Word: pyongyang
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Though older now, and a bit infirm, and increasingly consumed with thoughts of passing on to his youngest son the family business (running North Korea into the ground), Kim Jong Il still has a fondness for a decent Fourth of July fireworks show. Pyongyang shot at least seven short-range SCUD missiles in the direction of the Sea of Japan on Saturday morning, in what some analysts termed an act of "defiance" against the United States and its allies in east Asia. But the SCUDS, fired from the eastern coast of North Korea, have limited range, and fell harmlessly into...
...same time, the State Department sanctioned Namchongang Trading Company, based in Pyongyang, for being involved in the purchase of aluminum tubes and other equipment "specifically suitable for a uranium enrichment program since the late 1990s." The State Department believes the company may also have been involved in assisting Syria to build a covert nuclear reactor - one that Israel ultimately destroyed in September...
...Pyongyang has taken an equally self-destructive position on food aid. Thanks to bad floods in 2007, food shortages last year were likely the worst experienced since the 1990s. The World Food Program (WFP) says it has launched a program to feed 6.2 million people in North Korea, or more than a quarter of the population. Yet in March, North Korea, without explanation, rejected all food aid from the United States, its largest official donor, and kicked five aid groups distributing the food out of the country. The step is potentially disastrous for the North Korean people. The WFP figures...
...which South Korea pursued its "sunshine policy" of engagement with the North, Seoul became a major trading partner and source of aid, especially of much needed fertilizer. But current South Korean President Lee Myung Bak reversed the policy when he took office in 2008, linking economic cooperation with Pyongyang's dismantlement of its nuclear-weapons program. The result is that North Korea is now more dependent than ever on its main patron, China. Nicholas Eberstadt, a North Korea expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, figures that the gap between the amount of goods China ships into North Korea...
That fact makes Beijing's policy toward North Korea even more central in any effort to convince Pyongyang to give up its nuclear-weapons program. But the North's recent disregard for its own economic conditions doesn't bode well for any attempt to use financial incentives to woo Pyongyang into better behavior. "They may still negotiate for some kind of deal," Noland says. "But I don't think we're going to get denuclearization" in the near term. That means North Korea's economy, just like its relations with the outside world, is likely to get worse...