North Korea

The Financial Times reports on a new cottage industry in Korea -- matchmaking services pairing South Korean men with women who defect from North Korea:

Defying the gloom among small businesses in South Korea, Mr Hong predicts a rosy future for his enterprise, run from a small office in the suburbs of Seoul. Driven by a haemorrhaging economy, defections from the authoritarian North are soaring, and the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers are women. Of the 2,809 defections registered last year – up from 1,043 in 2001 – 2,197 were women.

In 2006 Mr Hong was the second South Korean to open a specialist agency finding husbands for them, but his niche market is exploding. The 39-year-old has identified 10 competitors, most of them established last year.

Mr Hong’s own match certainly lends credibility to his business. His wife, Kang Ok-shil, defected from North Korea in 2002 and has a crucial foothold in defectors’ social networks. They have named their agency Nam-nam-buk-kyo, an ancient adage meaning “the south’s got the boys, the north’s got the girls”.

Mrs Kang, a 41-year-old former electrical worker, says many North Korean women see South Korean men as less domineering. “North Korean men are more authoritarian. North Korean men have the perception that men are the sky and women are the ground,” she says, quoting a famous Korean aphorism.

South Korea’s unification ministry offers less romantic reasons for the disparity. The men in the North are trapped in military service, often for 10 years or more. Women become the breadwinners and are increasingly involved in cross-border trading, presenting opportunities to defect. Many women are also trafficked into prostitution and hostess bars.

While South Korea has a skyrocketing divorce rate, the company claims that almost none of the marriages they have arranged have broken up. They attribute this to the fact that “North Korean women are more persevering."

In a somewhat garbled story in today's Financial Times, Christian Oliver speculates that one key motive for Chinese premier Wen Jiabao's recent visit to Pyongyang might be to get his paws on North Korea's vast mineral wealth.

Oliver cites a recent Goldman Sachs report (pdf) by analyst Goohoon Kwon, which values North Korea's mineral resources at 140 times its anemic 2008 GDP (about $20 billion), and projects that the economy of a unified Korea could rival Japan's in three to four decades.

Kwon predicts a "gradual integration between the North and South, rather than an instant German-style unification." Obviously, there are a lot of ifs involved, but it's an interesting finding nonetheless (leaving aside some ridiculous assertions in the report, such as the idea that perennially starving North Korea has "high human capital" -- a "well-educated labor force" that possesses a "sound work ethic and Confucian values").

As the report details, North Korea is particularly blessed with deposits of magnesite, used in various industrial applications, as well as coal, uranium, and iron ore. South Korea, in contrast, is extremely resource poor (though it does seem to have ample reserves of asbestos and kaolinite, a kind of clay).

What Kwon doesn't really address head-on are the problems that would be created by the vast gulf between North and South Korean economic cultures, incomes, and lifestyles. Think back to your high school chemistry class. Remember that chapter on stoichiometry? Well, we can't be certain that a chemical reaction between North and South Korea would create a balanced equation. It might just lead to an explosion.

And let's not forget the resource curse. Just because North Korean leaders are sitting on top of a gold mine doesn't mean they'd do the smart thing and gradually integrate their economy with South Korea. More likely, they'd hoard it and corruption in Pyongyang would reach new heights -- especially if they fear that unification would mean sharing their stuff with the South.

KNS/AFP/Getty Images

New documents obtained by Japan's Mainichi Shimbun appear to confirm reports that Kim Jong Il's son Kim Jong-Un is being groomed as his father's successor. These include a textbook for high-ranking military officials :

"Anyone who meets him (Kim Jong Un) is fascinated by him," the text says, as well as praising him as "a military talent who has genius wisdom and policy" and that he "resembles our great general (Kim Jong Il) so much in appearance."

The documents also state that Kim Jong Un commanded the air force as a "vengeful commander" when there were mounting calls in Japan and the United States for intercepting the North Korean missile in April, and that Kim Jong Il once joked that an enemy country would suffer if Kim Jong Un chose to counterattack.

A document apparently compiled by the North's secret police urges a prompt preparation for the succession of the leadership, saying, "It is hoped that our General Kim (Jong Un) is crowned as the successor of our dear leader General (Kim Jong Il) as soon as possible so that the burden of our dear leader is lessened."

Nightwatch's John McCreary comments:

The haste with which his completely fictitious leadership story has been concocted reinforces assessments that Kim Chong-il could die suddenly. Chong-un has lived in Switzerland and, like his father, has never served a day in a military uniform, except for playing dress-up.

JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images

Two weeks ago, Bill Clinton, the former U.S. president and husband of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, visited North Korea. He met with dictator Kim Jong-il and secured the release of two American journalists who had been held there for months. 

This past weekend, Sen. Jim Webb traveled to Myanmar on a trip through Southeast Asia. Webb -- who likely knows more about the region than anyone else on the Hill -- has long criticized U.S. sanctions on Myanmar. He met with the head of the country's military junta and leading dissident Aung San Suu Kyi. And he secured the release of an American who had been jailed for breaking into Suu Kyi's compound, where she is on house arrest. 

The Obama administration and U.S. news outlets have described these two missions as "private diplomacy." Webb and Clinton are both foreign-policy heavyweights outside the administration. Their stature and connections provided them with the latitude to make entreaties to these rogue, adversarial governments. They offered nothing in terms of aid or support or promises of policy-change -- they did not represent the Washington, of course. But they offered good press and a thread back to the capital -- which proved enough for the strongmen, Kim and Shwe.

Clearly, though, the word "private" is not totally accurate here. Both did it with the administration's nod and help.

The Washington Post wrote of Clinton's visit: "The trip came about only after weeks of back-channel conversations involving academics, congressional figures, and senior White House and State Department officials, said sources involved in the planning. North Korea rejected the administration's first choice for the trip -- former vice president Al Gore." The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House approved Webb's mission -- and he used a military plane for the trips.

All of which leaves me a bit queasy, though ultimately hopeful, about this rash of private diplomatic missions.

Part of me thinks the White House shouldn't be in the lame business of disavowing trips it clearly had a hand in making. Further, I worry the United States gave up an opportunity to publicly demand something out of Yangon. Clinton herself has said the United States would consider trading an easing of sanctions for the release of Suu Kyi. Webb may have made some headway towards that goal. But to hear Clinton or Obama comment on it would have doubtless brought a sense of urgency to the issue and shined a brighter spotlight on what the junta needs to change.

On the other hand, both the United States and the rogue governments got what they wanted. The U.S. gave up virtually nothing, got its citizens back, and won some good press for its diplomatic successes. Myanmar and North Korea got, for a moment, to look magnanimous and reasonable -- tempered by the stories about their human-rights abuses, and the fact that Washington did not send interlocutors with actual foreign policy power (Clinton herself, or a committee chair, say) to confer with them.

I suppose these carefully charted and subtle missions proved to work fine. To consider them isolated incidences or unqualified successes (or failures) would be the worst misjudgment -- foreign policy is always about carrots and sticks, and back and forth. This White House gets that really well.

PORNCHAI/AFP/Getty Images

With all due respect to Henry the K., this is barmy:

A visit by a former president, who is married to the secretary of state, will enable Kim Jong Il to convey to North Koreans, and perhaps to other countries, that his country is being accepted into the international community -- precisely the opposite of what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has defined as the goal of U.S. policy until Pyongyang abandons its nuclear weapons program. 

Let Kim Jong Il do all the conveying he wants. The world is still going to see him as a bizarre, megalomaniacal tyrant -- and this episode makes only reinforces that perception. Grown-up nations don't take hostages.

As for the two journalists, they're now safe with their families. Here, I agree with the Carnegie Endowment's Douglas Paal:

Some commentators are suggesting that the Clintons’ actions showed American weakness by expressing regret to a ruthless dictator. These critics need to ask themselves: how would a more aggressive approach have gained the release of these two women from a sentence of 12 years of hard labor?

How indeed?

Coming on the heels of Kim Jong Il's public appearance in Pyongyang last week and subsequent reports that he is suffering from pancreatic cancer -- both of which reignited a stream of guesses about his life expectancy and speculation about his successor -- is the news of a documentary series on North Korea's leader.

To be sure this multi-episode biopic, poetically named The Sun of Songun Shedding Its Rays All over the World, is a never-before-attempted cinematic venture, as North Korea has yet to produce a film on the Dear Leader. And they're starting at the very beginning: I Will Add Glory to Korea, the first film, focuses on Kim's birth and childhood.

Some say the usually camera-shy Kim is taking his mortality seriously, rushing to solidify his legacy in his own vision while he's able. Others suggest that given his frail state a power vacuum is brewing and the movies are meant to draw attention to more youthful days of iron-fist ruling to reinforce Kim's control.

The Korean Central News Agency has this to say in a glowing statement released today:

The multipart documentary film will comprehensively deal with the immortal Songun revolutionary exploits performed by leader Kim Jong Il for the country and the revolution, the times and humankind, with his extraordinary wisdom and distinguished art of leadership, political calibre and noble personality." 

With a promotion like that, it's a documentary guaranteed to be more popular than March of the Penguins. Well, at least in North Korea...

AUM JUNG-SEOK/AFP/Getty Images

Kim Jong Il's recent decline in health has led him to scale down his public appearances. But the North Korean dictator did move back into the spotlight yesterday, appearing to commemorate the 15th anniversary of his father's death. Video from Russia Today:

The BBC reports:

Observers said he looked gaunt and limped slightly while entering the crammed auditorium where the ceremony was held in the capital Pyongyang.

It was the second major state event the 67-year-old has attended since suffering a suspected stroke in August.

His poor health has led to concerns of a power struggle if he dies suddenly[...]

Wearing a khaki suit, Mr Kim bowed his head during a moment of silence, beneath a portrait of a giant red flag with an image of his father, Kim Il-sung.

The North's deputy leader, Kim Yong Nam, issued the regime's by now familiar denunciation of the United States and South Korea.

Read more from FP about Kim Jong-Il's possible successors here, here, and here. 

As many as 26 U.S. and South Korean Web sites have been hit by thousands of zombified computers in the last two days, according to news agencies from both countries. Though the hackers responsible have not stepped forward, South Korea's intelligence service believes the widespread outages are the work of the North Korean government:

'This is not a simple attack by an individual hacker, but appears to be thoroughly planned and executed by a specific organization or on a state level,' the National Intelligence Service said in a statement, adding that it is cooperating with the American investigative authorities to investigate the attacks."

In addition to a handful of South Korean government agencies and private organizations, The New York Times claims denial-of-service attacks also affected Web sites maintained by the following:

... those of the White House, the State Department and the New York Stock Exchange ... The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points."

The implications of an attack on any country's economic infrastructure can be pretty dire. Corporations can expect as much as a five percent drop in their stock price following a cyberattack.