Just returned from three weeks in Korea - Inchon (Un-seo-dong), Tae-an, Kong-ju, and Sokcho; but not Seoul - and will have a few posts on that over the next week. If felt like a helluva lot longer than three weeks, but that’s a different story. I didn’t have net access most of that time, so [...]
Predicting the future is a chancy business at best and rarely rewards either the prognosticator or the consumers of the fortunetelling. Nonetheless, I offer the following thoughts as a conversation-starter.
With the recent speculation of Kim Jong-Il’s ill health, incapacitation and perhaps death, it might be useful to conceptualize the political shape of the Korean Peninsula [...]
Update: As of last evening no English language sources had this story, but the AP and KBS Global have picked it up overnight, both with essentially the same details as the Chosun Ilbo article: Kim Jong-il has not been seen since 14 August, and five Chinese doctors are in country to treat him.
Original [...]
Tutor to young Kim Jong-il from 1959, Kim Hyun-sik (76) defected in 1991 and is now a research professor at George Mason University in Virginia. After his defection, Prof. Kim’s entire family was executed via the gulag.
Prof. Kim’s memoir published in South Korea last year, “A 21st Century Ideological Nomad” (Korean), is the basis [...]
Via AFP: “South Korea has lifted an overseas travel ban on Hwang Jang-Yop, the highest-ranking North Korean defector ever to come here and a harsh critic of the Pyongyang regime. . . Hwang, former secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party and an ex-tutor of Kim Jong-Il, defected during a trip to Beijing in 1997.” [...]
After missile and nuclear tests and uranium enrichment, the U.S. sanctions North Korean firms while Pyongyang reverses, making overtures. It’s not an accident, it’s a pattern of strategic disengagement.
- #Vanity Fair, of all publications, has a lengthy article on North Korea’s counterfeiting operations, including Office 39. Well worth a read. (h/t NE Asia Matters)
- #The Chosun Ilbo has an article about a new book by Chang Jin-song (formerly affiliated with the North Korean Workers' Party) that details Kim Jong-il private life, including the inside scoop on all his lady friends. According to Chang, one unfortunate young lady to get Kim's attention was, "brutally executed after she spurned Kim's persistent advances and fell in love with another man."
- #Gizmodo has an excellent array of Kim Jong-il photos; In Which We Provoke Kim Jong Il in 77 Offensive and Hilarious Ways. Some are sure to become often used classics.
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