Category: Sanctions

OFK Exclusive: N. Korea to Charge Crafty Yodok Inmates With Running International Counterfeiting Ring

The U.S. has said the question of North Korea’s frozen accounts in the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia could be resolved early if North Korea punishes counterfeiters of U.S. dollars and destroys their equipment.  [link] Firing squads and bloody handshakes to follow, and my sources tell me there may  even be a ceremonial steamrolling of the HP Laserjet that was  the center of this dastardly plan.  I dare you to  figure out where the  satire ends and the “news” begins: Ever...

Wobble Watch: Has China Unfrozen Blocked North Korean Accounts?

The State Department is saying it doesn’t know if the reports are true; it’s telling reporters to ask the Chinese: A diplomatic source in Beijing said China has released some of the North Korean money at Macau’s Banco Delta Asia (BDA), frozen after the U.S. Treasury in September last year designated it a primary money laundering concern abetting Pyongyang’s illicit activities.  The unfrozen accounts, less than half of the US$24 million initially held up, are believed to be those not...

S. Korean Defense of Kaesong Raises More Questions Than Answers

Last spring, the U.S. Special Envoy on Human Rights in North Korea and some  NGO’s first raised concerns about the rights of workers at North Korea’s Kaesong Industrial Park, which  hosts just  over a dozen South  Korean factories.   The  Unification Ministry initially tried to allay those concerns by bringing journalists and some foreign dignitaries up to Kaesong for guided tours.  This did not work  as planned.  The U.S. Ambassador wandered around and snapped pictures of all the U.S.-made machine tools that...

Wobble Watch: Treasury Won’t Lift Sanctions on Kim Jong Il’s Macau Accounts

New press reports link the bank accounts that mean so much to Kim Jong Il with  his nuclear and other  WMD programs.  North Korea used its accounts at a Macau-based bank, suspected of having served as a base for the North’s alleged illicit activities, to pay for devices that could be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons, a Japanese daily reported Saturday. Quoting unidentified sources, Yomiuri Shimbun said China froze North Korean accounts worth US$24 million...

Someone Please Staple Kim Geun-Tae’s Lips Together

This is an act that damages our national pride and is not appropriate for the South Korea-U.S. alliance.” — Kim Geun Tae, head of S. Korea’s ruling party and North Korea’s favorite dancing piggy, on hearing that the United States actually intends to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718. When I worried aloud that the United States would ease sanctions on North Korea during the pendency of the next round of endless, pointless six-party extortion denuclearization talks, I based my...

North Korea Wants Its Drug Money Back

[Update:  A senior Korean official suggests that the U.S. will do just that right after the talks resume.  Scroll down.] [Update 2:  The Washington Post post also suspects that North Korea’s announcement is merely an effort to foil the American economic pressure: We hope Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, who conducted lengthy talks with his North Korean counterpart in recent days, is justified in expecting “substantial progress” from the new round. But history suggests that both North Korea...

N. Korea Agrees to Return to Six-Party Talks

[Update:   According to this Korean language link, the South Koreans were the last of the six parties to know that the talks would begin again.  You’d think that after getting seven billion dollars from South Korean taxpayers, they’d have enough left over to afford a phone call.  I guess they spent it somewhere else.] News coming off the wires claims that the North Koreans have agreed to return to six-party talks. Chinese, U.S. and North Korean envoys to the...

Where Is That Other Shoe?

[Update:   A State Department official who asked not to be identified said the sanctions authority, bearing the name of Senator John Glenn, who sponsored it in the Congress, is open-ended in the range of sanctions available. That official predicted that all financial and economic transactions with North Korea would be ended, except for humanitarian aid. ] We’ve all been waiting for othe other shoe to drop — for the U.S. to announce what sanctions it will impose — since North...

Annual Treasury Report on Counterfeiting of U.S. Currency Abroad

The full report is here, but it’s a big, fat, nasty pdf. Here’s the section on North Korea: 6.5.7 North Korea and the Supernote Since 1989, the U.S. Secret Service has led a counterfeit investigation involving the trafficking and production of highly deceptive counterfeit notes known as supernotes. The supernote investigation has been an ongoing strategic case with national security implications for the U.S. Secret Service since the note’s first detection in 1989. The U.S. Secret Service has determined through...

Proliferation Security Watch

*   Hong Kong authorities have detained a North Korean ship “Kang Nam I, a 2,035-ton general cargo ship,” which had arrived from Shanghai.  North Korean crew members and Hong Kong customs officials suggest that the inspection is related to a couple dozen safety violations, that the ship is empty, and that the inspections are not related to U.N.S.C.R. 1718.  Crew members claim that the ship will sail again in two days.  The Chosun Ilbo reports that the search didn’t...

U.N.S.C.R. 1718: Who Won, Who Lost (Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 13)

John Bolton: Winner. I’d like to hear John Bolton’s critics deny that, as with Resolution 1695, he has wrung far more effectiveness from the U.N. than we had come to expect. Not only should we confirm this man, pronto, we should clone him. Madeleine Albright never got results like these. The United States: Winner. We got everything we really wanted here: help constricting Kim Jong Il’s financial arteries the right to search his ships and planes. an embargo on the...

MUST-READ: Key U.S. Policy-Maker Calls China Out for Double-Dealing

David Asher, who recently led the Illicit Activities Initiative, is probably the architect of our tough new financial strategy against North Korea’s counterfeiting, smuggling, and money laundering. He is also one of Washington’s clearest thinkers on North Korea. Asher didn’t know that North Korea would actually test a nuke when he delivered this address to the Heritage Foundation in September, and really, it deserved more media and blog attention than it got. Asher, to say the least, doesn’t think China...

The Sunshine Policy Is Dead, Part 3

Like the captain of a sinking ship herding rats back into the hold, Kim Dae Jung is desperately trying to preserve a policy that was his dubious legacy.  Without Sunshine, there is only bribery and a tarnished hunk of metal.  Kim, predictably, apportions blame equally between North Korea and the United States.  Honestly, there is just no pleasing some people.  We’ve offered the North Koreans far too much for far too long.  If DJ really thinks the North Koreans have...

U.S. to Propose Arms Embargo on North Korea

I’d proposed it two days before July’s missile tests, because of the rising danger of another preventable famine, but  it now looks as if John Bolton is circulating  this concept  as part of what he’d tried to get from the U.N. after the July missile tests: The United States circulated a draft U.N. resolution late Monday that would condemn North Korea’s nuclear test and impose tough sanctions on the reclusive communist nation for Pyongyang’s “flagrant disregard” of the Security Council’s...

Greeks Intercept Counterfeit N.K. Cigarettes

Officials in Greece nabbed a North Korean freight vessel that was carrying 1.5 million cartons of contraband cigarettes and arrested the seven seamen aboard, it was announced Monday. [link] Let’s hope there’s a trial, and that this one won’t be  a goose egg  like the Pong Su case was.  Whether the Aegean could use another artificial reef, I leave to the Greeks, but  Greece is  always happy to do the exact opposite of what America asks. The Greek Merchant Marine...

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 11: Eyes on Seoul

Green eyeshades are turning toward Seoul, Kaesong, and Kumgang.  If you think things were bad before, this is where U.S.-Korea relations will be severely tested.  The U.S. Treasury Department isn’t going to put up with Seoul acting as Kim Jong Il’s financier for long, and  with the  likely exceptions of some shady  Russian banks  and whatever China is secretly providing at the state-to-state level, South Korea is Kim Jong Il’s last cash cow. Kumgang That poll yesterday — the one...

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 10: The First Shoe Drops

Japan and Australia have imposed sanctions on a series of the companies Kim Jong Il uses to collect foreign currency and dual-use items. In Japan’s case, this includes shutting off a substantial income source for the North: cash remittances from ethnic Koreans in Japan: The sanctions will effectively freeze North Korea’s assets in Japan by banning withdrawals and overseas remittances from the targets’ accounts in Japanese banks. This is about as robust an option as I had predicted here, although...