Untrained eyes fail to perceive John Kerry’s North Korea “progress”

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BRUCE KLINGNER OF THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION asks, “You call this progress, Secretary Kerry?”

Kerry cites his meetings with China regarding North Korea, yet Beijing continues to resist U.S. entreaties to increase pressure on Pyongyang by more fully implementing UN resolution sanctions.

In the meantime, Pyongyang continues to refine and augment its nuclear arsenal while Washington remains reluctant to impose the same unilateral US sanctions that it has already imposed on Iran, Burma, and Syria. Nor has the Obama administration yet addressed the UN Commission of Inquiry report on North Korea’s human rights violations which reached a level to be considered “crimes against humanity.” Obama’s Strategic Patience policy does indeed require patience, since there is no strategy. [The Daily Signal]

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AS IF TO PROVE KLINGNER’S POINT, China’s Foreign Minister calls on the U.S. to lower its preconditions for a return to six-party talks, which doesn’t suggest that Kerry’s talks with China have yielded progress, at least for our side:

“The United States is demanding North Korea show its willingness to give up its nuclear (weapons program), while maintaining a high threshold,” Zhang was quoted as telling the lawmakers, according to the South Korean delegate.

Zhang also criticized the U.S. policy of trying to “achieve its target even before the talks resume,” the delegate said on condition of anonymity.

The vice foreign minister reiterated China’s stated goal of “resuming the six-party talks at an early date.”

The opposite is true. It’s North Korea that’s trying to get the U.S. to accede, if tacitly, to its nuclear status before talks begin. North Korea has repeatedly declared that it’s a nuclear state, and has refused repeatedly to give up its nuclear arsenal. So what’s the point of disarmament talks if the parties don’t even agree that they’re about disarmament?

Without that acknowledgement, the talks would be a de facto recognition of North Korea’s nuclear status, even as North Korea demands more aid, cash, and sanctions relief in exchange for a freeze or some equally ectoplasmic ephemera. And while I’m glad that at least officially, Kerry is sticking to that precondition, I continue to hear from well-informed people that his position is much less clear behind the scenes. When Glyn Davies talks about “reversible steps,” it further reinforces what I’m hearing.

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NORTH KOREAN VICE-MARSHAL Hwang Pyong-So wants to be sure John Kerry hears him:

“If the US imperialists threaten our sovereignty and survival… our troops will fire our nuclear-armed rockets at the White House and the Pentagon — the sources of all evil,” Hwang said in his speech broadcast Monday on state television.

He forgot to mention Foggy Bottom, but it’s not as if Foggy Bottom ever struck fear into the heart of any psychopathic despot.

President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, and Secretary of State of John Kerry is hard of hearing. Discuss among yourselves.

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NORTH KOREA DENIES selling arms to Hamas, as reported here, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center calls on the Obama Administration to “take all necessary steps” to block the sale. It also denounces some vicious anti-Semitic rhetoric from pro-North Korean Web sites based in China the United States.

For those keeping track, this year, Kim Jong Un’s sycophants have called President Obama “a wicked black monkey,” President Park Geun-Hye “a whore,” and Justice Michael Kirby “a disgusting old lecher with a 40-odd-year-long career in homosexuality.”

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OH, GOOD: The Yongbyon reactor has been shut down over problems with its cooling system. In some sense, you could call that progress, but I wouldn’t give John Kerry any credit for it.