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Monthly Archive: May, 2008

May 5, 2008

Out With a Whimper: Scholars and Policymakers on Bush’s Legacy of Indecision and Weakness on North Korea

Last week, I attended a program at the American Enterprise Institute about Bush’s new North Korea policy, in which we are reduced to negotiating against our positions of last year, while the North Koreans observe with a mixture of arrogance and befuddlement.  The sum total:  the Administration has lost all will and all backbone.  Don’t expect any policy changes toward accountability or reciprocity.  Instead, expect the lesson to be that you can proliferate nukes to anyone and not just get...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
May 2, 2008

Pick Up ROK, Drop On Foot

[Scroll down for updates.] The Korean Church Coalition passes along this press release on Chinese efforts to stop a North Korean human rights demonstration in Seoul, how those efforts backfired, and how the Chinese response since then has exacerbated the reaction. kcc-press-release.pdf Officially, the best China can offer is something that’s not widely perceived as an apology by South Koreans (who can be fairly reluctant to interpret apologies as such once offended). Unofficially, Chinese “netizens” continue to propagate asinine denials...

Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
May 2, 2008

The Famine of 2008 Has Begun: “It seems like everyone is going to die.”

Those are the grim words of a North Korean interviewed in Good Friends’s latest newsletter, which reports that North Koreans — not just the usual concentration camp inmates and street orphans, but farmers  — are now dying of starvation because of the current food crisis: In the farming areas of the township of Yangduk, Yangduk County and the vicinity in South Pyongan Province , instances of people dying by starvation due to a shortage of food rations are appearing. Currently,...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
May 1, 2008

Must Read: Marcus Noland Reports N. Korea “Headed Toward Outright Famine”

This is from a new paper released by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and one of OFK’s all-time favorite North Korea experts (and have you read his book yet?): North Korea is once again headed toward widespread food shortage, hunger, and risk of outright famine. According to Peterson Institute Senior Fellow Marcus Noland, “The country is in its most precarious situation since the end of the famine a decade ago. Calculations by Noland and Stephan Haggard, University of California,...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Refugees
May 1, 2008

House Republican Leaders Denounce Bush Administration for Withholding Syria Intelligence

Between the Stephens nomination and this, I’d say the Bush Administration has a congressional relations problem on its hands when it comes to Korea policy: The Bush administration’s failure to fully brief Congress on North Korea and Syria has done more than jeopardize the relationship between our two branches of government. It has denied the administration the benefit of congressional support that could have ensured an agreement with North Korea that avoided needless risks, instead of one that may be...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
May 1, 2008

President Bush Issues Statement on North Korea Freedom Week

Laura and I send greetings to all those observing North Korea Freedom Week. I am deeply concerned about the grave human rights conditions in North Korea, especially the denial of universal freedoms of speech, press, religion, assembly, and association, and restrictions on freedom of movement and workers’ rights. I have met in the Oval Office with some of the brave individuals who have escaped from that country. I am deeply concerned by the stories of divided families, harsh conditions, and...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. Politics