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December 20, 2007

Behind the scenes, a deepening crisis for Agreed Framework 2.0

Maybe the Dear Leader will save us all yet. From ourselves, that is. If he does, it will be because he’s overplayed his hand again. A reader forwards a scan of a letter sent by three Republican U.S. Senators — Brownback, Grassley, and Kyl, the new minority whip, to Chris Hill, the architect of Agreed Framework 2.0. The letter requests that State specifically respond to this Congressional Research Service report’s allegations that North Korea continued to materially support Hezbollah and...

Categories Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
December 18, 2007

House resolution honors Henry Hyde

The resolution passed unanimously last night (suspension of the rules, voice vote).  You can read the full text of the resolution here. It’s sad to think of Hyde’s own passage; sadder still to contrast him with the rudderless party he left behind.  For purposes of Korea policy, we might as well be in a second Carter Administration with a 1975 Congress.  Yes, a few isolated Republicans (and one or two Democrats) take a principled stand here and there, but it...

Categories U.S. Politics
December 17, 2007

Don’t let the absence of tact, polish, logic, and stability fool you: Ron Paul slithers like a true pol

Please don’t take this as a reflection on my personal  life, but perhaps  because I’ve lived in Nevada, Korea, and Washington, D.C.,  I  have only  mild moral objections to voluntary exchanges of sex for money between adults.  I’d think that this would be a rare point on which I’d agree with Ron Paul.  But when asked if he was  “shocked” to learn that  the Moonlight Bunny Ranch had contributed to his campaign, Paul missed  the chance  to  defend social libertarianism by...

Categories U.S. Politics
December 13, 2007

Condi: U.S. not ready to engage N. Korea broadly

A day after the New York Philharmonic announced it would play a concert in the North Korean capital and a week after word of a personal letter from Bush to leader of the communist nation, Kim Jong Il, Rice downplayed the significance of both. “This is not a regime that the United States is prepared to engage broadly,” she said. “If we are going to engage it broadly, it’s clear in the program that we have laid out how that...

Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
December 13, 2007

Congressional Research Service issues report on the implications of removing North Korea from the terror sponsor list

Yesterday, a reader and friend was kind enough to forward the entire report to me (thanks!), which I’ve uploaded onto this blog, and which you can access here: crs-north-korea-terrorism-list-removal.pdf   Since then,  this has  generated some press attention in South Korea.  The report’s authors are the highly regarded Larry  Niksch and Raphael Perl.  There’s too much valuable information in there for me to graf and do it justice; this one is a must-read.  I’ll limit my comments to a few...

Categories Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
December 12, 2007

Senate resolution would set conditions for de-listing North Korea as a terror sponsor

I knew this was coming but was asked not to write about it. But now, I see that Richardson has a link to a Yonhap story about it. Now that it’s out, I’ll speak out of school for a moment and say that I suggested a couple of the provisions that made it into the resolution, although I’d rather not say which ones. The sponsor is Sam Brownback, who having dropped his presidential bid, is back to doing what earned...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
December 11, 2007

Desperately in need of a stranger’s hand

At the end of last month, I linked to a post at Powerline, quoting Noah Pollak on the subject of Annapolis, which I said then could just as well apply to Condi Rice’s eleventh-hour test of Kim Jong Il’s character. Pollak said, If Condi’s pursuit of the peace process is due to a belief that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible and will unlock the forces of moderation and conviviality in the Middle East, then, well, she is simply a...

Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
December 4, 2007

KCNA Announces Hill’s Arrival

Pyongyang, December 3 (KCNA) — Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of State, and his party arrived here today.  [link] That’s the entire story, not an excerpt.  Why so terse?  Maybe their friends in Seoul sent them this (ht: GI Korea): The U.S. government decided to impose three new conditions for removing North Korea from Washington`s list of state sponsors of terrorism, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Saturday. The new conditions are in addition to the current U.S...

Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/U.S. Politics
November 30, 2007

Henry Hyde, R.I.P.

I last saw Henry Hyde at the final hearing at which he presided as Chairman of the International Relations Committee. Months later, despite the passage of control to another party, a larger-than-life portrait of Hyde still hangs in hearing room of the re-named Foreign Affairs Committee. Nearly all that has been written about Henry Hyde after his passage yesterday has focused on his role in Whitewater or his steadfast opposition to abortion — in other words, things about which the...

Categories U.S. Politics/Washington Views
November 24, 2007

Casualties of Banalities: The Arrest and Coming Death of Yoo Sang-Joon

One of the bravest men I have ever met is locked in a Chinese prison this weekend, facing the risk of being sent back to certain execution in his native North Korea.  His story stands for the human suffering that endures while diplomats craft a controversial agreement to disarm North Korea of its nuclear weapons and to grant its dictator, Kim Jong-il, the peace treaty and the recognition that his regime has sought for decades.  [The Sunday Times, Michael Sheridan]...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. Politics
November 21, 2007

No Legacy for You

The Washington Post declares: The war in Iraq seems to have taken a turn for the better and the opposition at home has failed in all efforts to impose its own strategy. North Korea is dismantling its nuclear program. . . .  Yet none of this has particularly impressed the public at large, which remains skeptical that anything meaningful has changed and still gives Bush record-low approval ratings. No, not if the Washington Post does not choose to make it...

Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
November 18, 2007

It Takes Many Wards to Make an Asylum

Maybe this will help support my efforts to talk one of you off the Ron Paul ledge.  The favorite candidate of “truthers” and other conspiracy theorists the mainsteam won’t embrace is  also the favorite of  white supremacists and neo-Nazis.  Andrew Walden lays it all out in meticulous detail.  Call it guilt by association if you will, but weeks after the questions  were raised,  Paul isn’t refusing their money or blocking those donate links from white supremacist sites.  I’ll save you...

Categories U.S. Politics
August 30, 2007

State Dept. Won’t Remove N. Korea from Terror List … Yet

The chief U.S. envoy at North Korean nuclear talks said Wednesday the United States will make sure close ally Japan is satisfied before lifting North Korea from a U.S. list of countries accused of sponsoring terrorists. Christopher Hill acknowledged the North has raised the terror-list removal repeatedly as a crucial part of a February nuclear disarmament accord. But, he said, the United States is “not going to cup our eyes and pretend a country is not a state sponsor of...

Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
July 28, 2007

Not Ready

I have resigned myself to a Lee Myung Bak presidency in Korea, something I can do without much difficulty because (a) there will be much amusement, hilarity, scandal, and great blog material,  and  (b) because I’m not South Korean [Update:   or North Korean].  Superficially, Lee is the furthest “right” of the major candidates, and while  South Korea’s idea of “right” may  not be my thing, it’s  the linear opposite of South Korea’s idea of  “left,” which I unreservedly  despise.  Concepts...

Categories Korean Politics/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
July 14, 2007

If Jack Pritchard Doesn’t Believe Jack Pritchard, Why Should We?

Jack Pritchard probably comes to his role as South Korea’s  main policy mouthpiece honestly,  through a shared  belief that the next ten years of unrequited aid really will change North Korea into a peaceful, bucolic, union-free garment  district.  Pritchard is President of the Korea Economic  Institute, which  works  Washington’s Korea-watching and policy-making crowds through its regular sponsorship of social and academic dinner  events.  I’ve been to a few myself, and though I seldom agree with  what I hear there,  the...

Categories Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views/WMD
July 5, 2007

The FTA and ‘Fortress Korea’

It can be disturbing to find so much to agree with in the writings of someone who doesn’t share your outlook on the bigger picture. I generally favor the lowering of trade barriers and oppose the protection of domestic industries from the competition of a fair and open market. Note the key caveat in that last sentence, for defining “fair and open” is where the devil is. I suspect Alan Tomlinson defines it more narrowly than I do, and that...

Categories NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
June 20, 2007

North Korean Money and the Fed

Kevin Hassett, Director of Economic Policy Studies at the  American Enterprise Institute, asks, “Why did the Fed help North Korea launder money?”  I’m no economist, so I’m interested in how the transaction  could affect the Federal Reserve system.  Hassett thinks  this transaction simultaneously  inseminated the Fed with dirty money and politics, and he doesn’t think we’re going to like what we see at the end of the gestation.  You ought to read the whole piece, but here’s a graf: It...

Categories Money Laundering/NK Economics/U.S. Politics
June 18, 2007

Lee Myung-Bak Proposes ‘Kaesong Archipelago’

Would you trust this man?  If you were one of those hoping that the next South  Korean election would be the end of our long international nightmare, you were mistaken: Former Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak, the front-running opposition presidential aspirant in December’s election, proposed Monday creating a “Manhattan-like” island near the border with North Korea and building an inter-Korean industrial park there to ease military tension. Dubbed “Na-deul,” which means a narrow waterway in Korean, the manmade island would be...

Categories Human Rights/NK Economics/Proliferation/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/WMD