Archive for Appeasement
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 June 7, 2010 at 10:06 am · Filed under Appeasement, Sunshine, North-South
It is much like that other psychological syndrome we sometimes observe in hostages who paradoxically express feelings of sympathy and adulation for their captors. The particular phenomenon I call the Kaesong Syndrome occurs when businesses become economic hostages of a despotic regime, and later begin to mimic its despotic exploitation of their workers, and finally, to parrot its demands in both substance and manner.
The South Korean companies operating at the Kaesong Industrial Complex yesterday demanded that the South Korean government ensure the safety of their workers in the North and come up with measures to minimize their losses in case the complex shuts down.
In a meeting with Unification Ministry officials yesterday, some business owners at the inter-Korean complex asked the government to increase the 7 billion won ($ 5.87 million) cap on insurance payouts they could expect to receive if the industrial park shuts down.
Other business owners pleaded with the ministry to refrain from resuming psychological operations against Pyongyang.
The requests follow North Korea’s threats on Thursday that it would shut down traffic at Kaesong if South Korea does not abandon its plan to resume psychological operations as part of punitive measures for the March 26 torpedo attack that sank the Navy warship Cheonan, killing 46 sailors. [Joongang Ilbo]
The idea of Sunshine was that interaction between North and South Korea would reform and liberalize the North. But really, who changed who here?
I cannot conceive of a less worthy group for a bailout. Just let the exploitive bastards go bankrupt.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 26, 2010 at 10:46 am · Filed under Appeasement, Diplomacy
Mike Chinoy was an absolutely, positively objective CNN reporter until he wrote a book accusing the Bush Administration of sexing up evidence of North Korean uranium enrichment to wriggle out of the first Agreed Framework. Poor Chinoy. Before his book even went to print, samples submitted by North Korea to the State Department began to test positive for highly enriched uranium, and in due course, Meltdown wasn’t just Chinoy’s title, it became a fitting description for his central thesis.
But because people like Chinoy are even harder to deter than Kim Jong Il, he now argues that the right response to the premeditated sinking of a South Korean warship is to sit down with them, presumably to ask them what it will cost to make them keep quiet for six more months. Because it worked so well before, right? Of course, this assumes that the North Koreans even want to sit down with us, except for their demand for access to the wreck of the Cheonan to do their own “independent” investigation. Chinoy, with his characteristic talent for finding hope in unlikely places, takes this demand seriously.
It is at moments like this that we should all pour out libations to Zeus for a president who, thus far, has not taken the counsel of men like Mike Chinoy. It’s why I feel a need to defend President Obama’s North Korea policy, for all of its flaws, from conservative critics who assume that Obama appeases Kim Jong Il (and that George W. Bush did not). They ought to be more careful in their criticisms. If this President sees no point in pursuing a tough policy anyway, he might just opt for a weak one.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 26, 2010 at 8:44 am · Filed under NK Economics, Appeasement
[Update: So did they mean it or not? Damn Kim Jong Il never keeps a promise ….]
President Lee can heave a mighty sigh of relief. Not only will the Kaesong Industrial Park be closed after all, but also, Chung Dong-Young, the Hankyoreh, and the usual suspects among Korea’s nationalist left can’t possibly criticize him for it without abandoning all pretense of logic.
Oh, wait ….
In any event, this is all proceeding very much like I’ve been predicting for years now, and better than I’d feared: the South Korean workers at Kaesong are being expelled rather than taken hostage, so far. You will recall that President Lee has been planning his response to a North Korean closure of Kaesong for at least a year now, but don’t ask me how.
Here’s the North Koreans’ statement:
“1. All relations with the puppet authorities will be severed.
“2. There will be neither dialogue nor contact between the authorities during (South Korean President) Lee Myung Bak’s tenure of office.
“3. The work of the Panmunjom Red Cross liaison representatives will be completely suspended.
“4. All communication links between the north and the south will be cut off.
“5. The Consultative Office for North-South Economic Cooperation in the Kaesong Industrial Zone will be frozen and dismantled and all the personnel concerned of the south side will be expelled without delay.
“6. We will start all-out counterattack against the puppet group’s ‘psychological warfare against the north.’
“7. The passage of south Korean ships and airliners through the territorial waters and air of our side will be totally banned.
“8. All the issues arising in the inter-Korean relations will be handled under a wartime law.
“There is no need to show any mercy or patience for such confrontation maniacs, sycophants and traitors and wicked warmongers as the (South Korean President) Lee Myung Bak group.” [Reuters]
The closure of Kaesong is good news for many reasons. First, it ends South Korea’s “material support for a rogue government, its nuclear ambitions, and its human rights atrocities.” Second, it removes a tremendous credibility problem from President Lee’s argument that other nations should isolate North Korea economically. Third, it crushes the dreams of billions of hippies.
Of course the Hankyoreh will find some way to blame President Lee for the North Koreans’ closure of Kaesong. I’m sure they’re writing the editorials as I write this. But what we should remember is that the North Koreans have their own reasons for shutting Kaesong down — the same reasons why they stalled the expansion of Kaesong that Roh Moo Hyun wanted so much. Kaesong workers probably never received any actual wages and depended on their ability to move South Korean consumer goods onto the black market to earn a profit. Kaesong’s fate was sealed once the North Korean generals saw the subversive power of ChocoPies, and there’s nothing any South Korean president could have done to change that.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 14, 2010 at 10:19 am · Filed under Appeasement, Diplomacy, Terrorism/Iraq
Just a year after the Senate confirmed failed North Korea negotiator Chris Hill as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, NHK is reporting that Hill plans to retire this summer. There has been occasional grumbling about Hill’s performance in office in Baghdad, though nothing approaching the criticism of his performance as a negotiator with North Korea. One of those who apparently didn’t much care for Hill was Gen. Ray Odierno, one of the architects of the military strategy that stabilized Iraq in 2007-2008. I presume that Hill would not have left a position he’d occupied for such a short period of time, after such a difficult confirmation, if the Obama Administration had been completely pleased by his performance there.
Hill’s retirement is some consolation for the fact that Senator Sam Brownback, who held up Hill’s nomination for several weeks, will retire from the Senate this fall to run for governor of Kansas.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 2, 2010 at 6:20 am · Filed under Appeasement, Useful Idiocy, Cheonan Incident
Here is our latest edition of the Kaesong Death Watch:
Last week, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak met with two former presidents, Chun Doo-hwan and Kim Young-sam, who reportedly suggested shutting down Kaesong in response to North Korea’s suspected role in the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean warship. [….]
In a statement released in early April through the official Korean Central News Agency, the North said it would “entirely re-evaluate” its involvement in the Kaesong Industrial Complex if relations continue along a confrontational path.
Last week, South Korean media reports — citing an unnamed South Korean Unification Ministry official — said North Korean military officials who inspected the complex expressed concerns the South could use high-rises there to spy on the North or sneak troops into the country through the complex’s water system. The inspection intensified speculation the North might end or suspend its participation in the complex.
Some background here.
“I’ll never forget the touching moment of seeing South Koreans and North Koreans working together, side by side … when my factory first opened,” he said. “Cultivating and spreading the spirit of freedom to the Kaesong people is very inspiring.”
… he said as he pressed an electric cattle prod into the back of an insolent North Korea’s worker’s neck. Please. I smell something spreading all right, but it isn’t freedom, or wages.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on April 9, 2010 at 6:20 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Famine & Food Aid, China & Korea
As the food situation in North Korea continues to deteriorate for its most vulnerable, a South Korean NGO is sending 300 tons of flour and other supplies to help feed 12,000 “marginalized” people, including kids in 50 orphanages. The article mentions nothing about monitoring or nutritional surveys, so pray to a God they can’t that there will be a few dollops of gruel left for their begging bowls after all of the theft, diversion, and corruption.
Note, by the way, this seemingly significant fact near the bottom of AFP’s article: “Pyongyang has also rejected some aid.” It’s too bad the reporter doesn’t tell her readers whose aid was rejected (America’s), why the regime rejected it (its aversion to monitoring), and how many kids it might have fed.
Still, the leader of the world’s most egalitarian society can’t let a little famine interrupt his feast, so he’s throwing a banquet for the Chinese Ambassador to thank his government for helping him undermine U.N. proliferation sanctions. China is not only doing this by funding Kim Jong Il’s regime directly; it is also using its considerable influence in Washington, asking that “sanctions enforcement be dropped as a precondition for their return to multilateral talks.” If past experience is any guide, the State Department and the Washington think tank chorus would be ebullient about this, since few of them see any higher purpose than talking, even if North Korea sees no higher purpose than stalling and obfuscation. Kim Jong Il finds talks to be just one useful vehicle to achieve this.
Unfortunately, China might get its way even as the sanctions start to put real pressure on the regime. Amid North Korea’s obscene coexistence of feast and famine, President Obama may be preparing to offer North Korea an aid-for-talks deal, that is, food aid in exchange for simply returning to six-party talks. Marcus Noland, who is more concerned about feeding the hungry, doesn’t like where this is headed:
Noland warned such deals to bring the North back to the table could have a negative effect in the long run and that rejoining the talks may simply be aimed at securing external support in order to control the shaky internal situation.
“Unfortunately, this kind of linkage is likely to degrade the humanitarian aid program as well as provide North Korea an opportunity to parlay self-created disputes in one arena into concessions in another, as well as undercutting (South Korea, which has) acted with admirable restraint,'’ he said. [Korea Times]
Not only do I share Noland’s distaste for linking humanitarian aid to nuclear diplomacy, the more time passes, the more I doubt that the humanitarian benefit of food aid is really doing much good for the North Korean people. Having watched North Korea’s food situation closely for the last six years, I’ve seen far more linkage between the food situation for ordinary North Koreans and the functioning of markets than to the arrival of food aid, which we’ve always suspected the regime of diverting, whether at the macro or the micro level. Not only do I have little confidence that aid would feed those who really need it, I have little confidence that the State Department would demand effective monitoring, such as nutritional surveys that ensure that the recipients are regaining health and weight as the aid program continues. North Korea has always rejected effective forms of monitoring as a condition of U.N. or U.S. food aid programs. Why should we think that North Korea will be more flexible when we’re also linking this negotiation to our demands for talks and disarmament?
If we accept that food aid has receded as a significant part of North Korea’s food supply, Open News delivers some rare good news: North Korea’s resilient markets have largely recovered from the Great Confiscation, and for the time being, the price of rice is even falling. I tend to suspect that these reports are more reflective of local and temporary conditions, they’re still a very good sign that Kim Jong Eun won’t repeat his father’s performance by causing an inaugural famine.
For what it’s worth, at least some in the Administration continue to signal their intent to adhere to a hard line on sanctioning the regime that has created all of this misery:
The United States will continue to take a tough line on North Korea at a time when the latter is a “broken state,'’ John Hamre, former U.S. deputy secretary of defense and now leader of a Washington-based think tank, said Wednesday.
“The posture (of the United States) is we’re happy to negotiate with North Korea if North Korea agrees that its current strategy is wrong,'’ said Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), at a forum in Seoul. “It continues to rely on nuclear intimidation and that’s not a solution, it’s not a strategy and we will not accept it.'’ [….]
“We do not need to beg the North to work with us. We need to just be very confident,'’ he said, adding that perhaps the best tactic would be to hold up South Korea’s success for those in the North to see. [Korea Times]
It would be unfortunate if Noland is right that the Administration will let State seize defeat from the jaws of victory again. It’s probably too soon to assess the deal or its full significance unless and until we see the details and scale. Still, I often suspect that the East Asia Bureau is so obsessed with making a deal with Kim Jong Il and redeeming all of the effort it has invested in failure that it can’t stand the thought of North Korea simply ceasing to exist.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 25, 2010 at 7:57 pm · Filed under Appeasement, Sunshine, North-South
North Korea’s threats to confiscate South Korean property at Kumgang are having predictable consequences for its investment climate:
In an interview with The Dong-A Ilbo yesterday, Ahn said the head of a conference member company recently died of a heart attack due to severe stress from his business in North Korea.
The suspension of the inter-Korean tours caused the late chairman’s company to teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, causing his death at age 55, Ahn said.
Ilyeon’s prospects are no better. Ahn has invested 14.7 billion won (12.9 million U.S. dollars) in his North Korea venture, including 13.4 billion won (11.8 million dollars) to build the hotel and additional facilities.
His company is six billion won (5.3 million dollars) in the red due to the suspension of the Kumgang tour. Its deficit slightly decreased in early 2007, but the killing of a South Korean tourist at Mount Kumgang in July 2008 by a North Korean soldier dealt another serious blow. [Donga Ilbo]
I suppose I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the family of someone who vapor locks at 55, but all in all, I have a lot more sympathy for Park Wang Ja and her family. Yes, enabling the repression and the occasional murder of other people can be risky, especially when your business partners turn out to behave just as unscrupulously toward you. Hat tip: Curtis.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 15, 2010 at 7:11 am · Filed under NK Economics, Appeasement, Sunshine
Please allow me to introduce Roh Jeong-Ho, ex-millionaire, former role model for the Sunshine Policy, and asshole. How does one achieve such distinction in life? In Roh’s case, this way:
Roh was once touted by the South Korean media as one of the young leaders in his early 30s who were expected to lead the post-unification era when he exported 44 km of barbed-wire fences to Rajin-Sonbong in 1995. North Korea had asked Roh to supply the fences to isolate the area from ordinary North Koreans. In return, the North offered him the use of 33,000 sq. m of land in the free zone for 50 years. [Chosun Ilbo]
Roh was willing to make what we’ll call certain compromises for the greater good of reform and liberalization:
At first, the North threatened to scrap the barbed-wire order, complaining that the deal was revealed to South Korean media. Roh managed to calm the North Koreans, but then they started making new demands. They even told Roh to supply equipment to guards who were posted along the fence, including tazers and high-voltage current generators.
The North Koreans were apparently quite serious about what the New York Times called “barbed-wire capitalism:”
But to let in the air of foreign currency without also letting in the mosquitoes of democracy, North Korea wants to confine capitalism to the Rajin-Sonbong Free Economic and Trade Zone in the isolated northeast corner of the country, near the borders with Russia and China.
A barbed wire fence, electrified in places, separates the 288-square-mile zone from the rest of North Korea. This despite the fact that a brochure prepared by North Korea’s Committee for Promotion of External Economic Cooperation touts that the zone will become ‘’a crossroad of human transport and traffic.'’ [N.Y. Times, Sept. 15, 1996]
Although not much else came of the Rajin-Sonbong zone, the North Koreans did put up the fence, at least. Curtis identified it in satellite imagery. What is not stated is how, exactly, one isolates an area from “ordinary North Koreans” if some of them are allowed to live inside the electric fence. Indeed, I recall having read (but cannot currently find) news reports that the indigenous population inside the zone would have been forcibly relocated. North Korea’s failed plans for a similar trade zone at Sinuiju involved the forcible expulsion of “several hundred thousand local residents.”
Whether this monstrous mass relocation actually came to pass, I cannot say, because thankfully, by 2002 the regime’s ambitious plans were generally acknowledged as a failure. It is always so: this is a regime whose ruthlessness is limited only by its incompetence, and its subjects’ best hope is often that the latter will triumph over the former.
I ask you: is there a better living symbol of the Sunshine Policy than Roh Jeong-Ho, the man wanted to get rich — and naturally, do his part to liberalize and open up North Korea — by selling it barbed wire? North Korea got its barbed wire and stiffed Roh (the barbed-wire salesman, not the dead president), who is now bankrupt, bitter, and lacking in any apparent pity for anyone but himself.
“North Korean government workers operate under a bizarre, performance-based system,” Roh said. “Their performance is gauged based on how much they are able to extort from South Korean businesses.” [….]
“If you’re not careful, you could end up losing everything,” he warned. He added that the business prospects are riddled with traps. “We tend to believe that the North Koreans would be accommodating since we are ‘compatriots,’ but that’s a big mistake,” Roh said. “North Korea extends its invitation to South Korean businesses in order to use them as window dressing to attract Chinese and Russian investors.”
As is inevitably the case with investors in North Korea, a fool and his money — in his case, $1.5 million — are soon parted. This may be one of those rare occasions to celebrate a small victory for karmic justice that precedes the afterlife.
It’s hard to figure out the exact status of the Rajin zone today, as North Korea makes a fresh effort to revive it. Some reports in late 2008 suggested that North Korea had evicted some or all of the Chinese companies that originally bought into Rajin. This is a curious thing; after all, the Chinese thought that they’d purchased an exclusive 50-year lease for the port as recently as 2005.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on March 4, 2010 at 7:14 am · Filed under Appeasement, Defectors, NK Military
Update, 4 Mar 2010: According to this article (link in Korean), he didn’t come alone. There were originally four. Of the other three, one was killed while trying to escape, and two more are still missing. The greatest significance is the personal tragedy for the three who didn’t make it, and for the families of all four of the soldiers, who will almost certainly become objects of the regime’s collective retribution. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers.
[Satellite images of the Kumgang border crossing; click to see full size]
An important secondary significance is that soldiers’ morale, at least in some front-line units, is so low that they would speak openly of defection among themselves and actually risk their lives trying it.
_________________________
Well, Roh and DJ always promised that eventually, this engagement stuff would be a two-way street:
South Korea’s top spy agency says a North Korean soldier has defected to South Korea. The National Intelligence Service said Wednesday that the North Korean soldier was being questioned over the reasons for his defection. It declined to give his name, rank or the date he defected. [AP]
By now, we can only hope that South Korea’s relevant organ is giving this fortunate young man plenty of warm care and ChocoPies. Say a prayer for the soldier’s family; God only knows what their fate will be.
The source for the Kumgang connection is this Korean-language news story. The road itself has been somewhat disused recently; it’s nice to see some of that cash wasted on North Korea going to a good use other than as an MSR for an invasion.
Park Wang-Ja was not available for comment.
Related? From the Chosun Ilbo: “North Korea has promised to assure South Korea of the safety of four South Koreans it claims are being detained for trespassing once the ongoing probe is finished. North Korean delegates at an inter-Korean meeting Tuesday said the investigation “by a concerned agency” will take some time, according to the Unification Ministry.” The fact that the North Koreans have stopped talking about its “relevant organ” is conclusive proof that they read this blog.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 15, 2010 at 12:51 pm · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Human Rights, Diplomacy
Expanding on Robert King’s recent comments on (the complete absence of) human rights in North Korea, I explain why this is an issue we can’t sideline in our disarmament negotiations.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 6, 2010 at 7:05 am · Filed under Appeasement, Diplomacy, Proliferation, Useful Idiocy
The revelations about North Korea’s highly enriched uranium program had already been falling like the snow on Seoul this week, and then I saw this:
North Korea appears to have started a uranium enrichment program soon after it agreed in a 1994 deal with the U.S. to dismantle its existing plutonium nuclear weapons program, South Korea’s foreign minister said Wednesday.
Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan’s remark, if accurate, suggests North Korea had no intention of giving up its atomic ambitions when it signed the 1994 pact that defused an earlier crisis over its plutonium-based bomb program.
Suspicions about a North Korean uranium program touched off a new nuclear standoff in 2002, when a U.S. official said the North privately admitted having such a secret program. [AP, Jae Soon Chang]
Unfortunately, the South Koreans don’t tell us much about how they know this.
Coincidentally, I was already about 90% done with a detailed article for The New Ledger about the evidence that North Korea cheated all along, contrary to the doctrinaire insistence of some, notably Mike Chinoy, that George W. Bush threw away Agreed Framework I and missed a chance to disarm North Korea through diplomacy. Some have even blamed Bush for North Korea acquiring nukes.
Related: I had never seen the response to Selig Harrison in Foreign Affairs co-written by Robert Gallucci, Clinton’s chief negotiator with North Korea, until a reader and friend directed it to me last week. It’s must-reading for anyone tempted to take Selig Harrison seriously:
The United States, for a number of years, has had well-founded suspicions that North Korea has been working on the enrichment of uranium. Indeed, in both 1999 and 2000, the Clinton administration was unable to certify to Congress that North Korea was not pursuing a uranium-enrichment capability. (This fact alone should dispel claims of partisanship on this point.) In mid-2002, the Bush administration obtained clear evidence that North Korea had acquired material and equipment for a centrifuge facility that, when complete, could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year.
Although the straw man David Albright knocked down was a case consisting mostly of evidence that North Korea purchased aluminum tubes, the evidence consists of much more than that, but I’ll let you read the rest on your own. For what it’s worth, North Korea later provided a sample of the tubing, which turned out to contain traces of highly enriched uranium.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on December 30, 2009 at 6:09 pm · Filed under Appeasement, Diplomacy
North Korea has been stealing trucks, cranes and other equipment from the site of a nuclear power plant where an American-led consortium stopped construction four years ago in a dispute over the North’s nuclear weapons development, the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reported Wednesday. [N.Y. Times]
It gets better:
“There is even suspicion that the North Koreans used the equipment when they conducted a nuclear test in October 2006 and in May,” the paper quoted a source as saying.
North Korea may have used some of the more than 200 pieces of heavy equipment taken from the site in the country’s northeast to stage a nuclear test in May, South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said, quoting government officials.
“The removal of equipment without taking steps to settle financial issues is a clear violation of the agreement and can be construed as theft,” one official was quoted as saying. [….]
Equipment left behind at the site is valued at 45.5 billion won ($39 million), including cranes and bulldozers and nearly 200 trucks and other vehicles, the JoongAng Ilbo said. [Reuters, Jack Kim]
It’s really hard for me to work up too much outrage over this. Rather, it seems like a case of our own gullibility leading to predictable results. I wonder how much of KEDO’s equipment and materiel was shipped in after we already knew that the North Koreans were cheating on Agreed Framework I.
As a practical matter, KEDO was a dead letter by 2002, when President Bush called the North Koreans on their cheating. In 2004, the North Koreans “nationalized” most of the construction equipment at the site. In 2005, the Bush Administration terminated the contract of KEDO’s executive director, Charles Kartman (no relation to Eric). Then, in 2007, KEDO presented the North Koreans with a bill for $1.9 billion, which the North Koreans don’t seem to have even bothered to laugh off.
You can peruse some of the stacks of materials left behind in these satellite images, taken on March 19, 2004. Click for full size:
Update:
According to the Unification Ministry and other sources, North Korea has taken 190 vehicles from the site in Kumho, South Hamgyong Province, and 93 pieces of heavy equipment, including cranes and excavators, and is likely using them for military purposes. [….]
In December 2005, North Korea asked KEDO workers to leave the country and said they would not be allowed to repatriate equipment and construction materials.
At the time, KEDO and North Korea had agreed to leave materials at the site. Most belonged to South Korean subcontractors, and they had planned to sell off some of it to make up for financial losses stemming from the halted work.
In 2003, after the KEDO first suspended construction, the North said it would not allow the transfer of equipment unless it received compensation. A government official here said, “The North moved the equipment before we could even address the compensation issue, and that’s clearly in violation of our agreement. It can even be regarded as stealing.”
In January 2006, the Roh Moo-hyun administration in Seoul said the North had pledged to store the materials and that it expected the North to honor its word. Despite suspicions that the North had used some of the equipment in preparation for their second nuclear test this year, the current Lee Myung-bak administration has also remained silent.
But intelligence sources tell a different story.
They said the North started using equipment almost immediately after KEDO’s withdrawal and that the North Korean military was involved.
“North Korea is trying to keep South Koreans or KEDO officials from going near the construction base,” one source said. “Recent satellite photos of the site show that hundreds of the black covers that were used to conceal materials are mostly gone.”
Sources estimate equipment and materials are worth about 46 billion won ($39 million). South Korea, one of the founding members of the KEDO, spent $1.1 billion on the construction project. [Joongang Ilbo]
Posted by Joshua Stanton on December 21, 2009 at 9:46 am · Filed under Appeasement, Diplomacy
The Obama Administration’s new proposal to set up a “liaison office” in Pyongyang may be the most disturbing development of his administration’s entire approach to North Korea. It would, in effect, elevate diplomatic relations between the two governments just seven months after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, and just nine months after it tested an ICBM, all in flagrant violation of multiple U.N. resolutions. Now, after North Korea has made no meaningful concessions on disarmament and even demands recognition as a nuclear power, we propose to offer a gesture of legitimacy to the most undeserving of regimes. To achieve this new concession, North Korea need only return to disarmament talks, something it has done in one form or another since at least 1992. It has stalled and cheated us with great success ever since, not because North Korea is run by geniuses, but because America’s diplomatic class is populated by imbeciles who never tire of buying the same horse again.
Let’s not pretend that we gain anything from this gesture — we always have the “New York Channel” and multiple means of talking to the North Koreans if we need to. With all of the North’s egregious offenses against us, and against humanity itself, surely we can demand something tangible in return — a cessation of its counterfeiting of our currency, of its dope smuggling, of its constant threats against the South, of its proliferation of WMD’s, or of its supply of surface-to-air missiles and RPG’s to terrorists via Iran — before we begin making such important concessions. Is the North incapable of accounting for a single South Korean or Japanese abductee first? Can’t it permit one Red Cross visit to just one of its hideous gulags? Don’t any of these things matter to us? This move really seems to portend that we’re heading back down the road of giving North Korea concessions for nothing — appeasement, pure and simple.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on November 2, 2009 at 9:44 am · Filed under Appeasement, WMD, Diplomacy
Who remembers the heyday of Agreed Framework II, when the foreign policy establishment united to educate the hoi polloi about all of the great unfolding achievements of diplomacy with the North Koreans? They told us that North Korea was removing fuel rods and dismantling in earnest. Siegfried Hecker went to Yongbyon and returned to report, with a few qualifications, that “the DPRK leadership has made the decision to permanently shut down plutonium production” and that “the disablement actions taken to date will effectively delay a potential restart of plutonium production.” David Albright and Jacqueline Shire wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post entitled “Slowly But Surely, Pyongyang Is Moving,” in which they admonished “[t]he finger-wagging, told-you-so naysayers” to “take a deep breath.” We have previously touched upon the irrational exuberance of Don Oberdorfer, who wrote, “[A]ll indications are now that engagement and understanding across the DMZ are moving ahead.”
All the while, the Bush Administration’s State Department was feeding this illusion of progress, most notably with symbolic displays like the destruction of the Yongbyon cooling tower — a New York Times reporter called it “a gesture demonstrating its commitment to halt its nuclear weapons program” — but also by selectively withholding intelligence that didn’t fit the narrative of a forthright and compliant North Korea.
Self-deception leads to sadly predictable results. It’s taken less than a year for all of Christopher Hill’s “progress” to be reversed:
North Korea has apparently restored its facility used to produce weapons-grade plutonium at its main nuclear complex that had been mothballed under a six-nation accord, officials here said Monday.
“The reprocessing factory appears to have been restored to its earlier conditions,” a senior defense official said, citing satellite photos that also showed a continuous stream of workers in and out of the site in Yongbyon, 90km north of Pyongyang.
“Activities involving people and vehicles have been consistent for months,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I wouldn’t be surprised if North Korea has started to reprocess spent fuel rods.”
“Evidence points to the North having put Yongbyon back to work,” another official said, citing electricity has been detected being supplied to the complex on and off over the past few months. [Yonhap]
You can see Google Earth images of North Korea’s main nuclear facilities here. Really, the only thing that hasn’t worked out as I expected it to — yet — is the starting of that 50-megawatt reactor. Let’s close by thanking our creator that Chris Hill’s deceptions and incompetence can’t do us any harm in the sleepy backwater where he’s posted today.
·
Next entries »
