Hope is not a plan

According to South Korean officials, talks are occurring with the aim of the two Koreas fielding a unified Korean Olympic team in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

The BBC story

As ever in dealing with North Korea, there are no guarantees. But it would be pretty impressive to have a unified Olympic team made up of athletes whose countries are still technically at war with each other.

An article in the January 20, 2006 issue of Science magazine describes major revisions planned by Robert Laughlin at KAIST, the Korea Advanced Institue of Science and Technology in Taejon. Take special note of this paragraph about a budget increase:

...it will allow the university to raise the fraction of foreign faculty to 15% and aim to teach all graduate courses in English by 2010, among other changes. (Currently, about one in three are in English.) "We're trying a bold experiment to internationalize studnets," Laughlin says. "It's what parents want."

Though it wouldn't make sense to have American college students learn science in any language other than English, it would be great if college programs had comprehensive humanities segments that were taught in other major world languages. Immersive historical and cultural study sections on Russia, China, Korea, Latin America, South Asia and the Arab world would not be unwelcome.

The Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China may be discontinued as an administrative entity, according to this Chosun Ilbo article. At its creation fifty years ago, Yanbian was 62% Korean, but this has declined to 33%, despite a somewhat more relaxed policy allowing second children for ethnic minorities. The cutoff for having an autonomous prefecture for an ethnic minority in China is 30%.

Apparently, Koreans are choosing to go to other regions of China where Korean companies are setting up shop, as well as moving to South Korea.

This exodus from Yanbian and the possible loss of its autonomous status are notable inasmuch as this area represents roughly the northern half of the ancient Korean kingdom of Koguryo, from which the contemporary name "Korea" is derived.

One of many propaganda voices I check in with occasionally is the website of the Korean Central News Agency, the English- and Spanish-language voice of totalitarian North Korea.

It's an odd pastiche of 1950s Communist pronouncements, such as "Rodong Sinmun Calls for Realizing Great Alliance against Conservative Forces" and "Koreans Urged to Turn Out in Struggle for National Reunification." The actual text is even more reminiscent of the 50s:

Pyongyang, January 23 (KCNA) -- Greater efforts are being directed to increasing coal production in the coal-mining industry in the DPRK. Officials of the Ministry of Coal Industry go deep among workers to concentrate efforts on coal production, each taking in charge of big coal mines including the Anju Area Coal Complex.

Thanks to the devotion of the coal producers in a pilot for building an economic power, larger amount of coal is being provided to the thermal power plants.

I don't know what inter-pit tunneling emulation is, nor how it's a kind of socialist emulation, but there you go.

This is not a translation problem, but for that fact that they're not just translating into English, but into English as spoken by Stalinists.

However, a release titled "U.S. Arms Build-Up for War against DPRK under Fire" told me something I didn't know -- a squadron of F-22 Raptors is being deployed to Kadena Air Base in Japan. The official Air Force news site confirms this, saying that this is the first overseas deployment for the Raptor. I hadn't realized the Raptor was ready for action.

If you read enough of this stuff, you'll see bits like this:

Yehia Zakaria Khairullah, chairman of the Egyptian Committee for the Study of the Juche Idea, said at the seminar that the army and the people of the DPRK single-mindedly united around Kim Jong Il, the Songun brilliant commander, have registered great successes in building a great prosperous powerful socialist nation last year. He expressed belief that the DPRK would achieve fresh success in their efforts to bring about prosperity this year, too, thanks to the Songun policy.

If you're confused, that's okay.

"Juche", meaning "main body", is the official name for former leader Kim Il Sung's version of Stalinism with all the serial numbers filed off. Theoretically, the chief tenets of Juche are:

• Independence of the people in thought and politics, self-sufficiency in economics and defense
• Policy must reflect the will of the masses
• Methods used to enact policy must be tailored to the specific country
• The key work of policy is making people into better Communists, including training absolute loyalty to the leadership

If you were reading closely, you'll notice that the policy requires absolute obedience and freedom of thought. You can imagine which one has won out over time. Also, Juche has never quite managed self-sufficiency for North Korea, which was continuously supported economically from its inception until the Soviet collapse in 1991, at which point the first famines struck. North Korea now receives outside assistance from the very countries it preaches Juche to, which is rather like taking economic advice from the person you're giving debt counseling to.

"Songun" is North Korea's current "military first" policy, which has very little to do with the revolution and a lot to do with keeping Kim Jong Il in power. As long as the military isn't going hungry, it matters very little to the people in charge that little North Korean kids are growing up blond from malnutrition.

You can read more about the history and current practice of Juche on its Wikipedia page.

The ever-update Korean Central News Agency of the DPRK tells us that:

Alexsander Kempshall, chairman of the Central Committee of the New Communist Party of Britain, in his key speech said that socialism is now successfully being built in the DPRK. He stressed that though socialism collapsed in some countries, Korean socialism is emerging victorious.

Meanwhile, reality tells us that 70% of North Koreans are starving.

So successful socialism leads to starvation? I'll sit that one out.

The BBC, mirroring a report from the South Korean Yonhap news agency, reports that the North Korean government's recent reversal on the policy of holding family members hostage has not gone over well with its diplomatic staff.

According to the report, the DPRK had a long-standing policy of only allowing its overseas diplomats to take one child with them. This policy -- a protection against diplomats defecting -- stopped in 2002. Now the DPRK has reissued the directive, requiring its diplomats to send all but one child back to North Korea. The shocker, as reported by Yonhap, is that so far, overseas diplomatic staff have refused to comply.

Yonhap's source said opposition to the move was particularly strong among North Koreans living in China, the North's closest ally.

The reports said that diplomats in China had yet to send a single child back to North Korea, prompting the despatch of a senior official from Pyongyang to Beijing to investigate.

One imagines diplomats in the DPRK are very well aware of how things work in their country, and would be hesitant to relinquish control over their own families if they could help it.

KCNA had no comment on this reluctance on the part of North Korean diplomats to follow a directive handed out by the great leader, although it did contain a "special bulletin" issued by the U.S. Group for the Study of Songun Politics on the anniversary of the birth of Kim senior.

A little looking found this Geocities page dedicated to the group. Largely a mirror of propaganda from KCNA, it also features two propaganda posters of North Korean missiles destroying the capital, which seems mildly treasonous coming from an American group. I don't know enough propaganda Korean to translate the posters without a dictionary handy, sadly.

BBC article

For the first time in half a decade IAEA inspectors are on the ground in North Korea, ready to begin talks about shutting down and sealing the Yongbyon nuclear facility. This step was overdue per the terms of the agreement North Korea made in Beijing, which said that the shutdown would start by mid-April. Other key points of that agreement:

• UN inspectors to be allowed entry to verify the shutdown
• North Korea to list its nuclear programs and materials derived from them to date
• North Korea to start normalizing its diplomatic ties with the US and Japan, and begin talks with South Korea

In return for all these things, North Korea will receive an initial shipment of 50,000 tons of fuel oil, upped to 1,000,000 tons when Yongbyon is completely shut down. South Korea has also said it will restart food aid now that the shutdown appears to actually be happening.

So why the action now? The likely motivation to move is our release of $25 million in North Korean funds held in a bank in Macao.

Consider just how wrecked the North Korean economy is at all levels, that this amount of money is enough to induce Kim Jong-il to hold up peace talks that he, apparently, was otherwise willing to at least pretend to move on. Obviously, the money's going straight to him, but its importance suggests that perhaps he's unable to imbezzle that money anywhere else out of the destitute economy of the DPRK. Either that, or his ego couldn't stand the prestige hit of having his funds frozen.

US envoy Christopher Hill had a few understandably cautious words about all this:

"I think the next couple weeks are going to be a very important period for the six-party process," Hill told reporters Monday. He expects the reactor to be shut down within a few weeks.

Here's the DPRK's official take on the funds issue:

Pyongyang, June 25 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry gave the following answer to a question put by KCNA Monday as regards the settlement of the issue of the funds frozen in the Banco Delta Asia in Macao:
The funds frozen at the above-said bank were finally wired as demanded by the DPRK side, thus settling the controversial issue of the frozen funds.
It has thus become possible to use the de-frozen funds for improving the standard of people's living and humanitarian purposes, as planned.
The DPRK took a serious view of the issue of de-freezing the funds not because of that amount of money but the action taken to freeze the funds was a vivid manifestation of the hostile policy toward the DPRK.
This is also in line with the principle of "action for action" confirmed by the six parties. Now that the issue of de-freezing the funds has been settled, the DPRK, too, will start implementing the February 13 agreement on the principle of "action for action."
As part of it, the DPRK will hold a discussion on the suspension of the operations of nuclear facilities, its verification and monitoring with the working delegation of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Pyongyang from June 26.

al Jazeera article
CNN article

Regular rail service has begun between South and North Korea. For the moment, this is a single line with a single cargo train set to carry materials into the Bongdong area where a number of South Korean companies have production facilities in a special "industrial zone" at Kaesong. This BBC article discusses the new train, somewhat erroneously indicating that South Korean companies have gone to the North for "cheaper labor." As I understand it, the many costs associated with doing business within the quirky and odd confines of the North Korean industrial zone mean that it is actually more costly and less efficient to operate there. Companies that set up facilities in Kaesong did so with the understanding that they were acting to promote South-North links, rather than for strict economic benefits.

The South Korean government is looking for additional rail links, as well as passenger service between South and North. The former may come soon, but the latter seems less likely, at least as a regular thing. That said, it was possible back in the heyday of German separation for West Germans to travel into the East, as long as they were willing to surrender their passport for a while and sit through questioning and other indignities.

KCNA has no comment on the rail line just yet, although it does tell us that "The National Reunification Institute released an indictment on December 9 branding traitor Ri Hoe Chang as a fascist man-killer, separatist and confrontational maniac, kingpin of irregularities and corruption and human scum."

"Kingpin of irregularities" is an amazing title. Something to aspire to for the rest of us, perhaps. Incidentally, Lee Hoi Chang was the second-place finisher in the 2002 South Korean presidential election, finishing just over 2 percentage points behind current president Noh Moo-Hyun.