Kim Jong Un: China seconds that devotion

Economist piece on the second trip that Kim Jong Il took to convince his Chinese patrons that idiot son #3 Kim Jong Un is the right man at the right time.

When Kim snuck off earlier this year, you know the subject was the same, but at least China could feign some ignorance.  Word was that the son snuck along for the train ride this time, with the Chinese offering kind words for the upcoming big party meet that will crown the boy.

So it would seem that the Chinese have clearly signed off on the succession, meaning they will bear some real responsibility for what comes next.

The Politics Blog: Meet the World's Next 28-Year-Old Dictator

The most exclusive party on the planet this week won't take place on some former senate candidate's yacht or even in a celebrity's backyard. It will take place — well no one knows where it's going to be, really, except somewhere in North Korea. What is for sure — and what everyone beyond diplomatic circles should know full well — is that the impending conference of the Workers' Party, which is supposed to happen every five years but has taken thirty in this kind of upside-down country, will have implications the world over. Dangerous ones.

Read the entire entry at Esquire's Politics Blog

WPR's The New Rules: Putting the Brakes on China until Beijing Can

In late-July, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gently put China on notice regarding its increasingly aggressive claims over the near-entirety of the South China Sea by proposing a formal international legal process to resolve territorial disputes there.  Naturally, the Chinese were not pleased, but the proposal was a great move by the Obama administration. Every step that China takes to build up its military power naturally triggers a strong balancing desire throughout the rest of Asia.  But with none of those far-smaller economies looking to anger “rising China,” somebody needs to give voice to those fears and create vehicles for organizing the sought-after balancing.

That somebody can only be the United States.

Read the rest of the column at World Politics Review.

US-SouKo naval exercise: I say, stick it to the new emperor!

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WSJ on the message that was sent by the US-South Korea large-scale naval exercise, despite China’s objections and NorKo’s pathetically over-the-top threats of raining down nukes on the whole proceedings.

China fears nothing about the exercise in a direct sense. It’s just Beijing worrying that the US and SouKo intending to pressurize the new kid on the block—Kim Jong Un.

Coincidentally, that is exactly what I would advocate.

Anything else lets Beijing off its self-created hook and gives Idiot Son #3 the wrong impression (i.e., that he’s anything but a historical placeholder).  If we feed that numbskull’s ego, we will regret it in spades (like the kind you use to dig mass graves).

Latest NGO warning on NorKo's enduring malnutrition issue

Guardian story by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

The gist is familiar enough to long-time watchers:

A desperate picture of the health of North Korea's population is painted by a report describing a country of stunted children, where the hungry eat poisonous plants and pigfeed, amputations are conducted without anaesthetic and doctors are paid in cigarettes.

Almost two decades after it was hit by a famine that killed an estimated 2 million people, North Korea again faces widespread food shortages and is unable to provide even basic healthcare for its people, according to the report, published today by Amnesty International.

The human rights organisation accuses the North Korean regime of systematic neglect and calls on the international community to intervene to prevent a humanitarian disaster.

Based on interviews with aid workers and North Korean defectors, the report says hospitals lack essential equipment and drugs, which forces the sick to treat themselves with medicines bought from markets. Major operations are routinely conducted without anaesthetic, while malnutrition has paved the way for a tuberculosis epidemic.

Nice.

Another factoid:

Last year Unicef said that between 2003 and 2008, 45% of North Korean children under five were stunted, while 9% suffered from wasting and a quarter were underweight.

The longer this goes on, the bigger the ultimate aid bill.  How South Korea turns a blind eye on this always amazes me, even more so than China's cynical exploitation of the situation to loot the place of minerals.

The succession is well underway in NorKo

FT full-page "analysis" on recent going-ons in NorKo, as bodies continue to wash up in this succession crisis.

Gist:  Kim Jong Il is clearing out his politburo to stock it with loyalists for his son, Kim Jong-eun, the "young general" (as he is now touted) who needs military "victories" to prove his worth--hence the recent sinking of the SouKo warship.

But since all the major players (SouKo, China, US) are loath to confront Kim on what will likely become a lengthy pattern of increasingly provocations, we should expect them to continue for quite some time.  

And with the ludicrous public promise of making NorKo a "mighty and prosperous nation" by 2012 hanging out there, foreign demons will have to be slain to explain the inevitable shortfall.

The only real variable in the equation is China becoming unhappy enough with these shenanigans to stop using its UN Security Council veto to shield the regime.  Other than that, we're waiting on the Romanian scenario, by which a cabal of senior NorKo officials move against Kim Jong-eun once the old man dies.

Underneath all of NorKo's belligerency re: succession remains the famine

CSM article by way of WPR's Media Roundup on NorKo lifting restrictions on private market activity in response to persistent famine conditions:

North Korea appears to be allowing private enterprise in local markets in a desperate search for an antidote to rising hunger and potential unrest.

South Korean analysts, with contacts inside North Korea, report a loosening of state restrictions on the private sales of goods as North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il smooths the way for the takeover of his youngest son, Kim Jong-un.

The lifting of state restrictions on the operation of local markets selling food and other goods comes amid reports of an economy that is now descending to the level of the 1990s, when aid experts estimate two million people died of disease and starvation. Several years ago, markets were opened briefly – for similar reasons – before authorities again clamped down.

The most definitive report on free-market opening comes from Good Friends, a non-governmental organization in Seoul that has long attempted to provide food and other aid to North Koreans and receives information by a network of informants inside the North. Food rations have also been suspended, according to the group.

Private stands selling food and small items are operating with minimal official harassment, according to these reports, though it’s not clear whether they are fully legal or simply given tacit acceptance.

A guiding factor appears to be the desire to appease conflicting forces, including a small but influential middle class that suffered huge losses from revaluation of the currency. It’s critical, say South Korean analysts, to settle differences in the run-up to an extraordinary convention of the ruling Workers’ Party in September at which leadership changes – notably confirmation of a post for Kim Jong-un – are expected.

Familiar tactic for totalitarian system undergoing political change:  ramp up the tension with rest of world while offering bread to the masses to keep them quiet.

Unfortunately for the NorKo masses, all the relevant great powers are more than happy to let this situation proceed.  SouKo doesn't want the problem, nor does China, nor does the US.

NorKo: breaking point for masses, yes, but not for Kim clan

North Korean border with China:  guess which side is China's.

NYT story that does the usual with scant interview-based info from recent escapees:

Like many North Koreans, the construction worker lived in penury. His state employer had not paid him for so long that he had forgotten his salary. Indeed, he paid his boss to be listed as a dummy worker so that he could leave his work site. Then he and his wife could scrape out a living selling small bags of detergent on the black market.

It hardly seemed that life could get worse. And then, one Saturday afternoon last November, his sister burst into his apartment in Chongjin with shocking news: the North Korean government had decided to drastically devalue the nation’s currency. The family’s life savings, about $1,560, had been reduced to about $30.

Last month the construction worker sat in a safe house in this bustling northern Chinese city, lamenting years of useless sacrifice. Vegetables for his parents, his wife’s asthma medicine, the navy track suit his 15-year-old daughter craved — all were forsworn on the theory that, even in North Korea, the future was worth saving for.

“Ai!” he exclaimed, cursing between sobs. “How we worked to save that money! Thinking about it makes me go crazy.”

North Koreans are used to struggle and heartbreak. But the Nov. 30 currency devaluation, apparently an attempt to prop up a foundering state-run economy, was for some the worst disaster since a famine that killed hundreds of thousands in the mid-1990s.

Interviews in the past month with eight North Koreans who recently left their country — a prison escapee, illegal traders, people in temporary exile to find work in China, the traveling wife of an official in the ruling Workers’ Party — paint a haunting portrait of desperation inside North Korea, a nation of 24 million people, and of growing resentment toward its erratic leader, Kim Jong-il.

What seems missing — for now, at least — is social instability. Widespread hardship, popular anger over the currency revaluation and growing political uncertainty as Mr. Kim seeks to install his third son as his successor have not hardened into noticeable resistance against the government.

NorKo remains an amazing experiment in pushing captive masses past the limits of human endurance.  It is the closest thing to a country-as-concentration-camp as the world has ever seen.

Kim's leadership shuffle in NorKo: the regent selected

WSJ story on recent leadership shake-up in NorKo that's clearly designed to clear the path for the third generation in the Kim dynasty.

Kim moved his brother-in-law Jang Song Taek into the #2 spot. He will apparently act as idiot son #3's sherpa in the planned upward glidepath to the top spot upon Kim Jong-Il's death.  Jang is 64 years old, and is believed to be the #3 son's top supporter.

More Russian outreach on modernization

FT article.

Russia co-producing strategic airlift with the US, buying naval surface combatants from France, trading cheap fuel for basing rights in Ukraine, and now building ships with South Korea out in Vladivostok.

Quite the rising challenger, huh?

Russia’s state-owned shipbuilder teaming up with South Korea’s King-Kong shipbuilder Daewoo—a modernizing alliance all right.

Smart Haass piece on the Koreas crisis

"Smart Haass" has a nice ring to it, yes?

WSJ op-ed by Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and holder of the George Kennan slot at State under Bush-Cheney (early, not late).

Call out text summarizes it perfectly:

Pass the South Korea free trade agreement and give up negotiating with Kim Jong Il.

The FTA has been sitting with Congress for 3 years.  Instead of passing some meaningless message, why not pass that instead?

(Feel free to slap your own forehead and utter, "Duh!")

Other than that, skip the usual diplo show with nutty Kim and signal that you're just waiting for his death to screw the place over as much as possible.

Okay, I spiced up that last bit.

Reason why?  Make it clear to China that when the event goes down, we'll just watch while things get dicey for them as much or more than they do for Seoul.

Meanwhile, we should publicly explore the reality of a unified Korea with our southern friends, says Haass, and let China come to that conversation as it sees fear--I mean, fit.

May have spiced up that last-last bit a bit too.

Divisions within PRC over DPRK?

Clinton with South Korea's president last week.

NYT story on perceived divisions within China over how to respond to latest NorKo shenanigans.

While China’s decision-making on core foreign policy issues tends to be secretive, American officials said they had picked up hints that there was some disagreement within the leadership about how to respond to North Korea’s behavior, pitting civilian party leaders against the military.

The debate surfaced last year after North Korea tested a nuclear device, American officials said, and has accelerated since the attack on the South Korean ship, the Cheonan. Chinese civilian leaders have expressed growing puzzlement and anger about the North’s behavior, these officials said, while military officials tend to see the North’s moves as more defensible given the threat North Korea perceives from the United States.

Unsurprising split.  Just interesting that it's becoming apparent to outsiders.

The Politics Blog: 5 Ways to Get Help on the North Korean Mess (from China)

Is Kim Jong-Il mad or what? As if this weekend's Eastern diplomatic swing to ease tensions over the sinking of a South Korean warship didn't seem fruitless or frustrating enough, now the world's least-favorite despot is really screaming to respect his authorit-ah by freezing ties with Seoul this morning.

Having long ago reversed its own "sunshine policy" toward its evil twin, South Korea now seems truly fed up. President Lee Myung-bak checked all the usual boxes over the weekend (cut remaining trade, block sea lanes, resume pysops, seek UN Security Council resolution, etc.), then pointedly added a call for regime change, vowing that North Korea "will pay a price." But before you go screaming World War III on today's developments, take heart: The solution, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remains in "intensive consultations" with Beijing over both NorKo and Iran's nuclear program, remains in China. And the time for tough choices seems to have arrived, both for Beijing and the Obama administration.

I have long argued — and since persisted, with regard to both Pyongyang and Tehran — that the U.S. should punt on Iran's nukes (there's nothing undeterrable about a Shia bomb) and target North Korea for regime change. I still believe that. Engaging with Iran serves tangible, near-term purpose (e.g., Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel-vs.-Hamas/Hezbollah), while toying with Kim serves none. And I still believe that China is in the driver's seat, whether we're talking Beijing's $80-billion investment in Iran's energy sector or its dreams of lifting $6-trillion worth of NorKo's mineral reserves (at bargain basement prices). Understanding that China must save face as well as sunk costs, here's my plan for making everyone — save Israel and Kim — more, shall we say, respectf-ah in the short run.

Read the full post at Esquire's The Politics Blog

North Korea as a Chinese colony? Only so long as the minerals hold out.

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NYT story noting that, in their respective hours of fear (North Korea over looming famine, South Korea of recent naval ship sinking by North Korea), both sides sent their top leader to China recently for reassurance.

On Friday [30 April], President Lee Myung-bak will travel to China under growing pressure at home to make the case for crucial Chinese support for tough international sanctions against North Korea if, as is widely expected, the North is found responsible for the sinking of a South Korean ship. But he is unlikely to win that support, experts say, a reflection of China’s growing role in the Korean Peninsula.

Since taking office in 2008, Mr. Lee has wound down his predecessors’ “sunshine policy” of aid and engagement with the North, heightening Chinese fears of instability and driving the North into China’s economic embrace. Ultimately, that could give Beijing greater leverage in determining the fate of the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, a situation that many South Koreans would consider to be a nightmare.

“China’s influence has become so important that we can almost say that it can now claim the first and last piece of the apple on the Korean Peninsula,” said Lee Byong-chul, a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul, using a Korean saying to suggest that China can have whatever it wants.

Even conservatives, who have usually opposed aid to the North, warn of North Korea’s becoming a “Chinese colony” whenever reports circulate of Chinese companies taking over North Korean ports and mines at bargain prices.

All the experts quoted call the "colony" fear overblown, but they're talking about it in a political sense.

In an economic sense, NorKo already is China's colony.  China controls 70% of its trade and is locking in the nation's natural resources in a manner that can only be described a colonial in scope and control.

I do agree with the experts on one thing:  China will do nothing to destabilize the situation--nothing so long as they get their minerals ($6T worth) in return for their meager aid ($3B a year).

Eberstadt on NorKo endgame scenarios

Eberstadt, almost always the smartest guy in the room on North Korea, joins the recent trend of analyzing possible endgame scenarios in this WSJ opinion piece.

He starts by paraphrasing Churchill:  "Unification would be the worst possible outcome for Korea--except for all the other alternatives.

Eberstadt says he expects NorKo to continue upping the nuclear ante--as is trying to sell.

So the big alternatives post-Kim is that the military takes over openly and continues down this path, or internal instability with rivals to the throne duking it out (he says civil war with nukes is possible because these guys have no trouble killing lots of their own people--as evidenced by the famines of the 1990s).

The most interesting possibility is that the Chinese step in and sort of take over, a subject long floated by Chinese academics, but Nick discounts this in the manner that I have recently:  Beijing plans on busting-out the joint in terms of mineral wealth before plotting any serious endgame.  Of course, at some point in that process, South Korea would have to deal with the PRC.

So unification looks better to Eberstadt.

Let's hope Seoul gets the memo.