Disarmament Talks, Cont.

Recently elected South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has taken a firm position towards North Korea. According to Reuters:

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday urged North Korea to start standing on its own feet, stop relying on handouts and get ready for unification. [...] The conservative leader has promised to help lift North Korea out of abject poverty on condition the reclusive communist neighbor abandons nuclear weapons and opens up its economy.

Thankfully, an international disarmament accord was signed in 2007. However, there is dispute over whether North Korea completely and accurately followed through with it. According to Associated Press:

The accord, signed among the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, is at a stalemate due to a dispute over whether the North fully accounted for its nuclear programs by a Dec. 31, 2007 deadline. The North says it already provided the list in November, while the U.S. says it is still waiting for a complete, detailed declaration.

On the other hand, North Korea is asking the other members of the international accord to fulfill their agreements: to provide 1 million metric tons of fuel oil and normalized diplomatic ties (remove North Korea from the state sponsor of terrorism list) with the U.S. and Japan (Bloomberg).

That's why, at the suggestion of North Korea, chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill and his North Korean counterpart Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan met in Geneva on March 14 to discuss these discrepancies (Chosun Ilbo). However, no progress was made.

In Visit, Cellist’s Quest for Lost Chord to His Youth

By DANIEL J. WAKIN for the New York Times
PYONGYANG, North Korea — For much of his 60 years, Valentin Hirsu has thought of those three Korean boys in his class.

It was at Music School No. 1 in Bucharest, Romania. The boys were North Korean orphans from the war that had torn up their country. One played piano, another clarinet, the third flute.

After about six years, they were taken home.

Mr. Hirsu never heard from them again. Now, in Pyongyang as a cellist with the visiting New York Philharmonic, he is asking about their fate.

"It’s a crime not to look for them if I’ll be there,” he said on the eve of the orchestra’s departure from Beijing. “I don’t know if they are alive or minister of culture. How am I supposed to know?” he said.

Mr. Hirsu kept a picture that includes the three Koreans among a clutch of students around a teacher, like a “mother hen,” he said.

He recalled the three boys as excellent students and good kids. “They were the best in drawing,” he said. “They were the best in geography, even Romanian, volleyball, everything.”

After graduating, Mr. Hirsu embarked on a successful career as a soloist in Romania. In 1975, he immigrated to Israel and a year later to the United States, where he almost immediately won an audition for the Philharmonic.

Mr. Hirsu gave the photograph to Fred Carriere, the executive director of the Korea Society, which helped the Philharmonic with logistics for the trip. Mr. Hirsu had a phonetic recollection of the names, but that did not prove to be much help. Mr. Carriere said Monday, after the orchestra arrived in Pyongyang, that he had had no success in locating the three.

A disappointed Mr. Hirsu said he would not give up, promising to ask every North Korean musician he encountered about them. “I can find them on my own,” he said.

U.S.'09 Budget for NK Shifts to Denuclearization

The U.S. budget for North Korea-related funds in fiscal year (FY) 2009 is spread out between the energy and state departments with a shift away from democratization assistance to nuclear disarmament.

The budget proposed earlier this month, and to start in October this year, includes the Energy Department's request for $ 140.5 million for Nonproliferation and International Security (NIS) which covers the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative. This program is specifically aimed at disabling, dismantling and verifying North Korea's nuclear program and at stopping spread of weapons of mass destruction.

``Another priority in FY 2009 is disablement, dismantlement, and verification of nuclear programs in North Korea,’’ the department's budget request says.

``In FY 2009, NIS will provide technical expertise required (for) dismantlement actions of the North Korean nuclear facilities, continue to verify the North Korean declaration of its nuclear program elements, support the six-party working groups, and undertake scientist engagement opportunities to support denuclearization and proliferation risk reduction.’’ (Yonhap)

From: The Korea Times

22 N. Koreans Executed for a Defection Attempt

Twenty-two North Koreans, sent back to the North by South Korean authorities earlier this month after their fishing boats drifted into South Korean waters, were reported to have been executed by a firing squad.

The North Koreans were shot dead last week by North Korean military authorities of South Hwanghae Province, which believed they had attempted to defect to the South, Yonhap News Agency reported Sunday, quoting an unidentified government source.

``The rumor (of the execution) has been spreading out among locals. Local people have been shocked that all of the 22 were executed by a firing squad without distinction of age or sex,'' the source said.

The 22 North Koreans included eight men, 14 women and three students.

North Korean fishermen often stray into southern waters because of bad weather or engine problems.

From The Korea Times

NK Intensifies Press Oppression

"North Korea executed a state-run company's director last year for having made phone calls abroad without government permission, an international journalist group said in its annual report released Sunday.

The case reflects a marked increase in executions for the offense of communication with people outside the totalitarian country, Reporters Without Borders said.
``North Korea is the world's most isolated country and the security forces are responsible for keeping it that way at all costs,’’ it said in the report.

`` North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is visiting media newsrooms, giving orders to reporters and correcting the editorials.’’

The group campaigning for freedom of speech also introduced burgeoning efforts to break the isolation. About a dozen North Korean reporters, who received secret training in China, launched the country's first magazine immune to censorship in November.

``Working closely with a Japanese news agency, Rimjingang has promised unprecedented news about the situation within the country,’’ it said. ``The first edition carried interviews with North Koreans and an analysis of the country's economic situation.’’ (Yonhap) "

From: The Korea Times

North Korea Diverts Food Aid to Military

The Korea Times, among others, reports that South Korea's food aid may actually be serving to feed the North Korean military, rather than the North Korean population as a whole:

Some of the rice given to North Korea by South Korea for humanitarian purposes has been funneled into the North Korean military units on the front lines, according to a military source Thursday. But Seoul has never raised the issue with Pyongyang.

``Since late 2006, we have noticed bags of rice clearly marked with South Korea's Red Cross logo being unloaded from trucks in North Korean military camps and some of them were left in a stacked there,'' an official said on condition of anonymity.

The bags, which contained rice, were also used for North Korea's military encampment. So far some 400 rice bags reportedly ended up in the North Korean military bases.

North Korean defectors have often said rice provided to the North by the South leaked to the military. Some even said the good quality rice goes to the military first.

It's an odd cycle, with South Korea feeding the very military that threatens to invade it. There are, however, more sinister implications regarding the regime's motivations. Must read analysis at the blog One Free Korea, which posits, among other things, the possibility that the North Korean regime, when given food aid, cuts back on importing food so as to free up more money to spend on other things while its people sit on the brink of starvation.

More on China's Pre-Olympic Crackdown

From the International Herald Tribune:

When state security agents burst into his apartment on Dec. 27, Hu Jia was chatting on Skype, the Internet-based telephone system. Hu's computer was his most potent tool. He disseminated information about human rights cases, peasant protests and other politically touchy topics even though he often lived under de facto house arrest.

Hu, 34, and his wife, Zeng Jinyan, are human rights advocates who spent much of 2006 restricted to their apartment in a complex with the unlikely name of Bo Bo Freedom City. She blogged about life under detention, while he videotaped a documentary titled "Prisoner in Freedom City." Their surreal existence seemed to reflect an official uncertainty about how, and whether, to shut them up.

That ended on Dec. 27. Hu was dragged away on charges of subverting state power while Zeng was bathing their newborn daughter, Qianci. Telephone and Internet connections to the apartment were severed. Mother and daughter are now under house arrest. Qianci, barely 2 months old, is probably the youngest political prisoner in China.

For human rights advocates and Chinese dissidents, Hu's detention is the most telling example of what they describe as a broadening crackdown on dissent as Beijing prepares to stage the Olympic Games in August. In recent months, several dissidents have been jailed, including a former factory worker in northeastern China who collected 10,000 signatures after posting an online petition titled "We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics."

"This is a coordinated cleansing campaign," said Teng Biao, a legal expert who has known Hu since 2006. "All the troublemakers — including potential troublemakers — are being silenced before the Olympic Games."

Both refugees and NGO workers are likely to fall into the "troublemakers" category, which bodes ill for them and for the cause of North Korean freedom.