A sign that pouring into Thailand is sustainable?

The Foreign Ministry complained yesterday that local and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were hampering Thailand’s efforts to prevent illegal entry by North Korean defectors. The ministry’s complaint came after police rounded up 59 North Koreans in Pathum Thani province on Tuesday, the third mass arrest in four months.

Thailand already has measures in place to prevent North Koreans sneaking into the country, but its efforts to prevent illegal entry have been hampered by local and international NGOs that encouraged North Koreans to flee their country, said deputy ministry spokesman Kiattikhun Chartprasert. However, he did not name any groups specifically.

While we should be grateful that Thailand will probably never send refugees back to North Korea, we should be concerned that it will become more costly to hold more refugees. We “organizations” tend to count on the good nature of the Thais without concerning about the cost to them.

It’s one thing to not give damn about China, which repatriates refugees, but it’s another to not care about a country that actually respects human rights. For a country that’s transitioning back to democracy and fighting an insurgency in the south, Thailand should not be devoting more and more of its limited resources to process thousands of refugees.

In other words, in order to encourage Thailand to remain a safe haven for North Koreans, governments and NGO’s ought to reward the country as an incentive to keep accepting refugees.

After all, when was the last time LiNK or other human rights organizations thanked a country outside of its embassy?

Looks like Kim Jong-Il will have to rely on store bought music (Via. Gizmodo)

The Bush administration wants North Korea’s attention, so like a scolding parent it’s trying to make it tougher for that country’s eccentric leader to buy iPods, plasma televisions and Segway electric scooters.

The U.S. government’s first-ever effort to use trade sanctions to personally aggravate a foreign president expressly targets items believed to be favored by Kim Jong Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run the communist government.

Kim, who engineered a secret nuclear weapons program, has other options for obtaining the high-end consumer electronics and other items he wants.

But the list of proposed luxury sanctions, obtained by The Associated Press, aims to make Kim’s swanky life harder: No more cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis.

The new ban would extend even to music and sports equipment. The 5- foot-3 Kim is an enthusiastic basketball fan; then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented him with a ball signed by Michael Jordan during a rare diplomatic trip in 2000.

I bet it sucks to be an elite in Pyongyang right now.

Thanks to the power of YouTube, I found this short clip of the aftermath of the 1983 Rangoon Bombing. The culprits? North Korean agents. The target? The President of South Korea and his cabinet.

The result? 21 Dead and 46 wounded. If it weren’t for some bad traffic, President Chun Doo Hwan would have been among the victims and another Korean War might have started.