North Korea in the News
by Richardson ~ April 30th, 2007. Filed under: News Links. Yonhap: BDA funds likely to be wired to N. Korea this week
Joongang Ilbo: North seeks Russian or Italian home for its funds
U.S. News: Bush Pressured to Move on North Korea Disarmament
AP: U.S. concessions may not be enough
Crisis Group: After the NK Nuclear Breakthrough: Compliance or Confrontation?
AFP: Non-proliferation conference to open in Vienna
Kyodo: Aso, Rice to reaffirm alliance, cooperation on N. Korea standoff
Japan Times: China presses Japan for energy aid to N. Korea
DPMO: Soldier Missing From The Korean War is Identified (PDF)
Christian Post: Protestors Demand End to China’s Repatriation of N.Koreans
Christian Post: Innovative Ways to Smuggle Gospel into NK
AP: North Korea displays new missile that can reach Guam, report says
Yonhap: N. Korean labor leaders arrive in S. Korea for Labor Day events
Yonhap: N. Korea, Switzerland try new bank program to help N.K.’s farmers
Yonhap: Seoul proposes military talks with Pyongyang this week
AFP: SKorea to explore peace summit to ‘end’ Korean war
AFP: SKorea urges talks with NKorea on rail link
KCNA: 28 April
April 30th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Swiss to help NK bank…..worked for the Nazis…
May 1st, 2007 at 4:10 pm
-Besides polemics, this represents the first article published by Swiss Development Cooperation Agency (SDC/DDC) on their own activities since 2004 although operations have not stopped for twelve years. Humanitarian aid has been replaced by a more developmental approach. While aid mainly addresses the agricultural sector, it is subjectively focusing on the transfer of skills/knowledge based upon “good governance” and ”market reform” (basically, a reformulation of swiss national imagery). The agency sponsored Pyongyang’s first business school a few years ago. This generosity also fuelled a cycle of conferences held every year to an audience composed of NK young diplomats and state employees. In this perspective, the micro-credit program appears entailed in their development strategy.
-Whereas communications from the agency on their DPRK operations have been kept to a minimum as regards to the empathy towards the regime and the fear to lose their entry ticket in DPRK, this is the first occasion of a reflexive perspective upon their own work there. Until now, not a single word had been said on the regime’s constraints from the swiss side although many foreign NGOs have chosen to expose their difficulties, or eventually pack luggage and leave. Will this imply a broader change of standpoint on DPRK from the institution in the future?
May 1st, 2007 at 4:37 pm
When groups like Doctors Without Borders (MSF) pulls up stakes and abandons a nation, it should be mega, mega fireworks and warning bells and flashing lights going off around the globe in the halls of any organization that likes to tell itself it is doing something for the good of the North Korean people (that also helps the regime).
I want to carry around pictures of the starving kids and tortured and executed refugees who get caught having crossed the border into China - and hold them up every time some person in a group of influence begins talking about helping NK with “market reform” and “signs of hope.”
Maybe NK actually wants the benefits of reform. Maybe it actually believes the economic situation would become better moving away from Juche.
But, the dead and tortured bodies of the regime, those who have died from starvation and those executed for bringing in information about the outside world or fled almost beyond the regime’s control —- tell us the regime is most definately convinced —– it can’t survive if it reforms. It has proven all along that it believes it cannot take steps that will allow the people to learn about the outside world or allow the world to learn much about what goes on inside its borders.
When Doctors Without Borders gives up on you because you hamper its effort to save your own citizens —– we should learn something…
May 1st, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I forgot to add —– we should also note that the leaders and many members of groups like Doctors Without Borders —- are not exactly Washington DC neocons —- they are usually people who have a lot of negative things to say about American foreign policy.
Again, when these groups wash their hands of a nation and pull out, it should be a very, very loud message for the world….