Yesterday was a busy news day on multiple fronts. There were a few developments in the situation on & around the Korean peninsula.
According to the NY Times, after worldwide condemnation from almost every country on the planet for setting off a nuclear weapon, North Korea launched three short-range missiles. More troubling though are reports that have American spy satellites detecting steam plumes and activity around North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear faciltiy, which may indicate they've restarted the processing of spent fuel rods to create weapons grade plutonium. There's also reports this entire mess might be "palace maneuvering" to set up Kim Jong-il's son for the reigns of power.
So I thought I might do something that discussed the recent news, as well as gave a little peek inside North Korea. Looking at the images & videos that come out of the country is both fascinating & maddening. Especially when you see Kim Jong-il's water slide, which he & the other elites must enjoy while their people starve not too far away from it.
A few years ago CNN broadcast a special which featured video smuggled out of North Korea. It was called "Undercover in the Secret State." The conditions presented in the documentary footage are horrible, but one incident I've always remembered from it involved starving women just trying to get a ride on a train. About 30 seconds into the video below, a woman is beaten by North Korean officials because she didn't have a "travel permit" to go to another town.
But why feed your people when you can build nuclear weapons instead, and fuck with the world? The current threat from North Korean nukes is not (at least not at the moment) from a missile hitting Los Angeles. But what if these idiots were to sell nuclear material to al-Qaeda or some other terrorist group? They've already reportedly sold missile tech to Iran & Syria. Yeah, the possibility of nuke sales might be unlikely, but should the world be willing to take that chance? That's the $64,000 question.
However, all of this might just be maneuvering to keep power. All of this could be connected to the stroke Kim Jong-il is believed to have suffered last year.
American officials say they believe that Mr. Kim, in rapidly declining health, is maneuvering to make his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, his successor, perhaps after a period in which his brother-in-law, Jang Seong-taek, would serve as a regent.
The nuclear test and the test-firing of six short-range missiles, the American officials said, must be understood within the context of this internal struggle to extend the Kim dynasty’s rule for another generation.
But they warn that the information coming out of North Korea is frustratingly vague and inconclusive. Mr. Kim, officials noted, skipped a recent meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov. Chatter about the health of Mr. Kim has spiked in Beijing and in Seoul, where North Korea-watching is an obsession. Even a recent official photo of Mr. Kim, which shows him alive but feeble, is open to conflicting interpretations, an official said: it may be that North Korea wants to show that he is still in control, or it may be that it is signaling that the end is near and appealing for help in a perilous transition.
Among the latest developments in North Korea's nuclear mess:
South Korea had wavered on joining the initiative for fear of provoking the North. But on Tuesday, President Lee Myung-bak, who came to power with a promise to take a tougher approach toward the North, spoke with Mr. Obama about the North Korean threat and the South’s decision to join the effort.
On the phone, Mr. Lee emphasized to Mr. Obama that the United States and its allies "should not repeat the pattern" of "rewarding" North Korea’s provocations with dialogue and economic aid, as they did after the North’s first nuclear test in October 2006.
- North Korea responded to this by threatening to cross the 38th parallel.
"As declared to the world, our revolutionary forces will consider the full participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative by the Lee Myung-bak group of traitors as a declaration of war against us," the North Korean military mission said, referring to the South Korean president, in a statement carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)... The PSI allows participating countries to interdict and seize ships and planes suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction. Pyongyang views the exercise as a violation of the Korean War armistice, which bans any attempt of naval blockage in the region.
The North's military "will be no longer bound to the armistice agreement" that ended the 1950-53 war, and the peninsula will be returned to the state of war if the armistice becomes ineffective, the mission said.
With the armistice now ineffective, the North can no more guarantee the safety of U.S. and South Korean naval vessels and other commercial vessels sailing along the inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea, the mission said.
- In Japan, a defense panel for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is proposing a change in policy that would allow preemptive strikes by Japan's Self-Defense Forces if the country believed an attack was imminent.
As for the United Nations, Ambassador Susan Rice told reporters North Korea will "
pay a price" for their actions. The
Security Council, along with representatives from South Korea & Japan, met for 90 minutes on Tuesday to discuss ways to toughen existing sanctions, as well as possible new ones.
The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said after the meeting that a "good start" had been made but the discussions would take "some time".
"We are thinking through complicated issues that require very careful consideration," she said. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke earlier to Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, as well her counterparts from China, South Korea, Japan and Australia.
The Obama administration said it was pleased with the decisive reaction so far, especially from Russia and China. But US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly also indicated it was not too late for North Korea.
But there is a question of what options are open to the Obama Administration. New restrictions on investment & trade with North Korea will require the support of China to both get through the Security Council & have any teeth. If the Chinese are really ready to take the gloves off, their banks could also freeze about $2 billion in North Korean assets. And then there's interdiction; stopping & searching every ship that enters & leaves North Korea. It's an option already available by virtue of 2006's Security Council Resolution 1718, but as seen above in North Korea's reaction to South Korea joining the Proliferation Security Initiative, it could ratchet up the tensions & bring us a step closer to armed conflict.
When asked whether Mr. Obama would seek to intercept North Korean shipping, a step that could paralyze the country’s trade, a senior administration official said, "That’s getting ahead of ourselves."
Another senior official, however, said, "Other than having the Chinese cut off their oil, it might be the only step that would show them we are serious."
Over at the Wall Street Journal, they have an interesting story about how a George Mason University grad student by the name of Curtis Melvin, along with others, have been using Google Earth, news reports, and eyewitness accounts to create a "democratized intelligence" service.
"Here is one of the most closed countries in the world and yet, through this effort on the Internet by a bunch of strangers, the country's visible secrets are being published," says Martyn Williams, a Tokyo-based technology journalist who recently sent Mr. Melvin the locations of about 30 North Korean lighthouses.
Among the images & structures they've discovered:
The image above depicts an area covered with mounds. It's speculated these mounds are actually mass graves for some of the more than 2 million people that starved to death in the famine of the 1990s.
The structures in the picture are just a small portion of a North Korean prison camp called "Camp 16." The entire camp measures 18 miles by 16 miles (four times the size of the District of Columbia). No ground level pictures of the prison camp have ever made it out of the country.
The first image depicts a compound on the outskirts of Pyongyang for Kim Jong-il and other North Korean elites (
click on it to "embiggen" and get other details). There's also a pool with an elaborate water slide.
This is Kim Jong-il's personal golf course, which must either be spectacular or really sucks, since North Korean state media claims Kim Jong-il aced five holes and finished 38 under par the first time he golfed.
A mysterious project near the eastern city of Wonsan appears to be a runway that goes through a mountain and is perhaps a future air base. At present, the strip is much wider than needed for cars, but not big enough for large planes.
About a month ago, Foreign Policy magazine had a photo essay from documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve. He entered North Korea under the guise of being a businessman looking to open a chocolate factory. Even though he was being monitored by minders, van Houtryve was able to take pictures around Pyongyang.
Uneasy Street:
Van Houtryve arrived in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, during a normal work week in February. He found its main thoroughfare entirely empty. "Nobody’s out. No couples with babies, nobody taking a walk," van Houtryve says. "You could wait 10 minutes before you ever saw a car." Only a few old Mercedes—the exclusive privilege of top bureaucrats—cruise Pyongyang’s streets. North Korea has just a few hundred thousand cars for more than 20 million people. The country has only 1,000 miles of paved road.
Shop Girl:
This is shopping in North Korea. The clerk sits in the dark, unheated special store, waiting to turn on the lights for foreigners, the only permitted customers. "She’s wearing a ski jacket or parka; the rest of this time they’re sitting there with the lights off, freezing," van Houtryve says. The goods—toys, televisions, and the like—are imported from China. The store only accepts euros.
Collectivist Commute:
When van Houtryve approached North Koreans, they walked off or averted their eyes. He never once photographed a smile. Even children ran away from him. "They’d turn and notice me and immediately bolt off—as if a wolf had come up to them." Pyongyang’s somber trams are old East German models, giving the city a Soviet feel two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Cult Of Personality:
In van Houtryve’s hotel room, propaganda played in an endless loop on the three TV channels. North Korean biographers, striving to make Kim his more revered father’s equal, insist a swallow foretold his birth and attribute a spate of superhuman characteristics to him—the ability to manipulate time among them. Defectors have described him as arthritic and illiterate.
One other fascinating peek inside North Korea is National Geographic's "Inside North Korea" from a few years ago. It is also especially interesting since host Lisa Ling's sister is now a prisoner inside North Korea. A June 4th "trial" date has been set for American journalists Laura Ling & Euna Lee.