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Monthly Archive: August, 2010

August 30, 2010

At Last, Plan B

This afternoon, the Treasury Department finally announced its long anticipated sanctions against North Korea, in the form of a sweeping new executive order. The order, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, authorizes the blocking of assets of “any person” providing what Treasury calls “material support” for North Korea’s WMD proliferation, money laundering, counterfeiting, trade in luxury goods, bulk cash smuggling, and pretty much everything North Korea does that violates UNSCR 1718 or 1874, or the U.S. Criminal Code....

Categories Cheonan Incident/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions
August 30, 2010

A North Korean family of three on its way to South Korea has disappeared in China. The obvious suspicion is that they were arrested and are about to be repatriated to North Korea. Because one member of the family had already made it to South Korea, the family’s punishment is certain to be severe. In related news, North Korea is reporting giving longer prison camp terms to repatriated defectors in camps like Cheongo-Ri, where the odds of surviving a year...

Categories Anju Links
August 30, 2010

Plan B Watch

According to Yonhap, Treasury will roll out its new North Korea sanctions this week. I am giddy with anticipation. And on a related note, I hope the boys at Treasury are Daily NK readers (or better yet, sources): The No.39 Department, which is responsible for the management of Kim Jong Il’s private funds, holds the bank account with the British Virgin Islands branch of FirstCaribbean International Bank (FCIB), a prominent bank in the Caribbean region. According to an expert source...

Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions
August 30, 2010

Throw the Book at Him

So I will assume that Stephen Kim, the Korean-American State Department contractor who is now being prosecuted for leaking top secret / sensitive compartmentalized information was neither employed by, nor sympathetic to, North Korea given his choice of Fox News as a recipient for his leak of information that might have revealed U.S. intelligence sources in North Korea. And having said that, I really don’t care what Kim’s specific views were, I just want to know if any foreign government...

Categories U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Washington Views
August 30, 2010

North Korea and South Africa: A Study in Hypocrisy

After less than three weeks, FIFA has closed its investigation into allegations that players and coaches of North Korea’s losing soccer team were subjected to criticism sessions when they returned home. But when you go to FIFA’s web site, it’s apparent that FIFA’s “investigation” consisted of opening and reading a letter from the North Koreans denying it. I have no inside knowledge of whether the allegations are true, but I know that FIFA has no more idea of the truth...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Racism/Sports
August 25, 2010

Being a Fascist Still Shouldn’t Be a Crime

Next time you see press coverage that characterizes the “Reverend” Han Song Ryol as a “liberal” or “peace activist,” his own words will add to your insight about just how tortured the words “liberal” and “peace” have been at the meaty hands of some correspondents. How does one apply such words to an avowed supporter of the world’s most belligerent and least liberal regime? “Our land and people in the North are armed with weaponry far more powerful than nuclear...

Categories The Fifth Column
August 24, 2010

Nothing Good Can Possibly Come of This

I posit the following: Jimmy Carter would not have agreed to go to North Korea had North Korea not agreed to release Aijalon Gomes. The North Koreans know Carter is the best friend they have in this country, and not even they are foolish enough to humiliate him by sending him home empty handed. I also posit that North Korea would not have induced Carter’s visit without the expectation of some benefit to the regime. At a minimum, they can...

Categories Aijalon Gomes
August 19, 2010

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....

Categories Uncategorized
August 19, 2010

Good Riddance, Chris Hill

Regular readers already know that Christopher Hill is one of the few career civil servants I write about here whom I loathe almost unreservedly. The first job of an American diplomat is to represent American interests and values. Hill did neither. In his parting remarks before heading off into obscurity — if history is kind to him — Hill encapsulates in one statement what made him the best diplomat North Korea ever had: “We know the Iraqis don’t have nuclear...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks
August 18, 2010

North Korean Fighter Pilot Dies in Possible Defection Attempt

A fighter plane from North Korea has crashed in China, killing its pilot. The pilot may have been trying to flee North Korea. Yonhap has a photograph of the aircraft, which has a delta wing characteristic of a Soviet MiG-21 or an early-model ChiCom F-7. [Yonhap photo] China may seem an unlikely destination for a defector who must have known that he’d be repatriated and killed if caught, but Yonhap, quoting South Korean government sources, claims that the pilot was...

Categories China & Korea/NK Military
August 17, 2010

North Korea is on Twitter … unless you happen to be a North Korean, of course. ___________________________ The Washington Post looks at Jang Song Thaek’s emerging role as svengali to Kim Jong Eun. ___________________________ “I have a sneaking suspicion that Kim Jong-il’s son, who wants to take over, has to earn his stripes with the North Korean military,” Gates said at the U.S. Marines’ Memorial Club in San Francisco. “My worry is that that is behind the provocation like the...

Categories Anju Links
August 16, 2010

President Lee Drags South Korea Toward Its Destiny (Updated)

If there is such a thing as cautious enthusiasm — particularly for something that’s implausible on its face — that describes my reaction to President Lee’s proposal for phased unification with North Korea: Lee’s plan, similar to proposals from previous South Korean leaders, calls for North Korea’s denuclearization. If North Korea meets that demand — and years of international persuasion have not succeeded — Lee’s plan calls for a “peace community,” improved economic cooperation and then the establishment of a...

Categories North-South/Reconstruction
August 14, 2010

Toronto: 10th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees; Seoul: Beautiful Dream Concert

On August 19-22 Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul is partnering with this year’s host HanVoice in Toronto for their 10th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees.  This will be the first time the conference has been held in North America; to date the ICNKHRR has been in Seoul (3x), Tokyo, Prague, Warsaw, Bergen (Norway), London, and Melbourne. The main session this year is Saturday, August 21st, from 9 – 6.  Events open to...

Categories Books & Films/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees
August 13, 2010

Washington seems to believe that North Korea will return to the six party talks and stop its belligerent behavior if its sources of overseas funding are cut off. If that’s what “Washington” actually does believe, I think it’s wrong about that, but I do think that sanctions will do several other very useful things, like destabilize the power structure during the succession process, slow North Korea’s progress at proliferation, and break up the financial and logistical infrastructure of its proliferation...

Categories Anju Links
August 13, 2010

Repatriated South Korean POW Sent to Yodok

An octogenarian South Korean POW has been sent to a North Korean prison camp after he was caught attempting to escape the country and return to his homeland more than 55 years after being captured during the Korean War. [Open News] According to the report, the “peace forest” that will be Jung’s final destination is the infamous Yodok, or Camp 15. Follow me in a slightly cynical thought. If we’re going to start using the I.C.C. as a means to...

Categories Korean War/North-South/Refugees/The Camps
August 13, 2010

Rumor: North Korea Planning Biological Attack on the G-20 Summit

North Korea is trying to launch a biochemical attack against the South prior to the G20 Summit in Seoul in November, a conservative activist claimed Thursday citing a North Korean source. Choi Sung-yong of the group Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea said the North is preparing to send 20 different deadly biochemical weapons attached to balloons and parachutes across the border. He said the campaign is led by Gen. Kim Kyok-sik, who commands the North’s frontline fourth corps, at...

Categories NK Military/Terrorism (NK)
August 12, 2010

So, it might have been “the game of their lives” after all.

Several of you have e-mailed me (thank you) about the announcement that FIFA will open an investigation into reports that North Korea has ordered “harsh ideological criticism” sessions and hard labor for the players and coaches of its unsuccessful World Cup team. “We sent a letter to the football federation to tell us about their election of a new president and to find out if the allegations made by the media that the coach and some players were condemned and...

Categories Sports