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August 29, 2014

Is Yonhap disinforming us about China and crude oil?

If they keep feeding us the same false story after it’s been debunked, perhaps a little paranoia is in order. Again, the report is that China hasn’t export any crude oil to North Korea. The report is based on KOTRA statistics that show no crude oil shipments — which may or may not go unreported as “donations” — but those statistics also show a sharp rise in exports of refined petroleum products like diesel and jet fuel. ~   ~   ~...

Categories China & Korea/Media Criticism
August 19, 2014

Peter Hahn speaks out about China freezing his accounts and investigating him …

for his humanitarian activities. Hahn says, “We feed 22,000 children every day,” including the most pitiful children of all, the kkotjaebi. While I’m generally skeptical of claims that food aid can reach the intended recipients inside North Korea, Hahn tells a sympathetic and compelling story. Read and decide for yourself. I’m not sure if Hahn is doing as much good as he thinks he is, but I am sure that China and Kim Jong Un are the villains of this story....

Categories China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid
July 30, 2014

China shuts down exhibition by North Korean satirist

IF THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT WONDERS why its own people find its modern cultural output stultifying, then maybe it shouldn’t stultify quite so much: A North Korean defector known for his satirical paintings on North Korean society was forbidden from holding a rare exhibition in Beijing on Sunday, with Chinese police officials removing his artwork shortly before the exhibition began. The painter from North Korea with the pseudonym Sun Mu, who fled the North in 1998 and resettled in South Korea in...

Categories China/Refugees/Subversion
July 17, 2014

Polls show Asians are increasingly fearful of China

There is much interesting news this week about how China’s bullying of its neighbors is perceived in other Asian nations, including South Korea. An AP report describes how China’s predatory hegemony in the Pacific has (as I suspected it would) alienated other Asian nations and isolated China itself. A more interesting item, noted in The Washington Post, is a graphic of Pew Research polling data from Asian countries showing that majorities (or strong majorities) throughout the region are afraid of China’s bad touch. In all,...

Categories China
July 9, 2014

Keeping China’s Cold War cold: The case for PATO

As our alliance diplomacy fails in Asia, “Pentagon officials,” no doubt with some prodding from the White House, say that if the Senate confirms Mark Lippert as Ambassador to South Korea, he would redouble U.S. efforts to rebuild a trilateral alliance with Japan and South Korea. “Trilateral” would be a very good start toward “multilateral,” and I wish the administration success. I don’t know much about Mr. Lippert, but a diplomatic vacuum now could mean war and chaos for us all, while...

Categories Asia/China/China & Korea
July 8, 2014

Refugees’ lives may depend on interpretations of Sino-Korean consular agreement

Human rights advocates have long contended that China’s repatriation of North Korean refugees violates international law, including obligations China undertook voluntarily in the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1969 Protocol. A U.N. Commission of Inquiry recently added its weight to that contention and strongly criticized China’s disregard of that Convention. [Suzanne Scholte and Rep. Park Sun-young protest outside the Chinese Embassy in Seoul, 2012] Some rights advocates have hoped that the COI’s report would force China to alter its refugee-deportation policy,...

Categories China & Korea/Refugees
July 7, 2014

Continental drift: U.S. alliances erode despite “pivot” to Asia

Xi Jingping has departed from Seoul, where he couldn’t quite bring himself to agreeing to a joint statement with Park Geun Hye calling for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. But the statement stopped short of directly urging North Korea to give up its nuclear program, only vaguely calling for all members of the six-party nuclear talks to resolve the issue through dialogue and abide by their 2005 denuclearization-for-aid deal. [Yonhap] Some of the dire declarations I’ve seen that...

Categories Abductions/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Russia & Korea
June 1, 2014

N. Korea sells China fishing rights to S. Korean waters, just in time for Xi Jinping’s visit to Seoul.

North Korea, in a demonstration of its unique gift for sowing mischief, has just added South Korea to the long list of Asian nations involved in maritime disputes with China. According to Yonhap, Pyongyang has just sold the fishing rights to “its” littoral waters in the Yellow Sea to China. That’s a problem for Seoul because Pyongyang defines “its” to include waters south of the Northern Limit Line, the disputed maritime extension of the western side of the Korean DMZ. “Part of our waters...

Categories Anju Links/China & Korea
May 28, 2014

No, China did not cut off N. Korea’s oil supply (corrected).

The Chinese government has announced that Xi Jinping will visit Seoul next month without having ever visited Pyongyang, a reversal of the usual sequence. Although Asian diplomats place great value on the symbolism of such things, it is also possible to make too much of it. Still, I draw a few inferences from the announcement that may be important. First, the announcement of Xi’s visit would pose significant complications for Pyongyang if it plans to nuke off soon. Xi would feel...

Categories China & Korea
May 7, 2014

China leaks contingency plan for N. Korea collapse

Last week, North Korea unexpectedly announced that Hwang Pyong So had replaced Choe Ryong-Hae as North Korea’s top military officer and number two official. Choe had held this status since the December purge of Jang Song-Thaek. It may be a complete coincidence that Kyodo News has since reported on allegedly leaked contingency plans by the Chinese Army to seal the border and protect North Korean officials from, shall we say, summarized judicial proceedings in the event of a collapse of...

Categories China & Korea
March 24, 2014

For China, holocaust denial substitutes for diplomacy

It’s offensively obtuse things like this that convince me that Chinese will eventually be as despised in North Korea as Japan is despised in South Korea, and that its profiteers won’t be safe to walk the streets of Rajin:  “The inability of the commission to get support and cooperation from the country concerned makes it impossible for the commission to carry out its mandate in an impartial, objective and effective manner,” said Chen Chuandong, a counselor at China’s mission in...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Human Rights
November 22, 2013

U.N. Commission should find China responsible for crimes against humanity, too.

China is denying reports that it arrested 15 North Korean refugees near Kunming. According to the Chosun Ilbo, the refugees have been moved to areas near the North Korean border. Some may have been repatriated already, along with other refugees rounded up near Shenyang. If so, their fate inside North Korea is grim. As the Chinese government already knows, and has for years. I don’t know what, exactly, I should read from the fact that North Korea is loudly calling for China...

Categories China/Refugees
March 13, 2013

Why rising rice prices probably don’t mean that China is enforcing U.N. sanctions.

Hope springs eternal.  I said recently that it wouldn’t surprise me to see China temporarily restrict trade with / aid to North Korea to mislead us into thinking that it’s really pressuring North Korea to disarm, thereby slowing the momentum here to legislate what Glyn Davies calls “national” sanctions.  This trick works so well because so many of us so desperately want to believe that China will give us an easy out.  Witness this report, via Korea Real Time, that...

Categories China & Korea
March 11, 2013

Chinese banks host massive slush funds for Kim Jong Un despite “tough” new U.N. resolution

So over the weekend, I read U.N. Security Council Resolution 2094, and I didn’t see much that deviated from the low expectations I expressed based on the press reports.  (Since then, Marcus Noland has expressed a similarly pessimistic view). For those nations that are interested in strict enforcement, there is useful material in this; for example, the reference to the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force, which you can find on Page 13 of this document, will cause some nations to be more circumspect about...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea
March 7, 2013

Plan B Watch: China’s U.N. Bait-and-Switch

We’ve seen enough of China’s past conduct when it comes to U.N. resolutions aimed at North Korean proliferation that we ought to recognize duplicity when we see it.  We should also know by now that our hapless U.N. Ambassador isn’t very good at recognizing that duplicity.  That’s why the news that China is expected to vote for another U.N. Security Council resolution this morning underwhelms me.  I even think I have a pretty good  idea what China’s game is here. Like I said before — China...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions