Posted by Joshua Stanton on September 2, 2010 at 6:49 am · Filed under Useful Idiocy, Aijalon Gomes
First, Carter brought Aijalon Gomes home. Second, he apparently gave away nothing in exchange. Third, he felt so snubbed he hasn’t even been on the talk show / op-ed circuit (at least not yet, fingers crossed) telling everyone how prepared North Korea really is for dialogue. Fourth, Carter’s apparently intentional snubbing has demonstrated to most vaguely reasonable minds that North Korea is not ready for dialogue, and that not even Carter’s generous assistance to North Korea’s nuclear program has earned him Kim Jong Il’s respect and gratitude. As long as Carter (a) keeps his mouth shut, or (b) remains largely ignored, it will continue to be the case that Carter’s trip did more good than harm.
Victor Cha says that “[m]any journalists in Washington and Seoul have dubbed the trip a failure at worst or a non-event at best, given Carter’s inability to take the diplomatic initiative of his own as he had done in 1994 in the first nuclear crisis.” I would brand the trip as successful for that very reason, and wonder if the journalists in question have been sequestered in solitary confinement since 1993 or simply lack any capacity to draw inferences or learn from the repetition of past events. Try not to think that the fourth branch of our government is composed of people like this. You need your rest. I only wish they possessed the capacity to see, as Sung Yoon Lee does, how predictable the North Koreans’ playbook really is, even if the precise provocations, inducements, and deceptions may not be.
Because Carter has been so quiet, Donald Gregg offers this bizarre and rambling manifesto, which the New York Times deemed fit to print, and which comes down even to the left of John Feffer in its flirtation with 3/26 conspiracy theories:
Given the difficult agenda he inherited when he came into office, President Barack Obama did not give high priority to dealing with North Korea, whose leaders were seen as obscure and irascible.
“Obscure” wouldn’t be the word I choose for people who do this to other people and their children, but if you’re making a conscious effort to desensitize your readers to the implications of evil this profound and irreconcilable, adjectives are as good a tool of distortion as any other. And though there’s no question that Obama inherited a difficult situation with North Korea, so did his predecessor. And we all know how uncompromising he was with the North Koreans, don’t we?
For example, a suggestion last year that the White House invite Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il’s youngest son and probable successor, to the United States was not seriously considered.
The only thing I can really say to that suggestion is that I’d like to know the precise address where Gregg scores his weed.
Instead, President Obama formed a strong relationship with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, whom he saw as the dynamic leader of a strong American ally, and was content to let Seoul set the pace in terms of dealing with Pyongyang.
Imagine that! For some strange reason — possibly the fact that one of them has a significant gross domestic product, a functioning economy, a representative government, and facilities that still inexplicably host 29,500 U.S. military personnel — President Obama played favorites between North Korea and South Korea. President Obama’s foreign policy no longer frightens me much. For many of the same reasons Gregg finds it so disappointing, it’s far better than his predecessor’s. I’m only frightened when I try to conceive the expectations of men like Gregg when they voted for Obama (or so I presume, and it’s not a long limb I’m out on there). You’re about to see what I mean by this:
One problem, however, is that not everybody agrees that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea. Pyongyang has consistently denied responsibility, and both China and Russia opposed a U.N. Security Council resolution laying blame on North Korea.
In June, Russia sent a team of naval experts to look over the evidence upon which the South Korea based its accusations. Though the Russian report has not been made public, detailed reports in South Korean newspapers said the Russians concluded that the ship’s sinking was more likely due to a mine than to a torpedo. They also concluded that the ship had run aground prior to the explosion and apparently had become entangled in a fishnet, which could have dredged up a mine that then blew the ship up.
I won’t repeat all of the reasons why this elaborate and unlikely theory is completely lacking in any scientific basis, other than to wonder why, in recent decades, we’ve seen no similar occurrence with the many boats in that area that actually use fishing nets. The pictures alone refute it.
Oh, and did I mention that Donald Gregg is the former U.S. Ambassador to Korea? Yes, I mean South Korea. This man was appointed by the President of the United States, confirmed by the Senate, and embraced by the brain trust of our foreign policy establishment. I seem to recall that he was even with the CIA. He is, in other words, the pairing of an extraordinary resume with a mediocre mind.
Putting further pressure on Pyongyang also only strengthens its dependence on China. The increasing frequency of Kim Jong-il’s trips to China, and the quality of the reception he receives, are clear indications of this trend.
Or, clear indications that China is using Kim Jong Il to create security problems for the United States and advance its own hegemonic interests, and that it’s time for us to make North Korea China’s problem, too.
American pressures are also likely to instill a mistrust and hostility toward the United States in the mind of Kim Jong-un, who is in his mid-20s and about whom little is known.
Because for all we know, nothing else in Kim Jong Eun’s background could possibly have exposed him to the idea that Americans are irascible, predatory, subhuman beings.
The disputed interpretations of the sinking of the Cheonan remain central to any effort to reverse course and to get on track toward dealing effectively with North Korea on critical issues such as the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Admittedly, the idea that the most appropriate response to a premeditated attack by a rogue state on a traditional ally, or even on our own selves, is to simply deny it does certainly does open up bold new approaches to the art of conflict resolution. For that matter, why should South Korea have a military at all if it’s just waiting to experience mysterious accidents, none of which are truly capable of objective explanation and thus subject to “disputed explanations,” and each of which is a potential obstacle to us “reversing course” and forking over whatever the attacker besieged and desperate interlocutor demands as a precondition to the next negotiation?
And yet something gnaws at me, suggesting that all of this will not end as quickly and cleanly as Gregg imagines. There is also this part of me that supposes that if North Korea shelled Seoul, Donald Gregg would pick his way through the rubble, find a takkoji stand that had somehow escaped destruction, and then write an op-ed declaring that it was a goodwill gesture and — that exhausted cliche — an olive branch.
In the end, it’s proof enough who saw and seized opportunity in Aijalon Gomes’s stroll across the Yalu. I hope no one else will think of doing anything like this again.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 30, 2010 at 10:27 pm · Filed under Counterfeiting, Money Laundering, Sanctions, Cheonan Incident
This afternoon, the Treasury Department finally announced its long anticipated sanctions against North Korea, in the form of a sweeping new executive order. The order, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, authorizes the blocking of assets of “any person” providing what Treasury calls “material support” for North Korea’s WMD proliferation, money laundering, counterfeiting, trade in luxury goods, bulk cash smuggling, and pretty much everything North Korea does that violates UNSCR 1718 or 1874, or the U.S. Criminal Code.
In addition to the new order, Treasury also imposed new sanctions against several North Korean entities under the existing Executive Order 13382. Below the fold, I’ve pasted the text of the Executive Order, President Obama’s letter forwarding the EO to the Speaker of the House, two Treasury press releases, and some remarks by OFK favorite Stuart Levey, all of which I’ve archived here to aid your research and mine.
My initial reaction is that the new EO gets it just right. It’s narrowly targeted at North Korea’s illicit activities, but it’s also broad enough to cover the main ones — arms and drug trafficking, money laundering, currency and pharmaceutical counterfeiting, and the squandering of its resources on luxury goods while North Korean children starve in the streets. This is a tough-yet-refined version of the Plan B I’ve been advocating since its earliest draft in 2006.
Here is the key language:
All property and interests in property that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person, including any overseas branch, of the following persons are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in:
(i) the persons listed in the Annex to this order; and
(ii) any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State:
The EO then goes on to describe a wide range of activities, assistance, and financial activities that could support North Korea’s illicit activities, including the assets of any entity held by a U.S. person, or within U.S. jurisdiction. This means that if a Chinese entity is involved in helping a blacklisted North Korean entity acquire missile components, Treasury could freeze the Chinese entity’s tainted assets based in the U.S., assets of its U.S. subsidiaries, its assets in U.S. banks, or potentially, the entity’s foreign bank’s correspondent accounts in U.S. banks. This is all we could ask, and — if applied vigorously — it will be enough to force international businesses to choose between the use of the global financial system and their business ties with North Korea. Yes, North Korea could try to conceal, blur, obfuscate, and obscure which companies are connected to its illicit activities, but Treasury’s answer to this is that its effect will be to spread suspicion to all North Korean entities, even those that claim to be legit. This could be a severe blow to North Korea’s ability to comingle illicit and legitimate finance (the essence of money laundering) and will terrify investors and cause capital flight from the Palace Economy just as the Kim Dynasty is trying to engineer a smooth succession.
For Senator Sam Brownback, it is also a rightful claim to an important legacy when he leaves the Senate to become, almost assuredly, the next Governor of Kansas. In recent months, as North Korea’s behavior changed thinking in the Obama Administration, Brownback effectively lobbied State for tougher economic sanctions, and skillfully parlayed the stayed threat of nomination holds to build friendships with State Department officials with whom he found common ground. In the absence of strong conservative thinkers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Brownback filled the void, seized the opportunity to build relationships in the Treasury Department, and encouraged it to press for tougher enforcement. The question now turns to the Administration’s determination to use this tool aggressively, and follow the money to the very ash heap of the Kim Dynasty if necessary.
Who is targeted? A lot of entities that were already on Treasury’s list of specially designated nationals, but also, two key additions: Bureau 39 of the Korean Workers’ Party, and the notorious Reconnaissance Bureau, the prime suspect in the recent attempt to assassinate Hwang Jang Yop. Also sanctioned was a North Korean state enterprise responsible for making and exporting submarines and torpedoes.
For the moment, senior State Department people like Robert Einhorn seem determined to use financial pressure to force a fundamental change in North Korea’s behavior, and talk of re-engaging with North Korea all seems very theoretical and conditional. I don’t think anything short of a coup will actually cause that fundamental change, and the real test will come when State and the Administration come to grips with this. For now, this is all we could have hoped for from this Administration.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 30, 2010 at 3:12 pm · Filed under Anju Links
A North Korean family of three on its way to South Korea has disappeared in China. The obvious suspicion is that they were arrested and are about to be repatriated to North Korea. Because one member of the family had already made it to South Korea, the family’s punishment is certain to be severe. In related news, North Korea is reporting giving longer prison camp terms to repatriated defectors in camps like Cheongo-Ri, where the odds of surviving a year are already slim.
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Why is this news? You know, it may just be the fact that I hate peace, but I really don’t get why the fact that John Feffer still advocates “constructive engagement” with North Korea is any more newsworthy than the fact that Tommy Chong still smokes dope.
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Agreed Framework III Watch: Please, God, not again.
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So amid all the groundless speculation about why Kim Jong Il took Mini-Me to China last week — aside from his desire to snub Jimmy Carter — let me just add one more theory that I’ve seen too little discussion about. My own groundless speculation is that while there certainly must be some succession grooming in the works, Kim Jong Il is also enlisting the help of his enabler, Hu Jintao, to evade U.N. and Treasury sanctions, and I predict he’ll get it unless Treasury knocks off a Chinese bank or mining company to get across the point that we’re not going to tolerate that.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 30, 2010 at 12:02 pm · Filed under Counterfeiting, Money Laundering, Sanctions
According to Yonhap, Treasury will roll out its new North Korea sanctions this week. I am giddy with anticipation. And on a related note, I hope the boys at Treasury are Daily NK readers (or better yet, sources):
The No.39 Department, which is responsible for the management of Kim Jong Il’s private funds, holds the bank account with the British Virgin Islands branch of FirstCaribbean International Bank (FCIB), a prominent bank in the Caribbean region.
According to an expert source familiar with China and North Korea, the No. 39 Department’s secret overseas account exists under the name “Hana Holdings”. It is apparently held with the Road Town branch of the bank, which is based in Barbados and has branches in 17 countries.
Explaining the importance to North Korea of the No.39 Department account, the source told Daily NK, “Due to recent UN Security Council sanctions, the No. 39 Department is experiencing considerable difficulties with its overseas financial trade. Currently, excluding Chinese banks, their only active overseas account is that held with FirstCaribbean International Bank.”
Also, he added, “The only bank through which the No. 39 Department can make overseas transfers is FirstCaribbean International Bank in the British Virgin Islands, since their other secret bank accounts are all blocked.”
As usual, there’s a Chinese connection. One of the Daily NK’s sources, Ken Kato, is a DC-based accountant and activist for the release of Japanese abductees I’ve met and corresponded with in the past. This would be a case of North Korea’s malice reaping severe and unintended consequences. Separately, the Daily NK reports that Bureau 39 has fallen on hard times.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 30, 2010 at 10:42 am · Filed under U.S. Law, Washington Views, U.S. & Korea
So I will assume that Stephen Kim, the Korean-American State Department contractor who is now being prosecuted for leaking top secret / sensitive compartmentalized information was neither employed by, nor sympathetic to, North Korea given his choice of Fox News as a recipient for his leak of information that might have revealed U.S. intelligence sources in North Korea. And having said that, I really don’t care what Kim’s specific views were, I just want to know if any foreign government put him up to this. Regardless of Kim’s views, the administration is right to throw the book at those who illegally leak classified information.
One of the most inviolable rules any civil servant, contractor, or employee must respect is that confidential or classified information must never leave the office. That’s why you’ve never seen me talk about my work, and you seldom even see me allude to it. There are exceptions, recognized by law, for revealing abuse of authority or a violation of law by colleagues, but the appropriate vehicle for those reports is to report that information to the Inspector General, not Fox News or Wikileaks.
I already regret making the comparison to Robert Kim, because I only draw it because of Stephen Kim’s ancestry, which shouldn’t matter. But among South Korea’s favorite methods for exerting its extensive influence over U.S. policy toward the Koreas is to leak reports that favor its policy goals. I emphasize that I have no particular reason to believe that Stephen Kim was working for South Korea, but Kim’s case does illustrate the danger that foreign governments will use leaks to corrupt U.S. government employees for their own purposes (and in case you’re wondering, I hold precisely the same view of Jonathan Pollard, who deserves to die in prison). Ultimately, this legitimizes suspicions of dual loyalties against loyal and honest American citizens who may bring badly needed linguistic and cultural understanding to the federal service. That means that leaks of this kind are toxic for good policymaking, for the civil service, and for society as a whole, and that the Obama Administration gets my full support for this prosecution.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 30, 2010 at 5:38 am · Filed under Human Rights, Activism, Sports
After less than three weeks, FIFA has closed its investigation into allegations that players and coaches of North Korea’s losing soccer team were subjected to criticism sessions when they returned home. But when you go to FIFA’s web site, it’s apparent that FIFA’s “investigation” consisted of opening and reading a letter from the North Koreans denying it. I have no inside knowledge of whether the allegations are true, but I know that FIFA has no more idea of the truth of this matter than it did when it cleared Uday Hussein of charges of torturing Iraqi athletes (an iron maiden was later found behind Iraqi Olympic Committee headquarters).
But rather than speculating about the unknowable, I ask why North Korea is invited to international sporting events at all, and why liberals who rightly pressed to sanction South Africa and opposed constructive engagement, now advocate that precise thing in the case of North Korea, whose human rights record is far worse than South Africa’s.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 27, 2010 at 7:47 am · Filed under Anju Links
I’m glad Aijalon Gomes is coming home, and I’m bracing myself for all of the addlebrained things Carter will now have an excuse to say on CNN between now and Sunday night. For now, I’ll just note the ingratitude of Kim Jong Il’s calculated snub by choosing this occasion to visit China. I predicted the other day that North Korea wouldn’t snub such a valuable enabler. I regret the error, as this was obviously an intentional snub. No doubt, the domestic propaganda will characterize Carter as a groveling supplicant spurned by a leader of greater stature, and for once, the propaganda will be right on the mark. I say “ingratitude” because if Kim Il Sung was the father of North Korea’s nuclear program, Carter was its godfather.
I can’t resist making one more observation, and it is this: who else has noticed that the ex-”human rights president,” one who was so concerned about Park Chong Hee’s authoritarianism that he almost pulled U.S. forces out of Korea, never quite summons the principle to call for the closure of North Korea’s peace forests? Or that Carter’s ostentatious and smug brand of religious faith never translates into a call to end North Korea’s persecution of Christians?
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Succession Watch: North Korea is now said to be producing millions of portraits, badges, and other icons portraying Kim Jong Eun’s royal visage. And since fuel obviously isn’t needed for flood relief or bringing in the harvest, they’re gassing up the tanks for a colossal military parade. You can read a good summary of succession developments and speculation here, at the Wall Street Journal.
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Good question: “What is Facebook without friends?” Also on this topic, I believe it’s obligatory of me to point out that at one point, North Korea’s Facebook page listed itself as male-seeking-male.
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North Korean pilots still live better than the wretches who surround them, but the North’s economic collapse has damaged their material privileges, too.
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Our friends, the ChiComs, Part I: “North Korea smuggled state-of-the-art measuring equipment used in long-range rockets and missile launchers from China in April. Citing an unnamed source, a Seoul-based daily said a Chinese company forged documents to illegally export the machinery to North Korea, an activity banned under UN Security Council Resolution 1874.”
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Our friends, the ChiComs, Part II: “China is keeping up its barrage of words directed at the U.S., this time with a fiery editorial written by a general in the country’s state-run military newspaper, which calls for the country to be prepared to respond if it is attacked by the U.S. ‘If someone does not harm me, I won’t harm him,’ said Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan in Thursday’s Liberation Army Daily. ‘If someone harms me, I must harm him.’” By this unassailable logic, the Chinese entities that fund Kim Jong Il and Ahmedinejad and enable their terrorism and proliferation are long overdue to have their assets blocked.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 25, 2010 at 9:17 am · Filed under The Fifth Column
Next time you see press coverage that characterizes the “Reverend” Han Song Ryol as a “liberal” or “peace activist,” his own words will add to your insight about just how tortured the words “liberal” and “peace” have been at the meaty hands of some correspondents. How does one apply such words to an avowed supporter of the world’s most belligerent and least liberal regime?
“Our land and people in the North are armed with weaponry far more powerful than nuclear weapons - solid unity, self-containment, and revolutionary optimism fuelled by the Juche ideology,” Han said.
Cozying up to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, he said, “I genuinely respect, love and desire to obey you.” He also attacked the findings of a multinational investigation on the sinking of the Cheonan, calling it the “pinnacle of Lee Myung-bak’s pack of lies.” He blamed President Lee for sending the sailors to their deaths. [Joongang Ilbo]
Han Song Ryol is a fascist, not a liberal. Aijalon Gomes is a liberal. Even “Reverend” is difficult to allow. Han worships Kim Jong Il, but if that qualifies Han as a cleric, then you must allow that Juche is a religion, in the same sense that the Peoples’ Temple and Al Qaeda’s brand of Wahhabism are religions. The evidence that Han worships a higher God is far less clear.
Han Song Ryol is a charlatan, a traitor, and a fool. But this does not justify the South Korean government’s ham-handed decision to arrest and make a martyr of him. Indeed, I take issue with the Joongang Ilbo’s editorialists mixing these two issues:
What’s more disheartening is that there are people who applaud Han’s stunt. Some 150 members of a local branch of the progressive Democratic Labor Party held a ceremony to welcome the pastor back home. Some civilian activist groups based in North Jeolla Province also protested against his arrest. These groups should declare what side they’re on. What part of Han’s actions do they approve of? Are they followers of the North Korean regime, too?
If you hold a ceremony to welcome Han Song Ryol back home, you’re either a paid-up member of the Fifth Column or willfully ignorant of facts that would make any reasonable thinker want to dissociate himself from Han. Not that this should surprise us in the case of the Democratic Labor Party, whose North Korean influence was so brazen that it resulted in criminal convictions during the Roh Administration and split the party itself.
I’m also cynical enough to suspect that in practice, the same probably also applies to those who bothered to protest Han’s arrest publicly, though I also protest the fact of Han’s arrest for his words, and I can’t remember the first or last time anyone accused me of being a follower of the North Korean regime. The South Korean government’s prosecution of repellent ideas has only glorified those ideas (and in due course, we’ll also learn that North Korea’s suppression of dissent was less successful than we tend to estimate).
Far better for South Korea to have simply denied Han reentry into South Korea. It would more than suffice as Han’s punishment to let him live by what he preaches, and he could hardly complain about spending the rest of his life in a place he mischaracterizes as a paradise. Wouldn’t life in North Korea be punishment enough for any fool? Certainly it would be a fascinating thought experiment. I suspect it would be just a matter of time before Han would misspeak, be reported by a neighbor, and vanish into a Peace Forest one night. When that time comes, who in the Democratic Labor Party do you suppose will stand up for his right to free speech then?
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 24, 2010 at 7:58 am · Filed under Aijalon Gomes
I posit the following: Jimmy Carter would not have agreed to go to North Korea had North Korea not agreed to release Aijalon Gomes. The North Koreans know Carter is the best friend they have in this country, and not even they are foolish enough to humiliate him by sending him home empty handed. I also posit that North Korea would not have induced Carter’s visit without the expectation of some benefit to the regime. At a minimum, they can count on Carter to hear whatever disingenuous offer they want to extend to the Obama Administration to weaken or forestall financial sanctions and broadcast that message in op-eds and NPR interviews.
My greater fear, however, is that Carter’s visit will facilitate the extension of some more tangible, regime-sustaining ransom. So it was with Bill Clinton. While he played tough and let William Perry hint darkly about air strikes, he ultimately allowed Carter to broker the Agreed Framework that irrevocably made North Korea a nuclear power. I have no cause to believe that Obama is playing us, but I have cause to be suspicious. Even paranoid people have real enemies, after all.
I’d like to hear those who supported the methods of Robert Park and Aijalon Gomes (as opposed to their intentions) tell me why Park and Gomes have done more good than harm.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 19, 2010 at 1:43 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
That’s funny, I thought North Korea liked the idea of unification.
The traitor talked about “unification tax,” sheer nonsense, at a time when the situation prevailing in Korea is so tense that a war may break out any moment. This is no more than sophism let loose by an idiot who knows nothing about reunification, insensitive to what is happening in the world and ignorant of the inter-Korean relations, a profiteer who knows nothing but money and a political imbecile.
How can you not like unification? It’s like puppies, Christmas, and peace.
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Kim Jong Il Death Watch: Open News thinks the embalming process has already started, metaphorically speaking. Meanwhile, Jong Eun’s grooming continues.
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I’m surprised this took so long: “On July 6th, a high level source in North Korea stated that the country’s overseas agents are propagating that the US. had been behind the explosion of the South Korean ship ‘Cheonan’.” One advantage of making the Cheonan Incident America’s fault would be that instead of pretty much forgetting about those 46 lost sailors, South Koreans would remember — even fetishize — them for decades.
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The United States and its allies should also impose sanctions that target Chinese companies and financial institutions that facilitate or fund Pyongyang’s illegal activities. Moreover, any Chinese entity circumventing sanctions on North Korea should find it exceedingly difficult to do business elsewhere. Thanks to its not-so-paranoid fear of domestic instability, the Chinese leadership is very sensitive to the economic consequences of its actions. [Michael Mazza, The American]
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To stop his acts of killing, we have to make him hurt. For example, after the sinking of the Cheonan, Seoul could have closed down the Kaesong industrial zone, which is just north of the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas. There, about 120 South Korean businesses employ around 44,000 North Korean workers. That, by itself, would deprive Kim of a substantial source of funding because Pyongyang skims a large portion of the wages.
Similarly, we can cut off North Korea’s access to the international financial system. The Bush administration did just that in September 2005 when it declared Banco Delta Asia, a bank Kim used in Macau, to be a “primary money laundering concern.” As such, no financial institution would do business with it. And as a result, North Korea, for two years, had to use its diplomats to ferry cash in bulging suitcases around the world. And, lo and behold, Kim Jong Il did not start a war even though the U.S. Treasury Department crippled his government. [Gordon Chang]
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American diplomats have met with Aijalon Gomes and asked North Korea to release him for health reasons. I can conceive of no reason but ransom for North Korea to imprison Gomes for seven months, and I’m struck by the absurdity of a world in which a malingering airline bomber walks free while a peaceful human rights petitioner is imprisoned unjustly … with hardly a peep from the Human Rights Industry.
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North Korea shows off its new toys: A new tank, apparently an upgraded T-62, and a surveillance UAV. Not seen: an inexpensive, reliable, mass-produced tractor to replace all those oxen still used to plow the fields.
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Don Kirk writes about the legacy of Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine after the Cheonan Incident.
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The Pentagon reports on China’s military buildup.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 19, 2010 at 7:51 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement
Regular readers already know that Christopher Hill is one of the few career civil servants I write about here whom I loathe almost unreservedly. The first job of an American diplomat is to represent American interests and values. Hill did neither. In his parting remarks before heading off into obscurity — if history is kind to him — Hill encapsulates in one statement what made him the best diplomat North Korea ever had:
“We know the Iraqis don’t have nuclear weapons,” Hill said. “It’s a good thing. Probably Iraq is easier because at the end of the day what can you say about North Korea? You really can’t ask them to reform because asking them to reform is asking them to be destroyed. So what will be the future there? Whereas, in Iraq, I can see the future.” [Yonhap]
And by “reform,” he might as well mean “disarmament.” Indeed, it’s pretty evident he did mean disarmament, if you recount Hill’s oily salesmanship of Agreed Framework II even as the North Koreans steadily reneged on it. Hill’s belated concession that he “can’t see” North Korea’s future is really a concession that he has no vision of a North Korea that ceases to brutalize its people, attack its neighbors, and arm terrorists. But this is the vision that Hill was ostensibly charged with realizing, and it’s the vision he aggressively sold to President Bush in accumulating his power to give away so much in his negotiations with North Korea.
Of course, Hill is absolutely correct when he says that North Korea doesn’t dare to reform … or disarm. I don’t fault him for perceiving the truth. I fault him for concealing it from everyone from President Bush down to his adoring media harem who were largely too stupid to grasp that on their own. Was Hill’s perception of North Korea’s interests that much more acute than his perception of America’s interests, or did Hill simply conclude that appeasing North Korea’s interests aligned more closely with his own than advancing America’s interests? I’ll leave that question to others. What’s evident to me is that for Chris Hill, having a deal — any deal — was the object that eclipsed all others. Stated differently, Chris Hill’s diplomacy certainly seemed to be all about Chris Hill’s ambition. I’ve met plenty of people who would say the same in private, but Senator Sam Brownback was the only person with the spine to act on it.
Despite the lack of any competent reporting on why Hill left Baghdad barely a year after a difficult confirmation, I can’t bring myself to believe that someone this ambitious would be retiring to an academic job in the outer provinces if he’d been seen as an effective ambassador in Iraq. In the end, the best service Hill gave to his country was to demonstrate the futility and dishonesty of everything he advocated.
Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 18, 2010 at 9:48 am · Filed under China & Korea, NK Military
A fighter plane from North Korea has crashed in China, killing its pilot. The pilot may have been trying to flee North Korea. Yonhap has a photograph of the aircraft, which has a delta wing characteristic of a Soviet MiG-21 or an early-model ChiCom F-7.
[Yonhap photo]
China may seem an unlikely destination for a defector who must have known that he’d be repatriated and killed if caught, but Yonhap, quoting South Korean government sources, claims that the pilot was actually headed for Russia — also an unlikely destination — and lost his way. Why not South Korea or Japan? Because the North Korean air force undoubtedly keeps a very tight hold on the supply of fuel to discourage pilots from entertaining such ideas, and witness accounts published by the AP are consistent with this theory:
A witness said the plane plowed into an apple orchard, killing its pilot on impact. South Korean media said the plane, believed to be a fighter jet, appeared to have run out of fuel and might have been piloted by a defector.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency said the aircraft crashed Tuesday afternoon in Lagu, a village in Liaoning province about 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the North Korean border. It cited government officials as saying the plane “might be” North Korean, and said the pilot died.
The report said China was communicating with North Korea about the matter.
A man who lives in Ersonggou village, about five kilometers (three miles) from the crash site, said he and many other local residents saw the plane flying low over the area before it crashed into an apple orchard.
“The engine was making a very strange noise and it was flying in a very weird way, with it’s head up and rear down,” said the man, who would give only his surname, Ning. “It looked like a piece of scrap iron flying in the sky.”
CNN adds that the plane destroyed a house, but didn’t hurt anyone on the ground.
As of this morning, AFP was still reporting that the aircraft was a helicopter.
You can see satellite images of most of North Korea’s military airfields here. Press reports have mentioned a North Korea airfield at Sinuiju as a likely place of origin, but I’ve never seen anything but Il-28 bombers on that field. The air base at Kaechon seems a more likely source. Speculate on your own what this says about morale in the North Korean military.
Update: Yonhap reports that South Korean radar saw the plane taking off from Sinuiju after all.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 17, 2010 at 9:07 pm · Filed under Anju Links
North Korea is on Twitter … unless you happen to be a North Korean, of course.
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The Washington Post looks at Jang Song Thaek’s emerging role as svengali to Kim Jong Eun.
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“I have a sneaking suspicion that Kim Jong-il’s son, who wants to take over, has to earn his stripes with the North Korean military,” Gates said at the U.S. Marines’ Memorial Club in San Francisco. “My worry is that that is behind the provocation like the sinking of the Cheonan, and so I think we are very concerned that this might not be the only provocation from the North Koreans,” he added in response to a question over the threat posed by Pyongyang. [Reuters]
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In an Orwellian world, “war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength”. In the strange, fictitious world of North Korean historiography, the past 57 years of de facto peace is war, a life of servitude to the state is freedom, and national strength is rooted in ignorance of the outside world. [Sung Yoon-Lee, Asia Times]
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“The military counteraction of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) will be the severest punishment no one has ever met in the world,” a spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army said in a statement carried by North Korea’s official news agency. [CNN]
President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 to reward it for its complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantling of its nuclear arsenal. Thus far, President Obama has seen no cause to disturb that decision.
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-il asked China for $10 billion worth of direct investment and one million tons of food during his visit to Beijing last May, according to the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, Friday.
Quoting an anonymous diplomatic source based in Seoul, the Japanese daily said that “apart from the direct investment, Kim asked Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to offer one million tons of food and 800,000 tons of oil.” But China refused to make any promises, it said. [Korea Times]
The price of a Peking Duck dinner says this report was leaked by the Chinese. They can see how even their old friends are snarling at them now. Other reports have said that China has been pushing major investments in North Korea.
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It certainly does seem that China perceives a moment of opportunity to expand its territorial waters to include the Yellow and South China Seas. China’s perception of President Obama’s weakness may or may not be a miscalculation, but the Pentagon does seem to understand that such a miscalculation could prove extremely dangerous to the peace in East Asia and the Pacific. The Pentagon is now saying (though it does not say when) that it will send a supercarrier into the Yellow Sea — a symbolic gesture, given that such small bodies of water are hardly ideal places for carriers to maneuver. For symbolic reasons, that’s probably the best decision, but as Mark Helprin argues, challenging China credibly requires us to retain our qualitative edge over China’s military, and to avoid the asymmetric traps it is so adept at setting for our ground forces in Asia.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on August 16, 2010 at 6:00 am · Filed under Reconstruction, North-South
If there is such a thing as cautious enthusiasm — particularly for something that’s implausible on its face — that describes my reaction to President Lee’s proposal for phased unification with North Korea:
Lee’s plan, similar to proposals from previous South Korean leaders, calls for North Korea’s denuclearization. If North Korea meets that demand — and years of international persuasion have not succeeded — Lee’s plan calls for a “peace community,” improved economic cooperation and then the establishment of a “national community.”
“Inter-Korean relations demand a new paradigm,” Lee said, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. “It is imperative that the two sides choose co-existence instead of confrontation, progress instead of stagnation. The two of us need to overcome the current state of division and proceed with the goal of peaceful reunification.” [WaPo]
Perhaps it’s not completely implausible. Lee must know that the demise of Kim Jong Il is going to destabilize the North Korean leadership, and that if relatively open and moderate thinkers are lying latent in Pyongyang, a proposal like this one could have some appeal for them. There is some chance that this could come to pass if there’s a coup or some other kind of dramatic shift in control, but not without one.
It seems to me that Lee’s proposal does three things he badly needed to do. First, he steals “unification” from the lexicon of those for whom it really means sustaining North Korea (and hence, the division of Korea). I mean, the last thing the average unnamed Hankyoreh “analyst” or Democratic Party assemblyman wants is for the archives of the Peoples’ Reconnaissance Bureau to fall suddenly into the hands of the Chosun Ilbo. But don’t take my word for it:
“Overall, I see a major contradiction in his proposal, proposing a unification tax while having burnt all the bridges with North Korea,” said Moon Chung-in, a professor of political science at Yonsei University.
Personally, I think “torpedoed” would have been the perfect metaphor.
Second, he offers a financial and security incentive for the emergence of legitimate North Korean moderates, as opposed to those who inhabit Selig Harrison’s fantasyland. Third, by levying new taxes to pay for it, he makes a difficult and necessary decision to begin offsetting the cost of reconstruction (and this is also reason for American taxpayers to celebrate). Being a low tax / small government sort myself, I ordinarily recoil at big, expensive projects, but who can really call this discretionary spending? It seems to me that if big changes are inevitable for North Korea, the South is probably money ahead by getting serious about planning for it and having the equipment and logistical machinery in place now. And to the extent there are fiscal objections to this, I’m willing to entertain those from anyone except the same crowd that dumped billions of Sunshine dollars into Mount Paektu and haven’t a thing to show for it.
Fourth, it certainly beats another water project.
Update:
In the Wall Street Journal, Evan Ramstad has some more good quotes from Lee:
“Reunification will happen,” Mr. Lee said. “It is therefore our duty to start thinking about real and substantive ways to prepare for reunification, such as the adoption of a unification tax. I ask that these and other issues related to this be discussed widely and thoroughly by all the members of our society.”
North Korea’s state media carried no immediate reaction to Mr. Lee’s speech. [….]
Mr. Lee’s idea rests on the premise that North Korea’s authoritarian regime will either collapse or be pressured into reaching out for help, and that the more prosperous South will take the lead in picking up the pieces. [….]
Mr. Lee began [his speech] by including “our brethren in the North” in the list of people he was addressing. He opened the section on North Korea by saying “My 70 million compatriots,” a reference to the combined population of the two Koreas.
Powerfully provocative words that I hope many North Koreans will hear. Ramstad compares Lee’s concept to Germany’s the “unification” or “solidarity” tax.
Yonhap notes the absence of detail in Lee’s proposal, suggesting that the tax might be levied in the form of a VAT, a bond issue, or even lottery tickets. This made me snicker …
“President Lee doesn’t call for the immediate imposition of a unification tax. Such a tax, if imposed, will be visible only in the next administration,” Rep. Na Seong-lin of the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) said in a radio interview.
What we have here is a bold vision without any specific plans, at least not that Lee’s people are willing to talk about yet:
“Amid speculation about Kim Jong-il’s health problems and the North’s worsening economic crisis, the need for us to raise unification expenses has grown bigger and bigger. We should assume greater responsibility for North Korea if we don’t want to lose it to China in the aftermath of its possible collapse.”
Related Cabinet ministries declined to speculate on how preparations for unification will be funded. An official at the unification ministry said discussions for Lee’s idea of unification tax “will only now enter the early stage of planning” adding, “There could be different ways to secure finances, but it’s something that requires national consensus.”
The big losers here? Kim Jong Il, for one. With this speech, Lee effectively began to write his obituary. Another must be Han Song Ryol, whose cross-DMZ media spectacle was more or less forgotten amid the debate Lee has provoked about better ideas. That debate shows us again that the last thing South Korea’s left really wants is unification:
The main opposition Democratic Party countered that Lee’s words could actually lead North Korea to believe Seoul is trying to “absorb” Pyongyang and that the government would do well to first consider how to first improve inter-Korean ties.
They’ve delayed the inevitable, but in the end, they can’t prevent it — by which I mean the reading of the Reconnaissance Bureau’s archives.
Posted by Dan Bielefeld on August 14, 2010 at 3:58 pm · Filed under Human Rights, Refugees, Defectors, Books & Films
On August 19-22 Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul is partnering with this year’s host HanVoice in Toronto for their 10th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees. This will be the first time the conference has been held in North America; to date the ICNKHRR has been in Seoul (3x), Tokyo, Prague, Warsaw, Bergen (Norway), London, and Melbourne.
The main session this year is Saturday, August 21st, from 9 - 6. Events open to the public also include an art exhibition and concert Thursday, and movie screenings of Kimjongilia (followed by a Q&A session with the director) and The Red Chapel Friday evening.
All events are free, though for the main conference Saturday they’re asking that people register in advance since they’re providing free lunch and a translation device.
Here is the schedule on Saturday:
@ The Isabel Bader Theatre (U of T)
08:30 Registration
09:30 Opening Session
Opening Remarks
Benjamin H. Yoon, Founder & Chairman, Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights
Welcoming Speeches
- Randall Baran-Chong, Chair – 10th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees , HanVoice, Canada
- Carl Gershman President, National Endowment for Democracy, USA
Congratulatory Remarks
- Michaelle Jean (Written), Governor General of Canada
- Hon. Jason Kenny (Written), Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism, Canada
- Dalton McGuinty (Written), Premier of Ontario, Canada
- Heidi Hautala, Chairperson of Sub-committee on Human Rights to the EU Parliament
(to be confirmed)
Keynote Speech
Hon. Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Canada (To be confirmed)
Special Remarks
Barry Devolin, Member of Parliament, Canada
10:30 Session 1: Human Rights in North Korea between Obstacles & Opportunity
Pervasive State of Fear in the Country
Man-ho Heo, Professor, Kyungpook National University, ROK
Changing Perception of North Korean Population
Katy Kongdan Oh Hassig, Researcher, Institute for Defense Analysis, US
Testimony of NK defector
Young Cheol Kim, Former Officer at Ministry of people’s Safety in the DPRK, Escaped and Entered South Korea in February of 2008
Q & A
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Session 2: Experience of North Korean Refugees in Transit & Asylum Countries
Moderator: Dr. Sun-Young Park, MP, Liberty Forward Party, ROK
Legal Grounds for Protection of North Korean refugees
Roberta Cohen, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Brookings Institution, US
Human Trafficking: Human Rights Situation of North Korean Refugee Women in China
Won-Woong Lee, Professor, Social Welfare Studies, Kwandong University, ROK
Children from Nowhere: Stateless Children in China
Kay Seok, Human Rights Watch
Testimony of NK Refugee
Mi-Ran Kim, Hair Dresser in the DPRK, Escaped from the country on 3rd of April, 2007 and entered South Korea in March of 2008
Resettlement Process & Experiences of countries accepting North Korean refugees: issues with resettlement and integration in final destination
- South Korea: Yoon-Sook Park, Professor at World Cyber University, ROK- Canada: Younglee Ha, Executive Director, Korean Canadian Womens’ Association
- Canada: Young-Lee Ha, Executive Director, Korean Canadian Women’s Association, Canada
- US: Hannah Song, President, Liberty in North Korea (LiNK)
- Japan: Kate Nielsen, Director of International Relations, Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, Japan
Q & A
16:00 Break
16:15 Session 3: Strategies for the Improvement of Human Rights in North Korea and Protection of Refugees
Moderator: Hon. Barry Devolin, Member of Parliament, Canada
Maintaining the Momentum and Commitment of the International Society
- Pam Shime, Researcher, Global Advocacy & Leadership Institute- Joanna Hosaniak, Head of International Campaign & Cooperation, Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, ROK
- Jack Kim, Executive Director, HanVoice
- Kate Nielsen, Director of International Relations, Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, Japan
- N.C. Heikin, Director of Documentary Film, “Kinjongilia(2009)”, US
Q & A
Closing Cermonies
The Isabel Bader Theatre is located at 93 Charles St. West (Closest TTC Station – Museum):
If anyone is planning on driving to the conference from the Milwaukee/Chicago area, please drop me a line. If I can go, I’d certainly help with gas and driving duties.
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Second, this must be a pretty busy season in the Citizens’ Alliance events department — tomorrow (Sunday) in Seoul is their annual Beautiful Dream Concert to raise money for young North Koreans who’ve resettled in the South. It will be at 4pm at Korea University. Sounds like a good way to observe Liberation Day, August 15th:
CONCERT INVITATION
There are youth defectors all around you that traveled a long and perilous road to reach a place where their dreams could flourish. Yet, many experience difficulties in adjusting to life here due to differences in culture, disparities in education levels, lack of understanding by fellow professors and students, and other problems regarding their families and their lives. The need for our concern and our help is exigent to insure that their budding hopes and dreams are not rooted out by the cold indifference of society. As a result, we are holding the Beautiful Dream Concert 2010 to raise contributions to aid youth refugees. We would be deeply grateful if you would join us in our effort to protect the bright future of youth defectors.
August 15th 2010 (Sun) 4:00 pm
Korea University Inchon Memorial Hall
Hosted by: GSIS of Korean University, Ewha Institute of Unification Studies
Organized by: Beautiful Mind Charity, Citizen’s Alliance for North Korean Human Rights
PROGRAM
Beautiful Harmony Orchestra – Silk Road Foundation
Poem by Dong-Ju Yoon on Orchestral Music and Sopranos -Jin-Won Lee
Cavatina- S. Myers
Arirang rhapsody -Ji-Soo Lee
Piano Trio – Pianist Joo Young Kim =, Violinist Ji-Hoon Park , Cellist Il-Hwan Bai
Hungarian Dances No.1 - J. Brahms
Otono Porteno from Four Season in Buenos Aires - A. Piazzolla
Visually Impaired Clarinetist Sang Jae Lee
Theme from Schindler’s list - J. Williams
It ain’t necessarily so from Opera - G. Gershwin
[Kyeong-min Kim Introduction Slideshow]
Cerebral Palsy Pianist Kyeong-min Kim
Piano Sonata no.14 op.27-2 c# min. 1st mov. - L. V. Beethoven
Yearning - Kyeong-min Kim
Baritone Kyoo-Seok Lee
Largo al factotum della citta from Opera - G. A. Rossini
Soprano Mihyun Kho
Il bacio> - Arditi
Soprano Mihyun Kho & Baritone Kyoo-Seok Lee
All I ask of you from Musical - A. L. Weber
Nowon Voll Ensemble
Radetzky March - Johann Strauss Sr.
Nowon Voll Ensemble & North-South Korean Youth Choir Dream Plus
Magic Castle - Kwang-Jin Kim
To the Country of Hope - Jae-Myoung Hyun
# There will be an event during the concert to donate funds aiding youth defectors.
# The donations falls under public interest contributions under Corporate Tax law and will
be eligible for tax-free benefits at the end of the year.
# There will be pizza served starting at 6 pm* thanks to the generous donations of Papa John’s Korea.
(First 400 guests)
[*NOTE: It appears the pizza party has been changed to 3pm if I’m reading this update right. -DB]
Invitation Tickets: Free.
Performance and Ticketing inquiries ㅣ
Yeon Jung Hong 02-723-1672, 2671 nkhr@naver.com
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