Archive for March 2007

So Much for ‘Peace in Our Time’

March 22, 2007 "United" Nations, Counterfeiting, Diplomacy, Money Laundering, Russia & Korea, Six-Party Talks, WMD 16 comments

[Sorry for the earlier comments glitch; please e-mail me if you have problems.] 

OK, now the diplos have flown home. 

Talks on halting North Korea’s nuclear program broke down abruptly on Thursday with the country’s chief nuclear envoy flying home after a dispute over money frozen in a Macau bank could not be resolved.

Kim Kye Gwan flew out of Beijing after refusing to take part in six-party talks to push forward a February agreement calling for North Korea to begin winding down its nuclear programs in return for energy aid and political considerations.

Kim waved to reporters when he arrived at the airport but did not say anything.  [AP, Bo Mi-Lim]

How predictable.  I feel compelled to repeat that this breakdown originates in the U.S. Treasury Department’s action against a bank where North Korea was laundering the proceeds of crime, including the counterfeiting of our currency.  After months of insisting that “law enforcement” matters were not part of denuclearization talks, Hill met Kim in Berlin and reversed that position, apparently promising to “resolve” Treasury’s investigation into Banco Delta Asia within 30 days.  We did “resolve” it, and of course, Treasury told us what everyone — especially Kim Jong Il — already knew, that BDA was a dirty bank.  We never agreed to give the North Koreans back a penny, at least not on the face of Agreed Framework 2.0.  If the North Koreans expected otherwise, I have to wonder why Hill didn’t dispossess them of that expectation.  On the other hand, the North Koreans did agree to show up and talk this week, and that was in Agreed Framework 2.0.  The North Koreans broke their word; we didn’t.  So whose fault is that?

Russian envoy Alexander Losyukov, who also left for home Thursday, was quoted by ITAR-Tass news agency as saying “the whole problem came from the American side.”

He said the United States failed to assure the Chinese side that the Bank of China could receive the funds, which were linked to a counterfeiting and money laundering investigation, without fear of facing U.S. sanctions or a “negative attitude” from the banking community and the U.S. government.

To do what Losyukov, China, and North Korea wanted, here’s what Hill would have had to do:  (1) grant North Korea and the Bank of China advance immunity from our banking, counterfeiting, or money laundering laws; (2) persuade thousands of bank officers and shareholders worldwide not to have a “negative attitude” about accounts whose owners still aren’t known in many cases; and (3) ingore two U.N. resolutions that we drafted and lobbied for just months ago.  Incidentally, you have to wonder why it’s taking so long to sort our the ownership of the accounts and release the funds.  Maybe … because someone rushed Treasury to conclude its investigation before we knew all the facts?

Let’s hear it for multilateral diplomacy. Â Lesson One today is that no matter how awful the behavior of the North Koreans, it’s always our fault for somehow provoking them.  Losyukov’s government also voted for UNSCR 1718, but to put it mildly, there isn’t much of a rule-of-law culture in Russia, or in the U.N. itself.  In a sense, Losyukov is right, which brings us to Lesson Two:  you don’t have a deal unless you have “a meeting of the minds,” which is why people write and sign agreements.  We did bring this on ourselves in one sense.  In our desperation to reach this agreement, we allowed the other parties to harbor some unrealistic expectations that sheltered in an agreement so amorphous that it’s almost completely impossible to decipher its meaning. 

“The difficulty of this issue is beyond our expectations and due to some technical and procedural issues we had not expected completely before,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a news conference. 

Like I said.  And as a result, the talks have broken down, nothing is achieved, and we’re the ones who get blamed.  Yongbyon (GE pics here) churns out its smoke signals with nary a U.N. inspector in sight, the shutdown deadline is approaching rapidly, and of course, we — sorry, the South Koreans – are about to give the North Koreans 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil anyway, even though Chris Hill told Congress that the payoff was to be “coordinated” with North Korea’s compliance.

And if that’s not a bad enough omen, consider this:

North Korea said Thursday it will convene a parliamentary session in mid-April just days before the deadline for the shutdown of its nuclear facilities under a February denuclearization agreement. 

“The fifth session of the 11th Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK will be convened in Pyongyang on April 11, according to a decision of its Presidium promulgated Wednesday,” the Korean Central News Agency said. DPRK stands for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The meeting comes just two days before the deadline set by the landmark Feb. 13 agreement for North Korea’s shutdown of its main nuclear reactor and allowing U.N. inspectors back into the country.  [Yonhap]

Kim Jong Il is convening his rubber-stamp parliament, which has no power and no function but to serve as a prop audience for bombastic rhetoric, four days before Kim Il Sung’s birthday. Â Does that seem like an auspicious occasion for Kim Jong Il to announce that he’s giving up the “nuclear deterrent” he starved two million people to get?

If this agreement is not to degenerate into a protracted farce – and no deal at all would be a far better thing – this is our last chance to stop it.  Here is what we should do now:

1.  Stop the delivery of the fuel oil until North Korea shows up to “discuss” its full nuclear disclosure, as it agreed.

2. Â Clarify that North Korea must “shut down and seal” Yongbyon as agreed by April 13th.

3.  Declare our Banco Delta obligations fully resolved and reaffirm that North Korea is bound by UNSCR 1718 in its disposition of the $25 million, and that we make no promises about what Treasury will do if the funds are unlawfully diverted to non-humanitarian purposes.

Anju Links for 3/21

March 21, 2007 Abductions, Appeasement, Korean Politics, Six-Party Talks, Terrorism/Iraq, The Fifth Column No comments

*  It’s a pity both sides can’t lose:  It’s Taliban v. Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, with high casualties on both sides (I’ll be praying for more).  it’s nice to see that the bad guys are just as capable of self-destructive division as we are.

* Larry “Bud” Melman has passed away.  He was 85.

*  Fifth Column Update:  South Korea’s far-left “civic groups” have seen a significant decline in membership.  This fits with other recent evidence that South Koreans have become more “conservative,” although I suspect it’s more of a dimming of radical idealism than a resurgence of pro-Americanism or hostility toward juche. 

*  50-50:  The U.S. and ROK defense ministries have agreed to split the cost of the Camp Humphreys relocation. 

*  Kim Jong Il’s Taepodong didn’t boost itself very far off the pad, but it turns out to have been a nice boost for missile defense:

Boeing Co. on Monday said its complex system to defend against enemy missile attacks proved more reliable than expected and required less maintenance when it went on alert for a prolonged period last summer before a series of North Korean missile tests. [....]

The system was built to intercept and destroy enemy long-range ballistic missiles during the midcourse phase of their flight. It went on alert before the North Korean missile tests for “much longer than it had ever been before,” Fancher said, although he declined to give an exact timespan.

“The system was much more robust than we had hoped,” he said, referring to its software and memory banks. [Reuters]

I wish I had some Boeing stock about now, because they’re also getting some substantial performance bonuses.  A successful system could also have significant diplomatic benefits for the United States.  Japan is undoubtedly interested in getting itself under this, although it’s unclear if the system would be all that useful in protecting South Korea from short-range missiles.  The most important participant for the preservation of regional peace, however, might be Taiwan.

*  It turns out that North Korea’s method of matchmaking is a lot like Borat’s method of wooing Pamela Anderson.

*  Gullible Travels:  With North Korea just starting to get serious about renegeing on Agreed Framework 2.0, it’s the perfect occasion for the first direct private flight between North and South Korea.  The flight will carry a delegation of officials from South Cheolla Province, so lets hope the North Koreans aren’t put off by the radicalism of their guests.

*  While the surge has at least temporarily tamed the Shiite militias, the al-Qaeda strategy has been to strike “soft” — read, civilian — targets while exfiltrating into the Anbar countryside to conserve its strength.  That has led to clashes with some Sunni tribes that don’t want them around.  According to this account, members of one Sunni tribe recently killed 39 AQ, including two of its senior management.  If one effect of the surge is to transform 2006′s Shia-Sunni killing into a Sunni-on-Sunni, Iraqi-on-AQ conflict, that will be a significant improvement.

‘Peace in Our Time!’ Updates

March 21, 2007 Six-Party Talks, Washington Views, WMD 2 comments

[Updated below]  As I write, diplomats from five nations have decided to stick around at a resort somewhere near Beijing for a couple more days, probably for many exciting hours of CNN International, while North Korea decides whether it’s interested in talking about uranium.  Contrary to reports I’d read yesterday, no one is flying home just yet, but no one expects anything to get done this week, either.

The holdup — which U.S. negotiator Chris Hill and the New York Times had said was resolved — was the release of $25 million in North Korean accounts that in large measure contain the proceeds of illegal activity.  In a thinly veiled bow to UNSCR 1718, we insisted on putting this money into a special account for “humanitarian” and “educational” purposes, though everyone knows Kim Jong Il will divert the money, perhaps for a new batch of those nifty Omega watches he likes to give his prune-faced generals every Hannukah.

Incidentially, some reporters happened to ask John Bolton what he thinks of this:

”I think this is a mistake,” Bolton told reporters after a speech in New York. ”The idea that China’s now going to guarantee that North Korea spends this money on humanitarian programs gives me about as much confidence as what the North Koreans did with the U.N.’s money.”  [Kyodo] 

Ouch. 

Sympathetic as I may be to that view, that ship sailed when we agreed to “resolve” the Banco Delta funds issue as a part of this deal.  I’m not opposed in principle to linking the issues; after all, financial pressure is one of the strongest forms of pressure we have now to disarm North Korea.  I am opposed to forfeiting that pressure without achieving our goals:  the normalization of North Korea’s behavior, a timetable for achieving it, and a robust inspection program to verify it.

As you might have guessed, North Korea’s stall tactics have won no friends.  Says Chris Hill: 

“While these forms have been filed out and faxes sent, while that is going on, our nuclear talks have not made progress. That has been the real opportunity cost to this.” 

Here’s South Korea’s Chun Yung-Woo: 

“I don’t know why we should waste our time waiting for the obstacle to be cleared.” 

More from Hill:

We all have jobs to do. Waiting around for some forms to be filled out is not usually in our job descriptions,” US envoy Christopher Hill told reporters after spending the first part of Wednesday in his hotel room.

“You cannot expect these large delegations to sit around while it is being sorted out.”  [Reuters]

What is being sorted out, exactly?  For one thing, whose accounts these really are.  On closer inspection, some of those named as account holders turn out to be either dead or non-residents of Macau.  That does tend to slow things down.

So, to sum up where we stand: Â Kim Jong Il gets all of his laundered money back and will probably be able to spend it however he wants. Â His mouthpiece still refuses to even discuss disarming or the release of hostages, and the diplomats of four of the world’s great powers (and South Korea) are in their hotel rooms playing Starcraft and drawing pay while they wait to see if he’ll change his mind. 

See also:  David Sanger of the New York Times can’t quite conceal his celebration of the departure of the State Department’s last conservative of importance, Robert Joseph. Â Joseph specifically resigned because Agreed Framework 2.0 will “prolong the survival of a North Korean government he has publicly called ‘criminal’ and ‘morally abhorrent’ while failing to require it to give up the weapons it has already produced.”  I challenge anyone to make the case that (a) he’s wrong about any of that, or (b) that Joseph’s vision of diplomacy doesn’t have a far better record of accomplishment than Chris Hill’s:

Inside the White House, he drafted a new policy for aggressively pursuing trade in unconventional weapons, one that goes far beyond export controls. It became the “Proliferation Security Initiative,” a plan now supported by both Democrats and Republicans that creates a web of countries that use their national laws to cooperate in intercepting shipments.

When the new effort hit early pay dirt in the fall of 2003, intercepting a cargo ship bound for Libya with nuclear centrifuges built by Abdul Qadeer Khan’s nuclear smuggling network, it led to Mr. Joseph’s biggest success: working with American and British intelligence officials to persuade Libya to give up its nuclear program, which helped break up Mr. Khan’s network.

At moments like this, I can almost enjoy reading Chris Hill bitching about all the time he’s wasting in his hotel room while the North Koreans deliberately make a complete fool of him.  It’s not as if Hill didn’t bring this on himself — and the rest of us — by disregarding Joseph’s advice. (hat tip)

Update 2:   But we’re making the necessary preparations to ship the first installment of fuel oil anyway — just as I’d predicted.  The fuel oil should be shipped as early as next week.

Freedom House to Hold Geneva Event on N. Korea Human Rights

March 21, 2007 Activism, Europe No comments

fh-geneva.jpgIf you plan on being in Geneva this weekend, click the thumbnail to see the full-size flyer.  Thanks to a reader for sending.  Adrian Hong of Liberty in North Korea and Elizabeth Batha of Christian Solidarity Worldwide will speak, in addition to David Hawk and Jared Genser of DLA Piper.  Although Europe has not led on this issue, I tend to agree that strong European condemnation matters — it would inspire a more responsible European approach to business and investment, and it would be harder for South Koreans to dismiss than American or Japanese condemnation.

I hope that someone in attendance will write a summary I can publish here.  The specific issue that interests me most is famine as a human rights issue. 

Anju Links for 3/20

March 20, 2007 "United" Nations, Appeasement, Blogs & Blogging, Diplomacy, Japan, Terrorism/Iraq, U.S. & Korea, WMD 3 comments

*  Renaissance man Kevin Kim, a/k/a The Big Hominid, has launched his new book, “Water from a Skull.”

*  Missed the train, but not the train wreck.  ”Notice me!,” cries Ban Ki Moon, just as the February 13th deal starts to strike immovable objects, one of which has an atomic mass of 238.

*  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  the Japanese are an odd people.

*  Don’t Forget to Ask for Receipts:  “South Korea will spend about $250,000 to foot the bill for the training of North Korea’s visiting under-17 football squad, the Unification Ministry said Tuesday.”  [Yonhap]

*  Abandonment Issues:  One thing about the February 13th agreement I’ve been enjoying is how its vagueness has created a new sense of insecurity among many South Koreans (see, e.g.).  For years, the only Korean voices we heard were downplaying the proliferation threat to the United States or even legitimizing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.  Now, we hear South Koreans worry that the United States is plotting to leave North Korea in possession of nukes and focus exclusively on the prevention of proliferation:

The U.S., he said, “may have changed its goal to preventing the North from transferring nuclear materials abroad,” rather than making an issue of nuclear weapons North Korea already has. “This is what Pyongyang wants, but it’s unacceptable to Seoul,” Kang added. A fellow with a state-run think tank predicted that North Korea will pursue a “Pakistan model,” whereby it can have nuclear weapons while normalizing relations with the U.S. at the same time.  [Chosun Ilbo]

When people turn to suspicions of plots and betrayal this quickly, my first non-expert diagnosis is “projection.”  There’s nothing nefarious about a country worrying about its own security interests first.  It’s the expectation that other countries will give those concerns the same superceding priority that’s the real oddity.  Belatedly, Korea realizes that its government has forfeited the advocacy of its real security interests at the six-party talks.  Instead, it invested its energies in throttling the Americans, appeasing the North, and cozying up to China, all while it seemingly expected the United States to sacrifice its own security for South Korea’s.

*  But We Mustn’t Call Them “Terrorists:” Â 

Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday.  [....]

“Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back,” Barbero said.  [Agence France-Presse]

I am the father of two children, and although there aren’t many people in this world I could personally dismember with a pair of needle-nosed pliers, I’d gladly do so to the baby-killing, Satan-worshipping, cowardly terrorist bags of excrement who did this to two kids and three bystanders. 

As with most “insurgent” attacks in Iraq, the prime suspect here is al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda is a foreign-led force that deliberately slaughters hordes of civilians, meaning that these are not “insurgents;” they are “terrorists” who sometimes also kill the police and soldiers who are protecting Iraq’s elected government.  These people started the war with us, not the other way around.  Keep this in mind if you think we’re dealing with people who can be deterred, appeased, or contained.  They won’t quit when they’ve destroyed Iraq, so you can’t run from them.  Take out nuclear weapons and wood chippers and you’re pretty much down to shooting them or putting them in cages. 

N. Korea Boycotts Talks Over Funny Money Proceeds

March 20, 2007 Counterfeiting, Diplomacy, Money Laundering, NK Economics, Six-Party Talks, WMD 4 comments

[Talks stall; See updates below]

BEIJING – International talks on North Korea’s nuclear program stalled again Tuesday, with Pyongyang refusing to take part until it receives $25 million from a bank blacklisted by the United States, Japan’s chief envoy said.

Kenichiro Sasae said a meeting scheduled for Tuesday afternoon between the chief delegates of the six nations involved in the disarmament talks was canceled because Pyongyang refused to attend.

“There was no progress at all today,” Sasae said. “China as chairman (of the talks) urged North Korea to come to the table but they would not come.”  [AP, Mary Yamaguchi]

What isn’t clear from the report is whether North Korea objects to the compromise solution offered by the U.S. side, under which Macanese authorities were to transfer all $25 million — including laundered proceeds of drug dealing and counterfeiting – into an account to be used for humanitarian and educational purposes.  That account was to be at the Bank of China.

“According to China, North Korea said they will not come to join further discussions until they confirm that their money got into their bank account in China,” Sasae said. 

Chris Hill, the U.S. delegate, claims that Kim Kye-Gwan, the North Korean delegate, agreed to this deal, but the one nobody has heard from yet is His Porcine Majesty, Kim Jong Il.  It may be that Delegate Kim is stalling until he gets approval from Tyrant Kim. Read more

Chipyong-ni It Aint

March 19, 2007 An Alliance?, ROK Military, U.S. & Korea 2 comments

[See also:  A very good, thorough ROK Drop post, and a dissent from Andy Jackson.]

Reporting from Kurdish Iraq, Michael Totten says the only booms are economic, and that the Kurds are leveraging peace and prosperity into de facto independence.  It’s a long, interesting, occasionally fretful post, and well worth reading.  Along the way, Totten notes how Kurds view the South Koreans’ “sacrifice” for a democracy in Iraq:

Iraqi Kurdistan is technically occupied by a foreign power, but this occupation surely ranks among one of the most absurd in human history. Dr. Ali Sindi, advisor to Prime Minister Nechervan Barzani, told me that South Korea is the official occupier of “Northern Iraq. Korean soldiers are stationed just outside Erbil in a base near the airport. He laughed when he told me the Kurdish military, the Peshmerga (“those who face death”), surround the South Koreans to make sure they’re safe.

I suppose I should set a macro in my computer to say that we should appreciate the ROK soldiers who volunteered for what sounds like dreary duty. Â And of course, one South Korean soldier was killed in Afghanistan recently.  But South Korea’s contribution in Iraq ought to be placed in the context of what other nations gave for South Korea’s freedom, how much it was willing to give for the freedom of other nations in their hour of need, and the high price South Korea demanded in return, so that it could extend the slavery of North Koreans. 

Alliances form around the convergence of interests, but it is the convergence of values that makes them endure even when interests diverge.  This, in a nutshell, is why the alliance between the United States and South Korea isn’t enduring.

Anju Links for 3/19

March 19, 2007 Appeasement, Diplomacy, Drugs & N Korea, Japan & Korea, Media Criticism, NK Economics, Terrorism/Iraq One comment

*  Radio Megumi.  An international body has granted Japan permission to increase broadcasts into North Korea.  The broadcasts will be directed at a small audience:  its abducted citizens.  I tend to think that Japan would see them home again sooner if it broadcast words of dissent and subversion to the North Korean people.

*  Short-Selling Appeasement.  Japan now stands alone in standing up to the North Koreans in Beijing:  not one Yen until you give us back our people.  I have to wonder whether Japan will have much success on its own, but Japan’s leaders are probably calculating that this deal will not last.  The question is how long, when the U.S. side has developed an Uri-like willingness to indulge mendacicty, intransigence, and crime.

*  One Million Bottles of Extra-Strength Sudafed, Please.  Japan has identified three factories — apparently of its own colonial-era contruction — that are now used to produce the high-quality meth now sold on its streets. Â If you know where to look, you can find them in Chongjin, Wonsan, and Nampo.  There may also be a fourth in the area of Sinuiju.

*  Al-Yahoo Watch.  Jules Crittenden fisks pro-terrorist media spin.  Meanwhile, the big home-front story of the week was the impressive turnout of counter-protestors, which clearly surprised the organizers of the original “surrender now” demonstration.  I don’t think anyone will ever outcompete the hard left and its prepackaged cadres of professional activists at a game they invented, but this does suggest more effective mobilization by those who oppose them.

*  Killing the Goose.  For those who think the Kaesong Industrial Park is teaching North Korean apparatchiks about capitalism, observe their latest extortionate demands on the business tenants there.  Recall that Kaesong hasn’t proven to be all that profitable for all of its tenants, despite slave labor wages (most of which the workers may never even see) and financial help from South Korea.  So if the North Koreans remain ignorant of how balance sheets work, just what lesson do you suppose they’ve learned?

Ill-Gotten Gains: Who Still Remembers Resolution 1718?

March 18, 2007 "United" Nations, An Alliance?, Appeasement, Counterfeiting, Money Laundering, Six-Party Talks, WMD 10 comments

[Scroll down for updates.]

(d) all Member States shall, in accordance with their respective legal processes, freeze immediately the funds, other financial assets and economic resources which are on their territories at the date of the adoption of this resolution or at any time thereafter, that are owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the persons or entities designated by the Committee or by the Security Council as being engaged in or providing support for, including through other illicit means, DPRK’s nuclear-related, other weapons of mass destruction-related and ballistic missile-related programmes, or by persons or entities acting on their behalf or at their direction, and ensure that any funds, financial assets or economic resources are prevented from being made available by their nationals or by any persons or entities within their territories, to or for the benefit of such persons or entities; (emphasis mine)

– U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, Para. (8)(d), Oct. 14, 2006

So now that Chris Hill has again caved in to the North Koreans and promised to give them back either $20 million or all $24 million of their criminal proceeds in Banco Delta Asia, I just have a few questions: do we have any idea what the North Koreans will do with this money, or can we expect it to be used for the customary prohibited purposes: luxury goods, missiles, and weapons systems? Will any of it be set aside for the care and feeding of North Korea’s millions of starving people? Or are we just not asking?

We need not ask where the funds came from. Recall the words that some “senior U.S. official” said to a Reuters reporter about these BDA funds not long ago: “It is all one big criminal enterprise. You can’t separate it out. Presuming — as I do — that the money will be returned with no strings, questions, or conditions, we’re not only violating UNSCR 1718, we’re giving them back money our own statements confirm we know to be criminal proceeds. We can meekly claim, as we did two weeks ago, that $8 to $12 million in funds could be legitimate, but to say that of 83% or even 100% of the total insults our intelligence.

I am bothered by this.

Read more

Marks of Distinction

March 17, 2007 History One comment

Inspired by the Marmot’s cool photo of a Japanese zero in U.S. markings, I rounded up a few other pictures of cross-dressed aircraft and tanks from World War II.

From my reading of the North African and Eastern Front campaigns, I understand that it was especially common to press captured vehicles into service there.  You have to wonder how many “friendly fire” kills this practice caused.  From my experiences at the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, I suspect that most friend-or-foe identifications are done at ranges where you can make out your target’s silhouette, but not its markings.

And finally, a real novelty:  a Soviet Mi-24 “Hind” painted like a redneck monster truck, complete with airbrushed eagle plumage.  I recall seeing this described as a scene from Afghanistan, but one glance at the scenery and the buildings in the background will tell you it’s more likely Southern Europe.  I have to say this is almost enough to make you rethink that whole “swords-to-plowshares” concept.  Tacky, but in a way that’s somehow endearing.

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