Quotes of the Day:
"The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do"
- Marcus Aurelius
"In the future, we should anticipate seeing more hybrid wars where conventional warfare, irregular warfare, asymmetric warfare, and information warfare all blend together, creating a very complex and challenging situation to the combatants; therefore it will require military forces to posses hybrid capabilities, which might help deal with hybrid threats."
- Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono
“Don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world."
-Colin Powell
1. North Korea answers phone, world yawns
2. US urges full implementation of UNSC sanctions on North Korea
3. UN report notes North Korea's continued nuclear, missile programs
4. ‘North rehearsed submarine attacks on South during 2018 peace talks’
5. FM Chung says S. Korea committed to global role for post-pandemic era
6. Moon tries to fan flame of warmer relations with North
7. N. Korea bolsters ideological education in military following restart of inter-Korean hotline
8. Teachers in Yanggang Province mobilized for the potato harvest
9. North Korea Trades Scorn for Flattery to Win Benefits From Moon
10. 'Escape from Mogadishu' selected as S. Korea's Oscar entry
11. A renewed chance for peace in Korea
12. Selling Slavery: South Korean investors’ $900,000 Kaesong lobbying campaign
13. When China rules the world
14. Blackouts in China Deprive North Korean Factory Workers of Hot Water and Light
1. North Korea answers phone, world yawns
Yawning could be good. It is too bad we cannot take a long term approach with north Korea. Yes, yawning will probably make the regime continue to lash out to call attention to itself and make sure it remains on everyone's radar. But if we really want to destroy his political warfare strategy and blackmail diplomacy we need more yawning and less reacting over time until he finally gets the message that his strategy has failed. Unfortunately politics, agendas, and visions (especially the peace agenda vision) in Seoul or DC will not approve of yawning.
North Korea answers phone, world yawns
Cross-DMZ hotline reconnections are no game changer, but South Korea has little choice but to dance to the North’s tune
SEOUL – So, the game is back in play. North Korea restored cross-border hotlines on Monday, raising hopes among some members of Seoul’s political class for improved relations and even “high-level” meetings before the year-end.
South Korean officials made contact with their North Korean counterparts on Monday morning, Yonhap News Agency reported, via two hotlines: one military, one Red Cross.
It was the first time in 55 days that the North had responded to the South’s calls.
Via “stable management of the communication lines and swift resumption of dialogue, the government hopes to begin and advance substantive discussions on improving inter-Korean relations,” Seoul’s Unification Ministry said.
Separately, Unification Minister Lee In-young said South Korea will push to arrange high-level talks with North Korea before 2021 comes to a close.
Hotlines had been cut off in 2020 amid tensions over the flight of propaganda balloons across the border by activists in the South, which infuriated Pyongyang. They were restored in July, but after the South Korean and US militaries conducted summer military drills, the North Korean side stopped responding to South Korean communications.
Monday’s resumption of calls had been earlier signaled by both Kim Jong Un and his high-profile sister Kim Yo Jong. Cynics might say the hotlines have become a puppet string for the North Koreans to jerk when they want something from their southern counterparts – but what Pyongyang wants from Seoul is unclear at this juncture.
Certainly, the news will send no tsunami of excitement coursing through the jaded community of Korea watchers who have seen change-defying North Korea make these kinds of gesture so many, many times before.
Kim Jong Un meets South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Moon’s biggest ambition has been inter-Korean engagement. Photo: The Blue House
And certainly, it is a sign of the utterly dire state of relations between two states that have been separated since the Korean War wound in 1953 that such a low-cost, low-energy move by the North has animated pro-engagers in the South.
Where good news is great news
After all, South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s Blue House has a hotline to Kim’s State Affairs Commission, and there is, contrary to popular belief, email contact between the two states.
But for the single-term president, whose formerly bright star is rapidly fading as his term comes to a close – he leaves office next May – Monday’s news could be electrifying.
Though he has done an impressive job of managing Covid-19, while shepherding his export-dependent economy through the worst of the unprecedented pandemic and maintaining an alliance with the US despite the storms of the Donald Trump presidency – Moon’s biggest ambition has been inter-Korean engagement.
That ambition has been wilting even since Trump walked out of a summit with Kim in Hanoi in 2019. Optimists had hoped that Kim’s offer at the summit might translate into a limited deal, which would help the two states build trust, and expand. Pessimists had been convinced that North Korea would never denuclearize, so the whole exercise was a farce.
Seoul, heavily dependent upon its strategic alliance with the much more powerful Washington, is largely a slave to US policy on North Korea. To nobody’s surprise, North-South relations shriveled.
That was hardly a political disaster for Seoul. Nobody is in a hurry to push reunification – a high-risk, hugely expensive end goal for which there are few plans and no process. And, the generation who have family north of the DMZ are dying out. Few young South Koreans pay much attention to the country to their direct north.
Yet Moon keeps the light shining. He has said he is ready to engage North Korea up to his “final day” in office, having been visibly gratified by his engagements with Kim in the summits of 2018.
Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump walk together at the Sofitel Legend Metropole hotel in Hanoi. Hopes of a breakthrough in their talks came to nothing. Photo: AFP / KCNA via KNS
And even within the limited wriggle room strategic realities offer him, Moon has much to play for.
He had hoped to reconnect inter-Korean road and rail links, reconnecting South Korea to the Eurasian continent for the first time since the end of the Korean War. That was doomed by the Hanoi summit.
He subsequently offered humanitarian relief and vaccine support. That was rejected as an angry North Korea, bruised by the failure of Kim-Trump diplomacy and living next door to Covid-struck China, withdrew from international engagement, sheltered in its collective bunker and locked all entrances.
Prior to Monday’s news, various straws have been clutched at by Seoul officialdom – many of which prompted Korean wonks to shake their heads.
There had been high hopes during the Tokyo Olympics Games that the event would provide a platform for a resumption of talks. But, citing Covid-19, North Korea did not attend. Ditto, North Korea will not be present at the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics.
So what is left?
Though he is now in the “lame duck” period of his term, Moon may want one, last summit. During that he could – feasibly – reach a limited deal. That would then be ratified by the National Assembly, where his party has a majority. That process would weld his successor to whatever Kim and Moon might agree upon.
Meanwhile, seen through Pyongyang’s prism, the timing may be right. It knows that Seoul’s freedom of action is limited by Washington, but can feasibly win some benefits.
Kim’s conundrums
A Northern outreach to South Korea as the world awakens from Covid-19 makes sense, given that the situations regarding the two other key players on the North’s limited geopolitical periphery are not promising.
People at a railway station in Seoul on September 28 watch a television news broadcast showing file footage of a North Korean missile test. Photo: AFP / Jung Yeon-je
Globally isolated North Korea must ride two tigers. It suffers from over-dependence upon China, as well as tense relations with Washington.
While China trades with and invests in North Korea, the latter’s lack of partners grants Beijing massive leverage – leverage that irks Pyongyang. As a result, trade takes place on Chinese terms and investment is largely low-end resource extraction.
Relations with the US are problematic for different reasons. Relations are poor, but that does not mean contact is cut. Asia Times understands that there have been talks between North Korea and the Joe Biden-era US, behind closed doors at an undisclosed location in Europe. But there has been no agreement.
This could explain the recent barrage of missile tests, signaling Pyongyang’s displeasure.
For Biden’s White House, North Korea is a distant priority. The aging president is under multi-dimensional domestic pressures, which likely preclude overseas peacemaking. But even before Biden’s woes were ignited by the Afghan debacle, Korea watchers were disappointed by the signal he sent to Pyongyang with the assignment of a special envoy.
The envoy, Sung Kim, is an extremely smart, widely respected expert on Korean affairs. But he has a day job: He is Washington’s ambassador to Jakarta. Moreover, as a diplomat, he falls well outside the core Biden brain trust.
A source close to Moon told Asia Times that the hope, in Seoul, had been for a player at the policy level in the Democratic Party to be appointed to the North Korea brief. That would have required North Korea to appoint a similarly high-level counterparty, which could have put wheels under diplomatic engagement.
The lack of leverage
The challenge North Korea presents is a near-impossible one for democratic governments, such as those which hold power in Seoul, Washington and Tokyo to respond effectively to.
Sung Kim is highly regarded for his expertise on North Korea but has other responsibilities. Photo: AFP / Noel Celis
How do you deal with a regime which cares more for the dignity of its leadership and the security of its elite than the well-being of its populace? Where do your levers lie?
An obvious one is the military. But the perils implicit in operations against a modern Sparta like North Korea – which possesses a functional nuclear deterrent – are unthinkable.
Another obvious answer would be to support, fund, train and arm a resistance movement to overthrow the regime from within. That too is unthinkable.
So secure is Kim’s fortress state, and so deeply entrenched and so extensive are its state surveillance mechanisms, that while there are believed to have been at least two military coup attempts in the 1990s, there is minimal likelihood of operatives evading capture or death.
And it would need to be operatives, as there is no space in the official North Korean political landscape for anti-Kim voices.
What about pressure tactics? North Korea is one of the most heavily sanctioned states on earth, but enjoys an economic pressure release valve: China.
While China does not favor North Korea’s military provocations, it certainly does not want to see the country wobble and release potential instability over China’s border. Moreover, at a time when Beijing-Washington are increasingly aligned against one another, it seems unlikely the China will turn the screws on North Korea at US request.
So for Seoul, and for the global North, what remains is diplomacy. But diplomacy with North Korea has been largely fruitless.
The natural outcomes of diplomacy – political and trade/commercial ties – are virtually non-existent. While a number of Western democracies have established tiny missions in Pyongyang, political linkages remain minimal. When did you last hear of a senior European or North American official visiting Pyongyang?
A worker on a production line for cakes in Pyongyang. North Korea has no major brands or industry apart from military production. Photo: AFP / Kim Won Jin
And trade and commerce is barely a trickle.
Many claim that sanctions explain this – but foreign companies and individuals that did business with North Korea prior to the heaviest sanctions being enacted hardly prospered. Indeed, multiple firms in multiple sectors – European investment banks, Swiss watchmakers, Egyptian telcos, South Korean conglomerates – ended up burned.
The resultant lack of trade and investment leaves the Global North with virtually no commercial or technological leverage.
The incredible non-collapsing state
Many who do not study North Korea don’t get this. Your correspondent recalls briefing a senior editor at a British newspaper on the lack of resistance to the Kim regime. He simply could not comprehend that there was none.
Another well-educated Brit asked me whether the Kims are “mad.” In fact, the Kims are very shrewd, calculating politicians who play their weak hand in international affairs brilliantly.
After all, North Korea is a black hole in otherwise industrially sizzling, technologically surging Northeast Asia. It has produced not a single international brand nor any cultural export of global note.
It is led by one of the most globally recognized Asian faces on Planet Earth, but what makes it relevant in global affairs is its massive army, nuclear arsenal and ever-improving missile technologies.
I have acquaintances who have met all three Kims – the late state founder Kim Il Sung, his late son Kim Jong Il and his grandson and current leader, Kim Jong Un. They all say the same things about all three Kims – they are both smart and charismatic.
Yes, they preside over a system that offers its citizens virtually no rights or freedoms, while operating some of the darkest penal institutions on earth. Moreover, locals have minimal chances of overcoming class barriers and live in one of East Asia’s poorest nations.
But the Kims do provide stability.
And that is important, for it is something that both the punditry and the general Western public fail to grasp.
Since the early 1990s, a number of experts have predicted a North Korean collapse. Their predictions, it is safe to say, were wishful thinking. And beyond that small circle, there is widespread and comforting – almost fairy-tale – belief among many natives of liberal democracies that authoritarian governance is somehow doomed to fall.
North Korea and China both give the lie to that.
Another complication is any seismic change could be catastrophic, unleashing risk across the heart of the world’s third most important zone of economic activity. So any transformation that does occur – such as the creeping advance of basic, market-capitalist practices across the nation since the 1990s – is best kept to a gradual pace.
North Korea has built up extreme resistance to outside influence. And it is not about to implode at any time in the near future. This means that what we have now is what we are going to keep getting.
This is a reality the wider world has to deal with and a reality South Korea has to live with.
Granted, some may argue that the South is being jerked around by North Korean puppet masters, is rewarding bad behavior and is playing a game it cannot win.
Still, for South Korea, any engagement that opens dialogue is a plus.
Talking holds the potential of doing some good – such as dispatching humanitarian aid. For prosperous South Korea, a G10 economy, such aid is low-cost.
And promotion of the status quo is a hedge against the possibility of new tensions arising – amid the post-Covid era and a regional arms race – that could impact Seoul’s capital markets.
Many Korea watchers will have sighed or yawned when they saw Monday’s news.
But the massive stakes in play are why pro-engagers in Seoul get animated when their North Korean counterparties do something as minimalist as answering a telephone. Good news and positive developments are so thin on the ground, anything that is not bad news is cause for excitement.
2. US urges full implementation of UNSC sanctions on North Korea
I think people forget that a key line of effort in the Biden Administration Korea policy is the full implementation of all relevant UNSC resolutions. Who (other than Kim Jong-un) can justify opposing that?
US urges full implementation of UNSC sanctions on North Korea
A boy watches a screen showing a photo from the April 27, 2018, inter-Korean summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the Unification Observation Post in Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea, Oct. 4. AP-Yonhap
A spokesman for the U.S. State Department on Monday stressed the need to fully implement U.N. Security Council sanctions on N. Korea while also urging the North to comply with U.N. resolutions that prohibit the North from testing or developing weapons of mass destruction.
Ned Price made the remark after North Korea criticized the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) for convening an emergency meeting last week to discuss its recent missile launches.
"We remain concerned by the DPRK's repeated violations of multiple Security Council resolutions and we underscore the need for both full compliance with Security Council resolutions and full implementation of all existing U.N. sanctions," the spokesman said in a telephonic press conference.
DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki echoed concerns over North Korea's recent missile launches.
"We, of course, condemn any illicit missile launches, which are destabilizing to the region and to the international community," she said in a White House press briefing.
The UNSC meeting, held Friday in New York, followed a series of missile launches by the North that Pyongyang claims had included the testing of a newly developed hypersonic missile and an anti-aircraft missile.
The U.S. said the country and its allies were still assessing the recent launches to confirm the exact type of missiles launched by the North, but still condemned the missile launches as violations of multiple UNSC resolutions.
"We're consulting closely with our allies both in capitals and in New York ... as we assess the recent events and as we determine next steps," said Psaki.
The North is prohibited from testing or developing any ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction under UNSC resolutions.
Pyongyang on Monday (Seoul time) criticized the UNSC for holding a meeting on its missile launches, arguing the meeting itself has demonstrated the council's double standard toward North Korea as it remains silent over American joint military exercises with South Korea that the North claims are war rehearsals.
Price said the U.S. still remains ready to engage with the North in dialogue.
"Our goal ... remains the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and we remain prepared as we've said to meet with DPRK officials without preconditions," he said.
Pyongyang remains unresponsive to overtures made by the Biden administration. It has also stayed away from denuclearization talks with the U.S. since early 2019.
Price said the U.S. has made "specific proposals for discussions" in its outreaches to the North and that it hopes "the DPRK will respond positive to our outreach."
He also reaffirmed U.S. support for inter-Korean dialogue, one day after North Korea reopened its direct communication channels with South Korea after a 55-day suspension.
"We support inter-Korean dialogue and engagement, as well as cooperation, and we'll continue to work with ROK partners," the spokesman said, referring to South Korea by its official name, the Republic of Korea.
North Korea had restored inter-Korean communication lines in July after a 13-month suspension, only to shut them down again after about two weeks in August. (Yonhap)
3. UN report notes North Korea's continued nuclear, missile programs
No surprise here.
Excerpts:
Despite the sanctions in place, the panel of experts found indicators that North Korea still had access to international financial institutions including those in China, Russia and Indonesia, and that some countries in Southeast Asia had still allowed North Korea’s overseas workers to work in restaurants, whose revenue would end up going into the state coffers. The panel said investigations are ongoing on these allegations.
Noting the adverse humanitarian situation in the North, partly attributable to the lockdowns following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and Pyongyang’s restrictions on market activities, the panel stressed “the need for Member States to ensure that humanitarian aid to the country proceeds unhindered, consistent with the relevant resolutions.”
Tuesday
October 5, 2021
UN report notes North Korea's continued nuclear, missile programs
Representatives of the United Nations Security Council raise their hands to vote in favor of a draft resolution at the UN headquarters in New York on Sept. 30. [LOEY FELIPE/XINHUA/YONHAP]
North Korea continues to advance their nuclear and ballistic missile programs despite sanctions by the United Nations, a panel of experts of the UN Security Council said in a recent report.
“Despite the country’s focus on its worsening economic travails, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPRK] continued to maintain and develop its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes,” reads a report submitted to the UN Security Council by its panel of experts last month, which examined the effects of the sanctions on the North from February to August this year, using North Korea’s full name.
The panel releases its findings on the effects and any violations of the sanctions on North Korea twice a year, with a midterm report around August or September and a final report in March the following year. The midterm report dated Sept. 8 was published on the security council's website on Tuesday.
Although North Korea’s ballistic missile tests have reduced in numbers — one test launch of two short-range ballistic missiles this year, compared to four ballistic tests in 2020, 13 in 2019 and 15 in 2017 — the report found indications that activities at the North’s nuclear weapons facilities have continued. Under UN Security Council resolutions, the North is prohibited from testing ballistic missiles.
“According to a Member State, the external construction of the light water reactor seems to be complete,” the report said regarding the Yongbyon site, one of the major nuclear weapons facilities in the North, whose reactor is capable of producing weapon-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods.
It added that Pyongyang may be capable of delivering nuclear weapons “now miniaturized to fit ballistic missile warheads.”
The report also found indications that maritime exports from North Korea of coal and other sanctioned goods continued from February to August this year, though they were at a reduced level compared to the previous months.
“Maritime and financial investigations demonstrated increasing sophistication by both vessels and the management and ownership structures supporting them in order to evade sanctions,” it said.
The panel found that the vessels suspected of conducting activities in violation of the sanctions manipulated the vessels' automatic identification system, meaning the vessel in operation had registered itself as a different vessel under a different flag to avoid being caught.
“The Panel considers such vessel identity laundering as a sanctions evasion technique that directly enables suspect vessels to continue to deliver illicitly refined petroleum to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” the report said.
Some of these vessels suspected to be carrying out sanctioned activities for the North were found in the waters in China. When asked about these vessels, China responded, according to the report, “Vessels suspected to be delivering refined petroleum products to the DPRK […] have not entered Chinese ports since 2020,” even adding that it “hopes that the Panel does not readily believe information which is against facts.”
Despite the sanctions in place, the panel of experts found indicators that North Korea still had access to international financial institutions including those in China, Russia and Indonesia, and that some countries in Southeast Asia had still allowed North Korea’s overseas workers to work in restaurants, whose revenue would end up going into the state coffers. The panel said investigations are ongoing on these allegations.
Noting the adverse humanitarian situation in the North, partly attributable to the lockdowns following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and Pyongyang’s restrictions on market activities, the panel stressed “the need for Member States to ensure that humanitarian aid to the country proceeds unhindered, consistent with the relevant resolutions.”
BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]
4. ‘North rehearsed submarine attacks on South during 2018 peace talks’
Say it ain't so. You mean the regime has never given up its hostile intent and its objective to dominate the regime, through force if necessary, under the rule of the Guerrilla Dynasty and Gulag State?
And how about our readiness? I will leave it to the naval experts to assess. I do not think a comparison of the number of training activities is a measure of readiness and capabilities.
The military found that the North deployed its submarines to rehearse attacks on the South about 150 times in 2018, the highest number since 2014, when such drills took place about 120 times. Excluding 2018 from 2015 to 2019, Pyongyang held the drill 87 times a year on average.
No drills took place in 2020 because of the pandemic, according to the military.
Not only were the 2018 drills not made public at the time, but since 2018, South Korea has cut back on its own naval drills with the US to counter North Korean submarines.
The Navy held submarine drills with the US only eight times, spending two weeks in total running them in 2018, while in 2016, the allies spent a little over a month holding them.
‘North rehearsed submarine attacks on South during 2018 peace talks’
Published : Oct 5, 2021 - 16:06 Updated : Oct 5, 2021 - 20:54
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un addresses the 5th Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly of North Korea on Sept. 29. (KCNA-Yonhap)
Most of North Korea’s naval drills involving submarines in the past seven years took place in 2018, even as the two Koreas held talks three times to defuse tensions, Rep. Han Ki-ho of the opposition People Power Party said Tuesday, citing the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The military found that the North deployed its submarines to rehearse attacks on the South about 150 times in 2018, the highest number since 2014, when such drills took place about 120 times. Excluding 2018 from 2015 to 2019, Pyongyang held the drill 87 times a year on average.
No drills took place in 2020 because of the pandemic, according to the military.
Not only were the 2018 drills not made public at the time, but since 2018, South Korea has cut back on its own naval drills with the US to counter North Korean submarines.
The Navy held submarine drills with the US only eight times, spending two weeks in total running them in 2018, while in 2016, the allies spent a little over a month holding them.
“This is catastrophic. North Korea still has eyes set on infiltration no matter what Moon says,” Rep. Han, a former three-star Army general, said, referring to President Moon’s push to sign a formal declaration with the North to end the 1950-53 Korean War, for which fighting stopped with only a cease-fire.
Inking the declaration is the cornerstone of Moon’s North Korea policy, which he describes as the first step before engaging the North in talks to dismantle its nuclear arsenal. The talks, which were last held in 2019, have since been in limbo because North Korea is refusing dialogue.
Speculation over a thaw in inter-Korean ties is mounting over hotlines the two neighbors reconnected Monday. Pyongyang had not responded to Seoul’s routine calls since August, accusing the South and the US of ramping up tensions with their annual military drills.
But North Korea has not withdrawn its conditions to reopen nuclear negotiations.
Pyongyang insists Seoul and Washington drop “double standards,” essentially demanding the two see its weapons tests as part of its self-defense and not a provocation, as the two allies consider their tests that way.
The North, which conducted a series of weapons tests in September in violation of UN sanctions, also demands the South and US scrap “hostile policy,” which involves maintaining sanctions the UN and US imposed to halt the North’s nuclear and missile programs.
A senior official at the Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said, “They are more like issues we have to work out together and not necessarily preconditions.”
5. FM Chung says S. Korea committed to global role for post-pandemic era
And I think if you read the results of the Moon-Biden summit the future of the ROK/US alliance is a global one and not restricted to the Korean peninsula or even Northeast Asia.
FM Chung says S. Korea committed to global role for post-pandemic era | Yonhap News Agency
SEOUL, Oct. 5 (Yonhap) -- Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong reaffirmed South Korea's commitment Tuesday to contributing to a "resilient and inclusive" recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, his office said.
Chung made the remark during the 15th ministerial session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), held via video links, stressing the importance of a "fair and equitable" distribution of coronavirus vaccines.
"Minister Chung expressed the government's commitment to contributing to the preparation for a resilient, inclusive and sustainable post-COVID-19 era," the ministry said. The speech was pre-recorded.
He explained Seoul's contribution to COVAX AMC and efforts to provide antivirus support to some 120 countries to help them with COVID-19 responses, it added. COVAX AMC is an international mechanism intended to provide COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries at low cost.
Chung called for the strengthening of inclusiveness to alleviate inequality that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, vowing that South Korea will continue to provide support to help the vulnerable groups, such as women and irregular workers.
He also introduced Seoul's efforts to expand the official development assistance (ODA) related to climate change and green growth, asking for the international community's support for its bid to host the next U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28) in 2023.
UNCTAD is an intergovernmental organization established under the U.N. to promote the interests of developing countries in world trade and investment.
In July, UNCTAD upgraded South Korea's status from a developing country to a developed one.
elly@yna.co.kr
(END)
6. Moon tries to fan flame of warmer relations with North
I have to take strong exception to President Moon's statement here. The comparison of political systems and national power is not meaningless. To say so, unfortunately, accepts the political system of the Guerrilla Dynasty and Gulag State to the north. The regime's political system and its national power are an existential threat to the ROK.
Excerpt:
“From the perspective of overseas Koreans, a Korea divided in two, into the South and the North, must be a sad reality,” said Moon, speaking at a ceremony marking 15th World Korean Day. “But we have no reason for confrontation. Competition over political systems and comparison of national power has long since become meaningless.”
Tuesday
October 5, 2021
Moon tries to fan flame of warmer relations with North
President Moon Jae-in delivers a speech at a ceremony commemorating the 15th World Korean Day at the Grand Walkerhill Hotel in Gwangjin District, eastern Seoul, Tuesday. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]
President Moon Jae-in said that there is “no reason for confrontation” between the two Koreas Tuesday, a day after the restoring of cross-border hotlines, stressing the importance of co-prosperity with the North.
“From the perspective of overseas Koreans, a Korea divided in two, into the South and the North, must be a sad reality,” said Moon, speaking at a ceremony marking 15th World Korean Day. “But we have no reason for confrontation. Competition over political systems and comparison of national power has long since become meaningless.”
The two Koreas restored cross-border communication lines Monday, 55 days after Pyongyang suspended them to protest a military exercise, taken by the South as a positive signal to deescalate tensions and improve inter-Korean relations.
“Now, it is even more important to prosper together,” continued Moon. “Even if unification takes time, the South and North can cooperate and get along well with each other.”
Moon was joined by some 300 overseas compatriots, including leaders of Korean associations, elected officials and businesspeople in-person and virtually at the event held at the Grand Walkerhill Hotel in eastern Seoul.
He said that he “dreams of a future generation of 80 million South and North Koreans and 7.5 million Koreans living overseas empathizing with each other and working in solidarity for the sustainable development of the Korean Peninsula and the world.”
Moon also called on Koreans abroad to play a role in spreading word of the international strength of “one Korea” and the “possibility of greater prosperity through lasting peace” on the peninsula.
He especially stressed that overseas Korean politicians “have become a strong bridge for peace on the Korean Peninsula.” Four Korean-Americans were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives last year, and Rhie Ye-one became the first member of Korean heritage in the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, in September.
In an address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 22, Moon proposed a formal declaration to end the 1950-53 Korean War between the two Koreas, the United States and possibly China.
In his Armed Forces Day speech on Oct. 1, he said an end-of-war declaration could open “a new era of conciliation and cooperation with the international community,” while also underscoring his responsibility as commander-in-chief to establish and maintain lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry and Defense Ministry confirmed Tuesday that daily calls were made over their hotlines with the North for a second day.
Pyongyang stopped responding to daily calls over the inter-Korean hotlines on Aug. 10.
This came after inter-Korean hotlines had been revived on July 27, some 13 months after the North unilaterally cut off all communication lines with the South including the Panmunjom channel at the inter-Korean border village, the joint liaison office line and two military hotlines.
Pyongyang has been calling on Seoul to withdraw its “hostile policy,” seen as a reference to joint military drills with Washington and U.S.-led sanctions in place over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles programs.
Speaking to the Supreme People's Assembly on Sept. 29, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called on the South to withdraw the “double-dealing attitude and hostile viewpoint and policies towards the other side before declaring the termination of war,” adding “this is an important task to be settled beforehand in order to control the inter-Korean relations and open up a bright future.”
Kim also accused the United States of “petty tricks” when offering “diplomatic engagement,” calling it “an extension of the hostile policy” pursued by previous U.S. administrations in his first direct response to the Joe Biden administration’s repeated calls for “dialogue without preconditions.”
Washington said Monday it supports inter-Korean cooperation but urged Pyongyang to comply with UN Security Council sanctions resolutions.
Ned Price, spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said in a press briefing in Washington on the resumption of inter-Korean communications, “We support inter-Korean dialogue and engagement, as well as cooperation, and we’ll continue to work with our [South Korean] partners to that end.”
He added that the United States remains “concerned by the DPRK's repeated violations of multiple Security Council resolutions” and underscored the “need for both full compliance with Security Council resolutions and full implementation of all existing UN sanctions.”
He referred to the acronym for the North’s official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Last Friday, the UN Security Council convened an emergency meeting after North Korea’s latest weapons tests including of a new advanced anti-aircraft missile and a hypersonic missile. North Korea’s Foreign Ministry blasted the Security Council meeting, calling it an “intolerable provocation” in a statement Sunday.
Price stood by Washington’s offer to meet with North Korean officials “without preconditions.”
Washington will continue to consult closely its allies including Seoul and Tokyo on “how best to engage with the DPRK” on the “overarching goal” of the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, he added.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, also said in a briefing Monday that the U.S. government supports “inter-Korean dialogue and engagement and cooperation.”
But she stressed, “We, of course, condemn any illicit missile launches, which are destabilizing to the region and to the international community,” adding that the Biden administration is closely consulting with allies and the United Nations on the “next steps.”
However, reiterating a commitment to engagement with the North, Psaki said, “In our messages, we have made specific proposals for discussion with the DPRK. We hope DPRK will respond positively to our outreach.”
BY SARAH KIM [kim.sarah@joongang.co.kr]
7. N. Korea bolsters ideological education in military following restart of inter-Korean hotline
According to the regime any problem will be solved if enough ideological training of the people is conducted.
Note that the recent missile launches are likely timed to reinforce the ideological training. This is why we need to assess north Korean provocations and actions through the National INtelligence Officer, Syd Seiler's, analytic methodology the 4D concept - four dimension - development, demonstration, diplomacy, and domestic. These recent missile launches supported all four but in this case domestic messaging is important in order to reinforce ideological training.
N. Korea bolsters ideological education in military following restart of inter-Korean hotline - Daily NK
Recently distributed materials claim that although North Korea possesses modern weaponry as a nuclear power, socialism “will collapse overnight like a water-logged wall” if authorities carelessly educate young soldiers
By Jeong Tae Joo - 2021.10.05 12:57pm
North Korea may have restarted Monday the inter-Korean hotline Pyongyang unilaterally cut in August, but the North Korean military has reportedly bolstered internal ideological education to “guard against the spread of the Korean Wave.”
The Korean Wave refers to the growing popularity of South Korean pop culture, especially in East Asia.
According to a Daily NK military source in Pyongyang, the North Korean military’s General Political Bureau distributed to the entire military on Thursday “collective study materials” calling for soldiers to “boldly defeat imperialist schemes to ideologically and culturally infiltrate” the country and “establish a revolutionary military spirit.”
The political study materials involve a week’s worth of self-study, lectures, exercises, criticism and Q&As aimed at young soldiers throughout the military, supervised by unit propaganda departments and youth activities departments.
What is worth noting is that with the materials distributed on Thursday, North Korean military authorities launched their ideological education program the very day after national leader Kim Jong Un announced through local and international-facing media Pyongyang’s intention to restart the hotline.
The move is seemingly aimed at getting a grip on potential ideological laxity within the military before authorities begin restoring dialogue and ties with the South.
In fact, the materials warn that though the North Korean military possesses modern weaponry as a nuclear power, socialism “will collapse overnight like a water-logged wall” if authorities carelessly educate young soldiers.
The materials also warned that young soldiers, the “main force of the People’s Army that must protect the peace of the fatherland and the people,” are “still oblivious to the importance of establishing a revolutionary military spirit.” They then list instances of young soldiers “blinded by bourgeois ideology and culture.”
Kim Jong Un at the leadership podium during the Party Foundation Day military parade in Pyongyang on Oct. 10, 2020. / Image: KCNA
For example, raw recruits in a battalion with new recruits under the General Staff Department’s Communications Bureau performed a “strange dance” during the unit’s downtime. Worse yet, the dance became a fad within the unit.
This suggests the soldiers were busted for imitating dances by South Korean pop groups like BTS, which are popular among young North Koreans.
The materials also shared examples of punishments meted out by individual military units. They pointed to eight guardpost personnel in the Second Corps who were punished for “failing to adhere to report processing methods for enemy materials” and a soldier of the Seventh Corps who received “legal punishment” for hiding a memory stick or card with South Korean songs in his uniform when he returned to his unit from leave.
With authorities suggesting soldiers will face similar punishments in the future, military units feel they must accelerate their educational efforts aimed at young soldiers, the source said. As the authorities intensify their “politics of fear,” cadres worry that they could face punishment “as the people in charge.”
The source said “political departments, organizational departments, propaganda departments and youth departments” of units throughout the military will intensively review the ideology of their young soldiers and take measures in response by Party Foundation Day (Oct. 10).
Meanwhile, military authorities have decided to write more frequent detailed reviews of the “ideological tendencies” of individual soldiers. Instead of annual reviews, they will write quarterly reviews, a move likely aimed at recording suspected ideological changes through tighter surveillance.
Moreover, the military’s manpower division has decided to turn over charts from ideological reviews by unit political departments to the social organizations of soon-to-be-discharged soldiers eligible for biannual university recommendations.
The chart transfer will begin during discharge procedures next spring and fall. Soldiers also receive a recommendation letter in their discharge documents.
In the past, ideological problems found during ideological evaluations were overlooked by non-military organizations, the source said.
With the authorities now excluding ideologically problematic soldiers from school recommendations and sharing their ideological records with their social organizations in their discharge documents, everyone is on guard, he added.
Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
8. Teachers in Yanggang Province mobilized for the potato harvest
All problems are a result of Kim Jong-un's deliberate policy decisions and the bankrupt ideology of Juche and Kimilsungism.
Excerpts:
According to the source, this year’s potato harvest in Yanggang Province is not looking good. Many farms have suffered flood or drought damage, or have not properly received fertilizers or manure.
Teachers believe they will not be able to fill their potato quotas unless they get an early start on digging up tubers. So they are competitively harvesting potatoes.
Some schools are drawing censure for asking students to pony up the money needed to harvest and transport the potatoes.
The source said in Hyesan, some elementary schools collected KPW 5,000 to 10,000 per student. Middle schools collected over KPW 10,000 per student, believing teachers needed to hit their quotas before they could properly teach their classes.
Teachers in Yanggang Province mobilized for the potato harvest - Daily NK
Daily NK has learned that teachers in Yanggang Province have recently been mobilized to harvest potatoes. A source says they are heading to the farms earlier than in previous years with a poor harvest expected this season.
The source, who is based in the province, told Daily NK on Thursday that the province’s education department assigned local teachers potato quotas from Sep. 25. He said early October is the optimal time to harvest potatoes, but with the authorities expecting insufficient supplies, they are putting teachers to work in the fields about 10 days earlier than last year.
According to the source, this year’s potato harvest in Yanggang Province is not looking good. Many farms have suffered flood or drought damage, or have not properly received fertilizers or manure.
Teachers believe they will not be able to fill their potato quotas unless they get an early start on digging up tubers. So they are competitively harvesting potatoes.
A group of North Korean students in Pyongyang / Image: fresh888, Flickr, Creative Commons
Some schools are drawing censure for asking students to pony up the money needed to harvest and transport the potatoes.
The source said in Hyesan, some elementary schools collected KPW 5,000 to 10,000 per student. Middle schools collected over KPW 10,000 per student, believing teachers needed to hit their quotas before they could properly teach their classes.
Kindergarten students, too, were mobilized for the potato harvest. However, their students were not tasked with “non-tax burdens,” said the source.
Instead, kindergarten teachers not taking part in the harvest are being asked to contribute money to dig up and ship the spuds.
“Teachers are being mobilized for the potato harvest as we enter autumn,” said the source. “The propaganda calls educating future generations an important project for the future. But in fact, with (the authorities) unable to work out ration issues, teachers are being reduced to farmers.
“With recent difficulties making ends meet, teachers often ask students or parents for bribes,” he added. “Because of this, educational authority in schools is collapsing.”
Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
9. North Korea Trades Scorn for Flattery to Win Benefits From Moon
We need to understand, expose, and attack the strategy of the Kim family regime. This article helps us understand and expose it to a certain extent.
North Korea Trades Scorn for Flattery to Win Benefits From Moon
October 4, 2021, 7:22 AM EDT Updated on October 4, 2021, 7:32 PM EDT
North Korea has labeled Moon Jae-in a meddlesome mediator and reduced to rubble a $15 million liaison office that was one of the South Korean president’s biggest diplomatic achievements.
On Monday, however, Kim Jong Un’s regime abruptly restored communication with South Korea via hotlines that Pyongyang had let fall silent for about two months. The move came after Kim’s sister praised Moon as a man of admirable ideas.
Kim Jong Un meets with Moon Jae-in in 2018.Source: Pyongyang Press Corps/Pool/Getty Images
The change in tone likely has a lot to do with the political calendar in Seoul. South Korea elects a new president in March and time is running out for Moon to make good on one of his core pledges to bring the two Koreas closer to peace. North Korea sees the election as a chance to win concessions from Moon and get him to press the U.S. to do the same.
“It appears that North Korea’s strategy for now is to work through South Korea,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a nonresident fellow with the 38 North Program at the Stimson Center. “It is pressuring Seoul to not walk in lockstep with Washington’s North Korea policy and to persuade the Biden administration to offer concrete incentives to North Korea.”
The restoration of the hotlines -- established in 2018 after a series of historic summits between Kim and Moon -- comes as Pyongyang dangles the prospects of another face-to-face meeting before the South Korean leader leaves office. The summit would discuss matters such as the formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which Moon urged anew during an address to the United Nations last month.
South Korean Unification Minister Lee In-young told Yonhap News Agency he saw the restoration of the communications links as marking a “restart” in efforts to improve ties.
A summit -- perhaps on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February -- would provide a timely boost for Moon’s progressives, who have long backed engagement with North Korea. Public opinion polls suggest the conservative People Power Party has a shot at winning office.
Kim, meanwhile, has been looking to rally domestic confidence as North Korea faces one of its worst food shortage in years. He is struggling to build an economy that has shrunk since he took power about a decade ago after being hit with global sanctions to punish Pyongyang for defying UN resolutions by testing nuclear weapons and missiles that can deliver warheads.
While North Korea has frequently shifted between provocations and diplomatic overtures, Kim now appears to be trying to do both at the same time. The regime has in recent months restarted activity at its plutonium-production site and fired off several new weapons systems designed for strikes against Japan and South Korea, which host the bulk of U.S. troops in Asia.
The Firing Line
Ballistic missile tests under Kim Jong Un
Sources: South Korea Ministry of Defense and Center for Nonproliferation Studies
If successful, Kim’s appeal to Moon could have the added benefit of widening gaps between Washington and a key ally. Kim may be seeking to increase his leverage if he returns to nuclear-disarmament talks with the U.S., which have been stalled for more than two years.
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The Biden administration has told North Korea the door is open for talks and has indicated it could offer incentives in exchange for nuclear disarmament steps. But Pyongyang dismissed the overture as a “petty trick.”
Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader’s sister who has led pressure campaigns against Seoul and Washington, praised Moon’s recent call for peace as an “interesting and an admirable idea.” About two weeks earlier, she had denounced his criticism of North Korea’s weapons tests as foolish.
South Korea has little power to actually bring about a peace treaty after it refused to sign the armistice among U.S.-led UN forces, North Korea and China that ended the Korean War’s fighting. America has talked about a peace deal and diplomatic recognition as something that would follow an agreement to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear arms program.
For Moon, that wait may be too long.
“Pyongyang is taking advantage of Moon’s desperation to leave behind a Korean peace legacy before March by dangling hopes to make Seoul work harder to satisfy the regime and break from Washington,” said Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow in Seoul with the Center for New American Security. “The mood in the Moon government is ‘all hands on deck’ to make sure an end-of-war declaration is signed by the four heads of state at the Beijing Olympics when they start in February.”
(Updates with unification minister comment.)
10. 'Escape from Mogadishu' selected as S. Korea's Oscar entry
South Korea soft power (but also a very useful film for north Korean information and influence activities). I hope this will soon make it to the streaming services.
'Escape from Mogadishu' selected as S. Korea's Oscar entry | Yonhap News Agency
SEOUL, Oct. 5 (Yonhap) -- The South Korean action film based on a true story of the life-and-death escape by South and North Korean diplomats during the Somali civil war in the 1990s will represent South Korea in next year's Oscars.
The Korean Film Council (KOFIC) said Tuesday that it has chosen "Escape from Mogadishu" out of six films as the country's entry for the best international feature film category of the 94th Academy Awards.
Last year at the 92nd Oscars, South Korea's "Parasite" won the non-English movie section that requires each country to submit a single film as their official representative.
Bong Joon-ho's black comedy swept four Oscar titles, including best international feature film and best picture, becoming the first Korean-made film to win an Oscar.
"Based on a real story, 'Escape from Mogadishu' impresses viewers with quality action and suspense, well combined with the dramatic story from inter-Korean tension and cooperation," KOFIC said in a release.
"It has already received rave reviews at home and abroad," it said. "We hope 'Mogadishu' will continue to attract global attention to Korean films initiated by 'Parasite.'"
Directed by Ryoo Seung-wan, "Mogadishu" is about diplomats in South and North Korean missions in Somalia cooperating to escape the country during the 1991 civil war.
It is the most-watched film in South Korea among all films released in 2021, attracting a cumulative 3.1 million moviegoers.
It was invited to this year's New York Asian Film Festival as the opening film.
The 94th Academy Awards is slated for March next year.
brk@yna.co.kr
(END)
11. A renewed chance for peace in Korea
Or wishful thinking. I think the SCMP editorial board is reading too much into the regime's actions. I do not think optimism is warranted. Any little gesture (such as simply answering the telephone) is blown up into some huge indicator that change is just around the corner and that peace is going to soon break out.
A renewed chance for peace in Korea
By SCMP Editorial South China Morning Post2 min
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un
Silence between enemies creates uncertainty. The reopening of key communications channels between North and South Korea 13 months after they were severed is a chance for stability.
Now that phone calls are again being answered, day-to-day problems can be quickly dealt with. There is also greater opportunity for a resumption of high-level talks that can end the hostility and finally bring peace to the Korean peninsula.
The North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, expressed a willingness to restore hotlines last week after conciliatory comments by his counterpart from the South, Moon Jae-in, who called at the United Nations General Assembly for a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean war. Kim’s influential sister, Kim Yo-jong, said signing a formal peace agreement was a good idea and that another inter-Korean summit was possible, although Seoul would have to first drop its hostility towards Pyongyang.
Moon’s five-year presidential term ends in May and he is eager to forge a legacy as a peacemaker; he held three rounds of talks with Kim Jong-un in 2018, but dialogue has been at a standstill since negotiations between the North and the United States, the South’s ally, collapsed in 2019. The resumption of twice-daily calls between the sides’ militaries and communications links operated by Seoul’s unification ministry heightens the chances of the leaders meeting again.
02:10
North Korea’s Kim Jong-un offers to reconnect vital communication line with South Korea
Restoring the hotlines is a barometer of the North’s willingness to improve bilateral relations. Since direct communications were first established in 1971, Pyongyang has severed links on numerous occasions to show displeasure with Seoul.
They were cut in August last year after the South went ahead with joint military exercises with the US. Tensions have since risen, with the North warning of a security crisis, restarting a nuclear reactor capable of producing weapons-grade material and last month test-firing a series of new missiles, including one it claims can reach hypersonic speeds.
But now that Pyongyang is answering Seoul’s calls again, there is a possibility of a thawing of strained ties, mending of relations and another summit. China, as the North’s ally, and the US, have important roles through encouraging and assisting.
Only by all parties working together can there be stability and a lasting peace in the region.
12. Selling Slavery: South Korean investors’ $900,000 Kaesong lobbying campaign
You can always count on Joshia Stanton for in depth and critical research.
Selling Slavery: South Korean investors’ $900,000 Kaesong lobbying campaign
Documents filed with the Justice Department in July show that a group of South Korean investors hired a San Francisco law firm and a South Korean consulting firm to lobby the U.S. government to support reopening a shuttered, looted, and partially exploded manufacturing complex near Kaesong, North Korea. The documents were required to be filed with the Justice Department and made public under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA), a law designed to expose foreign propaganda and influence in the United States.
The FARA filing includes an agreement between the Kaesong Investors, the South Korean consulting firm HC & Sons LLC, and the U.S. law and lobbying firm of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.
The two firms will split a combined $900,000 in fees over the course of ten months to lobby the executive branch and Congress, presumably to seek exemptions to North Korea sanctions for Kaesong. Kaesong’s viability depends on its access to the U.S. financial system, to meet Kim Jong-un’s demands for payment in hard currency. Its products need access to American markets, and some of its machinery may require U.S. export licenses.
Throughout its life cycle until its closure in 2016, the Kaesong complex faced nagging questions—not only about slave labor and unsafe working conditions, but also about the use of its proceeds to fund Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.
Before then-South Korean President Park Geun-hye closed Kaesong following North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, Kaesong provided Pyongyang nearly $100 million a year in hard currency. No one but Kim Jong-un really knew where the money went. The North Korean workers at Kaesong were selected by the regime, had no rights to strike or bargain for better working conditions, were not permitted to speak to their South Korean managers, and received as little as $2 a month out of $130 a month in “wages” paid to the North Korean government by the South Korean manufacturers who invested there. None of the managers could say how much the North Korean workers were paid, if at all.
By contrast, just short of a million dollars is an exceptionally large amount for foreign principals to spend on lobbying Congress. Korean government ministries and the Embassy might pay each of several Biglaw firms or lobbyists they keep on retainer between $130,000 and $260,000 a year to lobby for various trade, economic, immigration, and policy interests. Kaesong investors obviously saved a great deal of money by using North Korean slave labor and South Korean government subsidies. Some quarters of my profession are now sharing in the residuals. As we used to say in the Army, “같이갑시다.”
Pillsbury’s political action committee has also contributed thousands of dollars to members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including former Chairman (and now Ranking Member) Michael McCaul. No information suggests that the contributions were linked to specific legislation or policy involving Korea or Kaesong, but the contributions will certainly help Pillsbury get access to powerful members. In fact, it has already met with at least two members of the Foreign Affairs Committee—Chairman Gregory Meeks and Rep. Andy Kim.
Still, their timing could be better.
The blog “Foreign Lobby Watch” previously reported on the story here. Subscribe to find out which former Texas congressman will “spearhead” the Kaesong investors’ campaign; then, leave a comment. Investors have been lobbying Congress to lift U.S. legal impediments to reopening Kaesong since at least 2018, and the left-wing government of Moon Jae-in has between calling for Kaesong’s reopening and expansion since he began campaigning for South Korea’s presidency the same year it closed.
But reopening Kaesong today would confront far greater political and legal obstacles than it did in 2015. In fact, I’ve been told unofficially that Park’s decision to close Kaesong in January of that year was not only a reaction to the nuclear test, but also a recognition that the legal environment for doing business with North Korea was about to change dramatically. That same week, the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016 (NKSPEA) secured enough votes for a nearly unanimous passage in both houses of Congress. Over the next year, a series of implementing executive orders, Treasury Department regulations, three more U.N. resolutions, and a second law—Title III of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA)—strengthened the sanctions affecting Kaesong even more.
(Full disclosure: I wrote the NKSPEA and Title III of the CAATSA, but I did not write the acronyms.)
The new UN sanctions ban exports of metals, vehicles, and machinery to North Korea; direct and indirect correspondent relationships with North Korean banks; what the resolutions call “joint ventures” and “cooperative entities;” and joint infrastructure projects. Under Resolution 1718, paragraph 8(d), as broadened by subsequent resolutions, Seoul and the investors would be responsible for ensuring that the money is not used for nuclear weapons or other prohibited purposes. When South Korea’s then-right-leaning government closed Kaesong, it initially claimed that some of Pyongyang’s Kaesong revenue went to nuclear weapons. It later clarified that it simply didn’t know. Moon’s government says the payments to Kaesong didn’t violate UN or US sanctions because there was no direct proof that Pyongyang used the money for nukes or other prohibited things that hungry people can’t eat.
Moon’s interpretation is wrong. It reverses the burden of proof and hides behind Pyongyang’s secrecy and notoriously opaque finances to refuse to perform due diligence about what is overwhelmingly likely. Any wire transfer of dollars to North Korea would require a license from the Treasury Department, which should deny it on that basis alone.
Then, there is the question of U.S. market access. Legally, Kaesong products could not be imported into the United States since 2011 because they’re made in North Korea, but there have been widespread suspicions that they were leaking into U.S. Commerce as components of manufactured goods, or vaguely marked as “Made in Korea.” Since 2017, the CAATSA has created a rebuttable legal presumption that products made with North Korean labor are made with forced labor and banned from U.S. Commerce under the Tariff Act. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has enforced that law aggressively. Some North Korean products, or products made with North Korean labor, have entered U.S. commerce through China or Russia anyway, but Customs has pursued those imports to their countries of origin and requested information from the exporters about their use of North Korean slave labor. It has also seized several shipments of goods.
Of course, the U.S. government still isn’t the main obstacle to reopening Kaesong.
If anyone knows when the investors plan on lobbying the Supreme People’s Assembly, let me know. We can split the reward.
More supplemental FARA filings (1, 2, 3, 4) name the individual lobbyists involved in the Kaesong campaign. So if you’re a congressional staffer, and if Matthew Oresman, Greg Laughlin, Craig Saperstein, or Elizabeth Moeller pays you a visit, say hello for me. It must be a small world. Oresman’s name also shows up in this 2013 FARA filing, when he was with a different law firm, Patton Boggs LLP, representing the Government of Albania. (So does Don McGahn, who was White House Counsel during the Trump Administration and refused to testify in the House impeachment hearings.) In a separate filing, Pillsbury discloses that the South Korean government hired it to lobby for nuclear energy cooperation and trade relations with the U.S. government, and to find out more about the Biden administration’s appointees affecting those policy fields.
Kaesong was once the centerpiece of what former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung called the Sunshine Policy. Its hypothesis was that more investment in North Korea would build economic integration, break down its isolation, and eventually spur economic and political reforms and peaceful relations. Needless to say, things haven’t worked out that way. “Engagement” projects played by Pyongyang’s rules, did not crack the isolation of the people, were an economic lifeline for a system that enforces isolation and repression, and thus stifled demands from within for reform and change. Instead of changing Pyongyang for the better, it changed those who engaged Pyongyang on its terms for the worse, by making them complicit in its deceptions, secrecy, and illicit activity.
Rather than appeasing Pyongyang, Kaesong became a source of tension as Pyongyang leveraged Seoul’s political interest in showing progress toward improved inter-Korean relations to demand “wage” and tax increases. Occasionally, it detained a South Korean who took the promises of engagement seriously and broke the rules against unauthorized contact with North Korean workers. The closure of Kaesong cost the investors more than $600 million, and South Korean taxpayers probably paid most of it. It also guaranteed that no non-Korean company would ever invest there or make it a critical link in its supply chains. A few South Koreans were willing to invest for nationalistic and political reasons, but also because of those taxpayer subsidies. As of 2017, the North Koreans had driven away most of Kaesong’s vehicles, looted much of the equipment, and allowed many of the facilities to fall into disrepair.
At last word, however, they were at least keeping up the landscaping.
~ ~ ~
Update: As I think of the vastness of the legal and consulting fees being poured into the bottomless pit of sunk costs called Kaesong, it certainly raises my suspicions that a group of small manufacturers could not have afforded that sum alone. Good investigative journalism would inquire into whether the South Korean government is really paying this bill and using the manufacturers’ group as a shield from controversy, and to avoid friction with the U.S. government. If I were a South Korean taxpayer, I’d want to know much more about not only that question, but about all the governmental and semi-governmental organizations that spend my money on foreign lobbyists and lawyers. When you dive into the FARA filings, the entire relationship between the two countries starts to look deeply corrupt.
By the way, why hire lawyers as lobbyists? The innocent explanation is that they understand legislation. But if a law firm is big enough and limits the percentage of time the lawyer spends on lobbying, the lawyer can take advantage of a loophole in the Lobbying Disclosure Act. Lawyers also have something that lobbyists don’t—attorney-client privilege, which shields both attorney and client from nosy questions about their confidential communications.
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13. When China rules the world
A view from Korea.
Excerpts:
Jacques predicted 17 changes that would happen if China took over the world. First, he predicted that world history will be sino-centric. As the capital of the world moves from New York to Beijing, the “tributary system” will return to international relations. While the state becomes the center, its civil society will be less emphasized and authoritarian rule by Confucian tradition will be presented. His predictions 10 years ago show a relatively generous view on China’s emergence.
But a number of recent actions by China ring alarms about the future. History will likely be distorted. China’s human rights commission defined the Korean War as an aggression by the U.S., for example. It conveniently removed North Korea’s invasion. In China, famous Korean poet Yoon Dong-ju is described as a Chinese and kimchi is advertised as Chinese food. I am worried that China will shake Korea’s national identity. A Chinese official said that a small country should follow a larger country. The 21st century version of the tributary system will surely return.
Social dominance by Chinese-style authoritarianism is also worrisome. China tends to use technology as a means to control society, rather than using it for the advancement of humanity. That’s “digital Leninism.” Personal liberty will be greatly shrunk.
Tuesday
October 5, 2021
When China rules the world
[REUTERS/YONHAP]
YOU SANG-CHUL
The author is director of the JoongAng Ilbo China Institute.
The United States and China may not be shooting guns at each other, but they are practically engaged in a war. The world is anxiously watching this hegemony contest. Meanwhile, 75 countries are the shrimps worrying about being crushed in the fight between the two whales.
Korea is one of them. As its security is tied to the United States and its economy to China, Korea must embrace both. That’s not easy. After the Biden administration unites the allies, China warns about the consequences.
The world is struggling to decide which side to stand with, but no country seems to have found a clear answer. Here, we need to consider one thing. What will the future be after the hegemony contest? If the United States stays on top, no major changes will occur. But what will happen if China wins? Here’s a book to refer to: Martin Jacques’ “When China Rules the World.”
Jacques predicted 17 changes that would happen if China took over the world. First, he predicted that world history will be sino-centric. As the capital of the world moves from New York to Beijing, the “tributary system” will return to international relations. While the state becomes the center, its civil society will be less emphasized and authoritarian rule by Confucian tradition will be presented. His predictions 10 years ago show a relatively generous view on China’s emergence.
But a number of recent actions by China ring alarms about the future. History will likely be distorted. China’s human rights commission defined the Korean War as an aggression by the U.S., for example. It conveniently removed North Korea’s invasion. In China, famous Korean poet Yoon Dong-ju is described as a Chinese and kimchi is advertised as Chinese food. I am worried that China will shake Korea’s national identity. A Chinese official said that a small country should follow a larger country. The 21st century version of the tributary system will surely return.
Social dominance by Chinese-style authoritarianism is also worrisome. China tends to use technology as a means to control society, rather than using it for the advancement of humanity. That’s “digital Leninism.” Personal liberty will be greatly shrunk.
The forecast for a future led by China is extremely worrying. The contest between the U.S. and China could quite literally determine which world we live in, in the future. Considering that, it is far too simplistic to think in the context of “security with the United States, economy with China.”
If China wants to win the hearts of the world and overtake the United States, it must first care about the concerns of its neighbors.
14. Blackouts in China Deprive North Korean Factory Workers of Hot Water and Light
Blackouts in China Deprive North Korean Factory Workers of Hot Water and Light
After long hours, workers go home to chilly, dark homes with cold showers.
Rolling blackouts in northeastern China have deprived North Korean factory workers of hot water and lighting in their cramped dormitories, making their living and working conditions even more unbearable, sources in China told RFA.
Though power outages are commonplace in North Korea they have been much less frequent until recently in China, where Pyongyang sends laborers to earn desperately needed foreign cash for the government.
“Power has been cut off to some of the large factories in Hunchun since the 24th of September,” a Chinese citizen of Korean descent, from Jilin province in China’s heavily industrialized northeast, told RFA’ s Korean Service Sept. 29th.
“The Chinese authorities explain that it’s because crowded large factories increase the risk of COVID-19 infection,” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.
The source said that the government’s explanation was a ruse.
“We all know that there are power shortages because there’s been… fuel shortages, and the power shortages are particularly serious in the three northeastern provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang,” the source said.
The shortages are a result of a reduction in coal imports and decreased production, as Beijing tries to balance its growing energy demand with a desire to curb pollution by transitioning to alternative energy sources.
According to a recent estimate by Goldman Sachs, as much as 44 percent of China's industrial activity has been hit by power shortages, leading analysts to cut their 2021 GDP growth forecast for China to 7.8 percent from an earlier estimate of 8.2 percent.
For the North Korean clothing manufacturers in Hunchun, who toil away in harsh working conditions as their government takes up to 90 percent of their salaries, the power outage was initially seen as some much-needed time off, according to the source.
“They didn’t understand the situation well, so they were saying, ‘Finally we can rest!’ but the company brought in generators and restarted the factory, so they had to work in even worse conditions than before,” the source said.
Though the generators supply electricity to the production line, the company did not power up the workers’ dormitory, leaving them without light, heat, and warm water.
“They have to bathe in cold water and stumble in the dark because they have no electricity in the dormitory… They appealed to the factory officials for basic standard living conditions, but nothing has changed so far,” said the source.
“Even their Chinese coworkers are feeling sorry for them, saying, ‘What have they done to deserve such conditions?” the source said.
Another Chinese citizen of Korean descent from Dandong, just across the border from North Korea, confirmed that power had been cut off to large factories in the city since the previous week.
“The authorities say that it is because of coronavirus quarantine measures, but factory officials already know that it is because of the power shortages happening all across China,” said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.
“More than 200 North Korean workers at a livestock processing plant here in Dandong… are working the same hours as before because the factory hooked up its own generator,” the second source said.
Like the garment workers in Hunchun, the meat packers in Dandong have to return to an unlit dormitory after work and bathe in cold water, the second source confirmed.
“How terrible it is that they work all day processing livestock into meat, and they can’t even wash properly after work, the second source said.”
“The North Koreans I met at the plant talked about how they work 16-hour days, and they are covered in blood and animal waste, but the only thing waiting for them is a tiny dormitory with only cold water for comfort.”
According to a recent RFA report, there are about 30,000 North Korean workers in the Dandong area employed in the region’s factories.
Though international nuclear sanctions prohibit North Korea from sending workers overseas and preclude countries from issuing work visas to North Koreans, Pyongyang has been known to dispatch workers to China and Russia on short-term student or visitor visas to get around sanctions.
Reported by Jeong Yon Park for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Jinha Shin. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
