[Cankor] Report #240

[cankor at cankor.ca]

Dear subscriber,

Welcome to issue #240 of the CanKor Report.

QUIDNUNC seeks answers to the following questions:

1. Why do DPR Koreans put so much emphasis on agricultural self-reliance, 
when every specialist knows they will never be self-sufficient?

2. What is the reason South Koreans prefer the term "unification", whereas 
North Koreans always use the term "reunification"?

3. Il-sung Kim, Kim Il-song, Kim Il-seong, Kim Il-sung, Il Song Kim -- are 
these spellings deliberately designed to irritate North Koreans who prefer 
the traditional, unhyphenated transliteration, capitalization and order of 
their names, i.e. Kim Il Sung?

Please send your answer (maximum 150 words) to: editor at CanKor.ca

The CanKor team.

For articles not original to CanKor, direct links are available in the 
Contents section, should you wish to consult the originals on the internet.

If the links no longer function, you may refer to the full text articles 
appended to the issue.

For back issues, archives and other content, please visit our website: 
http://www.cankor.ca
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CANADA-KOREA ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SERVICE

CanKor # 240

Friday, 10 March 2006
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The DPRK is reported to have test-fired two short-range missiles within its 
borders this week.

In a rare bilateral meeting between US and DPRK officials in New York this 
week, the DPRK asked for removal of US "financial sanctions" related to 
alleged money-related criminal activities, formation of a joint DPRK-USA 
task force to examine counterfeiting concerns, access to the US banking 
system, and technical help in identifying counterfeit bills. US officials 
clarified the meeting was only a briefing, not a negotiation, and rejected 
any link between Treasury Department actions and the six-party talks.

After almost three years in custody, four crew members of a DPR Korean 
freighter used to transport smuggled heroin are acquitted by an Australian 
Supreme Court jury. This week's CanKor FOCUS on DPRK drug trafficking also 
features a new US State Department report which states that though the DPRK 
was "most likely" involved in drug production and trafficking in 2005, there 
are no reports or incidents with clear, demonstrable links to the DPRK 
government.

CanKor's BOOK REVIEW section presents two points of view on Tim Beal's 
"North Korea: The Struggle Against American Power," and an overview of 
"Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World," by Gordon G. Chang.
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Contents:

1.   USA CONFIRMS DPRK MISSILE TEST
     http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/international/asia/09korea.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

2.   DPRK SETS TERMS FOR RETURN TO TALKS
     http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR2006030802291.html

FOCUS: DPRK drug trafficking under review
3.   DPR KOREAN SHIP CREW CLEARED OF SMUGGLING CHARGES
     http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200603/s1584323.htm

4.   DPRK NARCOTICS INVOLVEMENT "LIKELY BUT NOT CERTAIN"
     http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=March&x=20060301170731ajesrom0.3814966&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html

BOOK REVIEWS
5.   SALUTARY ANTIDOTE TO HEATED RHETORIC
     North Korea: The Struggle against American Power, by Tim Beal
     Reviewed by John Feffer, (Copyright Korean Quarterly, 
www.koreanquarterly.org)

6.   NORTH KOREA AGAINST WHOM?
     Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World by Gordon G. Chang
     North Korea: The Struggle against American Power, by Tim Beal
     Reviewed by Erik Mobrand, 
http://www.globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=1650&cid=5&sid=31

QUIDNUNC: Readers ask and respond to common and uncommon questions.
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1.   USA CONFIRMS DPRK MISSILE TEST
     by Norimitsu Onishi, New York Times, 9 March 2006

North Korea was reported to have test-fired two short-range missiles within 
its borders on Wednesday, even as six-nation talks over its nuclear program 
remain deadlocked. The missiles were launched in the direction of China, the 
Japanese news media first reported, citing unidentified defense officials. 
American officials in Washington confirmed the reports.

"Indications are that North Korea launched two short-range missiles," Scott 
McClellan, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. "We have 
consistently pointed out that North Korea's missile program is a concern 
that poses a threat to the region and the larger international community."

American officials said that North Korea had test-fired similar short-range 
missiles in recent years but had refrained from testing medium- or 
long-range missiles since firing one that passed over Japan in 1998. The 
commander of the American forces in South Korea, Gen. Burwell B. Bell, said 
Tuesday that North Korea in recent years had been focusing its missile 
program on developing short-range missiles that could be used in a conflict 
on the Korean peninsula. General Bell told a Senate Armed Forces committee 
hearing that North Korea had put on the back burner efforts to develop the 
kind of long-range intercontinental missiles that could reach the United 
States.

"In the years since the late 90's, the last six years, seven years, we have 
seen very little activity by the North Koreans to actively continue to 
develop and test long-range missile systems," General Bell said. "There is 
no doubt in my mind that they have the capability to begin more 
technological investigation and to begin a regimen to lead to testing and 
potentially to lead to fielding. But there's no evidence of it right now."

Six-nation talks over North Korea's nuclear program have been stalled since 
November. North Korean officials have said they will not return to the talks 
unless the United States lifts its financial crackdown on companies that 
Washington contends are tied to illegal activities by North Korea.
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2.   DPRK SETS TERMS FOR RETURN TO TALKS
     by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, 9 March 2006

In a rare meeting between US and North Korean officials this week, North 
Korea pressed the United States to end efforts to stem alleged 
money-laundering and counterfeiting activities, warning that otherwise it 
would not return to the six-nation talks on its nuclear programs. Li Gun, 
the senior North Korean official at the meeting, made four requests, 
according to a US official familiar with the talks. They included demanding 
that the United States remove what he called "financial sanctions," form a 
joint US-North Korean task force to examine the counterfeiting concerns, 
give North Korea access to the US banking system, and provide North Korea 
with technical help on identifying counterfeit bills.

"We cannot go into the six-party talks with this hat over our head," the 
official quoted Li as saying.

The US officials viewed the meeting as only a briefing, not a negotiation, 
and rejected any link between Treasury Department actions to thwart alleged 
counterfeiting and the six-party talks. D. Kathleen Stephens, the principal 
deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia, opened the meeting, but 
the briefing was led by Daniel Glaser, a deputy assistant Treasury 
secretary.

The nearly three-hour meeting was held Tuesday in New York at the US Mission 
to the United Nations. It came as North Korea rattled nerves in Asia 
yesterday with a missile test, and as a senior Republican lawmaker accused 
the White House of giving "exceedingly constrained options to our 
negotiators" and urged a more creative approach, including direct talks with 
Pyongyang.

"The six-party process is beginning to appear moribund," declared Rep. Jim 
Leach (R-Iowa), chairman of the House International Relations subcommittee 
on Asia and the Pacific. "It's time for the United States to lead," he said, 
rather than "indebting us to the diplomacy of countries that may have 
different interests."

The nuclear talks -- which include China, Japan, South Korea and Russia --  
have been on hiatus since November because of North Korean distress over the 
Treasury Department investigation. In September -- just as the six-party 
talks reached a breakthrough agreement in which North Korea said it would 
give up its nuclear programs in exchange for aid, security assurances and 
eventual normalization of relations -- the Treasury designated a Macao bank 
as acting as a front for North Korean counterfeiting operations.

The Treasury action had wide repercussions, forcing all US banks to cut off 
correspondent-banking relations with Macao's Banco Delta Asia -- and leading 
many banks around the world to curtail dealings with North Korea to avoid 
any similar taint. "BDA was designated because its facilitation of North 
Korean illicit financial activity presents an unacceptable risk to the US 
financial system," Glaser said in a statement issued after the meeting.

The Treasury Department has alleged that senior officials at Banco Delta 
Asia accepted large deposits of cash, including counterfeit money, and 
agreed to place it in circulation. Treasury officials also alleged that the 
bank accepted multimillion-dollar wire transfers from North Korean front 
companies that were involved in criminal activities.

At the meeting, Li said there is no evidence of illicit activity by North 
Korea. Li noted that US credit cards cannot be used in North Korea, forcing 
US diplomats to enter the country with large amounts of cash. He suggested 
that counterfeit money had entered North Korea through this route. Despite 
Li's official denials, Chinese officials have privately told US officials 
that North Korea has admitted that some individuals had been involved in 
such activities in the past.

US officials have repeatedly denied any link between the Treasury action and 
the nuclear talks, saying the government in Pyongyang is trying to use the 
issue as a way to start a dialogue with the United States outside the 
six-party framework. Li began the session Tuesday by saying that North Korea 
was upset that it had to be called a briefing rather than a bilateral 
negotiation. The North Koreans had canceled a session scheduled in December 
over the semantic dispute.

"This is not a USA-North Korea issue," State Department spokesman Sean 
McCormack said yesterday. "This is a matter of getting back to the six-party 
talks."

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, who played a key role in 
negotiating the September agreement, said on Capitol Hill yesterday that the 
United States is ready to resume the six-nation talks on implementing the 
agreement "without conditions." Leach said the case for allowing Hill to go 
to Pyongyang "to test the boundaries -- and push the implementation -- of 
the joint statement is compelling." He also said the United States and North 
Korea should consider establishing liaison offices in each other's capitals. 
"There is clearly a problem of communication between our two governments," 
he said.
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FOCUS: DPRK drug trafficking under review

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3.   CREW ACQUITTAL WEAKENS DPRK DRUGS LINK
     by Peter Gregory, The Age, 6 March 2006

Victoria's biggest heroin importation could not be "pinned" on the North 
Korean Government after the acquittal of four senior crew members of the 
freighter Pong Su, a United States Government analyst said yesterday. 
Speaking from Washington, Raphael Perl, a senior policy analyst for 
terrorism, narcotics and crime, said he had no doubts that North Korea was 
involved in the drugs trade "big time". But he said a Supreme Court jury's 
verdict yesterday finding the four men not guilty of aiding and abetting the 
importation of 125 kilograms of heroin -- estimated by police to be worth up 
to $160 million -- had to be respected. After the verdicts were announced, 
Justice Murray Kellam said suppression orders preventing publication of 
cases, in which four men had pleaded guilty, had expired.

Kiam Fah Teng, 47, and Yau Kim Lam, 34, both members of a shore party that 
met the heroin importer, Ta Song Wong, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting 
the importation. Teng was jailed for 22 years, with a 15-year minimum, and 
Lam for 23 years, with a 16-year non-parole period. Wong, who brought the 
drugs from the Pong Su with an unnamed man, who drowned, is yet to be 
sentenced. Another member of the shore party, Wee Quay Tan, is also awaiting 
sentencing.

In his opening address at the seven-month trial, prosecutor John Champion, 
SC, said it was not part of the case against the four crew that the North 
Korean Government or any of its agencies instigated or sponsored the drug 
drop. But US Government reports -- the most recent of which was published 
last week -- have speculated that the importation at Boggaley Creek, near 
Lorne, on the night of April 15, 2003, was part of North Korean drugs trade 
activity. The US State Department, in an international narcotics control 
strategy report dated March 2006, said the Pong Su incident drew worldwide 
attention to the possibility of North Korean Government trading in drugs. In 
a report to the US Congress in March 2005, Mr. Perl said that the case 
arguably showed how North Korean drug traffickers had joined forces with 
criminal gangs from neighbouring countries.

Dong Song Choi, 61, described in court as the ship's political secretary, 
Man Sun Song, 65, the ship's captain, Man Jin Ri, 51, the first officer, and 
Ju Chon Ri, 51, chief engineer, pleaded not guilty to aiding and abetting 
the importation of a commercial quantity of heroin. They denied any 
involvement in the importation or knowledge of it.

Outside court yesterday, John O'Sullivan, who represented Mr. Choi, said 
accusations that the importation involved the North Korean Government were 
never part of the body of evidence. The jurors sat for less than an hour on 
their tenth day of deliberations before returning the verdicts. Solicitor 
Jack Dalziel said the four men had been granted bridging visas for a few 
days and were expected to return to North Korea. He said they were elated to 
be released after almost three years in custody.

In a trial that began in August last year, the jurors were told Australian 
authorities chased the 106-metre-long Pong Su for four days after the heroin 
drop ended in disaster. Mr. Champion said Wong and a colleague, who boarded 
the ship in China, dropped over the side in a dinghy in treacherous 
conditions about midnight on April 15. He said they were trying to land 150 
kilograms of high-grade heroin, sealed in blue plastic bags. But the dinghy 
capsized, causing the death of the unnamed importer and the loss of 25 
kilograms of the drugs. Mr. Champion said Federal Police arrested the shore 
party. Wong was found hiding in dense scrub on April 17. The other 
importer's body was found on the beach. The Pong Su was boarded off NSW on 
April 20.

In sentencing Teng, Justice Murray Kellam said the operation was complex, 
secret and well planned. Members of the shore party entered Australia on 
false passports, and used code to communicate. By April 11, police had the 
on-shore team under surveillance, and by April 15, had teams in the Lorne 
area, where the Pong Su remained until late morning on April 16.

Mr. Song told the jury he had believed Wong and his companion to be 
charterers' agents. The companion told him on April 15 that the ship's 
charter to pick up luxury vehicles in Melbourne had been cancelled. Song was 
to await further instructions. Mr. Song dropped anchor almost three 
kilometres from Boggaley Creek, where engine repairs were carried out. Mr. 
Song said he did not learn until later that the agents had left the ship. He 
said he investigated their disappearance and was told by the ship's owners 
that he should leave the area and travel north. Mr. Song said during 
cross-examination that he did not know what narcotics were, but knew that it 
was illegal to import them into the country.
*************************************************

4.   DPRK NARCOTICS INVOLVEMENT "LIKELY BUT NOT CERTAIN"
     US State Department press release, 1 March 2006

North Korea most likely sponsored narcotics production and trafficking in 
2005, although there were no public reports of incidents with clear, 
demonstrable links to the Pyongyang government, according to a State 
Department report released March 1. The International Narcotics Control and 
Strategy Report 2006 (INCSR) noted that North Koreans have been apprehended 
trafficking in narcotics and engaging in other illicit activities for 
decades.

Given developments during 2005 that linked the North Korean government to 
"other forms of state-directed criminality," the report says, the State 
Department reaffirmed its opinion that "it is likely, but not certain, that 
the North Korean government sponsors criminal activities, including 
narcotics production and trafficking, in order to earn foreign currency for 
the state and its leaders." The report found "substantial evidence" that 
North Korean government entities and officials have laundered proceeds of 
illegal activities such as narcotics trafficking and counterfeiting through 
a network of front companies that use overseas financial institutions.

In September 2005, the Department of the Treasury designated Banco Delta 
Asia SARL in Macau as a "primary money laundering concern," asserting that 
the bank had been "a willing pawn for the North Korean Government to engage 
in corrupt financial activities." Governments in the region have identified 
incoming narcotics as having originated in North Korea, the INCSR says.

In 2003, Australia's seizure of 125 kilograms of heroin from the Pong-Su, a 
cargo vessel owned by a North Korean state enterprise, raised the 
possibility of state trading in drugs by the North Korean government.  The 
trial of the ship's senior officers began in January 2005 and should be 
completed in 2006.

The Japanese government believes a significant amount of methamphetamine 
smuggled into Japan is refined and/or produced in North Korea.  "There were 
no seizures of methamphetamines in Japan during 2005 linked to North Korea," 
the report acknowledges.  But in past years, it says, "30 per cent to 40 per 
cent of methamphetamine seizures in Japan" have been linked to North Korea. 
Methamphetamine manufactured in North Korea now may be identified as 
Chinese-source, the report notes, because ethnic Chinese criminal elements 
are working with North Korea in narcotics production and distribution, 
abroad and within China.

The 2006 INCSR is the 23rd annual report to be published in accordance with 
the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.  The report provides the factual basis 
for the designations contained in the president's report to Congress on 
major drug-producing and drug transit countries.  A country's performance in 
controlling drug trafficking crimes is a factor in determining the 
assistance it will get from the US government.
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BOOK REVIEWS

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5.   SALUTARY ANTIDOTE TO HEATED RHETORIC
     North Korea: The Struggle against American Power, by Tim Beal
     Reviewed by John Feffer, Korean Quarterly, Winter 2006

Amid all of the accusations and counter-accusations between the United 
States and North Korea, it can be refreshing to step to the sidelines to get 
another perspective on the conflict. Tim Beal is a lecturer in international 
business at the University of Wellington in New Zealand. He has followed 
Korean issues for some time and has visited North Korea. And just as New 
Zealand has had the courage to challenge US power on military questions, so 
has Tim Beal fearlessly tackled US policy and press coverage head on. His 
new book is a salutary antidote to the heated rhetoric and conventional 
analysis that typifies US perspectives on North Korea.

Beal's book is divided in two parts. In the first, he provides a concise 
history of the Korean peninsula, from its legendary beginnings to the 
current conflict that erupted again in 2002 when the United States accused 
North Korea of harboring a secret nuclear program. Beal provides useful 
mini-chronologies to guide the reader through the often confusing twists and 
turns of recent history. He attempts to give North Korea's side of the 
story, as a way of making sense of positions that many in the United States 
dismiss as nonsensical. Americans don't come out very well in this story, 
from US involvement in dividing the peninsula to generous support for South 
Korea's authoritarian leaders. There are some missing pieces -- such as Kim 
Il Sung's ruthless suppression of rival communists and leftists, which 
appears only as "outmanoeuvring" in the text -- but in general Beal provides 
a concise summary of revisionist history.

The second part of the book is both more interesting and more problematic. 
Here, Beal tackles some of the key charges against North Korea: that it 
violates human rights, exports drugs and missiles, is developing an 
offensive nuclear capacity, and violated the 1994 Agreed Framework with a 
highly enriched uranium (HEU) program. In the first part Beal took aim at 
historians; in part two he challenges sloppy journalists, conservative 
activists with hidden agendas, and politicians eager to score points.

Healthy skepticism toward the most extravagant claims made against North 
Korea is surely welcome. Beal carefully scrutinizes charges of drug 
smuggling to reveal a much more complicated picture. He compares North 
Korea's missile exports to the general practices of the United States and 
its allies and determines that Pyongyang is really no worse and, at least 
when it comes to volume of exports, less pernicious.

On the issue of human rights, Beal does an excellent job tracking down the 
2004 claim that North Korea practiced chemical warfare on political 
prisoners. The documents that a North Korean defector smuggled out and 
handed over to the BBC turned out to be likely forgeries. Details in the 
defector's testimony were not internally consistent. This should be enough 
to discredit the story, but Beal goes on to quote from a press conference 
given in Pyongyang by the defector's family after they'd been returned to 
the country. However plausible their account, the circumstances of the press 
conference were not conducive to a full and honest accounting of what 
happened, so Beal should not have emphasized it.

That the human rights issue is being used by the hard-line right in the 
United States and South Korea to advance regime collapse in North Korea 
should not discredit or throw into doubt the wide range of evidence that has 
come out about the extensive violations taking place in the country. At 
times it seems that Beal forgets that he is writing about a state run by a 
privileged elite under enormous pressure from the outside. This elite, like 
embattled elites everywhere, will do pretty much anything to remain in 
power. Evidence of smuggling by North Korean diplomats in the 1970s and 
1980s, more recent evidence of counterfeiting operations with the IRA, and 
evidence of methamphetamine production go unexamined in Beal's book.

Skepticism is a much-needed tool for revealing US hypocrisy, but it 
shouldn't be deployed only in one direction. Beal is by no means an 
apologist for the North Korean regime. But his book might have benefited 
from more analysis of the self-serving aims of the North Korean elite.

Such concerns aside, Tim Beal's new book is a helpful guide for all of us 
who stand on the sidelines and watch the United States and North Korea 
intermittently fight and negotiate. He's not a cheerleader. He's not a 
partisan. So it's good to have his voice in our ear as we try to figure out 
the action on the field and who the players are.
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6.   NORTH KOREA AGAINST WHOM?
     Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World by Gordon G. Chang
     North Korea: The Struggle against American Power by Tim Beal
     Reviewed by Erik Mobrand, Global Politician, 8 March 2006

In October 2002 the Agreed Framework that supplied North Korea with US aid 
since 1994 in return for promises not to produce nuclear weapons broke down 
and led to the current standoff on North Korea's uranium enrichment program. 
Since then, rounds of six-party talks involving the United States, North 
Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia have sought to deal with the 
impasse. The United States refuses to talk with North Korea directly. The 
world is faced with the question of what is to be done with a secretive 
country that may or may not have nuclear weapons.

What are we to make of the current situation? Two recent books on the 
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), both written for general 
audiences, offer widely divergent views on the nuclear problem. Tim Beal, a 
New Zealand-based academic and host of a website on North Korea, provides a 
guide to sifting through the sparse and often-politicized information on the 
reclusive country. Gordon Chang, lawyer and author of The Coming Collapse of 
China, has produced a polemical treatise on the crisis, claiming that the 
need for decisive action trumps any gaps in knowledge.

The subtitles of the volumes by Beal and Chang sum up their contrasting 
interpretations of the current North Korean situation. According to Beal, 
the development of the North Korean nuclear problem is a story about 
interaction between the DPRK and the United States. The immediate cause of 
the current crisis was American fear of Japanese-North Korean and 
North-South rapprochement. A summit between Tokyo and Pyongyang in September 
2002, as well as an impending South Korean election, prompted Washington to 
abandon the framework, as the current administration has sought an "ABC" 
(Anything But Clinton) policy on North Korea.

For Chang, on the other hand, North Korea is threatening the world in a 
crisis of its own making. American involvement extends only to failing to 
act earlier to protect the "global order" from North Korea. Chang does not 
mention Washington's role in the breakdown of the 1994 Agreed Framework. 
Overstating his case, Chang seems to have forgotten about decades of Soviet 
aid, the withdrawal of which plunged the North Korean economy into turmoil: 
"Neither friend nor foe has had much influence on the fanatical and 
militaristic state, not even the mightiest nation in history" (p. xx).

Chang notes that President George W. Bush's "impressive achievement" has 
been to keep North Korea "off balance" (p. 212). (Is this an 
accomplishment?) Chang is upset, though, about American reliance on 
cooperation in Northeast Asia to address the problem. Washington's "generous 
policy" (p. 131) has been to have China disarm North Korea. Chang tells us 
that the USA is being forced to "bend to Seoul" (p. 113), before going on a 
tirade against South Korean leadership - based largely, it seems, on a 
discussion with a conservative South Korean economist-turned-legislator. 
Rather than celebrating South Korea's turn to democracy since the 1980s, 
Chang blames "recent South Korean presidents" for not calling the DPRK what 
it is: "South Koreans have, in their newfound wealth, lost their way" (p. 
175).

What is the solution to the current situation? Chang considers engagement 
with North Koreans - not their government - to be a long-term answer that 
could empower the people to overthrow the regime. But Chang is convinced 
danger is imminent, and he brushes this approach aside. What worries Chang 
is that Pyongyang will sells its nukes to terrorists who will sneak them 
across the Mexican border into the United States. And that is why Washington 
must act, the sooner the better, to wipe out the threat from North Korea.

Offended by the regime's existence, Chang tells us it is time for it to go. 
An American encounter with the DPRK would be "a fight to preserve the 
liberal international system" (p. 225). Is Chang calling for the USA to 
strike North Korea? Presumably, but what does he mean when he advises, "we 
have to steel ourselves for war if we don't take great risks for peace" (p. 
219)? What might those "great risks" be, if not military ones?

Beal has a response to Chang's righteous indignation. Beal warns the world, 
and especially Americans, to consider carefully whether extreme measures on 
North Korea would truly be motivated by moral concerns, including the 
regime's human rights record: "The coexistence of genuine moral fervour over 
crimes committed by others with a readiness to commit one's own is not 
uncommon. The road to empire is paved with good intentions" (p.130).

For Beal, the optimal solution is for the United States to acknowledge the 
existence of the Pyongyang regime. Progress will be difficult until 
Washington takes Pyongyang seriously and starts discussions. The United 
States could help revive the North Korean economy quickly, which would set 
the country on a road toward positive social and political change.

Chang's whole argument comes down to the claim that we should worry about 
North Korea selling weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups. This 
possibility must figure among low-priority security concerns. Nuclear 
weapons are not needed for devastating attacks to occur, as 9/11 
demonstrated. Shifting resources to address this threat would be 
incommensurate with its rank behind more likely sources of insecurity. 
Furthermore, if weapons proliferation is truly a concern, then North Korea, 
which Beal notes conducts missile sales equal to 0.3% of the United States' 
(p. 186), is not the biggest problem.

More to the point, international assistance to North Korea's economy would 
reduce the likelihood that the regime would turn to weapons trading for 
cash. Chang opposes aid, because it funds the regime - but expanding the 
country's resource base would diminish the threat of Pyongyang selling 
weapons to terrorist groups. The danger of searching for good and evil in a 
complex world is that it may obscure the least bad solution.

Neither book offers new information on North Korea. Beal and Chang approach 
the country as outsiders, and they miss some of the important developments 
in the region, especially in exchanges between China and the DPRK. Still, 
Beal has done the public a service by offering a guide to widely-available 
sources that anyone can look through to draw their own conclusions on the 
North Korean nuclear issue.

Chang's book seeks to provoke, but with the pretense of informing. On North 
Korea's nuclear program, Chang writes - without explanation of how he knows 
it - that the "soundest view" is that by late 2007 Pyongyang will be able to 
produce uranium for two to six bombs per year (p. 33). Chang's expertise is 
left in doubt by mistakes in his book, ranging from downright falsehoods 
(that legislator Park Geun-hye is the favorite in the next South Korean 
presidential election, p. 214) to half-lies (that China's Chongqing is the 
largest city in the world, p. 117).

The far better-informed Beal is more honest about unknowns. The situation 
with North Korea is not only complicated; it is unclear because information 
is scarce and sometimes manipulated. But there is danger in the view, 
expressed by Chang, that "When there's not much to go on, the simplest 
explanation is often the best" (p. 63). Chang does well to remind us of US 
"responsibility" to the world, but he neglects the other side of that 
responsibility - to show restraint in resorting to its superior coercive 
power.
*************************************************

QUIDNUNC
In this section of CanKor, we invite readers to send questions, answers, or 
responses to previous answers. Submissions should be under 150 words and may 
be edited for space.

*************************************************

Answers are sought to questions posed in the previous two issues:

WHY DO DPR KOREANS PUT SO MUCH EMPHASIS ON AGRICULTURAL SELF-RELIANCE, WHEN 
EVERY SPECIALIST KNOWS THEY WILL NEVER BE SELF-SUFFICIENT?

FOR WHAT REASON DO SOUTH KOREANS PREFER THE TERM "UNIFICATION", WHEREAS 
NORTH KOREANS ALWAYS USE THE TERM "REUNIFICATION"?

*************************************************

WHAT NOW?

Il-sung Kim, Kim Il-song, Kim Il-seong, Kim Il-sung, Il Song Kim -- are 
these spellings deliberately designed to irritate North Koreans who prefer 
the traditional, unhyphenated transliteration, capitalization and order of 
their names, i.e. Kim Il Sung?

[Answers should be e-mailed to: editor at CanKor.ca]
*************************************************

End CanKor # 240

*************************************************
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