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.

Punishment for Human Rights' Abuses

Like two aspirins for those whose heads ache, because they feel powerless to do anything about unspeakable human rights' violations, the concept of Magnitsky laws is a cure. These laws impact the individuals and organizations responsible for inhuman abuses, who often seem to escape prosecution, to accummulate fortunes by leveraging their high-level contacts and to laundeer and stash their wealth in safe havens throughout the world. Countries, including the US, UK, Canada, the Baltics and members of the European Union, enact a version of the Magnitsky law to freeze accounts of those responsible for human rights' abuses, thereby preventing them from financing their anticipated luxurious lifestyles. While the laudible aim of Magnitsky laws and fate of Sergei Magnitsky are well known, some details are disputed. Mr. Magnitsky, a 37-year-old tax expert, sometimes represented as an attorney, worked for Bill Browder's London-based Hermitage Capital Management investment firm. When Browder's Russian investments in state-owned corporations, especially Gazprom, prospered, he appears to have involved Magnitsky in a scheme to limit his tax liability by claiming a discount for employing disabled workers firms did not employ. In connection with an investigation two Moscow police officers made into Broder's alleged $230 million tax fraud case, Magnitsky ended up in a Russian prison, where a doctor discovered he needed pancreatic surgery he never received. Magnitsky died in prison on November 16, 2009. Mr. Browder effectively tells the story that the two police officers who initiated the tax fraud investigation were responsible for Magnitsky's death. In any case, the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) maintains a list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) sanctioned under various laws, including the Global Magnitsky Act of 2012. On Friday, August 7, 2020, the OFAC list added 11 Hong Kong officials for undermining autonomy guarantees and restricting freedom of expression or assembly. In mid-July, 2020, the UK's Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations imposed asset freezes and travel bans on: - 25 Russian officials implicated in Magnitsky's death - 20 senion Saudi intelligence officials allegedly involved in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi - 2 Myanmar generals connected to ethnic Rohingya autrocities - 2 North Korean organizations that run the concentration camps for political prisoners The UK's sanctions regulations provide review provisions.

You Don't Have to Be Catholic to be Helped by Nuns

On the passing of John Lewis, the young 1963 Civil Rights leader who went on to represent Georgia in Congress for 33 years, one tribute mentioned nuns who administered a Selma, Alabama, hospital took care of him when he was beaten by police in 1965. A female Muslim student wrote a prize-winning story about a nun, the principal of a college in Bangladesh, who saw she was absent, visited her family and arranged to help her continue her education after her unemployed father could no longer afford tuition. Shamima Sakendar's story is now a film, "The Soul," which can be viewed on Facebook and YouTube. Taken together, these mentions of the unheralded contributions religious orders of women reminded me of the legally-trained nuns who represent immigrants in courts at the US border and the recently deceased Sister Carolyn Farrell, who had helped plan, at the invitation of Iowa's governor, the State's long-term goals. She also was elected to the City Council in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1977 and became mayor in 1980, since Council members held that office on a rotating basis. The work nuns do in Africa is extremely important. To prevent young women from being lured into the human trafficking trade, nuns in Bukoba, Tanzania, help students become self-sufficient in a 3-year sewing program. At graduation, they receive their own sewing machines. Since 1989, nuns in Kampala Uganda, have provided a home for as many as 30 abandoned babies and children under five at a time. When mothers die in childbirth after traveling long distances to deliver their newborns, relatives often cannot be found to care for the babies. In other cases, women flee from abusive husbands who are left with children they don't want, husbands leave to seek work in cities or abroad and never return and friends and relatives shun women and children who are HIV positive. With help from volunteers, the nuns carry the babies, sleep with them and maintain a cow and chickens to provide milk and eggs to feed them. The nuns try to find caring relatives by posting children's photos in local newspaper ads. If no relatives are found and the children have not been adopted by age 6, they are transferred to a children's home and then a group home until they can support themselves. As carbon dioxide's greenhouse gases continue to raise the Earth's temperatures, the organic farming practices of nuns in drought-ridden Chilanga, Zambia, provide a valuable example of how to produce a variety of indigenous fruits, cabbage, kale, maize, tomatoes, onions and beans as well as how to raise cows, goats and chickens. By drilling a borehole, the nuns were able to install an irrigation system to spray water over crops. They also use manure as organic fertilizer and crop rotation to keep from depleting soil nutrients. Mixing crops grown on the farm helps control insect damage. Without becoming Catholic, people around the world benefit from the care nuns provide.

What Does Success Look Like?

When a "Black Lives Matter" group took over the pavilion in a park to broadcast a message by bullhorn last night, I was reminded of this question an interviewer asked a Black author on the "Book TV" program. I guess I would have answered her question by saying success in a Black neighborhood would look like a well-maintained school, no Pay-Day loan and liquor stores or abortion clinics. The kindly Black man on the "Today" show this morning, who had adopted a "family" of a dozen or so multiracial children would have answered differently. As would Rev. Derrick DeWitt, the director of the Maryland Baptist Aged Home whose residents have had no infections during the COVID-19 epidemic. Jasmine Guillory, an attorney who writes romance novels with Black female lead characters, might judge her success by publication of PARTY OF TWO, her fifth novel. Everywhere on the globe, no matter what your aim is: reforming a police department, feeding a hungry world or living a happy and fulfilling life, before beginning a task, ask yourself, "What will success look like?"

Rocky on the Ropes

No pandemic would send Rocky Balboa or the folks on the World War II home front into a black hole of loneliness and depression. Follow their advice: Get physically fit. Activate you own version of Rocky's raw egg concoction and his run up Philadelphia's Art Museum steps. Grow your wealth. During World War II, Captain America advised citizens to fight for freedom by investing $37.50 in a war bond that would yield $50 in ten years. Today, bonds are sold online at treasurydirect.gov. Discover farming. Pick apples, berries and watermelons at local farms, buy fresh corn at stands along country roads, plant tomatoes in your own Victory Garden and grow flowers to attract the honeybees that pollinate crops. Enjoy home entertainment. Once listeners gathered around the radio to hear a closet full of items tumble out on "Fibber McGee and Molly" or they read comic books in lighted closets during blackouts. Choose from a much wider variety of ways to enjoy home entertainment today. Hone your arguments. While sheltering in place, take time to scroll through social media, listen to talking heads, read up on the issues and then express your opinions in "Letters to the Editor" and elsewhere.

Sky-based Networks Aid Earth-bound Travel and National Security

For centuries, wise men and ship captains have relied on stars to guide their way. When China's Long March 3B Rocket launched a final satellite from the Xichang Satellite Center on June 23, 2021, the completed BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) became a new network in the artificial skies mentioned in an earlier post. Besides serving China, the BDS is expected to court customers along China's Belt and Road Initiative project throughout Asia and Africa. Earlier, the European Union had allowed China to use its Galileo network of navigational satellites even though China was not an EU member. Once China learned what it could about a satellite system, it went off on its own. A short time later, the UK announced, on July 3, 2020, it would join with Bharti Global, India's mobile network operator, to fund a $1 billion purchase of the bankrupt OneWeb startup that had invested $3.4 billion in its satellite project. With satellites manufactured in Florida, Arianespace had helped launch 74 satellites out of a planned 650 for OneWeb. As of November, 2020, the government of the UK and India's Bharti Global own OneWeb, including its 74 satellites already in space. A Russian Soyuz rocket is scheduled to launch another 36 onconnect nearly all of the Earth's land and sea surfaces. December 17, 2020. Bharti Global's 425 million customers in India demonstrate the commercial and operational expertise that company brings to OneWeb's ultimate connection with nearly all of the Earth's land and sea surfaces. Nowadays, satellite constellation networks represent more than aids for travel, navigation, port traffic, sea rescues and precision timing, they offer broadband internet communication across the world, and they are an essential national security asset.

Expand Family and Business Income Streams

Economic suffering from jobs lost to automation and the COVID-19 pandemic accelerate the need for multiple income streams from family members and businesses. The earlier post, "Rebirth of Self Worth," suggests ways children even can help generate income by adding lemonade and hot dog stands and entertainment to family yard sales. The following examples show how some businesses find new market segments eager to try their products.

     Hard to mow hilly parks overgrown with invasive buckthorn bushes and honeysuckle inspired the formation of the HaakHagen Goat Grazing farm run by a couple of friends in Wisconsin. Their 88 agile goats, rented out to private landowners and government land, also help preserve prairies by nibbling invasive species and shrubs that block the sun needed by shorter native plants. The goats are gentler on the land than heavy mowing machinery, what they leave behind eliminates the need for some fertilizer and adults and children find the goats fun to watch.

     Renting out RVs during the pandemic has become a new business catering to both vacationing families and virtual employees looking for office space while sheltering at home. When pleasure and business travelers return to the skies, they are likely to receive airline-branded Honeywell Safety Packs containing single-use gloves, hand wipes and face masks. Trendwatching.com reports Honeywell offers airline crews reusable packs of safety glasses and face masks with interchangeable filters.

     What is obvious from these three businesses is the way they each seized opportunities to serve multiple market segments. Clothing manufacturers now have an opportunity to produce double-duty items for home and business wear. Educational suppliers can think in terms of the home and school markets. Online retailers might gain multiple incomes from pop-up holiday shops, and more and more similar ideas will create new jobs and economic growth.