Photo by Ben Piven for Worldfocus

North Korea is one of the most closed-off societies in the world. Information from inside the country is notoriously difficult to gather.

Radio signals are jammed, internet connections blocked and cell phones monitored. To combat this lack of information some news organizations pay informants to smuggle news out.

These sources, often cultivated by South Korean news agencies as “underground stringers,” risk their lives for little pay. But as many as half of their reports are false, according to a recent New York Times article by Choe Sang-hun:

The reports are sketchy at best, covering small pockets of North Korea society. Many prove wrong, contradict each other or remain unconfirmed. But they have also produced important scoops, like the currency devaluation and a recent outbreak of swine flu in North Korea. The mainstream media in South Korea now regularly quote these cottage-industry news services.

“Technology made this possible,” said Sohn Kwang-joo, the chief editor of Daily NK. “We infiltrate the wall of North Korea with cellphones.”

Over the past decade, the North’s border with China has grown more porous as famine drove many North Koreans out in search of food and an increasing traffic in goods — and information — developed. A new tribe of North Korean merchants negotiates smuggling deals with Chinese partners, using Chinese cellphones that pick up signals inside the North Korean border.

Worldfocus also spoke with Barbara Demick, Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, about North Korean informants:

Regarding the underground news agencies, I’ve found that their reports are plausible, but a little exaggerated. For example, Good Friends’ NK Today was the first to report the famine in the 90s, but I think their claims of the death toll were overstated. These agencies have on occasion given vague reports of protests that I think have a kernel of truth — but are also exaggerated.

For example, I have never interviewed a defector who personally witnessed any kind of public protest in North Korea, although I think there have been localized incidents at the markets where vendors complained to market management or resisted arrest by the police. There have also been a fair number of incidents in which security officials were murdered.

On the ethics of the agencies paying informants, I think it would be unethical for them not to pay — in that these people are risking their lives. According to Choe Sang-hun’s recent piece [above], some of the informants are actually considered to be reporters who are working. But there is no doubt just the same that paying taints the quality of information. It creates an incentive for them to tell you what they think you would want to hear. We don’t pay for interviews with defectors, although when I interview them I am usually with a missionary who might be providing food and clothing.

Worldfocus put together a list of English-language news agencies and blogs that cover North Korea. These sites try to gather information from within North Korea:

• Daily NK was created by activists from the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights. As the world’s first dedicated North Korean online news site, The Daily NK reports in real time.
• NK Today is produced by Good Friends USA to help the North Korean people from a humanistic point of view and describe the way North Korean people live as accurately as possible.
• North Korean Economy Watch is intended for business people, policy makers, academics and journalists but does not generally focus on human rights or the nuclear issue.

• DPRK Studies promotes awareness of North Korean security, social, political and historical issues. It is a portal to news, research, opinion, and organizations on North Korea.

• The Hankyoreh is a progressive newspaper decisively committed to journalistic freedom, democracy, peaceful coexistence and national reconciliation between South and North Korea.

• Kyodo News is distributed to almost all newspapers and radio-TV networks in Japan. Kyodo has a special English-language section dedicated to North Korea.

• Yonhap News Agency is based in Seoul and is the largest news-gathering network in Korea. There is a monthly magazine and a weekly e-newsletter dedicated to covering news from North Korea.

And these sites serve as North Korea’s official media, propagating pro-government news and information.

• Korean Central News Agency is the Pyongyang-based state-run news agency of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. News is transmitted to other countries in English, Russian, and Spanish.

• Korean Friendship Association was founded on November of the year 2000 with the purpose of building international ties with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

For more Worldfocus coverage of North Korea, visit our extended coverage page: Behind the Korean Curtain.

Looking beyond the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula, Worldfocus Radio examines the economy of one of the most isolated countries on earth.

North Korea has a per capita income of around $1,800 and continues to be the poorest nation in East Asia. The country still relies on heavy industry and military spending — in addition to huge amounts of food and fuel aid.

But we know little about the country’s black markets. And we struggle to find accurate statistics on the nation’s true standard of living.

A propaganda poster in Pyongyang. Photo: Ben Piven

Martin Savidge hosts Barbara Demick of the LA Times and Leon Sigal of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project. They discuss:

• North Korea’s post-Cold War isolation
• recent currency devaluation
• impact of closing underground markets
• China’s strategy of engaging North Korea
• prospects of U.S. economic engagement
• other investments (such Egypt’s Orascom)

GUESTS:

Barbara Demick is the Beijing bureau chief for the LA Times and author of the new book Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. She has reported extensively on economic and social changes inside the country.

Leon Sigal is director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council in New York. He has authored several books, including Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Ben Piven and Lisa Biagiotti

Visit Behind the Korean Curtain for our extended coverage and Inside the Hermit Kingdom for exclusive Worldfocus video from the inside.

Now known as South Korea’s “Million Dollar Baby”, the 19-year-old has been the reigning WBA featherweight champion since 2007.

Al Jazeera English’s Rahul Pathak has more.

A South Korean honor guard in Yongsan. Photo: Flickr user ImComKorea

Worldfocus contributing blogger Jamblichus analyzes the leadership style of the conservative South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, which he likens to that of a CEO, and his controversial plan to dredge Korea’s major waterways.

If you were a shareholder in the Republic of Korea, plc., you’d probably be quite content and thinking about buying more stock: Lee has clinched a huge project to sell locally developed nuclear reactors to the United Arab Emirates, a first for the country and as a result making South Korea only the sixth place in the world to export nuclear reactors.

He has launched an ambitious $19.2 billion program to dredge and “clean up” the nation’s four major rivers, pledging the project will generate thousands of jobs, improve water supply and quality, and prevent flooding, while also boosting the nation’s “aquatic tourism.” Sounds good, does it not?

Except that most people who know anything about it are united in their opposition. Take Hong Jong-ho, an economist at Hanyang University, for example, who argues that the project would create an “environmental disaster” that would worsen flooding and pollute the two rivers that supply drinking water for two-thirds of the nation’s 49 million people and that costs would run as high $50 billion.

(Lee claimed that 60 percent to 70 percent of it would be recovered by selling sand and gravel scraped from the riverbeds — hardly likely to have a positive environmental impact surely? — and that the rest would come from private investment. )

And opposition party chairman Chung Sye-kyun claims the administration has not conducted a proper feasibility study and its environmental impact assessment on the 634-kilometer area, completed in just four months, was slap-dash and troubling. Plans to place the project in the hands of project in the hands of the Korea Water Resources Corporation, which is not subject to National Assembly budget reviews, have also raised concerns, according to local paper the Hankyoreh.

Yet Lee is highly unlikely to pay much attention to their fretting; you see, Mr Lee’s silvery lining as leader has a cloud attached and it hovers above everything he touches like a possible ratings downgrade from a credit agency or a sell recommendation from an influential analyst. The cloud, which is a towering cumulonimbus, rather than your wispy cirrus is this: President Lee runs the nation like a company.

He is no democrat, for a CEO with a penchant for collaborative leadership or one who recognizes the value of dissent is generally a weak CEO. To Lee, those who disagree with his position are renegade shareholders who may damage the stock value. They must be brought on side or silenced before the international markets notice.

The president is equally aware of who the majority shareholders are in his enterprise. They are the conglomerates, the establishment academics whose intellectual prostitution allows for their recruitment as technocratic advisers, they are the fund managers and construction companies.

“We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still,” wrote British philosopher John Stuart Mill, but that is the mindset of a philosopher, not a businessman.

So as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gets its funding shut off and its offices closed down; as the National Human Rights Commission gets its funding reduced and its independence threatened; as the judiciary faces an almighty assault on its integrity, it is a little disconcerting to read that CEO Lee’s government is to invest $1.5 billion, yes, billion, in building marinas and subsidizing the construction of yacht clubs.

Whether this seems like an appropriate priority for a nation’s government dear reader, led by a businessman or otherwise, I leave to your impartial assessment.

Worldfocus is partnering with Pearl World Youth News, an initiative of Daniel Pearl Foundation and iEARN, to bring the voices of young reporters to our viewers.

Ji Eun Lee writes about the challenges of integrating young North Korean defectors into South Korean society.

On a quiet Friday night, several North Korean defectors gathered at the camping site near Seoul World Cup Stadium. Defectors are North Koreans who have fled their country for ideological, political, or economic reasons. Risking punishment and even death in case of capture, they cross the country’s armed borders and come to South Korea.

Dressed in the latest fashions and checking text messages on their cell phones, they looked like typical young Koreans. But there was some hesitation in their eyes when they were asked about their lives in South Korea.

“It’s not that we don’t want to talk about our experience here. Most of us are hesitant because talking about the ways in which we don’t fit in only seems to accentuate the fact that we’re…different,” said 26-year-old Young-Woo, and several heads nodded in agreement. “And we really aren’t that different from South Koreans, besides the fact that we’ve escaped North Korea to come here.”

An increasing number of North Koreans are crossing over to South Korea. According to the South Korean Ministry of Unification, more than 15,000 defectors live in the country, and in 2008 alone, 2,809 crossed the border.

Many South Koreans regard them as refugees and support programs aimed at helping the defectors. Ironically, it is this very help that places the defectors in an awkward position because they want to avoid standing out.

“We appreciate the help for its sake. As nice as it is to see that South Koreans are paying attention to the plight of North Koreans, the attitude behind such help is often very patronizing,” said Chul-Min, a 23-year-old college student. “Most South Koreans don’t seem to think of us as Koreans. They treat us as if we are exotic foreigners. Though we are aware of the intentions of the South Koreans who want to help us, they seem to have established a distinct mental dichotomy between the two Koreas.”

When asked about the difficulties they face in South Korea, the defectors murmured that life here isn’t as perfect as they’d imagined. Though originally one people sharing centuries of rich culture, decades of separation have widened the gap between the two Koreas.

“Even in terms of language, there is quite a lot of difference in regional dialects. We don’t have trouble communicating. But our distinct accent, or the different words we use, immediately betrays where we come from, attracting curious, uneasy looks,” added Chul-Min. “And speaking of language, proficiency in English seems to be extremely important here. Many defectors face difficulties with English as the level of English education offered in North Korea is very basic. It’s frustrating because it directly affects our opportunities for job or education.”

Many jobs applications in South Korea ask for scores from standardized English tests like TOEFL or TEPS. An estimated 100,000 institutions offer advanced English classes with one hour of lesson costing well over US $30. Expensive private education is often unaffordable for North Korean defectors. Many of them subsist on economic aid from the government. And public education does not give them an edge to compete with South Koreans in school or at the workplace.

English is only one of many difficulties faced by North Koreans in education. Most defectors pursue higher degrees after coming to South Korea, but they often have trouble adjusting to the curriculum.

“The curriculum is just so different from what we had in the North,” said Hye-Young, the youngest of the group at 19. “For instance, Korean history in North Korea is very different from what’s taught here as it’s manipulated by the government to serve as ideological propaganda.” Many defectors are forced to take classes with much younger students.

Difficulties come in many forms, but the group agreed on one thing: behind every difficulty they face is the South Koreans’ thinking that defectors are fundamentally different. “Advocating for the rights of North Koreans is evidently a strong movement here. Grants, lectures, fundraisers, there seem to be so many programs designed to ‘help us out’. Why not start by accepting us as Koreans?” said Hye-Young.

- Ji Eun Lee

(All names have been changed to avoid repercussions for family members still residing in North Korea.)

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.