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Days of The Rat: Predictions for 2008

[Tokyo, late December, the blackest hour of the night. At the door of my apartment, a feeble, scratching knock. Outside stands a man so ancient that it is impossible even to guess his age. His dark skin is papery and wrinkled, his eyes are brown pools, and his earlobes hang loose from the weight of the polished rhinoceros horns which pierce them. He presses an object into my hand, picks up his blow pipe, and melts into the night.

It is a twist of parchment containing three or four lumps of a dried out, woody substance. My sniffs of gratification turn into cackles of triumph. My wishes have been granted. My dreams have come true. The future is mine!

Every year this blog solicits predictions for the year ahead from Asia’s most renowned prophets and soothsayers. The results have been lamentable. The Sage of Singapore, whom I consulted for 2006, was a bit of a disappointment. Madam Sosostris, last year’s featured soothsayer, was a disgrace! What was the fatuous old trout on about?

This year I decided to take matters into my own hands. Through contacts among the Dayak people of Borneo, I acquired certain . . . substances, harvested from the rain forest by the timanggong, or animist wizards. When inhaled, in combination with the correct incantations, they open invisible doors which allow glimpses of the future. Men of weak spirit would be driven mad by such visions, but this is a risk which I am prepared to take for you, my readers.

I drop the woody lumps, as instructed, into a cauldron of snake blood, and heat it slowly, breathing in the fumes and muttering the eldritch syllables inked on the parchment. Within moments, I am transported to the jungle. Faces painted with blood and clay flash before my eyes. My ears are filled with the sounds of insects and the screams of animals and humans. The Great Lord of the Forest taps me on the shoulder and whispers in my ear . . . Here is what I see in 2008, Heisei 20, the Year of the Rat . . . ]

Flying Seoul-o

Writing about foreign stereotypes last week, I made sceptical reference to the popular notion of Japan as a land awash in bizarre pornography, where every other salarymen spends his lunch break hunched over rape manga, downloading bukkake videos, and purchasing schoolgirls' underwear from his office vending machine. Japanese smut is certainly distinctive, I acknowledged, but if it really is more widely consumed than in the rest of the world - show us the evidence.

Committed Asia Exile reader Joseh Miller has taken up the challenge by sending me a link to this fascinating page on the website Internet Filter Review. It goes some way towards answering a profound question: who are the world's biggest wankers?

The answers will amaze and appal you.

Stroky, stroky: On the Six Party Talks

Watching the TV pictures of the Six Party negotiators just now, I was struck by something that I hadn't noticed yesterday.

At the end of their past meetings, if they had anything remotely like an agreement to celebrate, the six chief delegates would stand before the cameras in the strange pose illustrated above (this picture is from a few years ago, not yesterday). Not quite a handshake, not quite a clasp. Each Six Party Talker thrusts forward his hand and sort of it bunches it in with all the others. It looks uncomfortable in every sense.

So yesterday, nice, patient, quietly spoken Christopher Hill, the US assistant secretary of state (third from the right in the picture above - apparently he's become something of a sex symbol for middle-aged Chinese ladies) reached in for the ritual patting of the palms. Standing to his right was his North Korean delegate, Kim Kye Gwan (second from the right above). Mr Kim had just signed what everyone has been calling a "landmark" agreement. And he has always done this claspy-touchy thing before.

But this time, he refused to play along. He beamed warmly and nodded encouragingly, but his hands remained at his side. Since he was in the middle, the two plenipotentiaries to his right couldn't clasp either. This produced an awkward situation in which half the delegates stroked one another's hands, and half didn't.

Mr Kim didn't hold hands.

Why didn't he want to hold hands?

Below is my op-ed piece from this morning's paper. For a much more positive view of the US government see this morning's leader.

If anyone finds a web image of the group photograph from yesterday, could they send me the link? Thanks.

You're never going to keep me down

Kim Jong Il is back. Despite those rumours from South Korean intelligence, three weeks ago, that he had been arrested by his own military, the state run Korean Central News Agency reports today that he is as full as beans as ever, pounding the revolutionary sites and taking in a grove of "slogan-bearing trees".

I attache the text of the KCNA report below. Um, don't feel that you have to read it all the way to the end . . .

And here's a snap commentary on this week's round of Six Party Talks written for Times Online.

I'm not talking to you

My news story about the resumption of the Six Way Talks on North Korea nukes was a little squeezed in this morning's paper, so I attach it below in fuller form. I'm amazed (but then perhaps I'm not surprised at all . . .) how little comment there has been on this about-turn by the Bush administration. For the past four years, despite the pleas of diplomats, Democrats, Korea experts around the world, and the South Korean president, the US government has stood firm in its rejection of any talks with North Korea.

Result: stalemate.

Beginning two weeks ago year in Berlin, and this week in Beijing, it abandoned that policy and held lengthy and detailed bilateral negotiations with the Norks.

Result: things start moving . . .

North Korea: leave it to the psychics

What is going on in North Korea? Perhaps nothing - but there are people out there who want you to believe that something astonishing is about to happen. Last week, journalists in Britain and Japan (and probably elsewhere) were contacted by "senior South Korean sources" with thrilling rumours - that Kim Jong Il had been detained in an apparent coup.

One version of the story suggested that he had been seized by a rebel unit of the Korean People's Army in the east coast city of Wonsan. The Japanese news agency, Jiji, had it that he was under house arrest at his villa in Wonsan, possibly in poor health, while a fierce battle for power took place among his senior lieutenants. A Jiji source in Tokyo told the agency that an unspecified relative of Mr Kim had been purged and arrested last September. The South Korean government denied it - but then they would, wouldn't they? By implication, the source of these leaks were People Who Know - deep, spooky, well-connected and, inevitably, right-wing conservatives.

But, this time at least, none of it was true, and within a couple of days the "sources" were acknowledging as much. Someone was lying - but who?

Days of the Boar: Predictions for 2007

[Madame Sosostris, the renowned clairvoyant, is very bunged up when I call on her, but even dosed up on Sudafed and Flu Strength Lemsip she remains one of the most brilliantly gifted ladies in the expanded Europe Union, and her Tarot pack is (for want of a better word) wicked.

Her parlour is in a narrow gritty street in Shoreditch, a quarter of minicab offices and kebab shops, unencroached upon by rising rents and yuppification. A mute man in his sixties (said to be Madame S's son by a famous matinee idol) answers my ring and leads me into the dim room where she sits, an ancient figure wreathed in scarves, her black eyes sparkling in a mask of powder and mascara. She croaks a greeting, and directs me to the leather armchair at her side. A cup of bitter tea is offered in a brittle China cup. I hand over the agreed amount which she counts with supple fingers.

"So, my dear," she wheezes. "What's it to be? To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits? To report the behaviour of the sea monster? Describe the horoscope? Haruspicate or scry?"

"I seek, Madame, to know what will transpire in the Orient in the twelvemonth ahead."

"In the Orient, eh?" she says, shuffling the Tarot deck. Cards flash and are covered, some of them familiar to me. The drowned Phoenician Sailor; Belladonna, Lady of the Rocks; the man with three staves; the one-eyed merchant. "I do not find The Hanged Man," she says in a tone of puzzlement. "Curious, in the circumstances."

Here, then, are Madame Sosostris's predictions for 2007, the Year of the Boar.]

Pyongyang Busted

Haneda airport in Tokyo, at 10.45 yesterday morning. I have just landed back in Japan after my jaunt to Mt Kumgang-san in North Korea last week, and a night in the South Korean capital, Seoul. At the customs desk, the uniformed officer asks me how long I've been away.

'Four days."

"Have you been to any countries other than South Korea?"

"Well, yes ... North Korea."

"North Korea,” he said slowly. “North Korea. Did you buy anything when you were there?”

“Just some souvenirs."

“North Korean souvenirs, eh? Could you show me?”

And then it dawned on me – I was a sanctions buster!

Into the Diamond Mountains

[Here's my piece from yesterday's paper about my trip last week to Mt Kumgang in North Korea.I'll try to post more on this in the next few days, along with some pictures by The Times photographer, David Bebber.]

The cosy, the frightening, the cute and the sinister

From Richard Lloyd Parry

At a tourist resort at Mt Kumgang, North Korea two worlds collide

The journey to Mt Kumgang in North Korea, the world's most bizarre mini-break, begins at dawn in an atmosphere of menace and confrontation. Electrified fences and tank traps line the road on the South Korean side of the border, and the forest on either side is strewn with mines. Travellers are given stern instructions about conduct on the far side: don't take photographs from the coach windows; don't speak to the North Korean officials at immigration; whatever you do, don't talk about politics.

Passports and bags are scrutinised and x-rayed, and one by one we are admitted to the world's most impenetrable country, a rogue state notorious for oppression, xenophobia and most recently, for nuclear proliferation. And there among the granite-faced soldiers, waving his paw in a gesture of cheery welcome, is a man dressed as a giant brown teddy bear.

The morning after

[Below is my analysis piece from today's paper. The splash by James Bone and I is here; plus sterling background and analysis from Bronwen Maddox (on the world's limited options), Richard Beeston (on the potential for a nuclear arms race), Mike Evans (on the technicalities of delivering a bomb) and Jane Macartney (on China's dilemma).]

At times of hunger, when the rice has gone and all the dogs and cats have been eaten, North Korean schoolchildren scavenge the fields around their villages for crows, dragonflies and rats. The countryside is littered with abandoned factories – not only is there no fuel for the machinery, but all the metal from the power cables has been stripped and sold. Diplomats in the capital Pyongyang worry about sending their cooks out to shop for dinner parties because the few hundred pounds they carry with them is the equivalent of several decades’ wages for the average worker.

Economically, North Korea is a husk of a country, poor by the standards of sub-Saharan Africa, let alone those of booming East Asia. But yesterday, despite ideological bankruptcy, growing diplomatic isolation, and a famine in the 1990s which killed as many as 3 million people, it became the ninth member of the nuclear club. Whatever else is true about North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il – and there is no doubt that he is a tyrant and a killer on a historic scale – it is impossible to deny his genius in playing the weakest possible hand of cards with maximum shrewdness and skill.

They went and did it

It's just before noon, a misty early autumn day, and I'm waiting to cross the road opposite City Hall in central Seoul. A lot of policemen are standing around, and the lights are taking an unusually long time to change. Suddenly there's a buzz of motorbikes and black-windowed limousines with little Rising Sun flags flapping. It's Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, just arrived after his rather successful summit meeting in Beijing.

I walk to the bank and change my Indonesian rupiah (the left overs of last week's holiday money) into Korean won. Then back around the corner to meet Dr Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert from Kookmin University, for lunch. "Did you hear?" he says. "They've gone ahead with the nuclear test."

It's not a surprise (although I hadn't expected it this early). And yet, stepping back a yard or two, how remarkable - that a country like North Korea, a starving, maimed wreck of a country, should have become a nuclear state. From the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France, down through Israel, India and Pakistan, and now - North Korea. It's like a nuclear armed Cambodia or Albania. Whatever you think of Kim Jong Il, what an amazing thing he has achieved.

How this happened and what happens next will be picked over for years, and I'll be writing more soon. Here's my brief instant reaction, largely based on my conversation with the admirable Dr Lankov, and a few thoughts to bear in mind while picking your way thorugh the self-righteous and inane guff that is already spewing out of CNN et al.

In the next few months there will be endless and tedious tough talking about how bad BAD BAD the Norks are, and what a spanking the "international community" is going to give them. There will be probably be an attempt at sanctions, but they won't make any difference. Nothing the rest of the world can do will make any difference.

There is nothing anyone can do about North Korea's nuclear test.

(r) The Big Black Hole: Two books on North Korea

[Originally posted December 2005]

THIS IS PARADISE: My North Korean Childhood
by Hyok Kang with Philippe Grangereau, tr. Shaun Whiteside
Little, Brown, £9.99; 164pp

ROGUE REGIME: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea
by Jasper Becker
Oxford University Press, £16.00, 300pp

During the catastrophic food shortages of the mid-1990s, as North Korean towns and villages slithered unstoppably from hardship to hunger and into outright famine, children like Hyok Kang found ever more grotesque and ingenious ways of fending off starvation. Floods, drought and corruption had made rice and meat so scarce that they were unaffordable. Creeping like thieves to avoid vigilant adults and guard dogs, already scooped and stunted by malnutrition, Hyok and his gang of little friends tested the limits of the edible.

Chickens, dogs and cats quickly disappeared from towns and farms. At harvest time, children ran out into the fields to pluck the freshly sown seeds from the furrows. They feasted on raw sparrows and quails; crows they fried on a brazier. But soon the birds had deserted the barren fields and the perch and loach had been fished to extinction in the ponds.

Then they started on grasshoppers and dragonflies (“Grilled,” Hyok Kang tells us, “the flesh of fat dragonflies tastes a bit like pork.”) Rats were hunted down, not only for their flesh, but for the grain and corn cobs which they stored in their underground larders. Families drank soup made out of boiled pepper leaves, and the verges were stripped of pigweed and dandelion.

The Missiles of July

Yawn. Stretch. Scratch. I wake up, the morning after the Great North Korean Missile Launch. And Tokyo - and I presume the rest of the world - is still here! Based on the loose-bowelled reaction to yesterday's missile tests I had expected to awaken in a glowing post-nuclear city of crazed mutants - or at least in a country under martial law, with streams of refugees fleeing the city for the relative safety of Tokyo Disneyland. Last night, I even went to sleep listening to Ultravox's apocalyptic classic 'Dancing With Tears In My Yeyes".  But no apocalpyse! What in Bush's name is going on?

Click here for my sensible, sarcasm-free analysis of the missile test firing yesterday.

Despite my flippancy, it is serious of course. But it's been serious for years, and the events of yesterday morning make little difference except symbolically. This is what it boils down to, in a very simplified and condensed form. The only way to make progress in defanging North Korea and luring it out of its isolation is by engagement - the kind of 'Sunshine Policy' enacted by Clinton and the former South Korean president, Kim Dae Jung. Yes, the North Koreans will lie and cheat and generally take the piss. But what is the alternative?

The alternative is what we've got now - a situation of rudderless drift in which the US pats itself on the head for not "rewarding" North Korea with talk and concessions, while Kim Jong Il meanwhile builds up his nuclear arsenal. The ironies are so immense it's easy to stop noticing them. To repeat only the most obvious: we went to war in Iraq over WMD which didn't exist; meanwhile North Korea boasts of building nuclear weapons, and we find ourselves powerless. Like so much current US foreign policy, we will look back on all this in calmer decades to come and shake our heads at the idiocy of it all.

Another loosely connected thought. The official version has it that six medium range missiles were fired yesterday and one Taepodong 2 which "failed" after 40 seconds. But did it really fail, or was it destroyed in flight by the North Koreans themselves?

As far as I can tell, there is a single source for all the technical information about the flight of the missiles - the Pentagon. And of course it suits the Pentagon to portray the Taepodong as a laughable failure. But it all seems a bit too neat to me.

Having cranked up their missile, the North Koreans had to do something with it. But it was clear that if they fired it all the way - up over Japan and towards the United States - a furious and decisive reaction would have followed. Perhaps they chose to lob it a little bit of the way and then ditch it - enabling them to test the launch mechanism and the first stage of the rocket, and to make their gesture of defiance, but without unequivocally inviting retaliation.

I don't know . . .

There's good sensible commentary by the sage John Gittings on The Guardian website here.

Why shouldn't North Korea test the Taepodong?

Taking everything into account, balancing up the pros and the cons, all things considered - I am anti-intercontinental ballistic missile.

Long, metallic, phallic objects, charged up with jet fuel, and mounted with nasty warheads - they give me the willies. When they are in the hands of unreconstructed Stalinists, with bad hair and gulags, then my unease multiplies. Much better all round to melt them down to make Meccano kits for underfunded schools, or spend the money on improved broadband internet access for Pyongyang.

All that said, I can't understand why North Korea shouldn't conduct a long range missile test.

We may not like the North Koreans, but there are certain facts about them that we have to accept. They have a large military, as does the United States. It possesses, and is developing, ballistic missiles (like Britain and the United States). Obviously, it is going to test them - Britain does, and the Americans do too. It may be alarming, but it is hypocrisy to claim that they are not entitled to do so.

The argument then becomes one about proliferation. The rest of the world, it is claimed, is trying hard to limit the spread of powerful and destructive long range weapons; the North Koreans cannot be allowed to flout these principles and make things more dangerous for for everyone else. But legally this isn't true - it is three years since North Korea pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it is certainly not signed up to anything promising not to test conventional weapons (the so-called "ban" on testing in 1999 was nothing more than a voluntary, self-imposed moratorium).

And who really is making the world dangerous? Kim Jong Il is not my cup of tea, but I believe that he is a rational man and I can see that he finds himself in a difficult position. He was already stranded by history, marooned on a shrinking iceberg of communist rhetoric with no obvious way of stepping off and maintaining his power. His economy was failing, his people were starving, and his military was grinding to a halt. Then George Bush appeared and unambiguously announced, in the "axis of evil" speech, that Kim was in his sights. He demonstrated the kind of thing he had in mind by invading Iraq the following year.

In such circumstances, how would you expect a leadership to react? To quietly roll over and surrender (as anti-American resistance was supposed to have done so after the defeat of Saddam)? Or to leverage what few military resources it has at its disposal and at least give its declared enemy something to think about?

Happy Birthday, Dear Leader

Sixty-four years ago today, Kim Jong Il, maximum leader of North Korea, was born beneath a guiding star in a stable-like building on the sacred volcano, Mt Paektu - or in a camp of anti-Japanese guerrillas near the Russian city of Khabarovsk, depending on whether you believe the official or ths historical version.

There isn't really much more to say, and so foreign reporting of the occasion has focused on the question of who will succeed Mr Kim. The common assumption is that it will be one of his three sons: the thirty-something Kim Jong Nam, 24-year old Kim Jong Chul, or 21-year old Kim Jong Woon.

Last October, I spent three days in Pyongyang with The Times photographer, Paul Rogers. We were met at the airport by three "guides". The oldest, Mr Lee, was a former diplomat in his sixties. Mr Chung (I have changed their names, by the way), a man in his late forties, seemed to have the most authority among the three. Miss Kim, who was 24, was the interpreter. They escorted us everywhere, dropped us off at our hotel in the evening, and picked us up first thing in the morning. (We managed to escape them by getting up very early one morning; that is a story for another time).

They were relentless in their promotion of the official line: that North Korea is the best of all possible worlds and that everything in it is for the best. Early on, I asked them about who they thought would be the successor to Kim Jong Il. After all, by the time his father, Kim Il Sung, had reached his 60s, the younger Mr Kim was well established as Dear Leader, Lodestar of the Revolution, All-Time Supreme Tiddlywink Champion etc., etc.

Their response was one of tolerant and amused shock at the insensitivity of the visiting foreigner. There was simply "no need" to consider such matters, they explained, at a time when the Kimster (they didn't call him that, by the way) was so self-evidently healthy and vigorous. Did they think it would be one of his sons, I asked. Again, the question was dismissed as a tactless irrelevance. What did they know about Chairman Kim's family? Were the sons as popular among the population as the father obviously was? "These are private matters of the Chairman, Comrade Kim Jong Il, and we cannot discuss them with outsiders," said old Mr Kim, with air of one who could tell if he wanted, but was damned if he was going to be bullied into it by me.

On the second day, as we were driving back from the border with South Korea, along deserted roads, past deserted fields, I carried out a test.

One of our despots is missing

Staggeringly prescient, the Sage of Singapore, this weblog's resident oracle, has done it again. On New Year's Day, you will remember, His Awesome Sapience predicted that Kim Jong Il, supreme leader of North Korea, would disappear around the time of his birthday in February. A month ahead of schedule, it has come to pass.

To be fair, the Kimster hasn't vanished completely, but he is difficult to pin down at the moment as he conducts a mysterious tour of China, possibly in his latest attempt to educate himself about its economic reforms. Has he been in Beijing, or Shanghai, or Shenzhen? Or was he heading to Russia? By train or by air? Or has he simply been back at home in Pyongyang watching CNN?

The confusing story is told in detail by NKZone and Asiapundit (from whom I have borrowed the picture); and here's the latest this morning from Yonhap, the South Korean news agency:

BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was on his way back home Wednesday, ending a secretive eight-day visit to China which included talks on his country's nuclear weapons program, diplomatic sources said ... The North Korean leader left Beijing by train late Tuesday evening and was expected to cross the border shortly after 9 a.m. (0100 GMT), the sources said.

There was no official Chinese or North Korean confirmation of Kim's trip which began on Jan. 10 but Beijing, in keeping with its past practice, was expected to announce it after he has returned home.

The last time the Dear Leader made this train journey, there was a huge and mysterious explosion on the line a few hours after he had passed through, provoking speculation about an assassination attempt.

Interestingly, some of the reports suggest that KJI may have overcome his famous aviophobia.

The Big Black Hole: Two books on North Korea

THIS IS PARADISE: My North Korean Childhood
by Hyok Kang with Philippe Grangereau, tr. Shaun Whiteside
Little, Brown, £9.99; 164pp

ROGUE REGIME: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea
by Jasper Becker
Oxford University Press, £16.00, 300pp

During the catastrophic food shortages of the mid-1990s, as North Korean towns and villages slithered unstoppably from hardship to hunger and into outright famine, children like Hyok Kang found ever more grotesque and ingenious ways of fending off starvation. Floods, drought and corruption had made rice and meat so scarce that they were unaffordable. Creeping like thieves to avoid vigilant adults and guard dogs, already scooped and stunted by malnutrition, Hyok and his gang of little friends tested the limits of the edible.

Chickens, dogs and cats quickly disappeared from towns and farms. At harvest time, children ran out into the fields to pluck the freshly sown seeds from the furrows. They feasted on raw sparrows and quails; crows they fried on a brazier. But soon the birds had deserted the barren fields and the perch and loach had been fished to extinction in the ponds.

Then they started on grasshoppers and dragonflies (“Grilled,” Hyok Kang tells us, “the flesh of fat dragonflies tastes a bit like pork.”) Rats were hunted down, not only for their flesh, but for the grain and corn cobs which they stored in their underground larders. Families drank soup made out of boiled pepper leaves, and the verges were stripped of pigweed and dandelion.

Blogs of Innocence and Experience

I was a hesitant recruit to blogging, but after a week and a half I am enjoying this. It is one more demand on time, of which there is never enough in the day anyway. I like to polish and worry over what I write, whereas a blog is, or should be, fifty per cent spontaneous. But perhaps it will suit me, for I am a show off, if a shy one. And then there is the novelty of working in this unfamiliar, marginal writing space, unconstrained by word count, time and the wisdom or folly of editors.

A newspaper article is an artefact, fixed and finished as soon as it is printed, but a weblog is provisional, a work-in-progress; almost alive. It can be constantly refined and updated. Errors of fact and lapses of style can be corrected at a stroke. And then there are images and moving pictures, and sound files, and links... It feels like the birth of a new literary medium, which doesn’t happen many times in a lifetime, and it’s exciting to get stuck in before the conventions become fixed and the hierarchies established.

Thomas Nashe would have had a weblog, if he’d been born 400 years later, and so would Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. William Blake would have had an extravagant multi-media website, complete with audio files recording his conversations with angels, and George Orwell would have been a furious blogger, although clueless about the technical aspects. Who else?

Some of what I will write about here will fall under the category of ‘Current Affairs’, but not all. Much of it will be about Japan, where I live, but also about Korea and south-east Asia, the other places I am paid to worry about, as well as the conflicts I am sent to cover from time to time, such as Iraq. Perhaps I’ll also write about this strange, untethered life I lead: in Asia, but not of it, looking out at the world from inside a soap bubble floating one floor up above west-central Tokyo.

I’ll try to post something most days. Comments, criticism, ideas and links are welcome.