And now for the news from North Korea

WHO’S THE MOST FAMOUS foreign news reader in Japan? You might be surprised—it’s none of the glorified magazine models who appear on the BBC, CNN, or Fox (though a few middle-aged women were fans of the late Peter Jennings due to the ABC news excerpts NHK broadcast on their satellite channel).

Take a look at the accompanying photo to see the overseas announcer instantly recognizable to anyone in the country who watches television news. And here’s the best part—almost no one knows her name!

Thanks to this report in the English-language version of South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo, we find out that her name is Ri Chun-hi, a 65-year-old grandmother and 1971 graduate of the Pyeongyang University of Dramatic and Cinematic Arts. Ms. Ri is surely even better known in South Korea—her responsibility is to deliver news reports for an overseas audience. The photo here shows her announcing North Korea’s nuclear test on 9 October 2006.

What’s the reason for her celebrity? A recent profile in the North Korean magazine Naenara put it this way:

“She grasps the hearts of viewers with her strong and appealing voice…She strikes the enemies so severely that they have become dumbfounded when she announces statements and talks.”

Some people describe her grasp on the hearts of viewers in a different way, however. A few years ago, one of my Korean language tutors, a university student in Japan, said that the standard North Korean broadcasting style “gives me the creeps”. (Well, that’s not what she said in Japanese, but that’s what she meant.)

That’s probably one reason excerpts of her reports are broadcast so frequently here without a Japanese voice-over: her intonation and tone are so artificial, and so quickly shift from exaggerated bellicosity to patriotic fervor, one could easily imagine her as a state broadcaster in George Orwell’s 1984. It was not for nothing that she was recruited from drama school rather than journalism school. (That’s also probably better training for television news, but I digress.)

The unadulterated taste of the Pyeongyang propaganda technique likely does creep out most Japanese and Korean viewers. The contrast between the brisk but understated broadcasting style in Japan provides a perfect implied contrast with just how different daily life in North Korea must be. Pictures with voice inflections are worth a thousand words in the broadcast medium.

And really, let’s be honest–these broadcasts also have plenty of cheap entertainment value.

Ms. Ri may not get the multi-million dollar contracts awarded to the “anchors” on American network television, but the article does say that she is well-remunerated by her country’s standards:

“She lives…in a house in a beautiful place in Pyeongyang, the capital,” the magazine said. “The modern dwelling house and car were given to her as gifts by the state.”

Then there are the other perks:

North Korea’s female news announcers enjoy the privilege of getting their hair styled at the country’s best beauty salon, Changgwangwon in Pyeongyang. They are also allowed opportunities to try on clothes made by the national clothing institute before anybody else.

Judging from her picture and considering the universality of the feminine psychology, it wouldn’t surprise me if the thought of going on a diet has crossed her mind from time to time. Other North Korean women should be so lucky.

Here’s another unintentional glimpse of life behind the kimchee curtain in North Korea, courtesy of Naenara:

Their hairstyles and clothes lead the country’s fashions.

Lucky for us, there’s a YouTube clip of Ms. Ri delivering this very announcement on DPRK TV. It’s only about 1:15, which is enough to get the flavor if you don’t know Korean.

You’ll get the idea, but I’ve seen her in better form. She’s much more emotive when she’s delivering the propaganda ministry’s florid invective.

Postscript: The Chosun’s report says that TV news reports in North Korea often begin with the phrase, “Our Korean People’s Army supreme commander Kim Jong-il.” I’m pretty sure that “supreme commander” here is the same word as shogun in Japanese, though the Koreans are not about to use that expression. The two languages have a lot of words in common, but the pronunciation is of course different. Another is the word that first appeared on screen in the YouTube clip: podo. It’s identical to hodo in Japanese, and means “news report”.

Ozawa Ichiro’s foreign affairs

OZAWA ICHIRO, the president of the Democratic Party of Japan, the country’s leading opposition party, is considering a trip to South Korea to visit Lee Myung-bak on 22 or 23 February, just before Mr. Lee’s inauguration as president, according this Kyodo report. Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo also might drop in on Mr. Lee, but he would visit around the time of the inauguration itself.

The Japan Times eagerly suggests in its headline that Mr. Ozawa might upstage the prime minister by being the first to visit Mr. Lee. (The newspaper’s political orientation is such that they would be delighted if that happened.) Upstaging Mr. Fukuda might well be the DPJ president’s reason for making the visit, but the way Mr. Ozawa and the party behaved when he visited China in early December suggests another possible outcome: the visit could blow up in their faces like an exploding cigar.

Mr. Ozawa’s mentor was the late Tanaka Kakuei, the Boss Tweed of Japanese politics. Mr. Tanaka took a special interest in China, and this interest is shared by his protégé. The DPJ president regularly leads groups on goodwill tours of the country. During his tour last December, the group met with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Here’s the BBC report on his visit; the headline reads, “Ozawa beats Fukuda to China visit”, as if the article belonged in the sports section rather than the Asian news category.

Starting at the Beginning

This story begins when the Dalai Lama visited Japan last November on a tour to raise the awareness of the Chinese oppression of his Tibetan homeland. DPJ Secretary-General Hatoyama Yukio held a joint press conference with him during his stay here.

You don’t need a fortune cookie to figure out how the Chinese responded. They wrote this letter to the DPJ, which is still up on the website of their embassy in Japan. Here’s a translation from the Japanese of the good parts:

“We express our great surprise and strong dissatisfaction with Secretary-General Hatoyama’s statement of support for the Dalai Lama at the press conference.

“Under the guise of religion, the Dalai Lama is an anti-Chinese political exile working to break up the country.

“Ozawa Ichiro, the president of your party, will lead a large delegation to visit our country early next month.

“We most firmly request that you extend all due respect to China’s position toward Tibet so that a similar event does not happen again, and that relations between the DPJ and China can continue to develop soundly in the proper direction.”

The DPJ’s Response

As it happened, Uyghur human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer, who had spent six years in a Chinese jail, and who was forced to divorce her activist husband by the Chinese government, was also in Japan at the time. She had been invited to attend a study conference organized by Makino Seishu, one of the DPJ’s founding members with Kan Naoto and Hatoyama Yukio. A former lower house member, Makino has for years been an outspoken advocate for the Tibetans and the Uyghurs, and of democracy in Asia.

Ms. Kadeer (shown in the second photo with the Dalai Lama) soon found herself disinvited by the conference. A room for the meeting had been reserved since August in a building used by Diet members, but the party applied some pressure to Mr. Makino to avoid offending the Chinese. She did wind up addressing a study conference, but it was not one with direct DPJ involvement. That get-together was sponsored by three LDP members of the Diet instead: Nakagawa Shoichi, Eto Seiichi, and Hiranuma Takeo.

Those who attended heard about the Chinese imprisonment and execution of Uyghurs and their justification of their behavior by insisting it is part of the global war on terrorism.

Mr. Hatoyama admitted the letter had been delivered to the party, and that party leaders thought it best for the conference to be held at a different location. And so Mr. Ozawa’s Beijing junket remained on the schedule. He did miss a few days of the special Diet session extended to discuss the new bill for Japanese support of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, but the DPJ boss is not one to let legislative affairs interfere with his other interests.

Mr. Ozawa Goes to Beijing

Alas, Mr. Ozawa didn’t do himself any favors in Japan with his behavior. The DPJ leader can be arrogant at times, particularly when he thinks he has the upper hand in a situation. Indeed, The Economist of Great Britain has in the past referred to him as a bully. But his behavior when he met with President Hu bordered on fawning obsequiousness, according to several sources quoted in the 20 December edition of the weekly magazine, Shukan Shincho.

Photographs of the meeting show the often haughty Japanese politician beaming and sitting up straight in his chair like a child anticipating a special treat. Reports suggest that in contrast to his normally calm and deliberate speaking style, Mr. Ozawa’s voice was high-pitched and squeaky, even quivering at times, as he spoke to President Hu. Instead of the standard bland diplomatic boilerplate, he offered President Hu thanks that came across to some as unctuous toadying.

Two of the magazine’s sources were members of his own party, and they were not shy about speaking on the record. Watanabe Hideo said he found the whole scene too embarrassing to watch, and added that everyone in the traveling party should be ashamed of themselves. Oe Yasuhiro described Mr. Ozawa as behaving as if he were pledging fealty to a feudal lord in an old-fashioned tributary relationship.

Mr. Watanabe recalled that Mr. Ozawa had once given a press conference in which the DPJ president claimed that Japan was too biased toward the US and too fawning toward China. He quoted Mr. Ozawa as saying, “I will say what should be said to both China and the US.” He also remembered that Mr. Ozawa once criticized two-track diplomacy by saying that the conduct of foreign relations is the exclusive right of the government.

It should be noted that both Mr. Watanabe and Mr. Oe were members of Mr. Ozawa’s now defunct Liberal Party. That generally conservative grouping was part of the Liberal Democratic Party’s ruling coalition during the Obuchi Keizo administration. When other LDP members blocked Mr. Ozawa’s readmission to the party (to which he belonged for almost 30 years), he converted that into an opportunity to cross the aisle and join the opposition DPJ.

The two men are now among Mr. Ozawa’s harshest critics, perhaps because the latter seems to have blithely jettisoned his former political beliefs after becoming the leader of the generally more left-of-center DPJ.

Criticism from a Chinese Observer

Also criticizing Mr. Ozawa was the staunchly anti-communist Chinese-born journalist and critic, Shi Ping (third photo). Mr. Shi (who recently took Japanese citizenship) observed that the Ozawa-Hu meeting was given front-page coverage in the People’s Daily the next day. The article quoted Mr. Ozawa as using language that was both fulsome and excessively flowery to thank Hu for meeting him. In Japanese, his words were rendered this way.

日本国民は中国の最高指導者が日中友好に大変な関心を持ってくださったことに深く感動しています。

“The Japanese people are deeply moved that China’s supreme leader has favored friendly relations between Japan and China with his great interest.”

Mr. Shi characterized the Japanese visitor’s attitude as that of a Ginza hostess trying to curry favor with her customers. He thought that Mr. Ozawa’s approach was tantamount to positioning Japan as a Chinese vassal state, and that the description used by the People’s Daily was identical to those the paper prints when provincial Chinese government officials go to the capital to call on President Hu.

He also wondered how Mr. Ozawa could claim to represent the entire Japanese people, much less describe them as being deeply moved.

The account of the Ozawa-Hu meeting is noted with little more than a photograph in the English edition of the People’s Daily. Here is the Japanese version, which uses language more restrained than that described in the magazine interview. Mr. Shi, however, is talking about the Chinese-language version of the article, and the People’s Daily is known to change versions of their coverage depending on the language of the edition.

Is Seoul Next on the Travel Agenda?

But now Mr. Ozawa wants to visit South Korea in advance of Prime Minister Fukuda’s visit. What will he and the future South Korean president talk about?

The Kyodo article suggests one topic—Mr. Ozawa’s recommendation last week that voting rights be extended to Korean citizens resident in Japan for local elections. These Koreans citizens are the descendents of those ethnic Koreans who were either brought to Japan or came voluntarily to work.

In fact, what Mr. Ozawa actually said earlier this week was that he has favored for some time extending the right to vote in local elections to people with permanent resident permits, and that his party would introduce such legislation in the Diet later this session. The ethnic Koreans who would receive the right to vote are estimated to total about 600,000, while the figure for all foreigners with permanent resident permits, ethnic Koreans included, number about 950,000.

His suggestion was immediately seconded by the leader of the New Komeito Party, Ota Akihiro. This was significant because New Komeito is the junior coalition partner of the governing LDP. There has been speculation that Mr. Ozawa hopes to pry New Komeito loose from its ties with the LDP and entice them into a new governing coalition with the opposition parties.

New Komeito is the political arm of the lay Buddhist group, Soka Gakkai. A large number of their membership is thought to be ethnically Korean.

Japan’s citizenship laws are based on the legal concept of ius sanguinis, or nationality on the basis of family origin. This contrasts with the legal concept of ius soli, or nationality on the basis of the place of birth. In other words, the ethnic Koreans who were born and grew up in Japan, speak only Japanese, and often have never set foot on the Korean Peninsula, do not have local voting rights unless they become naturalized Japanese citizens.

Should Ethnic Koreans Have Japanese Voting Rights?

It is not the business of foreigners to recommend to the people of another country with a democratic system to whom they should or should not extend the right to vote. That includes me, who, as the holder of a permanent resident permit in Japan, would gain the right to vote if the proposed legislation were submitted and passed.

But to briefly summarize the pros and cons, those in favor would say that most of the ethnic Koreans born in Japan are virtually indistinguishable from a native-born Japanese with the exception of their passport. Those opposed, however, would assert that citizenship choice is in very real terms a pledge of allegiance. Though Japanese citizenship is relatively easy for ethnic Koreans born here to obtain, those who choose not to do so are pledging their allegiance to another country. In some cases, that country is, de facto but not de jure, North Korea rather than South Korea. Why should people who make that choice be able to vote in Japanese elections?

The Japanese public is of course aware of how easy it is for ethnic Koreans to obtain Japanese citizenship, so Mr. Ozawa deliberately tried to soften the impact of his proposal by including all permanent visa holders rather than specifying Koreans. Doing so would have the drawback of enfranchising some people with a deficient working knowledge of the Japanese language.

But why is this the business of future Korean President Lee Myung-bak, and why should Mr. Ozawa feel the need to discuss this issue him? Does he intend to fawn before the South Koreans too? Does he seriously think this will earn him goodwill from the new government in Seoul? Or is he simply running in a pointless one-man race to meet Mr. Lee before Prime Minister Fukuda does?

The Onus in Foreign Relations is Not on Japan

Many foreigners urge Japan to improve its relations with China and South Korea. The unspoken premise of their urgings is that the Japanese are somehow to blame for the state of the respective bilateral relationships not being as good as it could be. It is as if the Chinese and the Koreans were anxiously pining for Japanese friendship with open arms, while the Japanese are unable to respond because they cannot overcome some obsolete notion of tribal superiority.

If anything, the reverse is true. Both China and South Korea have partly defined their contemporary identity by demonizing Japan for its past behavior; China continues this policy even as Japanese generosity underwrites to a significant degree China’s economic growth. And if anyone in the region cannot overcome the obsolete notions of the past, it is the Koreans. Some members of their government and media seem to encourage anti-Japanese attitudes out of a spiteful desire to indulge the uniquely Korean sense of han, or grudges over past wrongs.

There is very little positive to be said about today’s China, other than the fact that some Chinese know how to make a lot of money. They are manipulated by a brutal, oppressive regime contemptuous of the concept of human rights.

Those who have eyes cannot fail to see that the Chinese are intent on reestablishing their ancient hegemony in the region in an East Asian version of manifest destiny. Meanwhile, North Korea has turned itself into the political equivalent of a suicidal religious cult.

If any politicians or diplomats in the region need to adapt to contemporary political realities, it is those of China and the Korean peninsula. They are the ones who need to readjust their behavior and attitudes toward Japan, whose actions—unlike theirs—have been exemplary for the past sixty years. To assert otherwise is to view the world through the wrong end of the telescope.

To suggest that the Japanese need to change their outlook and behavior toward their neighbors is to suggest that the Japanese need to conduct a regional foreign policy based on appeasement. Such a suggestion cannot have been made by clear-headed observers.

Is it the case that Ozawa Ichiro has fallen under the spell of appeasement? Why else would his party placate the Chinese after their leaders had the effrontery to talk to the Dalai Lama or a representative of the Uyghurs? Why else would Mr. Ozawa behave in front of the new Chinese emperor like a pupil being given a gold star at a student assembly? Why else would he travel to Seoul to discuss the voting rights of Korean nationals in Japanese elections?

Events over the past six months have demonstrated that it is not as likely as it once seemed that Mr. Ozawa will become Japan’s prime minister–or that if he does, his term in office will not be appreciably longer than that of, say, Abe Shinzo, without Mr. Abe’s unheralded accomplishments.

But if he does become prime minister, the reports of his recent behavior in China and the justification for his possible visit to South Korea do not bode well for Japanese foreign policy under an Ozawa administration.

Pyeongyang caught in another lie?

THIS ARTICLE FROM THE WASHINGTON POST suggests that the North Koreans might have been outsmarted:

U.S. scientists have discovered traces of enriched uranium on smelted aluminum tubing provided by North Korea, apparently contradicting Pyeongyang’s denial that it had a clandestine nuclear program, according to U.S. and diplomatic sources.

The article notes the tubing could have been contaminated by exposure to other equipment, but North Korean credibility is not such that it can automatically claim it was an honest mistake. Here’s the interesting part:

David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said…that several Energy Department laboratories have highly sophisticated methods of detecting the nuclear material from items that had been thoroughly decontaminated.

Did the North Koreans decontaminate the tubing before submitting it to remove the evidence?

If so, it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve been caught out by advanced technology. As proof that a younger Japanese man whom they had abducted had later died while in North Korea, they submitted what they said were his cremated remains to the Japanese government.

A Japanese analysis discovered the bones were those of an old woman. Pyeongyang claimed the Japanese were lying, but it turned out they had burned the bones twice to foil identification. They were unaware that advances in technology had rendered that particular subterfuge obsolete.

How much longer does the world have to wait for their discovery that their political, governmental, and social systems are obsolete as well?

For background, here is a report from the same newspaper dated 10 November saying that the North Koreans would be providing evidence they weren’t enriching uranium. Now the possibility emerges that they were being too clever by half.

Based on the amount of space they devoted to the possibility, the Washington Post seems to have been laying the groundwork in this article to discredit Bush administration policy. Why they would take the word of Pyeongyang over Washington is another issue entirely.

Naturally, they saved the critical information for last in a 17-paragraph article.

David Albright…said in a report this year that there is “ample evidence” that North Korea was trying to put together a small-scale research program involving a few dozen centrifuges but that claims of a large-scale effort were flawed.

Albright said yesterday that the tubes acquired by North Korea needed to be cut in half and shaped in order to be used as the outer casings of centrifuges. If Pyongyang proves that the tubes were untouched, he said, it could “shatter the argument” that they were meant for a uranium program.

But Albright said it is difficult to see how North Korea could explain away a set of centrifuges that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said a Pakistani nuclear-smuggling network provided to Pyongyang. “I think the North Koreans are making a big mistake” if they deny they had any interest in uranium enrichment, he said. “They are going to create a lot of trouble if they stick to this.”

What trouble is created by the latest discovery remains to be seen.

NOTE: A commenter has pointed out that the bones analyzed by the Japanese government were supposedly those of Megumi Yokota, rather than a man. I regret the error.

North Korea: An account by Peter Hitchens

MAGAZINE AND NEWSPAPER ARTICLES describing the deprivation of life in North Korea have been commonplace for years now, but none so eloquently convey the squalor as a recent piece in Britain’s Daily Mail by Peter Hitchens (Christopher’s brother).

Calling the country a real-life Truman show, Hitchens says that Pyeongyang is more to be pitied than to be feared. Astonished at the shabbiness of the city’s showplace district for foreigners, he wonders what the rest of the country, where those without privileges live, must be like.

During his five-day stay in the country, Hitchens saw acres of farmland, but only two tractors; miles of railroad track, but only four trains (and those moving at reduced speed); soldiers armed with weapons so decrepit they seemed more dangerous to the users than to the targets; a luxury hotel for foreigners that shut off the power as soon as the tour buses left; and computers with no working links to websites outside the country.

The tour bus taking Hitchens and his party to a museum broke down. The driver unsuccessfully tried to patch the fuel line with chewing gum. Then the replacement bus that arrived also broke down en route; they never made it to the museum.

There’s also some trivia that was new to me: The immense, unfinished Ryugong Hotel, a 1,000-foot-high pyramid of ugliness that dominates the skyline, has the same dimensions as the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984. The Kim Il-sung Institute of Health and Longevity fed the elder Kim a special diet of extra-long dog penises (minimum length, 2.8 inches) to keep him alive longer. (Now we know why the Koreans have such a taste for Fido.) Also, while I followed the story of Kim Jong-il’s son Kim Jong-nam when he was caught traveling in Japan on a false Dominican Republic passport, I didn’t know that he was with two women (neither one his wife) and a suitcase full of cash. The name on the passport was Pang Xiong, Chinese for “fat bear”.

The article does have some quirks. Hitchens says he never saw anyone in jeans or a baseball cap. (First thought: So what? Second thought: Good for North Korea.) He also wonders if the deification of the Kim family had its origins in Japanese attitudes toward the Emperor before the war. (If there is a connection, I don’t think one begat the other; I suspect it would be more likely the situations had common ancestors.)

The photographs are a highlight of the article. The most striking photo is a close-up of what appears to be a bus or streetcar. Most of the glass is missing from the window. Among the passengers sitting inside we see an old woman whose expression is a combination of resignation, fatigue, and despair; a middle-aged man looking at the camera whose face mixes traces of resentment, anger, and embarrassment; and a frightened little boy.

We’ve all seen photos of the bronze statue of Kim Il-sung, but this one has Hitchens posed next to it. That conveys very directly a sense of the monument’s monstrosity .

And one aspect of the photos is particularly odd—for some reason, Peter Hitchens is prominent in most of them. I’ve never seen news journalism accompanied by snapshots in which the author was brought so blatantly to the forefront.

It’s online here.

The finer distinctions

MY WIFE THINKS she can spot Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese (in particular) at a glance most of the time on television.

A couple of years ago, I had her take the test on the site All Look Same. The objective of the test is to guess the ethnicity of Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese from their photographs. My point total was identical with hers, which temporarily brought the room temperature down a couple of degrees. (I’d been married long enough to have gotten the hang of marital arts judo and realized that I should have missed a couple on purpose. Maybe I’ll learn in my next life.)

Regular visitors here will know that a test such as this can be difficult, but others might not realize it is possible to devise a test that no one would pass–even East Asians. In San Francisco, I knew a young woman whose face could have been used as a model for an ukiyo-e print, but she was Chinese. She told me that even Chinese people meeting her for the first time thought she was Japanese.

Indeed, the reason I recalled this site was a photo in a feature story in today’s local newspaper about a ceramist. I live close to Arita, so features about ceramics in the paper are common. I thought the woman in the photo was Japanese–in fact, she looked like someone I thought I had met–but when I read the caption, it turned out she was Korean.

The All Look Same site has been around for a few years, but they’ve updated it with tests on food, architecture, and urban scenery. When I took the face test, registration was required, but they accepted assumed names. Try out your skills of observation–or your intuition!

And if you have the time, the page written by the site’s owner, Dyske Suematsu, on his philosophy, is worth reading. As an aside, this could fit in the recent post about regional characteristics in Japan:

I once had a Caucasian hairdresser who told me that he worked for a Japanese hair salon in New York for a long time. He looked at my hair and correctly guessed which region of Japan my parents were from.

Postscript: My wife’s clues for identifying Vietnamese are sharply sloping shoulders and a wider, flatter nose. I see her point.

Kim Jong-il: Growing senile?

THIS STORY IS FLYING SO LOW under the radar, it makes me suspect that people who follow North Korea more closely than I do might not be taking it seriously.

The Daily NK reported on the 20th that a Japanese source confirmed a story American intelligence heard about a year ago: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is starting to suffer from dementia.

According to the source, “The U.S. official obtained intelligence that Kim Jong Il is suffering from symptom of dementia since a year ago. Such news is a top-secret subject which only the most important figures in North Korea’s seat of power know.”
However, the source relayed, “The U.S. official said, they do not currently know whether Kim Jong Il’s symptom is Alzheimer or senile dementia.”

The report notes that Kim makes policy decisions by personally approving reports that are submitted to him, but some people in his inner circle concerned about his behavior have begun to bypass Kim and ratify those reports on their own.

They also report that Kim can go on inspection tours and will meet with South Korean President Kim Moo-hyun during the Inter-Korea summit as scheduled on October 2-4, but his aides are concerned because they “do not know what he will say and cannot control what kind of strange behaviors he will display.”

Secretive dictatorships such as the Kim Family Regime are hotbeds for the germination of overblown rumors, so the story might have no basis in fact. The DPRK website is the place to go for news on North Korea, and they haven’t mentioned it. Neither has The Marmot, unless I missed it. It might be that everyone is focused on the upcoming summit and North Korea’s connection with the recent Israeli raid in Syria.

Even if this is nothing but a rumor, however, it does compel one to consider the gruesome possibilities of what might occur if it were true, or were ever to come to pass. Kim is 65, which is a bit early for either Alzheimer’s or senile dementia. Then again, this is a man who by all accounts has lived a profligate life, and was at one time the world’s largest consumer of Hennessey’s. It is also not too early for people both inside and outside North Korea to begin thinking of who will succeed him.

Contingency plans may already be in place. It would not be out of the question for rough preparations to have already been made for dealing with a sudden death by heart attack or stroke, or a more drawn-out terminal illness.

It is not as likely, however, that people in the inner circle have considered their options if Kim slowly but inexorably grew mentally incompetent. Considering the Dear Leader’s behavior over the years and his seemingly supreme power, it is not pleasant to speculate on the potential occurrence of some disturbing events as he slips into a twilight world. (Was he serious about ordering those executions? The distribution of funds? Will he forget tomorrow, or will he execute us if we delay?)

The character, or lack of it, of the people around him would become just as important as his physical and mental condition.

And then we could start to think about what might happen if he turned his attention to South Korea and Japan one day, somehow thought it was 1975 again, and happened to be in a particularly petulant mood.

Korean interpreter saves the day

THE MEDIA OFTEN PUBLISHES STORIES about blunders committed by translators or interpreters that cause international embarrassment.

But this post in DPRK Studies, titled What Roh Actually Said to Bush in Sydney, describes how a quick-witted Korean translator may have prevented international embarrassment by soft-pedaling some statements made in front of television cameras by South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to American President George Bush.

Mr. Roh is dismissed by some Japanese observers as an “NGO president”, which I think is the perfect description.

One also could add “third-rate demagogue”. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts at rapprochement with both China and South Korea after the deterioration of relations during his predecessor’s term paid off with China; relations between the two governments are gradually growing stronger. One result was that in April, Premier Wen Jiabao became the first Chinese premier to address the Japanese Diet. During his speech, he gave credit to the Japanese for apologizing for their wartime behavior, and thanked Japan for their financial assistance and support for Chinese modernization efforts.

In contrast, when President Roh met Prime Minister Abe, all he wanted to talk about was comfort women. Mr. Abe rightly concluded the man wasn’t worth taking seriously

While the Chinese may not be high-minded, they are pragmatic. Whereas neither can be said of President Roh.

Still the Sea of Japan

THE JOINT LOBBYING EFFORT OF BOTH KOREAS to change the name of the Sea of Japan to the East Sea ran aground–again–when the ninth conference on the standardization of geographical names announced that the status quo will be maintained.

Conference Chair F.J. Ormeling encouraged the three countries to find a compromise (Ha!) or to agree to differ and to report by the next conference, which will be held in five years.

The two Koreas claimed that the Sea of Japan name came into wide use during the Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula. The Japanese counter that the name was used long before that.

The Koreans also note that a quarter of commercial maps worldwide use both names. That this argument was rejected suggests international bodies might now be aware that the table-pounding tactics Choson uber-nationalists use to promote their fantasies can be intimidating (or can generate a desire to avoid any hassle).

The Koreans also complained that their efforts to reach a “mutually agreeable solution” have been stymied because the Japanese have agreed to only one bilateral meeting since 2002. This also suggests that international bodies have wised up about what Korean activists really mean by the expression “mutually agreeable solutions”.

Perhaps if the Koreans were interested in bilateral meetings for mutually agreeable solutions, they could promote the spirit of bilateralism by pulling up a chair and discussing the status of Takeshima.

Jiro Kodera, the Japanese representative, said:

“My delegation believes it is high time for this issue to be put to rest and for us to turn our attention to the true aims of this conference.”

Amen.

The gangsters of Pyongyang

AN ARTICLE about North Korean government activities in Time Magazine this week presents the reasons why the regime has been dubbed the Sopranos State in some quarters:

A TIME investigation found that Kim’s criminal businesses not only stretch across Asia but also have managed to gain footholds in Russia, Europe and the U.S. Among the regime’s illicit activities are the production and trafficking of opium and heroin to dealers around the world, the manufacture and sale of billions of counterfeit cigarettes and the production of tens of millions of dollars in forged U.S. currency sophisticated enough to evade detection by U.S. banks. In many cases, the transactions are conducted not by rogue gangsters but by North Korean government officials, including members of the country’s diplomatic corps stationed overseas.

Pyongyang has an excellent reason for being involved in these activities:

Those illegal activities earn, by some estimates–including one by the State Department’s former point man on the issue–about $1 billion a year for the senior Pyongyang leadership…Consider that in 2005, all of North Korea’s legitimate exports totaled $1.7 billion, according to a CIA estimate.

If true, this would not be out of character for North Korea. Anyone who has followed their negotiations with the U.S. and the other countries in the six-party talks knows they’ve been running a protection racket for years.

(Article found at the DPRK Studies site.)

Dealing with debtors, Asian style

TWO DIFFERENT STORIES highlight two different approaches taken by two countries–the United States and Japan–against the clandestine activities of other East Asian nations actively working against them. From all appearances, Japan actually has an approach, while the U.S. does not.

Writing in Contentions, the blog of Commentary magazine, Gordan Chang takes the Bush administration to task over continuing reports that the Chinese are supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iraqi insurgents with weapons. To provide background, he provides links to other reports suggesting that the Chinese have been providing military assistance and training to the Taliban for several years.

There have also been reports that some people in intelligence circles suspect the Chinese are providing nuclear technology to countries in the Middle East, which I’ve linked to before. Indeed, when Libya’s Col. Khaddafi abandoned his nuclear program and turned over his resources to the IAEA, it was discovered that much of the documentation was written in Chinese.

Chang wonders why the United States lets China get away with it.

In contrast, Japan is dealing with years of belligerent North Korean behavior by cutting off the flow of currency and goods to the Pyongyang regime and refusing to allow North Korean ships to call on Japanese ports. The starving North Koreans make a habit of eating the carrots offered in carrot-and-stick diplomacy—and usually the bark from the stick, too—and then stiffing the joint for the bill. Now (for a change) they’re having to deal with a Japanese hard line, which has been the hallmark of the Abe administration’s Pyongyang policy.

They continue to tighten the screws. Yesterday, the Tokyo District Court ruled that unless Chongryon, the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, repays a debt of more than US$500 million to the government-run Resolution and Collection Corp., the company may seize their Tokyo headquarters (photo at right). In fact, the ruling allows RCC to act immediately to claim assets.

Chongryon is a pro-Pyongyang group that represents about 50,000 Korean citizens in Japan (most of whom were born and grew up in Japan), and serves as the country’s de facto embassy. They also are widely assumed to act as a conduit for funds to Pyongyang. Some observers think the association now may be forced to dissolve unless it ponies up the money it owes.

Japanese efforts to stop the flow of funds to North Korea are very likely to be causing real pain. The Japanese government officially claims that about US$24 billion flows from Japan to North Korea every year, but since 90% of the money is hand-delivered, no one knows exactly how much is remitted. Some estimates are as high as US$75 billion.

A good chunk of this money is believed to have come from the pachinko industry; many of the gaming halls are run by companies controlled by people born in Japan but with Korean passports. Japanese newspapers have run articles about people cutting back on their pachinko play because of worries it indirectly funds the North’s nuclear program. Another possible North Korean income source is smuggled methamphetamines. But it has become difficult to smuggle out the cash now that Japan is no longer a port of call for North Korean ships.

There’s an unusual twist in the case involving the Chongryun. Shigetake Ogata (photo 2), who attempted to buy the property but couldn’t come up with the money, warned, “This ruling will be conveyed to North Korea and there will be retaliation against Japan, which is not good for Japan’s national interest.”

I think it’s safe to say that Ogata is exaggerating about the retaliation. There is nothing Pyongyang can do economically to harm Japan, and its military options—if it wants to survive—are extremely limited.

It’s also safe to say that Ogata’s involvement in the purchase of the property created a media sensation, as you can see from the forest of microphones. Ogata is the former head of the Public Security Intelligence Agency. That’s Japan’s domestic intelligence outfit, which is responsible for monitoring North Korean activities in the country. In fact, as the Daily Yomiuri reports:

In March 1994, Ogata testified on behalf of the agency at the Diet about Chongryon’s activities. He told the House of Representatives Budget Committee that “about 5,000 members of Chongryon are engaged in secret activities.”
Many in the government and legal profession have spoken of their embarrassment that Ogata would act to help the same organization.

The deal fell through when Ogata failed to raise the funds, but not before investigators questioned him and searched his offices. Ogata held a press conference a day ago, during which he claimed that he became involved because the situation “struck a chord in his heart” and that he wanted to help ethnic Koreans in Japan.

Japanese media reports also note that Ogata told the press conference that Chongryon informed him it gave US$2.8 million yen to an unidentified former president of a Tokyo real estate company to facilitate the deal, as well US$80,000 for Ogata personally as the plectrum to strike his heartstrings.

He denied taking the money, but then again, he also said he was moved by the unidentified man’s stories of having to deal with racism in the U.S. and Japan. Ogata explained that their relationship deepened, and their thinking was alike on certain issues, but that he never got the man’s name card or knew his given name.

In short, Japan’s former top spycatcher claims the reason he was on the verge of being paid by the North Koreans to act as their bagman in a deal to save an organization he knew was trying to harm Japan was that he got taken in by a sob story from someone he didn’t bother to check out. (Would you care to speculate on whether he actually did turn the money down, or would have had the matter not come to light?) He could use the money now, because he’s under investigation for submitting fraudulent documents in connection with the deal.

Meanwhile, the Mainichi Shimbun is reporting that the owner of Chongryon’s Osaka headquarters declared bankruptcy to avoid a similar seizure by the RCC.

Why is it that Japan can put a full-court press on the North Koreans, while the Americans are so loathe to act against China? Among several reasons, this one might be the most important: China is recycling the profits from its huge trade surplus with the United States into U.S. Treasury bonds. That allows the United States to defer its diet and continue its supersized spending—some of which buys goods manufactured in China.

Meanwhile, all Japan has to do is keep finding ways to turn off the spigot while whacking Ogata and any other cockroaches that scuttle across the floor when the lights get turned on.

It’s good to be the creditor, as both Japan and China are finding out.

Addendum: While the Chongryun is affiliated with North Korea, some people in Japan whose loyalties or family ties are with South Korea also actively support the organization or work for it. That’s because the South Korean-affiliated organizations in Japan are emasculated by internal disagreements and are not as effective in promoting the interests of native-born Koreans. Indeed, my upstairs neighbors right after I got married were Korean nationals born in Japan, and the husband worked for the local Chongryun branch (about a 10-minute walk from my house). His wife gave the same explanation to my wife!