30 April 2013
by Daniel Pinkston
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All but seven of the remaining South Korean workers at the only joint venture with the North have returned home.
The Unification Ministry in Seoul says five people, including the chairman of the Gaeseong Industrial Development Management Committee, plus two telecommunications company employees will remain in the zone to negotiate “unresolved issues.”
North East Asia Deputy Project Director, Daniel Pinkston, joined Arirang News to give an analysis of the current situation.
11 April 2013
by rtraynor
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North Korea has moved at least one midrange missile to its east coast for a possible test firing and may launch others. In this video, Crisis Group’s Daniel Pinkston speaks to the Wall Street Journal about what North Korea hopes to gain by escalating tensions.
8 April 2013
by Daniel Pinkston
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PHOTO: Uriminzokkiri
After five days of restricting access to the inter-Korean Kaesŏng Industrial Complex (KIC), Pyongyang ordered suspension of operations pending a review on the future of the project. KIC was established in accordance with an agreement reached during the June 2000 inter-Korean summit and remains one of the few symbols of inter-Korean cooperation. The project is home to 123 South Korean firms that employ about 53,000 North Korean workers who produce labour-intensive manufactured goods that are losing competitiveness in South Korea’s increasingly high-wage economy. For Pyongyang, KIC is an important source of hard currency, given that both the country’s export competitiveness and its foreign-exchange sources are very limited.
The North Korean government receives about $90 million per year for KIC labour services, but workers see only a portion of this, which they receive in North Korean wŏn at the official exchange rate. Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and supporters of the “sunshine policy” envisioned that KIC would be a transformative project that would draw North Korea out of its isolation. It offered an opportunity for North Koreans to see the subversive reality of an alternative economic system; this was in turn expected to encourage reform and opening. Instead, North Korea has operated KIC as if it were a hermetically sealed space station. South Korea has supplied electricity, water and waste-water treatment, heating oil, construction materials, and components and material inputs for the manufactures. The only things North Korea has supplied are the land and labour.
Given that the North succeeded in sealing off KIC, why would the Pyongyang leadership now risk losing it? There are two possibilities, neither of which is reassuring for the future of the Korean peninsula.
21 March 2013
by rtraynor
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In this episode of the Korea Today show, Dan Pinkston, North East Asia Deputy Project Director, speaks about the current stand off between the two Koreas (Dan Pinkston is interviewed in this video at 15:10).
13 March 2013
by rtraynor
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North Korea has taken a number of recent steps that raise the risks of miscalculation, inadvertent escalation and deadly conflict on the Korean peninsula. On 12 December, it launched a small satellite into orbit in defiance of UN Security Council Resolutions 1695, 1718 and 1874. The Council condemned this in Resolution 2087 (22 January). Three weeks later, Pyongyang conducted its third underground nuclear explosion. In response, the Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2094 (7 March) condemning the test and expanding economic sanctions. This was preceded by multiple vitriolic threats from the North. While none of this is unprecedented, the danger of unintended consequences has increased considerably. All sides need to issue more reassuring statements, exercise caution during planned military exercises and, especially, the North must avoid further blatant disregard of its international obligations.
The North’s threats had slight nuances and different audiences. The military’s main target was the U.S-South Korea alliance and the UN Command (UNC) as they begin large combined exercises in the South. It declared the Security Council actions hostile and the annual U.S.-South Korean combined military exercises “the most dangerous nuclear war manoeuvres targeted against the [North]“. The North’s army said it would take practical (but undefined) counter-actions, no longer recognise the 1953 Korean War Armistice as of 11 March, shut down operations at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjŏm and cut off the telephone line to the UNC. The televised statement also declared that all armed forces, including reserves and the Strategic Rocket Forces, were prepared to act according to an “operational plan signed by Kim Jŏng-ŭn” and that the army was ready to counter even a nuclear attack with a “diversified precision nuclear strike of Korean style”.
12 March 2013
by rtraynor
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In this video interview with The Telegraph, Dan Pinkston, North East Asia Project Deputy Director, says the new threats from North Korea are a result of Pyongyang feeling “emboldened” by recent successful nuclear tests.
11 March 2013
by Daniel Pinkston
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C), his wife Ri Sol-Ju (L) and former NBA basketball player Dennis Rodman clap during an exhibition basketball game in Pyongyang in this undated picture released by North Korea’s KCNA news agency on March 1, 2013.
The last couple of years have been tough for North Korea watchers seeking new policy prescriptions for dealing with Pyongyang. The Six-Party Talks appear dead and Pyongyang has no consistent and formal diplomatic processes with either Seoul or Washington. Back channel efforts have failed. President Obama fulfilled his promise to reach out to adversaries by sending a secret delegation to Pyongyang twice in 2012, but this effort was rebuffed. The Lee Myung-bak administration also held secret meetings with DPRK officials in October 2009 and June 2011 to seek an inter-Korean summit, but without success.
More recently, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt led a delegation to Pyongyang in January 2013, but the group was widely criticised for visiting in the wake of the DPRK’s Ŭnha-3 launch the previous month. DPRK media described the delegation as having paid respect to former leaders Kim Il-sŏng and Kim Jŏng-il as great men, and as having recognised the DPRK as a great power in science and technology.
And now basketball genius (I’m not joking) Dennis Rodman, former National Basketball Association (NBA) champion and winner of seven consecutive NBA rebounding titles, has returned from a well-publicised trip to Pyongyang. Rodman was part of a group that included three Harlem Globetrotter players and Vice Media . This group, especially Rodman, is facing severe criticism. Rodman has been denounced for having called Kim Jŏng-ŭn a “friend for life” and an “awesome guy.” Professor Robert Kelly at Pusan National University sums up the view that high profile foreign visitors do a disservice by providing domestic propaganda value that lends credibility to the regime. While I tend to agree with Kelly, I think the Rodman visit is different and opens a window of opportunity to bring change to North Korea.
25 January 2013
by Daniel Pinkston
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Sign reads “Let’s fight to the death for the party central committee led by the great comrade Kim Jung-un.” PHOTO: CRISISGROUP/Dan Pinkston
As expected, the DPRK has rejected UN Security Council Resolution 2087 adopted 22 January (EST) in response to the launch of the Ŭnha-3 space launch vehicle (SLV) on 12 December 2012. The DPRK Foreign Ministry statement dismissed the resolution as illegitimate less than two hours after it was adopted by the Security Council. The DPRK National Defense Commission (NDC) issued its own statement the following day, threatening to launch more satellite boosters and missiles, and to conduct nuclear tests in order to deal with the United States. Not to be outdone, the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea issued its own statement against the ROK one day after the NDC, promising to wage war against the South if it participates in the sanctions regime against Pyongyang.
The DPRK’s displeasure with Resolution 2087 may have been expected, but Pyongyang’s belligerent tone caught many by surprise, as the expectation had been that North Korea would moderate its behaviour following the death of Kim Jong-il in December 2011. For a year we have seen reports of Kim Jŏng-ŭn’s leadership style and how it contrasted with his father’s. Kim Jong-il was a relative recluse whose spoken words were never broadcast on radio or television. Kim only spoke once before the public when he uttered one sentence at the beginning of a military parade in the early 1990s.
21 December 2012
by Daniel Pinkston
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The Unha-3 (Milky Way 3) rocket carrying the second version of Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite, is launched at West Sea Satellite Launch Site in Cholsan county, North Pyongan province, December 12, 2012. PHOTO: REUTERS/KCNA
North Korea has beaten its South Korean rival in the race to place a satellite into earth orbit, becoming the 10th nation to do so. Despite this impressive scientific and engineering achievement, the launch violates UN Security Council resolutions that prohibit all North Korean launches using ballistic technologies. Pyongyang argues that as a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty it has the sovereign right to launch satellites because Article 1 stipulates that “outer space…shall be free for exploration and use by all states without discrimination of any kind…” However, Pyongyang conveniently ignores the section of Article 1 that requires states to explore space “in accordance with international law.” UN Security Council resolutions are considered international law, and the Outer Space Treaty does not authorize signatories to disregard or violate resolutions as they exercise their right to explore outer space.
22 November 2012
by Daniel Pinkston
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Naro-1 space launch vehicle. Photos: Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI)
During a recent visit to Beijing, I was reminded that many Chinese believe the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-ROK alliances are aimed at containing China. My Chinese friends also confirmed what I’ve been reading: there appears to be a growing perception that the United States benefits from rising tensions in East Asia. I find this Chinese perspective quite puzzling. Although some cynical critics of the U.S. “military-industrial complex” stress that certain defense firms are poised to boost revenues through increased arms sales to the region, the threat of an armed conflict in the region puts much greater national economic benefits at risk. I do not believe rising tension in East Asia is in the U.S. national interest, and I do not believe it is welcomed or encouraged by senior American government officials. Continue Reading →