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Monthly Archive: March, 2009

March 31, 2009

Is Hostage-Taking North Korea’s New Business Model?

This should do wonders for North Korea’s foreign direct investment: North Korea told South Korea on Monday it put a South Korean worker at the joint industrial zone of Kaesong under probe on suspicion of violating relevant regulations, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said. North Korea sent a notice to South Korea, saying the South Korean worker, detained at around 11:50 a.m., has criticized the North’s political system, ministry spokesperson Lee Jong Joo said at a press briefing. [Kyodo News] I...

Categories Appeasement/NK Economics
March 31, 2009

Gates to North Korea: You Are Clear for Lift-Off! (Plus, N. Korea’s Nuclear “Reset Button”)

Is Obama the new Kennedy, or the new Carter? It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union”¦. To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation and...

Categories Missiles/Uncategorized
March 31, 2009

31 March 2009

THE SENATE Foreign Relations Committee is expected to approve Christopher Hill’s confirmation today, but tabloid rumors notwithstanding, that isn’t the final “confirmation” vote. THE U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION has adopted a resolution denouncing North Korea’s human rights record and reappointing Vitit Muntarbhorn for another year. The resolution was adopted despite the opposing votes of China and Russia: The UN Commission on Human Rights yesterday adopted the European Union-led resolution on a 26-6 vote with 15 abstentions at a meeting at...

Categories Anju Links
March 30, 2009

One Man’s “Bargaining Chip” Is Another Man’s Hostage

Update: Uh oh: Two American journalists detained at North Korea’s border with China two weeks ago will be indicted and tried, “their suspected hostile acts” already confirmed, Pyongyang’s state-run news agency said Tuesday. The Korean Central News Agency report did not say when a trial might take place, but said preparations to indict the Americans were under way as the investigation continues. “The illegal entry of U.S. reporters into the DPRK and their suspected hostile acts have been confirmed by...

Categories Media Criticism/Refugees/Terrorism (NK)
March 27, 2009

It is NOT ‘legal’ for North Korea to launch a satellite, plus miscellaneous observations

Let’s begin with a historical contrast that pretty much speaks for itself: It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union…. To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from...

Categories "United" Nations/Missiles
March 26, 2009

26 March 2009

GOOD QUESTION! Now that he’s pending confirmation as a senior Pentagon official, do you suppose Ashton Carter will call for President Obama to destroy North Korea’s missile on the ground, as he and William Perry did in 2006? The idea of launching a military strike against North Korean territory is stoopid — that’s with two O’s — whether you look at it politically, diplomatically, or militarily. Waiting for North Korea to launch it and destroying it in flight, however, would...

Categories Anju Links
March 26, 2009

Chris Hill Lies to Entire Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Sam Brownback’s Finest Hour

[Updated below.] [A]s the current assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, [Christopher Hill] presided over negotiations with North Korea that deliberately minimized focus on the bleak human rights record of that country, ignored its nuclear proliferation, and had the practical effect of affirming its nuclear weapons capability. Hill also has a troubling hotdog tendency to play by his own rules, to the detriment of U.S. diplomacy…. Hill’s brand of cowboy diplomacy might be justified if it...

Categories Human Rights/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
March 26, 2009

Erection Day!

North Korea is lifting its Taepodong II missile peaceful satellite launch vehicle onto the launching pad. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that such a “provocative act” could jeopardize the stalled talks on supplying North Korea with aid and other concessions in exchange for dismantling its nuclear program. “We have made it very clear that the North Koreans pursue this pathway at a cost and with consequences to the six-party talks, which we would like to see revived,” Clinton...

Categories "United" Nations/Missiles/NK Military
March 25, 2009

The Weekly Standard on North Korea’s Changing Food Supply System

The article, with the provocative title “Kim’s Crumbling Regime,” discusses trends in bottom-up marketization of the food supply and the regime’s failure — a potentially fatal one — to stop that trend and regain control over the food supply. I’m not plush for time today, so I’ll just throw out a link and recommend you read it on your own. I’ve discussed the same tends a great deal here recently, because a growing body of evidence suggests that they’re accelerating.

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change
March 25, 2009

U.S. journalists under ‘intense interrogation’ in Pyongyang

This is the price a journalist pays for trying to report the truth about North Korea, away from the regime’s guided tours. The information about the whereabouts of Euna Lee and Laura Ling comes from South Korean “human intelligence” sources in the North, so don’t take this at face value: After being questioned at the security command, Lee and Ling were reportedly taken to Pyongyang last Wednesday. Each was put in a separate vehicle so that there would be no...

Categories Media Criticism/Refugees
March 25, 2009

Stuart Levey Renominated

Yes, it’s a perfectly excellent nomination by the Obama Administration for Treasury. No, I’m serious. Stuart Levey, the Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, played the key role in snipping North Korea’s financial lifelines in 2005 and 2006, starting with Macau’s Banco Delta Asia. Treasury’s effort ended when North Korea blinked and made a bunch of false promises to Chris Hill just to stop the pain, and Chris Hill duly made it stop. But no single U.S. government official...

Categories Money Laundering/NK Economics
March 24, 2009

24 March 2009

THE DAILY NK ALREADY HAS some details about the whereabouts of the American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee: The information source also released that, “The emergency, that they had arrested American citizens, was immediately reported to the DSC, which supervises the border guard units. It was also reported to the headquarters of the 9th corps, which has jurisdiction over North Hamkyung Province. The two were sent to Pyongyang in the morning of the 18th after investigation by the special...

Categories Anju Links
March 24, 2009

Chris Hill’s Record of Success? Examples, please.

CHRIS HILL’S CONFIRMATION HEARING starts tomorrow, and the Weekly Standard has (second only to this blog) owned the story. Stephen Hayes relates the story of Hill’s insubordination to his bosses in talking directly to the North Koreans, which is a prohibition I find it hard to believe the last Administration was really serious about enforcing. Frankly, a writer of Hayes’s caliber could have done far better, and I hope he will yet. Still, Hayes manages to do much better than...

Categories Uncategorized
March 24, 2009

Great Ideas That Won’t Work: A Korea-Japan Alliance

For reasons I laid out here in January, pragmatism is making gradual gains on emotion in Seoul and forcing Japan and South Korea to understand that their interests have aligned: A senior South Korean government official recently remarked that if the U.S. and North Korea speed up too much in bilateral talks, Japan could play a role in “slamming on the brakes.” He appeared to be suggesting that any bilateral negotiations bringing Washington and Pyongyang together after the North has...

Categories Asia/China/Geopolitics
March 23, 2009

Collapse of N. Korea’s Planned Economy, Rise of Markets Improve Food Supply

North Korea’s government, for reasons that are not clear, has begun allowing cash transactions for food imports, and the result is a significant increase in food flowing into North Korea’s ports: As a result, Shinuiju harbor is witnessing a mass importation of rice and flour from China for the first time. The amount of food imports, which started to increase in early February, has reached its peak in late February and early March, importing 800 to 1,000 tons of rice...

Categories Deprogramming/Famine & Food Aid
March 23, 2009

Kim Jong Il Now Parade Magazine’s World’s Third-Worst Dictator

In a statement released by KCNA, Kim’s publicist thanked academy members for their votes and said that it was an honor just to be nominated. And in related news — sit down for this one — here’s the latest report that North Korea has been diverting international humanitarian aid. Yet another survey shows that need North Koreans never saw a spoonful of it, except for sale in the markets at prices they couldn’t pay. The charge appears not to have...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il
March 21, 2009

Iran Still Not Feeling the Whole ‘Hope and Change’ Thing

The idea of an outreach to the Iranian people would have made sense — up to a point — had Obama spoken through the despised mullahs rather than to them. Yet the great irony of Obama’s attempt to connect with Iranians is that it probably convinced them that he’s completely out of touch with their aspirations and reinforced popular notions of America as decadent, weak, and self-absorbed: Khamenei set the bar impossibly high — demanding an overhaul of U.S. foreign...

Categories Iran
March 20, 2009

Chris Hill Update: Man Tells Lie, Lie Catches Up With Man, Dog Bites Man

The Washington Times, reporting that Senator Brownback is increasingly open in his threat to hold Chris Hill’s nomination as Ambassador to Iraq, relates just the latest story of Hill misleading a member of Congress: In [a] hearing on July 31, in response to a request to bring Jay Lefkowitz, who was a special envoy for North Korea human rights, to future talks, Mr. Hill said, “I would be happy to invite him to all future negotiating sessions with North Korea.”...

Categories Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics