Archive for Human Rights

What will a U.N. inquiry on N. Korean human rights actually mean?

March 14, 2013 "United" Nations, Human Rights 2 comments

The U.N. Human Rights Council is set to approve an inquiry into human rights conditions in North Korea, conditions that a U.N. investigator says “may” be crimes against humanity:

Marzuki Darusman, an investigator for the United Nations, is expected to present a report to the council urging the creation of an international commission of inquiry to follow up on the abuses recorded in the eight years that a United Nations official has monitored human rights in the North.  [N.Y. Times]

So, what exactly would that mean?

“An inquiry mechanism could produce a more complete picture, quantify and qualify the violations in terms of international law, attribute responsibility to particular actors or perpetrators of these violations and suggest effective courses of international action,” Mr. Darusman said in the report. [N.Y. Times]

It could also presage indictments in the International Criminal Court — indictments that China would have to expend cred and capital to block.

The U.N. Human Rights Council will likely consider and approve Darusman’s recommendation in March, in a resolution to be co-sponsored by the EU and Japan in March.  South Korea’s co-sponsorship is notably absent, but at least South Korea will actively support the measure, which is a change for the better.  Here’s another change for the better:

“We are in effect ramping up international political pressure on this unparalleled, systemwide failure in respect to human rights,” Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, the American ambassador to the Human Rights Council, said by telephone. “We’re hoping that even if it doesn’t crack the whole system that on some of these issues we might see some opening and some change because of this pressure.”  [N.Y. Times]

Robert Joseph puts this in context nicely:

“Exposing the North’s brutality toward its own citizens has not been a priority component of U.S. policy,” Robert Joseph, the top State Department disarmament diplomat in the George W. Bush administration, told a U.S. Senate hearing on Thursday.

“In fact, concerns about how such exposure might affect the prospects for engagement with the regime have worked to place human rights atrocities in a separate box which is mostly neglected if seen as complicating higher order diplomacy,” he said, in a view widely shared by the human rights community.  [Reuters]

Reading further, it’s clear that this effort by human rights lawyer Jared Genser played an important role in getting the U.N. to finally focus on this issue.  Another factor appears to be the emerging consensus that quiet diplomacy has failed to disarm North Korea or address the human rights issue.  Policymakers no longer worry that emphasizing human rights will cause North Korea to walk away from disarmament talks.  After all, they walked away from those talks five years ago.  Since then, they’ve carried out two missile tests, two nuke tests, and two major attacks on South Korea.

I’ve been as skeptical as anyone about the capacity of the U.N. to do much of anything binding, and in fact, even the Times agrees that an inquiry would be a largely symbolic gesture. Where this will really matter is in how it shapes other, more tangible debates in committee meetings, floor votes, and in the boardrooms of companies making investment decisions.

Last week, I asked whether Dennis Rodman would have played Sun City. He wouldn’t have, because at least one responsible adult of average intelligence would have warned him that it would have been career suicide.  Maybe playing Pyongyang will be prove to be career suicide for Rodman; his career is long over anyway.  But the Rodman episode does illustrate that in most households, North Korea isn’t yet the pariah it deserves to be.  When it is, that will have severe consequences for a regime that survives on foreign currency.

For a variety of reasons, the U.N. Human Rights Council doesn’t have the moral authority to pin that label on North Korea. Ironically, one good reason may be that it has it has ignored this issue for so long.  Still, such things require a steady and determined drumbeat to work.

Update:  North Korea calls the charges “faked material … invented by the hostile forces, defectors and other rabbles.” Am I a “hostile force” or an “other rabbles?”

Park Geun Hye will back human rights probe of North Korea

March 5, 2013 "United" Nations, Human Rights 4 comments

You don’t need a Ph.D. to see that North Korea is gearing up to test Park Geun-Hye. The nice people at the quasi-official, Japan-based Chosun Sinbo reacted to Park’s inauguration speech, in which she called on North Korea to disarm, by saying they were “unable to hide our rage.”  Domestically, the North has launched another series of exhausting war exercises, with soldiers forced to live days on end in tunnels, or standing guard and catching frostbite outdoors.

All of this is a reaction to Park’s attempt to offer the North aid, as long as Kim Jong Un quits biting the hand that feeds his subjects.

“As part of trust-building efforts, we will first start humanitarian assistance,” the official said. “Besides the aid, we are also considering what else we can do.”

The government’s policy on North Korea revolves around a “two-track strategy” – supporting UN sanctions against Pyongyang’s provocations while pursuing trust-building policies at the same time, the official said.

“Rather than a strategy of ‘sanctions first and aid later,’ we’re going to participate in the international push for sanctions on the regime as chair of the UN Security Council, but we’ll also make moves based on mutual trust with North Korea,” the official added. [Joongang Ilbo]

Separately, the Joongang Ilbo piece adds the interesting detail that under Park’s predecessor, “the volume of inter-Korean trade … dropped from 289.2 billion won ($267 million) in 2007 to 14.1 billion won in 2012,” despite regular reports that trade at Kaesong has continued to rise.  Park suggests that this trend could be reversed, but also threatens that “[i]f North Korea stages further provocations, that would prompt stronger sanctions, which would pose a grave threat to the future of the Korean people.”

It all sounds sensible enough, even if it’s a little unrealistic.  But while we were all distracted by Dennis Rodman, Park made one decision that really deserves some applause.  Early in her administration, when most presidents would have shied away from controversial decisions, Park gave her government’s active support to a long-overdue U.N. human rights inquiry, after years of South Korean silence:

South Korea’s pledge Wednesday to give “active” support to the investigation comes just two days after the inauguration of President Park Geun-hye and is likely to infuriate the North, which views discussion of its human rights as a “grave violation.” Seoul struggled with the decision, which forced a choice between two key goals: restoring civil relations with Pyongyang and pressing its government to improve treatment of its 24 million people.

The South’s commitment, announced by Seoul’s deputy foreign minister for global affairs at a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, is significant because the South holds influence over global policymaking regarding North Korea. With South Korea’s support, the investigation is all but assured of passage when the resolution is put up for a vote this month among member states of the Human Rights Council, rights advocates say. [....]

The new U.N. inquiry would establish a panel of experts who would interview witnesses, document abuses and help formally establish whether the North’s government is committing crimes against humanity. In January, Navi Pillay, the U.N. human rights chief, said in a statement that such an investigation was “long overdue,” particularly because there was no sign of improvement under third-generation leader Kim Jong Eun.  [Washington Post, Chico Harlan]

Separately, Yonhap notes that North Korea appears to be reducing the prisoner population in its gulag to between 80,000 and 120,000, but that this does not suggest an improvement in human rights conditions there.  Unfortunately, the paywall prevents me from seeing (1) Yonhap’s source for that estimate, (2) the basis for the source’s conclusion, and (3) the all-important follow-up question:  so what happened to the prisoners?  If anyone has a subscription, I’d be much obliged for the rest of the story.

Even before Park made this fateful decision, the North had already begun the process of making her into its next Goldstein.  Park will soon learn that the North doesn’t do give-and-take.  North Korea is a society of absolute authority and manichean struggle.  If you’re in charge, you demand tribute.  If you’re not, you pay it.

Would Dennis Rodman have played Sun City?

February 27, 2013 Human Rights, Propaganda, Useful Idiocy 4 comments

Visit Pyongyang – An idiom used to describe a desperate plea for media attention (see also Jump the Shark) by a washed-up celebrity or politician (see Jimmy Carter, Bill Richardson, Ric Flair) who, lacking the residual talent to attract such attention by any other means or device, visits the one place on Earth where any publicity-seeker whose name is vaguely recalled by persons over 40 can be assured of making global headlines without being arrested, indicted, or otherwise worthy of public interest. Lacks the mortality risks of space travel (see Lance Bass) or Celebrity Rehab, but does require travel on Air Koryo.

I don’t intend to spend a lot of time writing about Dennis Rodman, so I will answer Max Fisher’s question this way:  ”No.”

If no right-thinking person would visit or do business with apartheid-era South Africa in the 1980s, how can any right-thinking person justify paying money to Kim Jong Un-era North Korea? It would be (mildly) interesting to know what Dennis Rodman’s views on apartheid were, but I don’t have to go out on a long limb to suppose that he thinks it was unjust. He would be right about that, of course.

There were some important differences between these two dictatorships, but none supports a defense of Rodman.  The most important one is that present-day North Korea kills a thousand-fold more people and keeps the survivors in a state of infinitely greater misery.  Other important differences can be seen in this historic video of “Sun City,” a single used to popularize an artistic boycott of apartheid-era South Africa. There is a manifestly hypocritical difference in elite mass opinion about how to treat these two dictatorships — isolate (bad) South Africa, engage (worse) North Korea:

A third difference is all the b-roll that was available to fill this video. There is, of course, nothing like this in North Korea (well, almost nothing). If P.W. Botha had known how to run a real dictatorship, there wouldn’t have been a Sun City, there might not have been a boycott, and there might still be apartheid in South Africa today.

One can only hope that Rodman will eventually perceive his surroundings with the moral clarity that Muhammad Ali did despite the ravages of Parkinson’s disease (hat tip to me for that cite).

OFK in the WaPo

February 12, 2013 Human Rights, Sanctions, The Camps 2 comments

Many thanks to my friend Prof. Sung Yoon Lee for offering me the opportunity to co-write this with him, especially since he frankly did most of the writing this time.  It’s a pleasure to write with Prof. Lee.  He’s a terrific writer, and our views align so closely that there’s no need for painstaking negotiations over wording and content.  Really, I don’t know of anyone who (1) understands the pathology of North Korea better, and (2) can express it so well in my native language (which he speaks better than me, to tell the truth).

After you’re done with that, don’t miss this paper Prof. Lee wrote as part of a symposium for the National Bureau of Asian Research.  In the pages of Foreign Policy, Dan Blumenthal highlights it as “a much-needed dose of reality about what exactly we are dealing with.”  Must reading.

I also have to compliment the WaPo folks for a particularly speedy and professional job of editing this for publication.  I’ve been an editor, and I know how hard it is to boil something down to the space limits without harming the author’s intent.

In case you’re keeping score, that’s one-two-three times I’ve been linked by the Post today, which must be some kind of record.  For that, I owe many thanks to Adam Cathcart and, of course, Max Fisher.  After all these years, I’d grown accustomed to being dismissed as a crank raving from the margins.  I hope I won’t miss that old familiar feeling.  I mostly hope that all of this effort will eventually matter where it counts.

Update:  Geez.  Get a load of The Washington Post‘s Editorial Board, sounding like us:

This should not mean trying once again to engage North Korea in negotiations: More than 15 years of such efforts have demonstrated that the United States lacks the leverage to induce the regime to give up its nukes. If any country has such leverage, it is China, which supplies its neighbor with fuel and food. U.S. diplomacy should be aimed first at pressuring Beijing to take responsibility for the growing menace on its doorstep. New Chinese leader Xi Jinping has the opportunity to change a policy that, in backing the Kim regime in the interest of “stability,” has made the Korean peninsula steadily more dangerous.

Though sanctions on North Korea are already tight, the Obama administration should look for new ways that the U.S. financial system can be used to cut off the regime’s access to international banks. It should work to bring greater attention to the human rights calamity in the North.

That’s the next best thing to an endorsement. I never thought I’d live to see that.

U.N. may investigate N. Korean officials for crimes against humanity

February 9, 2013 "United" Nations, Human Rights 2 comments

I don’t know what’s gotten into the U.N. lately, but this would be a pretty big deal:

North Korea’s leaders are likely to be the target of a U.N. investigation into their personal responsibility for rapes, torture, executions, arbitrary arrests and abductions, following an expert report published on Tuesday.

The report by Marzuki Darusman, an Indonesian lawyer who is the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said North Korea’s “grave, systematic and widespread” human rights violations ought to be laid bare before the U.N. Human Rights Council and the U.N. General Assembly.

“The inquiry should examine the issues of institutional and personal accountability for such violations, in particular where they amount to crimes against humanity, and make appropriate recommendations to the authorities of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and international community for further action,” said Darusman’s report.  [Reuters]

Sure, China will block it and it’s all non-binding, but steps like these would matter for public awareness and to help get third countries to cooperate with sanctions.  It would also matter in smaller ways.  For example, it might make a few “liberal”-minded tourists think twice about taking overpriced guided tours of Pyongyang that subsidize a regime that treats people this way.  I mean, Sun City, anyone?

 

The Whole World Is Watching

January 30, 2013 Activism, Human Rights, The Camps 8 comments

Since I started this blog nearly ten years ago, I’ve had one primary objective — to do my small part to make it impossible for people with more influence than me to ignore North Korea’s crimes against humanity.  This week, for the first time, this quixotic campaign does not seem like such an exercise in futility.  Today, everyone on earth seems to be talking about Google maps and satellite imagery of concentration camps in North Korea, even posting fake “reviews” of the camps, which often cross the line of questionable taste.

It’s gratifying, after all the effort that it took, to be able to claim a significant contribution to the study and publication of that imagery.  We are, nevertheless, still a long way from doing much good for the people in those camps.

camp-22-southwest-gate-with-people

[People gathered in the courtyard at the southwest entrance to Camp 22

on April 27, 2002.  Who were they?  How many of them are still alive?]

But we are closer to the goal, because the regime is now on notice that the whole world is watching.  It can’t expand, establish, or significantly modify a camp without attracting global interest, the the state’s whole system of terror rests on the capacity of these camps.  Today, reporters who ignore these camps can be called out for bias, and the U.N. has finally been shamed into at least token acknowledgement, however ineffectual it will prove to be.

Our next Secretary Secretary of State, who has said next to nothing about the camps for the last ten years and was widely rumored to be angling for a visit to Pyongyang, is the latest of the latecomers.  Last week, he felt compelled to mention them at his prepared speech for his confirmation hearing:

American foreign policy is also defined by food security and energy security, humanitarian assistance, the fight against disease and the push for development, as much as it is by any single counter terrorism initiative – and it must be. It is defined by leadership on life threatening issues like climate change, or fighting to lift up millions of lives by promoting freedom and democracy from Africa to the Americas or speaking out for the prisoners of gulags in North Korea or millions of refugees and displaced persons or victims of human trafficking. It is defined by keeping faith with all that our troops have sacrificed to secure for Afghanistan.  America lives up to her values when we give voice to the voiceless.

To be sure, this is a token throwaway clause, buried inside the sort of sentence that defines the term “long-winded” — really, I can only marvel at the lung capacity one can build by being so pompous.

Wiser folk parse the words of politicians at their confirmation hearings the way they might parse the words of convicts at their sentencing hearings.  The words ring about as sincere as the speaker’s personal history suggests them to be.  In fact, no politician of either party with a prominent foreign policy role has had less to say about human rights in North Korea over the last decade than John Kerry, who ought to be thanking Chuck Hagel for the gift of an easy confirmation.  But saying a little is better than saying nothing at all, and it will give us something to point to when, nine months from now, he asks Barack Obama to give him a long leash to negotiate Agreed Framework III, an agreement that will inevitably offer regime-sustaining aid and offer no hope to the victims of the camps.

Ya Think? U.N. human rights chief suspects “crimes against humanity” in prison camp called “North Korea”

January 16, 2013 "United" Nations, Anju Links, Human Rights, The Camps 3 comments

Nearly seven years after Jared Genser’s Failure to Protect and nearly nine years after David Hawk’s The Hidden Gulag, a senior U.N. official has gotten around to calling for “an in depth investigation” of what “may amount to crimes against humanity” in North Korea’s prison camps, and elsewhere in the larger prison sometimes called “The Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea:”

U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay called on Monday for an international investigation into what she said may be crimes against humanity in North Korea, including torture and executions of political prisoners held in shadowy camps.

She voiced regret that there had been no improvement since Kim Jong-un took power a year ago, succeeding his late father, and said it was time for world powers to help bring about change for the “beleaguered, subjugated population” after decades of abuse.  [Reuters, Stephanie Nebahay]

No improvement?  That seems a little bit unfair to a leader who has given his people a dolphinarium, dancers in Mickey Mouse costumes, an ICBM, and a state-of-the art fitness center to protect them from Asia’s growing obesity epidemic (and successfully! … with one notable exception).

“Because of the enduring gravity of the situation, I believe an in-depth inquiry into one of the worst – but least understood and reported – human rights situations in the world is not only fully justified, but long overdue,” Pillay said in a rare statement on North Korea.

Really, now — it seems like just nine short years ago that the world heard about this.  In the meantime, the U.N. has been very busy not visiting North Korean refugees in China, informing us that North Korea’s health care system is the envy of third-world nations everywhere, barely monitoring the distribution of its food aid, and helping Kim Jong Il move his supernotes to a safe at U.N. Headquarters.

The reclusive country’s network of political prison camps are believed to contain 200,000 people or more and have been the scene of rampant violations including rapes, torture, executions and slave labor, according to Pillay, a former judge at the International Criminal Court.

These “may amount to crimes against humanity”, she said.

Living conditions in the camps are reported to be “atrocious” with insufficient food, little or no medical care and inadequate clothing for inmates, she said.

“The death penalty seems to be often applied for minor offences and after wholly inadequate judicial processes, or sometimes without any judicial process at all,” Pillay said.

“People who try to escape and are either caught or sent back face terrible reprisals including execution, torture and incarceration, often with their entire extended family.”

Pillai’s call coincides with the beginning of two-year non-permanent terms on the Security Council for South Korea and Australia, which, despite North Korea’s recent opening of an embassy in Canberra, had been lobbying for more pressure against the atrocities in the North. Writing at Korea Real Time, Alastair Gale contrasts that approach with South Korea’s:

For outsiders, one puzzling question is why South Korea doesn’t apply more pressure on North Korea over human rights, including those of South Korean nationals held in the North. Legislation addressing the problem occasionally gets submitted to parliament but is routinely blocked by left-of-center parties over concerns it will upset the North. There was no substantial debate over human rights in North Korea during the race for South Korea’s presidency last year.

This position is all the harder to understand — and will be all the harder for future generations to explain — in light of the fact that South Korea is pushing for strong U.N. action over North Korea’s missile test.

For the record, the reaction of North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador was to “totally reject” Pillai’s allegations, to deny that “such kind of crimes” occur in North Korea, and call for an investigation of the ”king of human rights abuses, the United States.”  As persuasive as that may be, it doesn’t approach the level of this KCNA classic, talking about the Saenuri Party’s effort to finally pass a North Korean human rights law:

There has never been and can never exist the enemy-touted “human rights issue” in the DPRK under popular masses-centered socialism.

All the people enjoy genuine freedom and exercise their rights as the masters of the state and society as the independent rights and creative activities of human beings are guaranteed institutionally.

South Koreans admired the true picture of the DPRK where human rights are fully respected and guaranteed.

U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki Moon, who is of unknown origin, has yet to comment on the allegations of crimes against humanity on his watch, either in his current position or as South Korean Foreign Minister at the height of the Sunshine Policy.  When asked about Pillai’s statement, Ban simply looked up from Xi Jinping’s lap, smiled, and wagged his fluffy white tail.

 

An Idealist’s Apology

December 4, 2012 Activism 2 comments

It’s not easy for me to admit this, but I saw a lot of myself in Mike Deri Smith’s story:

After I finished the book, I couldn’t stop thinking about the prisoners Shin left behind in the gulag. I’d be standing at the meat counter at the supermarket choosing between the highest quality lamb, steak, pork, and chicken, and I would remember the rat meat that helped keep children alive in the camp, and the undigested corn kernels they pulled from cow dung. I felt an urge to act so strong that I couldn’t ignore it. Perhaps idealism is more than just a slur inflicted on the young and hopeful. Perhaps being idealistic is a principle worth standing up for.

And so I found myself, a few months later, ringing the doorbell at London’s North Korean embassy. I was prepared to demand justice, but my shaking hands betrayed my utter fear of what would happen when someone opened the door.

I hope Mike will find his own way to hang in there.  A few of us can do no more than fight a delaying action — a virtual guerrilla campaign against a few selected targets — but more of us could alter the global conversation.  

Some aspects of “activism” weren’t a fit for my type, and so I chose to put those things at a distance and focus on the things that I had the time and the inclination to sustain.  Another discovery was that cynicism makes a fine propellant for idealism, especially when outrage wanes, and makes a good restraint for one’s own idealism.  It’s also conducive to satire, which is what keeps this from becoming unsustainably dreary for me (and maybe for some of you).

No Pyongyang Spring

July 2, 2012 Human Rights, Inside NK, Refugees No comments

You may not believe that Kim Jong Un learned to drive at age three, but he has managed to perform one miracle — making North Koreans long for the libertine halcyon era of Kim Jong Il:

The ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong Il’s sudden death in December of last year brought a tighter grip across the border.  Going even further, Kim Jong Un ordered a “guilt by association” system, which is a collective execution system which aims to terminate the entire family of anyone who has attempted defection. Also, 20,000 additional soldiers were dispatched along the border region to tighten security in the area. Immediate execution of anyone caught attempting to defect was ordered as well. On December 31st, 3 men crossing the river in Hyesan, Yanggang province were executed by firing squad and a couple in their 40s attempting defection in Hoiryoung, Hamkyung Buk-do were executed as well. Clearly, there are unspeakable atrocities happening as the noose is tightened around the Chinese/North Korean border.  [Open News]

Separately, Open News reports that this may be a case of horse / barn door.  The regime is trying to regain control of the movement of people, information, and money by tightening border controls, cracking down on illegal cell phones (with the help of trackers purchased from German suppliers), putting new restrictions on market trading, and sending students to labor in the fields.  Yet so much outside information has already entered North Korea that it has fundamentally altered the world view of much of the population, especially the younger generations.  It’s almost impossible for poor North Koreans to cross illegally now, but the smugglers, who have the means to pay bribes, can still get their wares through to meet the high demand for outside goods and information.

Talking the Talk on Human Rights

June 18, 2012 Diplomacy, Human Rights 6 comments

After nearly four years of near-complete silence about North Korea’s human rights atrocities, Hillary Clinton is speaking truth to power:

Clinton called on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and related programs and put the welfare of its people first.

“Only under these circumstances will North Korea be able to end its isolation from the international community and alleviate the suffering of its people,” she said.

A coalition of 40 human rights organizations and activists in April submitted a petition to the U.N. Human Rights Council calling for action to shut down the country’s forced labor system. [UPI]

And this:

“Because at some point, people cannot live under such oppressive conditions – starving to death, being put into gulags and having their basic human rights denied,” she said.

“So we are hoping that (Kim) will chart a different course for his people.” [Reuters]

So I take it not even Mrs. Clinton thinks there’s a strong prospect of getting North Korea back to the six-party talks before November. Might as well buy herself some protection against the charge that she and her administration are completely deaf to the world’s worst ongoing human rights crisis.

Even Robert King, our Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea (whose usual function is to go to conferences, strike a sagacious pose, and say things that John Foster Dulles could just as well have said) is suggesting that he has affirmative policy proposals:

The United States will work to increase the flow of information into North Korea amid signs of change in the repressive state’s media landscape, a U.S. human rights envoy said Thursday.

“In the North Korean context, small but significant changes are underway, and the United States remains committed to increasing information into the DPRK,” Robert King, U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, told a forum in Seoul. “Breaking the information blockade is the key to positive change in North Korea.” [Korea Times]

King speculated that North Korea admitted the failure of its recent missile test because it was no longer capable of hiding the truth from the North Korean people. But what exactly is King proposing here? Broadcasting a new cell signal into the North? Flooding its markets with iPhone knockoffs? Leveraging some magical new app that will hack into the Orascom network?

Broadcasting from abroad including the state-sponsored US station will help break down the “information blockade” and contribute to “more conscious North Korean citizens”, said King.

He said Washington remains committed to increasing information to the North. “This is a fundamental component of our commitment to improving human rights in North Korea.”

Several groups based in Seoul or elsewhere beam radio broadcasts into the North. [AFP]

Right. The same things we’re doing now, only not enough. And which North Korean defectors are probably doing more effectively anyway.

Information about the outside world also comes in via CDs, DVDs or memory sticks, or through smuggled mobile phones which connect to Chinese networks near the border.

King criticised China’s policy of repatriating refugees from the North as job-seekers rather than treating them as potential refugees.

He said he was “deeply concerned” by such reports and urged Beijing to honour international treaties it has signed on protecting refugees.

No word, of course, on what if any policy proposals King will offer to deal with this long-standing abuse. If there’s one thing that the experience of living through the Bush Administration taught me, it’s that words alone mean nothing without the will and the vision to implement practical and effective policies to deter the abuses.

Nice words, though. Now let’s see what policies this administration offers to address what it has, so belatedly, recognized.

Update: Really? The North Koreans are Republicans now?

The North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said: “…how foolish and ridiculous the US was in its attempt to meddle in the internal affairs of the DPRK (North Korea) over its ‘human rights issue’ and ‘people’s living’ and hurt its single-minded unity.

“Hillary would be well advised to pay more attention to the issues of economic crisis and huge hordes of jobless people, which have become so serious that they may dash the hope of the administration of the Democratic Party for stay in power.”

… the consequence of which would be John Bolton having a say in North Korea policy? So I take it North Korea won’t be endorsing Obama this year, but this confounds even me.

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