It seemed for a while that there would be no repercussions for North Korea's national soccer team after their dismal performance in the World Cup earlier this summer. Of course, this being North Korea, the team -- and especially its coach -- have not gotten off lightly. In a six-hour "grand debate," the entire squad (minus it's two Japan-based players, who surely must think themselves two of the luckiest people on the planet) was berated by Sports Minister Pak Myong-chol, and were then forced to publicly denounce their coach. The manager, Kim Jong-hun, was accused of "betraying the young General Kim Jong-un," the son and heir apparent of Kim Jong-Il. He has reportedly been forced out of the Worker's Party and forced to work as a construction laborer.

It's not like North Korea ever had a chance of success. They were pitted in the "Group of Death" with Brazil, Portugal and Côte d'Ivoire, arguably the toughest group in the whole tournament (regardless of Brazil's early exit and Portugal's dull 1-0 loss to Spain). Holding Brazil to a 2-1 scoreline in their opening match should have been enough of a moral victory for Kim Jong-Il, but he doesn't see it that way. (Shocking.)

North Korea's subsequent 7-0 decimation at the hands of Portugal, the first ever sports program live broadcast on North Korean TV (and almost certainly last ever), surely raised the ire of Dear Leader. Of course, if he wanted to pin the blame, he should look in the mirror. Reportedly, it was his demand that the team play more aggressively that created gaps in the side's defense.

Perhaps, though, this is a sign of progress. A South Korean intelligence source told Chosun Ilbo, "In the past, North Korean athletes and coaches who performed badly were sent to prison camps." We'll see.

Given how stubbornly Kim Jong-Il appears to be weathering his reportedly grave illness, you might think North Korean healthcare is more or less intact -- even the Dear Leader must get a boost from modern medicine. But a chilling report released today by Amnesty International is an all-too-clear reminder that the luxuries (or in this case, just the bare necessities) of royal treatment in Korea are a far cry from the horrors of everyday existence: based on the accounts of 40 North Korean defectors and health professionals, Amnesty investigators reveal just how backward the country's healthcare system truly is.

Drained of the most basic -- and most important -- resources (everything from pills to power), hospitals in North Korea are barely functional. Doctors make their rounds by candlelight, and patients endure major operations without even the mildest anesthesia. And that's only if the ailing can make it to a hospital in the first place: many patients must make many-hour treks to consult with their inept doctors -- appointments that invariably spell further trauma. One interviewee describes his harrowing amputation (anesthesia-free, of course):

Five medical assistants held my arms and legs down to keep me from moving. I was in so much pain that I screamed and eventually fainted from pain," said the man, identified only by his family name, Hwang. "I woke up one week later in a hospital bed.

Under North Korea's official health care program, all citizens are entitled to free medical treatment -- and state officials insist they truly receive it. Yet World Health Organization figures give the country a failing grade: North Korea spends less than one dollar per person per year on health -- a meager sum that makes it the world's worst performer.  First-person accounts in the report only confirm this picture. According to one defector and former doctor:

People in North Korea don't bother going to the hospital if they don't have money because everyone knows that you have to pay for service and treatment.

Without the right bribes - cigarettes, alcohol, or just plain cash -- most Koreans don't stand a chance. In short, says the doctor: "If you don't have money, you die.''

How come the North Korean national team that managed to lose by only one goal to Brazil -- a win, essentially -- got beat down so brutally by Portugal? According to some sources,* Dear Leader himself may be to blame:

Quoting a source, RFA reported that after watching the match against powerhouse Brazil, in which North Korea recorded a respectable 1-2 loss with a tight defense strategy, Kim Jong-il said that although the team played the first half well, it lost because it only focused on defense in the second half. He then gave orders for the team's defenders to be positioned forward and even specified where each defender should be standing in the field.

According to the source, Kim "gave orders twice" to a responsible official dispatched to South Africa during the game against Portugal on June 21. The orders were delivered to North Korea manager Kim Jong-hun and implemented in the game. Despite the widening gap in the score, the North Koreans team stuck to their hopeless strategy and lost 0-7.

Perhaps he should stick to golf. 

*All the usual caveats about wacky North Korea stories based on defector reports. 

A heartwarming scene from The Red Balloon it was not: when South Korean schoolchildren launched fifty balloons into the sky on Thursday, no one stopped to oh and ah. The man who spotted the air-borne rubber fleet twenty miles outside the capital city Seoul mistook the colorful orbs for parachutes and instantly raised the alarm. A military and police investigation was quickly mounted, only to conclude that the would-be North Korean invaders were in fact the steadily deflating remains of a local school celebration.

The incident is one more laugh for international observers -- and one more sign of just how high tensions are running in South Korea in the wake of the March 26 explosion of the Cheonan. (This isn't the first false alarm on the Peninsula in recent weeks: the discovery of an abandoned diving suit on the heels of an unexplained coastal explosion set police on high alert. Thankfully -- or just embarrassingly -- investigators concluded nothing was awry.)

But for South Korean security officials, it's better safe than sorry: facing strong criticism within the country for their mishandling of the Cheonan incident, top military leaders stepped down, and remaining forces pledged to improve their level of responsiveness.

(Balloons have been the source of Korean controversy before: read about this defector's helium-powered propaganda.)

As World Cup fever heats up around the world, there's huge interest in the tournament's biggest underdog: North Korea, which debuts against soccer juggernaut Brazil on June 15 in its first cup appearance since a Cinderella showing in 1966.

Kim Jong Il's squad, ranked 105th internationally, just barely qualified for the big show, and oddsmakers figure its chances of winning are about 1,000 to one.

Little is known about the players. There's Kim Myong Won, a striker known as "the Chariot" for his speed. But Kim will be restricted to playing goalkeeper due to a North Korean attempt to skirt FIFA rules. There's also Jong Tae-se, a stocky forward who was born and lives in Japan, where he is known as "the People's Wayne Rooney" for his resemblance to the English star. Jong scored both North Korean goals during a recent match against Greece, which ended in a 2-2 tie, and has vowed to score once in every World Cup game. The team's captain is Hong Yong Jo, who plays for FC Rostov in Russia.

The North Korean team has been cloistered since arriving in South Africa earlier this week. But one source of great speculation has been cleared up: The players will be wearing uniforms made by Legea, an Italian sportswear company that paid a reported $4.9 million for the privilege:

North Korea’s team is getting an amount similar to what might be paid to a low-ranking team in the English Premier League, the world’s richest soccer league, according to Simon Chadwick, a sports business professor at the U.K.’s Coventry University. Ri, in an interview in Tokyo last week, said it was hard to find a jersey sponsor as there’s “no market” for sports apparel in North Korea.

“If it doesn’t result in sales, there’s no point” for some sporting-goods companies, Ri said.

Legea will provide North Korea with branded World Cup jerseys and training gear, Nastro said. That will help raise the Italian brand’s international profile, although the marketing bet could backfire, Chadwick said.

Legea “will be working overtime to put clear blue water between the team and the regime,” Chadwick said. “It could get to the stage when people stop buying the brand if they’re being seen as propping up a dictatorship.”

Ya think?

As part of the deal, North Korea will get a 10 million-euro bonus if the team wins the cup.

A few weeks back, via Wired's Danger Room, I saw this truly weird story in South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper about reports that the North Korean navy has a "human torpedo" unit that may have been involved in the sinking of the South Korea frigate, Cheonan. Yes, a human torpedo unit is what you think it is: 

North Korea's human torpedo units belong to the 17th Sniper Corps and are deployed in both the East and West seas at the brigade level. The units are made up of elite soldiers, just like South Korea's UDT/SEAL teams, and were fed very well even when the rest of North Korea's people were starving due to economic hardships, according to defectors.

Jang Jin-sung, a North Korean poet who defected to South Korea, wrote recently on his blog that the human torpedo units "are treated better than submarine crew and their training centers around suicide bombing attacks." North Korea reportedly formed such squads in each branch of the military after leader Kim Jong-il said during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that no military in the world can defeat an army that can carry out suicide bombings.

But the human torpedoes not only use suicide bombing tactics but also launch attacks using semi-submersible vessels equipped with light torpedoes or other explosives, which are fired or placed on their intended targets at close range.

It seemed a little like one of the many too-weird-to-be-true stories that filter out through the South Korean media, but I see that in this recent interview, a former North Korean submarine helmsman captured in 1996 corroborates the existence of these units: 

Lee also said he heard about human torpedo units, explaining, "They belong to the sea sniper brigades of the East Sea and West Sea fleets. Each fleet has one suicide unit. They travel on the submarine in the beginning but, from a certain point they ride on the torpedo and direct it to its target. Torpedo carriers are told that they can escape, however, in reality it is very difficult."

Yeah, I would imagine that might be difficult. 

I'm still skeptical, but more curious. Lee also has some interesting (though similarly uncorroborated) things to say about how a North Korean sub might have gotten into South Korean waters undetected and what Kim Jong Il's motivations for the attack might be.

Hat tip: Asian Correspondent

Which interpretation of the (not-so-shocking) news that North Korea sank a South Korean warship is more troubling: that Kim Jong Il ordered the torpedo strike, or that he didn't?

Ruediger Frank, a North Korea expert at the University of Vienna, says it's the latter:

The “cornered tiger” scenario is the only condition, beyond mental illness, under which Kim Jong Il would choose this option. One possible interpretation of the sinking of the Cheonan is that the situation in North Korea is so bad and the regime so desperate that it believes risking annihilation is its only option. But while it is hard to regard the situation in North Korea as rosy, it has been through worse times. With the currency reforms of 2009, the regime was able to win some time in its otherwise hopeless fight against the inevitable transformation of North Korea’s society when it expropriated the growing wealth from the newly emerging middle class and tried to partially demonetize the economy again. And as far as we know, prior to March 26, there was no intelligence pointing to unusual troop movements; no increase in communications that might have signaled something out of the ordinary was about to happen or signs that a change in the military’s alert status was about to take place.

Of all the possible scenarios for why North Korea would have been involved in the Cheonan incident, the one that should worry us the most is the possibility that it was NOT Kim Jong Il who gave the orders. While in 2008 one could have imagined, under certain circumstances, that a young recruit overreacted and shot a South Korean tourist at Mt. Kumgang, it is much less likely that the captain of a North Korean submarine had a short fuse and sank that corvette. He must have done so upon receiving orders, or at least a “go ahead” from someone above him. The higher up we move in the command chain, the stress motive becomes less likely. A lieutenant commander in his sub might think twice; a rear admiral will think ten times before pulling the trigger.

If the North Koreans torpedoed the ship, and if it was not done after a self-destructive order by Kim Jong Il, this may be proof of a destabilization of the current leadership in Pyongyang. Sinking the Cheonan without consent by the top leader would be an open act of insubordination. An autocratic leader who does not have his lieutenants under control becomes a liability to the system. It is fear and the unchallenged authority of the top that keeps an autocracy together. Many of us have argued that such considerations had allowed Kim Jong Il to take over power from his father so smoothly despite his very different personality: the elite knew that regime stability depended on a strong and undisputed leader, and he was the only realistic candidate for the job.

Yet, years have passed since 1994, and North Korea has changed substantially. A famine, a set of failed economic policies, and Kim’s obvious health issues have created a situation of frustration, insecurity, and nervousness. The Pyongyang elite will be holding their breath and watching closely how Kim Jong Il reacts. What if he does not succeed in creating the impression that sinking the Cheonan was his idea? Even if so, this is a catch-22 since it invites a potentially destructive counter reaction by South Korea and the United States. If it wasn’t done on his command, will Kim Jong Il conduct a major purge of the culprits like his father did in 1956, when a trip to Europe was used to launch a coup against him? If he doesn’t, then the vultures will get more courageous.

Frank worries most of all about a rapid and messy regime collapse, leading to "a humanitarian disaster, a last-ditch effort at a military solution, or the active involvement of superpowers like China."

There are clearly a lot of folks in the region who are also worried about this scenario. But it's worth noting that North Korea already is a humanitarian disaster. At some point, Kim Jong Il's regime is going to have to end before that situation changes. I don't see any signs that outside players, save perhaps China, have any hope of micromanaging some sort of smooth transition to a more decent government.

This didn't get much attention yesterday, but there's been more tension along the Korean sea border: 

South Korean Navy vessels fired warning shots, turning back two North Korean patrol boats that had entered South Korean territory, military officials said.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday that one North Korean Navy vessel crossed the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea and another entered South Korean waters 47 minutes later at the western sea border, Yonhap News service reported.

The separate incidents took place Saturday night, the first at 10:13 p.m., the second at 11:30 p.m.

Later this week, Seoul plans to submit a letter to the U.N. Security Council on the conclusions of its investigation into the cause of the sinking of the South Korean Navy frigate Cheonan on March 26.  

Nothing's confirmed yet, but this does not sound good: 

A South Korean navy ship with about 100 personnel on board is sinking off the west coast near North Korea, possibly due to a torpedo attack, reports say.

The ship was sinking near Baengnyeong island, Yonhap news agency quoted navy officials as saying.

It also said another South Korean ship had fired shots toward an unidentified ship in the North. The involvement of North Korea has not been confirmed.

North Korea threatened the South with "unprecedented nuclear strikes" this morning over reports that Soeul was preparing for instability in the North. Such threats are hardly unusual, but if North Korea is indeed behind the sinking, that would be the biggest escalation of the conflict in years. With more reports of economic distress and internal strife coming out of the Hermit Kingdom, Kim Jong Il may have bargained that it was time to pick an international fight.

The thing about wacky Kim Jong Il stories is that they're generally impossible to prove or disprove so it's gnereally best to treat them as little more than curiosities. That's certainly true of Kim's apparent taste for all things Austrian:

"He only ate foreign food," the colonel said. "In Vienna, there was a special attache, a friend of mine, who only procured special foreign food for the dictator."

Kim Il-sung's craving once led to a delegation of cooks being sent to Austria to visit renowned culinary schools and some of the country's finest restaurants to collect recipes. The colonel, who speaks German fluently, served as translator.

"'Learn everything' – that's what they were told," the defector said. "The crazy dictators heard rumours that Austrian cuisine was world-famous and that's why they wanted [the cooks] to come here."

No offense to the homeland of Mozart, Frued and Rilke but I'm not sure Austria would be my first choice for culinary delights if I were a dictator with unlimited resources. 

It seems that North Korea's "50-day battle" against illegal economic activity (read: economic activity) is not surprisingly causing further instability. From the Times:

It was at the end of last November that the Government announced a drastic revaluation of the won in an apparent effort to crack down on the country’s burgeoning free market economy. All North Koreans were required to swap old won notes with new ones at an exchange rate of one to 100, knocking two zeroes off their value. Because of a cap of 100,000 won per family ((€526 at the official exchange rate), anyone with significant holdings of cash had their savings wiped out. 

Since then, reports of inflation and food shortages have trickled out of the isolated country via traders and smugglers in China, as well as North Koreans close to the Chinese border who take the risk of keeping illegal mobile telephones. According to such informants, quoted anonymously in the Seoul-based DailyNK news website, there has been “an explosion in the number of casualties resulting from popular resentment at harsh regulation of market activities by the security apparatus across North Korea.”

Agents of the People’s Safety Agency (PSA), which is conducting a so-called “Fifty Day Battle” against illegal enterprise, were reported to have been attacked and driven away as they sought out market activity in the city of Pyongsung in North Pyongan province. In the once prosperous industrial city of Chongjin on the country’s east coast, a steel worker named Jeung Hyun Deuk was reported to have killed an agent of the National Security Agency named Cho.

Even Kim Jong Il acknowledged in a recent statement that there are  "still quite a number of things lacking in people’s lives." If Dear Leader is indeed responding to popular resentment, things must be getting pretty bad. 

I was curious to see how the Korean Central News Agency, the official propaganda organ of Kim Jong Il's regime, would cover U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth's visit to Pyongyang. But aside from a one-sentence item announcing Bosworth's arrival, they seem to have completely ignored it. "Credentials of Hungarian ambassador accepted" got more play, not to mention "Potato starch used for dishes".

Not quite sure I understand the KCNA's news judgement. If I were doing publicity for a small despotic regime, I think I would want to publicize the fact that my country's most powerful enemy was sending a highly-ranked envoy to negotiate with us. 

Update: They've posted another one-sentence item: "U.S. envoy Bosworth leaves"

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

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