Return to *North Korean Studies*
by Aidan Foster-Carter
On the face of it North Korea is sitting pretty, with no reason for the United States to go after it and with talks with the South resumed. But underlying everything is the issue of Pyongyang's nuclear program, which, in this new era of heightened tension, might give Washington cause to change tack.
by Aidan Foster-Carter
North Korea is routinely referred to as a Stalinist state, often more from habit than with any real thought. Think about it though, and the appellation is not entirely accurate, although in the final analysis, Stalin has a lot to answer for.
The days were when it was not easy to find good specialist books on North Korea written in English. Times have changed, and there is now a wide range to choose from, writes Aidan Foster-Carter , who picks a few of his favorites.
By Aidan Foster-Carter
As North Korea's President Kim - Yong-nam, not Jong-il: (Pyongyang Watch, Jul 9,) continues his tour of Indochina, this seems an apt moment for another in our occasional series examining the DPRK's ties with assorted parts of the globe. Previous pieces have looked at Pyongyang's adventures in Africa, and in Central and South Asia. So let's now come closer to home and see how North Korea has fared in its own quasi-backyard of Southeast Asia. This article focuses mainly on Indochina. A future one will extend the story to the major Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) member states...
By Aidan Foster-Carter
The good news is that North Korea has won an award. The bad news is that it has no official status. The worse news is - you'd guessed - that this was the kind of competition one would rather not win. Call it a sixth sense, or call me an old cynic. But somehow, as soon as I saw the cover of Newsweek's July 9 issue, I knew the DPRK would be in there. In fat postcard style letters, it read: "Greetings from the World's Worst Countries". And promised "Newsweek's Bottom 10 - the Worst of the Worst"...
No, not that
President Kim
By Aidan Foster-Carter
This week North Korea's President Kim begins a tour of Indo-China. Have Kim Jong-il's two trips to China given him a yen for wider horizons? Nope. Not that president Kim. So did they elect someone else? You've got to be kidding. A coup? Perish the thought. Then what's going on? Nothing at all. It's just that the formalities of North Korea's power structure - the realities are something else again - can be rather confusing. This article will boldly strive to dispel Confucianism. Take a deep breath ...
North Korea's diplomatic forays into South and Central Asia, reflective of its efforts elsewhere, are characterized by subversion and spooks, farce and sleaze. Nevertheless, seven centuries after Genghis Khan laid waste to Korea, his heirs are kinder to North Koreans than their own latter-day khan, writes Aidan Foster-Carter.
Last June people on the the Korean peninsula were
celebrating first ever inter-Korean summit talks. A
year later there is not that much to party about,
although the news that the United States is at last
ready to resume talks with North Korea gives some
cheer, writes Aidan Foster-Carter.
By Aidan Foster Carter
Numbers and North Korea go together like fish and bicycles. With figures so rare, the latest report of the South Korean central bank on the North's economy is like gold dust. In the end, a familiar story emerges: Seoul trades more in three days than Pyongyang does in a year. One country, two planets.
By Aidan Foster Carter
On May 15, Choe Su-hon, one of Pyongyang's nine deputy foreign ministers, quantified the grim truth at a Unicef conference in Beijing. Almost a quarter of
a million people - 220,000 to be exact - died of famine between 1995 and 1998. As a result, and also due to medical shortages, average life expectancy fell
from 73.2 in 1993 to 66.8 in 1999.
By Aidan Foster Carter
Not having been entirely complimentary about the Asia policies of the Bush administration in the past, let me agree with them for a change on one particular. Last Friday, the Financial Times quoted US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as saying that Washington has "concerns of proliferation" with Pakistan, centering on "people who were employed by the nuclear agency and have retired". Armitage didn't elaborate on details or evidence. But colleagues confirmed that the object of concern is North Korea, which is believed to have traded its missile technology for access to Pakistan's nuclear secrets...
By Aidan Foster-Carter
Kim Jong-il, we may safely predict, is not amused. A regime which denies liberty and even life to its subjects, preaches puritan communist morality and excoriates capitalism and the West, lets its playboy princeling swan into so-called enemy territory on a tacky fake passport, with son, two young women (neither his wife), a trunkful of cash and all the vulgar display of the nouveau riche. Bah, humbug...
By Aidan Foster-Carter
It's hard to be optimistic about North Korea just now. Kim Jong-il and his peculiar realm seem to be once more headed full-steam astern, back into hermit kingdom mode. It's the crass choices of others who should know better - read George W Bush and his hard-line advisers who are a godsend to Northern hawks - who are responsible for the about-turn and insulting slap in the face of Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-jung. Confucius, meet Texas; and note who's wearing the cowboy boots...
By Aidan Foster-Carter
For the first time ever, North Korea on March 24 officially honored a South Korean: the late Chung Ju-yung, the larger-than-life founder of the Hyundai conglomerate, who died last week aged 85. When he was a teenager, the northern-born Chung ran off to the bright lights of Seoul, taking money his dad was saving to buy a cow. In 1998, he returned to the North with a gift of 500 cows. He got to meet Kim Jong-il and clinched a deal to run tourists to Mt Kumgang. That was the breakthrough that made the inter-Korean summit possible and set the stage for the new pan-Korean political economy that is now emerging...
by Aidan Foster-Carter
Yu Tae-jun was either very brave or mighty foolish. Either way, by all accounts he's now very dead - at just 33 - after being publicly executed. His crime? Defecting to South Korea from the North. His mistake? Returning - or being returned. Even in North Korea people like the unfortunate Yu should have at least one right: to know what it is they're being shot for...
The reportedly huge number of refugees fleeing North Korea raises the possibility of the collapse of the Pyongyang regime. But hence the conundrum: to stem the exodus, the world should buttress, with aid, one of its most horrible regimes. Francesco Sisci writes that what is needed is a sophisticated, nuanced and hard-nosed coordinated policy on North Korea, not wet sentimentalism, to prevent endangering millions of its
neighbours and the welfare of all of Asia...
A major American news magazine has exposed the plight of North Korean refugees, an issue that has been shamefully neglected because a lot of people wish it would just go away. If not attended to, it may become a major threat to hopes of peaceful change on the peninsula. Aidan Foster-Carter writes that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il must be pressed urgently to feed and treat his people better - because it's right, and because if he doesn't he risks reaping the whirlwind...
"According to the far-reaching plan of the Great General who is determined to computerize the whole country, computer genius education bases will be newly established." That report in the North Korean party paper Rodong Sinmun goes on to extol Kim Jong-il's "extraordinary knowledge about the computer area". Aidan Foster-Carter writes about the North's expanding, if still restricted internally, interest in the World Wide Web and notes that, as ever, self-reliance rules. But, he adds, that can't last...
by Leon V Sigal
The proposed United States missile defense system is too far off to protect the US from a possible North Korean missile attack, argues Leon V Sigal, and therefore it is in the US interest to conclude a deal to terminate Pyongyang's missile program. Sigal outlines six myths which he says have prevented the conclusion of such a deal.
by Aidan Foster-Carter
In a critique of the abovementioned article, Aidan Foster-Carter agrees with Sigal's conclusion that dialogue with North Korea, not isolation, is required. But the fear is that one-sided "dove" arguments like this will only confirm to US hawks that liberals need a reality check...
by Aidan Foster-Carter
If North Korean leader Kim Jong-il learned more than "Woooo, skyscrapers!" from his recent Shanghai jaunt, he should whiz down the new motorway to Nampo port, where the authorities have been doing their damnedest to sabotage business by refusing entry to South Korean ships, and give the harbour board some of his celebrated on-the-spot guidance.
By Aidan Foster-Carter
Kim Jong-il has a new theme song: it's no longer "My Way", but rather "The Times They Are A-Changin". Kim's problem, writes Aidan Foster-Carter, is that in order to put into practice the lessons he learnt in Shanghai he must justify a policy U-turn by his absolutist regime without repudiating its past or weakening its grip.
By Aidan Foster-Carter
If Kim Jong-il learned anything in China, he should swiftly do a Deng Xiaoping and say loudly and clearly that markets and private enterprise are A Good Thing, to be actively encouraged. It's far too late for toes in the water, or even halfway houses. What North Korea needs is the full monty: markets, reforms, private business, entrepreneurs. Everywhere. Now.
By Aidan Foster-Carter
Whatever your view of Kim Jong-il, you have to admire his skill on the world stage. His just completed visit to China was pure theater, and his timing was perfect. For his Washington audience, he sent a signal to the potentially hostile new US administration that he's serious about reform. His own military received a message that economic matters are in the ascendant. Watch the "Great Teacher of Acrobats" fly - and pray he doesn't lose his grip.
By Aidan Foster-Carter
Real politics in North Korea is kept carefully hidden behind a facade of unity. Yet different reports emanating from Pyongyang recently have taken such contradictory lines that it is impossible not to notice. Diehards and reformers are engaged in fierce debate over what is a matter of life and death for the country. Highlighting the debate is leader Kim Jong-il's call for nothing less than a new way of thinking.
In the first unambiguous sign that North Korea really does plan to rejoin the planet, a major global corporation is taking the plunge and going in. Asea Brown Boveri, the Swedish-Swiss engineering multinational, is to undertake nothing less than the modernization of North Korea's entire national electricity grid. The short-term difficulties for ABB will be considerable, writes Aidan Foster-Carter, but the long-term rewards could be immense.
By Aidan Foster-Carter
So far, just 200 out of 70,000 South Korean applicants have been allowed brief reunions with their kin in the North. Koreans living in other countries like the US and Japan, however, are seen by Pyongyang as cash cows rather than a political risk, and are welcome to visit the North, for a price. It may be a long time before South and North Koreans at home get that lucky
By Aidan Foster-Carter
North Korea's Dear Leader has a new flavor of the month - catfish - and the nation's meagre resources will no doubt be commandeered to further the catfish cause. Given Kim Jong-il's other pet projects - potato farming and the production of salt from seawater - can a fish-and-chip franchise be far behind?...
By Aidan Foster-Carter
The prospect of a journey to North Korea by US President Bill Clinton in the waning days of his term has drawn decidedly lukewarm appraisals from many observers. They warn that this exercise in "legacy politics" could backfire badly. Even the White House has backed away from the expectation that the president will go to Pyongyang soon....
North Korea is literally a land of darkness, writes Aidan Foster-Carter. Satellite photos of the peninsula at night show a mass of bright lights all over South Korea, but north of the Demilitarized Zone all is black except a faint glimmer around Pyongyang. It will take South Korean resources to switch the Northern lights back on and power Pyongyang's recovery.
North Korea, in the short span of less than half a year after the summit between South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Il-jong, has now become a battleground for diplomatic influence between China, Russia and the United States. Under these circumstances it will hardly be a great tactical feat for Kim Jong-il to extract any number of political and economic concessions from his various suitors without having to offer much in return in terms of concrete changes in his realm. After the past months of frantic diplomatic activity and feel-good meetings, it's time to take stock and insist in hard-nosed manner on effecting the economic changes which provide the best handle on internal change in North Korea.
Over the past six years, ties between the world's sole superpower and arguably its biggest rogue have developed into a unique and highly anomalous relationship. Contrast the US's tough treatment of the likes of Cuba, Iraq and Libya with its kindness to North Korea's Kim Jong-il. Now the odd friendship may get even warmer after last week's visit to Washington by Vice Marshal Cho Myong-rok. Yet you don't have to be a hawk to wonder if Pyongyang's smile diplomacy means it is actually giving any ground.
A Clinton visit to Pyongyang would have a reasonable chance of defining another sizeable step toward Korean peace. What's bugging congressional Republicans that they don't want to see him travel to North Korea to make his own contribution to the process? Kim Jong-il proved at the June inter-Korean summit that he is good for some positive surprises. There's no reason not to give him a chance for an encore