What Can Be Learned about North Korea: Defectors, COVID, Accidents

North Korea's Chairman, Kim Jong-un, surfaced on September 25, 2020, to send a letter to South Korean President Moon Jae-in's Blue House apologizing for the North Korean troops who killed an official from South Korea's Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries on Septemebr 22. North Korea later claimed the official crossed North Korea's maritime border south of the Yeonpyeong islands it controls in order to defect to the north. This explanation occurred shortly before reports began to claim Jo Song Gil, North Korea's acting ambassador to Italy, who disappeared with his wife in Rome in November, 2018, had been living in South Korea since July, 2019. A North Korean diplomat in London, Thae Jong ho, and his family had defected to South Korea in 2016. Originally, Chairman Kim expressed condolences that the incident involving the death of the South Korean official had occurred at a time when both countries were suffering from COVID-19. On October 3, after President Trump was found to have COVID-19, Chairman Kim also expressed his wish that the president would recover. Commercial satellite imaging has shown the Yongbyon area, where North Korea's Nuclear Scientific Research Center is located, suffered severe damage from typhoons in September, 2020. The breach of a dam caused the lake that provides a steady water level for cooling when reactors are operating, which they are not now, dried up. Elsewhere, flooding in the area damaged grain in the country's already suffering economy. Grain is now drying on every available surface. At the UN in September, 2020, North Korea announced it is satisfied with the strength of its nuclear deterrent and intends to concentrate on economic development. A party conference is planned for January, 2021, in order to develop a new 5-year economic plan. Sanctions imposed to block North Korea's nuclear and missile program remain in place, although they have not been very effective. As usual, reports direct from North Korea, where citizens are afraid to talk to reporters, were not forthcoming immediately after neighboring countries announded North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, was in a coma on August 25, 2020, and observers saw explosions across China's border at Changbai on August 3, 2020. Since the sister of Kim Jong-un, Kim Yo-jong, who was anticipated to assume interim North Korean national and international duties while her brother was in a coma, had not been seen in public since July 27, 2020, some suggested a power struggle for leadership might be in progress. This no longer seemed the case, when Kim Yo Jong was seen with her brother, Kim Jong Un, inspecting the flooded area in Yongbyon in September. The August explosion in North Korea occurred in the Tapsong neighborhood of Hyesan City on North Korea's eastern border with China. These explosions caused articles to reference a July, 2020, train fire in Sinuiju on North Korea's western border with China. Firefighters were unable to contain the fire, because extinguishers at the train station were empty. In the process of describing how the explosion began with a gasoline fire and spread to LPG storage cylinders, we learned that homes in Hyesan each rely on their own stored gasoline or LPG. Finally, besides reporting on North Korea from South Korean and official Chinese sources, initial reports of the explosion revealed there are Chinese activists who help those trying to escape from North Korea.

Playgrounds Welcome March Basketball Madness

Now that he's an ex-President, Barack Obama welcomes his extra time to fill out March Madness brackets for the annual basketball tournament pitting 68 top U.S. college teams against each other. Former University of Pennsylvania stars welcome the chance to reminisce about years back when they were on an Ivy League basketball team that reached the Final Four. They remind each other how they were the tough recruits from the New York public leagues who recognized the teammate potential of a lanky lad from a Connecticut prep school.

     March Madness also brings players to welcoming neighborhood basketball courts. The short Shark Tank entrepreneur, Daymon John, reports how he, by being the one who brought the ball, always was welcome to play in pick-up games. Surprisingly, North Korea's short President, Kim Jong-un, is a basketball fan who probably would welcome an invitation to a March Madness game.

     There's even a semi-professional basketball team in Tibet, China. Willard "Bill" Johnson, a former MIT basketball coach and professional player in Iceland, Australia, and Cape Verde, coaches a team made up of nomad sheep and yak herders and Buddhist monks who were prepared to play in the Norlha Basketball Invitational in Gannan, part of China's Gansu province. Unfortunately, Beijing canceled the tournament, because local police voiced security concerns about controlling a large gathering of people during the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.

     One of Johnson's players, 6-foot, one-inch Dugya Bum was a school drop out who didn't quit smoking until basketball changed his life. His home now displays a framed photo of LeBron James. Basketball also transformed the difficult lives of Norlha's nomad women who became interested in trying new things, like yoga and meeting together to chat, once they too had a team.

     The Olympic Creed claims "The most important thing about the Olympics is to take part." Around the world, in playgrounds and gyms everywhere, the most important thing may be getting to know each other by taking part in sports. 

Vietnam and U.S. Demonstrate the Value of Short Memories

Chances are, looking back on your life, you remember having an enemy who later became your friend. Kids also go through those off and on enemy-friend relationships, as do countries. Turning Germany into a friend after World War II proved far better than trying to condemn the country forever following World War I.

     In the U.S. we learned at Senator John McCain's funeral service on September 1, 2018 last Saturday, even though he was captured and tortured for over five years in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese now recognize him as someone who helped bring about the reconciliation of the United States and Vietnam.

     Haiphong harbor, once mined by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, now is valued as an import/export hub needed to handle U.S. trade pulling out of China. In February, 2019, President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un chose Vietnam for their meeting to discuss demilitarization of the Korean peninsula and lifting the crippling economic sanctions that keep North Korea from enjoying the prosperity South Korea and Vietnam now enjoy.

     Today, both the United States and Vietnam continue to contest China's claim to "indisputable sovereignty" over the Spratly Islands and their adjacent waters in the South China Sea. After declaring in 2015 no intention of militarizing its artificial islands there, China now has radar installations, reinforced concrete bunkers, and missiles on three Spratly Islands west of the Philippines, a compliant challenger dependent on Chinese investment. China also has landed bombers in the Parcel Islands disputed with Vietnam.

   Vietnam, nonetheless, with its powerful military force, successfully prevented China from locating an oil exploration rig in its waters. At home, Vietnam has experienced anti-Chinese protests. Meanwhile, in its ongoing challenge to excessive maritime claims by all countries violating the international Law of the Sea Convention, a U.S. destroyer's Freedom of Navigation Operation sailed within 12 miles of one of China's seven artificial islands in May, 2018. Then, the US canceled an invitation to China to participate in annual naval drills off Hawaii and invited Vietnam instead.

     Vietnam also has challenged China's claims in the South China Sea by building two of its own artificial islands on the Nanhua Reef in the Spratly Island chain. According to China, the reef where Vietnam built is only above water at low tide, and typhoon "Jasmine" washed away much of the reclaimed land dredged up from the ocean floor. China also was proud to add Vietnam used a technique inferior to the way China sucks up sand for its taller islands.

     Both low tech and high tech industries benefit from Vietnam's and the US's short memories. Check clothes labels, and you probably will see a number of items were made in Vietnam. At the same time, the oncology treatment IBM's Watson chose at Phu Tho General Hospital enabled a patient to move and eliminate the need for painkilling medication. Google Brain and technology experts also applaud Vietnamese Dr. Le Viet Quoc's effort to make deep learning a reality and to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into advertising research.

     At "Age of AI and Vietnamese Enterprises," a Hanoi summit on July 25, 2018, more than 400 AI, economists, and financial experts and delegates from Vietnam's leading firms heard Harvard's James Furman urge private-government cooperation on AI research and applications. Vietnam's own Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment told the summit's older generation to eliminate obstacles preventing companies from making full use of younger employees with math skills and an interest in new technology.

     Modeled on Silicon Valley, California, Vingroup JSC, a Vietnamese conglomerate worth about $3 billion, intends to consolidate its diversified businesses in VinTech City, where the focus will be technology development (including development of new generation materials), applications, manufacturing, and services. A sub-unit will house the Big Data Institution and Vin Hi-Tech Institution.Vietnam finds the key to using Big Data effectively is creating teams that include Big Data technology experts and those with a full understanding of the industry using the data. Working together, technology and industry partners are best able to incorporate unstructured data about customer activities, such as internet use and applications, with structured and semi-structured industry data in order to develop new digital products and services. Just like in the United States, Vietnam knows data found to have great long-term value for a company, needs to be protected from nearby and distant competitors, even if they are friends.

Golden Bridges to Peace

Military strategy suggests it is far better to give an enemy a "golden bridge" that permits retreat or saving face rather than to back an enemy into a corner, where the only option is an all out battle.

     Students might begin by suggesting "golden bridges" they could offer bullies and move on to identify a country's enemies and offer suggestions of "golden bridges," i.e. desirable options, that are better than open warfare between two countries. Using Bill Clinton to open a back door channel of communication with North Vietnam might be a useful gambit; he was involved in a past mission there.

     U.S.-China relations began to improve with a ping pong match between the two countries. Could a basketball game improve relations between the United States and the basketball-loving North Koreans?  With partners who are performers and an interest in visiting Japan's Disneyland, the ruling family clearly is interested in the entertainment field. Could a "golden bridge" be created by using North Korea as a movie location? Far-fetched? An Israeli Labor Party election was postponed, because it was scheduled on the same day as a Britney Spears concert, reports TIME magazine (April 24, 2017).

Nuclear Straight Talk

We talk casually about nuking our lunches until the remains of a bird or cat are found in a microwave oven. However small the amount, until the lingering radiation from the 2011 meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant in Japan was measured on the West Coast of the United States in 2015, proponents lauded energy from nuclear power plants as clean compared to that from fossil fuels.

     Ever since the first atomic bombs killed over 100,000 almost instantly and another 90,000 to 140,000 from radiation in Japan seventy years ago, world leaders have both worked to eliminate death and destruction from atomic and hydrogen bombs and worked to acquire these weapons. While it is tempting to walk away from exasperating talks with an Iran or North Korea, the need to stave off a nuclear attack or Chernobyl-type accident demands persistence at the negotiating table.

     The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed by Iran, five permanent members of the UN's Security Council, and Germany on July 14, 2015, aims to prevent Iran from enriching uranium at Natanz and from developing a bomb at its nuclear facility at Qom. The unanimous UN Security Council approval of sanctions on Kim Jong-un's North Korea on March 2, 2016 were designed to cut off financing for Pyongyang's nuclear and missile program. Yet "artificial seismic waves" detected at North Korea's Punggye-ri atomic test site caused a 5.0 magnitude earthquake on September 9, 2016. , Despite past cyber attacks that have caused North Korea's missile launch software to fail, in March, 2017, the country successfully launched four missiles that threatened Japan and claimed it had the west coast of the United States in its sights. In July, 2017, North Korea launched a long-range missile that made good on its claim. In addition to increasing the range of its weapon-carrying missiles, North Korea is working on mobile and submarine launchers that make it more difficult to detect pending missile tests/attacks.

      It might be wise to monitor travel from Iran to North Korea and back to make sure Iran is not using North Korea as a proxy to get around its agreement to discontinue its nuclear program. After all, Iran financed the transfer of North Korean nuclear technology to al-Kibar, Syria, where an Israeli air strike attacked Syria's nuclear reactor in September, 2007.

     At the website nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap, students can select target cities and see the widespread effect, in terms of casualties and radioactive fallout, of various atomic and nuclear weapons.

     In an article in the Novembver, 2015 issue of the alumni magazine of American University in Washington, DC, Koko Kondo, an atomic bomb survivor known as a hibakusha in Japanese, described the human suffering caused by the first mid-air detonation of an atomic bomb. With nine nuclear states (USA, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Russia, North Korea, Israel) and the forty countries that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and have the capability to develop nuclear weapons, Kondo knows how important it is to abolish all nuclear weapons.

     When President Obama came to Hiroshina on May 27, 2016, he laid a wreath at the Peace Memorial and said, "the voices of hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness....But memory...fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change."

     Kondo's memory of the August, 1945 attack starts with seeing a blueish-white flash and the collapse of a building on top of her. There were fires everywhere. People were staggering around holding fists full of charred skin, and their hair was standing straight up. The eyeballs of those looking at the sky when the bomb detonated melted.

     Speaking at the memorial service in Hiroshima's Peace Park on August 6, 2015, the mayor urged, "People of the world...contemplate the nuclear problem as your own."

Reasons to Celebrate Global Victories

Kim Jong-un's North Korea has released Kenneth Bae and two other U.S. citizens; Cuba has released the U.S. AID worker, Alan Gross, who has been in prison there for five years (See the later blog post, "Good News from Cuba.")

With Ebola and ISIS uncontained, it is well to look around the world and derive hope from other difficult situations that have been resolved in the past. For a reminder of some of these past victories, see the earlier blog post, "Hope for the Future."