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Web-only Exclusives November 30, 2000 From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead Bad news for the Philippines - and some others From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights? |
Week of July 17, 1998
PYONGYANG Kim Jong Il paid his respects to his late father Kim Il Sung on July 8, the fourth anniversary of his death - "the bitterest memorial day of the nation," according to the Korean Central News Agency. Analysts in Seoul expect Kim, 56, to become president before Sept. 9, when the country celebrates the 50th anniversary of its government.Week of July 10, 1998
PYONGYANG Kim Jong Il has taken a step towards formalizing his position as the country's undisputed ruler. On June 28, thunderous cheers and a display of fireworks - to quote the official news agency - greeted Kim's nomination as a candidate for the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's Parliament. The son of the late Kim Il Sung is assured of being elected on July 26. Kim Jong Il's nomination does not come from a regular constituency, but a special one reserved for the military.PRESIDENT KIM DAE JUNG wants to propose a joint investigation with Pyongyang into the infiltration of a North Korean submarine into the South's waters. "By proposing talks for a joint South-North Korean investigation, North Korea will realize that its crew had committed suicide when it inspects the evidence such as retrieved items and bodies," Kim said.
Week of June 26, 1998
PYONGYANG The official news service said the country will continue to develop and sell its missile technology to help it withstand the hardships caused by nearly 50 years of American sanctions. The Korean Central News Agency also said the government wants compensation from Washington for not selling its military hardware in the future. The initial American response called the threats "irresponsible."PANMUNJOM 500 cattle were trucked across the boundary from South to North Korea in a June 16 ceremony whose symbolism lifted hope for an end to 45 years of hostility. The animals belonged to Chung Ju Yung, 83, founder of the Hyundai group, who had left his North Korean village at the age of 18 and would return with them for the first time since.
Week of June 19, 1998
PARIS, FRANCE "It is not yet the stage to go into details with the South, but it would be very desirable to form a joint Korean team and for some of the 2002 World Cup finals to be held in the North," the vice-president of North Korea's football association, Choi Pyung Su, said in an exclusive interview with the Sports Seoul daily in Paris. The comments were the first reaction from a North Korean official over South Korea's calls to form a joint soccer team.MEMBERSHIP UNDECIDED Last month - not for the first time - North Korea told ASEAN that it would like to join ARF - the ASEAN Regional Forum, the loose network of ASEAN dialogue partners. It is the nearest thing the region has to a platform for security issues. Pyongyang's is a reasonable goal: it has relations with two-thirds of ASEAN's members, with embassies in Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, as well as in Hanoi and Vientiane. But not in Manila, which handled the application on ASEAN's behalf. The Philippines has long spurned North Korea's overtures for diplomatic relations. Are Filipinos blocking the North's bid? Most likely not. The problem seems to be more Korean. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's sunshine policy toward Pyongyang has yet to thaw the Cold War reflexes of his own foreign ministry, which signalled its opposition to Manila about letting in the northerners. And Pyongyang has not helped its cause by petulantly refusing to respond to routine queries which are sent to all ARF applicants. (Mongolia, another ARF wannabe, did reply and will duly join.) This prompted Singapore - a state admired by North Korea - to tell Pyongyang to re-think what it is doing, stressing that ARF is a serious organization which does not want members who refuse to take it seriously. Ideologically, Pyongyang seems to have replaced Karl Marx with Groucho, who did not want to belong to any club that would accept him as a member.
Week of June 12, 1998
CROSS-DMZ ESPIONAGE
SEOUL When President Kim Dae Jung took office, he cleaned up the National Security Planning Agency - the country's main intelligence gathering organization - by firing hundreds of agents. Kim may have to keep up the pressure for reform. His newly appointed intelligence boss, Lee Jong Chan, was shocked to find that the news of India's first nuclear tests in May reportedly made it to his desk a full 14 hours after the devices were detonated.Week of June 5, 1998
PYONGYANG: The government submitted a $2 billion anti-famine request to the United Nations Development Program in Geneva. Pyongyang says it wants to meet its own cereal needs within three years.Week of May 29, 1998
No Nukes Now - Pyongyang's Idle Threat
India's nuclear tests couldn't have come at a better time for North Korea. With the world's attention riveted by all things nuclear, Pyongyang's threat to fire up the reactors it shut down in 1994 and resume its nuclear program fed fears of an atomic weapons race tearing across Asia. But is North Korea really about to break its 1994 deal with the U.S. and end its nuclear freeze? No, the comrades north of the DMZ are just stirring the pot.Pyongyang's threats were timed to coincide with one of the regular meetings with KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization) - the consortium building new light water reactors for North Korea and supplying it with half a million tons of fuel oil yearly in the interim. KEDO's core members - the U.S., South Korea, and Japan - have been squabbling about paying for the fuel, even though the sum involved is paltry: about $50 million. (A more substantial $5.2 billion for the reactors has yet to be allocated, but that problem won't arise for a while yet.)
There are other reasons North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is not about to replay the 1993-94 Korean nuclear crisis any time soon: China, which he hopes to visit in the fall, would be furious and cut off crucial aid. And South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung has given virtual carte blanche to individuals and businesses to start making inter-Korean contacts. One of the first to jump at the opportunity was northern-born Hyundai founder Chung Ju Yung, who is worth at least $2 billion. He wants to aid his home region with a gift of 400,000 tons of corn.
Pyongyang is not about to drive such benefactors away. And if its threats prompt the allies to get it together to fund KEDO properly, it may even have done some good.
Week of May 1, 1998
From Province to Premier
Placing your bets in the North Korea Premiership Derby? British academic Aidan Foster-Carter at Leeds University says he has spotted a winner: keep your eye on Yon Hyong Muk, 76, a Czech-trained engineer and former PM with experience in dealing with Seoul. Pyongyang watchers spotted Yon soon after Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, in mid-January, visited Jagang province, an industrial base bordering China. The official press praised Yon, who had been posted there for about five years, for his energetic leadership and mobilization of the masses to build a series of small dams in mountainous Jagang. Using indigenous resources - like mass labor - to attack economic underdevelopment is the sort of tactic that perfectly reflects North Korea's philosophy of Juche or self reliance.Despite being sent to Jagang after his stint as PM, Yon is on the rise again: he was listed as a Labor Hero soon after Kim returned from the province. Yon's experience with South Korea - he was there three times while PM for inter-Korean prime ministerial talks - also stands him in good stead. That, and the fact that Kim ventured out to Jagang in the first place, mark Yon as a front-runner.
Week of April 17, 1998
NORTH KOREA-SOUTH KOREA Seoul accepted Pyongyang's invitation to the first top-level government-to-government meeting between the two countries in four years. The North wanted the meeting in Beijing on Apr. 11. The South preferred Panmunjom on the DMZ, but acquiesced.Week of March 27, 1998
NORTH KOREA-SOUTH KOREA Pyongyang will resume the inter-Korean dialogue soon, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Chung Soo said in Seoul. But Li Gun, deputy head of Pyongyang's delegation to the four-party talks in Geneva, quickly denied Park's claim as "nonsense."Week of March 13, 1998
"The population are innocent victims of an archaic regime," E.U. ambassador to Seoul Tue Rohsted said, but pledged continuing food aid. He rejected Pyongyang's arguments that drought and flooding were the sole causes of the North's drastic food shortages.Week of February 27, 1998
Kim's Plan to Reach Across the DMZ
Watch for South Korea's Kim Dae Jung to try ratcheting down the tension along the DMZ soon after he moves into the Blue House. He wants to find a way to back down from the decades-old animosity with Pyongyang. The plan will start with some confidence-building exercises. Step number one: South Koreans will be able to legally listen to North Korean radio broadcasts. The second will be to negotiate the resumption of cross-DMZ family visits. There have been a few times when select groups were allowed to make the trip north or south to see long-separated family members, but none of the sporadic exchanges ever lasted for more than one round of visits. To get his plans moving, Kim sent his PM-designate, Kim Jong Pil, to China to sound out Beijing's views. The president-to-be is also trying to involve Japan and Russia in his overtures.A senior source in Kim's camp says an important part of the fresh approach is to provide economic assistance to North Korea first and seek political negotiations later. The big change is that there is a new message from south of the border: Here is an opportunity for you to solve your problems. We are not interested in a German-style re-unification. As long as you behave well and do not threaten South Korean security, we will work with you.
The hope is that once there is a reduction in tension and the two antagonists are dealing with each other on a more tractable basis, the U.S. will be able to step in and accelerate its normalization program with the North. Tension between Seoul and Washington stems from the fear that the Americans might unilaterally move closer to Pyongyang - a closeness that the North has long sought. Kim's move could pre-empt that threat, providing, of course, that the North Koreans buy into his plan.
Week of February 20, 1998
NORTH KOREA-SOUTH KOREA "They have said that despite their difficulties, they are going to continue." That is how U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright described Seoul's plans to help finance the building of two nuclear reactors in North Korea. The total cost of the project: $5.2 billion.Week of February 13, 1998
NORTH KOREA-SOUTH KOREA The South will not be able to meet its share of the cost of building nuclear reactors in North Korea because of its current financial crisis. "We have to take into account our situation right now. We won't be able to put up the lion's share," Seoul warned.KOREAN DMZ "The South Koreans say the situation here is unique, but that is what the rest of the world said before," Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams told reporters during a visit to the demilitarized zone. She wants Seoul to sign the international agreement banning the use of land mines.
Week of February 6, 1998
Farewell to Spies at Home?
Korea's National Security Planning Agency (NSPA) may be the first government body to feel the long arms of President-elect Kim Dae Jung's reformers. Kim may reduce the role of the NSPA to monitoring North Korea and other non-domestic intelligence activities. The agency - created when its much maligned predecessor, the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), was disbanded - has been accused of spying on South Koreans. The NSPA maintains that such domestic operations are imperative since there are pro-North Koreans in the South acting under the instructions of Pyongyang. Ironically, the incoming Kim is likely to appoint Kim Jong Pil, the KCIA's founder, who is alleged to have been involved in kidnapping him from Japan in 1973, as his first prime minister.PYONGYANG ASKED that the Feb. 12 meeting to prepare for the resumption of peace talks in Geneva be postponed until President-elect Kim Dae Jung takes power on Feb. 25. The session was pushed back to early March, most likely delaying the Geneva meeting.
Week of January 30, 1998
A total of 2.8 million Koreans died of "natural calamities," in the North, Xinhua quoted a senior Pyongyang official as saying. The amount of food available per person dropped to just 180 grams a day, according to the same agricultural commission official.Week of January 16, 1998
NORTH-SOUTH KOREA "It is true we are faced with a financial crisis, but we hope it won't deter humanitarian aid to the North," a South Korean official said. The World Food Program asked for about 650,000 extra tons of food aid on Jan. 6. It is the largest appeal the agency has ever made.News from North Korea in 1997
News from North Korea in 1996
News from North Korea in 1995
