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Category: Diplomacy

April 20, 2010

Another Nuke Test in North Korea?

North Korea is preparing for a third atomic test that may come in May or June, South Korean broadcaster YTN reported on Tuesday, an act that could further isolate Pyongyang and complicate already troubled nuclear diplomacy. South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan dismissed the report, saying Seoul had seen no evidence, and the U.S. State Department also voiced doubts about its accuracy. “If North Korea was making such preparations, there would be related circumstances that can be detected … there...

Categories Six-Party Talks/WMD
April 13, 2010

A Bulb Comes on at The Washington Post

There’s debate over whether such Chinese aid would be useful in restarting diplomacy or unhelpful in easing the pressure that alone might someday spur a deal. What’s most likely is that it doesn’t matter: that the North Korean regime will never give up its nuclear weapons, because it has nothing else — no legitimacy at home or abroad. As in Iran, the problem is the regime more than the weapons. That’s not an argument against engagement with Kim Jong Il...

Categories Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks
April 9, 2010

North Korea and China Feast Amid Famine

As the food situation in North Korea continues to deteriorate for its most vulnerable, a South Korean NGO is sending 300 tons of flour and other supplies to help feed 12,000 “marginalized” people, including kids in 50 orphanages. The article mentions nothing about monitoring or nutritional surveys, so pray to a God they can’t that there will be a few dollops of gruel left for their begging bowls after all of the theft, diversion, and corruption. Note, by the way,...

Categories Appeasement/China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Six-Party Talks
March 25, 2010

Karmic Justice for Kumgang Investors

North Korea’s threats to confiscate South Korean property at Kumgang are having predictable consequences for its investment climate: In an interview with The Dong-A Ilbo yesterday, Ahn said the head of a conference member company recently died of a heart attack due to severe stress from his business in North Korea. The suspension of the inter-Korean tours caused the late chairman’s company to teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, causing his death at age 55, Ahn said. Ilyeon’s prospects are...

Categories Appeasement/North-South/Sunshine
March 17, 2010

Chinese Academic Admits what U.S. State Dep’t Won’t: Kim Jong Il Will Never Disarm

North Korea is using annual military exercises as an excuse to “bolster up its war deterrent,” the latter term being the traditional code-talk for nuclear weapons. This ought to put North Korea’s rumored return to six-party talks in context. So should this Asia Times piece by our friend, the seasoned Korea reporter Don Kirk (buy his book!), who quotes Beijing University professor Wang Jisi. Wang, speaking at a conference in Seoul recently, showed a much better appreciation of reality than...

Categories China & Korea/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Uncategorized
March 16, 2010

North Korea, Human Rights, and Diplomacy: When Hell Freezes Over

A series of bleak new reports shows that after more than a decade of attempts by the United States and South Korea to liberalize North Korea though aid and engagement, life is as cheap as ever between the Yalu and the Imjin. The system is less closed than it once was, although this is mostly the result of the fraying of the regime’s control over its borders, economy, and the flow of information. Yet these changes have occurred in defiance...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights
March 15, 2010

Meet Roh Jeong-Ho: Ex-Millionaire, Symbol of a Failed Policy, and Asshole

Please allow me to introduce Roh Jeong-Ho, ex-millionaire, former role model for the Sunshine Policy, and asshole. How does one achieve such distinction in life? In Roh’s case, this way: Roh was once touted by the South Korean media as one of the young leaders in his early 30s who were expected to lead the post-unification era when he exported 44 km of barbed-wire fences to Rajin-Sonbong in 1995. North Korea had asked Roh to supply the fences to isolate...

Categories Appeasement/NK Economics/Sunshine
March 8, 2010

North Korea Re-Re-Declares War, Threatens “Merciless Physical Force,” Demands Peace Treaty

So Operations Key Resolve and Foal Eagle have started again. I boldly predict that this year, as has been the case for each year for the many decades we’ve had troops stationed in South Korea, the exercise will not end with an American invasion of North Korea. Just as predictably, North Korea is threatening the United States and/or South Korea. The challenge for North Korean propagandists is always how to make each year’s threat stand out from such previous-year classics...

Categories Diplomacy/ROK Military/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Military/Useful Idiocy
March 5, 2010

U.N. Solves North Korean Pollution Problem (Not)

In the hierarchy of problems in North Korea — every last one of which the U.N. is failing, abysmally, to address — I’m not sure that pollution by toxic chemicals ranks at the top of the list. On the other hand, I agree that it’s going to be one of the biggest post-reunification challenges. Cue quote from some U.N. wonk: “The environment-related problems that exist in North Korea, I just have to say right now, I think they’re much more...

Categories "United" Nations/Inside NK
March 4, 2010

North Korean Soldier Defects Via Kumgang Crossing (Updated: He Wasn’t Alone)

Update, 4 Mar 2010: According to this article (link in Korean), he didn’t come alone. There were originally four. Of the other three, one was killed while trying to escape, and two more are still missing. The greatest significance is the personal tragedy for the three who didn’t make it, and for the families of all four of the soldiers, who will almost certainly become objects of the regime’s collective retribution. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers. [Satellite images...

Categories Appeasement/Defectors/NK Military
February 22, 2010

In Case You Weren’t Listening for the Last 20 Years: North Korea Swears Never to Disarm

The North Korean regime seldom makes a promise, in my opinion, that it really intends to keep. For instance, I don’t think it has the slightest intention of spending all that confiscated cash on meat soup instead of yachts and other goodies of that sort for The Great Fishwife. But I think, for once, they’re sincere when they say this: North Korea vowed Friday (February 19) not to give up nuclear arms for “petty economic aid”, claiming it has only...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 16, 2010

China Will Give Kim Jong Il $10 Billion, Violating the Spirit and Letter of U.N. Security Council Resolutions It Voted For

[Update: More here, at the Daily NK] Consistent with reports I’d linked previously, China is now offering a financially beleaguered Kim Jong Il a massive bailout, in obvious retaliation for America’s assistance in helping Taiwan to defend itself against the Chicom missiles aimed at its cities, and likely also as a way to bail Kim Jong Il out after the self-inflicted catastrophe of The Great Confiscation. China’s decision factors in the assumption that America lacks the spine to respond by...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions
January 25, 2010

New Reports Highlight Failure of U.N., Ban Ki Moon to Address North Korean, Chinese Atrocities

A series of new reports on (the absence of) human rights in North Korea will not, by itself, change much, but they signify that for now, South Korea has stopped ignoring the issue. They may also complicate the State Department’s preferred course of doing the same. On the 20th, Human Rights Watch released its 2010 “World Report,” which brings together a review of all the most important issues in the field of international human rights during 2009. As usual, North...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/North-South
January 21, 2010

Bosworth, On “Colbert,” Shifts the Goal Posts

The appearance was distressing on two levels. First, how is it possible that Stephen Colbert could be so funny on the Daily Show and yet provide so little entertainment value on his own show? Stewart becomes unwatchable during election years, but even when John Yoo is wiping the smirk off his face, Stewart still operates at a high level of sophistication. Colbert, on the other hand, seems to be playing for an audience that reads at a fourth-grade level, not...

Categories Diplomacy/Humor/Satire/Six-Party Talks
January 13, 2010

State Department Spokesman on Human Rights Policy

Because of time constraints, all I can give you for now is some quotes from yesterday’s press briefing, below the fold. Thanks to a reader for forwarding. Money quote: “We’ve made clear, going back several months, we’re not going to pay North Korea for coming back to the Six-Party process.” On the role of human rights in the six-party talks, however, the answers were vague to the point of being non-responsive.

Categories Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
January 6, 2010

Yes, Selig Harrison, North Korea Cheated

The revelations about North Korea’s highly enriched uranium program had already been falling like the snow on Seoul this week, and then I saw this: North Korea appears to have started a uranium enrichment program soon after it agreed in a 1994 deal with the U.S. to dismantle its existing plutonium nuclear weapons program, South Korea’s foreign minister said Wednesday. Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan’s remark, if accurate, suggests North Korea had no intention of giving up its atomic ambitions when...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Useful Idiocy
December 30, 2009

North Korea Loots KEDO Site (Updated)

North Korea has been stealing trucks, cranes and other equipment from the site of a nuclear power plant where an American-led consortium stopped construction four years ago in a dispute over the North’s nuclear weapons development, the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reported Wednesday. [N.Y. Times] It gets better: “There is even suspicion that the North Koreans used the equipment when they conducted a nuclear test in October 2006 and in May,” the paper quoted a source as saying. North...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy