A banner promoting North Korea’s 150-day economic production campaign in August. Photo: Ben Piven

Part 6 of 6 in our Inside the Hermit Kingdom series on the people and culture of North Korea. Worldfocus multimedia producer Ben Piven writes about the contrast between the North Korean economy and the booming economies of South Korea and China.

“Why does South Korea produce Samsung, LG, and Hyundai?” I asked Jong, our 25-year-old North Korean tour guide.

She said that North Korea will manufacture sophisticated goods once the essentials — electrification and rice production — are covered. But the blank look on her face suggested that she better not discuss the issue.

Then, she perked up when someone asked about her own ideal job. She replied matter-of-factly, “I’d be a businesswoman.”

Jong’s 5,000 KPW (Korean People’s Won) monthly salary is equivalent to around $1.67. The official rate for the North Korean won is 142 per U.S. dollar, but due to severe inflation since the mid-1990’s, the black market rate is over 3000 KPW to $1.

Housing, health care and education are free in North Korea. But with her meager salary, Jong on her own could never afford the television or computer which her family of four (including her mother, father and grandmother) possess. Euros, dollars and Chinese yuan are needed for major purchases.

In North Korea, tourists are not permitted to enter non-tourist shops or purchase the local currency, since a negligible amount of foreign currency could buy out an entire store. Opening up shops and currency to the market would cause economic humiliation.

North Korea’s GDP is $1,700 per capita, 1/15 of South Korea’s, according to the CIA Factbook. Tied with Cote D’Ivoire and just a tad wealthier than Chad, North Korea is poorer than Laos and Cambodia. North Korea went from one of the most prosperous East Asian countries in the 1970s to the least prosperous today.

A Yalu River bridge once connected North Korea with China but was bombed out by the U.S. during the Korean War. Photo: Ben Piven

It wasn’t always this way. Having relied on the Soviets for economic inputs, North Korea developed faster than South Korea in the aftermath of the 1953 armistice that concluded the Korean War. The country’s infrastructure was mostly built from the late 50s to the early 70s, when the Soviet system was strong.

But by the 1980s rural South Korea had transformed into a tech-savvy urban tiger, and the stunted north turned more repressive after a number of aborted attempts to liberalize the economy.

The Juche state ideology — which emphasizes economic self-reliance  — intensified around 1982, almost certainly in response to South Korea’s explosive economic growth. Today, the paradox is that North Korea may be isolated,  but it’s not self-reliant. The authoritarian state relies heavily on food and fuel aid from abroad — as well as, some say, criminal activities.

David Rose explains in Vanity Fair how the Office 39 slush fund supplies Kim’s personal coffers, his inner circle and the missile defense program. Annual revenues from decidedly un-Juche activities, including crystal meth sales and human trafficking, may surpass $1 billion.

North Korea suffers economically from a strict economic embargo. Photo: Ben Piven

According to Rose, the D.P.R.K. is also the world’s top producer of “supernote” counterfeit $100 bills. Since the government cannot legally borrow cash, military sales and criminal rackets generate enough hard currency to keep the regime from collapse.

Since Kim Jong-il implemented songun (military-first budget policy) in 1994, the nuclear program has propped up the regime but stunted the people’s health and welfare. And economic sanctions have further impoverished ordinary Koreans.

On our officially-sanctioned tour, we gawked at workers burning rubber shoes to pave roadways and saw only one functioning crane in five days. Like the country’s infrastructure, corn and rice plots were orderly but dilapidated. Peasants worked in large groups, then napped individually in tiny wooden shacks.

Except for one rainy day, our bus was lonely on the roadways. Endless queues of people waited for antique Soviet trams and buses, while government officials drove fancy German cars. The only billboards advertised Pyonghwa Motors, co-owned by Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church and under license from Fiat.

Officially, 2012 (Kim Il-Sung’s 100th birthday, known as Juche 100) will mark the completion of several projects, including the pyramidal Ryugyong Hotel, begun in 1987 but halted in 1992 due to severe shortages. Though the country’s tallest structure, the 105-story building is absent from tourist maps.

A North Korean phone on the country’s only cellular network. Photo: Ben Piven

The top two floors are being renovated as an office for Egyptian telecom magnate Naguib Sawiris, whose Orascom employees are also installing the nation’s first cell service, KoryoLink. The company has already enlisted over 50,000 subscribers at $25 per month. Sawiris also recently launched Ora Bank, another joint venture with a North Korean government partner. (North Korea’s ties with Egypt date back to the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In return for air force squadrons, North Korea later received scud missiles).

Some Americans believe that more economic engagement is the best way to bring North Korea in from the cold. There are some signs that the Juche nation is slowly bending to Western commercial pressures - witness the Taedonggang beer ad, Pyongyang pizza craze, and a new Singaporean-owned fast food restaurant.

But for now, despite the rapid globalization on its borders, North Korea remains in an economic deep freeze.

- Ben Piven

Pyongyang residents at the Arch of Triumph. Photo: Ben Piven

The South Korean government says that the number of North Korean refugees in South Korea has surpassed 16,000, and recent immigrants are generally uneducated and underemployed. Worldfocus contributing blogger Jamblichus writes about their plight.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry has requested 9.3 billion won (US$7.9 million) to beef up its resettlement facilities for defectors from the North as the number of refugees arriving from its destitute neighbor keeps climbing.

According to the ministry’s 2010 budget proposal, Seoul plans to spend just over four million dollars to build a second Hanawon, a resettlement center for defectors and around three million dollars to establish smaller “Hana” support centers across the nation.

Lets hope that those doling out the cash take the request seriously (the ministry has requested a 25% budget increase for next year) for North Korean refugees are becoming a growing underclass in the South whose needs current resettlement facilities are hugely under-equipped to accommodate.

Until the late 1990s, the number of North Koreans defecting to the South remained insignificant, totaling just 86 between 1990 and 1994 and remaining in double-digits each year until 1999. Numbers began to shoot up thereafter — following a devastating famine in the North — with 583 arriving in South Korea in 2001 and 1,139 the following year.

On February 16, 2007, the unification ministry pulled a cracker for Chairman Kim Jong-il on his birthday by announcing that the total number of Northern refugees arriving in the South had reached 10,000; just 32 months later there are now more than 16,000. You do the math.

The first wave — in fact more a gentle ripple — of defectors were largely drawn from the North Korean elite. But recent defectors have often been young and unskilled, hailing from the communist state’s North Hamgyong province. The sheer numbers have meant they are treated no longer as romantic escapees deserving of full approbation by the southern public — but a burden on the taxpayer, somewhat unsophisticated and potentially threatening to the social order.

The South’s rigid and hyper-competitive education system looks almost designed to alienate young defectors further from an already difficult-to-crack South Korean society. And while there are success stories — from world champion female boxer Choi Hyun-mi to journalist Kang Chol-hwan — the vast majority wind up unemployed.

A survey of 654 defectors that was conducted in December 2006, showed that 45.1% were unemployed, 30% had part-time employment, 13.1% had temporary employment, and only 11.8% were either self-employed or had full-time employment. Another survey conducted by Professor Park Sang-an of Seoul National University in the same year came up with an unemployment rate of over 67%.

Things may have improved since then, but I’m guessing not dramatically, particularly given the sheer increase in numbers arriving. Another survey reported by the Chosun Ilbo in 2007 found more than half of North Korean teens in South Korea drop out of school, a staggering figure compared to the 1-2 per cent drop out rate for South Korean students.

Given the numbers, seven million bucks doesn’t sound like all that much. There’s only so long South Korea can afford such a failure of integration — as defector numbers burgeon — before the problem becomes significantly more visible. Let’s hope the Unification Ministry gets its money.

Hsin-Yin Lee, a former associate producer at Worldfocus,  is a news editor at the “China Times” in Taipei.  She blogs here about an unusual proposal by the Japanese foreign minister, and the roadblocks to pan-Asian unity.

During a lecture at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan last week, Japan’s Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada suggested that China, Japan and South Korea write a common history book.

The proposal set East Asian nations buzzing.

Japan has been notorious for its distortions of the historical record - propagated in the Japanese education system -  that whitewash the war crimes of Imperial Japan before and during World War II.

The  Japanese approach to history has caused turmoil in the region for decades.  According to a survey conducted by Chinese media,  Twenty-three percent of respondents said the biggest obstacle preventing trilateral cooperation among the three nations is “dispute over history.”

But after Japan’s general election in August,  the country seems to be at a turning point in many ways.  New Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is endeavoring to fix fragile trilateral relations by introducing the concept of “Yuai,” the Japanese term of fraternity.

China and South Korea apparently were pleased with the idea of a common history book.  “It is a good idea to make a textbook based on a common recognition of the past histories of the three East Asian nations,” a presidential spokesman in South Korea said, “however, it will be a long-term and painstaking project.”

Indeed, in Japan, conservative nationalists have already held several rallies, accusing Okada of being a “madman” or a traitor.”  The road to consensus building doesn’t look so smooth.

Still, there have been precedents for former foes sitting down to write history textbooks together. In 2006, France and Germany co-authored the textbook in response to calls from high school students of both countries. The history textbook not only touches on the arduous reconstruction during the post-war era but also examines the war crimes of Nazi Germany.

François Fillon, the then-French Minister of National Education, noted, “We have lived through centuries in which the interpretation and writing of history nourished a ferment of bitterness between us.  We are now seizing the opportunity to make it the bond that unites us.”

Can we Asians apply the European model here, despite the fact that hatred, mistrust and animosity have kept us apart for centuries?

To me, the answer is yes.

I believe the concept of “Yuai” is the first step in reaching out to one another. I believe there is something shared by all mankind — something strong enough to break the boundaries of time and space, gender and race — that could bring us together once again.

The Korean green plan emerges as environmental delegations from around the globe hold meetings to discuss a new climate agreement to be ratified by the end of the year in Copenhagen — replacing the Kyoto Protocol due to expire in 2012.

Steve Chao of Al Jazeera English reports from South Korea.

Watch: South Korea turns green with tidal power plant

Michael Novacek, the provost of science at the American Museum of Natural History, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to weigh the downsides and benefits of tidal power.

A memorial for former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, who committed suicide.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that suicide in South Korea has grown more common over the past two decades, and the nation has the highest suicide rate among OECD countries — around 22 deaths per 100,000 individuals.

In May of this year, in a high-profile case, former President Roh Moo-hyun lept from a cliff to his death following a corruption scandal.

A Worldfocus contributing blogger at “Jamblichus” criticizes the lack of awareness about suicide in South Korea, particularly compared to the enormous publicity surrounding the H1N1 flu.

Yellow tape encircled the apartment’s parking lot. The rooftop of the seven-story building crawled with small figures assessing angles and examining a rail. I could see it all from the top of the neighbouring hill I’d climbed near my house. Someone had fallen or jumped. Given the rail it seemed the latter was more likely.

Later my wife asked a friend who lived in the same block what had happened. The woman looked at her, paused, and continued their previous conversation as if the question hadn’t been asked; somethings are better left unsaid or unasked, her body language read. (아는게 병, 모르는게 약, as the Korean adage has it: the knowledge is disease, not knowing is the medicine. Or “ignorance is bliss” for an English language equivalent).

Meanwhile Seoul’s gripped in H1N1 flu hysteria. Supermarket assistants clutch sterilizing sprays and wipe down the handle on your trolley, politely asking you to momentarily remove the sweaty paws of your toddler first; offices proffer antiseptic handwipes at their reception desks. Death is all around! Argh, gargle, a-tissue!

Except… well, it’s not. There have been 7500 people diagnosed with the flu and 7 deaths since May. And almost all who’ve died have been old, infirm, or already had severe health problems. Compare this to a massive social issue in South Korea: suicide.

It’s not talked about much and definetely not the subject of mass mobilization and a media frenzy. But the Seoul suicide prevention centre receives well over a 1000 calls every month. And the country has the highest suicide rate of all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.

The National Statistical Office (NSO) informs us that a total of 12,858 people, or 24.3 people for every 100,000 Koreans, took their own lives in 2008. That’s 35 suicides every day. EVERY DAY! My mountainous view was no anomaly.

Yet unlike the drugs companies, whose stock jumps with the news of every death, Good Samaritans don’t profit from the snuffing out of another life. And such hotlines are staffed by volunteers; there is no sub-economy of suicide, no business deals, no international threat levels. Suicide is just not sexy.

“If it bleeds, it leads” goes the old journalism chestnut, yet while the flu has gone pandemic — and the coverage has been spread like a mucus-smeared rag across, well, every rag — real bleeding, rather than sneezing, goes tragically overlooked: it’s just the desperate underbelly of a society on a very narrow pair of rails with a very steep drop on either side.

For more, read the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user letsbook under a Creative Commons license.

Despite the recent controversy, tensions appear to be easing between North Korea and its adversaries as high ranking officials meet, reunifications of families resume and meetings with U.S. diplomats are discussed.

Tony Birtley of Worldfocus partner Al Jazeera English explores these thawing relationships.

The attack brought down several major American and South Korean Web sites at least temporarily. But other South Korean officials expressed doubt that the North Koreans could carry out such an attack.

Keith Epstein, an investigative reporter for BusinessWeek whose specialty is cyber security, joins Martin Savidge to discuss who is behind the cyber attacks, the consequences of the attacks and how the U.S. can improve cyber security.

People bow at a memorial for former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun.

On Friday, tens of thousands of South Koreans lined the streets at the funeral of their former president, Roh Moo-hyun.

Roh committed suicide by jumping from a cliff near his house in late May. His once-great reputation as an upstanding leader and fierce liberal had been tarnished of late, as he was engaged in a corruption scandal.

Soo-Mee Park is The Asia Foundation’s public affairs officer in Korea. She writes at the “In Asia” blog about experiencing the country’s shared grief.

Roh Moo-hyun’s Funeral

Standing in Gwanghwamun, the heart of downtown Seoul, amid the sea of sobbing mourners at the funeral of the former Korean president Roh Moo-hyun, a curious déjà vu struck me.

Out of nowhere, the scene in front of me overlapped with a black and white footage of the funeral of Park Chung Hee I had seen some years ago on a local history channel. For a moment, the connections seemed rather unclear. Then it hit me: there was something unusual to the public grief toward the deaths of these two men that somehow surpassed the loss of a political leader.

For years growing up in Korea, I always wondered why there was such hype surrounding Park’s glory in our history textbooks. True, his life was a little more dramatic than the others – the longest-serving president who led a revolutionary coup before he was assassinated by the head of his own intelligence service.

[...] Last week, the country observed a grim scene. Roh, an outspoken, and often militant, liberal, killed himself by jumping off a cliff near his retirement home. A month earlier, he had been called into the prosecutor’s office for an investigation over a bribery allegation. For days, the question remained in many of our minds: what does it take to push a man of his stature to the edge of a cliff?

As the hearse of Roh passed the streets of Seoul on Friday, sheer disbelief was palpable in the faces of many citizens. A group of men, some in business suits, climbed up to the roof of subway exits to watch the hearse passing. Riot police were everywhere, blocking the entry into the city square often used by local protesters for candlelight vigils, and fliers were sparsely posted on shop walls, some carrying anti-government slogans, others condolences for the loss of a man whose rhetoric on justice and hope was once so lively and refreshing that it even charmed young Korean voters who cared little about politics.

“Sorry we couldn’t protect you,” one flier on the wall read. “We were happy to have you as a president,” said another.

For many, Roh’s suicide was more than the loss of a political leader. Instead, his death seems to have resonated with a certain admission of defeat for the  revolutionary values and lack of compassion for the poor and uneducated in Korean society that Roh, a human rights lawyer with no college degree, had once symbolized.

By late evening, after the funeral, the streets of downtown Seoul had turned into a state approaching anarchy. Men stood on the portable platform of a truck on an empty, blocked road and shouted anti-government slogans; protest songs were flowing out of a loudspeaker and soju (liquor) bottles were tumbling onto the streets. The restless mood was furthered by the cheerless glimpse of routine city life – street vendors walking around with their carts full of steamed corn, fishcakes and hot dogs, offering them to mourners.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user bittegitte under a Creative Commons license.

South Korea’s national intelligence service reports that Kim Jung-il has chosen his third son, Kim Jong-un.

John Park, a Senior Research Associate with the United States Institute of Peace, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the significance of the announcement, Kim Jong-un’s attitude toward the West and regional tension over projected missile tests.

Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge reported from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea, and writes about going on patrol with U.S. troops on Christmas eve in 2006.

I have twice spent time embedded with U.S. forces stationed at the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom in the DMZ.

The demilitarized zone is where another Korean War could very well begin. In just three years, the first Korean War killed more than 38,000 American military personnel, more than 58,000 South Korean military personnel and killed or wounded more than 2 million civilians, which is why few here are keen to see a second war. If there was another, estimates are that 10,000 people would die in just the first hour. The DMZ remains so sensitive that even now I cannot tell you everything I saw while I was there. What follows is some of what I can…

Soldiers gather at Observation Post Oulette. Photo: Martin Savidge

Stand-to came at 4:45 a.m., first light, but because of the rain and fog that now shrouded Observation Post Oulette, it was still pitch black. In the labyrinth of tunnels and fortifications that riddled the hilltop, soldiers stood in full combat gear, guns at the ready and manning positions. The scuffling of boots, mixed with the sloshing of water that had invaded their bunkers, was backed up by the steady drip-drip drum beat of a rain that wouldn’t stop. If an attack was going to come, history said this was most likely the time.

The soldiers were a little edgy. Most hadn’t slept well in the small outpost’s cramped barracks. A number of land mines had gone off in the night, detonated by lighting or maybe a deer — maybe a North Korean.

I was in my third week of living with U.S. forces stationed there. It was easy to feel nervous there. Though the Korean War stopped 50 years before, it never officially ended — instead, it was suspended by an armistice. Technically, North and South Korea are still at war. That’s something you really feel in the dank and dark underground, especially when you know that less than two miles away, an estimated million or more North Korean soldiers are also at stand-to. Armed and ready to bring it on, again.

But Armageddon apparently waited for another day. So, after breakfast, I joined about a dozen soldiers in a makeshift gym to witness a regular ritual. It began when someone plugged an iPod into a big boom box, cranked the volume and then hit play. The howling grunge of heavy metal pulsated through the room. The soldiers bobbed to its rhythm, psyching themselves up for what lay ahead as they turned to the mirrors on the wall and painted their faces camouflage colors, green and black.

Out on patrol. Photo: Martin Savidge

This was a patrol about to go in search of North Korean infiltrators. We would walk the line — the military demarcation line that in those parts passes as a border. Essentially, it’s where the front lines were when the guns fell silent five decades earlier. Today, it’s still a trip wire for the next war. If the North Koreans cross it,  then it all kicks off again — or at least that’s the theory. The North Koreans do cross it, just not in large numbers. In ones or twos, North Korean commandos sneak across as part of their own ritual.

This patrol was going out to find the North Koreans or signs that they have been there. The mission was considered so dangerous that only I was allowed to go — the camera couldn’t. I painted my own face and wore camo. Those are the army’s rules.

The day before, we even practiced the patrol somewhere else so that I could get a sense of how the soldiers move. Above all, to get to know the hand gestures, as once we leave the outpost, not a word would be spoken. Stop, go, get down…hands went up, fists clenched or flattened, palms circled in the air.

We set off down the outpost’s steep driveway. As we approached the double row of ten foot high steel fencing topped with swirls of concertina wire, the South Korean guards took up defensive positions before opening the gate. The rain poured down, and before we even crossed the perimeter, every member of the patrol was soaked.

To me, the patrol seemed to take a meandering course, down steep rocky slopes, slogging through wet underbrush and slithering up the muddy other sides. The rain was good and bad. It covered the noise of the patrol, but it also made it harder to see. Out there, it’s very easy to bump into a North Korean patrol or come across an infiltrator by stumbling over them. In the past, that has not turned out well…if the North Koreans feel trapped, rather then get caught, they use hand grenades to kill themselves. Pictures of the aftermath still hang on walls in the basement of nearby Camp Bonifas.

Another danger in the gloom: It’s very easy for the patrol to accidentally cross into North Korea. Away from Panmunjom, the demarcation line is only marked by signs spread a hundred meters or so apart. But the signs are the originals. Half a century later, their once-bright yellow paint has now turned rusty brown, the warning words unreadable. The U.S. and South Korea have wanted to replace them, but the North Koreans have to agree and so far they haven’t.

Soldiers communicate through hand signals. Photo: Martin Savidge

After a half hour or, so hands went up and the patrol sank down to one knee. Each man was spread far from the next so a mine or mortar wouldn’t take too many out. More gestures. The unit took up positions and simply waited — this was part of the surveillance. Everyone scanned the scene in front of them and strained to listen, looking for movement or listening for the whisper of footsteps. The entire patrol was just statues. One minute…five…10 minutes…waiting.

Another hand moved, and we rose and became animated again. We repeated this several times. We walked a long lazy loop, and after a while, we came across an ancient graveyard. Large tombstones sat at awkward angles; others were broken or fallen. It was here the North Korean commandos reportedly came.

The Americans say it’s part of a test they must pass: To cross the border into the south and return undetected. To prove they really made the journey, they carry pencils and paper to rub upon the stones of the graves and carry back to their commanding officers. No rubbings? Don’t bother returning.

The patrol inspected the area for signs of visitors, finding indications but no solid proof. After several hours of this silent hide-and-seek, we made the steep return up Outpost Oulette’s drive. The gates opened and only once inside did the guns go back on safety.

Patrols like this have been going out every day for 50 years. More than 28,000 U.S. troops are still in Korea today, daily guarding against a war most Americans back home forgot long ago.

- Martin Savidge

On Wednesday, North Korea responded with new threats and a display of military power.

Abraham Denmark, an expert on East Asia and a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, joins Martin Savidge to discuss how North Korea and South Korea match up militarily and China’s role.

From Tokyo to Moscow to Washington, world leaders instantly condemned Pyongyang’s latest nuclear provocation. The United Nations called an emergency meeting of the Security Council and at the White House, President Barack Obama called the North Korean nuclear blast — and the launch of short range missiles a few hours later — a “blatant violation of international law.”

Charles Armstrong, the director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the military and political significance of the nuclear test as well as the timing of the test, just days after the former president of South Korea committed suicide.

Google’s Lok Sabha Election Center

The Australian government announced plans to build a 43 billion dollar Internet network to bring broadband access to 90 percent of the country. The development will be administered by a publicly-owned company providing 37,000 jobs.

Blogger Sam Varghese of “iTWire” responded to the news with skepticism, writing:

I’d be really happy if some company or group could build something that just doubles the 6 to 8 Mbps that I get at the moment. Provided it happens in my lifetime.

I don’t mind if North Korea can provide it. Or even Iran. I’d just like to use something that works at a decent speed before I die.

Talk of decent broadband in this country is beginning to resemble talk about the unicorn.

Another country making headlines for its Internet use is India, where Google India predicts rapid growth this year, citing 50 percent growth in 2008 in a country traditionally known for its low Internet use.

Google is not only studying but also feeding India’s online interaction as the country’s general election approaches, with its Lok Sbha Election Center information portal. Gaurav Mishra writes for his “Guaravonomics Blog“about Internet technologies in India’s elections:

The Indian National Congress seems to be stuck in the web 1.0 era. Both the official Congress website and the Congress Media websites are online brochures. The Vote for Congress portal, which was supposed to revolutionize its online campaign by providing the Congress candidates a platform to blog (Hindu/ TOI), is still not up. None of the senior Congress leaders — Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Manmohan Singh — have a website and, what’s worse, their URLs are owned by cyber-squatters (Indian Express). The party does want to set up 600 internet kiosks across the country (Hindu) but without engaging interactive content, their effectiveness might be limited.

Shashi Tharoor — author and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations — is perhaps the only Congress candidate to seriously leverage the web in his campaign, with presence on Facebook and Orkut (CIOL/ Sify). Former Karnataka chief minister SM Krishna has a Twitter profile. Some of the younger Congress candidates like Priya Dutt, Milind Deora (Facebook) and Sachin Pilot also have well-designed websites, but aren’t really active on social media (Hindu). Some regional Congress leaders, like Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, also have a respectable presence on the web (Hindu/ Exchange4Media/ Indian Express).

China already has Internet traffic to match its population, and a January Economist article showed it passing the U.S. in Internet use. Andy of the “Saving to Invest” blog writes about the importance of considering international traffic and catering to a global audience: 

In time as the world adopts e-commerce at a consumer level the “value” of a transaction is likely to increase overseas much faster than it will locally. Which means that you need to ensure your online business model factors in this new audience and potential revenue source. In time, I have a feeling that the most successful online businesses (and blogs) will be the ones that appeal to a global audience and not just a local one.

Theresa of “Lives of Wander” writes about her difficulties finding an Internet connection in South Africa and other African countries, nowhere near as connected as the countries she and commenters visited in South and Central America:

Unfortunately, however, Internet here is not the God-given right that many of us have come to expect. We’ve had Internet access in about half the places we’ve stayed. Or at least we have access to a computer that is supposedly connected to the Internet. Most of the time the computer is so old and so slow, that it’s a miracle if it connects. If it does connect, getting any page to load can take ages. And the kicker here is that you’re paying for it. Internet is not only not ubiquitous, it’s also not free. So while I’m waiting 20 minutes for my Gmail to load, I’m paying for each of those 20 minutes. And it’s not even cheap either, costing $4 or more per hour. So if you haven’t heard from us lately, if you haven’t gotten emails or comments on your blog or a Skype call, you know why. Sorry.

Commenter Audrey writes about similar troubles in Central Asia and how technologies like Twitter can circumvent both censorship and obscenely slow lines:

We started using Twitter in this part of the world to let our family and friends know we were OK and to give them a little taste of what’s going on (in 140 characters or less). The interface is rather simple, so it comes up much quicker than having to go through a blog editor. Also, we found that government censors in highly controlled countries (eg, Burma, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) hadn’t been turned onto Twitter yet, so it was usually open when other communication channels had been blocked. If internet continues to be difficult, Twitter might be an alternative to get a quick message out.

Internet connectivity proves an ongoing problem across the African continent outside of big cities, but Africa is included in Google’s long list of development sites, and the Google Africa blog traces the company’s efforts across the continent.

In Sweden, connectivity is not the problem, but rather what people choose to do with their Internet connections. Sweden launced aggressive anti-piracy campaigns with the adoption of a new law allowing copyright holders to take names of users from ISPs. The day the law went into effect, Swedish Internet traffic reportedly dropped 40 percent. Techdirt’s “keep-whac’ing-that-mole department” speculates on the boost this gives to encryptors while really commenting on the misguided infeasibility of these aggressive practices.

With Sweden’s new antipiracy law in effect, it seems that one industry is getting a nice boost: apparently there’s a lot of new interest in encrypting your internet traffic, and services that provide encrypted VPN services are getting lots of new business. This, once again, points out that near total pointlessness in playing Whac-A-Mole over file sharing. It just become an endless game where each side continues to elevate itself, and it makes it that much more difficult in the end for the entertainment industry to do what it will inevitably be forced to do anyway: start building business models that embrace file sharing. But the further they push users of such services underground, the more and more difficult they’ll find it to embrace these services down the road. Each attempt to knock out these services or their users only comes around to backfire on the industry itself.

Meanwhile, South Korea continues to inspire envy in Web users around the globe.

A satellite image of the rocket at the Musudanri facility in North Korea. Photo: Institute for Science and International Security

U.S. officials say North Korea appears to be on track for a rocket launch that could take place as early as this Saturday.

A satellite image from earlier this week showed the rocket on a launchpad. U.S. defense officials say that fueling is underway. Meanwhile, South Korea’s navy and coast guard are maintaining a heavy presence near North Korean waters. Although North Korea says the rocket will launch a satellite, South Korea, Japan and the United States think the North Koreans are planning a test of long-range missile technology.

In London on Thursday, President Obama discussed the implications of the launch with South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak. They issued a statement agreeing on “a stern, united response from the international community if North Korea launches a long-range rocket.”

Blogger Ben Luongo at “Creative Loafing” argues that Obama’s “soft power” approach to North Korea may prove effective:

The foreign policy over the past eight years has been aggressive with threats and likely to justify its actions through self-defense. This hasn’t always been a good thing though. Eight years of the Bush Doctrine has eroded much of our soft power, which in today’s globalizing era is more effective than our might. It doesn’t go unnoticed, then, when a new foreign policy takes a more pragmatic outlook.

[U.S. Defense Secretary Robert] Gates makes a smart move by saying that we’re not prepared to shoot down any launch and here is why. The only way to ensure security between the U.S. and North Korea, or North Korea and the rest of the world for that matter, is to encourage North Korea into the modern international system where we govern our actions by law. If the U.S. were to shoot down a North Korean launch then it would be taking the law into its own hands, which is essentially the same offense (non-compliance with law) that North Korea is guilty of. Rather what the U.S. and Japan should do is let the international legal system work as it should. Nothing is more counterproductive, more hypocritical, than acting outside the system that we work so hard to bring North Korea into.

Hopefully, a new foreign policy under President Obama would work towards encouraging North Korea into the international system, where Kim Jong-Il would learn that testing the system is less productive than working with it.

Blogger Peter Kang at “World Policy” disagrees, writing that Obama’s change in approach to North Korea may prove disastrous for South Korea:

In the long run, Obama’s approach, which emphasizes more engagement with, and acceptance of, Pyongyang than the policies pursued by Bush, is likely to grant even more precious time to the North.

In the end, the Obama administration may be writing the final chapter of America’s failed North Korea policy by bringing about a devastating U.S. surrender: abandoning the denuclearization effort, accepting the monstrous tyranny as a member of the world nuclear club, and opening the gateway for the North to take over the South.

It is too simplistic to think that the United States can still protect South Korea under its nuclear umbrella. Most likely, North Korea’s strategy will not involve waging a full-scale war, which Pyongyang knows it cannot win. Instead, it will focus on the following approaches: 1) conducting guerrilla and terror attacks against the South; 2) enlisting the support of China, which wants to preserve a Communist dictatorship as a neighbor; 3) weakening South Korea’s will to defend itself by stirring up the already vicious infighting in the South between the majority pro-American conservatives and the minority but very aggressive progressives and leftists sympathetic to the North; and 4) using nuclear brinkmanship as a barrier against U.S. support for the South.

[...]The most urgent thing now is to issue a stern warning to Pyongyang clearly indicating intended punishments for the missile launch. Washington should do this regardless of what North Korea says about the Six-Party Talks, about reversing the denuclearization process, or about conducting a second nuclear test.

An American living in Korea writes at the “Elephant Talk” blog about Japan’s position and its relationship with both North and South Korea:

As we get closer to North Korea’s missile launch, Japan becomes a more interesting player. The thought of Japan preparing for a North Korean provocation begs several questions: Would Japan really take an aggressive stand on this? Would Japan ever go to war with the DPRK? And the bigger one: If they did engage fully in war with the North, what would South Koreans think of that? All Koreans, it seems, share a collective dislike when it comes Japan.  [...] If the DPRK landed a few missiles in Tokyo, or took control of Dokdo island, would there be a little tiny squeal of collective joy from the south? I asked a couple Korean friends this recently and one admitted, laughing, yeah, maybe a little.

For more on South-North Korea relations, see Wide Angle’s “Field Trip to the DMZ,” showcasing North Korean defectors living in South Korea.

The rocket will likely fly over Japanese territory, and the country has begun implementing countermeasures in northern Japan, ordering the military to intercept any debris. Blogger Tobias Harris in Japan discusses the political ramifications for Japan’s leaders:

I recognize that the Japanese government is unable to treat the rocket launch as nonchalantly as the U.S., by virtue of geography (the U.S., after all, doesn’t have to worry about debris falling on its territory), public opinion (overwhelmly supportive of the government’s response, according to a Sankei poll — even JCP supporters tended to be more supportive than not), path dependency (having pursued a hard line up until now, the government could hardly do otherwise), a desire to somehow rectify Japan’s unpreparedness when North Korea launched a Taepodong-1 over Japan in 1998, and Prime Minister Aso’s ideological tendencies. But the government better hope that should North Korea go through with the launch, no debris falls on Japan, because the damage it could cause in the likely event that an attempted intercept fails would be enough to destroy the Aso government, which has enjoyed a slight recovery in its support of late.

On her flight from Indonesia, Clinton said the North may be preparing for a leadership change after reports that its leader, Kim Jong Il, suffered a stroke last year. Clinton called the leadership situation “uncertain.”

For its part, North Korea stepped up its rhetoric today, saying it was fully ready for war with South Korea. See what a Worldfocus contributing blogger had to say about Korean maneuvers: No. Korea spews blustery rhetoric as Clinton arrives in So.

Charles Armstrong, the director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University, joins Martin Savidge to discuss how Clinton will be received in South Korea, what her agenda will be and policy towards North Korea.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton departs Andrews Air Force Base for her first official trip to Asia.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in South Korea on Thursday as part of her Asia tour. Also on Thursday, North Korea announced that it is ready for war with South Korea.

There are additional reports that North Korea may be ready to test a long-range missile.

Scott Snyder is the director of the Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy and an adjunct senior fellow for Korean Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He writes at the “In Asia” blog about Clinton’s agenda and South Korea’s options going forward.

Awaiting the New Secretary of State in South Korea

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Seoul today on her first visit to South Korea in her new post. South Koreans have anticipated her arrival—and the establishment of the Obama administration’s policy toward the Korean peninsula—with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation. This mood has been fed by a rapid deterioration in inter-Korean relations, increasingly strident North Korean military threats toward the South, and preparations to launch a long-range missile. The agenda for the visit is broad—suggesting that the U.S.-ROK alliance is now positioned to make contributions beyond the peninsula—but the core preoccupation will remain how to deal with North Korea.

[...]But there are still nagging worries in Seoul that the Korean issue will get lost in the shuffle of other pressing issues facing the Obama administration.

Although North Korea’s traditional blustery rhetoric and crisis escalation measures are familiar, they highlight the complexity of the North Korean challenge: North Korea’s nuclear weapons capability is unacceptable, but analysts increasingly suggest that North Korea will not give them up under any circumstances, implying no choice but acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear status. Moreover, North Korea’s internal political situation is fragile, with a defensive and weakening political elite that may find itself less able to steer a consistent path, but unlikely to lose power completely.

Further, North Korea’s policy of engaging the United States while marginalizing South Korea seems designed to ensure the perpetuation of tension on the Korean peninsula. This situation requires extraordinarily close cooperation between Washington and Seoul. Secretary Clinton’s visit establishes the relationships among leaders necessary to address this challenge.

Secretary Clinton has stated that her main objective during her first visit to Asia is to “listen.” This means that what South Korean leaders say and do (whether such actions can win support from the Korean public) will shape the near-term potential of the relationship. This is especially the case with regard to South Korea’s potential contributions to international piracy off the Somalian cost and post-conflict stabilization in Afghanistan.

Instead of responding to American requests for assistance in global ‘hot spots,’ South Korea should establish its contributions to the international community based on its own perceived interests, knowing that international perceptions of Korea’s prestige and influence as a global leader will depend on Korea’s capacity and willingness to undertake commensurate responsibilities.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user U.S. Department of State under a Creative Commons license.

Leon Sigal of the Social Science Research Council speaks with Martin Savidge about the motivation for this aggression and its implications for the new Obama administration.