Political calculus keeps Cuba on the terrorism sponsors list

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting discussion on whether or not Cuba should remain on the US government's list of state sponsors of terrorism. It's interesting from a Korea-centric perspective because the same arguments for or against it can — and should —be applied to North Korea as well.

The Bush administration took North Korea off that list as a concession, and Obama has not seen fit to put them back on despite things like the bombing of your Nintendo [stupid Siri!] Yŏnpyŏng-do Island and the sinking of the Ch'ŏnan. People like Joshua Stanton at One Free Korea say that such acts inspire fear in the South Korean people and therefore should be considered terrorism, while others point out that they are military provocations that don't fit a more precise definition of "terrorism" per se.

Four people, including two civilians, were killed when North Korea launched bombs against Yŏnpyŏng-do,  an island in the Yellow Sea, one of the isolated "Five Islands of the West Sea" that sit close to the North Korean mainland. 

I myself am on the fence about this. I think that moving them to the terrorism sponsor list again should only be done for something very serious, and perhaps those past military acts were serious enough, but I think we ought to wait until a time when such a move is part of a strategic overall plan to punish them for something they've done recently. In other words, the moment has passed for that, and we should use the threat of putting them back on the list as a way of getting them to behave right now.

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Being a "balancer" is so 2004

I am extremely terrified of Chinese people in Korea.

Over at The Atlantic (HT to Wangkon), Dartmouth Professor Jennifer Lind writes that South Koreans' desire to hedge their bets against China is the real reason politicos have scuttled Japan-born South Korean President Lee Myungbak's eagerness to enter an intelligence-sharing agreement with Tōkyō:

Still, there's something more behind the unraveling of the GSOMIA accord -- South Korean ambivalence about the country's role in the unfolding U.S.-China drama. Several defense and foreign policy analysts in Seoul told me, when I visited recently, that many of their countrymen shied away from GSOMIA because they saw it as part of a U.S.-led security architecture positioned against China. They added that many South Koreans are dismayed that, as they perceive it, the U.S. increasingly sees China as a military threat. A professor at the Korea National Defense University named Lee Byeong-Gu told me, "In particular, signing the GSOMIA agreement is worrying to Koreans in light of the recent U.S. 'pivot' or 'rebalancing' toward Asia, which many people fear represents an increased containment effort toward China. Some South Koreans are calling for their government to sign an intelligence-sharing agreement with Beijing as well as with Tokyo. South Korean legislator Shim Yoon-joe commented that signing such a pact with both Japan and China is important in order "to wipe out the allegation that the Korea-Japan military pact is a stepping stone to trilateral cooperation to check China."

South Korean analysts also emphasized to me that China is their country's top trading partner. As Aidan Foster-Carter put it, "South Korea can hardly afford to be seen as ganging up on the country whose growth largely drives its own." This year marks the tenth anniversary of the normalization of relations between South Korea and China. One researcher at a think tank in Seoul remarked to me that his institute has planned conferences and other events to commemorate the anniversary, and that South Korea's many other foreign policy institutes are all doing the same. At a time when the Americans appear to be orchestrating a coalition to balance against China, South Koreans are celebrating with it a milestone in productive and friendly relations.

Anyone who recalls how badly then-President Roh Moohyun and crew shredded good relations with Japan during 2005's Japan-Korea Friendship Year would scoff at the idea that Seoul doesn't have the cojones to upset Beijing as well during the diplomatic decennial.

And the idea that South Korea doesn't want to tick off its number-one trading partner? Well, I scoff at that. In the United States, top politicians want to burn Olympic uniforms because they were made in China! And yet, Chinese continue to buy American goods and ship their own to the States.

As with the US browbeating the Middle Kingdom, would South Korea's economic relationship with China change much at all were it to strengthen its longstanding military relationship with the Americans? Doubtful. I mean, look at how Beijing already uses South Korea as a whipping boy, egging on its Netizens to attack South Korea for all kinds of surreal and imagined things. Yet they continue to buy South Korea products and ship their own to the ROK.

You see, the other side of that don't-piss-off-China equation is that China needs the rest of the world to buy its stuff (as well as to send it stuff so it can make stuff).

Anyhoo, most observers would agree the primary reason South Korean politicians were up in arms over the miasmic GSOMIA is that it's Japan. And with Japan, there is a heightened sensitivity owing to, I don't know, maybe the sixty years prior to the Korean War. Japan's motives are more cautiously scrutinized, its leaders' utterances more closely parsed, their actions analyzed more carefully, etc., etc. Lee's supposed "secret treaty" with Tōkyō smacked of the 1965 normalization treaty that many South Koreans feel sold a lot of poor folks — including the so-called "Comfort Women" sex slaves — down the Han.

Even though I think South Korea and Japan should be natural allies at this point, not everyone agrees with me, and my cause is not helped by the idiotic right-wingers that think their own country was the victim during World War II and that everything Imperial Japan did in Korea was all for Korea's own good, etc., etc.

Nonetheless, there is some merit to Professor Lind's contention that a lot of South Koreans probably don't want to conspicuously position themselves against China. All except rabid chinboistas (who want the US out because they are actually pro-North Korean) are comfortable with the fact that South Korea is firmly in the US security camp, but some want (à la Roh Moohyun's "balancer of Northeast Asia" comments) for South Korea to use its unique position (i.e., that of not having invaded any of the others or being a threat to any of the others) to play mediator and make Northeast Asia a happy-go-lucky funland (which Autocorrect briefly changed to Finland... hmmm).

Back in the middle of the last decade, I asked a KBS news anchor about Roh's "balancer" declaration, and her remarks back up my suspicions about the real meaning behind the "balancer" comment. Roh wanted to be more Sweden than Switzerland, and if he'd said "mediator" or "hostage negotiator" instead of "balancer," that would have been much clearer (but inexperienced and poorly educated heads-of-state tend toward occasionally odd lexical choices... go figure).

So while I think that Professor Lind's comments have some merit, I think she is making a mountain out of a molehill. Yeah, there was some questioning about how closely South Korea should follow the US when then-President George W. Bush was asking Roh to send ROK troops to Iraq, but that is so ten years ago. There was also a lot of pent-up frustration with the US that was let loose in 2002 and 2003 (when Dubya's "Axis of Evil" comment made a lot of South Koreans fear the US was going to unilaterally attack North Korea and spin the Peninsula into a state of war), so naturally that outdated meme tends to stick.

Do you notice I keep bringing up Roh? Maybe the problem here is that Professor Lind is walking through a time machine on her way to Incheon International Airport. Things are different from a decade earlier, and not just because Lee Myungbak is extremely pro-US or the Iraq War is over, but also because South Koreans have since been scared sh¡tless by Chinese belligerence, including support for North Korea's deadly attacks on the South, Chinese fish pirates attacking and killing South Korea Coast Guardsmen, and Chinese students showing their anger that South Koreans would be so brazen as to criticize China.

In fact, this is what I wrote in the comment section at The Atlantic:

Hear, hear! When I read that "many South Koreans are dismayed that... the U.S. increasingly sees China as a military threat," I can't help but note that many, many South Koreans themselves have come to see China as a belligerent bully.

Chinese students in Korea, organized by their government, waving giant PRC flags and attacking peaceful protestors (on North Korean human rights, Tibet, etc.) in the heart of Seoul went a long way toward burning that connection into people's brains.

And that's why I recycled the picture above (from here).

But if you don't want to take my word for it, let's ask Beijing how they feel. As if to underscore my point further, China essentially threatened South Korea if it were to go ahead with GSOMIA:

China has many means to influence South Korea. When domestic forces fail to stop Seoul’s unfriendly moves against China, China should implement means to exert pressure on the South Korean government.

China and South Korea are close neighbors, and China is also deeply involved in the Peninsula’s affairs. This determines that the relationship between Beijing and Seoul has to be friendly. If their strategic partnership is ruined, this will bring a lose-lose situation.

And this sentiment — "That's a nice country you've got there, South Korea... it would be a shame if something were to happen to it" — is why I have an ironically titled "Benevolent Big Brother China" label for many of my PRC-related posts. 

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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...

We're talking about Kim Jong-un, of course, and how the bluster has continued unabated right through the Dear Leader's wake and the Prodigious Progeny's takeover and makeover. This is, of course, because the real people controlling things are people behind the scenes, not necessarily those sitting on the throne.

Anyway, North Korea has been turning up the heat by promising holy jihad against South Korea and the United States as the two allies prepare for annual military drills. And to that, the Christian Science Monitor asks whether we should be taking this seriously at all.

It's worth a read, but my own take sounds fairly close to the gist: This could all be empty rhetoric designed to whip up fear and pride in the masses and make sure they remember there's a bogeyman out there, just in case they get any big ideas about overthrowing the government to avoid starving to death, and all that, but the actual strikes on South Korean islands (namely Yŏnpyŏng-do) and the sinking of the ROK Navy vessel Ch'ŏnan give us pause that they might actually try a repeat of something like that in order to get us to take them seriously and to get people like me (and Don Kirk, etc.) to stop referring to their bluster as empty rhetoric.

If there really are competing factions within the Pyongyang regime, the chance of this happening is greater, because the last thing that the militarists want (note, I did not say military) is reform, appeasement, and a world where Truth Commissions remain a future possibility.

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South Korea hands Yellow Sea islands over to North Korea

Or at least, that's what Google Maps would have you believe.

So I was looking for an aerial view of Paengnyŏng-do the other day. That's one of the Sŏhae-odo (서해5도), the so-called "Five Islands of the West Sea" which are technically a part of the City of Inch'ŏn (인천광역시) but hug the coast of North Korea.

The Northern Limit Line (or NLL, the blue line above), which has formed the de facto maritime border between the ROK and DPRK since the Korean War armistice in 1953, is drawn in such a way that these islands form what would be a "natural" maritime border, one that follows the universally accepted principle of equidistance from populated land on the North Korean and South Korean sides.

The North Koreans, however, insist on the red line in the graphic. It ignores South Korea's Five Islands of the West Sea and runs equidistant from the mainland, with corridors South Korea can use to access its islands (and fish, presumably). It has become a very contentious issue lately, and North Korea has used it as a pretext to attack Yŏnpyŏng-do, ostensibly to sink the Ch'ŏnan, and engage in other sea battles out there.

Note that these islands are not disputed territory (former US Ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg's words notwithstanding), and they were ROK-held even before the Korean War (the islands and the Ongjin Peninsula just above them are south of the 38°N line (the Thirty-eighth Parallel) that was Korea's Mason-Dixon Line (the KNTO should put a sign up like that: "Welcome to 38-Line! It's Mason-dixon Line of Korea!" including those capitalization and article errors).

And so that makes it quite odd that Google Maps would list this key territory (one that makes Inchon a very long city, though not as long as Honolulu) as North Korean. You see, as I typed P-a-e-n-g-n-y-o-n-g, a list with various options for my search would pop up, each selection getting more precise and specific as I went along. Finally, Google Maps offered "Paengnyong Do North Korea." There was no biased input on my part.

Interestingly, though, if I use the Revised Romanization and type Baengnyeong (the Paengnyong spelling is based on McCune-Reischauer), a proper South Korean address appears. Hmm...

Google Maps doesn't list Yonpyong-do, but asks if you are looking for Yeonpyeong Do, which it lists as in South Korea. However, check out the list if you type in Y-e-o-n-p-y-e-o-n-g and see what pops up:

Yup. Check out number four. That "Yeonpyeong-ri" is the principal village on Yŏnpyŏng-do Island, and Google Maps has it listed as North Korean territory. Below is visual verification.

This is very sloppy work on the part of Google. What's next? Saying Calexico is part of Mexico just because they rhyme? (Though frankly, they can have it.)

Mapapropisms can happen to anyone, even some big names in media. The BBC apparently sent a drunken Mancunian out on a dinghy to redraw the NLL, and the Wall Street Journal ceded the US territory of Saipan to South Korea. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

But don't worry. I'm not going to go all VANK on Google (although I wouldn't rule out VANK going all VANK, since that's what they do). But it does make me wonder: Can I now no longer trust the accuracy of what I find when I search on the Google?

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Ain't misbehavin'... much

According to the Chosun Ilbo, North Korea has actually committed far fewer incursions over the Northern Limit Line*, the de facto border since the end of the Korean War which Pyongyang has been adamantly disputing as of late:

North Korean violations of the Northern Limit Line, the de-facto maritime border, have decreased to one-sixth the frequency of last year since January.

According to data the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted to Future Hope Alliance lawmaker Song Young-sun on Tuesday, violations of the NLL by North Korean patrol and fishing boats grew from 21 in 2006 to 95 times in 2010. But there have been only 16 so far this year.

North Korean patrol boats crossed the NLL 11 times in 2006 and 13 times in 2010 but only five times this year.

I guess the Lee Myungbak's limp-wristed response to the sinking of the Ch'ŏnan and the shelling of Yŏnpyŏng-do is working!

(Oh, by the way, I was being sarcastic.)

* Do not go here for a map of the NLL. It's the blue line in the graphic above, but the Norks insist on the red line. For a translation of the Korean text in the graphic, go spend two hours learning the frickin' alphabet. 

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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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Is North Korea's ominous warning serious this time?

There was a time when Pyongyang's threats to rain fire down on the South Korean capital, their claims that such-and-such by Seoul or Washington was an "act of war" that would be responded to in kind, or their other various forms of menacing behavior was just so much bluster: it was a de rigueur for North Korea's mouthpieces to regularly threaten the neighbors to the south.

That was, of course, before the sinking of the Ch'ŏnan last spring, killing dozens of ROK seamen, and then the shelling of Yŏnpyŏng-do Island last fall, which killed ROK military personnel and two civilians.

Now that the envelope has been pushed, one wonders if we should take threats like these a little more seriously:

North Korea warned yesterday that it will launch full-fledged attacks against people sending propaganda leaflets over the border, and it won’t give any advance warnings.

The threat to anti-North Korea campaigns by South Korean activists came amid rising hopes that the two Koreas will join China, Russia, the United States and Japan to revive the stalled six-party talks on the North’s nuclear weapons program.

“Under this situation, our army officially informs the south side that it will expand the scope of direct fire, already declared, into full-scale destruction fire at any area, any time,” said the North Korean military in a report from the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

In March, the North said through Korean Central Television that it was losing patience with groups sending propaganda leaflets via balloons across the border and would open fire on certain South Korean sites used to launch the balloons.

Despite the warnings, some civic groups continued to send the balloons. On April 15, the birthday of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, groups dispatched around 200,000 leaflets containing pro-democracy, anti-Kim family messages.

They are talking about anti-Kim Jong-il leaflets containing news of the Jasmine Revolution in the Middle East, along with dollar bills and DVDs, being floated over North Korean territory as a way to erode confidence in the regime. Pyongyang has made no secret that it is angry about the leaflets, which it considers psyops and therefore an "act of war." In fact, they have made threats in February and in March that they may attack these positions.

While I'm not saying that these leaflets shouldn't be sent out, I do think it is prudent to expect that North Korean might make good on its threat, with at least one or two shells lobbed in that direction (too many might invite a serious response from the Lee Myungbak administration, which is reeling from anger over its milquetoast response to the shelling last fall).

North Korea's have comfortably lowered the threshold at which they would act, and that alone should have us on guard. Moreover, the way North Korea is talking about this may indicate they are making a case (for their own people at least) why such an attack is not only justified but necessary. Here's North Korea's Central News Agency (KCNA) report on the same news above (朝鮮語):

The south side is persisting in the dirty action of scattering anti-DPRK leaflets, despite the north side's repeated warnings, while committing such reckless military provocations as firing bullets at it.

It scattered more than 200,000 leaflets at Rimjin Pavilion in Phaju City on April 15 and 1.2 million around Samgot-ri, Jung-myon, Ryonchon County in the central sector of the front on April 14, stealthily acting like a cat burglar for fear of merciless counteraction by the army of the DPRK.

It also perpetrated unpardonable military provocation such as firing 12.7 mm large-calibre machine gun in direction of the north side at random from 516 gendarme post at 19:38 on April 15.

Those facts prove that the present puppet authorities are getting evermore pronounced in the bellicose stand to escalate the north-south confrontation and finally bring the situation to the brink of war, the head of the north side pointed out.

Then he solemnly notified the following principled stand of the Korean People's Army:
As already and evidently clarified, leaflet scattering is a form of psychological warfare and it is just a clear-cut war provocation to a warring side.

Accordingly, it is our invariable stand that direct fire at the area where leaflets are let fly will be a legitimate punishment by the army of the DPRK, a warring side, to the breakers of the Armistice Agreement.

Moreover, the south side resorts to scattering of leaflets, moving places in a cunning way for fear of counteraction by our army. Under this situation, our army officially informs the south side that it will expand the scope of direct fire, already declared, into full-scale destruction fire at any area anytime.

Indeed, the KCNA story is a far more ominous read, for it combines the following elements: (a) a declaration that they consider leaflet spreading psyops and therefore an act of war, (b) an official warning of retaliation for said act of war, and most gravely, (c) a concomitant shooting incident that bolsters the case. That last one, left out of the English-language reports in South Korea and the Western media, may seal the deal by providing pretext.

The Pyongyang regime is starting to feel under siege, with much of the population outside the capital feeling very disgruntled following the Great Currency Obliteration of 2009 and the deprivation that followed. Simply put, the leaflet launchings make it harder for them to keep the people in line (which is one of the reasons for doing the leaflet launching in the first place!), perhaps to the point that the regime is under threat itself, and they have to do something.

It's no wonder, then, that some residents of P'aju (written as Phaju in the KCNA article) in the northern part of South Korea, are annoyed that the activists are launching the balloons from their neighborhoods. North Korea has recently demonstrated that they have no qualms about shelling civilian targets, and they could be next.

Now, this is not to say that the leaflets should not be sent. I'm sounding the alarm for preparation more than anything else. Perhaps also the leaflet-launching groups could pick some more isolated areas and perhaps even a maritime location (though I have no idea how feasible this is).

I'm just saying: This could get very, very ugly in the near term.

Plan... ahead...

UPDATE:
This doesn't bode well. Apparently Kim Jong-il has paid a recent visit to the government agency that is responsible for the attack on the Ch'ŏnan.

Selig Harrison proposes giving North Korea a Sudetenland-by-the-Sea

Writing in the New York Times, Pyongyang apologist Selig Harrison (see him skewered here) proposes that all this mess in the Yellow Sea could be over if South Korea agrees is forced to move the border "slightly to the south":

The Obama administration would do well to consult with both Seoul and Pyongyang on where to best set the new boundary, get an agreement from both governments to abide by it, and put it on the map. South Korea should not be given a veto over the redrawing. And North Korea should be warned that any future provocations on its part like the shelling of Yeonpyeong will result in swift, appropriate retaliation by the joint forces of the United States and South Korea.

Oh, were it not finals week and I had time to give this a proper fisking (which would, believe it or not, be far longer than this already is). Instead, I'll just leave you with a few points why this is wrong, wrong, wrong:

• The notion that South Korea should not have veto power over an agreement that takes away a substantial part of its own waters is simply absurd, even if Seoul in 1953 was not a signatory to the Korean War Armistice.

• To even hint at changing the established spheres of control on either side of the de facto maritime border (i.e., the Northern Limit Line, or NLL) would simply be rewarding North Korea for murderously acting out repeatedly.

• The NLL is a proper border in that it follows the universally accepted principle of equidistance from populated land on the North Korean and South Korean sides, land North Korea has recognized as South Korea's. Like it or not, the Five Islands of the West Sea [서해 5도] that include Yŏnpyŏng-do [Yeonpyeong] generate substantial territorial waters and EEZ for South Korea. This is not some unfair outcome of the Korean War (which North Korea started) since the Ongjin Peninsula just north of them and under North Korean control was originally South Korean territory south of the 38° Parallel. Simply put, the NLL is where it a maritime border would be were these two countries not military and political rivals.

• Any change to the line of control would endanger South Korea's actual land territories (e.g., the Five Islands of the West Sea, and possibly islands closer to the mainland). Unlike Mr Harrison, I'm not optimistic that granting North Korea more fishing waters would be the end of this mess.

Mr Harrison continues to peddle the idea of a North Korea with which we can do business, when the last ten years has taught us that Pyongyang will bite, hit, or otherwise try to sever the hand that feeds it, the hand that threatens to slap it down, or the hand that is held up by the South Korean government as Seoul says "Talk to this."

About the only useful thing in his op-ed is the idea some North Koreans have fed him about what would happen if a peace treaty were successfully negotiated:

One possible mechanism to replace the armistice is the “trilateral peace regime” for the peninsula that has been proposed by North Korea’s principal military spokesman, Gen. Ri Chan-bok. Under the plan, the armed forces of the United States, North Korea and South Korea would set up a “mutual security assurance commission.” Its role would be to prevent incidents in the demilitarized zone that could threaten the peace and to develop arms-control and confidence-building arrangements on the peninsula. General Ri has said explicitly that the North would not object to the presence of American forces on the peninsula if the armistice and the United Nations Command were replaced.

I'm a big believer in the Pax Americana's past, present, and future ability to keep Northeast Asia conflict-free, so any proposal that sees the US going bye-bye from South Korea is to me a nonstarter. I have no doubt Mr Harrison has been told that North Korea would accept a US military presence in a post-Peace Treaty Korea, but I'm not so sure they really would simply let it be. After all, the US is one of North Korea's bogeyman around which it constructs a justification for the Songun [선군, Military First] Policy, its raison d'être. No doubt the "puppet of the imperialists" rhetoric would continue unabated.

In the meantime, although part of me wants to believe in his cherry-flavored analysis, but it's more likely the eternal optimist is simply a useful idiot or possibly on the take.

UPDATE:
Or possibly a North Korean operative.

UPDATE 2:
Jack Pritchard, president of the Korea Economic Institute, has an article in the January 5 edition of the Korea Herald which also skewers Mr Harrison's proposal.

An American leftist teacher explains the North Korean crisis

Occasional Marmot's Hole commenter valkilmerisiceman linked to this video, which seems to me to do a decent job of summing up the leftist position on the recent North Korean crisis.

Just as we see with things like, say, opposition to the FTA, we have a situation where a little information can be a dangerous thing. Like with the above linked UAW action alert, this video is a cherry-picking of data intended to arrive at a pre-determined (and self-serving) conclusion.

Let's start with his description of what the US and South Korea were doing to (in his mind) provoke North Korea. He says:

The United States has 28,000 troops in South Korea and they're there for a specific reason. Most of the US troops are at the border. And the United States, just a few days ago, just yesterday, actually, had war games (what they're called), which is a preparation pretty much for war. War games is letting the country you don't like know that, "we've got the artillery, and at any time we want, we can invade you." That's exactly what war games are. And the United States and South Korea had a joint war games session in the Yellow Sea, and North Korea took it as a threat, which it was, and North Korea, well...

This is fraught with so many wrongheaded assumptions I can't possibly give them all their due, but I'll try to hit the highlights. First, the US troops are not at the border. Even the 2ID (Second Infantry) that is forward deployed is only as far north as Tongduch'ŏn [Dongducheon] and they are being moved south. On a related matter, while the primary role of USFK is to defend against an attack by North Korea, the US military presence in South Korea is instrumental in maintaining peace in Northeast Asia, a region that has been the site of immense volatility up to the Korean War.

Second, the "war games" (actually naval exercises) were not at all about invading North Korea but about defending South Korea's northernmost "Five Islands of the West Sea" (서해 5도) from North Korean attack or invasion, along with the waters south of the Northern Limit Line, the de facto border. Ironically, in shelling Yŏnbyŏng-do's [Yeonbyeong] main island, North Korea has again demonstrated precisely the need for such naval exercises.

This teacher then suggests that North Korea was simply reacting to this threat by, well, shelling Yŏnbyŏng-do. This is a key place where his facile analysis falls apart, for it strips North Korea of any agency in setting its own agenda (agency achieved in part by repeated aggression). What is important to note here is that North Korea is not attacking South Korean ships, waters, and now civilian communities in the region because it feels threatened but because it is trying to bolster the image of the military by pitting it against the enemy, as a justification for the Pyongyang regime's Songun [sŏn•gūn, 선군; "military first"] Policy.

North Korea's sinking of the Ch'ŏnan in March and the shelling of Yŏnpyŏng-do were only the latest in a string of sometimes deadly attacks and clashes going back to 1999, when North Korea — for the purposes of promoting Songun Policy for domestic consumption — unilaterally declared its own maritime demarcation line that essentially laid claim to much of the South Korea-controlled waters south of the NLL. While the NLL follows principles of equidistance used in determining territorial waters and EEZs, North Korea's proposed line removes South Korea's "Five Islands of the West Sea" from the equation when determining who should control the waters in that part of the Yellow Sea.

It's a nonstarter and Pyongyang knows that, but it gives them continuous opportunity to push the envelope and create enough trouble to engineer (for domestic consumption) an enemy encroaching on North Korea's sovereignty that will bolster domestic support and justify their hold on power, while being low-key enough that it won't likely trigger a devastating wider war which would almost certainly mean the end of the DPRK.

The teacher fails to recognize that when making his argument about negotiations, the bulk of which is also problematic. "The United States could settle this in an hour if it wanted to," he tells us. In a nutshell, he is saying, the US is at fault for the North Korean crisis because President Obama, like his predecessor President George W. Bush, has refused to negotiate with North Korea. Under President Bill Clinton, there were negotiations and things were just fine, but without direct talks, like now under President Obama and ROK President Lee Myungbak, things just fall apart.

This is fraught with error. For starters, North Korea did engage in clashes with South Korea in this region during the Clinton administration when the two sides were talking. These attacks occurred under Sunshine Policy when Kim Daejung and Roh Moohyun were president. They occurred not because of the existence or lack of negotiations, but because North Korea gains politically at home and economically from its neighbors by engaging in such brinksmanship.

Negotiation and Sunshine Policy had their place and may again in the future. But North Korea was hell-bent on the prestige and power of getting a nuclear weapon since the first Bush administration. The original Six Party Talks and Agreed Framework slowed down their progress (I believe Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo were working from the idea that buying time was the best option as Pyongyang would eventually collapse or make Chinese-style political and economic reforms), but did not eliminate North Korea's nuclear program. Engaging with North Korea economically and politically did not stop the attacks in the Yellow Sea.

So when Presidents Obama and Lee decide that it's time for the US and South Korea to stop being schmucks, this failure to communicate is not the cause of the confrontation but rather a response to it.

Bomb, bomb, bomb... Bomb, bomb Pyongyang

The latest tough-talker in the talking tough parade is Kim Kwanjin, the Minister of Defense-designate, talking tough at his parliamentary confirmation hearings.

From the Los Angeles Times:

President Lee Myung-bak's choice for new defense minister said Friday that South Korean jets will bomb North Korea if Pyongyang stages an attack similar to last week's deadly artillery barrage.

The tough words came as Lee's government suffered intense criticism that the response to the North's Nov. 23 shelling on a South Korean island was weak, and over a stunning revelation that the South's spy chief dismissed information in August indicating North Korea might attack the front-line island.

Lee's nominee, Kim Kwan-jin, told a parliamentary confirmation hearing that North Korean aggression will result in airstrikes. He said South Korea will use all its combat capabilities to retaliate.

"In case the enemy attacks our territory and people again, we will thoroughly retaliate to ensure that the enemy cannot provoke again," Kim said. The hearing is a formality as South Korea's National Assembly does not have the power to reject Lee's appointment.

Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. Such talk is dangerously cheap, and apparently very easy to come by. Why, take a look at what was said in December last year, months before the Ch'ŏnan was sunk and Yŏnpyŏng-do [Yeonpyeong] was shelled:

Tensions have remained high in the Yellow Sea since a brief but intense gunfight on November 10 left a North Korean patrol boat in flames. There were deadly naval gunbattles there in 1999 and 2002.

The South's navy expressed regret at its neighbour's announcement [that North Korea would open fire in the "disputed" waters south of the NLL] and pledged it would "sternly" handle any provocations.

"We express grave concern as the threat ... raises unnecessary tension between the Koreas," a statement said late Monday.

"Our military is fully prepared to protect the NLL and it will sternly respond to North Korea's provocations."

Is "thoroughly retaliate" the new "sternly respond"? We're only encouraging further escalation if we talk tough but do nothing.

The link from last year is from the December 22, 2010, Daily Kor, which fell on National Haiku Day, so all the day's headlines were in haiku form. This was the headline from that story:

To the NLL

sails the dauntless ROK* Navy

Defend it, they shall 

* pronounced "rock" for that perfect 5-7-5 structure

Inspired by this very Zen-like circular repetition of the events of the world, here's a haiku for today:

New Min-Def says we,

"will muster more than bluster!"

Just more empty words?

Yeah, yeah, Kushibo. Don't quit your day job.

FTA negotiations: "Cows and cars" is now just cars?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that automobile tariffs are the last remaining sticking point in the renegotiations of the negotiations on the KORUS Free Trade Agreement:

U.S. and South Korean negotiators meeting to revive a stalled trade pact are down to one main sticking point, say people familiar with this week's negotiations—leaving the biggest U.S. free-trade deal in nearly two decades hinging on an economically negligible but politically potent issue.

The deal now comes down to whether South Korea will agree to give the U.S. four or five years to phase out the 2.5% tariff it levies on Korean-built cars, these people say, rather than cutting the tariff immediately, as Seoul has sought.

The article notes that normal currency fluctuations — like when something bad happens in China and then a day or so later when investors realize that South Korea is not in China — can themselves make such a small percentage irrelevant.

And here's an enthusiastic hat tip to Ben Muse and his Korea-US FTA blog, which has been doing a fine job of keeping up with the latest news while I've been preoccupied with schoolwork and Yŏnpyŏng-dong. Always happy to support a fellow Freak Stater.

UPDATE:
And the FTA renegotiations have succeeded!

Did ROK military actually kick some butt during Yŏnpyŏng-do attack?

With much of the South Korean public angry that North Korea seems to have gotten away with murder, perhaps it was a good time for the Ministry of Defense to trot out some satellite pictures that painted a less one-sided picture of North Korea's attack on the South Korean island of Yŏnpyŏng-do [Yeonpyeong] last month.

From AFP:

Satellite images indicate North Korea might have suffered considerable casualties when South Korea returned fire after the North shelled its frontline island last week, a lawmaker said Thursday.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) presented to parliament an image taken by the South's own satellite and another one collected by an unidentified foreign commercial satellite.

Kwon Yong-Se, a ruling party lawmaker who chairs the intelligence committee, told reporters after the presentation that about 10 shells landed near the North's military positions on Mudo island.

The South's shells mostly landed between two clusters of barracks about 100 metres (330 feet) apart and some came close to one of the clusters.

"One of the shells hit the rear of the barracks. It is possible to assume considerable casualties occurred," Kwon said.

In light of the fact that the impact circle of the South's indigenous K-9 self-propelled guns is 50 metres, the impact is believed to have been considerable, Kwon said.

To my knowledge, North Korea has given no indication of whether it suffered any casualties or damage whatsoever, so a lot of this seems speculative.

And while indiscriminate shelling of barracks may not have been the most strategic of responses (or the most ethical, I suppose), it would (if true) send a message to the Pyongyang regime that they cannot emerge from such brazen attacks unscathed.

And that would be serious if they actually cared about the little people even in their own country.

Pets left on Yŏnpyŏng-do being tended by animal welfare groups

I thought this Reuters story was kinda touching:

Hungry dogs and cats roaming the streets of the remote South Korean island shelled by North Korea last week, some of them injured, are being fed and tended to by animal welfare groups. ...

Most of the 1,600 residents of mountainous Yeonpyeong have fled, leaving their pets behind, but animal welfare groups have taken them food and administered first aid.

"We helped dogs with serious cuts from shell splinters," Park So-yeon, a member of Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth (CARE), told broadcaster YTN Tuesday.

"We also saved dogs with broken legs and little dogs attacked by other stray dogs."

Television footage showed a dog snapping eagerly at food on a street scattered with shattered glass and lined with damaged buildings. Others ate from bowls set inside doghouses.

Island residents said there were an estimated 200 dogs and cats on the island. Animal welfare workers said they had helped about 50 dogs and 10 cats so far.

"If you abandon dogs, and they produce puppies without peoples' care, they will become wild dogs. Then you will have to cope with a social problem with many stray dogs all around Yeonpyeong," said Jo Hee-kyong, head of the Korean Society for Animal Freedom.

While I have no doubt that some of the dogs on Yŏnpyŏng-do are poorly treated by North American standards (e.g., tied on short leashes, not getting out to walk, or even whacked on the head occasionally by inconsiderate owners), there has been a sea change in terms of attitudes toward pets. The fact that they're trying to rescue cats underscores that very point (not only because the animal rights folks are concerned about cats, but especially that there are people on the island who own them — the traditional folklore about cats sucking up the souls of recently departed people made them to freaky for most people to keep as pets up until recently).

This dog is okay; it's just sunning itself. Seriously.

A speech to unify them all

ROK President Lee Myungbak gave a rousing speech to the nation on Monday. It outlined past aggressions by North Korea that went unanswered, discussed why the Yŏnpyŏng-do [Yeonpyeong] attack on civilians marked a dangerous turn, and vowed to fully retaliate if the North repeats this kind of provocation.

He made clear that South Korea will steadfastly defend the so-called Sŏhae-odo [서해5도], the "five islands of the West Sea," which skirt North Korea's southwestern coast. While acknowledging that many South Koreans had doubts about the facts surrounding the sinking of the Ch'ŏnan in March, he hoped the shelling of Yŏnpyŏng-do would remove doubts about North Korean aggression in the Yellow Sea.

He made clear he wanted to unify the country in their resolve to defend the Republic of Korea.

Courtesy of Yonhap, here is a sizable excerpt from the address:

Fellow citizens,
North Korea's provocation this time was entirely different and unprecedented in nature. Since the end of the Korean War, the North has perpetrated numerous provocations, but it has never launched a direct attack onto our territory before. Making matters worse, it indiscriminately shelled the island where some 1,400 residents are peacefully living.

A military attack against civilians is strictly prohibited even in time of war; it is a crime against humanity.

Only a few meters away from where shells landed, there is a school where classes were going on. I am outraged by the ruthlessness of the North Korean regime, which is even indifferent to the lives of little children.

Countries around the world are joining us in denouncing North Korea.

We have thus far tolerated provocations by the North time and again. On January 21, 1968, North Korean commandos infiltrated into Seoul with the intent of killing the President. A bomb explosion in Rangoon, Burma, set off by North Korean agents, killed many high-ranking South Korean Government officials who were accompanying the President. The North has already tried and failed twice to kill the South Korean head of state. North Korean agents blew up a civilian airplane in 1987, taking the lives of 115 passengers.

South Korea nonetheless endured these continual provocations because we entertained a slight hope that the North would change course someday and an unwavering commitment to peace on the Korean Peninsula. Over the past 20 years, therefore, South Korea has striven to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue through dialogue and collaboration while at the same time providing unstinted humanitarian assistance.

North Korea, on the other hand, responded with a series of provocative acts, including the development of a nuclear program, the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan by an explosion and the shelling of Yeonpyeongdo.

At long last, we came to a realization that it no longer makes sense for us to anticipate that the North would abandon its nuclear program or its policy of brinkmanship on its own. The South Korean people now unequivocally understand that prolonged endurance and tolerance will spawn nothing but more serious provocations.

Those who have so far supported the North Korean regime might now see its true colors.

It was an excellent speech that said everything it needed to say. But, as The Marmot notes, he said many of these things this past spring in regards to North Korea's sinking of the Ch'ŏnan. Worse, he might even be inviting North Korea to test this resolve. And then, if South Korea again responds by doing nothing, this could be a speech that will live in infamy.

Chinese netizen reactions to North Korean brinksmanship

I don't usually put much stock in netizen reactions as news (this oldie but goodie The Marmot's Hole post sums up why), but I thought this collection of Chinese netizen comments by the Wall Street Journal provided some useful insight:

The Kims are making trouble for the Chinese people here. Chinese people don’t want to control North Korea, but Fatty Kim is getting out of control. No one sympathizes with them, and this will only isolate them further. They need to build up their economy. — reader commenting in Baidu’s Post Bar discussion forum

From a broader perspective, this seemingly random attack was in fact an inevitable consequence of tensions that have been developing between the Koreas ever since the Cheonan incident. Additionally, ever since its second nuclear weapons test, North Korea has wanted to be invited to the table as a nuclear power…Forcing the U.S., China and other countries to acquiesce in this is the strategic objective it wants to realize. — Zhang Liangui, Korea expert, Central Party School

By every indication, North Korea despises the Six-Party Talks… The Six-Party Talks and the strategic objectives of North Korea are completely contradictory. North Korea firmly believes that possessing nuclear weapons isn’t just a matter of maintaining stability on the peninsula—it’s also a way for them to get more of what they want. — Shen Dingli, professor of international relations, Fudan University

China has no right to criticize North Korea. North Korea has a right to pursue freedom. If they can’t earn freedom, if they scream and nobody pays attention, then cannons will get attention. Cannons are effective. — reader commenting on Sina.com’s Mil Forum

As far as peninsular issues are concerned, South Korea relies completely on the United States military, seldom consulting China. As a result, despite China and South Korea having a common interest—despite China and both Koreas having a common interest—in stability, what you get instead is yesterday’s attack. — Global Times editorial

Firing on a residential area is the most intolerable act. The EU, the U.S., Japan and even Russia have condemned it, but all we can do is express neutrality. The most pressure in this situation actually falls on our shoulders. North Korea understands this, keeps stirring things up, because they know we’ll help them—stir things up all over the place then make us cover their tail. — reader commenting in Baidu’s Post Bar

The link is courtesy of One Free Korea, included in a post listing other worthwhile links.

China proposes talks to defuse tensions of Yŏnpyŏng-do incident

With South Koreans angry over their government's lack of a tough response to North Korea shelling Yŏnpyŏng-do Island [Yeonpyeong] and killing four people, the US and South Korea conducting joint naval drills in the Yellow Sea not far from where North Korea has unilaterally declared ROK-controlled waters south of the de facto border as inviolably their own, there are a lot of nervous folks out there worried that things can escalate.

One of them is China, which responded to its client state's murderous attack on its major trading partner by telling its major trading partner to "calm down." (They like saying that whenever North Koreans kill South Koreans, such as after the Ch'ŏnan incident.)

Anyway, China has now proposed emergency talks on this latest incident, but Seoul and its allies are skeptical.

From Reuters:

China called for emergency talks on resolving a crisis on the Korean peninsula on Sunday, and Seoul and Tokyo said they would study the proposal, as the U.S. and South Korean militaries started a massive drill.

Beijing's move to bring the two Koreas to the negotiating table comes after global pressure on China to take a more responsible role in the standoff and try to rein in ally Pyongyang.

China made clear that the talks would not amount to a resumption of six-party disarmament discussions which North Korea walked out of two years ago and declared dead. South Korea said it would carefully consider China's suggestion.

It's hard to know what China's intent is because it's not entirely clear what in North Korea is driving this. While North Korea is a client state and buffer zone for China, without whom the Pyongyang regime would have collapsed long ago, it may very well be the case that North Korea has gone so far off the reservation that Beijing is in no position to rein in North Korea at all.

And as loath as they are to being told what to do about North Korea, they are even more loath to admit they can't do anything.

But the US has few options other making appeals to China, which is what they're doing (mixed in with some biting criticism as well). From the Los Angeles Times:

With tensions rising on the Korean peninsula, several leading U.S. lawmakers Sunday called on China to play a more constructive role in restraining North Korea.

"Unfortunately, China is not behaving as a responsible world power," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"They could bring the North Korean economy to its knees if they wanted to. And I cannot believe that the Chinese should, in a mature fashion, not find it in their interest to restrain North Korea. So far, they are not."

Chinese officials Sunday called for an emergency resumption of the so-called six-party talks involving North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

China made the request as the United States and South Korea began previously planned military exercises in the seas around the Korean peninsula.

North Korea — which last week shelled a South Korean island, killing four — has condemned the maneuvers, which involve a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier battle group led by the nuclear-powered carrier USS George Washington.

Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) called the Chinese proposal for renewed diplomatic talks a "good first step."

Remember back in the 1990s, when there were heated annual battles in Washington over whether to renew for one more year China's "Most-Favored Nation" trading status, and those who wanted to give Beijing a permanent free ride insisted that this would lead to an open relationship where the PRC could become a more cooperative partner of the US? How's that working out for us?

It's okay. This happens to all major militaries at one point or another.

While conducting joint naval exercises in the Yellow Sea not far from where North Korea torpedoed the Ch'ŏnan and then shelled a town on a South Korean island, a South Korean army unit on the mainland accidentally fired a shell, which (thankfully) landed on the ROK's side of the DMZ.

From CNN:

The South Korean military accidentally fired a shell during a land-based military exercise Sunday afternoon, a South Korean military spokesman told CNN.

The country's defense ministry declined to provide details about the land exercise.

The United States and South Korea also began naval drills in the Yellow Sea Sunday, but a U.S. military spokesman has said no live firing will take place during those exercises.

The shell was fired by a unit located near Munsan, South Korea, and landed on the southern side of the military demarcation line, the South Korean officer said.

"The South notified North Korea that this was accidental firing through a statement issued by the chief delegate of inter-Korean general level talks," the officer said. He added, "the military is looking into the cause of the accident."

Yonhap also has the story. I say we "accidentally" fire loads more shells. Then if we ever do need to actually shell North Korea, they'll be caught off guard. After all, with their repeated shelling of the waters on either side of the NLL over the past year, that's what North Korea has been doing.

Meanwhile, Reuters has a nifty information-laden Q&A article on the joint military drills.

Like a brigade over troubled waters

The US and South Korea have kicked off joint naval exercises around Yŏnpyŏng-do [Yeonpyeong], the island whose recent shelling by North Korea killed two marines and two civilians and has put everyone on edge.

The announcement of the naval drills has itself raised tension. North Korea has called the exercises a provocation (but they call everything a provocation) and has threatened further attacks as a result. Meanwhile China has warned the US and South Korea to stay out of its EEZ (exclusive economic zone).

There's actually nothing wrong with US or South Korean naval vessels entering the Chinese EEZ, as long as they don't pitch fishing poles off the side and then try to sell what they catch. Since they'll be watching out for North Korean rockets, shells, and torpedoes, I doubt they'll be doing any angling. So screw 'em.

Actually, I'm a little baffled as to what the New York Times is getting at with their map. They show a 200-mile limit projected from the Chinese shore as if other nearby countries don't have their own EEZ.

Where two countries' projected EEZ overlaps, they must work out an agreement over who has economic control over what waters, but this typically follows the principle of equidistance, so South Korea's 200-mile limit would push against China's.

Indeed, the agreement of economically exclusive and economically shared waters is a bit more complex than the NYT lets on, and South Korea certainly has control over more than their map suggests.

PMZ means "provisional measures zone," while TZ means "transitional zone." At some point the TZs are supposed to turn into EEZs (or something like that), but I'm not sure if they have yet. At any rate, Chinese "control" is not as great as the NYT map suggests. [On an unrelated note, in the East Sea (Sea of Japan), Japan and South Korea have a shared zone based on an EEZ generated not from Tokto (which is technically not considered a habitable island, even though it houses people all year round) but from nearby Ullŭng-do.]

Oh, and I do know that a brigade refers to an Army subdivision, not a Navy one. But there aren't any naval terms that would have made for a bad pun.

South Koreans thirsty for revenge?

There's a "This time they've crossed the line" vibe coming out of South Korea, and that's what the New York Times is reporting:

“We never thought they would attack civilians,” Mr. Hong said Saturday as he and other survivors sat somberly drinking soju, an alcoholic beverage, near a makeshift shrine to the two men in this South Korean port city. “North Korean soldiers have full stomachs from our support, and now they repay us by firing at us. Next time, we should repay them by shooting them back.”

The South did shoot back, but many Koreans consider the limited response feeble compared with the hourlong artillery barrage on Tuesday, in which North Korea rained about 180 shells on the island, killing the civilians and two South Korean marines.

The ferocity of the attack and the deaths of the civilians appear to have started a shift in South Koreans’ conflicted emotions about their countrymen in the North, and not just among those who were shot at.

After years of backing food aid and other help for the North despite a series of provocations that included two nuclear tests, many South Koreans now say they feel betrayed and angry.

“I think we should respond strongly toward North Korea for once instead of being dragged by them,” said Cho Jong-gu, 44, a salesman in Seoul. “This time, it wasn’t just the soldiers. The North mercilessly hurt the civilians.”

And therein lies the conundrum. If only we could move Seoul out of the way. Or let the North Koreans know that South Korean and American planes could rain down on Pyongyang the same damage North Korea inflicts on Seoul, and then some. Mutually assured dicktitude.

UPDATE:
One Free Korea focuses on this article in a discussion of whether South Koreans are "finally ready to cut North Korea off":

If this report is accurate, it suggests that sympathy for North Korea may shift from being a relatively insignificant factor in a politician’s electability to a political liability. It may mean that Lee Myung Bak will have political cover to do what he should have done years ago and close Kaesong for good (Kaesong’s business model always depended on attracting foreign investment, and North Korea pretty much foreclosed any chance of that with some belligerent meddling starting in late 2008). It could also mean the end of inter-Korean food and fertilizer aid, which was never sufficiently monitored to prevent it from being diverted to the military and those inhabiting the top tier of the North’s political caste system. The end of South Korea’s remaining aid to the North would represent a very significant policy shift. It would also be, in my view, a more appropriate response than military action, something that feels better to call for in the abstract than after the next shells start falling. Until now, South Korean voters weren’t ready to cut up Kim Jong Il’s credit card. Has that changed?

As with just about anything at OFK, it's a worthwhile read.

Holy Moses! A mass exodus of North Korea workers from Russia!

The Independent is talking up the return of some twenty thousand North Korean workers in the Russian Far East back to North Korea as a sign that the North may be preparing for war:

A mass exodus of North Korean workers from the Far East of Russia is under way, according to reports coming out of the region. As the two Koreas edged towards the brink of war this week, it appears that the workers in Russia have been called back to aid potential military operations.

Vladnews agency, based in Vladivostok, reported that North Korean workers had left the town of Nakhodka en masse shortly after the escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula earlier this week. "Traders have left the kiosks and markets, workers have abandoned building sites, and North Korean secret service employees working in the region have joined them and left," the agency reported.

The workers are largely employed in construction, they are strictly controlled by Nork handlers who keep a close eye on all their activities, and most of their money is believed to go back to North Korea through government accounts.

Now what this all means is anyone's guess. I'd start by asking, Is this rare? I recall back in the mid-1990s, when the peninsula seemed on the brink of war over North Korea's nuclear program, several Western media outlets reported that things were so tense in South Korea that the authorities were conducting air raid drills. Yep, the turista journalistas who knew little about South Korea except that it was below North Korea were reporting that monthly air raid drills were a new response to all the tension. It would not be outside the realm of possibility that a routine or coincidental return of workers is being seen as a sign of something it's not.

But what if it is a deliberate response to the North-engineered crisis, Does this mean the DPRK military needs all the bodies it can get? I would think construction workers who can't even be trusted not to defect would make lousy soldiers (also because they lack recent military training). Surely a donnybrook in the Yellow Sea would warrant the deployment of actual soldiers.

If there is a connection with the Yellow Sea crisis, Could it be that Pyongyang fears these expat workers will flee if chaos erupts back in the Homeland? To me, this feels like a better explanation. Maybe things back inside the DPRK are shakier than we realize (which could be the reason for the Yŏnpyŏng-do shelling in the first place). If I were in charge of North Korea and I thought a war was going to break out, I'd want twenty thousand potential guerrilla fighters to stay outside the country until they're needed. But that's me. (Actually, I'd sign over the DPRK into some kind of confederation, and then I'd run for president.)

Another question to ask is, Is North Korea just messing with our heads? Though they do lose some hard currency by bringing the construction workers home, there may be some value in making the outside world think they're bringing back the workers for some military purpose. And as an added fringe benefit, it forces people like me to waste mental energy trying to figure out what they're up to.

UPDATE:
Joshua Stanton, citing this link from NK Economy Watch, suggests there may be something to my idea that the North Korean workers in Russia might take off if there is chaos on the Peninsula.

North Korean workers in Vladivostok during happier (and warmer) times. 
[source]