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吉田 康彦

吉田 康彦

1936年東京生まれ
埼玉県立浦和高校卒
東京大学文学部卒
NHK記者となり、ジュネーヴ支局長、国際局報道部次長などを歴任

1982年国連職員に転じ、ニューヨーク、ジュネーヴ、ウィーンに10年間勤務

1986−89年
IAEA (国際原子力機関)広報部長

1993−2001年
埼玉大学教授
(国際関係論担当)
2001-2006年
大阪経済法科大学教授
(平和学・現代アジア論担当)

現在、
同大学アジア太平洋研究センター客員教授

核・エネルギー問題情報センター常任理事
(『NERIC NEWS』 編集長)

NPO法人「放射線教育フォーラム」顧問

「21世紀政策構想フォーラム」共同代表
(『ポリシーフォーラム』編集長)

「北朝鮮人道支援の会」代表

「自主・平和・民主のための国民連合・東京」世話人

日朝国交正常化全国連絡会顧問

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北朝鮮人道支援の会

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TOP > English Page > North Korea Update (NovemberーDecember 2008)

2008年12月28日

North Korea Update (NovemberーDecember 2008)

LATEST  DEVELOPMENTS  ON  THE  KOREA PENINSULA

                        

 

KIM JONG-IL RECOVERING FROM A STROKE

(1)  Kim Jong-Il is apparently recovering from aftereffects of a stroke. Quoting numerous informants and intelligence sources, reports from Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo and Washington confirm that he had a stroke in mid-August.  After a silence of 50 days, North Korea’s official Central News Agency denied the reports and released a number of still photos showing Kim watching a football game, inspecting local soldiers and local factories, and visiting a zoo in Pyongyang.  But none of the pictures carried a date, and one picture ---a large group photo----was analyzed to be a composite one, according to experts.  Intelligence sources, however, confirm that some pictures are authentic, as he almost always has his left hand hidden behind the side table, or in the pocket of his jacket.  This means that he has the left arm/hand paralyzed as an aftereffect of the stroke.  No matter how many pictures may have been published, there are no foreigners---official guests, diplomats or correspondents--- who have met him directly and personally since mid-August.  Nor has he appeared on TV in which, he speakes or moves.  In fact, all the material available ---- a set of still photos without a date----indicates desperate efforts by DPRK authorities to ensure the nation's political and social stability.  On 11 December, a French newspaper, Le Figaro, quoted a French doctor of neurosurgery in Paris, as admitting that he flew to Pyongyang in late October to diagnose Kim Jong-Il’s stroke, which he said, was not serious.  He was on the stage of convalescence, the doctor said.  American intelligence sources admit that a locomotive exclusively used by Pyongyang’s dictator was observed to be moving toward the north where he was announced to have made local inspections. 

 

(2)  Pyongyang’s power structure appears stable, with policy decisions hinting at no change or no blurring.  Analysts point out that Pyongyang has been consistent in “its action-for-action principle” in negotiating with Washington on the denuclearization process.  In the six-party talks in Beijing resumed on 8 December, North Korea’s attitude remained unchanged, without making any compromise to the outgoing Bush Administration.

 

(3)  Korean sources in Tokyo almost unanimously predicte that even if Kim Jong-Il may recover completely from aftereffects of the stroke, power structure might have to undergo a gradual change from the current one-man dictatorship to a collective leadership.  The man in focus is Jang Song Thaek, Kim’s 62-year-old brother-in-law and Director of the Workers Party’s Administrative Division.  Jang, husband of Kim’s sole sister by the same mother, came back to power in 2006, after having been purged from Pyongyang for two years presumably as a result of his rift with the top leader.  Radio Press in Tokyo reports that Jang accompanies his ailing elder brother-in-law, to make local inspections more often than before---8 times since mid-August.

 

(4)  Patrimonial succession of power from Kim Jong-Il to one of his officially-recognized three sons is thus less likely, because none of them has accumulated experience within the party learning the nation’s politics and bureaucracy, enough to succeed his father as the top of the party, government and military, and because Kim Jong-Il himself is reportedly against the succession by blood, partly due to the opposition from China--- the most important supporter of his regime----saying that patrimonial succession is incompatible with socialism.

 

(5)  However, there are opponents to this view in consideration of the deep-rooted patriarchic tradition of North Korea’s society.  They argue that Kim Jong-Il might have to concede to finally designate one of his sons as successor, even nominally as a formality, for the unity and stability of the nation.  The most prospective candidate in this case is Kim Jong-Nam, the 38-year-old eldest son, sustained by strongman Jang Song-Thaek.  According to the Confucius tradition, the eldest son inherits his family and house.  With Kim Il-Sung as the founding father, North Korea, as a whole, is something like a big family.  Another widely-speculated prospective candidate is Kim Jong-Chol, the 27-year-old second son by the ailing father’s Japanese-born third wife, now dead.  He has a tenacious support from military circles.  All hinges upon Kim Jong-Il’s future health conditions. 

 

SIX-PARTY TALKS RUPTURED

(6)  The six-party talks, the last during the Bush Administration, were held in Beijing for four days from 8 December to discuss verification method on step-by-step denuclearization of North Korea.  The talks, however, ended without agreement.  North Korea was adamant on its refusal to sample-taking from the sites of its nuclear activities to be specified in a separate verification protocol, while insisting, under the action-for-action principle, upon energy and economic assistance by the five other participants in return for the disablement of North Korea’s existing nuclear facilities and the declaration of all nuclear programs.  Pyongyang’s tough attitude was interpreted as a gesture to gain time for the imminent inauguration of the Obama Administration.  However, Pyongyang is believed to be prepared to finally accept total abolition of nuclear weapons, provided that Washington, without interfering in its domestic affaires, should agree to conclude a peace treaty and fully normalize diplomatic relations with the DPRK,

 

(7)  South Korea’s Rengo News Agency reports that there is a plan in Washington’s political circles to dispatch a high-level American delegation to Pyongyang to explore a new channel of dialogue in US-North Koreas relations.  The delegation proposed to be sent within several months after the inauguration of the Obama Administration will include former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Secretary of Defense William Perry, according to the agency.  The report was originated by a previous New York Times report saying that Lee Ngyun, a senior official of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, during his visit to New York in November, extended an invitation to Kissinger, who replied, according the report, he would be ready to accept the invitation, on the assumption that he be named a special envoy and Pyongyang agree to eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.

 

 

NORTH AND SOUTH THE WORST SINCE SUMMIT

(8)  Relations between North and South are now the worst since the first North-South summit in June 2000.  The DPRK has expelled all South Korean government officials---1,200 in total number--- stationed in the Kum-Guangsam tourist zone and Kae-Song Industrial Complex, in protest against President Lee Myung-Bak’s “hostile” policy and, most recently, against two of the South’s anti-North NGOs distributing, by hydrogen balloons flying northbound over the sky, millions of paper bills disclosing Kim Jong-IL’s ill health to local people in the North.  The NGOs once accepted the Seoul Government’s appeal to suspend the bill flying on 5 December to avoid further worsening of the North-South relations, but one NGO resumed its anti-DPRK operations afterward.

 

(9)  Two symbolic North-South cooperation business schemes have collapsed. Nearly two-million South Korean citizens have visited the Kum-Guangsam tourist zone just north of the North-South Demarcation Line since November 1998.  The tour had already been suspended since July 2008, due to the shooting incident in which a South Korean woman was killed for her alleged invasion of North Korea’s territory.  The suspension has so far caused a loss of 100-million dollars to both sides.

 

(10)  The Kae-Song industrial complex is also near suspension, while a total of 36,000 North Koreans are working for 88 industrial firms, mostly small and medium-sized, from the South.  The one-day sightseeing tour of Kae-Song, an ancient capital of Korea, which also started in December 2007 as another symbol of North-South reconciliation and cooperation, bringing more than 110,000 Koreans and foreigners from the South, was likewise suspended in the wake of a new “cold war” on the Korean Peninsula.  It incurred a loss of one-million dollars at least to the Hyundae Industrial group, a main sponsor and promoter of both Kum-Gangsam and Kae-Song projects.  Foreign currency revenues for the North are being lost as well.  Seoul officials estimate Pyongyang’s annual revenue from the two tourist businesses at 50-million dollars.  This is being lost, but Pyongyang has no idea about loss and gain; their only concern is survival of the Kim Jong-Il regime.

 

(11)  Accordingly, the railway service between the North and South, ---daily shuttle of cargo locomotive shuttle on the railroad crossing the demarcation line---which started in December 2007, was suspended on 28 November.  The cargo trains were carrying law material bound for the Kae-Song factories and manufactured goods, mostly light metals and textiles, and then from Kae-Song to the South, eventually to Seoul for sales and exports.  This was also a symbol of North-South d?tente and cooperation.  All those symbols have disappeared, or are on the verge of disappearance.

 

(12) Pyongyang, cashing in on the imminent inauguration of the Obama Administration, purposely takes a highhanded attitude toward the South (and Japan) to win advantageous positions.  Another consideration would be to give an additional blow to President Lee Myung-Bak, whose popularity has been declining to a record low of 10-percent level, mainly for serious economic difficulties at home.  Since his inauguration, Pyongyang has been accusing Lee as an enemy of all Korean people.

 

 

RUSSO-DPRK RELATIONS IMPROVING

(13)  Railway repair and reconstruction work has started on the old and obsolete line crossing the border between Russia and North Korea.  During the visit of a Russian railway delegation to Pyongyang in early November, Russia agreed to invest 200-million dollars on the project on the 52-kilometer railway between Khassan in Russia and Rajin in North Korea.  Russia also agreed to modernize the Rajin port facilities to enable large cargo vessels to charge and discharge merchandise.  Work on the port will be starting in spring, 2009.

 

(14)  Railway cooperation is part of the Moscow Declaration signed by Kim Jong-Il and the then President Vladimir Putin during their summit in August 2001.  More recently, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev discussed the project with the President Lee Myung-Bak, who visited Moscow in early November 2008.  They agreed to link Pusan, a southernmost pot in the South, with Moscow, and eventually with Western Europe, as a modern silk road of iron.  The Russian move was interpreted as Moscow’s attempt to counterbalance China’s growing influence upon Pyongyang. This was also observed in the latest six-party talks in Beijing, in which the Russian delegation tried to play a more active role than before in mediating in differences between the U.S. and North Korea.  However, total railway repair and reconstruction work all along the east coast of North Korea from the Russian border to the demarcation line is estimated at 2.5-billion dollars, according to a Russian feasibility study conducted in 2001.  Here again, future of the whole project is to be affected by North-South relations.  

 

 

EUROPEANS AND ARABS MOVING TOWARD  PYONGYANG

(15)  The European Union (EU) has been paying a greater attention to North Korea as a future prospective market.  The EU-North Korea trade has been on a steady increase since Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson led a high-level EU delegation to visit Pyongyang in May 2001.  He confirmed from Kim Jong-Il that North Korea was prepared to open its market to invite foreign investment.  According to KOTRA (Seoul), EU-NK trade was expanded from 300-million dollars in 2001 to 400-milion dollar level in 2008, after recording a temporary decline due to North Korea’s missile shots and nuclear test in 2006.  A total of 110 foreign firms and enterprises, of which 23 Europeans, took part in the autumn international trade fair held in Pyongyang in September 2008.

 

(16)  Among the recent investors on North Korean market are the Phoenix Trade Company (the Netherlands) in electronics, the Menecke (Austria) in piano manufacturing, the Global Group (UK) in banking, the Anglo-Sino Capital in mineral mining, La Farge (France) in cement production and construction, which took over from the Orascom Construction Industries (Egypt).  The Orascom has been entrusted with a new third-generation (3G) mobile phone network in North Korea, for which the Egyptian concern plans to invest 400-million dollars for the coming three years.  The nation’s first mobile phone service in Pyongyang and the Rajin district in the North opened in November 2002 with technical assistance of a Thai capital, but was banned in May 2004, presumably due to an alleged assassination attempt against Kim Jong-Il.  Limited mobile phone service was resumed in Pyongyang in December 2008. 

 

(17)  The Orascom group has also embarked on construction and completion work for Pyongyang’s Hotel Ryangyan, the half-abandoned 105-story hotel, the highest in Asia.  The United Arab Emirates (UAR) has also agreed to take part in investment on the hotel completion work, merging the Egyptian capital,  according to informed sources in Seoul.  The DPRK authorities expect the work to be completed by April, 2012, the 100th anniversary of Kim Il-Sung’s birthday.

 

(18)  The EU and North Korea exchanged high-level missions and delegations in 2007 and 2008.  Glyn Ford, a British member of European Parliament, who visited Pyongyang twice in March and August 2008, published in London a book, entitled “Struggle for Survival,” the first objective and comprehensive review of North Korea, ever written by a European scholar-politician. 

 

 

JAPAN-NORTH KOREA TIES COMPLETELY STALLED

(19)  Long winter sleep in the Japan-North Korea relations.  There is a complete stalemate.  Pyongyang has announced that they would watch what  Japanese Prime Minister ASO Taro would do to break the deadlock in the bilateral relations.  ASO plans to do nothing, or rather impossible to do anything but for his own political survival.  His popularity is at a record low of 20-percent level.  The Japanese Government, for the fourth time, extended its economic sanctions against the DPRK for another six month period on 14 October.  However, North Korea appears more intransigent; Kim Kye-Gwan, in Beijing, claimed that Japan should be excluded from the six-party talks.  There was no contact at all between the North Korean and Japanese delegates during the Beijing talks.  A stumbling bloc is the abduction issue.  No solution acceptable to both sides is in sight.  And no initiative is expected to come from either side.  Therefore, Japan would have to follow Washington, even if the Obama Administration takes a drastic approach toward Pyongyang. (2008-12-28)

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