Search Results for: "Kim Dong Shik"

April 13, 2015

Justice for Rev. Kim Dong Shik: Court orders N. Korea to pay $330M in damages

Asher Perlin, the lawyer who argued and won the case against North Korea at the Court of Appeals on behalf of Rev. Kim Dong Shik’s family, writes in to direct me to this news: An Israeli NGO announced on Monday that a US federal court in Washington, DC has granted it a historic $330 million default award judgment against North Korea in a civil damages trial for wrongful death, torture and kidnapping. The judgment, only announced Monday, but written on...

Categories Abductions/Terrorism (NK)
November 13, 2014

Rev. Kim Dong Shik’s family is appealing the dismissal of its lawsuit against N. Korea

… at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. You can read the appellants’ briefs at this link, and I previously posted the original pleadings here. The District Court dismissed the suit for lack of evidence of torture, despite the fact that at least one North Korean agent was convicted of the kidnapping in a South Korean court. For background information on Kim’s abduction from China and murder in North Korea, see this link. Victims of terrorism and torture are allowed to sue...

Categories Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
March 12, 2010

12 March 2010: On the Potential for Social Unrest, Arms Trafficking, and Kim Dong Shik’s Widow Brother and Son Sue North Korea

Here’s a very long, and very interesting report on the potential for social unrest in North Korea, from a North Korean’s perspective. ________________________ The story on how North Korea exports arms is worth a longer post than I have time to write today. ________________________ Kim Jong Il’s banker Ambassador to Switzerland is retiring. Hmmm. ________________________ A U.S. District Court has issued a summons for the Foreign Minister of North Korea. I’ll have much more to say about this another day,...

Categories Anju Links
June 19, 2008

Who Remembers Kim Dong Shik? Answer: The Washington Post, Barack Obama, and Condoleezza Rice

Regular readers know that I’ve been a persistent critic of politicians of both parties who would  politicize and trivialize two  essential and  long-standing principles of American national security policy:  the intolerance of state terrorism, and the intolerance of proliferation.  North Korea’s refusal to be bound by any norms of  human civilization tempts a certain  class of politician to simply exempt North Korea from those principles.  Notwithstanding President Bush’s hawkish and mostly empty  words, his administration is about to  do exactly...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
October 7, 2015

Sens. Gardner, Rubio & Risch to introduce new North Korea sanctions bill (updated)

The new bill was revealed in this column by Josh Rogin, and includes a link to the full text. The bill, which still has no number, will be the Senate’s second version of the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, following the introduction by Senators Menendez and Graham of S. 1747 in July. Both bills follow the lead of Ed Royce and Elliot Engel, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who introduced H.R. 757 in January. H.R. 757,...

Categories Anju Links/Sanctions
May 5, 2015

Contradiction isn’t argument: A response to Doug Bandow on N. Korea and terrorism

In the years after my return from four years with the Army in Korea, I found much to agree with in Doug Bandow’s writing — up to a point. Bandow is best known — at least in the context of Korea — for arguing that South Korea can and should pay for its own defense, and that U.S. Forces Korea should withdraw. A supporter of the isolationist and semi-retired cult figure, Ron Paul, Bandow favors the withdrawal of all 28,500 U.S. military personnel from South Korea. But...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
March 5, 2015

N. Korea’s support for slashing of U.S. Amb’r might be state sponsorship of terrorism

Yonhap and The Washington Post are reporting that North Korea’s official “news” agency, the Korean Central News Agency or KCNA, has expressed its support for an extremist’s slashing of U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert yesterday, calling it “a just punishment.” You won’t find those words in the English version of KCNA’s report, whose headline is a dry, “U.S. Ambassador Attacked by S. Korean,” although you will see that KCNA spelled the Ambassador’s name “Report.” The Korean-language headline of the same article, however, translates to something like, “Act of...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Terrorism (NK)/The Fifth Column
September 14, 2014

Travel in N. Korea “feels incredibly safe,” says tour company whose customer just got 6 years hard labor.

In a proceeding that took just 90 minutes — about as long as most arraignments I’ve done — North Korea’s “Supreme Court” has sentenced American tourist Matthew Todd Miller to six years of hard labor for “entering the country illegally and trying to commit espionage.” The AP omits the State Department’s easily accessible finding that North Korea’s “judiciary was not independent and did not provide fair trials,” but adds the amusing detail that Miller waived his right to a North Korean lawyer....

Categories AP Watch/Foreigners in N. Korea/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
August 14, 2013

A hero, buried in the State Department’s memory hole

In case you were wondering, no, I’m still not over that whole North Korea / state-sponsor-of-terrorism thing.  The Weekly Standard has helped me nurse this old grudge by printing my fisking of the State Department’s latest annual country reports on terrorism.  I’ll give you the first paragraph and let you read the rest on your own: Even after a year of North Korean nuclear and missile tests, this year’s State Department “Country Reports on Terrorism” makes the risible claim that North Korea is “not...

Categories Anju Links/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
February 12, 2013

Good Sanctions and Bad Sanctions

Weeks before North Korea’s latest nuclear test, it was clear that the political climate surrounding North Korea policy was ready for a big shift away from honor-system diplomacy and toward tougher sanctions.  This test is likely to mean a major legislative push here in Washington — not just to punish North Korea, but to craft and enact sanctions that attack the regime’s structural weaknesses, with the intent of either coercing its disarmament or destroying it.  For all the tension that will...

Categories Anju Links/Famine & Food Aid/Sanctions
September 18, 2011

North Korea’s New Terror Wave

You probably heard somewhere that President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, to reward it for promising to completely, verifiably, and irreversibly give up its nuclear weapons. You probably also know that I did not favor this decision, to put it mildly. First, North Korea never acknowledged or apologized for its past and continuing acts of state-directed terrorism, such as the abduction and murder of Rev. Kim Dong Shik, its...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
September 4, 2010

Pueblo Plaintiffs Hunt for North Korean Assets in Treasury’s Files

When the survivors of the U.S.S. Pueblo, joined by the widow of their captain, sued North Korea for the horrific torture they endured in 1968, the real question wasn’t whether they were entitled to compensation, it was whether they could ever collect any. North Korea, as it has done with all of the other suits against it in U.S. federal courts, refused to respond to the suit after being duly served at its U.N. mission. Consequently, the court entered a...

Categories Sanctions/U.S. Law
July 16, 2010

President Obama Goes Wobbly on North Korea

Just what does a psychotic despot have to do to get on the list of state sponsors of terrorism?  Since President Obama’s inauguration, Kim Jong Il has – been caught twice shipping weapons — reportedly including man-portable surface-to-air missiles — to Iran, apparently for the use of its terrorist clients; sent a hit squad to assassinate a prominent defector in South Korea; threatened civilian air traffic to and from South Korea; threatened to turn the capitals of various neighboring states...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
July 16, 2010

If This Isn’t the State Sponsorship of Terrorism, What Is?

Just what does a psychotic despot have to do to get on the list of state sponsors of terrorism?  Since President Obama’s inauguration, Kim Jong Il has — been caught twice shipping weapons — reportedly including man-portable surface-to-air missiles — to Iran, apparently for the use of its terrorist clients; sent a hit squad to assassinate a prominent defector in South Korea; threatened civilian air traffic to and from South Korea; threatened to turn the capitals of various neighboring states...

Categories Anju Links
April 19, 2010

For North Korean Spies, Sending Refugees to the Gulag Is Entry Level Work

While most of my allotted blogging time has been consumed by following the Cheonan Incident, several other k-blogs covered the story of one “Kim,” a South Korean, who volunteered in 1999 to work for North Korean intelligence, hunt down and rat out defectors hiding in China, and send them blissfully off to death, or a fate worse than. He also agreed to spy on activists helping the refugees, and on the South Korean military. “Kim” has since been arrested by...

Categories Refugees/The Fifth Column

Delayed, But Not Denied: American Victims Sue North Korea

Until recently, I did not know that there are three pending federal lawsuits against North Korea in the U.S. federal court system, not counting the $69 million verdict won last year by the lawyers representing the surviving crew members of the U.S.S. Pueblo. After hearing that other suits might be pending, I signed up for my very own PACER account and did some searching, and sure enough. Interestingly, although these documents are all publicly available, the newspapers haven’t reported on...

Comments: 5
January 16, 2010

Ten Years Later, South Korea Questions Suspected North Korean Agent in U.S. Resident’s Kidnapping

The Reverend Kim Dong Shik, a U.S. lawful permanent resident, was kidnapped from China by North Korean agents 10 years ago today. Rev. Kim was there helping North Korean refugees. Somehow, the North Koreans managed to carry Rev. Kim back across the Chinese-North Korean border without any interference from our friends the ChiComs, despite the fact that Rev. Kim was wheelchair-bound (do wheelchairs even exist in North Korea?). Years later, rumors emerged to the effect that Kim was tortured to...

Categories Abductions/Terrorism (NK)