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Monthly Archive: June, 2011

June 7, 2011

Will China Finally Pay a Price for Enabling North Korea?

A staffer for the new, improved, media-savvy Republican Staff for the House Foreign Affairs Committee forwards some interesting video clips of its senior members talking about U.S. policy toward China. First up is Committee Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who calls President Obama’s treatment of the Dalai Lama “shameful.” Next, Dan Burton contrasts this with the effusive welcome given to the ChiCom emperor, who used the occasion to embarrass his hosts and score points with nationalist, anti-American netizens at home. Finally, Chris...

Categories China/China & Korea/U.S. Politics
June 6, 2011

Sung Kim Through the Retrospectoscope

The announcement that Sung Kim will be our new U.S. Ambassador to South Korea suggests continuity if a comparison of his background to Kathleen Stephens’s tells us anything. Like Stephens, Kim is a protege of Chris Hill* and comes from the State Department’s Korea Desk, which has long favored appeasement, agreed frameworks, and a peace treaty with North Korea, and had previously been caught trying to water down language in the State Department’s annual human rights report. My own fears...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
June 4, 2011

Robert King on Food Aid

Robert King went to Congress the other day to talk about food aid, and I don’t find much in his statement to take issue with. King stressed the importance of monitoring and the prevention of diversion, and proposed two measures to help avoid that: (1) delivering the aid in small allotments, and (2) giving corn or other forms of aid less desirable to the elites, as opposed to rice, which I’ll note is precisely the form of aid the leftist...

Categories Anju Links/Useful Idiocy
June 3, 2011

Monty Python and the Holy Centrifuges

With relations between North and South Korea still tense and limited, the North threatened Monday to abandon a military hot line with the South and close a jointly operated office where officials from both Koreas interact. The North also said it would never again deal with President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea, calling him a “traitor,” although the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, said only last month that he was willing to participate in a summit meeting with Mr. Lee....

Categories Humor/Satire/North-South
June 1, 2011

Tapdancing to the Graveyard

If we are to believe the International Business Times — and I’ve allowed the temptation to do so overcome my better judgment — North Korea ranks itself the second-happiest nation in own global Happiness Index. I realize that reactions to this news may vary. You may be thinking that it’s an honor just to be nominated. Others will wonder which camp are the judges in now. One observer correctly notes that “[n]othing says happy like government-issued proclamations of happiness.” But...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Sanctions/WTF?