First Hawaii and now Korea...

Oh, shyte! I think Daniel Dae Kim is stalking me.

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Picture of the day: Obama seeing red at the DMZ

US President Barack Obama is visiting South Korea for the nuclear summit, and he has decided to take a side trip to the demilitarized zone, aka the DMZ, his first trip to the de facto border between the two Koreas.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The visit was Obama's first to the demilitarized zone that has divided North and South Korea for nearly 60 years, and comes at yet another tense point in relations with the secretive nuclear power in the north.

Obama met with South Korean and U.S. troops, and like presidents before him, stood in a camouflaged bunker peering through binoculars to inspect the rough, wooded mountains of a nation that has frustrated the West for decades.

The president is in South Korea to attend a global summit on securing loose nuclear weapons. But as his Sunday schedule shows, the status of the rogue nuclear program in North Korea is likely to outshine the formal agenda. The DMZ visit was his first stop. ...

But first the president headed north about 25 miles from Seoul, beyond the roadblock, mine field and barbed wire fencing to a windswept watch station 25 meters from the demarcation line. Obama looked out from behind bulletproof glass at the two small villages on each side of the line -- Tae Sung Dong, the tiny South Korean town dubbed Freedom Village and Gi Jong Dong, known as Propaganda Village for its fake buildings and speakers that once blared messages trying to lure soldiers to the north.

The messages no longer play. And Sunday, Obama looked out in cold quiet as a North Korean flag flew over the village, lowered to mark the end of the 100-day mourning period for the late leader.

"There's something about this spot in particular," Obama said in his remarks to U.S. troops. "where there's such a clear line and there's such an obvious impact that you have for the good each and every day that should make all of you proud."

The DMZ has long made a dramatic backdrop for a presidential visit, as a rare reminder of Cold War anxiety and America's continued reach. The trip has been one that all of Obama's recent predecessors have made. (President George H.W. Bush visited as vice president.)

President George W. Bush visited the DMZ in February 2002, at another tense time in relations. Bush had just included North Korea in the "axis of evil," a remark that unnerved South Koreans worried about the increasingly bellicose rhetoric. Bush then delivered a toned-down speech and expressed sympathy for the plight of North Koreans.

Obama arrived on much better terms with South Korean leaders. During his three-day visit, he's expected to emphasize solidarity with Seoul and make his first comments on the status of the food aid pact.

I've been to the DMZ probably a half dozen times at least. It's a very sobering trip, and a must-see for any American visiting South Korea.

One thing, though, I wouldn't describe the surrounding hills of North Korea as "rough, wooded mountains." Rough, yes. Mountains, sure. But wooded? Not really. You can see from the southern side how denuded the terrain is on that side. I'm not sure if that's by design (don't give an invading military any cover) or if it's because things have been so tough up north for so long that they have burned away any potential fuel source, including the once numerous trees. We certainly saw something like that across Korea during the deprivation of the late Imperial Japanese colonial area.

Anyway, I like how Obama has his name on his badge, lest we not be able to figure out who he is.

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AFP video: "North Korea seeks foreign help for controversial resort" at Mt Kumgangsan

It's all in the video, which focuses a lot more on English-speaking Malaysian tourists walking around and looking at things than it does offering any news that would support the title they offered up.



Well, I guess they do have Kim Kwang-yun, director of the Mt Kŭmgangsan International Tourism Leadership Bureau, giving some sort of pitch to the Malaysians, starting at 1:47. But we don't hear him say much, as the AFP video editor seems to be afflicted with ADD. I'm guessing Mr Kim had offered a free trip if the Malaysians agreed to hear a pitch on Kŭmgangsan time-shares.

And who wouldn't want to invest in a North Korean tourism project? After all, it's only on rare occasion that the North Korean soldiers who patrol the place shoot and kill your customers, and the infrastructure is already there, built by and then stolen from the previous investors, so all you have to do is come (and bring hard currency)!

For something more solidly newsy, we have AP instead of AFP, in a separate article, saying North Korea is "looking to China" in a "drive to boost trade and investment":

Chinese travel agents, potential investors and foreign journalists recently traveled into the North to get a look at the special economic zone Pyongyang is promoting in Rason. It lies in the far northeastern tip of North Korea, 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from Pyongyang, but will be about an hour’s drive from China once the road is completed. ...

The market, a 13-year-old experiment in small-scale capitalism, has been so successful that the Chinese managing company, the Tianyu Group, is planning to expand the jam-packed 54,000-square-foot (5,000-square-meter) market to 320,000 square feet (30,000 square meters), Tianyu vice director Zheng Zhexi said.

The AP article is heavily focused on construction of the Chinese highway to North Korea's Rasŏn/Rajin industrial port development, which is a key part of incorporating North Korea into China's Northeastern Provinces, part of what I call the Manchurianization of North Korea.

Back to the video above. The AFP short film does offer a taste of why the Malaysians have come to this part of North Korea: secrecy. Several of them state that they're curious about secretive North Korea because they want to figure out why it's so secret. I guess if I were from a country billed as "truly Asia," then I'd be darned uncomfortable if I didn't know what all the other Asians were up to. 

And maybe North Korea really can rescue Kŭmgangsan with foreign tourists. Stick an affordable ski resort up there, make sure skiing accidents outnumber shooting incidents, and cash-carrying nouveau-riche Southeast Asians will come in droves (that sounds disparaging to the newly rich SE Asians, but I don't' mean it as such; good on them for starting to do well).

And in the end, if Pyongyang decides that it can rescue rural North Korea by replacing South Koreans with Southeast Asians, they're simply copying what Seoul has been doing for years in rural South Korea.  

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Just say no to letting Robert Park go to the DMZ

Anybody who reads One Free Korea (here, here, here, and here) knows I'm no fan of Robert Park's antics. It was foolish of him to traipse into North Korea, and it may have even endangered the lives of people he purports to be helping, not to mention that the US may have lost political and/or financial capital by securing his release.

Robert Park ended up in a mental hospital in Long Beach — he's got some personal issues that need to be taken care of — but a judge released him. Reporters asked him what he would do next, but instead of saying he was going to Disneyland, he gave them indication he is headed for South Korea and will journey to the DMZ:

Friends and family of Park are concerned after he apparently professed a desire to return to South Korea and take action at the DMZ, according to an e-mail from Suzanne Scholte, the chairman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition (NKFC), sent to Jo Sung-rae, a friend and fellow activist of Park's.

"I am writing this email to specifically ask you that if he should arrive in Korea that you provide him with 24-hour prayer and personal protection," reads the e-mail that was forwarded to The Korea Times by another activist. "He spoke frequently while in Washington D.C. about wanting to take his own life and do something drastic at the DMZ."

In the e-mail, Scholte, who had been helping prepare a press conference for Park, said, "It became very clear to all of us that Robert was still suffering from the effects of the torture he experienced in North Korea...Because of our love for him, we should do all we can to shelter and protect him and make it possible for him to be cared for so that he could recover from all that he has been through."

Holy effin' crap! This is a recipe for disaster. The man has marched into North Korea once already and one has every reason to expect he would try to do that again. The guy has no concern for his own safety and the safety of others, and the DMZ puts you in North Korean territory. And unlike Disneyland, there's no turnstile... you just keep walking.

And I seriously suspect that's what he will try to do. But the problem is that the DMZ is the kind of place where people get killed when someone tries to cross over from one side to the other without permission.

This guy is a loose cannon that is demonstrating that he is a danger to himself and others, and I suspect that he was like that before the North Koreans got hold of him. Instead of egging him on and calling him a hero for his actions, recognize that he needs to be reined in and possibly kept under surveillance in a place where he can't hurt himself.

Sheesh.