Category: America

Via Yonhap, we learned last week that Rep. Matt Salmon (R, Ariz.), the Chairman of the House Asia-Pacific Subcommittee, has introduced a bill to cut North Korea off from the “specialized financial messaging services” that banks use to send wire transfer orders around the world. The industry leader for financial messaging is SWIFT, whose headquarters is in Brussels, but which also has operations in Geneva and Manassas, Virginia. If you don’t know what SWIFT does and why it matters, I’ll...

In February and March, respectively, the U.S. Congress and the U.N. Security Council responded to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test with sanctions that were, in theory, an order of magnitude stronger than any sanctions imposed on North Korea until then. Sanctions, of course, are only as good as their enforcement, and in enforcing sanctions against North Korea, the most important rule has always been “follow the money.” Money — along with the contradictions of its political system — has always...

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower In yesterday’s post, I confronted two unwelcome facts: first, that Kim Jong-un almost certainly will not give up his nuclear arsenal voluntarily; and second, that we cannot learn to live with a nuclear North Korea (or more accurately, it will not learn to live with us). To these, I’ll add a third: things in Korea will certainly get much scarier over the next few years. Pyongyang is blaming...

Update, 2/18: The President signed the bill. ~   ~   ~ This afternoon, the White House made it official — the President will sign the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act. The White House didn’t say when, but I’d expect it to happen within a week or so. The question now turns to implementing the bill to maximize its impact on the regime, while minimizing the impact on the North Korean people. For well over a month, the...