Dieter Schmitt, who has run business tours to North Korea, looks at some of the opportunities and pitfalls: http://t.co/2BUVAq20mt

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) July 9, 2015

Bikini-clad models show off new swminsuits by French swimsuit brand Elle during a publicity event in Seoul on July 7, 2015. (Yonhap)

I always figured the Chinese would just reduce their oil exports to North Korea to make them feel a little pain and show their displeasure with North Korea.  I never believed they would cut off the exports entirely because of the effect it would have on regime stability:

WASHINGTON, July 10 (Yonhap) — North Korea’s sole-operating oil refinery has been up and running despite a series of media reports that China halted crude exports to the impoverished communist neighbor amid strained relations last year, a U.S. expert said Friday.

Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., chief analytics officer of AllSource Analysis, said in a report carried by the website 38 North of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies that the North’s Ponghwa Chemical Factory would not have been running if Beijing had halted crude exports.

Bermudez cited satellite imagery showing the refinery operational.

“Numerous reports during 2014-2015 have stated that China, North Korea’s largest crude oil supplier, did not sell it crude oil during 2014, a development that would force North Korea’s single operating oil refinery into caretaker status,” Bermudez said in the report.

“Satellite imagery from 2014 and 2015, however, reveals that the facility has remained operational, though perhaps at somewhat lower levels than in the immediately preceding years, calling into question media reports of an oil cutoff from China,” he said.

Imagery indicates activity at the factory’s rail loading and unloading facility, and construction activity within the factory, such as the building and maintenance of storage tanks and additions to several buildings, provides another indication that the facility remained operational, the expert said.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.

I guess it was only a matter of time, but now North Koreans get to wear another face on their clothes:

North Korea is printing new badges showing leader Kim Jong-un alongside his grandfather and father.

North Korean officials have so far worn badges with the faces of former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, but now the personality cult clearly includes the current leader.

A company in Pyongyang’s Pyongchon district is making the badges with the faces of the three Kims on the occasion of the anniversary of the Workers Party on Oct. 10, a source said on Tuesday.

The company is printing the first batch of 3,000 to give out to senior party officials and senior members of the socialist youth league.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

North Korea may have capacity to produce anthrax, analyst says http://t.co/btpWTu4hVN #NorthKorea #DPRK #WMD

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) July 9, 2015

This file photo, taken during the 1950-53 Korean War and obtained on June 23, 2015, from the Beijing-based International Committee of the Red Cross Regional Delegation for East Asia, shows a ruggedly dressed boy crying alone. This and other rare photos, which Red Cross officials and U.S. soldiers took during the three-year conflict, give a glimpse at how the inter-Korean war drove people into terrible situations, on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the start of the war, which falls on June 25. (Yonhap)

It will be interesting to see how this federal lawsuit plays out because right now universities are allowed to discriminate against another minority Asian-Americans because they are too smart:

The Education Department on Tuesday dismissed a complaint against Harvard University by some Asian American groups who say the university uses racial quotas to keep out high-scoring Asians.

The complaint was filed in May with the department’s civil rights office by more than 60 Chinese, Indian, Korean and Pakistani groups. Education officials said the complaint was dismissed because similar concerns were the focus of a federal lawsuit.

The complaining groups said they were “very disappointed.”

Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were sued last year by some rejected applicants who want affirmative action policies banned. The Harvard lawsuit also contends the university specifically limits the number of Asian-Americans it admits.

Harvard said its admission policies have been found to be “fully compliant with federal law” and said it “has demonstrated a strong record of recruiting and admitting Asian-American students.  [Korea Times]

This NK News article makes a really good argument that the Chinese government has no creditability to complain about Japanese World War II historical revisionism when they themselves have made laughable historical revisionist claims about their involvement in the Korean War.  Here is an excerpt, but I recommend reading the whole thing:

Finally, there is a museum titled the “Commemorative Museum of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid North Korea.” It has exhibits on how South Korea, in collusion with the United States, started the war, how the U.S. made use of germ warfare, and how American POWs held by the Chinese and North Koreans were treated humanely according to the Geneva Convention – including photos of a “Santa Claus” handing out care packages to POWs from the Red Cross. (This contrasts sharply to the reports of POWs repatriated after the war concerning their brutal and inhumane treatment, as documented in U.S. Senate Report No. 848, 83^rd Congress, Second Session – Korean War Atrocities.)

Xi Jinping, in his 2010 speech, repeated the dubious claim presented at the museum of the use of germ warfare by U.S forces when he said: “Thereafter, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army constructed an impregnable defense bastion and crushed the enemy’s multiple attacks and their germ warfare.”

In conclusion, the assertion by Xi Jinping in his 2010 remarks that Harry Truman started the Korean War is directly contradicted by the Yeltsin documents. It is thus as controversial as the claim of non-coercion of Comfort Women made in the past by Japanese Prime Minister Abe. Yet, while Abe’s intemperate remarks have caused criticism throughout South Korean society, there is almost no public outcry over Xi’s condemnation of the American president. Yet Truman was one of the leaders of the UN coalition which laid the groundwork for a viable and independent South Korean state.  [NK News]

Read the rest at the link.

On #NationalFriedChickenDay, read @drfarls on the American Colonel who changed Asia http://t.co/uk6XinjBWe pic.twitter.com/q2vsMpLKVa

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) July 6, 2015

This file photo, taken during the 1950-53 Korean War and obtained on June 23, 2015, from the Beijing-based International Committee of the Red Cross Regional Delegation for East Asia, shows a South Korean soldier giving a cigarette to a Chinese prisoner of war at a prison camp on the southeastern island of Geoje. This and other rare photos, which Red Cross officials and U.S. soldiers took during the three-year conflict, give a glimpse at how the inter-Korean war drove people into terrible situations, on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the start of the war, which falls on June 25. (Yonhap)

You can see pictures of the Geoje POW Camp today at the below link:

• Places in Korea: The Geoje POW Camp

You can read my prior posting about the POW camp during the Korean War at the below link:

• Heroes of the Korean War: Brigadier General Haydon Boatner