Category: Uncategorized

The Sanctions Are Working

In April of 2009, I laid out a series of ten tough non-military options that I didn’t believe President Obama would have the spine to apply to North Korea. At the time, North Korea was about to test our new president by launching a Taepodong II missile in the general direction of Hawaii. I can’t fail to begin this article without conceding that Executive Order 13,551, signed on August 30th of this year, ought to count as full or partial...

Open Sources

North Korea, which was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 as a reward for its nuclear disarmament, looks to be preparing another nuclear weapons test. _________________________________ “It’s changed out there, and it’s dangerous. Increasingly dangerous,” Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during an informal question and answer session with troops in Iraq. What does it tell you that soldiers in Iraq are fretting about Korea? _________________________________ China has done...

Libby Liu, the President of Radio Free Asia, writes: [M]ounting evidence suggests that there are cracks, through which North Koreans are able to get a glimmer of the world outside their own. Cell phone use has shot up, especially along the Chinese border where wireless signals are stronger. This also is just one of the means by which many relatives of the 20,000 North Korean defectors in the South keep in touch with their family members. Restricted technology such as...

So is China that rising global power with the clout to lead a 19-nation boycott of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, or is China that third world Paper Tiger with delusions of grandeur that can’t even keep Kim Jong Il’s guns inside their zippers? My vote is with the Wall Street Journal on this one. It’s just too delectable to contrast China’s protestations that it has no power to prevent its economic dependent from starting Korean War II, and then...

U.N. Shocker! China Helps North Korea Cheat on Sanctions

A new report by a panel of U.N.-appointed experts confirms what we’ve really known all along — that China is acting in bad faith by helping North Korea violate three U.N. resolutions China’s U.N. Ambassador voted for. With many thanks to a few good friends of mine, you can read the whole thing yourself here … un-north-korea-proliferation-report-11052010.pdf … or you can simply read the fair and balanced analysis that follows, beginning with these quotes to give you some idea of...

Shots Fired at the Border

“Two shots were fired from a North Korean military guard post (GP) toward our GP around 5:26 p.m., and we immediately returned fire with three shots as under the rules of engagement,” the official said. “There was no damage from the North Korean shots.” The GPs are 1.3 kilometers away from each other. The official said after returning fire, South Korea twice issued warnings that the North had breached the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. [Yonhap] Right. Because...

China’s Cleansing Campaign

I want to begin this post by congratulating the Nobel Committee for awarding the Peace Prize, for once, to a person who has actually made sacrifices to improve the lives of others in a way that is likely to frustrate a belligerent state and prevent war. More precisely, by selecting someone who is not a terrorist, an unaccomplished politician, or a proven failure at making peace, Nobel may have extended its residual relevance a while longer. Better, it has returned...

At National Review, Mario Loyola takes up many of the themes I wrote about in my Capitalist Manifesto, and concludes that North Korea’s collapse is accelerating. I think a few of us have noticed that trend for an uncomfortably long time, but until the last two or three years, I couldn’t quite understand how those trends could continue this long without the termination of the regime. _______________________________ Open News has two interesting reports on one of the most important and...

That’s funny, I thought North Korea liked the idea of unification. The traitor talked about “unification tax,” sheer nonsense, at a time when the situation prevailing in Korea is so tense that a war may break out any moment. This is no more than sophism let loose by an idiot who knows nothing about reunification, insensitive to what is happening in the world and ignorant of the inter-Korean relations, a profiteer who knows nothing but money and a political imbecile....

Plan B Watch: Treasury Requires “Enhanced Due Diligence” for N. Korean Banks

The Treasury Department has announced that the governments of Sao Tome and North Korea will henceforth be subject to the “enhanced due diligence” requirements of Section 312 of the USA PATRIOT Act. The measures apply to U.S. financial institutions maintaining correspondent accounts for “foreign banks operating under a banking license issued by” North Korea. By itself, this action is likely to have little effect, because it’s doubtful that any North Korean-licensed banks have U.S. correspondent accounts. The better question, however,...

Anti-Government Leaflets Found in Hoeryong

Hoeryong, in North Korea’s far northeast, is the birthplace of Kim Jong Il’s mother, but with its low economic status and proximity to the Chinese border, it is also something of a hotspot for smuggling, capitalism, and dissent. Previous reports from Hoeryong have told of other leafleting incidents and at least one reported market protest. Now there is word of more anti-government leaflets found there: Quoting a source from Chongjin, Free North Korea Radio (FNKR) reported yesterday that a large...

Human Rights Updates

The former laughingstock called the National Human Rights Commission of Korea is planning to release a North Korea human rights “road map” this fall. On a related note, congratulations to Open News’s Young Howard, who now has the cred and the means to host a conference on human rights in North Korea. Open News also notes that Former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik has emerged as a leading advocate of this issue to the still-worthless Ban Ki-Moon and a...

25 March 2010

Kushibo has posted his much-anticipated response to Lisa Ling. ___________________ Kim Jong Il Death Watch: Mike Madden has the latest rumors in our grim vigil. ___________________ Fears that Russia is preparing to repatriate that North Korean logger who tried to make a break for freedom. ___________________ If famine, cannibalism, child labor, songbun, lousy education, and the risk of becoming a homeless orphan aren’t enough worries for a lifetime, North Korean kids also have to worry about child molesters. ___________________ For...

Chinese Academic Admits what U.S. State Dep’t Won’t: Kim Jong Il Will Never Disarm

North Korea is using annual military exercises as an excuse to “bolster up its war deterrent,” the latter term being the traditional code-talk for nuclear weapons. This ought to put North Korea’s rumored return to six-party talks in context. So should this Asia Times piece by our friend, the seasoned Korea reporter Don Kirk (buy his book!), who quotes Beijing University professor Wang Jisi. Wang, speaking at a conference in Seoul recently, showed a much better appreciation of reality than...

Great Confiscation Updates

Newspapers around the world are now coming to grips with North Korea’s most conspicuous policy disaster since the Great Famine, and the first one in which a state that has long claimed infallibility had to admit error: The policy backfired. Prices skyrocketed as market activities ground to a near halt, while state-run stores failed to meet the demand. In recent weeks, Web sites based in Seoul that collect news from sources inside North Korea have reported starvation in some towns...

22 January 2009: So Much for Outreach

* One year into the Obama Administration — and doesn’t it seem like so much longer than that? — the new conventional wisdom is that “outreach” has been a failure and that pressure is likely to continue. The failure of outreach is completely unsurprising. The administration’s resort to pressure is slightly surprising. * Jesus in Pyongyang! I sure hope this kid and her whole family aren’t sent to a prison camp over this. * Don Kirk: “Looking Ahead to North...

North Korea Honors Dead Sailors for Saving Kim Portraits

Reports like these are a staple of North Korea’s cult propaganda. Similar reports after the Ryongchon explosion in 2004 evoked global pity and disgust. They’re at it again: North Korea has poured honors on sailors who drowned to death while saving the portraits of the country’s leaders when their cargo ship sank off the coast of China in November, the communist state’s official media reported Friday. Yonhap tells us that five actual human beings died when the ship sank, which...

Where Is Robert King?

The short answer is that King, President Obama’s Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, is headed for South Korea and Japan. Here’s the entire State Department news release: Ambassador Robert King, Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues, will visit South Korea from January 11-14 and Japan on January 15. This will be Ambassador King’s first visit to the region since being confirmed by the Senate in November 2009. Ambassador King will meet with South Korean and...