Search Results for: moran market

April 30, 2023

British American Tobacco, North Korea, & the Bomb: Setting a New Low for How Evil a Tobacco Company Can Be

Last Tuesday, British American Tobacco, the world’s second-largest tobacco company, along with its Singaporean subsidiary, pled guilty to bank fraud and conspiracy charges and agreed to pay a combined $635 million in criminal and civil fines, penalties, and forfeitures to the Treasury and Justice Departments. The charges arise from an secret joint venture, going all the way back to 2001, in which BAT sold the North Korean government tobacco, other materials, machinery, and technical help to manufacture cigarettes, despite having said...

Categories Money Laundering/NK Crime/U.S. Law
September 6, 2016

N. Korea calls for murder of S. Korean President, State Dep’t still doesn’t think it sponsors terrorism

“When he eventually came to power, there was no book which deserved more careful study from the rulers, political and military, of the Allied powers. All was there….” – Winston Churchill, on Mein Kampf History, which is diplomacy in the past tense, is littered with examples of despots who made their intentions clear, but whom journalists and diplomats in free nations have blindly refused to take at their word. So it was that in the late 1930s, the journalist and...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
March 31, 2016

In Pyongyang, the ghost of Goebbels haunts the Associated Press

Why won’t the Associated Press release the Memoranda of Understanding it signed with the North Korean regime in 2011, in exchange for permission to set up a bureau in Pyongyang? What is it hiding? Plenty of possibilities come to mind, including the signature block. Imagine the AP’s embarrassment if it turned out that, to save time, someone had just pulled an old MOU out of a filing cabinet, crossed out “Josef Goebbels,” and written “Kim Jong-un” underneath it. Practically speaking,...

Categories AP Watch
January 6, 2016

North Korea says it just tested an H-bomb. Here’s how we should respond.

North Korea has just announced that it tested a hydrogen bomb. The announcement came shortly after the U.S. Geological Survey measured an artificial earthquake in the vicinity of North Korea’s Punggye-ri test site (Google Earth images of the site, and the gulag next to it, here). Events are moving faster than reporters can type right now, but the most comprehensive reports at this moment are at NK News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post....

Categories Proliferation/WMD
January 4, 2016

North Korea’s not-so-great dictator: Kim Jong-un’s impulsive ineptitude

South Korea’s Foreign Minister, Yun Byung-se, believes that Pyongyang is increasingly isolated. He believes that this is causing it “more distress this year than any other time,” and that Kim Jong-un will redouble his efforts to break that isolation this year. There are reasons to be skeptical of Yun’s statement. First, South Korea, having nominally signed on to a policy of pressuring Pyongyang to disarm without actually complying with that policy itself, must want to world to think that it’s...

Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
November 16, 2014

Defectors spread rumors, warns news service that spreads propaganda, disinformation, and fake photos

The Associated Press, the guardian of the grotto that holds the cuneiform clay tablets recording the sacred commandments of the journalistic profession, has published a hit piece warning its readers to beware of the North Korean guerrilla news services that have stepped forward to fill the void left by corporate news organizations, including the AP. Its lede: Video secretly taken in North Korea shows public executions by firing squad. The country is said to begin a currency revaluation that turns disastrous. Leader Kim Jong Un is...

Categories AP Watch
October 3, 2013

Sanctions are working in Iran. They’ll work better against North Korea, and here’s why.

Drag a modest grant check through DuPont Circle and you’ll accumulate at least ten pundits, several dozen grad students, and a multitude of assorted kooks who would willingly write you an academic paper entitled, “Why Sanctions Never Worked.” And that’s true, except for South Africa, Yugoslavia, Burma, Nauru, Al Qaeda, Iran, and North Korea, and only if you limit the argument to trade sanctions and exclude other tools of economic pressure, like coordinated divestment, third-party financial sanctions like those in Section...

Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Money Laundering/Sanctions
August 3, 2012

AP Watch: Columbia Journalism Review Misses the Opportunity to Review Journalism

I’ve been waiting for The Columbia Journalism Review to inquire into the AP’s Pyongyang Bureau, so imagine my disappointment to see them interview Korea (and Pyongyang) Bureau Chief Jean H. Lee and squander that opportunity by lobbing softballs.  I mean, seriously, not one question about this?  Not one probing question about the AP’s MOUs with the North Korean government? (Psst.  They have a comments section.) The AP-KCNA experiment continues to be failure nonetheless.  Seven months later, the AP sits in...

Categories AP Watch
April 23, 2012

AP Exclusive: Another Great Moment in North Korean Agriculture!

What’s all this I keep hearing from fringe organizations like the World Food Program that North Korea isn’t agriculturally self-sufficient? To mark what would have been Kim’s 100th birthday, thousands came to central Pyongyang to view elaborate displays, mostly of the violet orchid Kimilsungia named in his honor and the red begonia Kimjongilia named for his son and successor, Kim Jong Il. The Kimilsungia, named after Kim by the late Indonesian dictator Sukarno, has become an integral part of the...

Categories AP Watch/Humor/Satire
March 10, 2010

Yet Another Lawsuit Against North Korea in a U.S. Court

Thirty American victims of Hezbollah terror attacks have filed civil action in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against the government of North Korea. The plaintiffs, injured by Hezbollah rockets fired into northern Israel during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, allege that North Korea aided the militant group by training senior Hezbollah leaders and by providing networks of underground storage bunkers meant to house Katyusha rocket launchers. [Ha’aretz] This would be the third recent civil suit against North...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
May 28, 2006

The Dictator on My Bar Napkin

Two recent news stories again raise the one of the most difficult questions free societies face: what role should governments play in limiting the expression of views that are tasteless, offensive, or which might even be lies designed to strip that society of its freedom? Let’s begin with some context. If the first casualty of prosperity is taste, a corollary to this rule is that the depth of affliction is proportional to the speed with which a society achieves prosperity....

Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/Democracy/History/Korean Education/Korean Society/Unintended Humor/WTF?