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Category: Diplomacy

December 21, 2009

Obama’s “Liaison Office” in Pyongyang Would Be Appeasement, Pure and Simple

The Obama Administration’s new proposal to set up a “liaison office” in Pyongyang may be the most disturbing development of his administration’s entire approach to North Korea. It would, in effect, elevate diplomatic relations between the two governments just seven months after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, and just nine months after it tested an ICBM, all in flagrant violation of multiple U.N. resolutions. Now, after North Korea has made no meaningful concessions on disarmament and even demands recognition...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
December 17, 2009

North Korean Arms Shipment Linked to Iran and China

Did I call it or what? Weapons seized in Thailand from an impounded plane traveling from North Korea were likely destined for Iran, a high-ranking Thai government security official was quoted by Reuters as saying regarding the findings of a team investigating the arms. “Some experts believe the weapons may be going to Iran, which has bought arms from North Korea in the past,” said the official. The official was quoted as saying the Thai investigating team considered Iran the...

Categories "United" Nations/Axis of Evil/China & Korea/Iran/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
December 12, 2009

You Didn’t See Me Raising My Hand

I confess that I may be one degree more interested than The Marmot in those “crucial” talks between Stephen Bosworth and the North Koreans, for reasons I explain in this Hegemon post. After all, it could have been worse. The State Department could have declared a “breakthrough.” Dreading this as I was, it wasn’t possible to maintain complete apathy. Every negotiation with North Korea is another chance for State to drive a Lexus to the car lot and limp home...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 10, 2009

Today’s the 61st Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

(Inspired by Indexed, with apologies for the hurried execution.) Sixty-one years ago today, on December 10th, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Just a few months before, on September 9th, the DPRK was officially founded.  (As Joshua might say, discuss amongst yourselves.) The North Korea Freedom Coalition, writing in a recent release, has a few ideas on changing the status quo: Because North Korea is among the most isolated countries in the world and its...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights
December 10, 2009

More on Australia’s Denial of Visas to N. Korean Propaganda Artists

In Australia, five artists from the Mansudae Art Studio were invited to the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Queensland state to talk about 15 pieces the organizers commissioned for the exhibition, which includes work from more than 100 artists from 25 countries. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith rejected the artists’ applications for an exception to a visa ban on North Korea, part of targeted sanctions imposed in 2006 in response to the country’s steps to develop atomic weapons. Organizers...

Categories "United" Nations/Censorship/Propaganda/Sanctions
December 8, 2009

In Geneva, North Korea Answers Atrocity Accusations with Bluster, Denials, and a Concession

For the most part, it’s what you’d have expected: Lies, all lies! A U.S. plot (with the EU) to overthrow us! The POW issue is resolved. There are no more Japanese abductees in North Korea, and there is no need for a U.N. Special Envoy to visit. Some of the denials almost must be seen to be believed. On the starvation of the North Korean people, particularly those in the lower political castes: According to The Independent, North Korean ambassador...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps
December 7, 2009

N. Korea Comes Up for Human Rights Review at the U.N.

North Korea’s “universal periodic review” before the U.N. Human Rights Council began today in Geneva. Nothing much will come of it, I suspect, but at least the human rights story will get a bit of media attention, and North Korea will be just a little more toxic to potential investors. “There is a difference between wanting to be isolated and not caring about the rest of the world. North Korea cares about the world and therefore it wants to be...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights
November 30, 2009

UNDP Returning to North Korea

The scandal-plagued U.N. Development Program, just shy of two years from a report that found massive irregularities in its finances and operations in North Korea, is planning to return to North Korea. You will recall that among other items, the U.N. found $3,500 in counterfeit currency in a safe in New York. The cash may have come from the North Korean state bank that the U.N.D.P. was required to use while operating out of Pyongyang.

Categories "United" Nations
November 24, 2009

What Obama Accomplished in China

I suppose China’s behavior immediately after the president’s departure is all the evidence you really need. An activist who was investigating the role shoddy school construction played in the deaths of more than 5,000 children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake was given a three-year prison sentence Monday on charges of possessing state secrets. Huang Qi, 46, a veteran activist and blogger, is the most prominent of more than a dozen people who were arrested for demanding investigations into construction standards...

Categories China/Diplomacy
November 23, 2009

U.N. General Assembly Condemns North Korea for “Systemic, Widespread, and Grave” of Human Rights Violations

South Korea voted for and was one of 53 co-sponsors. The vote was 96 for, 19 against, with 65 abstentions: The resolution goes on to list torture, the absence of due process in law, use of the death penalty, collective punishment, strict restrictions on freedom of movement, thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association, the right to privacy and equal access to information, the treatment of returned refugees, violations of economic, social and cultural rights, human rights...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 18, 2009

Human Rights Watch: Raise Human Rights in Bilateral Talks with North Korea

Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch is one of the few people doing laudable work in an industry so invested in defending terrorists of late that it’s often too distracted to address the worst atrocities since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. This time, however, HRW’s letter, addressed to Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth, is a useful contribution to the policy discussion about North Korea: For too long has the world sidelined human rights in North Korea while single-mindedly focusing on...

Categories Activism/Diplomacy/Human Rights
November 17, 2009

Lankov in the NYT, on Negotiating with North Korea

Andrei must really hate peace to say something like this: People in Washington have finally realized what should have been understood years ago: Under no circumstances is North Korea going to surrender its nuclear weapons. North Korean leaders believe that they need these weapons both as a deterrent and a diplomacy tool. Only through the existence of the nuclear program can North Korea, a destitute third-rate dictatorship, manipulate the outside world into providing generous aid. It is often suggested that...

Categories Diplomacy
November 9, 2009

North Korea Faces Review by U.N. Human Rights Council

And here’s a sample of what the council will hear: In the course of beatings, the guards broke all his teeth, leaving him toothless for four years. To deprive him of sleep, the guards at the underground prison at Hoeryong city near the Chinese border used “pigeon torture”. Jung was handcuffed and tied by his arms to an object behind him so he could not stand or sit. He felt as though his bones were breaking through his chest while...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 6, 2009

Michael Green on Bilateral Talks and Sanctions

Beyond Christine Ahn’s alternative universe, the insiders are unanimous for now, whether on or off the record:  for the foreseeable future, the Obama Administration intends to sustain — if not intensify — sanctions until North Korea disarms.  Like most of you, I suspect that eventually, we’ll lift them for another promise to disarm, but for now, the unanimous message I’m hearing is to the contrary: A major factor in Washington’s reluctance to rush into talks, Green says, is that “the...

Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions/Washington Views
November 3, 2009

Ban Ki Moon Is to Human Rights What Roman Polanski Is to Child Welfare

It was a horror that came from within, that consumed and devastated entire communities and families. It was a horror that left you as survivors of a trauma which to the world beyond your borders was unimaginable, even though we all now know it happened.We will not pretend to know how you must overcome the unimaginable. We can only offer, in humility, the hope and the prayer that you will overcome — and the pledge that we stand prepared to...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 2, 2009

Yongbyon Reprocessing Plant “Restored to Its Earlier Conditions”

Who remembers the heyday of Agreed Framework II, when the foreign policy establishment united to educate the hoi polloi about all of the great unfolding achievements of diplomacy with the North Koreans? They told us that North Korea was removing fuel rods and dismantling in earnest.  Siegfried Hecker went to Yongbyon and returned to report, with a few qualifications, that “the DPRK leadership has made the decision to permanently shut down plutonium production” and that “the disablement actions taken to...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/WMD
October 30, 2009

Did Bill Clinton Meet Kim Jong Il’s Double?

Even for North Korea, this would be the WTF story of the year: A number of analysts here are convinced that not all the photos being released of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, are really photos of Kim Jong-il. Instead, they say, a look-alike has been standing in for him on some of the 122 trips he’s reportedly made this year to the countryside, factories, cultural events, military units, and all sorts of other venues. Some observers say the North...

Categories Diplomacy/Kim Jong Il/Ling/Lee Incident/WTF?
October 26, 2009

If President Lee is Sincere About Protecting Refugees and POW’s, the South Korean Consul in Shenyang Must Go

[10/27: Here’s an update on that 80 year-old POW.] The latest reports coming from northeastern China emphasize China’s ongoing disregard for the lives of North Korean refugees, and for the pleas of the South Korean government. They also raise questions about President Lee’s sincerity about shifting to a more compassionate policy toward North Korean refugees. Last week, it was reported that two family members of an escaped South Korean prisoner of war found their way to the South Korean consulate...

Categories China & Korea/Diplomacy/Refugees