Category: Diplomacy

N. Korea Expels Half of the South Koreans from Kaesong.

North Korea has allowed 880 South Korean people to stay in the inter-Korean industrial complex in the border city of Kaesong, far less than expected by the South, South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman said Monday. North Korea verbally informed South Korea of its decision Sunday night, Kim Ho Nyoun told a press briefing. [Kyodo] You say that like it’s a bad thing. Updates: The better media reporting on this subject probes two questions: (a) how will this affect Kaesong and...

Watch Your Back, Comrade

No, this is not a post about Hillary Clinton’s role in Barack Obama’s cabinet. I’ve read a lot of silly reporting about Kim Jong Il’s rumored stroke, but I’ve also seen and heard enough leaks from people who ought to be in the know that I’m actually starting to believe that he’s seriously debilitated. This latest one comes from former CIA officer Art Brown, and it makes it sound as though the power struggle to inherit all this is already...

The Wisdom of Kim Dae Jung: Slavery Is Prosperity, Censorship Is Freedom, Terror Is Peace

No matter what the North Koreans do with Kaesong next week or next year, their actions last week have already assured that it will fail to attract the international investment it needs to succeed. The North having demonstrated its willingness to hold potential investors’ capital hostage to their political whims, those investors will now stay away in droves. It’s worth reviewing just how grandiose the dream of Kaesong had become so recently. If you recognize the url stamped onto this...

Activists to Resume Leaflet Balloon Campaign

A wave of free publicity, courtesy of the governments of North and South Korea, has made the leaflet balloon campaign has been a great success. Why quit now? Activists for human rights in North Korea on Tuesday vowed to keep sending propaganda leaflets to the North even though the government has asked them to desist. The announcement was made by Park Sang-hak, head of Fighters for Free North Korea and Choi Sung-yong, president of Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea....

Obama Cabinet Watch: Someone is going to be very disappointed

We still don’t have a very clear picture of what Obama’s North Korea policy is going to be, but the North Koreans apparently have high expectations, as does one of its most prominent U.S. sympathizers, Professor Han S. Park. Park, writing in the Korea Times, says Team Obama met with the North Koreans recently and promised a “dramatic stride toward diplomatic normalization.” Oh, and the Americans will also demand that North Korea give up its nuclear weapons. Some day. This...

Because if it’s counterintuitive and groundless, it must be true!

I think the headline of this New York Times story by Choe Sang Hun ought to give you the idea: “Latest Threats May Mean North Korea Wants to Talk” Right. North Korea is serially flicking all of switches on the Sunshine machine to the “off” position, snipping the hotlines, storming out of talks, typing up eviction notices for the fools and scoundrels who inhabit Kaesong, and shooting the occasional housewife. Yet “experts” are found to conclude that this means that...

Calling Jay Lefkowitz

According to some fragmentary reports passed along by Human Rights Frontiers, Son Jung Nam — or rather, what’s left of Son Jung Nam after more than a year of torture in a dungeon in Pyongyang — is about to be stood up against a firing squad … if he still lives, that is. (No link on the latest report, which come to me via e-mail). I previously posted on Son’s case here. In China, a group of 11 refugees between...

Obama Cabinet Looking Surprisingly Centrist and Responsible

The L.A. Times reports that Obama is seriously considering either Hillary Clinton or Richard Holbrooke for State and retaining the effective Robert Gates at Defense.  We are already hearing the first sorrowful wailing from those for whom the highest form of patriotism is the emotional investment in America’s defeat and dimunition, in a way that is only coincidentally similar to the patriotism of its enemies.  At least one of them had the deficiency of judgment to actually believe that Dennis...

Arbeit Macht Nichts: The End of Kaesong?

The second of the twin pillars of the Sunshine Experiment, the Kaesong Industrial Project, may have gone to join the Kumgang Tourist Project on the ash heap of history this week with North Korea’s closure of the border between North and South.  With that closure, South Koreans inside the North Korean enclave have been served with their eviction notices.  The North Korean directive may yet prove to be a bluff, but it will still mean the end of Kaesong as...

Yet again, Kim Jong Il caught proliferating right under Chris Hill’s nose.

Sometimes, I wonder why I even bother. India blocked a North Korean plane from delivering cargo to Iran in August, responding to a U.S. request based on fears about the spread of weapons of mass destruction. This, nine weeks before President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, ostensibly to reward it for some sort of good behavior. According to the Western and Asian officials, the North Korean plane, an Ilyushin-62 long-range jet owned by...

While America Drifts, Japan and S. Korea Stand Firm

Does it ever seem that U.S. policy toward North Korea is intentionally designed to clash with those of Japan and South Korea?  No matter how necessary a coordinated approach may be to the success of any policy, and even when Japan and Korea are newly aligned toward the same strategy we’d been pursuing until February 2007, our State Department seems to delight in creating diplomatic chaos at the first sign that order might break out.  Ironically, it’s now America that...

I’ll Give You a Topic: The Verification Protocol is Neither. Discuss.

It’s hardly worth discussing anyway; after all, with North Korea, there’s little point in expecting what’s agreed today to stay agreed tomorrow. We’ve already abandoned the goal of disarmament, there is always another demand, it is always followed by another concession, and someone always wants us to think that this time, it’s really the last one. Still, the State Department justifies its de-listing of North Korea as a terror sponsor by claiming that it has reached a verification protocol with...

What Removing North Korea from the Terror List Means

If tomorrow’s Big Announcement from North Korea isn’t that the Great Leader has gone to the Great Meat Locker, it may well be that the North, having met with  such stunning  success at blackmailing the United States,  will throw some new tantrum at South Korea.  I would not credit the North with diplomatic genius for its success at isolating and blackmailing its enemies one at a time.  The trick isn’t new.  It seems more fair to credit us for the...

Rumor: Bush will de-list N. Korea as a terror sponsor today.

I heard the rumor yesterday afternoon, but now I see the AP is reporting it.  According to the Financial Times, the only thing holding up the announcement is notifying / strong-arming the Japanese, and perhaps the South Koreans.  You can see Condi and her mouthpiece not answer questions about this below the fold, if you’re interested. There’s nothing quite like giving right in to extortion.  Somewhere on the troposphere of Kim Jong Il’s clot-riddled, misshapen, hideously coiffed cranium, a drooly...

S. Korean JCS Chair: N. Korea Building Lighter Nuclear Warheads for Missiles

You might have thought that an agreement whose nominal objective is nuclear disarmament ought to be reasonably clear about dismantling, disabling, or dissing those arms in some specific way. If so, you thought wrong, and here are the consequences of that. In fact, Chris Hill’s February 2007 disarmament deal was intentionally vague about North Korea’s existing nuclear arsenal. Until this summer, State had insisted that the North’s nuclear weapons were covered by the phrase “all nuclear programs,” although North Korea’s...

Did They or Didn’t They? (Pt. 2)

You’d think that if Chris Hill and the North Koreans had made up, the North Koreans wouldn’t be launching missiles again.  The new launches appear to have been short-range missiles launched from the island naval base at Cho-Do, which you can see in full Google Earth color here.  One thing this illustrates is why North Korea always seeks to narrow the focus of talks:  while they sell temporary concessions on plutonium, they pursue a uranium program at full speed; then,...

How Many Divisions Does Ban Ki Moon Have?

Since October 2006, U.N. Security Council resolution 1718 has prohibited North Korea from trafficking in  major weapons systems or WMD techonology.  So sit down for this one: “The Middle East remans on the receiving end of the DPRK’s reckless activities,” Israeli delegate David Danieli told the meeting, referring to North Korea by its acronym. “At least half a dozen countries in the region … have become eager recipients” of the North’s black market supplies of conventional arms or nuclear technology,...

Did They or Didn’t They?

I took a few days off from blogging and figured by today I’d know if Chris Hill had succeeded in giving away the store to the North Koreans, but the reporting today is ambiguous.    The New York Times says that Hill left Pyongyang with the main “issues unresolved” but quotes or cites no  hard authority  to substantiate this.   The Chosun Ilbo quotes “observers” who  see “signs” that Hill’s visit  “produced some results,” and also quotes or cites no hard authority to...