Open Sources, August 7, 2012

NORTH KOREA THREATENS TO ‘PUNISH’ DEFECTORS and activists beyond its borders for criticizing its regime.  While I’ll tip my hat to the Chosun Ilbo for this one, I prefer KCNA’s original prose:

In case the DPRK’s just demands are not met, there will follow corresponding measures including punishment of criminals involved in monstrous terrorism and other subversive and sabotage acts against the DPRK and the operations to lure and abduct its citizens.

We declare that among the targets to be punished will be Kim Song Min, representative of the “Radio Free North Korea” who is the prime mover of the recent attempted terrorism, Pak Sang Hak, representative of the “Federation of the Movement for Free North Korea” who is keen on abduction, terrorism and plots, Jo Myong Chol, former director of the “Unification Education Institute”, and Kim Yong Hwan, a despicable renegade.

We will in the future, too, never allow those abductors, terrorists and saboteurs who dare hurt the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK, encroach upon its sovereignty and threaten the safety of its citizens and their organizers and those involved in them to go scot-free even by scouring all parts of the earth. [KCNA, July 31, 2012]

KCNA, of course, is now the business partner of that uncompromising guardian of free speech, the Associated Press, whose correspondent in Pyongyang sees glasnost and perestroika in every Snoopy backpack, but seems not to have taken notice of this. KCNA’s threat closely follows President Obama’s decision to keep North Korea off of the list of state sponsors of terrorism yet again.  President Bush removed North Korea from the list on October 11, 2008, in exchange for promises of complete, verifiable, irreversible nuclear disarmament. Discuss among yourselves.

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OUR STATE DEPARTMENT WANTS YOU TO KNOW that it is “concerned” at North Korea’s lack of “inertia” in its war against money laundering:

“The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) remained concerned about the DPRK’s failure to address the significant deficiencies in its regulatory regimes,” the State Department said in its annual report on terrorism.  [Yonhap]

North Korea’s war on money laundering appears just below the war on hunger and class inequality on its list of priorities.

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AH, THE SUBTLE GENIUS OF CHINA’S SOFT POWER:

China’s state-run media ramped up condemnation of the United States on Monday over tensions in the South China Sea, with the Communist Party’s top newspaper telling Washington to “Shut up” and charging it with “fanning flames” of division in the region.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s over the weekend condemned a U.S. State Department statement that said Washington was closely monitoring territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and that China’s establishment of a military garrison for the area risks “further escalating tensions in the region”. [….]

Beijing has said its disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines and other southeast Asian claimants should be settled one-on-one, and it has bristled at U.S. backing for a multilateral approach to solving the overlapping claims.

“We are entirely entitled to shout at the United States, ‘Shut up’. How can meddling by other countries be tolerated in matters that are within the scope of Chinese sovereignty?,” said a commentary in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, an offshoot of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s top newspaper.  [Reuters]

Once upon a time, when NATO had a purpose, it was effective at containing the ambitions of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev.  I predict that within five years, China’s aggression against its neighbors will have given purpose and effect to a new Asia-Pacific Treaty Organization.