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February 23, 2019

Hanoi Redux: the Senate, the Supremes & Pompeo (also, Trump!) on the Iran deal

SAY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT OBAMA’S DEAL WITH IRAN; what Trump signed with Kim Jong-un in Singapore makes it look like a model of clarity and specificity. For all its flaws, the Iran deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), undeniably gained us something. Its inspection terms and sunset clause were serious flaws and might have proven to be fatal ones. Even so, it got Iran to surrender a big stockpile of enriched uranium and make some useful concessions...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics
February 20, 2019

Save Congress a Seat at Hanoi: On North Korea, Sanctions, Treaties & Politics

WHO STILL BELIEVES THAT DONALD TRUMP IS THE GREAT NEGOTIATOR HE CLAIMS TO BE? Certainly not Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, or Mitch McConnell. Certainly not Kim Jong-un. Certainly not the people doing the most futile job inside the Beltway right now–writing Donald Trump’s intelligence assessments about North Korea, or of just what he persuaded Kim Jong-un to do at Singapore. Drink a toast to them. Better yet, buy them one. Many people in government now, up to and including John...

Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics
December 3, 2018

Of course, Kim Jong-un’s tourist resorts will fail. Of course, we can help with that.

The following question is multiple choice. Please do not use a number two pencil to blacken the oval on your screen. In April, angry, hungry citizens in North Korea’s remote Ryanggang Province took the brave and desperate step of protesting to local authorities over forced “donations” of food, money, and supplies they were required to make to the construction of — (a) an orphanage (b) a grain elevator (c) a soy-based infant formula factory (d) a beach resort If you...

Categories Human Trafficking/Sanctions/Sunshine/U.S. Law
November 27, 2018

DOJ sues to forfeit $3M linked to N. Korean money laundering, proliferation financing & slave labor

This afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia filed suit to forfeit just over $3 million that three defendants allegedly laundered for an interconnected network of North Korean banks and front companies, in violation of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act: $599,930.00 in funds “associated with” Cooperating Company 1 of Singapore, which agreed not to contest the forfeiture (and hopefully more), and which used “a bank account in...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law
October 29, 2018

DOJ indicts Singaporean businessman for conspiring to violate North Korea sanctions

The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York has indicted Singaporean national Tan Wee Beng for laundering money on behalf of two sanctioned North Korean banks—Daedong Credit Bank of Panama Papers infamy, and Korea Kwangson Banking Corporation of Dandong Hongxiang infamy. Both banks have been designated and blocked for years under Executive Order 13382, for proliferation financing. Both banks are also designated by the U.N. Security Council. You can read the indictment here and the Justice Department’s...

Categories Money Laundering/U.S. Law
August 29, 2018

The U.S.-Korea alliance is “in jeopardy” & it’s not even (mostly) Trump’s fault

MAKING THE ROUNDS IN WASHINGTON THIS WEEK IS THIS MUST-READ REPORT, in Tokyo Business Today, by Stanford Professor Daniel Sneider: “Behind The Chaos Of Washington’s Korea Policy.” The report is based on Sneider’s discussions with insiders familiar with the administration’s North Korea negotiations and policymaking, and yes, you should be worried: [T]he spoken, and unspoken, aim of most professionals implementing North Korea policy is to hold off President Trump from meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again. They worry...

Categories An Alliance?/Sanctions/Washington Views
August 24, 2018

Why the domestic troubles of Trump & Moon are grave news for Koreans

POLITICIANS DO THEIR WORST DIPLOMACY WHEN THEY’RE WEAK AT HOME. SCANDAL TEMPTS THEM TO SEEK GLORY ABROAD. The hyenas of the world’s ecosystem see them limp and decide to prey on them, or on the calves they can’t protect. Of Mr. Trump’s troubles, you already know plenty that I need not repeat here. Whatever your view of those troubles, they aren’t going away, and if you correctly acknowledge their political element, they’re apt to be more serious next January. The...

Categories America/An Alliance?/Korean War II/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
June 11, 2018

Why Trump can’t lift North Korea sanctions unilaterally

THE HIGHEST EXPECTATIONS WE SHOULD HAVE FOR THE UPCOMING CIRCUS IN SINGAPORE are low expectations – that the summit breaks with, at most, a vague agreement that North Korea will denuclearize, without Trump making any concessions for such a nebulous promise. No one deserves a Nobel Prize for trading away our last chance to disarm Kim Jong-un peacefully for more lies, or for excusing Kim Jong-un from the few consequences he faces for proliferation, crimes against peace, organized crime, and...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics
May 8, 2018

Moon Chung-in throws U.S. Forces Korea out the Overton Window (Update: & so does Trump)

A PATTERN WE’VE SEEN REPEATED OVER THE LAST YEAR goes roughly as follows: First, Moon Chung-in, the left-wing South Korean President’s crazy old uncle1 shouts something wacky from his attic when the Americans are within earshot. The Americans wince and pretend they didn’t hear. President Moon Jae-in and his cabinet walk the wacky remark back and gently hush the crazy old uncle. But once Moon Chung-in has defenestrated the wacky idea out of his attic’s Overton Window, the hard-left base...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
April 27, 2018

The Warmbiers sue North Korea

WHILE THE WORLD IS AGOG AT THE SIGHT OF KIM JONG-UN’S impersonation of a human being, Fred and Cindy Warmbier wish to remind you of his true character by sharing with you what their son—or what was left of him—was like when he came home from North Korea. Yesterday, they filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the North Korean government for the wrongful death of Otto Warmbier. I downloaded the complaint from PACER. Warmber...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
April 25, 2018

Steve Mnuchin is defying Congress & undermining the President’s North Korea policy

WHO, EXACTLY, DOES STEVE MNUCHIN THINK HE WORKS FOR—Donald Trump or Xi Jinping? We are just weeks away from a scheduled meeting between the President who appointed Mnuchin and the dictator of North Korea. That meeting may decide whether it’s still possible to disarm the North through diplomacy instead of a war that could easily go nuclear. Unlike every other U.S. president since there has been a North Korea, President Trump grasps that the prerequisite to a successful negotiation is...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law
November 15, 2017

Senate Banking Committee advances the Otto Warmbier BRINK Act, Treasury blocks the Bank of Dandong

Last week, while I was writing my rave review for Donald Trump’s speech to the South Korean National Assembly, the Senate Banking Committee was working to put more tools in his hands to bankrupt the man he would never stoop to calling “short and fat.”* By a unanimous vote, the committee passed the newly renamed Otto Warmbier Banking Restrictions Involving North Korea (BRINK) Act, which I previously discussed here and here. The bill now awaits Senator McConnell’s nod to get on the full...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics
November 8, 2017

Trump’s speech in Seoul was the best thing he’s done. In his entire life.

Just over nine months into his presidency, Donald Trump is best known for two qualities: doing terrible things, and doing things terribly. Inevitably, he and his party are starting to pay the political price for that. But this is not a blog about Obamacare, The Wall, Richard Spencer, Twitter fights with the grieving parents of dead heroes, or the Russia investigation. There are other blogs for those subjects. This is a blog about North Korea, which leads to my paradox....

Categories Human Rights/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
October 30, 2017

North Korean assassins arrested in Beijing as Tillerson’s terror sponsor decision looms

If you haven’t read my last post on this week’s deadline for the Secretary of State to decide whether North Korea has repeatedly sponsored acts of international terrorism, you may want to start there. This post will be a combination of breaking news and supplement to that post. This morning, Bloomberg News, citing a report in the Joongang Ilbo, is reporting that yet again, North Korean agents have been caught while on their way to assassinate a dissident in exile....

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
October 25, 2017

Congress to Tillerson: Put North Korea back on the list of sponsors of terrorism

I won’t belabor the point of why North Korea should be on the list (well, maybe just a little). The better question is why, eight months, a nuclear test, two U.N. Security Council resolutions, and one public WMD-enabled assassination after Donald Trump’s inauguration, it isn’t already on that list. One growing line of speculation is that Tillerson, for all his unpopularity at Foggy Bottom, has gone native there. This sentiment comes from thoughtful and influential conservative members of Congress, not...

Categories Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
October 18, 2017

Computer crime, bank fraud & money laundering: A preview of Kim Jong-un’s indictment

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that hackers employed by the government of North Korea have been implicated in yet another international bank fraud scheme using . This time, the victim is a bank in Taiwan, and the take was $60 million, all of it laundered through accounts in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and the United States. In a blog post Tuesday, cybersecurity researchers at U.K. defense company BAE Systems PLC also implicated Lazarus in the Taiwanese theft, saying that tools...

Categories Cyberwar/U.S. Law
October 11, 2017

How the U.S. fishing industry can do its part to disarm Kim Jong-un

Long-time readers know that I’ve had many uncomplimentary things to say about the Associated Press’s North Korea coverage. Its still-undisclosed agreements with the North Korean government to open a bureau in Pyongyang sacrificed journalistic ethics for a dubious dividend of access. Since opening its bureau in 2012, AP and its state-supplied North Korean stringers have reported a great deal of North Korean government propaganda and almost no actual news, while ignoring major news stories (to include a hotel fire, a...

Categories AP Watch/Human Trafficking/Media Criticism/Sanctions/U.S. Law