exchange for disarming.

Reports suggest North Korea is seeking large-scale deliveries of heavy fuel oil in return for shutting down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor.

So — unless this falls apart — it indicates talks can be useful.