The Great Wall is becoming a great pain in the arse

In the US, the "Culture Wars" are fought over gay marriage, abortion rights, and whether it's okay to pray in class or at football games. In East Asia, the "Culture" part relates to claims over ancient peoples — were the Koguryo folks Korean or Manchurian (and therefore "Chinese")? — and the "war" part has the potential to become the real type if the historical claims spill over into territorial claims.

Against that backdrop, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that some Chinese cultural experts are claiming that the Great Wall of China (and Manchuria and Mongolia and perhaps Korea) is about 2.5 times longer than previously thought — three times the width of the United States — if piles of stones capable of blocking horses are counted:

Zhang Lingmian was collecting walnuts in the countryside north of Beijing last autumn when a friend from a nearby village mentioned a mysterious structure in the mountains that had stumped locals.

The retired cultural heritage official and his friend scampered uphill for two hours, whacking their way through the brambles after the path ran out. At the top of a 2,700-foot-high ridge, they reached a long trail of haphazardly placed rocks.

Zhang says he immediately recognized what villagers called "the strange stones."

"I knew right away it had to be part of the Great Wall of China," Zhang recalled on a recent hike to show off his discovery, about 50 miles from central Beijing.

Although most of the rocks had tumbled down, a few piles reached up to Zhang's chest. "The walls just had to be high enough to keep the barbarians from crossing with their horses," explained Zhang, who says he has been studying the wall for 33 years.

The Great Wall of China may be one of the most recognizable structures on Earth, but it is still in the process of revealing new layers of itself — to cries of disbelief and fury in some quarters. At a time when Beijing is asserting its territorial borders in the South China Sea, the discoveries are not universally applauded.

More to the point for this blog, Korean historians are in an uproar because the supposed Chinese wall stretches all the way to the North Korean border — an area of the People's Republic of China that is not native to the Han Chinese and was once part of the ancient Korean kingdom of Palhae and Koguryo.

Funny that the main part of the Great Wall was intended to keep out the invaders whose territory China now claims as their own in order to justify their cultural (and territorial) designs.

The Not-All-That-Great Wall of China

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Peresnorka watch: Are conditions right for Perestroika and Glasnost in North Korea?

By now everyone knows about the North Korean Unha-3's failure to launch. This was followed by a wholly unexpected full disclosure, just four hours later, to the North Korean people.

Joshua at One Free Korea suggests (update 4) that they had no choice but to get frank with the people, owing to what he calls the World Cup theory of information in a global era:

The interesting thing here is that the North Koreans have admitted that the launch failed, which is new for North Korea. In 1998, for example, another North Korean missile test failed, but the North Koreans claimed that that its rocket lifted a satellite into orbit to play “immortal revolutionary hymns” to Kim Il Sung. I suppose some will call this concession a sign of some new North Korean perestroika or Pyongyang Spring; we’ve seen a false dawns predicted for even less. On the other hand, this is a regime that has recently cracked down on border-crossing — punishments now are much more severe than they were just two years ago — and which still goes to great lengths to deceive foreign media.

The more likely explanation is the same one that applies to North Korea’s decision to televise the World Cup live, only to have everyone with access to the broadcast see the North Korean team trounced. In North Korea, the groupthink probably favors boldness and punishes caution, conflating it with the denial of its own innate superiority. So North Korea gambled big that all of this hype would be a huge boost to its regime’s new figurehead on the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, and it lost big. And unlike 1998, when the regime knew that the truth couldn’t get in, the regime is no longer capable of suppressing big news — and it is North Korea’s own regime that made this big news.

Although intriguing, I don't think the World Cup theory is an adequate explanation for the (relatively) immediate disclosure of failure. Setting aside the obvious non-parallels — even North Koreans play sports and they know that soccer tournaments always come with winners and losers such that a failure would be a likely outcome, unlike the heavily hyped satellite launch — there are other reasons to question that theory as the primary reason for full disclosure.

First, they continue to lie to the North Korean people about a number of things related to the regime, things that, à la the World Cup theory, would eventually be discovered by many to be false, so why be immediately honest about this? Unlike the World Cup outcome, it's not as if it's easy to provide evidence of a high-altitude fizzling of a satellite that would have been impossible to see even if it had succeeded. Ultimately, naysayers consuming outside media may have little more credibility or influence on the non-defecting hoi polloi than, say, a British or Russian media source touting the Obama birther stuff would have on a general American audience.

When it blew to bits, it was dozens of horizontal and vertical kilometers away from what was a sparsely populated area, so I doubt it was observable to ordinary North Koreans with their own eyes (think Challenger disaster and the high-tech stuff in 1986 that was needed to videotape or photograph that). Moreover, any explosion that would somehow be observed could easily be explained as going from stage 1 to stage 2 or some such. Again, no pressing need for the full disclosure.

Second, by shifting gears and not lying about this particular thing, it suggests the regime cares about what the people think about the regime itself. Perhaps care as in worry, and that is an increasingly real thing for the regime. But what it is they are hoping to prevent or to effect by the disclosure, I'm not sure, but one can speculate.

Anyway, if it's not the World Cup theory at work, it seems a possibility at least that some sort of perestroika or glasnost is going on up there. For those of you who are too young to recall a time when there'd never been a President Bush, perestroika was a buzzword from Russian that meant "restructuring" but came to be used as a synonym for openness (that was actually supposed to be glasnost), but that word seems to have been largely forgotten. Leonid Brezhnev proposed perestroika to reform the Soviet Union in 1979, and Mikhail Gorbachev ran with it, applying it to the economy and social institutions. He added glasnost as a policy in 1985.

Within four years, the tight grip Moscow had on Eastern Europe was loosened enough that communism collapsed almost everywhere, including the USSR. Notably, however, Deng Xiapoing's own forms of restructuring and openness were more measured and controlled, surviving internal strife and international condemnation in the spring of 1989, and the regime is still with us nearly a quarter century later. North Korea, if it is adopting any form of perestroika or glasnost, is probably trying to do so on its own terms, modeled closely on the Chinese.

But back to the particular event in question: The disclosure of failure of what was supposed to have been a glorious accomplishment for the North Korean people is, in and of it self, by no means a sign that perestroika or glasnost fever has gripped the regime. One event does not a trend make, and we'd have to see more of this kind of thing before we can start giving the DPRK kudos for taking a brighter path. Televising Western movies or broadcasting Team North Korea's abysmal showing at the World Cup in South Africa may be points on the curve as well (Peresnorka!).

Nevertheless, the conditions for perestroika, based on our n=1 analysis of the past, seem to be in place: a regime that once tightly controlled all media but now is aware that it is undermined by outside news sources (think East Germans watching Dallas and Radio Free Europe, whose positive impressions of the West eventually spread osmotically to the Soviet Union), a brand new leader with a background that indicates a proclivity to regard the West positively (Kim Jong-un was educated in Switzerland), and increasingly deteriorating economic conditions that are starting to adversely affect even the elite. (And on a related note, I dare say that there may be peretroika-minded people in the regime who set the widely disseminated launch event up for a fail.)

It is my hope of hopes, but I don't think it's exactly unrealistic. (And it's not the first time I or anyone else have wondered if Kim Jong-un is North Korea's Gorbachev or North Korea's Deng Xiapoing.)

For naysayers like Joshua, I'll end this post with a few questions: First, if glasnost or perestroika were to occur right now or in the future, what do you think it would look like (a different question from what it should look like)? Second, if glasnost and perestroika were occurring right now or in the near future, might it not be in part because of the very Plan B that you have been pushing and that US President Obama seems to be implementing in some way?

Moreover, if it actually were occurring, would you be able to recognize it as such and even be willing to acknowledge it? The murderous Pyongyang regime has been so epically horrible and cruel to its people, and that makes it hard to imagine any change, but does the past make future change so unlikely that we can just ignore the possibility (while remaining very cautious)?

UPDATE:
I forgot to add a preemptive rebuttal to those who would say that Kim et al would be crazy to allow glasnost or perestroika, lest they be booted out of office or worse, as in the case of Kim Ilsung's buddy Nicolai Ceausescu. But let's take a look at post-Deng China and post-Gorbachev Russia. In the former, the communists are still very much in power and the people live relatively much more freely, while some form of capitalism has brought a great deal of prosperity to the elite (and to many of the people) that didn't exist before.

Meanwhile, in Russia, there is also considerably more freedom, and the country has essentially been run since 1999 by Vladimir Putin, a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB. And while his predecessor Boris Yeltsin was not part of "the organs" like Putin, he was a former member of the Communist Party as well.

Indeed, if Pyongyang went the path of Moscow or Beijing, it's hard to imagine a scenario where someone would rise to power who wasn't part of the nappŭn nomenklatura, even if they were reform-minded.

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An update to an iconic picture

I believe that at this point, every man, woman, child, cat, and dog on the planet has seen this satellite image of the Korean Peninsula, showing South Korea and a little bit of neighboring Japan all lit up, with North Korea in pitch black (in North Korea, every day is Earth Day).

According to The Marmot, a new picture has been making the rounds in South Korea showing the same thing. Again, we see that the cities of prosperous and free nations South Korea and Japan are, at dusk (or dawn), awash in light, whereas North Koreans had better get home or else they'll be stumbling in the dark.

The Marmot says he's not sure if it's real, but believes it could be. Prompted by that, I did a little investigation (I like investigating photos), and my conclusion is that it is probably legitimate.

Through this site, I've traced it to the International Space Station, which snapped the photo on October 11, 2011.

Moreover, it appears not to be doctored, as the same site cites similar photos of other parts of the world. Above is Egypt, Israel, and their Middle East surroundings. This photo is interesting for much of the same reason: it starkly depicts how much of Egypt's 90 million-strong population lives along the Nile. It also shows how prosperous Israel seems compared to its neighbors.

What I don't understand is how we can spend so much on an International Space Station that only turns out blurry pictures.

Meanwhile, I'm curious if North Korea's planned missile satellite launch will be visible from space.

UPDATE:
A Marmot's Hole reader says the photo of the Korean Peninsula can be found here, but I can't verify it since Google Chrome is not playing nice with Quicktime on my four-year-old iMac at the moment. The date in the URL seems to indicate January 2012, though, so I don't think it's from there. [mini-UPDATE: I did not see Korea in that China-to-Australia run once I got it going.]

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Kim Jong-un says he wants to pass gas

... to south Korea, that is.

From Bloomberg:

North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong Un, supports an agreement to build a natural-gas pipeline from Russia to South Korea via his communist state, the Russian envoy in Pyongyang said.

“All these existing agreements are supported by the new leadership in North Korea,” Russian Ambassador Valery Sukhinin said in a phone interview today from the North Korean capital. “Talks now are taking place between the parties implementing the project, from our side Gazprom, and from the North Korean side, the oil industry ministry.” OAO Gazprom is the state-run Russian gas-export monopoly.

Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, who died in December, agreed to the gas pipeline at a meeting in August with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev near the Siberian city of Ulan-Ude. Russia said the energy deal was part of efforts to win concessions on North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program.

Cue juvenile farting joke here...

It's been a while since we've talked about the natural gas pipeline that Russian and South Korean leaders want to lay through North Korea, but apparently the Prodigious Progeny is renewing the prospect. And just in time for annual begging-for-food season.

Too bad, for the sake of North Koreans in the lower echelons of society, we can't bring Juneuary to the DPRK.

Anyway, for my thoughts on the wisdom of having such a pipeline (or lack thereof) see here, here, and here. Of course, it's a somewhat different discussion now that Kim Jong-un is in charge: Could construction of a pipeline and the international agreements necessary to build it and maintain it be what is needed to coax North Korea from isolation, or is there still high potential that the Pyongyang regime will use the threat of cutting off the gas supply as a means of squeezing out concessions from Seoul, as they would have done under Kim Jong-il?

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Dear Dead Leader

ORIGINAL POST BY iPHONE:
Holy crap! It's a Christmakkuh miracle! I turn on my phone after a six-hour flight to California, and my inbox is flooded with news reports and private emails informing me that Kim Jong-il is dead, and why haven't I written anything about it.

I'll write more on this when I get settled, but I'm guessing in the next days or weeks we will find out if Kim Jong-ŭn really is (or is not) The Kim Who Wasn't There™.

(from here and here)

UPDATED (TWO HOURS LATER):
Wow. Where to begin. I guess if you want the latest news, you can go to the Los Angeles Times or perhaps The Marmot's Hole. Everyone is asking what will happen next. The answer is, beyond Kim Jong-il receiving some sort of unending torture in an inner circle of Hell, no one really knows.

Right now, everyone is looking at Kim Jong-ŭn. And Kim Jong-ŭn is crapping his pants. He's not even thirty and he's supposedly been tapped to lead the country. Right.

If you don't already know how I feel, read this and follow the links that tell you all about The Kim Who Wasn't There. Although The Marmot's Hole is reporting that Kim Jong-ŭn was "named... as his father’s successor," I'll believe it when I see it.

Before I go any further, let me tell you of two posts I was working on but was waiting until vacation (which began today) to write. Bear in mind, they are going to make me sound very, very nutty. The first was going to be a follow-up to my original "The Kim Who Wasn't There" post, basically a similar analysis of how much the KCNA (North Korea's central news agency) actually mentions Kim Jong-ŭn, which is not much. I was timing the analysis for the week around the first anniversary of him being named co-chair of whatever committee it is that he's pretending to run.

The second was a bit more out of left field. I was actually sitting down to analyze how much Kim Jong-il travels to give guidance and how much that keeps him away from Pyongyang. I was doing this in order to suggest that — get ready for this — Kim Jong-il might be a mere figurehead himself. Wow, wouldn't that ever be a trip (literally and figuratively)?

Some, of course, might think that really it was one of the KJI doppelgänger doing all the guidance, but I was starting to wonder if KJI really had all the power we have supposed he did. After all, the guy apparently nearly died from a stroke two or three years ago, and then went through a long recovery. Just who the hell was his Edith Wilson, if he had one at all? Maybe, just maybe, the ruling generals or nappŭn nomenklatura (see how I did that?) sorta got together and formed a junta or an oligarchy or something.

And where would that leave supposed designated heir Kim Jong-ŭn? Maybe they really do need a figurehead. Maybe they need a uniting force and a source of legitimacy. Maybe they have decided that Kim Jong-il's only son who is not crazy or possibly gay but is a team player must be the figurehead.

And if that's true, then my speculation that Kim Jong-ŭn would end up wielding no real power is still true. Not that he (or his supporting faction) wouldn't try. But just what can a figurehead do? I have wondered aloud if Kim Jong-un could possibly be North Korea's Gorbachev. Maybe the English-speaking, Swiss-educated KJU might just have some ideas of his own about opening up the country, and even his nominal power might be just enough to nudge the regime in that direction.

It all comes down to China.
But ultimately, whether or not Kim Jong-un will be in power as a figurehead, a leader with real power, or none at all, will depend on China. In the past, I and others have spoken about the ominous prospect of China working to turn North Korea into Inner Cháoxiān Autonomous Prefecture. China has a great deal of control over the DPRK and it does not want to relinquish it. It certainly does not want the Koreans to unify and have a US military presence at its backdoor.

And so China has been doing whatever it can to prop up the North Korean government. They started doing this during the Korean War and they've been doing it since. But lately they themselves have found the Pyongyang regime belligerent and unwieldy, even an embarrassment to Beijing. And don't think for a minute that China wouldn't give their blessing to even a transfer of power to a figurehead unless they had assurances that the post-KJI North Korea would be better behaved.

And here is where I'm actually kinda sorta glad that China is holding the reins (at least for the time being), because China has been prodding North Korea to follow a path similar to Deng-era China, and to integrate North Korea (economically at least) with China's northeastern provinces (i.e., a process I call the Manchurianization of North Korea).

North Korea has been opening in ways thought unimaginable just a few years ago. North Korea has brought in cell phone service, eventually becoming the world's fastest growing mobile market (more posts here and here). News reports said recently that they topped 1 million (in a country of about 22 million).

There are also things like Western-style coffee shops, television commercials for beer, and other trappings of the West as seen through Chinese eyes. In other words, China has lately been trying very hard to re-make North Korea in its own image.

And just what does all that mean? China does not allow a whole lot of dissent. Two decades after Tianamen Square, China is still authoritarian. And if North Korea follows a Dengesque path, you should expect North Korea to also be authoritarian as long as China is. Unless...

What if North Korea goes off China's game plan?
The only thing that could change the trajectory of North Korea being pulled toward Deng-era reforms that would bring it closer and closer to China would be unification. The question now is whether that can happen or not. The generals and the politicos in North Korea have no interest in giving up their own power and possibly risking arrest, imprisonment, and even execution which might result if North Korea allowed itself to be absorbed by a democratic South Korea. (I think there's a way to convince them while keeping that in mind, but that's another post for another time.)

But what if there is an uprising? What if Kim Jong-un just isn't cutting it as a figurehead or a real leader? What if the people have caught a whiff of the jasmine revolution and think now is as good a time as any to make a real change? Don't forget that in 2009 the regime dealt a body blow to almost everyone in the country — including many who had once felt quite loyal — with the Great Currency Obliteration. That has been, I believe, a real game changer in people's attitudes toward the regime, a moment where they suddenly realized, "These people aren't on my side."

Kim Jong-il died at a time when there are already food shortages, and the bitter winter will only make it worse. This is a precarious time to be changing leadership. Beijing itself may not be able to control what results. The biggest thing they have going their way, however, is that much of the population lives in rural pockets that are kept from communicating with each other. If there is a North Korean Spring, à la the Arab world, it will only be because of some very diligent people risking their lives to bring the message to the masses wherever they are.

So, in conclusion, with 3.5 hours of sleep and having just come off six hours of flying, these are my thoughts. I still think Kim Jong-un's faction does not have his power solidified, and I think there's a good chance he will either be squeezed out or allowed to be merely a figurehead. China will continue to push for reforms that make North Korea more like Deng-era China, but a popular uprising could easily thwart their plans to integrate the DPRK more with the Northeastern Provinces.

What would a North Korean spring look like? How would China react? Could we get China to back off a bit by (a) agreeing to keep their port facilities at Rajin and (b) promising that the US military will not be stationed in any territory that had been the Democratic People's Republic of Korea?

So much to think about. And I'll probably rewrite a lot of this in the morning.

UPDATE FROM THE NEXT MORNING:
Before I start, I'd like to add a few links to other blogs, who are as interested in this story as I. Make no mistake: this is the biggest story of the year and, depending on how things go, possibly the decade. So here are links from the biggies that cover North Korea regularly: One Free Korea, and Daily NK (which is like a news service, so just go there and see all the KJI-related articles).

I will forgive Asiapundit brazenly linking to themselves, just because that's something I would do, too, so go to this link and read the Marmot's Hole-worthy post they put up (frankly, others doing that meant I didn't have to, and I could thus concentrate on my theses about what might happen in the future — hint: the answer is likely to involve continued Manchurianization). Roboseyo has some thoughts. If you know of any others I've missed, please feel free to provide them in the comments.

And soon we'll start hearing from the experts on North Korea, as well as the pundits who liken themselves as experts on North Korea. And then we'll have a new round of blog posts on people talking about how North Korea expert Selig Harrison is nucking futs (and possibly on the take?).

Now for a couple things I forgot to mention in my bleary-eyed post from last night.

First, a huge dollop of honesty: I may not know what the fudge I'm talking about. Nobody does. And five, ten years from now, a lot of us will consider ourselves lucky if no one was keeping score.

Some honest punditry.
But here's where I get a little more honest: I was completely wrong about what would happen with North Korea back when the elder Kim died, and if only I'd been blogging in the mid-1990s, you'd know that.

See, I've been a news junkie ever since late elementary school, when I delivered newspapers. And that plus our own connection to Korea meant my young self would follow news on North Korea long before Kim Il-sung kicked the bucket in 1994.

And I was confident back then that Kim Il-sung — who at that point had ruled the country for four decades — was the only thing in the way of unification. So my late teen self actually bet someone fifty dollars (where was my late teen self getting that kinda money? ) that within five years of the Great Leader's Death, the two Koreas would be unified.

How's that prediction working out for you, late teen kushibo? (Good thing the person I bet kinda forgot; for a teen, that was Romney betting money.)

And so this is just me being honest. I was optimistic and perhaps naïve, but the thing is we all were. But there were so many things we didn't account for, such as Kim Jong-il's own ruthlessness (seriously, the guy looked like some sort of fat Korean Bill Gates, and who could imagine Bill Gates being evil?), and China's own willingness to support evil in order to maintain a satellite state (we thought they got that out of their system in 1950).

So now maybe we're overcompensating. We think North Korea's "leadership" doesn't have the capacity to move beyond dynastic dictatorship, and we worry that North Korea's people can't do anything but cower in fear. And we now understand that China will do whatever it can to ensure that North Korea doesn't become part of the string of pearls the United States intends to use as a choker.

But are we overcompensating too much? (By definition, any overcompensation is too much.) Is North Korea something that even Beijing cannot tame enough to use for their purposes?

A bulimic state cannot stand?
And that leads me to the other thing I forgot to mention last night: the purges. Right now on Capitol Hill in the US, we've got the leaders of Freddie and Fannie up there talking about charges that they'd misled the public. Now imagine that they were in fear that they would be taken out back and shot, and their families rounded up. That's what happened with the guy who was the scapegoat for the botched currency reform.

And that's just one example. You move way up the ladder, having been noticed for your competence but patiently and obsequiously playing the sycophant, and then you risk losing it all on a whim to a bullet through the skull when you piss off the wrong person.

"I can't work under these conditions!" is what you want to scream, but that's a guaranteed trip to the salt mines. So maybe you just wait, bide your time, until the old man's son is dead, and then we'll retake the asylum and set things right. Right? Right?

Notice a resemblance?

I mean, we don't want to have to wait until the son of the old man's son is also dead, do we? Junior the First, if he really was in charge, was only interested in selling off the country and buying coke. Sure, he kept all of us in Pyongyang living large, but we were always living in fear of the boom coming down. Maybe if we get rid of his son, we can actually move toward being a normal country where we are still the elite. Right?

They've just got to be thinking that way up there. I mean, Junior Junior has no real knowledge of how to run a country. He's weak, and possibly as whimsical as his dad, and that's a recipe for disaster, right? Best to off the kid — or put him in a figurehead role — and move on. But will the powerful Kim Jongsuk (his aunt) allow for that? Maybe we need to wait for her to croak.

So what I'm getting at is that the generals and the top bureaucrats have a deeply personal incentive to not stick with the status quo. And that could upend whatever plans China has (or maybe bolster them, depending on China's plans and how they feel about Round 3 of a Kim Dynasty).

Okay, I'm starting to blab again. So many thoughts in my brain right now, and I need some breakfast.

(And say what you will, but the flood of tears for the Dear Leader that will be seen on video clip after video clip, some of them from deep human emotion and some of them crocodile, were exactly what happened when the Great Leader seventeen years ago. Do not be alarmed, do not be shocked, do not adjust your set.)

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Holy backfiring North Korean hijinks, Fatman!

So, North Korea sinks a South Korean vessel, and then later bombs Yŏnpyŏng-do, killing military and civilians... The end result may be US troops stationed on the forward-situated "Five Islands of the West Sea" (서해오도):

South Korea plans to build barracks for US troops on an island near the tense sea border with North Korea in case of emergency or military drills, according to the defence ministry.

The barracks will be built on Baengnyeong, a front-line island and flashpoint in the Yellow Sea, a ministry spokesman told AFP.

"US soldiers will use the barracks during joint military drills or in case of emergency," he said, declining to give details.

The South will start building the barracks capable of housing some 160 US soldiers next year and construction will be completed by 2013, Yonhap news agency said.

This makes me happy. North Korea needs to see consequences for its actions, and if its outbursts over the NLL are met with a bolstering of US and ROK defenses, that's great.

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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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Well, I wouldn't trust whomever was trying to swallow up my country, either.

Ah, Wikileaks, the gift that keeps on giving us leakage.

I actually found this one quite encouraging: North Korea's Dear Leader apparently doesn't trust Beijing as far as he can throw them (despite his handing over the northernmost reaches of the DPRK to the Chinese).

From AFP:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il expressed distrust of his country's major economic prop China during a 2009 meeting with a visiting South Korean businesswoman, according to a US diplomatic cable.

The cable released by anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks summarises a meeting between the US ambassador in Seoul and Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jung-Eun, who had recently returned from a meeting in Pyongyang with the leader.

The cable dated August 28, 2009 quoted Hyun as saying Kim had made a comment about "not trusting" China, without elaborating.

That's nice to know, as I'm quite worried about a desperate regime in Pyongyang handing over the country bit by bit, in order to stay afloat.

The Wikileaks documents revealed some other interesting things as well:

Kim also complained that Seoul's unification ministry tasked with handling cross-border relations had "lost the driver's seat" to the foreign ministry, which he asserted did not understand North Korea. ...

Discussing relations with the United States, he told Hyun he had altered some parts of the Arirang festival to "fit American tastes".

Arirang involves tens of thousands of performers in mass games and artistic performances that praise the communist regime and the ruling dynasty.

The leader reportedly told Hyun he had cut out a sketch depicting a missile launch because he had heard Americans did not like it.

"He had also been advised that South Koreans did not like to see so many soldiers in the performance, so now more students were included," the cable says.

However, Kim described relations with Japan as "far worse than ever before" and Hyun was told separately by a senior official that the leader had ordered Japanese cars banned from Pyongyang's streets.

Wow, so KJI does care what the public thinks. Just not the public in his own country.

...

Pariah ship

Remember The Love Boat, where each episode would bring us three couples who found romance against the backdrop of a cruise ship plying the waters off the coast of an impoverished country where violence and mayhem were a way of life?

Well, it's back! But instead of Mexico being the dysfunctionally violent and poor country off whose shores they sailed, this time it's North Korea.

From The Guardian:

On Tuesday, the mysterious state launched itself into the glitzy world of cruise tourism when about 130 passengers set sail from the rundown port of Rajin, near the China-Russia border, for the scenic Mount Kumgang resort near the South Korean border.

Isolated North Korea's "state tourism bureau" has teamed up with a Chinese travel company to run the country's first cruise aboard an ageing 9,700-tonne vessel that once plied the waters off the east coast of the divided peninsula shuttling passengers between North Korea and Japan.

The ship was later used to transport cargo before Tokyo blocked its entry as part of economic sanctions over Pyongyang's missile and nuclear tests in 2006.

Some 500 North Koreans, about half dressed in dark workers' clothes and the others in office and traditional attire, waved off the ship in a choreographed performance on the potholed dock.

The spectators waved North Koreans flags and fake flowers, and let off fireworks to mark the occasion. Carnival music blared from two minivans.

Before the launch, Hwang Chol-nam, the vice-mayor of Rason City, gave a speech lauding the venture as part of the region's push to attract tourism.

Any nationality can visit the area visa-free. They must, however, arrange the trip through designated tour companies.

"Any country, people from America, Japanese, Singaporean, can come to Rason, that's the reality today, and that's the same for the Kumgang special economic zone," he told reporters aboard the vessel. ...

The cruise, which sails the length of North Korea's picturesque eastern coastline, will appeal not only to the adventurous seeking "something different", but also to gamblers wanting to try their luck at the North's casinos in Rason and Kumgang.

This brings up the whole issue of propping up the Pyongyang regime, of course, but I'm guessing some people just don't care or think it's merely a drop in the bucket.

I do take issue with The Guardian's description of Rajin as a rundown port. The Chinese are reportedly pouring a good deal of money into building the area up. I suppose the part off limits to North Korean civilians, however, might still be a bit dilapidated, but the region is enjoying a bit of a Rajin renaissance as China starts looking in that direction for an outlet to the sea that would justify propping up the DPRK.

In fact, one could call this a new Age of Rasŏn. Thanks, I'm here all week.

UPDATED:
The Huffington Post has pictures of the cruise and the cruise ship. It ain't no Carnival Cruise, that's for sure.

...

See the DPRK in a Chevrolet (or other Chinese-made GM vehicle)

From the Wall Street Journal, we get word of a Reuters story about a rally of sorts through the North Korean countryside:

China’s rapidly expanding network of highways, burgeoning obsession with the car and swelling stocks of disposable income have conspired to remake a once quintessentially American past time — the road trip — into the height of recreational fashion among monied Chinese weekenders.

Now it appears China’s road warriors have the pursuit to a place no American is allowed to roam: the trails and turnpikes, such as they are, of North Korea.

According the Reuters voice over on the CCTV report above, 100 Chinese tourists recently crossed the border to participate in the first ever “self-driven” tour allowed in the Hermit Kingdom. Because of the condition of North Korean roads, the report says, the convoy was limited to trucks with four-wheel drive. The tour looks to have included stops at a number of Potempkin hotels and restaurants. Total cost: $147 per person, or roughly 49 times the official average monthly income in Pyongyang.

One of the people interviewed notes that things appear to have improved since she was in North Korea a decade earlier. Her evidence? The hotels are nicer and there's abundant seafood.

Okay, then.

Still, that North Korea would allow this kind of thing at all is a possible indication of two things: (a) slightly greater confidence in allowing visitors to travel around unencumbered by handlers, even if the visitors are vetted from a friendly country, and (b) North Koreans themselves having greater exposure to outsiders and their trappings of wealth.

I say this because I've always felt that North Korean opening up — and I believe China is trying to force that upon North Korea — is a Trojan horse that could be a major contributor to the downfall of the Pyongyang regime as we know it. Like Dallas being broadcast into East Germany.

Western North Korea experts don't trust South Korean media on North Korea?

The Marmot highlights a very interesting English-language piece in the Kyunghyang Shinmun about how Westerner North Korea watchers (or American ones, at least) generally discount the truthiness of South Korean reports on North Korea:

Though I hate to admit it, among the so-called "Korea watchers" around Washington, who take interest in and observe issues on the Korean Peninsula, trust in the South Korean media is almost at rock bottom.

Since hardly anything that goes on inside North Korea is made public, not many articles are written based on clear facts. The result is a large number of articles that make deductions based on phenomena visible from the outside. In many cases, however, the grounds for such deductions are weak too.

I have to admit that this North Korea watcher (i.e., me) often dismisses or questions South Korean media reports about North Korea as speculative and based on flimsy evidence, but I say the exact same thing about Western (and Japanese) media reports on North Korea. In fact, you could say I've been making a career of this lately, what with me questioning the whole bandwagon thing of Kim Jong-un being so obviously elevated to leadership and deriding the media in general for ignoring the real story of China slowly but steadily and surely absorbing North Korea (i.e., "the Manchurianization of North Korea").

Anyway, the Marmot's post is an interesting read, and it linked to something from 2009, Mr Cullen Thomas, the author of Brother One Cell who managed to get himself arrested in South Korea for mailing himself hashish from the Philippines, going online and on air to discuss how his own drug-related legal problems in South Korea in 1994 were kinda sorta maybe just like Laura Ling's and Euna Lee's in North Korea fifteen years later.

I must have been traveling from Seoul back to California or Hawaii when this post was up, because it seems I completely missed both The Marmot's post and this gem where Joshua of One Free Korea fisks it.

Setting aside what an idiot Mr Thomas was and how he's trying to milk that for all it's worth, what annoys me about his appearance on CNN is the way they conflate South Korea and North Korea. Right off the bat, in CNN's introduction to Mr Thomas's appearance, I knew it would be unworthy of my time.

I loathe the journalistic media's laziness, both intellectual and structural.

While it's true that Mr Thomas makes a valid point that apology is a way for courts in South Korea to provide leniency (something that he did not do, by the way), this is something that could be gleaned from just about any North Korea watcher or Korea expert (see my "Who is Kushibo?" bio to see if I qualify) by reading their blog.

There's an analogy in there somewhere. 

The one where Kushibo called it on KJI's China trip

Can I call 'em or what?

Straight from one of the horses' mouth: PRC Premier Wen Jiabao is saying that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's trip to china was about learning how China's economy works, particularly the part of China close to North Korea.

From Bloomberg:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was invited to China to learn about the country’s economic restructuring and use that knowledge to revive his own nation’s shrinking economy, Premier Wen Jiabao said.

Wen made the comments during a meeting with South Korea’s President Lee Myung Bak in Tokyo, where the two leaders held a summit with Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan, Lee’s office said in a statement on its website. Kim arrived in Yangzhou in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu yesterday on the third day of his trip, Seoul-based Yonhap News reported.

Got that? This is exactly what I said here and here and here: the Dear Leader is being called over to Northeastern China, with an extra leg near Shanghai, to learn about Socialism With Chinese Characteristics so that Kim Jong-il can do the same in the DPRK.

You can't see it right now, but Kushibo is doing a cocky little "I'm right yet again" dance around the dorm room. Well, if you pay $19.95 a month, you could be seeing it.

But it's not about the contrarian Kushibo coming up with the correct analysis yet again while the mainstream media keeps harping on the Kim Jong-un-is-the-next-leader crap. It's about concern that the lazy media in South Korea, the US, and elsewhere are stuck on that one facile note, and it becomes the lens through which they (mis)interpret everything. It really does seem that they're missing the boat on the Kim Who Wasn't There, and thus they're ignoring the real story.

This trip has little to do with Kim Jong-un and everything to do with stepping up the Manchurianization of North Korea.

Meanwhile, Adam Cathcart over at Sinologistical Violoncellist has an interesting post listing twenty-eight things you may have missed about Kim Jong-il's trip to Big Brother China.

Planes, Trains, and Autocrats

North Korea Leadership Watch has a nice roundup of reports that Kim Jong-il's train is headed for Shenyang, with Yonhap speculating that his eventual destination is Beijing.

While he could be headed for the Chinese capital eventually, I think a visit to Shenyang is more keeping in line with what I believe the real purpose of the trip is (outlined here and more recently here): schooling Kim Jong-il (and possibly Kim Jong-un) on Socialism With Northeastern Chinese Characteristics™ as part of Beijing's list of demands to allow any dynastic transition to occur.

Educating Leader (UPDATED)

UPDATE 1:
Although the WaPo had also reported that Kim Jong-un is the one in China, AP is now saying that it might actually be Kim Jong-il himself (Yonhap has the story here). This doesn't change my theory below: China is acquiescing to preservation of the dynasty only if North Korea goes along with China's plans and ideas, and Beijing will be pushing to make sure Kim Jong-un understands what is expected.

UPDATE 2:
Here is the latest from Yonhap and the LAT. They are saying the original reports had it backwards and it is now kinda sorta confirmed that Kim Jong-il is in China, while they're still wondering if Boy Wonder is with him. Note that the the LAT's picture (shown below) is of the North Korean embassy in Beijing even though the reports indicate that the Dear Leader and/or his son are in the part of China much closer to the DPRK. Very confusing (not to mention sloppy), and I don't understand why they do things like that.

The media, which is largely failing to grasp the on-going story about China's Manchurianization of North Korea, is speculating that this trip "might be a request for food and economic aid," so they are assuming the final destination will be Beijing (and it indeed could be). The LAT's Barbara Demick does seem to have some inkling of what's going on, with her mention of the de facto Chinese takeover of a North Korean island in the Yalu River.

Regarding the confusion of Who's On First right now, the initial reports were not entirely wrong, as they were half right in saying that "it remains to be seen whether he was traveling alone or together with Kim Jong-il," and it turns out KJI is there and KJU himself might be there.

Actually, if L'il L'il Kim is not with Daddy Dearest, it would appear Beijing is less eager to groom Kim Jong-un, which strengthens my theory all along that KJU is being treated by China as The Kim Who Wasn't There and that they are only reluctantly going along with any inkling of a succession only in exchange for major concessions on reform and "minor" concessions on territorial control (see below). And the fact that either one of the Kims is in Northeast China strengthens that overall theory as well.

Just read this below and follow the links and it will all make sense.

This is the LAT's photo for the KJI-in-China story. It's a paramilitary police officer at the North Korean embassy in Beijing, opening a gate for a diplomatic car. Even though KJI is not in Beijing, this is the go-to spot for a photo for the story, which only confuses the reader. KJI is, if reports are correct, not in Beijing but in China's northeastern provinces. This is key because it is those provinces that Beijing is pushing to have North Korea integrated with. It is those provinces' economic reforms that Beijing is modeling for Pyongyang. By the way, I have visited this embassy, back in college. I talked with some North Korean diplomats inside. Nice people, or so it seemed. 

ORIGINAL POST:
Yonhap is reporting that heir-inapparent Kim Jong-un is in China.

From Yonhap:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's heir apparent son, Kim Jong-un, has been confirmed to be visiting China, a source in a Chinese border city said Friday.

The junior Kim arrived in Tumen, in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin, early Friday morning, but his next destination has yet to be confirmed, the source in Tumen told Yonhap News Agency. The source asked not to be identified, citing the issue's sensitivity.

Security has been tightened considerably in Tumen and areas linking the Chinese city with North Korean border, the source added.

A ranking government official in Seoul said that the North's presumed heir may have certainly arrived in China considering circumstances observed so far, noting he is unlikely to travel to Beijing.

When Beijing summons the leader of its vassal state, it can only mean one thing. The problem is, we usually have to guess at what that one thing is.

The press will likely fall over itself showing how it is yet further evidence that the Young General is solidifying his role as next leader of North Korea...

The trip is widely seen as China's seal of approval for what would mark the communist regime's second hereditary power succession.

... but I, on the other hand, am a bit more skeptical.

As those of you who travel in the alternate universe of Monster Island* know, China is leveraging its tentative support for the Kim Dynasty as a way of solidifying its control over North Korea and its plans to integrate it into China's Northeastern Provinces, what I call the Manchurianization of North Korea.

We've already seen Chinese troops moving into the free-trade zone port of Rajin/Rasŏn to secure a Chinese-controlled outlet on the Sea of Japan. And we are likely witnessing Beijing allowing dynastic rule to continue as long as the Pyongyang regime makes economic reforms, including researching socialism-with Chinese characteristics as well as plain old capitalism.

In exchange for Beijing's continued support, the Pyongyang regime is also being forced to give political and geographic concessions that allow China to meld the future Inner Cháoxiān Autonomous Region with the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning, and Heilongjiang.

And thus it's notable that Kim Jong-un is not headed for Beijing but is instead going no farther than the provinces just beyond the river. No doubt this trip by the younger Kim is meant as a means to educate the future king. We've seen this before and we should expect to see it more and more.

So, in conclusion, it is not a seal of approval. It's driver's ed.

*actually a peninsula

Islands in the stream

View Larger Map

And the Manchurianization of North Korea continues. Now we have word that the two close-as-lips-and-teeth neighbors will work on co-developing Wihwa-do, an island in the river that makes up the western half of their common border (the Yalu in English and Chinese, the Amnok-kang in Korean):

The two countries plan to hold a groundbreaking ceremony on May 28 for development of the island on the Yalu River, the South's Yonhap news agency said.

Pyongyang has reportedly worked out a special law to set up a free trade zone on the island, which is separated by a narrow waterway from the Chinese city of Dandong.

The North's state media disclosed a deal last year to build a new cross-border bridge on the Yalu River as part of a major economic package announced by Beijing.

The two sides have agreed to turn the island into a base for logistics, tourism and manufacturing that would be linked to China's industrial complex to be built in Dandong, Yonhap said.

At the end of 2010, the Chosun Ilbo reported on discussions between Pyongyang and Beijing over control of the island, which abuts the Chinese city of Dandong. The Pyongyang regime may have wanted it hermetically sealed from the rest of North Korea (e.g., through a bridge directly from Dandong to the island) but the Chinese, who seem hell-bent on forcing North Korea out of its shell, wanted the bridge to go through southern Shinuiju so that people going to Wihwa-do would have to drive past a bunch of North Koreans.

And then there was also the matter of a lease. Pyongyang offered fifty years and the Beijing balked, so North Korea offered a 100-year lease. Just great: North Korea is giving up pieces of its territory to the Chinese (as in Rasŏn, where Chinese troops are stationed), so when/if unification does happen, there might not be any North Korea left.

Capital Mystery Tour

The first ever photograph of Japanese tourists in America.

In the late 1860s and early 1870s, as Japan felt pressure to open up to the West, the Iwakura Mission and other diplomatic delegations set out for Europe and North America to intensely observe the social, legal, academic, and scientific institutions of the great powers of the day. In the late Chosŏn era, a number of Koreans went especially to the United States and Japan in an effort to learn how Korean could modernize itself and become a strong country.

It is in that vein that we have a dozen North Koreans on a crash course in capitalism partly arranged by UC San  Diego's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, touring the likes of Google, Home Depot, Sempra Energy, Bloomberg, Bloomingdale’s Department Store, CitiGroup, Union Bank, Qualcomm, and Stanford University.

The trip was largely a secret, but it seems the hosts pulled out all the stops. The North Koreans were even brought to Universal Studios.

Like their counterparts in the Iwakura Mission 140 years earlier,
these North Korean visitors have not yet adopted the peace/victory sign
as a de rigueur pose.

This is a very interesting development, one that would seem to indicate that North Korea really is turning over a new leaf, or is being forced to by China. I submit that this goes hand in hand with Beijing's attempt to push Chinese-style reforms on the DPRK in an effort to integrate it with the PRC's northeastern region (i.e., Manchuria). Such reforms, I believe, may be one of China's demands in exchange for allowing Kim Jong-il's son Kim Jong-un (i.e., The Kim Who Wasn't There™) to ascend to the Pyongyang throne, at least as a figurehead.

Kim Jong-il himself went on such a tour to China's south a few years back, visiting Guangzhou for a taste, Beijing's leadership hoped, of what Socialism With Chinese Characteristics (i.e., crony capitalism of the worst possible kind) could do for North Korea. Of course, if you're trying to convince someone who maintains control by hindering movement, blocking information, and threatening starvation that a relatively liberal and open system is the way of the future, free-wheeling Guangzhou (i.e., China's wild, wild south) is probably not the best place to take them.

Frankly, all those people down there doing what they want with little regard or concern for what Beijing wants them from them probably scared the bejeezus out of the poor Dear Leader.

We'll have to see what, if anything, it all means. I constantly ride Beijing for propping up a murderous regime, but maybe they really are working behind the scenes to get North Korean to "normalize" and join the community of nations. One can only hope.

Oh, and before their visit, I expect Google first made the Norks return that piece of Google Earth they stole.

"Those Western women are practically naked!
Don't look or your eyes will melt!"

A charter paving the way for Kim Jong-un?

Anyone who visits my blog knows that I am highly skeptical of how much of a done-deal the ascension of Kim Jong-un is, despite the South Korean, Japanese, and Western media's general acceptance of it as future fact. (And just so we're clear, I think the real story is the one they're missing: the Manchurianization of North Korea).

But as contrarian as I am, I am also honest, and if I see something that contradicts my viewpoint, I am happy, even to the point of ecstatic, to review it. So when Voice of America says they have in their hot little hands the charter that maps out Kim Jong-un's rise to the top of the heap, I sit up and take notice:

North Korea has revised the charter of its only political party, apparently to ensure a smooth transition of power from father to son in the reclusive communist state. VOA correspondent Steve Herman has obtained a copy of the document, which has not been made public in or outside North Korea.

North Korea experts say the revised Korea Workers Party charter (PDF), obtained by VOA, appears to create the framework for ruler Kim Jong Il to be succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Un.

The charter revision is dated September 28th last year, which was when party representatives met in Pyongyang. The following day the state-run news agency announced the charter had been revised to strengthen the party’s leadership and enhance its role in the army.

But specifics were not revealed, nor has the new charter been publicly issued.
Specialists on North Korea, including some in the intelligence community, who have seen the copy of the revised charter, say they have no reason to doubt its authenticity.

Government officials and academic analysts in Seoul say one of the changes to the charter allows the head of the party to also run the Central Military Commission, ensuring that one person is able to control all military and state affairs. Kim Jong Un, who is in his late 20’s, co-chairs the commission along with 68-year-old Army Chief of Staff, Vice Marshall Ri Yong Ho.

Cheong Seong-chang is a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute, which studies South Korean defense and foreign affairs policy. He says the change means Kim Jong Un will have full authority to control the military and the country should his father suddenly die.

For those of you who read Korean (and full disclosure: it would take me an entire afternoon to slog through this document), the PDF is right here. I'll see if I can get my Kindle to read it.

Now the obvious questions are: What does this mean? Is it the real deal? If it is real, has anything changed since it was issued? Has it ever been implemented or was it merely a draft? Who knows about it? Is it possible this "unreleased" document was leaked so that the North Korean security apparatus, ahem, could see where they need to plug things up?

In my theory whereby the Young General is the Kim Who Wasn't There, there is still room for Kim Jong-il to try to get his son to succeed him, and this may genuinely be a document meant to do that. But then we have to ask ourselves: Is he really in a position at this point to ram that through?

Finally, I leave you with this. Go to the KCNA site and look at the dates for the news (English here, Korean here). Go on, I'll wait. I've got last week's Community in my Hulu queue and I'm willing to wait. Okay, do you notice anything different from the official North Korean news site and the supposed North Korean super secret government charter document?

That's right, kiddies, the VOA document is missing the Juche date (주체 100년), while the English and Korean news sites include both the Gregorian calendar date (2011년) and the Juche date. That's quite an oversight on the part of whomever is trying to ensure that Fat Boy's Kin is going to rise like cream to the top.

But what do I know? I still think Kim Jong-il might be around until at least the middle of this decade.

China to send troops to Inner Cháoxiān Autonomous Region

[Yonhap graphic showing location of Rajin/Najin port (라진/나진, 
aka Rasŏn/Nasŏn or 라선/나선) in relation to China]

Peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula — defined in practical terms as Beijing pulling the plug on its support for the Pyongyang regime and allowing Seoul to absorb the DPRK without incident or interference — may have just gotten a lot harder. For the first time since 1994, China will station troops in North Korea, to protect the port facilities it is developing in Rasŏn (also known as Rajin or Najin).

From AFP:

China is in discussions with North Korea about stationing its troops in the isolated state for the first time since 1994, a South Korean newspaper reported Saturday.

The Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted an anonymous official at the presidential Blue House as saying that Beijing and Pyongyang recently discussed details of stationing Chinese soldiers in the North's northeastern city of Rason.

The official said the soldiers would protect Chinese port facilities, but the location also gives access to the Sea of Japan (East Sea), while a senior security official was quoted as saying it would allow China to intervene in case of North Korean instability.

A spokeswoman for the Blue House said she had no information, while China's defence ministry declined comment to AFP on the matter this week.

"North Korea and China have discussed the issue of stationing a small number of Chinese troops to protect China-invested port facilities" in the Rason special economic zone, the unnamed official was quoted as saying.

"The presence of Chinese troops is apparently to guard facilities and protect Chinese nationals."

China reportedly gained rights in 2008 to use a pier at Rason, securing access to the Sea of Japan (East Sea), as North Korea's dependence on Beijing continues to grow amid a nuclear stand-off with the United States and its allies.

The last Chinese troops left the North in 1994, when Beijing withdrew from the Military Armistice Commission that supervises the truce that ended the 1950-53 Korean war.

I couldn't find the Chosun Ilbo article they were talking about in English or in Korean [UPDATE: Destination Pyongyang has a Korean-language link in their excellent treatment of this news, and the Chosun Ilbo now has the story in English]. And I'm quite curious how many constitutes "a small number." In a nation of 1.3 billion, who knows?

We've already talked about development of these port facilities and the multi-billion-dollar economic package of which they are a part, what I call the "Manchurianization of North Korea." As a crucial element of its own attempt to reform North Korea, China is pressuring the Pyongyang regime to adopt Chinese-style economic reforms that will help integrate its economy with the PRC's northeastern provinces along its border with North Korea (that, I have been saying repeatedly, is the real story the Western media should be paying attention to instead of the supposed rise of the Kim Who Wasn't There™).

And what China gets out of it, they hope, is a stable satellite state (if not future territory, the Inner Cháoxiān Autonomous Region), along with coveted access to the East Sea (Sea of Japan). This is not something China will give up lightly, especially now that there will be PLA troops in North Korea to maintain their position no matter what happens to the DPRK government. I guess that's all the more reason to consider the solution I outlined just yesterday, which would be to preemptively grant China access in a unified Korea, in exchange for them stepping back and letting the Pyongyang regime collapse and Seoul pick up the pieces.

Perhaps there is some way to turn this big new wrinkle in our favor. One can't imagine that the North Korean citizenry is any fonder of foreign troops in their country than their fellow-traveling chinboista counterparts are in the South. So let's make this an issue in the propaganda we send to them. Lincolns, Hamiltons, and Jacksons have just enough room in the margins for a message like, "Kim Jong-il has allowed Chinese troops to occupy northern North Korea right now." Tie those to a mylar balloon and — boom! — instant disgruntlement.

Of course, fomenting such xenophobic antipathy would mean US troops would be rather unwelcome in the former DPRK once reunification occurs, but a big part of the aforementioned plan is to keep them out of the North anyway.