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December 14, 2006

Chinese Diplomats on the Town, Behaving Like … American Infantry!

Heard in the Forbidden City:  “Those uppity vassals won’t get away with  indignities like this  when we build our governor’s mansion on top of Kwanghwamun!” Police pulled over a car with the diplomatic license plate of the Chinese Embassy near the main gate of Ewha Women’s University around 9:50 p.m. on Tuesday. The driver and three passengers declined to take the test or confirm their identities and kept doors and windows locked. Police guided the car into a corner, where...

Categories China & Korea/UCMJ & SOFA/WTF?
December 2, 2006

Must-Read: On the Underground Railroad

The Times of London spent months trying to interview one of the conductors of the underground railroad.  This remarkable report tells us what North Koreans suffer to escape from hell on earth: He muffles his face and hides in the back of a car. Every Chinese checkpoint is a challenge. North Korean agents are out to kill him. Chinese-Korean gangsters hate him for rescuing women doomed to sexual slavery. Nam made his own escape after his wife and younger son...

Categories China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
November 29, 2006

Welcome Home

Life Funds for North Korean Refugees reports that Choi Young-Hun, who has been in a Chinese prison for the last four years for helping North Korea refugees, has been released: Choi was met at Incheon Airport this evening by close family members.  And although he appears extremely weak following his imprisonment, he took the time to express his thanks to all those around the world who have supported him with their prayers, letters and other contributions.

Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
November 20, 2006

Wobble Watch: Has China Unfrozen Blocked North Korean Accounts?

The State Department is saying it doesn’t know if the reports are true; it’s telling reporters to ask the Chinese: A diplomatic source in Beijing said China has released some of the North Korean money at Macau’s Banco Delta Asia (BDA), frozen after the U.S. Treasury in September last year designated it a primary money laundering concern abetting Pyongyang’s illicit activities.  The unfrozen accounts, less than half of the US$24 million initially held up, are believed to be those not...

Categories China/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Money Laundering
November 17, 2006

Proliferation Security Watch

The AP has a very detailed story on the search of a North Korean ship in the Indian Ocean, along with a nice summary of other searches in the recent past.  In this case, it sounds like all they found was cement. In other searches, Hong Kong authorities detained two North Korean cargo ships in October for safety violations apparently unrelated to the U.N. sanctions. Myanmar permitted a North Korean cargo ship in distress to anchor at a port in...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China & Korea/Japan & Korea/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/WMD
October 31, 2006

N. Korea Agrees to Return to Six-Party Talks

[Update:   According to this Korean language link, the South Koreans were the last of the six parties to know that the talks would begin again.  You’d think that after getting seven billion dollars from South Korean taxpayers, they’d have enough left over to afford a phone call.  I guess they spent it somewhere else.] News coming off the wires claims that the North Koreans have agreed to return to six-party talks. Chinese, U.S. and North Korean envoys to the...

Categories China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks
October 27, 2006

China-N. Korea Trade: Business as Usual

I didn’t get terribly excited about initial reports that China wouldn’t enforce 1718 in good faith, because I don’t frankly care much what they say, but rather, what they do.  Sounds like we have our answer, courtesy of the N.Y. Times: Truckers carrying goods into North Korea across the sludge-colored Tumen River say inspections are unchanged on the Chinese side. Customs agents rarely open boxes here or at two other border crossings in this mountainous region, truckers and private transport...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/NK Economics
October 25, 2006

Three More N. Korean Refugees Headed to U.S. from China

We’re about to see another test of that oddly arousing “lips and teeth” analogy. Two boys in their early teens without family and a man about 18 or 19 years old were taken without incident into the consulate in Shenyang with a member of Liberty in North Korea, according to a spokesman for the grass-roots group who asked not to be identified for security reasons. The group, also known as LiNK, operates orphanages in China that provide for North Koreans...

Categories China & Korea/Refugees/Uncategorized
October 24, 2006

‘Lips and Teeth’ No More?

You may recall the recent interview I did with Chuck Downs, in which Mr. Downs spoke of China’s  efforts to  court members of the North Korean military.  Downs suggested that this was a key concern to Kim Jong Il, and may have motivated him to test his officers’ loyalty.  According to this report, the North Koreans have just managed to roll up China’s spy network inside North Korea. CHINA’S People’s Liberation Army is pushing the Government to get tough with...

Categories China & Korea
October 24, 2006

More Grim News on N. Korea’s Food Situation

New reports are  predicting that things are looking bleak for North Korea’s food situation this winter. Millions of North Koreans are at risk of starvation this winter as humanitarian aid levels drop amid an international furore over the country’s nuclear bomb test. Aid agencies say much of the population is already surviving on basic rations and fear any further drop in food supplies could lead to a repeat of the 1990s famine that killed as many as two million people....

Categories "United" Nations/China/China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid
October 21, 2006

Dance, Little Piggy! (Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 14)

Most observers had speculated, since at least 1994 or so, that North Korea has the capacity to create a crude nuclear weapon. That appears to be exactly what they demonstrated recently, meaning that the only real news was our need to recalibrate Kim Jong Il’s brass-to-brains ratio. I didn’t guess whether he’d actually go through with it, but I did believe that he’d try to time it just before the U.S. election if he did. I also guessed that if...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/China & Korea/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea
October 16, 2006

Alleged Chinese Documents Reveal Depth of N. Korean Refugees’ Suffering

I can’t verify the documents’ authenticity, of course. That’s the natural advantage that comes with being China, North Korea, or any other opaque dictatorship — you can deny anything without having to let anyone search for the truth. Deniability in the narrower sense is always plausible. In the greater sense, it isn’t. This Wall Street Journal report merely adds some detail, and expands some of the parameters, of what we already know. The Border Police document, dated Jan. 10, 2005,...

Categories China/China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Refugees
October 15, 2006

U.N.S.C.R. 1718: Who Won, Who Lost (Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 13)

John Bolton: Winner. I’d like to hear John Bolton’s critics deny that, as with Resolution 1695, he has wrung far more effectiveness from the U.N. than we had come to expect. Not only should we confirm this man, pronto, we should clone him. Madeleine Albright never got results like these. The United States: Winner. We got everything we really wanted here: help constricting Kim Jong Il’s financial arteries the right to search his ships and planes. an embargo on the...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Geopolitics/Japan/Japan & Korea/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 13, 2006

Nuke Test Roundup

* The Japanese government has approved a total ban on trade with North Korea, and the ban has already taken effect. The BBC has a showing the last boat carrying used bicycles and refrigerators back to North Korea, to be given as rewards to loyal party members. * Gordon Cucullu, writing at Front Page Magazine, talks about cutting China’s support to North Korea; you might want to read this first, however. * The New York Times talks about President Bush’s...

Categories China & Korea/Japan & Korea/NK Economics/WMD
October 12, 2006

MUST-READ: Key U.S. Policy-Maker Calls China Out for Double-Dealing

David Asher, who recently led the Illicit Activities Initiative, is probably the architect of our tough new financial strategy against North Korea’s counterfeiting, smuggling, and money laundering. He is also one of Washington’s clearest thinkers on North Korea. Asher didn’t know that North Korea would actually test a nuke when he delivered this address to the Heritage Foundation in September, and really, it deserved more media and blog attention than it got. Asher, to say the least, doesn’t think China...

Categories China/China & Korea/Money Laundering/Washington Views/WMD
October 11, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 12

“If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures,” the North’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. Well, what on earth did they expect?  Applause?  Mind you, they still have the chutzpah to say they want to disarm, but the last time they said that was just hours before their alleged nuke test.  Meanwhile,...

Categories China & Korea/Japan & Korea/NK Economics/WMD