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Monthly Archive: March, 2007

March 11, 2007

I Can Already Write The Rest of This Story. So I Did.

BEIJING, March 10 (UPI) — North Korea’s chief nuclear envoy Saturday said the United States has promised to lift its financial sanctions against his country. “The North is keeping a close eye on the promise,” Kim Kye-gwan told reporters at Beijing’s Shoudu Airport as he headed home to Pyongyang, the Korea Times reported. “If the U.S. fails to solve the issue completely, we will have to take partial actions against it,” Kim said. I wonder if this could be true. ...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 10, 2007

Eight Questions Our Shenyang Consul General Won’t Answer

About a week ago,  I published  this post,  relaying Adrian Hong’s assertion that the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang,  in direct contravention  U.S. law,  stood by and refused entry to six North Korean refugees who where just feet from the  Consulate’s front gate.   Shortly thereafter, the refugees, Hong and other LiNK activists were arrested by the Chinese authorities.    After I published that post, a reader supplied me with the e-mail addresses of the Stephen Wickman, the U.S. Consul General in...

Categories Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Refugees
March 9, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Financial Edition

North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan said Thursday that Pyongyang’s decision to halt nuclear facilities, as outlined in initial steps included in the Feb. 13 six-way agreement, will depend on the U.S. lifting of financial sanctions against North Korea.  [Kyodo News; ht Richardson] The U.S. negotiator at the six-party talks, Chris Hill, once said that “[l]ife is too short to overreact to every statement coming out of Pyongyang.”  It’s true that the North Koreans do more than their...

Categories "United" Nations/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Google Earth/Money Laundering/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
March 8, 2007

The Death of An(other) Alliance?

Thank you, Vice Foreign Minister Obvious! North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan reportedly told North Korea specialists in the United States that China is “only trying to use” North Korea. Kim was in the U.S. for talks on normalizing bilateral ties.  [Chosun Ilbo] I take it His Porcine Majesty did not enjoy the buffet at the Chinese Embassy.  Or, more likely, this is just disinformation: China has no great influence on North Korea, he was quoted as saying, adding...

Categories China & Korea/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 8, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Abductions Edition

I forecast severe tire damage along the road to removing North Korea from the terrorism-sponsor list:  HANOI–Japan and North Korea opened talks here Wednesday morning on normalizing bilateral relations, but the North Korean side canceled the afternoon session apparently as a way of refusing the Japanese request to discuss the abduction issue further, the chief Japanese delegate said. However, the meeting is scheduled to resume Thursday morning at the North Korean Embassy to discuss the abduction and normalization issues, Koichi...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 7, 2007

Andrei Lankov on Triggering a North Korean Revolution

Update:   Here.  It’s a must-read. You have to see this one (via The Marmot).  In a logical  follow-on to “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism,” Professor Andrei Lankov offers practical suggestions for exploiting and  accelerating  a trend he identified previously — the  political decline of the Kim Dynasty.  I’ve previously  called Dr. Lankov arguably the  Western world’s only genuine North Korea expert; he’s one of those rare people  you can listen to for hours in rapt attention without  even...

Categories Deprogramming/Reconstruction
March 7, 2007

Food Crisis Update

It may be the first good news I’ve ever reported on the subject:  rice prices have actually fallen slightly in some of  North Korea’s most vulnerable areas, as the Daily NK reports in persuasive detail.  There’s even a city-by-city price chart.  The price drop is modest — roughly 25 to 30% — but this is the time of year when you’d expect food to be in very short supply, with rapid price increases,  if we were  headed for an imminent...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK
March 7, 2007

Hill: N. Korea Must Give Up Uranium Program

[Update:   This doesn’t  sound very “newly murky:”  “I have no doubt that North Korea has had a highly enriched uranium program,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said during a visit to Seoul. …. “We would expect that when North Korea makes its declaration of nuclear facilities that that would be one of the issues addressed in North Korea’s declaration,” he told a news conference.  Good, if we really have no doubts.  Straightforward interpretation is all that can...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan/Japan & Korea/WMD
March 6, 2007

Take the OFK Statesmanship Quiz

You are a  major political leader of one of the world’s major industrialized democracies.  An actor-turned-author publishes a book in which he photoshops the name of the country’s top newspaper into a picture of the World Trade Center on 9-11.  Just to make sure there’s no room for ambiguity, he says, “I want to become a terrorist ….  The newspaper is the sole monolithic monster remaining in [this] society.” As a statesman, your response is to: a.  Jail the man...

Categories An Alliance?/Democracy/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. & Korea/WTF?
March 6, 2007

Peace Is at Hand!

*    Accountability Is So Last Month:    For those who are thirsty for some rare news of someone holding Kim Jong Il accountable for anything lately, Opinion Journal has more on the end of the U.N. Development Program’s highly questionable North Korea operations, and some unsolicited advice for Chris Hill. *   ‘There’s Nothing to Wait for Here:’   Those words, from the North Korean delegate who passed reporters on his way into “normalization” talks, could be the truest...

Categories Appeasement/Deprogramming/Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK
March 6, 2007

The Politics of Self-Destruction

[Update: The politcs of self-destruction meets the politics of personal destruction. I’d be interested in knowing how many of those who denounced Ann Coulter’s homophobic epithet are now reveling in this story out of partisan schadenfreude. Unless Corporal Sanchez has crusaded against homosexuality and pornography while concealing his own past, I can’t think of anything other than the fact of his past homosexual behavior to make this a legitimate story. I’ll admit, however, that there’s certainly irony in the picture...

Categories Miscellaneous
March 6, 2007

Can They Do It? A Brief History of Resistance to the North Korean Regime

[Updated March 2007; See new incidents and survey stats at the bottom of the post.]   According to the  image of the North Korean people that their rulers carefully cultivate, North Koreans are brainwashed automatons.  Regime minders, who closely follow foreign camera crews inside North Korea, seldom permit outsiders to see any alternative.  That image  is probably a combination of fear, stage management, brainwashing, and a degree of truth:  few North Koreans have ever known anything else, and extreme nationalism...

Categories Resistance
March 5, 2007

‘Inside North Korea’ Tonight: Don’t Miss This One

A reader reminds me:  National Geographic Explorer is airing a special tonight at 9 p.m., “Inside North Korea.”  This program, done by Lisa Ling while traveling undercover, is not going to be the standard guided tour we’ve come to expect from the networks.   Do yourself a favor and read NGEO’s teaser.  This one looks good. Update:   It is good.  Channel 109 on Comcast. Update 2:   This was definitely one of the best NK docus I’ve seen, if for...

Categories Deprogramming/Inside NK/Media Criticism
March 5, 2007

Maybe He Should Have Called It a ‘Slam Dunk’

[Update: John Bolton weighs in at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. Bolton reads Joseph DiTrani’s remarks similarly to how I read them, although those of an “Anonymous Senior Official” are much more nefarious. Do not miss. Bolton continues to do great public service as a private citizen by focusing on the essential issues of inspection and verification, and then nails why all pieces of this framework join at that point, with pneumatic strength and precision: [I]t is precisely this...

Categories Washington Views/WMD
March 4, 2007

How a U.S. Consul Helped Send Six North Korean Refugees to Kim Jong Il’s Gulag

[Update: The Shenyang Six were freed from a Chinese jail in August 2007.] The Secretary of State shall undertake to facilitate the submission of applications [] by citizens of North Korea seeking protection as refugees …. (Title 22, United States Code, Section 7843) Back in January, I told you the story of the Shenyang Six, a group of six North Korean refugees who sought refuge from persecution and starvation in their homeland, and how the Chinese authorities, following their long-standing...

Categories China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees/Washington Views