Reports from two years ago suggest North Korea has been quietly helping Burma’s military regime build a nuclear reactor. While covert interactions between these pariah states have raised alarm in regional and Western security circles for quite some time, most mainstream Western media have ignored them. The following is a review of those activities, based largely reports appearing in the recently defunct Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) and the work of Australian military scholar Andrew Selth:

Continue reading "Ignored: North Korea’s Shadowy Arms Deals with Burma" »

Posted by Tomio Geron at 03:13 PM | Permalink

KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) reported in July 2005 that North Korea’s state-run Chosun Central TV is beginning to change. The first sign was the appearance of a different announcer’s backdrop for news programs.

PIC 1. North Korean Chosun Central TV (captured by South Korean KBS1)

Continue reading "Recent changes in North Korean Central TV" »

Posted by Tomio Geron at 11:11 AM | Permalink

Today Cheorwon bears witness to Korea's tormented past. Burned out buildings used by the Japanese during colonial rule, a bombed out train that once connected north and south, a bullet-riddled building where anti-communists were tortured and murdered--all testify to the legacy of a divided Korea.

Continue reading "DMZ Visit" »

Posted by Tomio Geron at 01:10 PM | Permalink

This photo, posted on the abductee association’s website, shows South Korean fishermen on a group outing in North Korea in 1974. The men were identified as having been kidnapped during 1971-1972. One-third of the men in the photo are now believed to be dead, according to an abductee who escaped to South Korea in 2000.

Between 1955-1987, South Korea had its own version of a Bermuda Triangle near the 38th parallel, a place where ships and planes would mysteriously disappear. In this version, the vessels and their crews would reappear in North Korea after a few days, victims of abductions the North Korean government has become notorious for.

Continue reading "Lost In Purgatory: The Story of South Korean Abductees" »

Posted by Tomio Geron at 07:35 PM | Permalink

The South Korea I grew up in was much different from the Korea we know today. It did not have the confidence of being the 12th largest trading nation in the world, nor did it have the glow of success from peacefully transforming to an open democracy following a military dictatorship.

Likewise, North Korea was not the impoverished pariah state it is today. It hovered in our backyard as a real military threat, and by all accounts its economy was neck and neck with South Korea’s.

Continue reading "The Longest Truce: A View From the South" »

Posted by Tomio Geron at 10:54 AM | Permalink

Lee Hee Sook (middle row, far left) with her family in North Korea in 1941.

Lee Hee Sook, 74, was born in Cheongjin, North Korea in 1931. A member of one of the 11 million Korean families divided on either side of the 38th parallel after World War II, she is also among the few who have been able to travel back across that line to see her relatives again.

Continue reading "Orphaned Daughter of North Korea Goes Home, Leaves Again" »

Posted by Tomio Geron at 10:49 AM | Permalink

Jason LaBouyer has been to North Korea twice. In July 2004 and again in August this year, the 23-year-old from California’s Yuba City crossed over the 38th parallel—something most Americans have not been able to do since George W. Bush invented an Axis of Evil and made the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea a charter member. Both trips were arranged by the North Korean government.

“I travel to the DPRK not as a tourist," he told me shortly after returning from his latest visit, "but as a guest of the Korean Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries."

Continue reading "The American Friend" »

Posted by Tomio Geron at 06:55 PM | Permalink