Sino-NK

Germany’s media market is particularly good at covering certain East Asian issues.  Der Tagesspiegel‘s coverage of the Ai Weiwei affair, for instance, was nothing short of spectacular, and ongoing attention to Japan and China’s memory wars is also top-notch among journalists and writers in Berlin.  Add to that a certain German flair for coverage of trends among writers and dramatists in Beijing (and almost hyperactive coverage of the Chinese Automobile-wirtschaft), and you have a distinct set of strengths which, at times, can surpass those of the Ganesha-like Wall Street Journal and match the damn-near heroic intensity of McClatchy’s bureau chief in Beijing.

But the German writers are at their best when dealing with Korea; there is, to borrow a term, a certain Empfindung, a feeling or empathy, which German writers seem to take on when gazing upon the divided peninsula. Barbed wire along the Tumen is readily transposed to the plains of pre-1990 Mecklenberg; the North Korean refugees become Mauerspringern, or “those who leap over the wall” (翻墙者).  And then there is the commitment to human rights among French writers in combination with faith in man’s capacity to rebel, to spy, and to reside for decades in existential funk; Sartre in North Korea.  Anyway, here are the relevant links.  — Adam Cathcart, Editor-in-Chief

– J. Janowski and M. Kollenberg, “Rette meine Freund: Fluchtlinge aus Nordkorea in China [Save My Friend: Refugees from North Korea in China],” Berlinger Tageszeitung (TAZ), 26 February, 2012. — A report from two German reporters who attended a rally outside the Chinese Embassy in Seoul, noting that deportation of all 150,000 estimated North Koreans residing illegally in China is not desired from the standpoint of PRC stability. The reporters interview Kim Eun-ju, who fled the DPRK as a child in 2002. The reporters also register a certain surprise that Lee Myung-bak would endanger commercial relations with the PRC, its top trading partner, over this human rights issue.  (This same trade-off had been a major theme in German reportage about Angela Merkel’s government failure to stand up for Ai Weiwei in the face of Wen Jiabao’s huge commercial contracts, not letting art or morality get in the way of business.)  In an earlier commentary, the TAZ Asia Editor Sven Hansen registered China’s desire to keep things quiet on the North Korean front, maintaining a delicate balance between influence and public rebuff.  The refugee issue threatens to upset that calculus.

– Song Hong-gun, “Réfugiés et espions à la petite semaine [Refugees and Small-Time Spies],” Courrier International [originally published in Korean in Chugan Dong-a]  26 February 2012. — Song chronicles the links between refugees and the monetization of the information which they carry, implying a structure of incentives for atrocity videos, photos from inside the DPRK, and Party documents.  A copy of the Korean People’s Army newspaper, Chosun Inmingun, can net as much as 300 000- 500 000 won (about 200-340 euros) Euros. Competition for information pinballs between Japanese journalists and South Koreans.  In this article, a key phrase is “information trafficking,” and the notion of frequently-falsified information is frankly broached.  In particular, the essay describes how false stamps or chops of various North Korean (or Chinese) public ministries can be obtained on the border. Not noted in the piece is how such information ends up in the hands of Wall Street Journal op-ed writers or in US Congressional testimony, but skirmishes about this kind of micr0-level source can be read about further on certain One Free Korea posts.

"Intelligence Black Hole" or Overflowing Black Boxes? | Illustration by Ares, courtesy Courriel International

– Stephan Blancke, a technology and espionage specialist residing in Berlin, has published a long academic article with a colleague, in German, on a fantastically relevant subject:

Stephan Blancke and Jens Rosenke, “Blut ist dicker als Wasser. Die chinesisch-nordkoreanische Militär- und Geheimdienstkooperation [Blood is Thicker than Water: Chinese-North Korean Military and Espionage Cooperation],” Zeitschrift für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik [Journal for Foreign- and Security Policy]  (April 2011): 263 – 294.

The 31-page journal article is briefly listed on the author’s fascinating occasional blog, and is speeding on its way to the waiting hands of the present writer via the magic of Pacific Lutheran University’s Interlibrary Loan service, so as to be broken down for SinoNK.com readers. In the meantime, Stephan Blancke is very much a name to watch.  Any person who credibly writes posts like “Hacking the North Korean Elite” is worth more than an Ueberblick.

– Finally, though it disrupts the European theme and is fully bereft of any Rasputin references, do not miss Sunny Lee’s recent missive in the Asia Times, entitled “Why North Korea May Muddle Along.” Among other things, the essay argues that you have gotten things entirely backwards; what needs to be prepared for, one follows, is Kim Jong Un’s 2050 dystopia.  In lieu of a bona fide SinoNK.com podcast (though that, too, is in the works like a palace coup), Sunny Lee’s provocative essay is read aloud on Soundcloud on behalf of SinoNK.com’s “listening readers.”