Check out this surreal story over at Danwei about a Chinese writer who visited North Korea, returned to China, and published a book about what he saw there, only to have the book banned from bookstores and wiped from the Web after the NORKS complained to the CHICOMS.

The first “trouble” it ran into was when a retired Chinese Foreign Ministry official called up the Foreign Ministry to report that The Real DPRK had “problems.” This individual had not read the book and did not go online; he had heard the audio version on Beijing Radio. When the Foreign Ministry received this old cadre’s report, it immediately telephoned Xinhua Lipin Book Co. to request a copy of the book for review. Xinhua Lipin couldn’t ignore this request, so it sent off a copy of The Real DPRK by courier to the Foreign Ministry. The company was quite nervous at the time, but then more than a month passed without the Foreign Ministry making any movements. This indicated that the book had its approval.

The real “trouble” for The Real DPRK began in the first part of July, 2008. The embassy of the DPRK in China sent a letter to the Chinese Foreign Ministry demanding that it halt circulation of The Real DPRK. The Foreign Ministry handed this matter over to GAPP, which issued an order banning the book.

However, “banning a book” is ultimately a process. At first, The Real DPRK was only taken off the shelves of major book stores. On 17 July, the DPRK embassy sent another letter to the Foreign Ministry, under the impression that many places in China were still selling The Real DPRK. So GAPP pressed bookstores across the country to remove book from their shelves.

Was anyone really surprised when the NORKS backed out of their nuclear deal with the U.S. and other nations?

According to the statement, Pyongyang has not only decided to suspend the disablement of its nuclear facilities, but is even “considering a step” to restore the facilities to working order.

I am always amazed and amused by these things, no matter how many I see.

“Though the dog barks, the procession moves on!”

“One day, I discovered three kernels of corn in a small pile of cow dung, picked them up and cleaned them with my sleeve before eating [them]. As miserable as it may seem, that was my lucky day.”

More here.

The following is from a Washington Post report on the cancellation of a trip to Seoul by U.S. President George Bush due to demonstrations against U.S. beef imports there. Emphasis is mine.

President Bush canceled plans Tuesday to visit Seoul next month amid protests over U.S. beef imports, and his administration made a key concession to North Korea by allowing it to exclude atomic bombs from a required disclosure of its nuclear activities.

You mean this whole exercise was intended to limit North Korea’s electrical power generation options!?!

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has assured Japan that The United States will continue to press for the release of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea.

Japan worries that the United States will remove North Korea from its list of nations sponsoring terrorism before a resolution of the issue.

“We have made very clear that the United States is not going to set aside or forget the Japanese abduction issue,” Rice told reporters on the plane to Berlin, where she will attend a conference on security in the Palestinian territories on the sidelines of a donors conference.

“We’re going to continue to press North Korea to make sure this issue is dealt with,” Rice said. “Japan is one of America’s strongest allies in Asia, I should say one of America’s strongest allies in the world and we recognize the sensitivity of this issue,” she said.

Right. . . Just about no one is falling for this in Japan, where the latest U.S.appeasement concession is being met with condemnation by people on both sides of the aisle.

A top LDP politician bitterly criticized Washington for repeating a past mistake. “The United States is doing the same thing over again.”

He was referring to the U.S. government’s failure to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons even though it promoted reconciliations with Pyongyang by dispatching then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang at the end of the Bill Clinton administration that stepped down in 2001.

“The Bush administration has become too lenient toward North Korea as its tenure is approaching an end,” he said.

Many politicians feel that the administration of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has supported the U.S. position even though there has been no tangible progress in the abduction issue because it places top priority on Japan’s ties with the United States.

However, some politicians expressed concern that the U.S. decision to remove North Korea from its list of terrorism-supporting countries could adversely affect Japan-U.S. relations.

The Washington Post is reporting that North Korea has agreed to reinvestigate the Japanese abductions.  It surprised the Japanese government but prompted them to pledge to lift some economic sanctions as a result.  The agreement was reached in bilateral negotiations in Beijing on Friday.

The abduction issue is a big deal in Japan and was the subject of an entire documentary film. The subject of the North Korean abductions was the subject of another recent post. 

North Korea also agreed to join in the investigation of the 1970 hijacking of a Japanese jet to the North, where four hijackers are believed to remain, Komura said. 

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda suggested Friday that if the reinvestigation of the abductions makes progress, Japan would ease other economic sanctions.

The issue of the North Korean abductions is one of the most thorny issues between Japan and North Korea.  I saw the documentary, The Megumi Yokota Story, on that subject at the Cleveland International Film Festival in 2006 (it turns out that it will be broadcast on U.S. Public television in a few weeks). In a nutshell, in 1977, 13-year old Megumi was abducted in Japan by North Koreans for the purpose of teaching their spies how to speak Japanese fluently to be more effective spies. She was actually one of at least 13 Japanese who were abducted. Now the Daily Mainichi reports a small development in the case. North Korea maintains that Megumi died in April, 1994 but an eyewitness is now saying that he saw her at least 2 months after that. The mystery (and heartache for the family) continues…

Over the weekend, the Washington Post ran a long article on Charles Robert Jenkins, aka “The Reluctant Communist.” Edward also discussed Jenkins in a recent podcast.  Jenkins was a U.S. serviceman serving in South Korea and took a drunken soujourn north and remained a captive there for 40 years!  He ended up marrying a Japanese captive and they had 2 children together.  In 2002 his wife was released and in 2004 he and their daughters were released.  This is a fascinating tale because so little is known about North Korea and Kim Jong-Il.  He spent some of his time there teaching English and a lot of his time in misery:

Jenkins devoted the bulk of his time, though, to survival — an endless grind of shoveling coal for heat, scrounging for food, hauling water and standing guard at night so hungry, marauding soldiers wouldn’t steal his peaches, his corn, his chickens or his kimchi.

He now lives with his family on Sado Island off Japan’s northern coast where he is a local celebrity.

Check out The VICE Guide to North Korea for a first-hand account of a group of journalists trying to get visas to visit North Korea and what happened after they got there.

The entire story is told in 14 installments here.

Getting into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with. After we went back and forth with their representatives for months, they finally said they were going to allow 16 journalists into the country to cover the Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang. Then, ten days before we were supposed to go, they said, “No, nobody can come.” Then they said, “OK, OK, you can come. But only as tourists.” We had no idea what that was supposed to mean. They already knew we were journalists, and over there if you get caught being a journalist when you’re supposed to be a tourist you go to jail. We don’t like jail. And we’re willing to bet we’d hate jail in North Korea.

But we went for it. The first leg of the trip was a flight into northern China. At the airport the North Korean consulate took our passports and all of our money, then brought us to a restaurant. We were sitting there with our tour group, and suddenly all the other diners left and these women came out and started singing North Korean nationalist songs. We were thinking, “Look, we were just on a plane for 20 hours. We’re jet-lagged. Can we just go to bed?” but this guy with our group who was from the LA Times told us, “Everyone in here besides us is secret police. If you don’t act excited then you’re not going to get your visa.” So we got drunk and jumped up onstage and sang songs with the girls. The next day we got our visas. A lot of people we had gone with didn’t get theirs. That was our first hint at just what a freaky, freaky trip we were embarking on…

scattered around buddhist temples in the tohoku region of japan there are mummified bodies enshrined in . practitioners of an ancient set of rituals known as shugendô, these monks actually mummified themselves in a prolonged act of asceticism. believing that they could attain enlightenment in a mere ten thousand days (about 8 years, 2 months, and 19 days) by adhering to a strict diet, keeping a strict schedule of meditation and exercise, and slowly poisoning themselves.

A while back we got mail from the University of California Press telling us that they have recently published by a book that might be worth reading. It is by now Japan resident Charles Jenkins, and it is titled The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea.

Charles Robert Jenkins is a former United States Army soldier who lived in North Korea from 1965 to 2004. He now lives in Japan. Jim Frederick was _Time_ magazine’s Tokyo bureau chief from 2002 to 2006 and is now a Time senior editor stationed in London.

“Jenkins’s straightforward presentation . . . conveys effectively both the hardships that he and other foreigners endured and the understanding and personal ties that he established. Readers have few opportunities to hear firsthand about life inside North Korea; those who follow current events will be intrigued by this story.”- Library Journal

In January of 1965, twenty-four-year-old U.S. Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world’s most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for forty years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick), takes the reader behind the North Korean curtain and reveals the inner workings of its isolated society while offering a powerful testament to the human spirit.

Full information about the book, including the table of contents, is available online.

North Korea reportedly has invited legendary rock guitarist Eric Clapton to play a concert in Pyongyang. This would make Clapton the first Western rock start to be invited to play in North Korea.

“Eric Clapton is a well-known musician and guitarist, famous throughout the world,” said [an] official, who declined to give his name. “It will be a good opportunity for Western music to be understood better by Koreans.”

A spokeswoman for Clapton, however, says that no agreement has been reached, yet.

“Eric Clapton receives numerous offers to play in countries around the world,” she said. “There is no agreement whatsoever for him to play in North Korea, nor any planned shows there.”

Though North Korea has long shunned rock music and pop culture, it is rumored that Kim Jong Chol, the son of national leader Kim Jong Il, is a big Clapton fan.

Found via The Marmot

Check out this amazing time map animation that traces geopolitical changes on the Korean Penninsula over time.

I wanted to find something like this for Japan but I couldn’t.

If you are snowed in this weekend as we are up on the Northern Kanto Plain, check out this documentary about a group of journalists that take a tour of North Korea.

It’s almost an hour long, but it is well worth the time.

Moon Ji-ae, a female Korean news anchor, has been fired on the heels of a public clamor for her head after something or someone caused her to break up at the end of a newscast.

Damn. . . Losing your job over a little chuckle seems a bit brutal. Maybe the people of Korea prefer there news to be presented thusly. . .

A major Japanese labor union is organizing a postcard mailing campaign they hope will convince North Korean strongman Kim Jong-il to release Japanese citizens still believed to be held captive after being kidnapped by NORK agents in Japan.

The Japanese Trade Union Confederation, known by its Japanese acronym of Rengo, has printed about 100,000 pamphlets and handed them out to members, as well as made the document available on its website, each of which contains a cut-out postcard urging Kim to “let our comrades come home.”

The postcards are written in Japanese and Korean, and contain photos of 12 people the Japanese government recognizes as official abductees. They also are adorned with a photo of the NORK Chia Pet dictator, in hopes that doing so will keep the North Koreans from destroying the cards.

Ever wonder why North Korea gets such great press coverage?

Why it’s because of the The Great Media Man, of course!

Via Danwei

The Japan Times this morning has a really informative article about pachinko.

Filled with noise, bright lights and cigarette smoke, the attraction of the pachinko parlor is hard for many to fathom.

Seemingly oblivious to their surroundings, the players — mostly males — sit transfixed as the metal balls cascade down the front of the machines, hoping to hit the “jackpot.”

Yet this national pastime is rife with reports of shady dealings, links to North Korea, gambling addiction and crime.

Here are answers to some questions about pachinko.

A must-read if you want to know more about pachinko, its current state, and its ties to North Korea.

The modern lifestyle of running water, electricity on demand, and abundant food, clothing, and shelter got you down?

Well, why not cast your fate (and perhaps your very life) to the wind and head on over to Pyongyang for a 10-month stint of teaching English?

The British Council, which serves as the Cultural and Education Section of the British Embassy in China, is accepting applications from ELT professionals to work for an English language project in North Korea.

No Yanks allowed, though. Local restrictions allow only U.K. passport holders to be considered.

I wonder. . . Does this mean that the NORKS will no longer be kidnapping their teachers?

Via DANWEI