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January 21, 2016

In The Weekly Standard: Ed Royce’s Bipartisan Coup Against a Bipartisan Failure

If President Obama ends up signing a North Korea sanctions bill in the next 30 days — and at this point, I don’t know what interest he has in vetoing one — it will effect the biggest change in our North Korea policy since the 1994 Agreed Framework. That, in turn, will have been due to years of principled dissent and patient, bi-partisan coalition building by Ed Royce, the California Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee. A certain,...

Categories Sanctions/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
January 21, 2016

WaPo: Senate Foreign Relations hopes to mark up N. Korea sanctions bill next Thursday.

Via the Washington Post this morning, we’re still pretty much where I said we were last week, but at least we have an expected date for a committee markup. The Senate is still trying to work out a bipartisan compromise between Senator Bob Menendez’s (D, NJ) weaker S. 1747 and Cory Gardner’s (R, CO) tougher S. 2144, rather than voting on the House bill that passed last week “with huge bipartisan support.” While the House and Senate bills contain generally the same...

Categories Sanctions/U.S. Law
January 13, 2016

N. Korea sanctions bill passes the House 418-2, Senate seeks compromise bill

By now, you’ve probably read the news about last night’s lopsided vote. Interestingly, it was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who were unanimous in their support. The two dissenting votes were Justin Amash and Thomas Massie, both isolationist Republicans from the Ron Paul mold.  Dissent may be patriotic, but it’s never beyond some well-deserved ridicule. [Reminder: The views expressed on OFK are the author’s alone.] You have to hand it to Nancy Pelosi for running a tight ship. In the end,...

Categories Sanctions/U.S. Law
January 8, 2016

Dems & Republicans join forces to support North Korea sanctions legislation

When it comes to North Korea policy, Washington’s most influential lobbyist has never been to Washington. He’s in his early 30s, never finished high school, chain smokes, likes to ski, loves the NBA and , favors dark suits and mushroom haircuts, has an explosive temper and a small nuclear arsenal, and weighs as much as a village full of his malnourished subjects. Tuesday’s nuke test may have come just in time for Congress to act before dispersing for a long...

Categories Sanctions/Washington Views
December 3, 2015

Sen. Gardner calls on Congress to pass North Korea sanctions bill

Amid all of the slaughter and chaos sweeping over us, Senator Cory Gardner doesn’t want us to forget which government built a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007, and that may soon be able to put a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile. It is time to ratchet up the pressure. That is why I’ve introduced the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act. This bill would require the president to impose sanctions on people who have contributed to North Korea’s nuclear program, enabled its...

Categories Sanctions/U.S. Politics/Washington Views/WMD
November 25, 2015

The Great Engagement Debate: Stanton v. Delury at NCNK

On October 22nd, the National Committee for North Korea invited me and Professor John Delury of Yonsei University to a debate, in which we each offered three proposals for the next president on North Korea policy, all premised on a delusion of grandeur that Donald Trump really cares what either of us thinks. The debate was held in a beautiful conference room on the top floor of the Hart Senate Office Building overlooking the Capitol. There was a great crowd...

Categories Engagement/Sunshine/Washington Views
November 23, 2015

Scott Snyder: increase sanctions, including secondary sanctions, on Pyongyang

In a new paper for the Council on Foreign Relations, Snyder has called for increasing pressure on Pyongyang through sanctions, to persuade it that it must disarm or perish: Since defecting from Six Party negotiations on denuclearization in 2008, North Korea has pursued nuclear development unchecked by international constraints. Barack Obama’s administration has demanded that Pyongyang make a strategic choice to denuclearize and tried to build a regional consensus opposing North Korea’s nuclear efforts, but it has been unable to halt the...

Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions/Washington Views
November 11, 2015

House Subcommittee Chair calls for re-listing North Korea as a terror sponsor

Last month, I posted video of a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-proliferation and Trade, where Chairman Ted Poe of Texas and Ranking Member Brad Sherman of California grilled a hapless State Department official about North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism, and why North Korea wasn’t listed. State’s performance at the hearing wasn’t just bad, but exceptionally so. Poe and Sherman were both visibly exasperated with State’s stonewalling, and seemed convinced that State was ignoring the law. Now, Poe has put his...

Categories Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
October 22, 2015

Congress wants answers on N. Korea and terrorism. The State Dep’t doesn’t have any.

As you may have heard somewhere, President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Obama Administration’s official view is that North Korea is “not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.” Since I collected and published that overwhelming evidence last year, I was looking forward to the day when the State Department would be called to Congress to confront it. Today was...

Categories Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics
October 18, 2015

Congress to hold hearings on N. Korea & terrorism, human rights, nukes this week

The first hearing, entitled, “The Persistent North Korea Denuclearization and Human Rights Challenge,” will be held Tuesday at 10 a.m., before the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The witnesses will be Sung Kim, the State Department’s Special Representative For North Korea Policy And Deputy Assistant Secretary For Korea and Japan, and Robert King, State’s Special Envoy For North Korean Human Rights Issues. The second hearing will be before the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, on...

Categories Anju Links/Human Rights/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law/WMD
August 18, 2015

Pro-North Korean group denies that it’s under investigation for tax evasion

According to the UPI, which in turn cites reports from Yonhap and SBS, one of America’s most infamous and influential pro-North Korean groups is under investigation “for tax evasion and political activities that violate U.S. tax laws.” The nonprofit Korean American National Coordinating Council in New York is under investigation according to local Korean American and diplomatic sources, but it was unclear which government agency was conducting the full-scale investigation, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported. The investigation also is the first reported...

Categories U.S. Law/Useful Idiocy
July 27, 2015

House, Senate will both hold hearings on North Korea policy this week* (updated)

If you ask senior Obama Administration officials about the policy of “strategic patience” with North Korea today, they will bristle and recast it as something else, but this wasn’t the case in 2010, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained her policy in a visit to Seoul: “What we’re focused on is changing North Korean behavior,” one senior U.S. official said. “We are not focused on getting back to the table.” “We recognize that diplomacy, some form of diplomacy with North Korea, is inevitable...

Categories U.S. Politics/Washington Views
July 10, 2015

Senators Graham, Menendez introduce companion to N. Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act

Senators Lindsey Graham (R, SC) and Robert Menendez (D, NJ) introduced the bill, numbered S. 1747, last night. I haven’t had a chance to read the full text yet, but from my initial read, it looks similar to S. 3012, which Senator Menendez introduced in the 113th Congress. Like S. 3012, S. 1747 makes the designations in Section 104(a) discretionary, rather than mandatory. The problem with that approach is that so far, President Obama has exercised his discretion to sanction North Korea as little as possible. The State...

Categories Sanctions/U.S. Law
May 21, 2015

Sen. Gardner introduces resolution calling for tougher sanctions against N. Korea

It would seem that his speech the other day had a purpose — this. I couldn’t have written it any better myself. Yes, it’s only a resolution, but its clear intent is to gain wider support for policies that a Senate version of the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act would enact into law. It’s also the latest sign that Congress wants North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and that in the battle to change North Korea policy, a...

Categories U.S. Law
May 18, 2015

GAO: State Dep’t must step up diplomacy to enforce N. Korea sanctions

The General Accountability Office has released a new report on the enforcement of sanctions against North Korea. The report, requested by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, will probably influence the contours of the Senate’s version of the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act. You can read the full report here and a summary here, and listen to a podcast here. The report correctly points to a key flaw in the enforcement of the sanctions that exist now — a lack of financial intelligence....

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions/U.S. Law
May 15, 2015

Sen. Cory Gardner just gave as good a speech about North Korea policy as I’ve ever seen

Senator Cory Gardner* of Colorado is the new Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy. When I first heard that a freshman Senator had been picked to lead such an important subcommittee, it concerned me. Delving into Gardner’s background, however, it became clear that he’s highly intelligent — he graduated from college summa cum laude, and (at least according to his Wikipedia page) speaks fluent German. He has graduated from law school (never a bad thing for a lawmaker) and served...

Categories U.S. Politics/Washington Views
January 1, 2015

Last year’s analysis proves that this year’s analysis of N. Korea’s New Year speech will also be crap

The worst news of the day is that KCNA is working again. That means that as you read this, somewhere in northwest D.C., America’s best-credentialed astrologers are sifting through a desert of despotism for grains of glasnost. In line with the requirements of the prevailing situation, the officers and men of the Korean People’s Internal Security Forces should sharpen the sword for defending the leader, system and people, and members of the Worker-Peasant Red Guards and the Young Red Guards...

Categories Media Criticism/Washington Views