Defecting from North Korea (last updated October 22, 2003) (back to top)
North Korea officially provides its citizens with the freedom to travel, but the government strictly controls this right and has threatened would-be defectors with severe punishments, according to various reports. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled their country, primarily for China, since an economic collapse that began in the 1990s.
North Koreans have a difficult time leaving their country for any reason. The government only issues exit visas for foreign travel to officials and to "trusted" artists, athletes, academics, and religious figures, according to a report by the United States Department of State. Guards monitoring the North Korea-China border reportedly have orders to shoot to kill persons attempting to leave North Korea without permission.
Attempted defection is a serious crime under North Korean law. According to a Human Rights Watch report, an unauthorized border crossing is punishable by up to three years of labor and re-education and defection is punished by at least seven years. Serious violations can be punished by execution and confiscation of assets. The government also reportedly has retaliated against the families of those who have left.
Sources: The United States Department of State's report on North Korea's human rights practices, published March 31, 2003, is on-line here. Human Rights Watch, The Invisible Exodus: North Koreans in the People's Republic of China (published November 2002) is on-line here.
North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) (last updated October 15, 2003) (back to top)
North Korea, perhaps the most isolated country in the world today, has raised tensions around the world by developing a nuclear program that could be used to build nuclear weapons. Most recently, a North Korean official said on Oct. 2 that the country is making nuclear bombs from plutonium it has reprocessed from spent fuel rods, though he also said that the country will not export the bombs or the bomb-making technology.
Recent Claims
The United States has said that it could not verify North Korea's latest statement. "This is the third time they have told us they'd just finished reprocessing the rods. We have no evidence to confirm that," Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an Oct. 3 press conference. "The North Koreans go out of their way to make these statements from time to time. And we will continue to pursue diplomacy and not react to each and every one of their statements."
Still, there might be some truth to North Korea's claims. The New York Times reported on Oct. 14 that the International Atomic Energy Agency has said that North Korea probably has enough plutonium for two new nuclear weapons. CIA reports have stated that North Korea probably had enough plutonium as of the late 1990s for one or two nuclear weapons.
The United States has participated in several talks with North Korea and other Asian countries in an effort to defuse the situation, with the most recent talks being held in late August in Beijing. Bush administration officials have said the United States has no intention of invading North Korea, despite concerns that the justifications Bush used to invade Iraq would apply in even greater force to North Korea.
Background on Nuclear Issues
The possibility that North Korea was using its nuclear program to develop weapons has long been a concern for South Korea, Japan, and for the United States. President George W. Bush even condemned the country in early 2002 as one of several states constituting an "axis of evil" for its development of weapons of mass destruction (see text here).
North Korea then acknowledged in October 2002 that it had developed a program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, an act widely seen as a violation of the 1994 Agreed Framework that seemed to resolve the first major crisis over North Korea's potential development of nuclear weapons. North Korea then expelled international nuclear inspectors on December 31, 2002 and announced on January 9, 2003 that it would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
A decade ago, North Korea provoked an earlier round of multilateral talks in 1993 by threatening to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United States and North Korea than had several rounds of talks over the next year and a half, culminating in October 1994 with an Agreed Framework under which North Korea agreed to freeze its existing nuclear program, and both sides agree to cooperate to replace North Korea's graphite-moderated reactors for facilities with light-water power plants which would be safer and would produce less plutonium which could be used in atomic weapons. Both sides also agreed to move towards full normalization of political and economic relations.
The United States maintained nuclear weapons in South Korea in 1957 to 1991, when President George H.W. Bush removed the last remaining weapons from South Korea.
Background on North Korea
Arguably the most Communist and most isolated country in the world today, North Korea is led by Kim Jong-Il, who took over in 1994 after the death of his father, Kim Il-Song, who ruled the country as a one-man dictatorship since its formation until his death. The country's socialist economy is under tight state control, consists mostly of basic industrial production and agriculture, and is relatively weak, especially compared to neighboring South Korea; North Korea's GDP per capita is about 16 times smaller than South Korea's.
Although the economy is ostensibly based on the principle of "juche," or self-reliance, North Korea has suffered food problems since 1995 due to natural disasters, a 30 percent contraction with its domestic economy, and the lack of agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, according to the UN's World Food Programme, and the country has accepted foreign aid.
Despite its economic problems, North Korea still spends about a quarter to a third of its GNP on military. South Korea, on the other hand, spends a much smaller percentage of its GNP on the military but more than three times as much in absolute dollars ($12 billion, about 3 percent of GNP). According to the U.S. Secretary of Defense's 2000 report to Congress on the military situation in Korea, South Korea has quantitatively inferior but qualitatively superior military forces to North Korea. North Korea has the world's third largest army with 1 million active duty soldiers, an air force of more than 1,600 aircraft, and a navy of more than 800 ships. South Korea has an army of about 560,000 troops, an air force of more than 780 aircraft, and a navy of about 200 vessels.
Relations between North and South Korea took some steps forward in recent years, especially with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's "sunshine policy" in the late 1990s, which President Kim's successor, Roh Moo-hyun, has promised to continue. The first summit meeting between Korean leaders took place in June 2000 in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, and the two countries have allowed family reunions, a reconnection of national railroads, and some forms of economic cooperation.
North Korea has been officially designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department, but it is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since 1987, when Korean Airlines Flight 858 was bombed in flight. Two North Korean agents planted the bomb and tried to commit suicide when arrested, but one, Kim Hyon Hui, a 25-year-old agent on her first mission, survived and was taken into custody. She later confessed and was sentenced to death, but was then given a presidential pardon on the grounds that she was brainwashed by North Korean leaders. As for previous instances, the most successful occurred in 1968, when North Korea sent a 31-man commando team to assassinate the president, got within a thousand yards of the Blue House before being repelled.
Sources: David E. Sanger, Intelligence puzzle: North Korean bombs, New York Times, October 14, 2003. James Brooke, Korean claim leaves U.S. concerned, but skeptical, New York Times, October 3, 2003. Secretary of State Colin Powell's September 3, 2003 comments are on-line here. Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (Addison-Wesley, 1997). Bruce Cummings, Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History (W.W. Norton, 1997). The State Department has background notes on North Korea here and on South Korea here. The CIA's World Factbook has entries on North Korea here and South Korea here. The International Atomic Energy Agency is on-line here. The CIA's January 2002 report on the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction is on-line here. The Federation of American Scientists has information on North Korea's nuclear weapons program here. The U.S. Secretary of Defense's 2000 report to Congress on the military situation on the Korean peninsula is on-line here, and the Defense Department's Responsibility Sharing Report for 2001, which contains information on troops stationed in South Korea as of 2000, is on-line here. The World Food Program is on-line here.
Asylum (last updated October 22, 2003) (back to top)
Once a non-US citizen arrives in the United States, he or she can seek asylum and, if qualified, may be permitted to remain. Under federal law, the United States grants asylum to individuals who are already present within the United States and who are unable or unwilling to return to their country of nationality because of persecution or because of a "well-founded fear" of persecution.
However, the North Korean pianist in this episode might not technically be eligible for asylum.
You cannot simply get asylum because you would rather live in the United States; you must be persecuted or fear persecution specifically on account of your "race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion." This pianist obviously leads a relatively privileged life in North Korea and he obviously has not expressed negative political opinions if the North Korean government trusted him enough to let him travel to the United States. He likely would face punishment if he did publicly seek asylum and was rejected, but as long as he keeps quiet, he is safe.
The number of cases filed and in which asylum is granted varies widely from year to year, a result of international conditions and who can get to the United States. In fiscal year 2002, the United States granted asylum to 26,919 individuals, mostly from China (5,713 individuals), Colombia (4,958 individuals), India (1,081 individuals), and Ethiopia (1,044 individuals). The United States has granted asylum to 16 individuals from Korea from fiscal year 1996 to fiscal year 2002; it is not clear which Korea such individuals sought asylum from.
Sources: The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Statistics is on-line here and has general information about asylum on-line here. Asylum statistics from the 2002 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics are available on-line here.
When is a Recession? (last updated October 22, 2003) (back to top)
By two commonly used measures, the United States has been out of recession since November or December 2001. The economy may not be as strong as it was in the 1990s, but it is not officially a recession.
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (which N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers referred to as the "official arbiter of the beginnings and ends of recessions"), a recession is a "significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months." A recession "begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches a trough." By that definition, the United States economy began a recession in March 2001 and ended it in November 2001.
According to the financial press, a recession is two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP. By that definition, the United States began a recession in the second quarter of 2001 and ended it sometime in the fourth quarter of 2001.
The following graph shows the value of the United States' gross domestic product from 1991 to the second quarter of 2003, along with the quarterly change in this value. All figures are from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and are in constant 1996 dollars.
Sources: The National Bureau of Economic Research is on-line here. An October 21, 2003 report on the NBER's recession dating procedure is on-line here. Data for the chart was taken from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is on-line here and has GDP information here.
Price of Milk (last updated October 23, 2003) (back to top)
What is the price of a gallon of milk? That question points to whether President Bartlet is in touch with how his constituents actually live, and it echoes arguably overblown criticisms about President George H.W. Bush during his 1992 campaign for re-election.
In any event, the price of milk varies by what kind you're buying, when you're buying it, and where. In Washington, D.C. in July 2003, whole milk cost on average $2.93 a gallon and 2% milk cost $2.90 a gallon, according to the regular surveys conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Survey data from some cities is summarized in the table below.
|
| Average Price of Whole Milk in 2002
| Average Price of 2% Milk in 2002
| Price of Whole Milk in July 2003
| Price of 2% Milk in July 2003
|
| Washington, D.C.
| $2.93
| $2.90
| $2.81
| $2.79
|
| Atlanta
| $3.08
| $3.08
| $2.99
| $2.99
|
| Boise, ID
| $2.57
| $2.24
| $2.23
| $2.05
|
| Chicago
| $2.99
| $2.93
| $2.89
| $2.82
|
| Seattle
| $3.71
| $3.53
| $3.52
| $3.29
|
Sources: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has information about retail milk prices on-line here. John P. Rourke and Mary F. Taylor, Retail Milk Prices Reported by Market Administrators: 1997-2000 summary and comparison (U.S. Department of Agriculture, May 15, 2001). For a look at some of the criticism leveled on President George H.W. Bush during the 1992 campaign for his alleged amazement at a grocery-store barcode scanner, Snopes.com has a relevant article here.
Naming a New Vice President (last updated May 1, 2006) (back to top)
If real, President Bartlet would now be only the third president to name a new vice-president while in office. The only ones to do so in real life were Richard M. Nixon, who nominated Gerald Ford to replace Spiro T. Agnew in 1973 just two days after Agnew resigned amidst charges that he had evaded paying federal taxes and receiving kickbacks, and Gerald Ford, who nominated Nelson Rockefeller to be his vice president after being confirmed.
The Twenty-Fifth Amendment - which was created in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and ratified in 1967 - sets out the procedure for how a new vice-president takes office. The president must fill a vacancy by nominating a new vice president who can take office after being confirmed by a majority vote of both the Senate and the House of Representatives (Cabinet appointments, by contrast, are done by just the Senate).
Before the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, four presidents simply let vacancies in the vice-presidency wait until the next election. James Madison, Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley all saw their vice-president die during their first term and, Madison's second vice-president even died during Madison's second term. Andrew Jackson's vice president John C. Calhoun resigned in December 1832 just weeks before the end of Jackson's first term, and so the office was simply left vacant until Martin Van Buren was sworn in as planned (Jackson and Calhoun had had a political falling-out).
Source: Jules Witcover, Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on the Vice Presidency (Crown Publishers, 1992). Findlaw's annotation on the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is on-line here.
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