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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
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
December 2, 2014

In 2006, Ashton Carter called for blowing up a N. Korean missile on the launch pad

At the time, I wasn’t especially enthusiastic about the idea, and I’m still not enthusiastic about it today, but had I known then that George W. Bush and Barack Obama would let things get to where they’ve gotten today, I might have agreed with the idea of an aerial intercept. One thing we know about Ashton Carter is that he talks a good game.

Categories Missiles/U.S. Military/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
September 13, 2014

On Think Tanks, Propaganda, the Foreign Agents’ Registration Act, and Korea

Washington is a marvelous city for someone like me. Where else could a foreigner, an outsider like myself, do the things I was able to do? – Tongsun Park, to the House Ethics Committee, April 1978 A detailed story in The New York Times, examining grants and gifts by foreign governments to U.S. think tanks — and how those gifts influence scholars (and through them), voters, policymakers, and Congress — has caused much controversy and discussion in Washington this week....

Categories U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Washington Views
September 9, 2014

Former Obama Admin. official: Our N. Korea sanctions are weak and our policy is stuck

The Obama Administration’s North Korea team is stuck. Its thirst for fresh blood is so dire that it recently asked Keith Richards whether he still has the number of that secret clinic in Switzerland.* Don’t take my word for it. Last Friday, former Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as a friend and spy of mine was sitting in the audience (thank you). Campbell’s remarks are worth listening to in full, but the...

Categories Anju Links/Media Criticism/Sanctions/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
May 2, 2014

Americans hate foreign policy, and also, the lack of one

One lovely April morning, the world awakened to find that its greatest power has fallen under the control of a cabal of perky Starbucks baristas. As it turns out, I am not alone in ridiculing the weaponization of tweets and hashtags as a substitute for tough and substantive national security policymaking as the world’s predators seize the day. Conspiratorial minds will suppose that this is all somehow coordinated, and maybe some of it is, but I assure you that I’ve been...

Categories Geopolitics/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
August 8, 2013

Rep. Albio Sires and Rabbi Abraham Cooper on Human Rights in North Korea

I’ll begin a gradual return from my hiatus by linking to this excellent op-ed by Rep. Albio Sires, Democrat from New Jersey, on the imperative of addressing North Korea’s human rights abuses. It’s a welcome sign that this isn’t a partisan issue. This op-ed, by Rabbi Abraham Cooper, follows it logically and compares North Korea’s abuses to some of those that occurred during the Holocaust.

Categories Human Rights/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
March 12, 2013

Last week’s Senate hearings on N. Korea marked by skepticism and ambivalence

Last Thursday, two days after the hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also held a hearing (on video here). This time, consensus was much less evident than ambivalence, and the views of the State Department were much more in evidence. Most of the oxygen was consumed by the first witness, Special Envoy Glyn Davies. Our Special Envoy’s testimony, by the way, was sponsored by Deer Park Bottled Water (written statement here). Chairman Bob Menendez...

Categories U.S. Politics/Washington Views
December 28, 2010

Rumors Hint at Policy Shifts in U.S. and South Korea

From Engagement to Reunification? So says the Chosun Ilbo, in describing what would be a major policy shift for South Korea. From 2008 until now, the policy would best be described as reluctant engagement, which brought out North Korea’s violent and extortionate streak. Now, according to unnamed sources in the Unification Ministry, the administration seems to be looking for ways to prepare for and even accelerate reunification: The government is shifting the emphasis of North Korea policy from exchanges and...

Categories Korean War II/North-South/Sunshine/Washington Views
December 12, 2010

I wonder if China is pleased with Japan’s new plans to expand defense spending, deploy more PAC-3 Patriot missile batteries, build more submarines to patrol disputed waters, and arm more Aegis cruisers with Standard-3 missiles. Again, there is even talk of acquiring nuclear weapons. China has only its own reckless backing of North Korea to blame for this. Me, I’d be happier if we sold the same types of gear to Taiwan, which as I take delight in repeating, happens...

Categories China & Korea/Japan/Korean War II/Regime Change/Washington Views
December 3, 2010

Huzzah, I’m finally a moderate!

Not being a frequent reader of Foreign Policy, I don’t know much about the leanings of the particular bloggers there, although most would call that publication a stalwart of the “realist” view that had so recently become fashionable in Washington, before Al Qaeda in Iraq was squeezed down to a small nub of its former self, and before it became evident that North Korea, Iran, and China weren’t prospective negotiating partners after all. This week, we read one FP contributor...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/Yeonpyeong Attack
August 30, 2010

Throw the Book at Him

So I will assume that Stephen Kim, the Korean-American State Department contractor who is now being prosecuted for leaking top secret / sensitive compartmentalized information was neither employed by, nor sympathetic to, North Korea given his choice of Fox News as a recipient for his leak of information that might have revealed U.S. intelligence sources in North Korea. And having said that, I really don’t care what Kim’s specific views were, I just want to know if any foreign government...

Categories U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Washington Views
July 20, 2010

The New Conventional Wisdom: We Have No Idea

I don’t recall ever seeing Victor Cha offer a view that was particularly original, imaginative, or likely to end in a successful result, but he is a reliable indicator of Washington conventional wisdom about North Korea, which in turn is heavily influenced by Seoul’s views about the North. And here is the new conventional wisdom: we have no idea what to do now. In Cha’s own words: North Korean behavior has gotten so bad, according to East-West Center Visiting Fellow...

Categories Washington Views
July 17, 2010

Back to Gridlock?

Secretary of State Clinton will travel to Asia, including South Korea, next week. In announcing the visit, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell gave this July 15th on-the-record briefing. In contrast to the Bush Administration’s anytime, anywhere approach to the six-party talks, you can sense a subtle shift in tone: Let me say that the United States and South Korea have always maintained, and our position is clear, that we are prepared under the right circumstances to sit down in...

Categories Washington Views
July 2, 2010

Washington’s “Conventional Wisdom” About North Korea Is an Oxymoron

Professor Sung Yoon Lee, writing in the Asia Times, says: [T]he North Korean regime is in the midst of the most serious internal political challenge in nearly 20 years. Facing severe economic stresses, increasing infiltration of information into North Korea, ever more North Koreans attempting to defect to the South, and the challenge of handing over power to an unproven son only in his twenties, the allegedly ailing North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, must wrestle with profound questions of regime...

Categories Diplomacy/Washington Views
June 17, 2010

Friends With Benefits: Another Silly, Tired “Engagement” Debate

My general impression of the new North Korea blog 38 North is that it’s mostly the same old crap from the same old people who’ve been proposing the same demonstrably failed approaches to North Korea for the last 20 years. They’ve finally published one thing of interest to me, however, a response to John Feffer by Roberta Cohen of the liberal Brookings Institute. If anyone can show me that anyone to the right of Cohen has ever been published on...

Categories Useful Idiocy/Washington Views