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Category: Diplomacy

July 7, 2009

Fireworks

Not that I paid much attention, but North Korea did in fact live up to expectations that it would test missiles on the 4th of July.  So often, our media get excited about the testing of anti-ship missiles which probably aren’t nuclear capable and probably couldn’t do much damage to ground targets in Japan or South Korea.  This time, however, the North fired off seven short-range missiles.  They were SCUD-C’s or Nodong’s, which could do serious damage to a South...

Categories "United" Nations/Missiles
July 1, 2009

Robert King to Be Next NK Human Rights Special Envoy? (Updated)

So says a reader I trust.  The little I know is that he was a staffer who worked for Rep. Tom Lantos, meaning he probably knows plenty about foreign policy and shares his former boss’s interest in human rights, but may not have much specific Asia expertise.  Here’s a photo of him. There are three things that I like about King without knowing anything else.  First, he’s not a State Department insider.  Second, he’s not the same person who will...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
June 30, 2009

Kang Nam I Turns Around, Heads North

U.S. officials said Tuesday that a North Korean ship has turned around and is headed back in the direction it came from, after being tracked for more than a week by American Navy vessels on suspicion of carrying illegal weapons. The move keeps the U.S. and the rest of the international community guessing: Where is the Kana Nam going? Does its cargo include materials banned by a new U.N. anti-proliferation resolution?  [AP, Pauline Jelinek] The ship apparently turned around last...

Categories "United" Nations/Proliferation/Sanctions
June 29, 2009

Obama Forms Team Plan B

The Washington Post is reporting that President Obama is forming an inter-agency team, much like the Illicit Activities Initiative that David Asher headed in G.W. Bush’s first term, to coordinate sanctions against North Korea: The White House is forming an interagency team to coordinate sanctions efforts against North Korea with other nations, senior administration officials said yesterday.  The team will be led by Philip S. Goldberg, a former ambassador to Bolivia who is slated to leave for China in the...

Categories Diplomacy/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
June 29, 2009

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Navy Tracks “Multiple” Suspicious N. Korean Ships It Won’t Actually Stop

The United States said it was monitoring “multiple” North Korean ships suspected of carrying weapons and that it would discuss with its allies what to do with one suspect vessel it is tracking.While the United States has been tracking the Kang Nam since last week, the Pentagon said it is closely monitoring several other North Korean ships allegedly carrying weapons. “We have been interested in this one ship [the Kang Nam], but we’ve been interested in, frankly, multiple ships,” Pentagon...

Categories "United" Nations/Proliferation
June 28, 2009

Sam Brownback Strikes Again

Now, he’s holding the nomination of Kurt Campbell to replace Chris Hill as Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.  Recently, Brownback has used the power of the nomination hold to become the congressional oversight over State’s spectacularly unsuccessful North Korea policy that no one on the Foreign Relations Committee is willing to be.  He’s brought a degree of public scrutiny to some of State’s dumbest decisions, and has managed to slow down — but not stop — the...

Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
June 26, 2009

U.S. Won’t Board Suspected N. Korean Arms Ship

The North Korean ship Kang Nam I may be carrying missiles to Burma, and then again, it may be headed for a stopover in Burma as it transits to points west.  And then again, it may merely be carrying “small” arms and bullets for shooting dissidents and uppity monks (for which their next of kin will be duly billed).  The official Burmese version is that they aren’t expecting the Kang Nam I in any of their ports. For some reason,...

Categories "United" Nations/China/Proliferation
June 26, 2009

Nothing Says “Democratic Peoples’ Republic” Like a New S-Class

A recent report claims that even as North Korea was preparing missile and nuclear tests, China helped North Korea flout a U.N. Security Council Resolution for which it voted and which it has promised to implement in good faith.  UNSCR 1718, in effect since October 2006, bans the export of luxury goods to North Korea.  It has since been reinforced by UNSCR 1874: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il doled out foreign-made cars to senior intelligence officials to ensure their...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Kremlinology
June 20, 2009

Sanctions Updates

The United Nations is getting to work on a list of North Korean entities to be sanctioned under UNSCR 1874, as Pentagon officials head to China to press their hosts on implementation and compliance. Off the Chinese coast, the U.S.S. John S. McCain continues to shadow the Kang Nam I and prepares to invoke the awesome mandate of the Security Council’s “pretty please” resolution.  Asked the obvious question, the State Department gives a quintessential State Department answer: “We would hope...

Categories "United" Nations/China/Proliferation/Sanctions
June 18, 2009

David Sanger: Obama Tired of Kim Jong Il’s B.S.

Regardless of what you think of N.Y. Times correspondent David Sanger or his paper, Sanger is rightly known for the quality of his access to the White House, regardless of who occupies it.  Here, he reveals the administration’s thinking about North Korea: The decision to confront North Korea with overwhelming pressure — designed to bring its shipping and financial transactions to a virtual standstill — is based on the conclusion that re-entering negotiations to buy the dismantlement of the country’s...

Categories Diplomacy/Washington Views
June 17, 2009

Lee, Obama Still Talking Tough, North Korea Still Not Back on the Terror List

This week’s visit to Washington by South Korean President Lee Myung Bak has produced some nice, tough-sounding words that may or may not come to fruition, and which probably won’t mean a thing a year from now: Obama said a nuclear armed North Korea poses “a grave threat” to the world and said “we are going to break” the pattern of North Korea being rewarded for threatening actions. Lee thanked the United States for its “selfless sacrifice” in defending his...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
June 16, 2009

Some Good Reads

Both appear in the Wall Street Journal, and both are too good to just graf and go.  Read them both in their entirety. Nicholas Eberstadt:  A New Plan for Pyongyang Paul Wolfowitz:  Resettle the North Korean Refugees Plus this from Melanie Kirkpatrick:  “I pray Ms. Lee and Ms. Ling will come home soon. But if the Americans’ ordeal raises international awareness of the horrors of North Korea’s gulag, it will not have been in vain.”

Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees/Uncategorized/Washington Views/WMD
June 16, 2009

Selig Harrison: Obama Shouldn’t Say Mean Things to North Korea

Sometimes, a news organization’s selection of guests tells you almost everything you need to know about its biases.  In one corner, we have Balbina Hwang, formerly of the Heritage Foundation before she sold out and went to work for Christopher “Kim Jong” Hill.  In the other, Selig Harrison presents that valuable “from beneath contempt” perspective.  This interview is a little old — from just after the toothless U.N. presidential statement that served as North Korea’s perfectly suitable excuse to walk...

Categories Appeasement/WMD
June 16, 2009

Poll: Obama Too Soft on North Korea

Admittedly, I’m ambivalent about this.  On the one hand, I’ve noted signs that Obama’s North Korea policy is headed in the right direction — a far better one than Bush’s, if carried out in a sustained and comprehensive way — although I think Obama will probably do a Chris Hill and buy the same horse all over again the minute North Korea offers to sign Agreed Framework III.  Still, my idea of “loyal opposition” extends an elected president and its...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
June 15, 2009

Biden, Lee: Won’t Get Fooled Again

He’s best known for saying things that make us cringe, but even Joe Biden is on message on North Korea: “It is important that we make sure those sanctions stick and those sanctions prohibit them from exporting or importing weapons,” Biden said. “This is a matter of us now keeping the pressure on.”  [AP] And since everyone else is, Joe, why not psychoanalyze the North Koreans’ motives?  Nope, he wouldn’t touch that one: “God only knows what he wants,” Biden...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
June 14, 2009

Hey DJ, What’s That Big Pink Animal With the Prehensile Trunk? (Updated)

Admittedly, I don’t have high expectations of NPR, but I would expect that even they would at least mention the circumstances surrounding the summit that bought Kim Dae Jung his Nobel Peace Prize.  Instead, NPR lets his grandiose claims go unchallenged: “The Sunshine Policy has been and still is supported by the majority of South Koreans and the whole world,” Kim says, sitting in his living room. “It’s the reason I won the Nobel Peace Prize. People are telling President...

Categories Appeasement/Censorship/Democracy/Media Criticism
June 12, 2009

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 (Updated with Analysis)

For better or for worse, they passed it. As with UNSCR 1695 and 1718 before it, this will be as effective as the implementation. Much has been said about how China undermined both of those resolutions, and that is true, but too little has been said about how much the U.S. State Department also did to undermine them for the sake of a failure called Agreed Framework II. The good news is that this time, there are some early and...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions