Category: North Korea

Yeah, you heard me.  From StrategyPage:

Refugees from North Korea report that the air force there has ceased, or greatly reduced, training flights of the 300 An-2 aircraft it maintains for delivering commandos into South Korea. The reason is apparently lack of fuel, and spare parts to keep the fleet of 30-40 year old aircraft, in working order. The AN-2 is a strange bird. It’s a single engine bi-plane made mostly of wood and canvas. This makes it difficult to pick up on radar, especially if it’s coming in low.

[…]

It can carry up to a dozen passengers. The An-2 can fly as slow as 60 kilometers an hour, making it excellent for crop dusting, or parachuting commandos to a precise location. Its range of 800 kilometers is sufficient to reach most of South Korea.

(Image of AN-2 – probably not North Korean – from Aerospaceweb.org)

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Headline from The Australian:  "China may back coup against Kim [Jong-il]."  Hat tip to The Corner.

Make of it what you will.

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UPDATE (Oct 19/06):  More on this from Strategy Page.

UPDATE (Oct 22/06):  I don’t buy all of the blogger’s conclusions, but this is certainly an interesting post on the subject.  (Hat tip to AsiaPundit.)

UPDATE (Oct 26/06):  Satire from The Onion on the subject.  (Hat tip to AsiaPundit.)

[Technically, that should read “Bilateral”…]

Jonah Goldberg says it doesn’t matter either way:

Lawyers say hard cases make for bad law…

Proof that North Korea is a hard case can be found in the fact that the Democrats and Republicans have switched sides. Ordinarily multilateralist Democrats are now unalloyed champions of unilateralism, in the form of face-to-face negotiations with North Korea, while President Bush — that infamous go-it-alone “cowboy” — has embraced international teamwork. Both approaches are flawed for a simple reason: North Korea wants a nuclear weapon because it wants a nuclear weapon.

The Jimmy Carter vision holds that North Korea’s nukes are coupons to be redeemed for groceries. But the North Koreans pocketed U.S. concessions after face-to-face talks in 1994 and continued pursuing nukes because … they wanted nukes. Bush’s strategy has been, first, to declare that advances in North Korea’s nuclear program are “unacceptable” and then do nothing, and second, to insist that the U.S. can’t accomplish anything because our “partners” won’t cooperate.

The North Korea dilemma — much like the threat of Islamic fanaticism – is Aesopian. The frog in Aesop’s fable did not wish to be stung by the scorpion. The scorpion’s position? Wishing’s got nothing to do with it. Americans tend to think — and Europeans consider it gospel — that all differences can be negotiated. The truth is that only negotiable problems can be negotiated. Just ask Hamas if everything can be bargained for around a table. Their one non-negotiable principle is that Israel must cease to exist. Beyond that, they’re open to all sorts of creative proposals.  [Emphasis added]

North Korean Cheerleaders in Prison.

See what I mean?

Twenty-one members of North Korean cheering squads who traveled to South Korea for international sports events are being held in a prison camp for talking about what they saw in the South, a news report said yesterday.

…the female cheering squad apparently violated a pledge not to speak about what they saw in South Korea, the Chosun Ilbo reported.

Citing another unnamed defector, the newspaper said the cheerleaders had pledged before going to South Korea that they would treat the country as "enemy territory" and never speak about what they saw there, accepting punishment if they broke the promise.

Anyways, here’s a few pics of the cheerleaders in happier days:

On the bright side, ladies, a strict regimen of hard labor along with Dear Leader’s patented Starvation Diet™ will have you losing ALL of those unwanted pounds in NO time.

Kim Jong-il, you’re all heart!

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