|
Greetings from somewhere over the Pacific. My distribution will be abnormal this week as I will be writing from Manila.
Quotes of the Day:
"Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion."
- Rumi
"The computer is only a fast idiot, it has no imagination; it cannot originate action. It is, and will remain, only a tool to man."
- American Library Association
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
- John Cage
1. Activity at Najin Points to Continued DPRK-Russia Arms Transfers - Beyond Parallel
2. South Korea defense chief threatens strikes on 'heart and head' of North Korea if provoked
3. Nat'l security advisers of S. Korea, Japan discuss N.K. threat
4. N Korean ambassador in Geneva recalled over smuggling allegations: Report
5. North Korean factory workers in China to lose pay for product flaws
6. Japan Is Destined to Have Nuclear Weapons
7. 'Houses of torment' that hide North Korea's darkest secret
8. US, South Korea and Japan urge a stronger international push to curb North Korea's nuclear program
9. U.S., South Korea, Japan to step up actions on North Korea cyber threats
10. US Deals with Allies Signal Concerns Over China’s Disinformation Campaign
11. Why a North Korean Defector Is Denouncing the Ivy League
12. Global Turmoil And Rising Tensions On The Korean Peninsula: The Need For A Vital U.S.-South Korea Alliance
13. Kim Jong Un, Demographic Destiny, and DINKs
1. Activity at Najin Points to Continued DPRK-Russia Arms Transfers - Beyond Parallel
Graphics and images at the link: https://beyondparallel.csis.org/activity-at-najin-points-to-continued-dprk-russia-arms-transfers/
Activity at Najin Points to Continued DPRK-Russia Arms Transfers - Beyond Parallel
2. South Korea defense chief threatens strikes on 'heart and head' of North Korea if provoked
The AP headline editor has misconstrued the Minister's remarks.
Here is a translation from a Korean language report from a friend and colleague who pointed out the difference:
The Defense Minister visited the Army Missile Strategy Command on the 8th to check the preparedness.
Minister Shin Won-sik said, "True peace is built by overwhelming and strong power and a firm will to use such power at any time." "The missile strategy history is a key unit of the 'Korean-style three-axis system' and a strategic unit with strong power to overwhelm the enemy."
He also said, "Maintain the readiness to immediately operate the world's best long-range, ultra-precise, and high-power missiles in the event of a mission."
In particular, he stressed, "Please strengthen the mental strength of the soldiers to maintain readiness," adding, "No matter how good the weapon system is, it is useless if the mental power of the soldiers who operate it is lax."
Minister Shin said, "We need to improve the ability to operate weapons systems through repeated mastery to enable immediate and accurate firing," adding, "There may be various types of provocations by the enemy, but your role is only to fatally hit the enemy's heart and head."
South Korea defense chief threatens strikes on 'heart and head' of North Korea if provoked
BY HYUNG-JIN KIM
Updated 10:02 AM EST, December 8, 2023
AP · December 8, 2023
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s defense minister on Friday threatened massive retaliatory missile strikes on “the heart and head” of North Korea in the event of provocation, as the rivals escalate their rhetoric over their respective spy satellite launches in recent days.
The unusually fiery South Korean warning came as the top security advisers from South Korea, the U.S. and Japan gathered in Seoul for talks on North Korea’s evolving nuclear threat and other issues.
During a visit to the army’s missile strategic command, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Wonsik ordered command officers to maintain a readiness to fire precision-guided and powerful missiles at any time, according to his ministry.
Shin said the main role of the command is “lethally striking the heart and head of the enemy, though the types of its provocations can vary,” a ministry statement said.
Animosities between the two Koreas deepened after North Korea launched its first military reconnaissance satellite into space on Nov. 21 in violation of U.N. bans. South Korea, the U.S. and Japan strongly condemned the launch, viewing it as an attempt by the North to improve its missile technology as well as establish a space-based surveillance system.
South Korea announced plans to resume front-line aerial surveillance in response. North Korea quickly retaliated by restoring border guard posts, according to Seoul officials. Both steps would breach a 2018 inter-Korean deal on easing front-line military tensions.
Last week, when South Korea also launched its first military spy satellite from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base, North Korea slammed the U.S. for alleged double standards and warned of a possible grave danger to global peace.
In a statement Friday, Jo Chol Su, a senior North Korean Foreign Ministry official, said the North would make all available efforts to protect its national interests in the face of threats by hostile forces.
The national security advisers from South Korea, the U.S. and Japan are to hold their first trilateral meeting in six months in Seoul on Saturday.
Ahead of the three-way meeting, South Korean national security adviser Cho Tae-yong and his Japanese counterpart, Takeo Akiba, met together on Friday and reaffirmed a need to strengthen their cooperation with the U.S. to cope with provocations by North Korea. Cho and U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan also met and affirmed that Seoul and Washington remain open to diplomacy with North Korea, according to South Korea’s presidential office.
Earlier Friday, South Korea’s Unification Ministry accused North Korea of property rights infringements by unilaterally using South Korean-owned equipment at a now-shuttered joint factory park in the North. The ministry also accused North Korea of dismantling the remains of a South Korean-built liaison office at the park that the North blew up during a previous period of tensions in 2020.
AP · December 8, 2023
3. Nat'l security advisers of S. Korea, Japan discuss N.K. threat
Excerpts:
"They reaffirmed the need for South Korea-Japan and South Korea-U.S.-Japan cooperation, and the strengthening of solidarity within the international community, in order to firmly respond to North Korea's nuclear and missile provocations," it said.
North Korea successfully placed a military spy satellite into orbit last month, after two failed attempts earlier in the year.
Cho and Akiba also discussed bilateral relations, noting the seven summits between their leaders this year, and agreed to expand areas of cooperation to produce more tangible results for the two countries' peoples, including in security and economic issues and people-to-people exchanges.
(2nd LD) Nat'l security advisers of S. Korea, Japan discuss N.K. threat | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by Park Boram · December 8, 2023
(ATTN: UPDATES with more info in last 4 paras; ADDS photo)
By Lee Haye-ah
SEOUL, Dec. 8 (Yonhap) -- The national security advisers of South Korea and Japan agreed Friday on the need to strengthen solidarity with the international community in order to respond firmly to North Korea's nuclear and missile provocations, the presidential office said.
National Security Adviser Cho Tae-yong and Japan's National Security Secretariat Secretary General Takeo Akiba held talks in Seoul ahead of Saturday's trilateral meeting with their U.S. counterpart, Jake Sullivan.
The two sides agreed that North Korea's "unprecedented" provocations are posing a "serious threat" to peace and stability in the region and beyond, the presidential office said in a press release.
"They reaffirmed the need for South Korea-Japan and South Korea-U.S.-Japan cooperation, and the strengthening of solidarity within the international community, in order to firmly respond to North Korea's nuclear and missile provocations," it said.
North Korea successfully placed a military spy satellite into orbit last month, after two failed attempts earlier in the year.
Cho and Akiba also discussed bilateral relations, noting the seven summits between their leaders this year, and agreed to expand areas of cooperation to produce more tangible results for the two countries' peoples, including in security and economic issues and people-to-people exchanges.
South Korea's National Security Adviser Cho Tae-yong (R) poses for a photo with his Japanese counterpart, Takeo Akiba, during their meeting at the presidential office in Seoul on Dec. 8, 2023, in this photo released by the office. Akiba is in the South Korean capital to hold talks with Cho and his U.S. counterpart, Jake Sullivan, the next day to discuss regional security issues and trilateral cooperation. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)
In a separate meeting later in the day, Cho and Sullivan shared their opinion that Seoul's suspension of an inter-Korean military tension reduction accord was a carefully considered measure in response to Pyongyang's repeated violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Last month, South Korea suspended part of the 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement that called for a series of military measures to reduce tensions along the border.
The two officials also reaffirmed that their countries remain open to dialogue with North Korea.
They expressed that the South Korea-U.S. alliance remains stronger than ever, and is a core pillar of peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region, pledging cooperation on Indo-Pacific strategies, new technologies and economic security, according to the presidential office.
President Yoon Suk Yeol later hosted a dinner at his official residence for the three national security advisers, the presidential officer said.
"South Korea-U.S.-Japan cooperation has become more important than before under a situation where armed conflicts are occurring at places in the world and the rule-based order is being threatened," Yoon said during the meeting.
"I hope the agreements from (the trilateral summit at) Camp David could be smoothly implemented and this momentum can continue," the president said, referring to his summit with President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in August.
During the meeting at Camp David, a U.S. presidential retreat, the leaders pledged to develop the trilateral partnership into a comprehensive cooperation mechanism.
This photo, provided by the presidential office, shows President Yoon Suk Yeol (2nd from R), National Security Adviser Cho Tae-yong (L), U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (2nd from L) and Japan's National Security Secretariat Secretary General Takeo Akiba ahead of their dinner meeting at the presidential residence in Seoul on Dec. 8, 2023. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)
hague@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by Park Boram · December 8, 2023
4. N Korean ambassador in Geneva recalled over smuggling allegations: Report
We need more countries with nK diplomatic missions to put pressure on the regime for its illicit activities.
N Korean ambassador in Geneva recalled over smuggling allegations: Report
Han Tae Song was previously expelled from Zimbabwe in 1992 for engaging in rhino horn trafficking.
By Taejun Kang for RFA
2023.12.07
Taipei, Taiwan
rfa.org
North Korea has decided to recall its ambassador to Switzerland, Han Tae Song, amidst claims he is involved in elephant tusk smuggling.
Both the panel of experts of the U.N. Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea and Swiss officials are investigating the ambassador’s purported involvement in ivory trafficking in Africa, according to Japan’s Kyodo News on Thursday.
It is anticipated that Han will be replaced within this year, with North Korean authorities possibly holding him accountable for being exposed, it added.
Appointed as ambassador to Switzerland in 2017, Han also represents North Korea at the United Nations in Geneva. Notably, he was previously expelled from Zimbabwe in 1992 for engaging in rhino horn trafficking.
The news came after a report that Botswana, along with South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, had been probing this North Korean-affiliated ivory and rhino horn smuggling operation for over a year
The ring is accused of pilfering at least 19 elephant tusks and 18 rhino horns from Botswana on two occasions last year and this year, and then channeling them through South Africa and Zimbabwe to Mozambican buyers linked to North Korea, Weekend Post reported on Sep. 26.
The report added that the investigation discovered two buyers from North Korea were central to a major smuggling operation involving wildlife products. One of these individuals, Yi Kang Dae, confirmed as an intelligence official in North Korea’s state security, collaborated with Ambassador Han.
The paper cited a security source in Zimbabwe as saying there is a big chance that Han may have revived the old smuggling network he ran while posted in the country in the 90s.
“The biting international sanctions against North Korea in the past decade may have prompted Han to reawaken his network which has been dormant for some time,” said the source, as quoted by Weekend Post.
The source added that it was uncertain whether the illicit network has been dismantled, as Han’s two key operatives remain at large in Mozambique, urging “joint vigilance” to “destroy the operation at the source and at the end of the line.”
Edited by Mike Firn.
rfa.org
5.North Korean factory workers in China to lose pay for product flaws
I guess you can get blood from a stone. The Gulag State has figured out how to extract everything from its people.
North Korean factory workers in China to lose pay for product flaws
The new policy seems to be a way for the government to extract more funds from the workers, sources say.
By Kim Jieun for RFA Korean
2023.12.08
rfa.org
North Koreans working in clothing factories in China must be nearly flawless under new punitive regulations that dock workers’ pay if they produce too many defective garments, residents in China told Radio Free Asia.
The new rules seem to be a way for the cash-strapped North Korean government to justify keeping more of the dispatched workers’ hard earned salaries, a resident of the city of Donggang in China’s Liaoning province told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.
“Earlier this month, notices on production performance evaluations, work regulations, and wage reduction rules were posted in the form of posters at each North Korean company in Donggang,” he said. “Wages will be reduced if reprocessing is required due to a work mistake or if a defective product occurs.”
On the first and second instances, the team leaders will be punished, not the individual worker, the notice said, according to the resident.
“That leader’s wages will be docked first. If three out of 200 pieces of clothing produced … must be repaired, 50 Chinese yuan (US$7) will be deducted. The second occurrence will also incur a 50 Chinese yuan penalty,” he said. “But from the third incident, 30 points will be deducted per item from the work group’s performance rating.”
The work groups can earn 10 points per day for a full day of work, and their compensation is based on the number of points they can earn in a month, which is usually around 200, the resident explained.
So losing 30 points is the same as missing out on three days of pay, all for just a single flawed item produced. If there are three or four flawed items made, the reduction would be around half of the work group’s monthly salary.
“The reason for the notice and reduction regulations is to collect even more foreign currency by reducing workers’ wages even more,” the resident said. “In addition, if a worker falls short of the daily production goal or delivers a defective product, there is a penalty that requires not only a reduction in wages, but also mandates that the worker cleans bathrooms.”
100,000 workers
The source said that there were about 100,000 North Korean workers in China, and Chinese companies calculate an average contract amount to be 2,000 to 2,500 yuan (US$280-350) per month per person and they pay the full amount to the North Korean companies.
The lion’s share of this is forwarded to Pyongyang, however, and the workers themselves earn only a small fraction of it.
The 100,000 figure matches the estimate of workers in China from human rights groups, such as the U.S.-based Committee for Human Right in North Korea
Many North Korean workers in China put in on average 12 to 14 hours a day, including nights with only one day off each month, although it varies slightly from company to company.
A resident of Dandong, which lies across the Yalu River border from North Korea’s Sinuiju, told RFA on condition of anonymity that notices of the new rules have gone up in factories in that city as well.
“They say the year-end evaluation will be based on these rules,” he said. “A North Korean clothing company in Dandong posted the notice. ... They are urging workers to increase their annual production.”
The products made by the North Korean workers will not only be used locally, the Dandong resident said.
“This … is a clothing company that produces luxury clothing in China and exports extensively, not only domestically, but also to Europe through Russia,” he said. “However, these products are mostly made with the blood and sweat of North Korean workers.”
Under international sanctions meant to deprive Pyongyang of cash and resources that could be funneled into its nuclear and missile programs, all North Korean workers were supposed to have returned home by the end of 2019, and no new work visas were to be issued to North Korean citizens since then.
But cash-strapped Pyongyang is still dispatching workers to both Russia and China by using loopholes, including by sending the workers on student visas.
Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
rfa.org
6. Japan Is Destined to Have Nuclear Weapons
Excerpts;
If there is a convincing argument against Japan acquiring nuclear weapons, it concerns the possibility of proliferation. Specifically, if Tokyo went nuclear, Seoul would likely do so as well. This is probably the most potent objection to nuclearization. The South Koreans have always been more positively disposed toward nuclear arms than Japan. Already, a majority of South Koreans, with a nuclear threat on their northern border, favor nuclear security. This percentage sharply increases if asked what they should do if the Japanese went nuclear. Their experience in World War II is not forgotten—many South Koreans view China more favorably than Japan. And they see the same unpredictable America that the Japanese do. Surrounded by a nuclear China and North Korea (and then a nuclear Japan), spurred on by a public that is pro-nuclear and uncertain about American guarantees, the leadership in Seoul would probably have no choice but to follow a path of proliferation. They are surely already holding discussions on the topic.
Yet, this should not trouble the Japanese. They need to remember that, whatever their differences, the South Koreans are their allies, not their enemies. The dangers they face emanate from Beijing and Pyongyang, not Seoul. There may be abstract or long-term risks to “world peace” from proliferation in East Asia, but the immediate dangers are an aggressive China, an unpredictable North Korea, and a faltering United States. With regard to their national security, these must be their immediate priorities.
In the end, the question of South Korea and the issue of nuclear proliferation present Japan with challenges that go to the heart of its national security. Since the end of World War II, Japan has prided itself on being the “peace nation,” leading the international battle to limit and eventually banish nuclear weapons. That goal seems as far away as ever. Yet, at the same time, the immediate threats to Japan’s national security have mounted, while its primary—indeed, only—protector has grown weaker and, exhausted by fruitless wars in Asia and the Middle East, shows every sign of withdrawing ever more from the international stage. The weary United States seems to be rediscovering its isolationist traditions. Japan’s stand as a beacon for global peace increasingly seems a luxury it can ill afford.
Should Japan continue on the idealistic path that was possible only because of America’s protections? Or should it accept the reality of a profoundly altered global situation in which they can rely on no one but themselves? Even the most hopeful and pacifist among the Japanese may realize that there is only one answer to these questions. Japan must develop nuclear weapons.
Japan Is Destined to Have Nuclear Weapons
The National Interest · by Barry Gewen · December 8, 2023
“[The Japanese have] a pretty clear view of where they’re going; they’re heading towards becoming a nuclear power in five years.” - Henry Kissinger, April 2023.
My country, Japan, has reached a historic crossroads: It must develop nuclear weapons because it really does not have a choice.
If one is realistic about the current geopolitical situation in Asia, there is only one issue that matters: The circumstances that served Japan so well following its defeat in World War II no longer exist. A nuclear China is an ever-expanding menace, flexing its muscles well beyond its borders. North Korea has a growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and shows no signs of tempering its hostility toward its neighbors. Most of all, the American “nuclear umbrella” that allowed us so many years of peace and prosperity under Washington’s military protection is increasingly frayed, probably irreparably. A long list of government officials and academic experts has always viewed America’s guarantees of protection against enemies as the foundation of its security. What policymaker in Japan, looking at the present disarray in Washington, can still take those guarantees for granted?
In the years after World War II and at the height of the Cold War, Japan was the bulwark of the American presence in Asia. The two countries were mutually committed to offsetting China’s rise and countering the spread of Communism. Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone declared that Japan and the United States shared an “inseparable destiny.”
Looking back now, one can see that there were always cracks and potential ruptures in that “destiny,” even if politicians papered them over. After the war, Japan, not unreasonably, became an international voice for the cause of peace. Written into its Constitution is a renunciation of war and the use of force to settle disputes. To some—over one-third of the public, according to one poll—such language had transformed Japan from a militaristic state into a pacifist nation with a special mission in the world. However, others, including influential figures in the government, interpreted the Constitution as giving Tokyo the leeway to develop nuclear weapons if necessary. But the issue never developed into a genuine debate. People in Japan refused to discuss it.
As the only country to be victimized by atomic bombs, many Japanese were passionately opposed to their use—“Never again!”—or even their development. John Foster Dulles referred to this as a “nuclear allergy,” a phrase he used in 1954 after a fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, was exposed to radiation from an American thermonuclear test on Bikini Atoll. The number of people affected was minuscule compared to the thousands of dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Still, it was as if all the emotions that had been tamped down since 1945 suddenly exploded. Within a month, the Diet passed a resolution opposing nuclear testing, while a public petition collected the signatures of more than half of the country’s registered voters in support of the resolution. (The incident also spurred the production of the movie “Godzilla.”) Japan was on its way to developing an international reputation as “the peace nation,” a designation that made its citizens proud. And in the years that followed, Japan introduced dozens of resolutions to the United Nations General Assembly calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Admittedly, there was incontrovertible hypocrisy between Tokyo’s opposition to nuclear weapons while it sheltered under the American nuclear umbrella. In 2016, New Zealand offered a UN resolution declaring that nuclear weapons should never be used under any circumstances. It attracted more than 100 cosponsors, Japan included. At the same time, eighteen nations backed a competing statement arguing that the use of nuclear arms might be necessary for reasons of national security. The two declarations were clearly incompatible. Japan was the only nation to sign both. But such contradictions didn’t bother the pacifist-minded public. Discussion of nuclear weapons was the third rail of Japanese politics. “Peace education” was required in public schools, and even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs funded anti-nuclear programs. Any leader who suggested a change in policy was bound to pay a political price.
Not even China’s first successful nuclear test in 1964 had much of an impact on public opinion—though it did bring home to many Japanese political leaders just how dependent the nation was on America and its bombs. Perhaps the majority of the Japanese people could shield their eyes and remain complacent. However, government officials charged with maintaining national security could not afford to ignore the Chinese threat. A split was emerging between elite opinion and the popular temper that would only grow in the years to come. It seemed that Japan’s longstanding anti-nuclear stance had become dependent on people who refused to adapt to a changing international situation, who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Prime Minister Eisaku Sato personified the division. After the Chinese test, he lamented his countrymen’s policy blinders and said the public had to be educated about the new realities. This would take time, he thought. Meanwhile, Sato took the only path open to him. He traveled to Washington to plead with President Lyndon Johnson to reaffirm America’s commitment to Japan’s defense. There was clearly something hat-in-hand, undignified, about Sato’s supplications—the U.S.-Japan alliance was never one of equals—but he did have one trump card up his sleeve. If Johnson didn’t supply the needed reassurances, he warned, Japan would have to consider developing its own nuclear weapons. In 1964, public opinion wouldn’t have countenanced that, and Sato no doubt knew it. Yet, the threat was convincing enough and disruptive enough to get Johnson’s attention. He issued a statement, reiterating it in 1967, that the United States was prepared to prevent China from employing nuclear weapons.
That was what Sato had hoped for, and it allowed him to then tack in the opposite direction. When he came home, he transformed from a leader for national security to a leader for peace. In December 1967, he enunciated what would become the foundation of Japan’s nuclear policy ever since: the “Three Nonnuclear Principles.” Japan would not develop nuclear weapons; It would not possess nuclear weapons; It would not allow nuclear weapons to be stationed on its territory. In private, Sato allegedly called the promises “nonsense.” Later, the always ambivalent (or two-faced) Sato added a fourth pillar, in essence declaring that Japan would adhere to the Three Principles as long as it retained confidence in America’s nuclear umbrella. For his efforts, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.
Indeed, Washington’s reliability and its nuclear umbrella have always been at the heart of Tokyo’s security policy. Posed in its simplest terms, the question is: Would America be willing to risk the destruction of Los Angeles to protect Tokyo? As the Chinese and the North Koreans expand their nuclear capabilities, the question has taken on lethal pertinence. As the question grows in importance for Japan’s future, one is forced to look back at the U.S.-Japan alliance and ask how strong it is or has ever been. Japan has always been the junior partner. Washington makes a decision, and Tokyo accommodates and adapts. But should it be satisfied to remain a junior partner?
A historic turning point in the relationship arrived in the early 1970s when Richard Nixon went to China and took the United States off the gold standard. These were profound “shocks” to Japan’s political and economic positions. Crucially, they demonstrated to Tokyo that Washington was prepared to pursue what it perceived to be its national interest, even if it damaged the interests of its allies. To be sure, the internationally-minded Nixon offered reassurances to the Japanese government—and it adapted. Then, America abandoned its ally in South Vietnam, and Japan adapted. The United States also turned its back on allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, Japan adapted. Washington failed to support Tokyo when North Korea kidnapped Japanese citizens. It drew a “red line” in Syria and refused to uphold it. It withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and the nuclear agreement with Iran. It made promises to defend the integrity of Ukraine, then failed to risk the lives of its own troops after the Russian invasion. Just how much can Tokyo trust any promises coming out of Washington?
What’s more, Japanese doubts are double-edged. If they have serious concerns about the United States doing too little, they also worry about it doing too much. In the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has proved to be impetuous and sanctimonious, canceling agreements with Russia, invading Iraq and Afghanistan, and intervening in Libya with little consideration of the long-term consequences. By tying their security to the decisions of impulsive and unreliable leaders in Washington, the Japanese are allowing themselves to be whipsawed. This is not a condition any country should have to live with, certainly not one as powerful as Japan.
Perhaps no other issue reveals the uncertainty and weakness of the U.S.-Japanese alliance at present as the vulnerability of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, claimed both by Japan and China (where they are known as the Diaoyu Islands). A full-scale attack on Japan by China is unimaginable, but gradual encroachments that shift the balance of power in the Senkakus are another matter. This dispute has continued for decades. Yet, in recent years, as the nuclear-armed Chinese have grown stronger militarily, they have become more assertive, sending Coast Guard patrols into what they claim are “Chinese territorial waters,” and scrambling their aircraft overhead. There are about two dozen Chinese military bases within range of the Senkakus, but only four U.S. and Japanese bases.
Apart from this growing disparity, the larger question for Tokyo is how reliable an ally Washington would be if the dispute developed into a full-scale crisis. Would Americans be willing to shed blood for dots in the ocean they have never heard of? Examples like Ukraine offer no comfort. And it should be remembered that Japan has territorial disagreements with Russia as well. No single dispute may be enough to trigger an all-out war with either China or North Korea (or Russia). But is it time for Japan to consider its own nuclear deterrent to replace the American deterrent and neutralize the salami tactics of its enemies?
Since the end of World War II, there have been two broad foundations to its “nuclear allergy” —and both have been steadily eroding. The growing threats in Asia have already brought into question the first foundation, the reliability of the American nuclear umbrella. The second is Japanese public opinion, with its traditionally profound aversion to nuclear weapons. But, like everything else in East Asia, that has been changing, too. Recent polls point in different directions at once. Some show the majority of Japanese are losing faith in the alliance with America. Others indicate that reliance on Washington’s nuclear umbrella remains strong. Japan seems to be a nation suffering from cognitive dissonance. As everyone knows, polls provide only a snapshot of public opinion (and depend on the way a question is posed). They tell us little about trends. But the trends in Japan all seem to be pointing in one direction.
The generation with personal memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is dying out, while younger generations appear to be more receptive to a nuclear Japan. Nuclear weapons are no longer a taboo subject. When the North Koreans fired a missile across Japanese territory toward the end of the last century, that was a history-changing event comparable to what the Americans experienced when the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957. Suddenly, the entire country seemed at risk and began to reconsider its options. The perceived threats only increased in the twenty-first century, most notably with the North Korean nuclear test in 2006 and repeated flights of North Korean missiles over Japanese territory. By 2022, after the Russians invaded Ukraine, despite American promises of protection, an overwhelming majority of Japanese were ready to debate the subject of nuclear weapons after decades of willed silence.
In any public debate, several objections would be raised to Japan going nuclear. In fact, many of these are nonsensical. It has been said that the Japanese people would be unwilling to sacrifice any of their wealth and prosperity at the expense of developing nuclear arms and the necessary delivery systems. But in recent years, Japan has shown itself ready to give up some of the easy life and accept dramatic increases in military budgets. Besides, if a country like Pakistan (or North Korea) is prepared to pay for nuclear security, Japan, with the world’s third-largest economy, can certainly afford to do the same. Rather, it is all a question of national will, which, in turn, depends on how much confidence the Japanese people have in the American deterrent.
Another anti-nuclear argument, equally nonsensical, is that if Japan went nuclear, the global community would respond with sanctions and diplomatic isolation. History tells a different story. After India and Pakistan exploded their bombs in 1998, the world reacted with consternation and hostility. That quickly passed, and both countries were soon welcomed back into the so-called family of nations. Washington even agreed to assist New Delhi’s civilian nuclear program. Where the Japanese are concerned, they can be confident that Washington would not abandon its most formidable ally in Asia because it had decided to strengthen its national security by going nuclear. There are already influential voices in America insisting that a nuclear Japan would benefit the United States.
One also hears arguments from geography. It is said that Japan is especially vulnerable to nuclear attack because its cities and population are concentrated in a relatively small amount of territory. The contention is that Japan is safer without nuclear weapons because a relatively small attack by the Chinese or North Koreans would do a colossal, unacceptable level of damage. Tell that to the Israelis, about whom it is said that two well-placed bombs would annihilate the whole country. Where are the voices in that tiny nation calling for unilateral disarmament?
If there is a convincing argument against Japan acquiring nuclear weapons, it concerns the possibility of proliferation. Specifically, if Tokyo went nuclear, Seoul would likely do so as well. This is probably the most potent objection to nuclearization. The South Koreans have always been more positively disposed toward nuclear arms than Japan. Already, a majority of South Koreans, with a nuclear threat on their northern border, favor nuclear security. This percentage sharply increases if asked what they should do if the Japanese went nuclear. Their experience in World War II is not forgotten—many South Koreans view China more favorably than Japan. And they see the same unpredictable America that the Japanese do. Surrounded by a nuclear China and North Korea (and then a nuclear Japan), spurred on by a public that is pro-nuclear and uncertain about American guarantees, the leadership in Seoul would probably have no choice but to follow a path of proliferation. They are surely already holding discussions on the topic.
Yet, this should not trouble the Japanese. They need to remember that, whatever their differences, the South Koreans are their allies, not their enemies. The dangers they face emanate from Beijing and Pyongyang, not Seoul. There may be abstract or long-term risks to “world peace” from proliferation in East Asia, but the immediate dangers are an aggressive China, an unpredictable North Korea, and a faltering United States. With regard to their national security, these must be their immediate priorities.
In the end, the question of South Korea and the issue of nuclear proliferation present Japan with challenges that go to the heart of its national security. Since the end of World War II, Japan has prided itself on being the “peace nation,” leading the international battle to limit and eventually banish nuclear weapons. That goal seems as far away as ever. Yet, at the same time, the immediate threats to Japan’s national security have mounted, while its primary—indeed, only—protector has grown weaker and, exhausted by fruitless wars in Asia and the Middle East, shows every sign of withdrawing ever more from the international stage. The weary United States seems to be rediscovering its isolationist traditions. Japan’s stand as a beacon for global peace increasingly seems a luxury it can ill afford.
Should Japan continue on the idealistic path that was possible only because of America’s protections? Or should it accept the reality of a profoundly altered global situation in which they can rely on no one but themselves? Even the most hopeful and pacifist among the Japanese may realize that there is only one answer to these questions. Japan must develop nuclear weapons.
About the Author:
Barry Gewen is the former editor of the New York Times Book Review.
The National Interest · by Barry Gewen · December 8, 2023
7. 'Houses of torment' that hide North Korea's darkest secret
Pure evil. President George W. Bush and David Frum were right to call north Korea part of the axis of evil.
And the Chinese are complicit in north Korean human rights abuses and crimes against humanity.
Excerpts:
‘Crimes of enforced disappearance torment and plague the families left behind,’ she said.
‘The utter anguish of a life trapped in a Chinese detention centre faced with a forcible repatriation to dystopic North Korea where they will most likely endure a barbaric fate as punishment for their escape.
‘With the international gaze fixed on finding those kidnapped in Gaza, or forcibly transferred into Russia, the systematic human rights abuses and international crimes occurring inside North Korea continue unabated and unacknowledged.
‘The time has come to speak out, search for the missing, prevent disappearances and rigorously pursue accountability for those perpetrating such crimes.’
'Houses of torment' that hide North Korea's darkest secret
MetroUK · by Gergana Krasteva · December 7, 2023
A map showing Baishan City Detention Centre in China where North Korean defectors are held (Picture: Metro.co.uk)
Kim Kyu-li considers herself ‘the luckiest woman in the world’ after a decade on the run, starvation and forced marriage.
Stories of people defecting from North Korea – like her – are not uncommon. After surviving a catastrophic famine that decimated Kim Jong-Un’s dystopian state in the mid-1990s, she fled to China where she remained for seven years.
‘When I first went to China, I could not understand Chinese language, so I had no idea what the broker was saying, whether he was negotiating to sell me,’ she told Metro.co.uk of her initial experience in the country.
‘Many North Korean women who were sold end up facing domestic violence and are often unable to escape their neighborhood.’
A satellite image of the detention camp in Baishan, near the border with China and North Korea
This is one of the reasons Kyu-li thinks of herself as fortunate. After defecting, she was sold to a Korean-ethnic Chinese man who was three years older than her.
His family treated her well and even helped her find a job at a restaurant in Tian Jin, near Beijing.
From China, Kyu-li escaped to Mongolia; then made her way to South Korea, and eventually arrived in London in 2007, where she is now based.
Now, she is fighting to find her sister, Cheol-ok, one of as many as 600 defectors who were deported from China back to North Korea two months ago.
Kim Cheol-ok, a North Korean defector who had lived in China for 25 years with her family before being deported by Chinese authorities
Fears have been growing for North Koreans like her, who are labelled ‘criminals’ and ‘traitors’ by Kim Jong Un’s regime, since they were forcibly returned to their homeland.
Pyongyang considers leaving the country without permission a crime of ‘treachery against the nation,’ punishable by death or by detention in labor camps.
There, defectors face the prospect of torture. Women are subjected to sexual and gender-based violence, and forced abortions.
Metro.co.uk has today mapped out five border crossing points in China’s Jilin and Liaoning provinces used to send them back to North Korea.
A map showing the five border crossing points used to send defectors back to North Korea and the detentions camps they are held in (Picture: Metro.co.uk)
These include Dandong to Sinuiju, Changbai to Hyesan, Helong to Musan, Tumen to Onsong and Hunchun to Kyongwon.
As revealed by Seoul-based human rights organisation Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), these are the crossings where heavily guarded buses and vans transporting hundreds of escapees drove into North Korea under cover of darkness.
Hundreds were detained while trying to flee to South Korea and other countries in search of freedom.
Largely to her older sister’s credit, Cheol-ok is one of the few known to the public North Koreans who were recently repatriated.
Kim Kyu-li, the older sister of Cheol-ok, who is based in London after years on the run
After defecting at the age of 14 at the height of the famine in 1998, she settled in a town in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin.
Like Kyu-li, she was forced into marriage with a Chinese man that had been arranged by a human trafficker, and later gave birth to a daughter.
She came to love her family over the past 25 years, but was abruptly arrested for unknown reasons on April 5, months before her granddaughter’s birth.
After an investigation by the TJWG, Metro.co.uk can exclusively reveal that Cheol-ok was held at the Baishan City Detention Centre in Hunjiang District, in the Jilin Province.
The Baishan City Detention Centre where hundreds of defectors are imprisoned
The last time Kyu-li spoke with her younger sister was on April 4, before she left home and was detained.
‘After repatriation, Cheol-ok will face severe punishment, forced labor, lack of food, and no access to medicine when sick,’ she said.
‘Furthermore, North Korean authorities do not care whether prisoners, like my older brother, live or die in prison.
‘He defected in 2002 and was subject to serious punishment and starvation. The location of where he is buried remains unknown.’
Both Chinese and North Korean governments have refused to confirm knowledge of the recent deportation
No communication has been established with defectors since being repatriated. Their location and wellbeing remain unclear due to what can only be described as an information blackhole in North Korea.
Their identities are also unknown, although most – more than 70% – are expected to be women.
Both Chinese and North Korean governments have refused to comment or confirm knowledge of the recent deportation.
It comes after Kim Jon Un’s government announced the reopening of the borders in August, which were sealed at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Kim Cheol-ok pictured in her youth
There are grave concerns that as many as 1,500 more people could be returned to North Korea in the coming months.
But China has never recognised those fleeing as defectors, and instead calls them ‘economic migrants’.
‘Crimes of enforced disappearance torment and plague the families left behind,’ she said.
‘The utter anguish of a life trapped in a Chinese detention centre faced with a forcible repatriation to dystopic North Korea where they will most likely endure a barbaric fate as punishment for their escape.
‘With the international gaze fixed on finding those kidnapped in Gaza, or forcibly transferred into Russia, the systematic human rights abuses and international crimes occurring inside North Korea continue unabated and unacknowledged.
‘The time has come to speak out, search for the missing, prevent disappearances and rigorously pursue accountability for those perpetrating such crimes.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
Sign Up for News Updates
Get your need-to-know latest news, feel-good stories, analysis and more
Privacy Policy
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
MetroUK · by Gergana Krasteva · December 7, 2023
8. US, South Korea and Japan urge a stronger international push to curb North Korea's nuclear program
Freedom loving countries of the world, unite.
US, South Korea and Japan urge a stronger international push to curb North Korea's nuclear program
BY KIM TONG-HYUNG
Updated 3:27 AM EST, December 9, 2023
AP · December 9, 2023
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The national security advisers of the United States, South Korea and Japan on Saturday called for a stronger international push to suppress North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and missiles, its cybertheft activities and alleged arms transfers to Russia.
The meeting in Seoul came as tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest in years, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un accelerating the expansion of his nuclear and missile program and flaunting an escalatory nuclear doctrine that authorizes the preemptive use of nuclear weapons.
The United States and its Asian allies have responded by increasing the visibility of their trilateral partnership in the region and strengthening their combined military exercises, which Kim condemns as invasion rehearsals.
Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have also expressed concerns about a potential arms alignment between North Korea and Russia. They worry Kim is providing badly needed munitions to help Russian President Vladimir Putin wage war in Ukraine in exchange for Russian technology assistance to upgrade his nuclear-armed military.
Speaking after the meeting, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington is working with Seoul and Tokyo to strengthen defense cooperation and improve its response to North Korean missile testing and space-launch activities, including a real-time information sharing arrangement on North Korean missile launches that the countries plan to start at an unspecified date in December.
He also said the countries have agreed to new initiatives to more effectively respond to North Korean efforts to bypass U.S.-led international sanctions that aim to choke off funds for its nuclear weapons and missile program.
“This will be a new effort with respect to cryptocurrency and money laundering and how we disrupt North Korea’s capacity to gain revenue from the hacking and stealing of cryptocurrency and then laundering it through exchanges,” he said.
Sullivan declined to share detailed U.S. assessments on the types and volume of North Korean arms being shipped to Russia and didn’t comment on the specifics of his discussions with South Korean and Japanese officials over the issue, but insisted that “there’s no daylight among us in terms of the types of weapons transfers that we are seeing. And those continue and they represent a grave concern for us.”
South Korean intelligence and military officials have said North Korea may have shipped more than a million artillery shells to Russia beginning in August, weeks before Kim traveled to Russia’s Far East for a rare summit with Putin that sparked international concerns about a potential arms deal. Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied U.S. and South Korean claims.
In a joint news conference after Saturday’s trilateral meeting, Cho Tae-yong, South Korea’s national security office director, said the three security advisers reaffirmed North Korea’s obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions that call for its denuclearization and ban any weapons trade with other countries, and agreed to strengthen coordination to ensure that is implemented.
Takeo Akiba, Japan’s national security secretariat secretary general, said the “unprecedented frequency and patterns” of North Korean ballistic missile launches necessitate a deeper and more effective partnership between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo.
South Korea, the U.S., Japan and Australia have also announced their own sanctions on North Korea over its spy satellite launch last month. North Korea argues it the right to launch spy satellites to monitor U.S. and South Korean military activities and enhance the threat of its nuclear-capable missiles.
During his conversation with reporters, Sullivan said the allies are preparing for the possibility that North Korea will up the ante of its weapons demonstrations and threats in 2024, possibly including the country’s seventh nuclear test.
Direct military action is also a concern after the North recently announced it was abandoning a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement on reducing border tensions after the South partially suspended the agreement, which had established border buffers and no-fly zones. Some experts say that has raised the risk of border-area shootings or clashes.
“Look, when a country announces its intent to walk away from a set of measures that are designed to help reduce risk and increase stability, our concern for potential incidents, provocations has to go up,” Sullivan said, though he said the full implications of the North’s announcement is not immediately clear.
Sullivan held separate bilateral talks Friday with Cho and Akiba and also met with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.
The U.S., South Korean and Japanese national security advisers last held a trilateral meeting in June in Tokyo.
South Korean intelligence officials have said the Russians likely provided technology support for North Korea’s successful satellite launch in November, which followed two failed launches.
North Korea has said its spy satellite transmitted imagery with space views of key sites in the U.S. and South Korea, including the White House and the Pentagon. But it hasn’t released any of those satellite photos. Many outside experts question whether the North’s satellite is sophisticated enough to send militarily useful high-resolution imagery.
Kim has vowed to launch more satellites, saying his military needs to acquire space-based reconnaissance capabilities.
South Korean officials have also said North Korea-made rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons could have been used by Hamas during its Oct. 7 assault on Israel and that the North could be considering selling weapons to militant groups in the Middle East.
Sullivan said that the United States has not seen any specific evidence of that, but remains vigilant about the possibility.
“I think given North Korea’s history of proliferation activities, including to reprehensible actors in other contexts across history, it’s a legitimate concern,” he said.
___
Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to the report.
AP · December 9, 2023
9. U.S., South Korea, Japan to step up actions on North Korea cyber threats
We must break the all purpose sword.
Our Korean allies should;keep in mind that despite all that is going on around the world, with zukrain, and Gaza, and Taiwan, the Houthis, and more, the US NSA is in Korea working on mutual security issues. PLease keep that in mind the next time you have thoughts about being neglected.
U.S., South Korea, Japan to step up actions on North Korea cyber threats
Reuters · by Hyunsu Yim
SEOUL, Dec 9 (Reuters) - The United States, South Korea and Japan agreed new initiatives on Saturday to respond to North Korea's threats in cyberspace, including cryptocurrency abuses and space launches, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
The three countries' national security advisers met in Seoul as Pyongyang warned that it would deploy more spy satellites.
Sullivan said the meeting followed up on commitments set forth at a Camp David trilateral summit hosted by President Joe Biden in August, where leaders of the U.S. and its two key Asian allies pledged to deepen security and economic cooperation.
"We've also launched new trilateral initiatives to counter the threats posed by the DPRK, from its cybercrime and cryptocurrency money laundering to its reckless space and ballistic missile tests," Sullivan told reporters, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
His Japanese counterpart Takeo Akiba said North Korea's "illicit cyber activities" had emerged as most recent challenges, calling them "a source of funds" for the isolated state's nuclear missile development.
The three countries' coordinated efforts will target potential threats of economic coercion, having completed work on a supply-chain early warning system, agreed to at Camp David, in critical minerals and rechargeable batteries, Sullivan said.
Biden met at Camp David with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to project unity in the face of China's growing power and nuclear threats from North Korea.
Sullivan said the nations "continue to stand up for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and freedom of navigation in the East and South China Seas".
Sullivan and his South Korean counterpart Cho Tae-yong co-chaired on Saturday the first Next Generation Critical and Emerging Technologies (CET) Dialogue, a forum aimed at cooperation on chips and other critical technologies, the South Korean presidential office said.
[1/6]South Korea's National Security Adviser Cho Tae-yong shakes hands with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Japan's National Security Secretariat Secretary-General Takeo Akiba after their joint press conference at the presidential office, in Seoul, South Korea on December 09, 2023. ... Acquire Licensing Rights Read more
NORTH KOREA-RUSSIA TIES
North Korean state media said on Saturday that Pyongyang was determined to launch more spy satellites soon, calling space development part of its right to defend itself as any other country has. It has also criticised South Korea for launching its own satellite, saying there is a double standard.
Sullivan disputed that claim, saying North Korea's satellite launch involves ballistic-missile technologies that violate United Nations resolutions, while South Korea's do not.
Sanctions monitors have accused North Korea of using cyberattacks to gather funds for its nuclear and missile programs, and a U.N. report said Pyongyang had stepped up its cryptocurrency theft last year, using sophisticated techniques to steal more in 2022 than any other year.
North Korea has denied allegations of hacking or other cyberattacks.
After talks with Sullivan and Akiba, South Korea's Cho said the three had also exchanged ideas on Ukraine and Middle East issues.
They discussed growing military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, and all three were confident North Korea was supplying weapons for Russia in Ukraine war, Sullivan said.
Since the White House said in October North Korea had provided Russia with a shipment of weapons from a port in its border town of Rason, the port continues to display a high level of activity, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said in a report published on Friday, citing satellite imagery analysis.
North Korea has denied it transfers arms to Moscow.
Reporting by Hyunsu Yim, Ju-min Park; Editing by Edmund Klamann, William Mallard and Neil Fullick
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Acquire Licensing Rights, opens new tab
Reuters · by Hyunsu Yim
10. US Deals with Allies Signal Concerns Over China’s Disinformation Campaign
US Deals with Allies Signal Concerns Over China’s Disinformation Campaign - New Delhi Times - India's Only International Newspaper - Empowering Global Vision, Empathizing with India
newdelhitimes.com · by Special Correspondent · December 9, 2023
Western foreign policy experts are welcoming recent U.S. agreements to jointly tackle foreign disinformation with Seoul and Tokyo, saying they are needed to counter Chinese efforts to undermine liberal democracies through the spread of fake news.
The U.S. signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with Japan in Tokyo on Wednesday “to identify and counter foreign information manipulation,” according to a State Department statement.
The agreement follows a Memorandum of Understanding signed with South Korea in Seoul on Friday to cooperate in their efforts to tackle foreign disinformation. The agreements, the first designed to fight disinformation, were made during an Asia trip by Liz Allen, the U.S. undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs.
They are designed to “demonstrate the seriousness with which the United States is working with its partners to defend the information space,” according to the State Department’s Wednesday statement, which did not specify any nations as threats.
In response, Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA on Tuesday that he wants to stress that “China always opposes the creation and spread of disinformation.”
He said, “What I have seen is that there is a lot of disinformation about China on social media in the U.S. Some U.S. officials, lawmakers, media and organizations have produced and spread a large amount of false information against China without any evidence, ignoring basic facts.”
The agreements the U.S. made with its allies are “a deliberate acknowledgment of the threats posed by China,” said David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy.
Credit : Voice of America (VOA), Photo Credit : Associated Press (AP)
Related
newdelhitimes.com · by Special Correspondent · December 9, 2023
11. Why a North Korean Defector Is Denouncing the Ivy League
On the one hand the Ivy League and other institutions of higher learning deserve criticism.
But Ms. Yeonmi Park is embarrassing the escapee community with her false stories and this kind of publicity. But she is also being exploited by organizations to serve a political agenda.
Excerpts:
Park escaped a totalitarian regime that operates on fear, paranoia and privation, and such regimes leave scars on those who escape. Some defectors bear the marks of torture. Some struggle with mental illness. Others retain scraps of the mentality that bound them to a totalitarian society. “They’re from North Korea. The truth doesn’t matter there,” Song, the Melbourne University academic, told me. “And it’s sort of embedded in their mentality wherever they go. It’s for their survival.”
Perhaps ironically, Park captures this sentiment best in her own words. At the end of “While Time Remains,” she delivers a stark warning to her readers. “When a people become untethered from history, when they become unshackled from reality, when they lose the ability to understand cause and effect,” she wrote, “they become ripe for exploitation from those who hold real power.”
Why a North Korean Defector Is Denouncing the Ivy League
newlinesmag.com · December 7, 2023
Yeonmi Park is tired of defending herself to journalists. “I wrote all this in the books. I explained a million times,” she told me near the end of our tense and, at times, surreal 45-minute conversation. “They refused to believe me.”
Park, 29, was once celebrated in the mainstream press. At a youth summit in Dublin in 2014, she gave a deeply emotional speech about her escape from North Korea that went viral, transforming her from a minor celebrity in South Korea, where she was living at the time, into one of the world’s most famous defectors. Outlets like The New York Times and The Daily Beast ran breathless articles, and Park quickly became a fixture in elite, mostly liberal circles. She attended the Met Gala. She opened for Hillary Clinton at the Women of the World conference. Marie Claire profiled her. Penguin gave her a $1.1 million book deal. She was admitted to Columbia University.
For four years, Park quietly pursued a degree in human rights studies, attending the university’s campus, a shaded neoclassical oasis in uptown Manhattan. But after graduating in 2020, she returned to the spotlight with a different kind of defection story. The liberal establishment, she claimed, was morally debased, an indoctrination machine that threatened to transform America into a North Korea-style nightmare, with a mix of safe spaces, gender ideology and diversity initiatives — all flashpoints of the American culture war that conservatives have railed against for years. Park’s horror stories of her time in Columbia’s liberal gulag won her audiences with podcast hosts like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, who have large — though not exclusively — conservative fan bases.
Park took things further in February, when she appeared on two of the most extreme programs in the MAGAsphere: Mike Lindell’s “Frank Clips” show and Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. Months later, she signed on as a contributor with Turning Point USA, a large, well-funded youth organization known for hosting MAGA firebrands like Bannon and Tucker Carlson. In response, The Times and other prominent media outlets have now begun to highlight long-standing questions about her credibility.
Park has mostly decided to stonewall journalists like me, so I didn’t expect a response when I emailed an interview request in late June. An hour later, my phone rang. “I don’t see why I should talk to you,” she said. I started asking questions. I wanted to understand her transition from international human rights advocate to U.S. culture warrior — and why her specific brand of storytelling fits so perfectly into the right-wing ecosystem she’s embraced.
Questions about Park’s stories first emerged in 2014, soon after her viral speech at One Young World, the youth summit where prospective leaders from across the globe had gathered to network with high-powered politicians, business leaders and humanitarian influencers. The questions continued with the publication of her much-anticipated 2015 memoir, “In Order to Live.” Reviewers applauded her bravery and resilience but fretted about inconsistencies in some of her stories. In prior public appearances, for example, Park had claimed that a family friend was publicly executed in a stadium for watching a South Korean DVD. But in different versions of the same story, the execution happened on the street, and it was for watching a James Bond movie or “Titanic.” Other North Korean defectors found the story implausible: Watching foreign media, while illegal, is not a capital offense, and public executions are rare. Then the tale of this supposedly formative event disappeared entirely; it’s not included in her memoir.
Beyond the inconsistencies, however, Park had a simple, uncontroversial story to tell about the brutal privations of life under Kim Jong Un, a dictator so cartoonishly heinous that any American — left or right — could consider him an enemy. When she wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times in 2018 excoriating Donald Trump for meeting with Kim, she was widely praised by liberals and foreign policy conservatives alike. No one mentioned the questions about her story. It was the first time in years she had received much attention at all.
Park’s second book, “While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America,” was published in February and focuses on her time at Columbia. It describes the Ivy League university as “a place [that] saw no light at all, in the world or in people.” She underwent four years of indoctrination, she writes, that required students to “memorize and recite, not to grapple or understand.” Straying from official doctrine carried severe consequences.
“You get censored; you get penalized,” she told one reporter. “They tell you the things you cannot talk about.” And if you dare to speak out? “You don’t deserve any mercy,” she recently explained to Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Conference. “You need to be annihilated.” The audience was intimately familiar with all of these claims: Turning Point USA, a major conservative youth organization, has spent the last 11 years accusing college campuses of policing speech, enforcing “woke” values and canceling anyone who stands in their way.
Peterson, a Canadian psychologist and self-help guru who has gained fame and notoriety for his own anti-woke crusades, penned the foreword to Park’s new book.
“She encountered the same ideology that had corrupted her homeland and doomed its inhabitants to a life in hell,” he wrote. The “totalitarianism lite” of the academy, he added, teaches a student to be “an oppressor-in-training — the inevitable and truly desired fate of every virtue-signaling Ivy League graduate.”
Peterson doesn’t call himself conservative, but he’s a defining voice on some of the cultural issues that animate the MAGAsphere. Park speaks a similar language. Throughout our conversation, unprompted, she recited arguments against trans people, proper pronouns, safe spaces and children taught to hate America.
Her message is very different today from what it was in 2014, but her fundamental appeal has not changed: She offers lurid and sensationalist secrets from a foreign and seemingly inaccessible enemy — one that is not merely wrongheaded or dangerous, but cartoonishly monstrous.
Here are a couple of the headlines Park received in the mainstream press before her MAGA turn:
“How ‘Titanic’ Helped This Brave Young Woman Escape North Korea’s Totalitarian State” — The Daily Beast.
“This Woman Escaped North Korea at 13 — These Are Her Lessons on Perseverance” — CNBC.
“[Yeonmi Park] had never seen a world map,” The New York Times wrote in 2018, three and a half years after questions about her story first emerged. “She nearly starved. After she underwent appendix surgery without anesthesia at age 13, Ms. Park recalled, she saw human bodies piled outside the hospital, their eyes eaten by rats.”
All of these articles were published after Mary Anne Jolley, an award-winning journalist, wrote a detailed article in The Diplomat that first called Park’s story into question.
Since Park’s anti-woke crusade began, meanwhile, her stories about North Korea have only grown more incredible. She told Peterson on his podcast that at the hospital she saw rats devouring whole bodies — eyeballs first — as hungry children stalked them.
“Then children catch this rat, and they eat, and they somehow die from — I don’t know what it is. Then rats eat the children back.” (“In Order to Live” describes bodies at a hospital but does not mention rats. The 2018 New York Times article adds the rats but does not mention children.) Struggling to hold back tears, she told a Turning Point USA audience recently that children in North Korea eat mud, adding, “If you eat mud, eventually you cannot go to the bathroom and you die.”
“North Korea has one train,” she told Rogan on his podcast. “And sometimes people have to push the train.”
“They have to push the train?” Rogan asked. His eyebrows arched.
“Yeah,” Park replied.
In our interview, I asked Park about that story. A train engine alone weighs between 100 and 200 tons — about the same as the Statue of Liberty or a blue whale. Could people really push it from one place to another?
“I’m so glad you asked that question,” Park replied.
She hadn’t seen anyone pushing the train, she patiently explained. Because so much of her pre-defection knowledge of her home country was propaganda, she said, she had to relearn the truth about North Korea after she left. Park also gets many of her stories from other defectors. She was certain the train story was true. She had pictures to prove it, she said, and would send them to me.
Park was born in 1993, less than a mile from the Chinese border in the province of Hyesan. Her father, a foundry laborer and member of the ruling Workers Party, supplemented his paltry salary by smuggling goods from China. This illicit income meant the Parks enjoyed a relatively high standard of living, but her family’s fortunes changed when her father was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to a reeducation camp. He returned in 2005, sick with the cancer that would eventually kill him. In 2007, Park and her mother escaped to China. Two years later, they slipped across the Chinese border and into the frozen Gobi Desert of Mongolia, where they surrendered to the authorities, who eventually sent them to South Korea. She was 15 years old.
Park’s reeducation began at a government-run facility that provides three months of mandatory classes for newly arrived North Korean defectors. These classes focus on vocational skills and information about South Korean society but also delve into the history of the fractured peninsula.
“Every day, the instructors challenged fundamental beliefs that had been drilled into our heads from birth,” Park recalled in her first book. “I was able to believe that Kim Jong Il lived in luxurious mansions while his people starved. But I could not accept that it was his father, the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, and not the evil Yankee and South Korean invaders, who started the Korean War in 1950.”
Eventually, Park accepted this version of events, surrendering her doubts and embracing her adopted home. (Most historians consider that invasion the official start to the Korean War, but the tensions that led up to it were far from unilateral.) In 2012, three years after her arrival from Mongolia, Park was cast on a South Korean variety show called “Now on My Way to Meet You,” which focused on young “defector beauties” from North Korea. Shows about defectors are popular in South Korea; they can be light and funny, but often focus on the extreme and gruesome tales Park is now famous for sharing. One woman on the “Now on My Way” show claimed to have been imprisoned for 28 years, starting at the age of 13, on unspecified charges (asking about your charges, she said, carries a penalty of execution). Other defectors on the show told stories about eating noodles made from ground rice plant roots mixed with lye.
South Korea’s hostile relationship with North Korea, combined with national pride, sensationalism and the understandable fear of its nuclear-armed, totalitarian neighbor, have created a massive appetite for what Jay Song, a professor of Korean studies at Melbourne University, describes as “misery porn.” In her academic work, Song writes of a “savage-victim-savior” model in which a savage like Kim Jong Un commits atrocities against an innocent, helpless victim like Park who eventually escapes their bad situation thanks to an outside liberator (often white, usually Christian). To me, Song put it more bluntly: “They want to pity some helpless and innocent-looking refugees abused by a fat, ugly dictator.”
Misery porn, like any form of sensationalism, opens donor wallets and generates clicks. These stories don’t just sell inside South Korea; there’s a huge market for them in the U.S. as well. Park’s 2015 book was one of five defector memoirs released that year. Defectors like Shin Dong-hyuk, who escaped from a North Korean prison camp, and Joseph Kim, who survived protracted starvation and homelessness before eventually crossing into China, have given TED talks and scored lucrative book deals. Human rights researchers and journalists alike, meanwhile, are always hungry for stories from inside the Hermit Kingdom. Defectors, Song says, at times receive payment from academics, activists and even some journalists for interviews: between $30 and $300 per hour, “depending on the quality of their information.” The more closely the defector’s story fits the misery porn template, the more valuable the story.
Even small sums of money can make a big difference to defectors in South Korea; studies show they experience widespread discrimination, suffer higher rates of unemployment and are often stuck working menial jobs for low wages. Worse still, these defectors often arrive in debt to the smugglers who made their escape possible, and their inexperience with South Korean capitalism leaves them vulnerable to scams.
Stories like Park’s that perfectly fit the genre — attractive victim, monstrous crimes and appropriate gratitude — can result in million-dollar contracts and international fame. Many of these North Korean horror stories, however, fall apart under more careful scrutiny — not because the nation is a secret workers’ paradise, but because the people who propagate the stories have a political and financial interest in them, and don’t do the incredibly difficult work of checking all the facts.
“The trouble with North Korean defector testimony is that there’s no way to check whether or not it’s true,” Song says. “It’s often found unverifiable and not reliable. Even the U.N. stopped using defector accounts as evidence.”
On “Now on My Way to Meet You,” Park’s role was not originally as a victim but as a striking contrast to the other defectors on the show. The producers christened her “The Paris Hilton of North Korea” and showed happy photos of her family looking sleek and posh in clothing imported from Japan. One picture showed her mother with a Chanel handbag, though Park would later describe it as a cheap knockoff. Park appeared on the show for a little over a year.
The Paris Hilton character was popular in South Korea — enough so, Park writes, that she was frequently recognized on the street. But this was not the Park that made the leap to international fame. That came courtesy of her English tutoring program, Teach North Korean Refugees — a for-profit organization co-founded by Casey Lartigue, a well-connected American libertarian who has worked for organizations such as the CATO Institute and the Atlas Society. It was through this teaching program that Park eventually landed the invitation to speak at the One Young World conference.
“North Korea is an unimaginable country,” Park began as she stood on the stage of the 2014 conference. Ethereal in an intricate hanbok, a traditional Korean dress, she struggled to hold back tears as she described a nightmare world of oppression in North Korea and her family’s escape through China. By the end, many in the audience were visibly weeping. “When I was crossing the Gobi Desert, scared of dying, I thought nobody in this world cared,” she said. “But you have listened to my story. You have cared.”
Less than two months later, Jolley wrote her article in The Diplomat that pointed out glaring inconsistencies within Park’s story, sometimes between interviews conducted days apart. The posh teenager who had found her fellow characters’ stories of starvation hard to believe on her old reality show was now telling reporters about having to eat grass and dragonflies to stay alive. “When I was growing up in North Korea, I never saw anything about love stories between man and woman: no books, no songs, no press, no movies about love stories,” Park told One Young World. But earlier she’d recounted watching many Western movies as a child, including “Titanic,” “Cinderella” and “Snow White.” This worldliness was central to her former message: Exposure to South Korean and Western media among her “black market generation” would eventually erode the Kims’ iron grip and, perhaps, lead to the fall of the government and the eventual reunification of the peninsula.
The Diplomat printed Park’s response below Jolley’s article. In it, the young defector apologized for the confusion. She pinned her discrepancies on trauma, the language barrier and the unreliability of childhood memories. But there is another reason for the divergence in her stories, she has since said: a desire to hide the two years of sexual exploitation she suffered at the hands of human traffickers in China. “In South Korea, if I ever said that I was a sex slave for two years, from 13 to 15, no sane man would marry me,” she told me.
It’s a heartbreaking story, but it doesn’t explain her wildly different tales about life in North Korea. I asked her about these inconsistencies, and she offered an explanation: She chooses which part of her life to focus on based on what her audience wants and expects. “I wrote all this in the book, but my life does go upside down when my father gets arrested,” Park told me. While her dad was a smuggler, she lived a relatively privileged life. After his arrest, she says, she and her mom nearly starved. Different outlets wanted her to emphasize different parts of her life, and so she did. When she auditioned for “Now on My Way to Meet You,” the producers were captivated by the period of her life when her family was doing well. “We can highlight this character for you where you had a good life story, because everybody has such a dark story,” Park told me, paraphrasing the producers. “And we don’t want those. This is the entertainment show after all.”
She chose to focus on the Disney and Hollywood movies in a separate interview for Liberty in North Korea, an international nonprofit that helps defectors escape, because that was the part of her story they were interested in — so interested, in fact, that they helped her write the speech. “I wish every platform asked me to talk about a million things and gave me 10 hours to explain my story,” she told me, “but I don’t get invited for those things.”
Twist your mind enough and it begins to make sense. The Yeonmi Park of One Young World existed just before her defection, and never saw a movie. The Yeonmi Park from the Liberty in North Korea interview existed earlier — and did. The Park in “While Time Remains,” her second book, “never slept on a softer or warmer surface than a cold cement floor.” The Park of “In Order to Live” slept on a bed while visiting her father in Pyongyang. None of these things are lies, exactly. They are pieces that support what she sees as an overarching, essential truth, stripped bare of anything that might complicate it.
None of the versions of Yeonmi Park, however, saw anyone eating mud. That story came from a fellow defector on “Now on My Way to Meet You” — a story Park initially disbelieved. “Some of the times when people talked about eating literally dried grass, I would say [back then] that that’s lying,” she told me.
She no longer has such doubts. Park believes survivors, and she is disgusted that so many others do not.
Much of what she says about North Korea is based on the experiences of others — narratives that may already be exaggerated due to an avalanche of perverse incentives. “I have no idea what’s happening in other parts of North Korea. I had to read so many books on North Korea after I escaped,” she told me.
Park never saw people push a train to Pyongyang either, but she insists it isn’t as impossible as it sounds. Sometimes, she told me, there isn’t enough electricity for one engine to pull the train, so they must get a second engine. If the second engine isn’t enough, the people must help by pushing. There are pictures of people pushing trains, she insisted.
After we hung up, Park sent the train pictures. There are three of them, all showing passenger cars that look one strong breeze away from collapsing. One of the pictures doesn’t show any people. Another has tired passengers and a conductor visible inside a train through its windows. The third shows hundreds of people sitting on the roof of a train, packed together tightly. A few people attempt to climb into the cars from the ground. It is a grim scene, but no one is pushing. Park also sends an encyclopedia article from Namu Wiki, a Korean website that resembles Wikipedia, but with less fact-checking. The article contains only an unconfirmed report that North Koreans sometimes roll handmade carts along the train tracks.
I found this evidence-free “proof” more disconcerting than a refusal to comment or even an outright lie. Park must have thought these pictures and the article proved her point: Why else would she send them? She doesn’t believe she is a liar and, after our conversation, neither do I — not in the traditional sense, at least.
With every pivot and oversimplification, every story that strains credulity to breaking point, Park is showing us one of the true horrors of North Korean totalitarianism, something that has nothing to do with rats or trains or mud: a disturbingly fluid concept of truth. It’s looking at a picture that clearly shows one reality and genuinely seeing a different one.
In June, Park’s treatment of reality was on display as she spoke to a rapt and riled group of roughly 2,500 people at Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit about the mud, the starvation and the people who threaten to bring those horrors to America: the woke left at American universities. “They were telling me that math … is not a real thing,” Park said of her teachers at Columbia, an institution with one of the most prestigious math programs in the world. “[That] it’s made up by white men to control minority people.” This claim is familiar to conservatives, who have repeatedly heard that the woke mob has declared math proficiency to be racist. It is true that some professors are concerned about disparate racial outcomes within the field of math, but they seek to end institutional racism within math departments, not the study of math itself. Columbia’s purportedly anti-math stance, Park claimed, was virtually the same lesson she had learned in math class in North Korea. Last February, she put it more bluntly on Megyn Kelly’s podcast: North Korean and American students are now “getting the exact same education.”
Park’s book also touched upon one of the conservative movement’s chief obsessions: gender issues. When she told a professor she believes there are biological differences between men and women, she writes, her professor dismissed her claim by saying Park had been “brainwashed.” When a classmate requested she refer to them with they/them pronouns, Park longed to “tell this fragile soul about life in North Korea versus life in America,” but says she refrained because she could see real pain in the nonbinary person’s eyes. She understood that the university had “brainwashed” this person into believing they were oppressed. The idea that trans people transition so they can claim status as an oppressed minority is a common conservative talking point.
Park’s university horror stories about the left go beyond the university. In 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests, Park made headlines when she claimed three Black women had robbed her near her Chicago home. When she begged passersby to stop the thieves, she claimed, they surrounded her, called her racist and prevented her from calling the police — a tale of racially charged violence that validated conservative fears of riots and lawlessness as a result of the protests. “They’re not going to prosecute those girls,” Park said on Rogan’s podcast a year later, referring to the thieves. But security footage shows that only two people — a man and a woman — robbed her, and the police investigated the incident. They never found the man, but Park picked the woman out of a lineup, and she was sentenced to prison before Park’s appearance on the podcast.
It’s perhaps this ability to treat facts as malleable that has allowed Park to find like-minded allies on the MAGA right. Hours after Park regaled the audience about her four years at an Ivy League reeducation camp, Lauren Boerbert, the controversial Republican congresswoman from Colorado, took the stage and railed against Target and the so-called “trans agenda,” criticizing the giant retailer for what she described as its “tuck-friendly swimsuits for tots.” A Target spokesperson was quick to point out that no such swimsuits exist, either in stores or online; Target only sells trans-friendly attire in adult sizes. But the right-wing pundit Candace Owens made the same claim at the summit, and Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson went even further, showing a video of himself trashing a Target pride display. The audience cheered. To them, it did not seem to matter whether this story was factually accurate. The wider point felt true.
When you believe that your political enemies are an existential threat, the truth becomes whatever it needs to be to defeat them. Donald Trump won the election. Books with gay characters are pornography. Liberals are totalitarian communists, wokeism is directly analogous to the Maoist cultural revolution, and if we continue embracing progressive policies, America will end up like Park’s nightmare version of North Korea, rats and all.
As the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote after World War II: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Park escaped a totalitarian regime that operates on fear, paranoia and privation, and such regimes leave scars on those who escape. Some defectors bear the marks of torture. Some struggle with mental illness. Others retain scraps of the mentality that bound them to a totalitarian society. “They’re from North Korea. The truth doesn’t matter there,” Song, the Melbourne University academic, told me. “And it’s sort of embedded in their mentality wherever they go. It’s for their survival.”
Perhaps ironically, Park captures this sentiment best in her own words. At the end of “While Time Remains,” she delivers a stark warning to her readers. “When a people become untethered from history, when they become unshackled from reality, when they lose the ability to understand cause and effect,” she wrote, “they become ripe for exploitation from those who hold real power.”
Sign up to our mailing list to receive our stories in your inbox.
newlinesmag.com · December 7, 2023
12. Global Turmoil And Rising Tensions On The Korean Peninsula: The Need For A Vital U.S.-South Korea Alliance
I just ordered Scott's new book.
Excerpts:
Despite rising geopolitical rivalry and shared security threats, the United States and South Korea remain vulnerable to threats from within. The risk of conflict between allies is magnified by deepening domestic political polarization in both countries. Those trends may impede the ability of the alliance to operate effectively despite mutual interests in working together as international security, economic, and technology partners, as I argue in my new book: The U.S.-South Korea Alliance: How It May Fail and Why It Must Not."
Ironically, the very convergence of interest that has enabled the Biden and Yoon administrations to work closely with each other runs the risk of becoming a liability for alliance cooperation. This would happen if one side or the other comes to be viewed as the exclusively preferred partner in managing shared alliance interests rather than political opposition leaders who might espouse nationalist or isolationist political platforms. Such developments would be particularly unsettling against the backdrop of geopolitical rivalry that makes the U.S.-South Korea alliance vital not only on the Korean Peninsula but also in addressing international conflicts around the world.
Global Turmoil And Rising Tensions On The Korean Peninsula: The Need For A Vital U.S.-South Korea Alliance
There should be concern that an escalation of inter-Korean tensions on the ground following North Korea’s successful satellite launch during Thanksgiving week might turn the Korean Peninsula into another international security flash point and a possible breaking point for global stability.
Forbes · by Scott Snyder · December 9, 2023
U.S. President Joe Biden, right, and Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea's president, shake hands at a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House during a state visit in Washington, DC, U.S., on Wednesday, April 26, 2023.
Al Drago/Bloomberg
The Joe Biden administration has its hands full as it juggles responses to both the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas while keeping an eye on cross-strait tensions in the run-up to Taiwan’s January 2024 presidential elections.
It is understandable that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s claims that he now has eyes on the White House, the Pentagon, and critical U.S. naval centers in the region following a successful satellite launch during Thanksgiving week might have generated the equivalent of a yawn from the White House, even as Kim’s sister Yo Jong once again reiterated North Korea’s distaste for dialogue with the United States.
But there should be concern that an escalation of inter-Korean tensions on the ground following North Korea’s successful launch might turn the Korean Peninsula into another international security flash point and a possible breaking point for global stability.
TV news in South Korea shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (C) and his daughter (2nd R) waves as he joins a photo session with a group of engineers and scientists, who have contributed to the country's successful launch of a reconnaissance satellite, at the National Aerospace Technology Administration in Pyongyang.
KIM Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Security dynamics on the Korean Peninsula have quietly been on a downward trajectory during the past year. North Korea launches long-range missiles with impunity due to UN Security Council paralysis arising from U.S.-Russia tensions and U.S.-China geopolitical rivalry. Meanwhile, Kim Jong Un has maintained domestic political control by surviving both the humiliation of the February 2019 Trump-Kim Hanoi summit failure and the self-quarantine imposed in response to the pandemic.
Kim has discovered post-pandemic that the new environment shaped by major power rivalry has provided greater maneuverability to evade UN sanctions and exploit Russia’s need for munitions amid the war in Ukraine. Putin has relieved Kim’s isolation, assisted North Korea with a new source of funding and technical support for its military modernization, and provided a form of legitimation for North Korea as an internationally accepted nuclear state.
But the immediate trigger for escalating inter-Korean tensions lies with the tit-for-tat dynamic exemplified in both the inter-Korean satellite race and the decision by both sides to step back from a 2018 military agreement North Korea signed with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in.
15 April 2023, South Korea, Joint Security Area: U.S. Army soldiers stand in the Joint Security Area (JSA) of the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.
Soeren Stache/picture alliance via Getty Images
Following North Korea’s satellite launch, the Yoon administration announced that it would no longer be bound by provisions of the 2018 arms accord that restricted South Korean forces from utilizing equipment near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) to monitor North Korean activities. In response, North Korea is restoring and rearming guard posts on the North Korean side of the DMZ.
Tit-for-tat escalation of tensions could generate an unwanted crisis similar to the 2015 escalation of tensions that occurred following injuries to South Korean soldiers from an undetected North Korean landmine placed near a South Korean guard post.
The Biden and Yoon administrations are working more closely than ever to coordinate peninsular and regional security and economic policies, motivated in part by a convergence of interests in safeguarding international stability based on the rule of law in an era of rising strategic competition. Moreover, President Yoon has taken steps to normalize South Korea’s relationship with Japan and overcome limitations on trilateral cooperation among the United States, Japan, and South Korea to meet common security threats.
Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea's president, from left, US President Joe Biden and Fumio Kishida, Japan's prime minister, at a news conference during a trilateral summit at Camp David, Maryland, US, on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023.
Ting Shen/Bloomberg
Nonetheless, the commitment to institutionalize trilateral cooperation remains fragile, especially in the event of a political transition in the United States and/or South Korea to a more nationalistic America-First or Korea-first approach focusing on narrowly defined national needs to the exclusion of U.S.-South Korea alliance coordination.
Despite rising geopolitical rivalry and shared security threats, the United States and South Korea remain vulnerable to threats from within. The risk of conflict between allies is magnified by deepening domestic political polarization in both countries. Those trends may impede the ability of the alliance to operate effectively despite mutual interests in working together as international security, economic, and technology partners, as I argue in my new book: The U.S.-South Korea Alliance: How It May Fail and Why It Must Not."
Ironically, the very convergence of interest that has enabled the Biden and Yoon administrations to work closely with each other runs the risk of becoming a liability for alliance cooperation. This would happen if one side or the other comes to be viewed as the exclusively preferred partner in managing shared alliance interests rather than political opposition leaders who might espouse nationalist or isolationist political platforms. Such developments would be particularly unsettling against the backdrop of geopolitical rivalry that makes the U.S.-South Korea alliance vital not only on the Korean Peninsula but also in addressing international conflicts around the world.
Forbes · by Scott Snyder · December 9, 2023
13. Kim Jong Un, Demographic Destiny, and DINKs
Does everyone have demographic problems? If so, what does that mean? Now and for the future?
Excerpts:
While American fertility isn’t ideal, it’s far from the imminent nightmare facing South Korea. Forty years after the country’s fertility fell below replacement, South Korea hit a new low just this year: 0.7 births per woman. Unless things turn around soon, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat explains, the country is heading for “a depopulation exceeding what the Black Death delivered to Europe in the 14th century.”
“The current trend in South Korea is more than just a grim surprise,” Douthat writes. “It’s a warning about what’s possible for us.”
Knowing us, Americans won’t heed the warning, but South Korea’s neighbor to the north certainly is. Under Kim Jong Un, North Korean fertility is approximately 1.6 births per woman — below replacement but not dissimilar from the fertility rates of many western nations.
Recently, the North Korean dictator acknowledged the falling birth rate and encouraged women to have children, saying, “When all mothers clearly understand that it is patriotism to give birth to many children and do so positively, our cause of building a powerful socialist country can be hastened faster.”
Only time will tell whether Kim’s natalist plea will be met with more children. My hunch is that he’ll fail, if only because altruism doesn’t seem to be a major factor in the decision to have kids.
Kim Jong Un, Demographic Destiny, and DINKs -
Even a dictator understands fertility better than the latest millennial trend.
spectator.org · by Mary Frances Myler · December 8, 2023
I attended a wedding last weekend, celebrating the nuptials of the fourth of my college friends to get married since we graduated in May of last year. The countercultural nature of young marriage isn’t lost on me or my friends. As vows are increasingly delayed and fertility rates linger well below replacement, there’s less and less certainty around the schoolyard rhyme that “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage.”
Brides like my college friends — 22 or 23 years old — were the norm around 1980, but the average age of marriage has increased over the past four decades for men and women alike. Today, the average American woman gets married at age 28, if she gets married at all. A record 22 percent of 40-year-old women have never been married, and that number is projected to increase. (READ MORE from Mary Frances Myler:
With younger generations seeing marriage as a capstone event for their young adulthood, men and women are devoting more time to building a career, attaining financial independence, or just “adulting.” Marriage is increasingly viewed as a cherry on top, not a foundation upon which to build. And with this change in priorities, couples are having children later in life. The average age of first-time mothers was 21 in 1972, increasing to age 26 in 2018 and 27.3 in 2021.
No Babies, No Future
As family formation is delayed — not just in the U.S. but across the world — fertility rates continue to fall. Currently, American fertility hovers around 1.784 births per woman, a marginal increase from 2022, and researchers project a continued decline in population growth over the next 30 years. When fertility dips below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman, society is headed for transformation, either through demographic distortion where the elderly outnumber the young or through mass immigration promoted to fill a shrinking workforce.
While American fertility isn’t ideal, it’s far from the imminent nightmare facing South Korea. Forty years after the country’s fertility fell below replacement, South Korea hit a new low just this year: 0.7 births per woman. Unless things turn around soon, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat explains, the country is heading for “a depopulation exceeding what the Black Death delivered to Europe in the 14th century.”
“The current trend in South Korea is more than just a grim surprise,” Douthat writes. “It’s a warning about what’s possible for us.”
Knowing us, Americans won’t heed the warning, but South Korea’s neighbor to the north certainly is. Under Kim Jong Un, North Korean fertility is approximately 1.6 births per woman — below replacement but not dissimilar from the fertility rates of many western nations.
Recently, the North Korean dictator acknowledged the falling birth rate and encouraged women to have children, saying, “When all mothers clearly understand that it is patriotism to give birth to many children and do so positively, our cause of building a powerful socialist country can be hastened faster.”
Only time will tell whether Kim’s natalist plea will be met with more children. My hunch is that he’ll fail, if only because altruism doesn’t seem to be a major factor in the decision to have kids.
DINKs and Postmodern Narcissism
The environmentalist anti-natalist position is familiar — don’t have kids because you’ll only strain the world’s limited resources, accelerate climate change, and doom your heirs to a dismal life on a dying planet — but it doesn’t seem to be all that popular in real life. If people aren’t having kids, they’re making that choice for far more selfish reasons.
Over the past week, videos of “DINKs,” millennials with “dual income, no kids,” circulated on TikTok and X/Twitter. If young people aren’t eager to start a brood, it might have less to do with climate change and more to do with money and near-total freedom.
“We’re DINKs,” one couple said, “We go to Trader Joe’s and workout classes on the weekends.” They can “go to Florida on a whim,” they boast. And take up golf, and vacation in Europe, and get a full night’s sleep, and buy 8-dollar lattes.
There are going to be a lot of “DINKs” in the future in their 50s to 80s that are going to be regretting this strategy.
pic.twitter.com/BZU2xNQrmZ
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) December 5, 2023
Another couple shared a similar litany of the perks of childlessness: going out to eat, buying their favorite snacks from Costco, spending money on themselves instead of a kid, not having to arrange childcare.
You’re both genetic dead ends congrats pic.twitter.com/IACLvQzp1v
— ᴡᴇϟ (@offtheraiIs) December 4, 2023
Taking into consideration the pressures of wage stagnation, increased housing prices, and the decreased possibilities of one-income households, it’s understandable that younger generations face significant hurdles in their pursuit of the traditional American dream. But while there’s certainly nothing wrong with enjoying the phases of life and marriage that precede parenthood, the glorification of the DINK lifestyle simply puts mediocre adolescence on a pedestal. Freed from children and the corresponding obligations, these millennials can make money and spend it on, frankly, petty expenses.
Children don’t exist to provide fulfillment to their parents, and it’s wrong to treat family size as conservative or religious bona fides, but a society that prizes unhampered independence over family formation will ultimately collapse in on itself. Though his main goal is the production of more workers for his communist hellscape, Kim Jong Un at least has the rhetoric to express why children are good. It’s not much, but the expression of civic duty is far more compelling than the DINK treatment of children as obstacles at worst, accessories at best.
Amid these utilitarian views of children and fertility, the words of the Catholic wedding Mass stand out. Prior to exchanging vows, the bride and groom stand before the congregation and declare their commitment to “accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church.”
Just as countercultural as young marriage — perhaps even more so — is this radical openness to life as a gift from God. It takes humility, maturity, and the willingness to lay down one’s life for another. Children aren’t guaranteed, and they are not primarily a social duty or a hazard to avoid. They’re a gift. And I, for one, am excited to see my friends and their husbands accept those gifts lovingly from God and bring them up to be lights in a dark world.
Mary Frances Myler is a writer from Northern Michigan now living in Washington, D.C. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.
READ MORE by Mary Frances Myler:
Is Friendsgiving the Future?
Weed Comes to the Buckeye State
spectator.org · by Mary Frances Myler · December 8, 2023
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
| 
