Posted on Sunday, January 23, 2005 - 11:45 pm:

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The secret uranium program posed a real threat of proliferation, but the Bush administration's response to it led the North Koreans not only to continue with it but also to revive their plutonium program. Now we have the worst of both worlds, and North Korea could eventually be producing dozens of nuclear weapons each year.


All this has been awkward for Bush to explain. He invaded Iraq because it might some day develop nuclear weapons, even as North Korea was openly and vociferously going all out to expand a known arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. So the administration has tended to avoid talking about North Korea.


On the other hand, it's been conservatives, and especially the Christian right, who have led the way in calling attention to human rights abuses in North Korea (such as the government's allowing some two million of its citizens to starve to death in the late 1990s). That is probably because Christians are among the repressed groups, and South Korean evangelicals have been active in trying to smuggle Bibles into North Korea and North Koreans out. While Martin's book is the best I know of so far on life in that country, perhaps the second best is The Aquariums of Pyongyang, by Kang Chol-hwan, a defector's account of life in a North Korean prison camp.[*] It provides a detailed look at a society where the slightest hint of dissent can turn an entire extended family into slaves in a concentration camp.

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Posted on Monday, January 24, 2005 - 6:58 pm:

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On April 22, 2004 a large explosion occurred at the Ryongch?n train station several hours after a train passed through the station returning Kim from his visit to China. The disaster killed upwards of 3,000 people. Initially, it was reported that the explosion was caused by an electrical fault; however, the South Korean media reports that there is evidence to suggest the incident may have been an assassination attempt. Given the reclusive nature of the North Korean regime, it is difficult to confirm or refute this possibility with any certainty.

In November 2004, the ITAR-TASS news agency published reports that unnamed foreign diplomats in Pyongyang had observed the removal of portraits of Kim Jong-Il around the country .The North Korean government has vigorously denied these reports. Radiopress, the Japanese radio monitoring agency, reported later that month that North Korean media has stopped referring to Kim by the honorific "dear leader" and that instead Korean Central Broadcast, the Korean Central News Agency and other media have been describing him simply as "general secretary of the Workers Party of Korea, chairman of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] National Defense Commission, and supreme commander of the Korean People's Army". It is unclear whether the possible curtailing of Kim's personality cult indicates a struggle within the North Korean leadership or whether it is a deliberate attempt by Kim to moderate his image in the outside world.

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