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 [...]

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.

Missed it on the 30th as I was working late, but it’s now been four years since DPRK Studies has been in blog format.

From the Japan Times: “Yasushi Chimura and his wife, Fukie, abducted by North Korea in 1978 but repatriated in 2002, expressed relief Friday that their children [now ages 27, 25, and 21] are adapting smoothly to Japanese life as they marked the fifth anniversary of their arrival in Japan.”

Via the NYT: “Former President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea, who had been under criminal investigation for corruption, died on Saturday from a fall while hiking on a hill near his retirement home… it was unclear whether the fall was accidental or whether Mr. Roh had committed suicide … Roh left a will, indicating that [...]

The topic is titled, “South Korea’s Rollback of Democratic Rights,” but some more interesting points arose from that false start. From LMB to mad cow to the bogus protest groups operating in South Korea today, something for everyone as Burgeson and Katsiaficas go head to head.

Via UPI: “A recent U.S. National Intelligence Commission report claiming that 1990s famines in the North have rendered many potential soldiers born during the period with “cognitive deficiencies” drew an angry official response from [the KCNA] Saturday… ‘They floated the cock-and-bull story… it is an open secret that the ill-famed intelligence and plot-breeding institutions of [...]

From the Korea Times (via ROK Drop): “The North Korean army should form part of peacekeeping forces to help reconstruct war-ravaged Afghanistan ― if Pyongyang normalizes relations with the United States, an opposition lawmaker said Thursday.” This from a South Korean Democratic Party (DP) member.