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April 23, 2008

More Senate Republicans Rebel Against Bush’s North Korea Policy

Fourteen Republican  senators have signed  a letter to President Bush opposing his agreement to let the North Koreans off the hook on full disclosure, disarmament, money laundering, terror sponsorship, concentration camps, abductions — you  name it —  before we lift sanctions.  An excerpt: We are … concerned  about the present course of action on North Korea’s nuclear program being pursued by representatives of your Administration.  It cannot be said that North Korea has complied with its commitments.  From all appearances,...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
April 22, 2008

House Foreign Affairs Committee Leaders Co-Sponsor Bi-Partisan N.K. Human Rights Bill

[Updated and bumped  4/22:   The GPO has published the full text; it’s here:  hr-5834.pdf It mainly reauthorizes the existing Act, tightens State’s reporting requirements, and adds more power and prestige to the post of Special Envoy.  It also demands quick action from State on increasing radio broadcasting and “facilitating the submission of applications” for asylum at our consular facilities in Asia.]   I don’t have a link to the bill or this press release yet, but it’s from a...

Categories Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. Politics
April 17, 2008

John Bolton Condemns Bush’s “North Korea Capitulation”

I think “Singapore Surrender” has a more alliterative ring, but I take no issue with Bolton’s argument: Last week in Singapore, U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill and his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye Gwan reached a deal that rests on trust and not verification. According to numerous press reports and Mr. Hill’s April 10 congressional briefing, the U.S. will be expected to accept on faith, literally, North Korean assertions that it has not engaged in significant uranium enrichment, and that...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
April 15, 2008

The Six Two One Party Talks, or Masturbatory Diplomacy

[Update: The White House accepts this stinker. Remember what Chris Hill said last year? “We cannot have a situation where (North Korea) pretends to abandon their nuclear program and we pretend to believe them.” That sure sounds like that Hill wants us to do.] So have you heard that Kim Jong Il will celebrate his removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism … by firing off more missiles? U.S. military authorities have been closely watching the North Korean...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
April 10, 2008

Representatives Ask Rice About ‘Consular Emergencies’ During Beijing Olympics

Last month, three members of Congress — Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of  Florida, Ray Lahood of Illinois, and Darlene Hooley of Oregon —  anticipating just how ugly things could will get if  when U.S. citizens protest during this year’s Olympics in Beijing, wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to ask what instructions  she had given to our  diplomats in China  about “consular emergencies” during the games.  The members also broached the sensitive subject of whether State should issue a travel advisory...

Categories China/U.S. Politics
April 3, 2008

What Should the Senate Ask Kathleen Stephens?

A reader tells me that the nomination hearing for Kathleen Stephens, State’s pick to be our next Ambassador to Seoul, will take place on April 16th, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. So if you sat on that panel, what would you ask? Naturally, I presume that every single answer to that kind of question will be thoughtful and intelligent, and the most intelligent and thoughtful questions have some unquantifiable chance to be seen by the people who will write...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
April 1, 2008

Oh, You Meant Those Nuclear Scientists in Syria ….

You have to wonder what Chris Hill thought this inspired move would accomplish, other than to put  intelligence sources and methods at risk:  The U.S. in recent bilateral talks reportedly gave Pyongyang a list of North Korean officials involved in the supply of nuclear technology to Syria, a suspicion the North denies. A high-level diplomatic source on Monday said that the U.S. obtained the list of officials including nuclear engineers, who were involved in the supply of nuclear technology to...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
March 12, 2008

Rep. Howard Berman of California Will Lead the House Foreign Affairs Committee

He will have to fill a giant’s shoes, and a shrill and partisan tone isn’t a promising start for that: “I deeply appreciate the confidence that my colleagues have shown in me today. While I can never replicate the unique historical perspective and natural eloquence that Chairman Tom Lantos brought to this position, I’ll work very hard as chairman to repair the damage done to America’s standing in the world over the past seven years by this Administration. My highest...

Categories U.S. Politics
February 12, 2008

The Candidates on North Korea, Part 3

I haven’t had time to dig up the various statements of Mike Huckabee and Hillary Clinton, but here are some perfectly fine efforts by Jack at DPRK Forum and Don Kirk in the Asia Times. I don’t agree with Kirk’s inference that McCain would support of keeping a large ground force in South Korea; I tend to think he’d be the most likely (except for Paul) to give the whole arrangement a fresh look. I also found this page at...

Categories U.S. Politics
February 8, 2008

Christopher Hitchens on the Rice-Lefkowitz Flap

Since Hitchens may have had something to do with goading Lefkowitz into making his original comments, I’ve been wondering how he would react to what resulted. I like to imagine that my little essay stung Lefkowitz a bit. At any event, he got up on his hind legs at the American Enterprise Institute in the third week of January and made an explicit criticism of the Bush administration that he serves. The State Department’s insistence on “diplomacy,” he argued, had...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
February 5, 2008

Senators Urge Bush Not to De-List N. Korea as Terror Sponsor

Six senators, all Republicans, have signed a letter to President Bush asking him not to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism yet.  The senators are Sam Brownback of Kansas, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, John Kyl of Arizona (the minority whip), Charles Grassley of Iowa, … and Larry Craig. You can see a pdf of the letter — full text, signatures, and all, here: senate-letter.pdf Many thanks to the person who sent me...

Categories Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics
February 3, 2008

Advantage, Lefkowitz?

The latest Bush Administration official to return from Pyongyang empty-handed is Sung Kim, who spent three days in Pyongyang and got no nuclear declaration for his trouble.  It’s a well known fact of diplomacy that even when no translation is necessary, it can take 72 hours to comprehend the utterance of the word “no. The latest Bush Administration alumnus to denounce its failing last-ditch appeasement of North Korea is former speechwriter Michael Gerson, who writes in the Washington Post about...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
February 1, 2008

KCTU Declares Jihad Against Lee M.B., Scores Meeting With Nancy Pelosi

On Tuesday, I wrote that President-Elect Lee was about to meet with the leaders of South Korea’s largest, most radical, and most violent labor organization — the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. There was, however, the matter of KCTU Chairman Lee Sok-Haeng’s outstanding arrest warrant for an “illegal” rally last October. President-Elect Lee, showing more interest in public order than his predecessor, was not willing to let this slide or grant Chairman Lee the special privilege of being questioned at...

Categories Anti-Americanism/U.S. Politics
January 28, 2008

SOTU Speech Fails to Mention North Korea

I heard “Korea,” and I think I  probably heard  “North” somewhere, but I did not hear “North Korea.”   It’s  nice that President Bush stands against genocide in  Sudan.  Seriously.  It would be better than “nice” if  Bush would do something meaningful to stop it.  It’s too bad, of course, that he chose to end his term as  an abettor of  a genocidal regime  in North Korea.  North Korea was even left out of his catch-all  list of repressive  nations  abroad. ...

Categories Appeasement/U.S. Politics
January 24, 2008

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Senate Subcommittee Finds Massive Irregularities in UN’s North Korea Development Aid

[Scroll down for updates.] The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has just released its report on the UN Development Program’s North Korea scandal.  Previous postings here concern the U.S. Ambassador’s original complaint,  Ban Ki Moon’s unrealized promises  of a full investigation, and the suspicious  termination of a whistleblower.  First, the main findings: 1. UNDP operated in North Korea with inappropriate staffing, questionable use of foreign currency instead of local currency, and insufficient administrative and fiscal controls.   2. By preventing...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/U.S. Politics
January 23, 2008

Just What We Needed: Our Very Own Ministry of Unification.

From a White House press briefing today:  Q       Is the administration about to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism?      MS. PERINO:  No.  Right now where we are is waiting on the North Koreans to provide a complete and accurate declaration of their nuclear activities.  So we’re continuing to wait for that.  We still have people on the ground helping with the disablement of the Yongbyon nuclear facility.  So at this...

Categories Diplomacy/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
January 19, 2008

The Candidates on North Korea (Fred Thompson)

Whew.  I had expected these  primary things to make this project a little less ambitions.  I expected wrong.  Next: SIMON: Well, here’s our final question, though. As you probably know, I’m sure you know, Ambassador Bolton has become very critical of the Bush administration since his resignation from the United Nations. He wrote a book about it and he’s made a lot of public statements. Do you think — and implying that the Bush administration is essentially walking backwards on...

Categories U.S. Politics