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Monthly Archive: January, 2007

January 25, 2007

N. Korea Denies Misuse of UNDP Funds

Update 1/26:   The UNDP North Korea program has pretty much hit the wall.  The UN says  it will “adjust the North Korea program and delay its implementation” until “approved,” which most likely means until the audit is completed.   The U.S. annual allocation to the UNDP remains, but it has decided to withhold  all of those funds for the time being, and may propose an end to all UN programs in North Korea, except the humanitarian ones. Here’s the  one that really...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
January 25, 2007

Lawless Will Stay

No link, because I’m passing along informed gossip from after-dinner conversation (no names, and no, this was NOT from  a certain  off-the-record event).  Indeed, his portfolio there will reportedly be enhanced to add Afghanistan and Pakistan to his area of interest. If this is in fact the case, it suggests that USFK restructuring will proceed as previously planned. The other informed gossip is split:  on the question of whether we are at the cusp of some kind of graceful-exit deal...

Categories Washington Views
January 24, 2007

What Jim Webb Should Have Said

[Welcome Instapundit readers.]   My fellow  Americans,  We  have  have a long  and glorious history that I join you in celebrating here tonight.  Let me share with you this deguerrotype of my great great great great grandfather, a penniless drunkard and street-corner pugilist  who sat in a Dublin jail,  until he  was paroled and came to Virginia in 1724, just in time to join in the massacre of the peaceful Massapequasimolie Indians.  I would hope you draw strength  from this...

Categories Terrorism/Iraq/Washington Views
January 23, 2007

Lebanon on the Altar

Michael Totten reports, and has some pretty shocking pictures, and it’s depressingly doubtful that democracy can survive there. The Cedar Revolution will become a victim of Iranian infanticide and the amivalence of Europe, the United States, and other democracies to support it in its hour of need. The lesson comes through clearly: investing your nation’s survival in the United Nations and its French peacekeepers is like investing your savings in a partnership with that exiled Nigerian general who keeps e-mailing...

Categories "United" Nations/Iran/Islam/Terrorism/Iraq
January 23, 2007

al-Yahoo Update

[Update:   Another misleading headline from AP, here.  I suppose if you’re going to lament the terrible quality of our intelligence, you have to be even more depressed about the quality of the information we often get from our news media.  It strikes me as hypocritical for those responsible for the latter fiasco to be caustic in their criticism of the former fiasco.  At least the  CIA  can say that it’s not easy to unveil the deceptions of  secretive tyrannies. ...

Categories Media Criticism/Terrorism/Iraq
January 23, 2007

That’s funny. I thought the main sticking point was the fact that North Korea built and tested nukes.

South Korea recently asked the U.S. to consider selectively unfreezing at least five of North Korea’s 50 accounts with the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia, saying part of the US$24 million North Korean accounts were acquired legitimately, it emerged Monday. The issue has been the main sticking point in international efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis. [link] … not to mention all of North Korea’s extended absences from the talks, and breaking its last three four  nuclear agreements.

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
January 22, 2007

Phoney War (I)

It is a natural tendency of people to accomodate themselves emotionally to conditions they cannot change. At its most extreme, accomodation can explain an abused child’s seeming acceptance of an abuser’s predations. At its most benign, it can be a mostly beneficial tendency to compromise with opposing views. But there is a difference between being open-minded and fooling one’s self. I’m still leaning against belief that a Democratic Congress with a narrow margin is going into an election year with...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
January 22, 2007

So I Guess Charlie Rangel Is Voting for the FTA, Then

United States Congressman Charles B. Rangel received the Distinguished Order of Diplomatic Service from the Korean government on Korean-American Day (January 13) at the Colden Center for the Performing Arts theater, Queens College, New York. Congressman Rangel said that he was honored to receive the award and that his achievement is the achievement of all his Korean friends. The medal was awarded to him by the consul general in New York, Moon Bong-ju. It is given to non-Koreans who have...

Categories U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
January 22, 2007

Wobble Watch

Here I go again,  elevating my metabolism  about the latest U.S.-North Korean “breakthrough” that will probably amount to nothing. North Korea has reportedly agreed to halt nuclear activities including operations at a reactor in Yongbyon, and allow on-site monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency as the first steps to abandoning its nuclear program. The agreement came during a meeting of the chief nuclear negotiators of the U.S. and North Korea that ended Friday in Berlin, sources said. According to...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
January 22, 2007

It’s All a Matter of Perspective

Does it sometimes seem to you like we are two ships that pass in the night?  The South Korean government should not disgrace itself by obeying foreign powers and imposing sanctions on its brethren….  South Korea’s political parties, groups and the public in all walks of life should be aware of the maneuvers of conservatives to take power ….   South Koreans should form a broad anti-conservative alliance to destroy pro-American and anti-unification politicians and their conspiracies. You say that like...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/WTF?
January 22, 2007

Ban Ki Moon Orders Review of U.N. Programs

Update 2:  Reuters reports that Ban is now backtracking and saying that the new audits will focus only on  programs where the financial practices are shady.  Monday’s U.N. statement said Ban would assign auditors only to U.N. funds and programs “in countries where issues of hard currency transactions, independence of staff hiring and access to reviewing local projects are pertinent.”  Audits would be “simultaneously carried out in select cases of countries” identified by the funds and programs, it said.  Funding...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Washington Views
January 22, 2007

KTU Update

Are you ready for your second story in just four days about Korean Teachers’ Union members being caught in possession  of pro-North Korean propaganda, with intent to distribute?  On closer examination, these appear to be the same suspects I blogged here.   Hat tip to The Nomad, who points out that there’s no evidence that the stuff was actually used in class, although we’ve advanced a step in that direction.  Unlike the case of the previous report, which was about mere...

Categories Korean Education/The Fifth Column
January 21, 2007

Somewhere in Hell, Josef Goebbels Is Smiling: Klaus Bender’s Big Lie

Update: In my visitors’ log today: Original Post: You may recall that a few weeks back, I noted that the Korean press had picked up a story from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one that many of its readers will no doubt be eager to believe. The story reported that North Korean supernotes are actually made by the CIA at an undisclosed location near Washington, D.C. Not being much of a German linguist, I made myself a reminder to find an...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Counterfeiting/Europe/Media Criticism
January 21, 2007

al-Yahoo Watch: News Consumers Need Warning Labels, Too

[Updated, scroll down]   The headline:  25 U.S. troops killed in Iraq Saturday I have my home page set to Yahoo because I use Yahoo e-mail, and there are two things about  Yahoo’s home-page headlines  that I’ve noticed and meant to start picking at  for a long time.  One is the tendency for the headlines to  emphasize only negative developments in  Iraq, chiefly casualties.  This headline, for example, could  just as well have told us  that Mookie Sadr, under pressure...

Categories Media Criticism/Terrorism/Iraq
January 21, 2007

North Korea Seeks Those Who Aided Abductee’s Escape

It’s been a bad week for North Korea’s P.R. machine, with the embarassments of abducted South Korean fisherman Choi Uk-Il’s escape and the repatriation of nine family members of South Korean POW’s (one of whom is already dead).   Both incidents — and the small matter of North Korea’s latest threat to nuke Seoul — proved embarassing to North Korea’s friends in South Korea, who have problems enough already.  But  good neighbors take care of their friends, so  North Korea is...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement
January 21, 2007

Hundreds of North Koreans Freeze to Death

In addition to the reports of a pandemic that’s now  afflicted thousands in  Chongjin, North Korea’s fourth-largest city, there is now word via the London Daily Telegraph that cold weather has  stranded and killed hundreds in the northeastern mountains: The men who finally made it into the remote highland village of Koogang were greeted by an eerie silence and a gruesome sight. Lying among the simple wooden huts and burnt remnants of wooden furniture, they found the bodies of 46...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
January 21, 2007

Opposition Legislator Responds to Shenyang-Gate with Refugee-Protection Bill

SEOUL, Jan. 21 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s main opposition party plans to introduce a law revision aimed at helping North Koreans and South Korean abductees fleeing the communist country, a senior party official said Sunday. Rep. Hwang Woo-yea, secretary-general of the Grand National Party (GNP), said the bill will help prevent the forced repatriation of defectors from North Korea and expedite Seoul’s diplomatic efforts to bring them to South Korea. “The National Assembly passed a similar GNP-initiated bill in 2004...

Categories Appeasement/China & Korea/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Refugees