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Category: Diplomacy

October 30, 2006

Must-Read: NYT Op-Ed by Havel, Wiesel & Bondevik Calls on U.N. to ‘Turn North Korea Into a Human Rights Issue’

The authors,  Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel, and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik have co-authored a powerful argument  for confronting  Kim Jong Il’s atrocities against the North Korean people, which they call “one of the most egregious human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.” They also call for a  “renewed international effort to ameliorate the crisis facing the country’s citizens:” For more than a decade, many in the international community have argued that to focus on the suffering of...

Categories "United" Nations/Europe/Human Rights/The Camps
October 30, 2006

As Roh Prepares to Name a New Cabinet, New Calls to Reboot Uri

After the local elections, I had blogged about the rift in the Uri Party about merging with other parties on the left.  In the wake of Uri’s beating in the last round of elections, it’s painfully obvious that the left is weak and fragmented and only stands a chance if it unites.  Note, for example, how Uri can’t win in South Jeolla province because other lef-wing parties win instead.  In that spirit, a former Justice Minister and Uri founder has...

Categories Diplomacy/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea
October 30, 2006

‘Contain and Transcend’

Eric Sayers of the Center for Security Policy has produced a very interesting paper called “Contain and Transcend:  A Strategy for Regime Change in North Korea.”  Eric doesn’t think we can or should  actually promote democracy or encourage dissent inside North Korea — I  think we can and should  — but he  gets the  essential formula right:  starve the regime, reach out to the people.  This one is a must-read think piece.  Eric also keeps a fine blog, The Neo-Reaganite.

Categories Appeasement/Geopolitics/Washington Views
October 29, 2006

DLP Leaders to N. Korea: ‘Say It Aint So!’

[Previous posts on the Il Shim Hue Fifth Column scandal here.  So far, the NIS has accused the ring of controlling violent anti-American protests, trying to infiltrate civic groups, controlling  senior officials of the Democratic Labor Party, and trying to manipulate the Seoul mayoral election.] As bad timing goes, it’s one for the books.  The far-left minor opposition Democratic Labor Party’s leaders  had planned their visit to Pyongyang  some time  ago, before they realized that their party would be at...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
October 29, 2006

U.N. Report on Human Rights in North Korea

Human Rights Without Frontiers forwards this report on human rights in North Korea  from the U.N. General Assembly (north_korea_u1_2006.pdf).  On the surface, it’s slathered with diplo-lard, but wipe that off and you can see some fairly strong language. In addition, it cannot be overstated that the excessive expenditure by the authorities on its defence sector based upon the country’s “military-first” policy causes serious distortions in the national budget and its use of national resources; it is a key impediment to...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights
October 27, 2006

China-N. Korea Trade: Business as Usual

I didn’t get terribly excited about initial reports that China wouldn’t enforce 1718 in good faith, because I don’t frankly care much what they say, but rather, what they do.  Sounds like we have our answer, courtesy of the N.Y. Times: Truckers carrying goods into North Korea across the sludge-colored Tumen River say inspections are unchanged on the Chinese side. Customs agents rarely open boxes here or at two other border crossings in this mountainous region, truckers and private transport...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/NK Economics
October 26, 2006

Where Is That Other Shoe?

[Update:   A State Department official who asked not to be identified said the sanctions authority, bearing the name of Senator John Glenn, who sponsored it in the Congress, is open-ended in the range of sanctions available. That official predicted that all financial and economic transactions with North Korea would be ended, except for humanitarian aid. ] We’ve all been waiting for othe other shoe to drop — for the U.S. to announce what sanctions it will impose — since North...

Categories Diplomacy/Money Laundering/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
October 25, 2006

S. Korean Cabinet Shakeup: Unifiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok Will Resign; Defense, Foreign Ministers Will Also Step Down

Reuters Photo:   UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok and Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon at the National Assembly, Oct. 6, 2006. [Scroll down for updates]   Roh has not confirmed that he will accept the resignation of the UniFiction Minister who replaced Comrade Chung Dong-Young.  Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok was soon expected to confirm his intention to step down during a meeting with reporters, according to the officials. With Lee’s resignation, if accepted, the president is expected to reshuffle all of his...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Korean Politics
October 25, 2006

Nuclear Blackmail

Update:   A couple  of delightfully  subtle KCNA  quotes: “If South Korea joins  the PSI,  it will pay.” “South Korea, if you want to have security, trust in those who share your blood.” And spill it. “If the South Korean authorities end up joining U.S.-led moves to sanction and stifle (the North) we will regard it as a declaration of confrontation against its own people … and take corresponding measures,” the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/WMD/WTF?
October 25, 2006

Marcus Noland on Sanctions and Engagement

He makes several good points, but this is probably my favorite: If I lived in Korea, I myself would also support the engagement policy. Engagement is very important as a tool to induce the fundamental changes of the North Korean regime. But from some time back, the South Korean government seems to have lost its perspective. Engagement is just a tool to achieving the goal of making changes in North Korea, but now it seems engagement itself has become the...

Categories Appeasement/WMD
October 25, 2006

North Korea Sold Ryongchon Relief Donations

The first clue should have been why they said they needed 50 televisions (background  and photos  of the still-not-quite-unexplained disaster; click the first link and scroll down for a before-and-after gif animation using satellite images).  A North Korean government-sponsored company has reportedly been selling products to North Korean citizens using the nonprofit aid products received from the international community, including South Korea during the Yongchon disaster of April 2004. Members of a North Korean aid organization located in Dandong City,...

Categories Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid
October 24, 2006

More Grim News on N. Korea’s Food Situation

New reports are  predicting that things are looking bleak for North Korea’s food situation this winter. Millions of North Koreans are at risk of starvation this winter as humanitarian aid levels drop amid an international furore over the country’s nuclear bomb test. Aid agencies say much of the population is already surviving on basic rations and fear any further drop in food supplies could lead to a repeat of the 1990s famine that killed as many as two million people....

Categories "United" Nations/China/China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid
October 24, 2006

Proliferation Security Watch

*   Hong Kong authorities have detained a North Korean ship “Kang Nam I, a 2,035-ton general cargo ship,” which had arrived from Shanghai.  North Korean crew members and Hong Kong customs officials suggest that the inspection is related to a couple dozen safety violations, that the ship is empty, and that the inspections are not related to U.N.S.C.R. 1718.  Crew members claim that the ship will sail again in two days.  The Chosun Ilbo reports that the search didn’t...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/Money Laundering/Technology/Uncategorized/WMD
October 23, 2006

U.N. Envoy: N. Korea Sends Handicapped to Camps

[Update:   Welcome Powerline readers!] Since I began blogging about North Korea, one of my core philosophies  has been  that nukes, diplomacy, and human rights aren’t logically separable. That’s because you deal with governments that possess a basic regard for human life differently from those that lack one. Governments in the first category share our desire to preserve life by avoiding war. Governments in the second category seek only to preserve and expand their own power; their motivations are not...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps
October 23, 2006

Ban Ki-Moon’s Image Makeover?

Already, Ban can see that what was popular in Seoul won’t cut it in the General Assembly.  In the rest of the world, North Korea is a pariah.  Besides, the man is highly sensitive about what bloggers say about him. “Taking the advantage of the U.N. Secretary-general’s authority and the U.N.’s functions, I plan to make the utmost efforts to actually improve the human rights situation in North Korea,” he said. Citing reports from U.N. human rights envoys and related...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
October 21, 2006

Dance, Little Piggy! (Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 14)

Most observers had speculated, since at least 1994 or so, that North Korea has the capacity to create a crude nuclear weapon. That appears to be exactly what they demonstrated recently, meaning that the only real news was our need to recalibrate Kim Jong Il’s brass-to-brains ratio. I didn’t guess whether he’d actually go through with it, but I did believe that he’d try to time it just before the U.S. election if he did. I also guessed that if...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/China & Korea/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea
October 21, 2006

MUST READ: NYT on Korean Nationalism, North and South

Today, even though it has a highly advanced economy — more than 80 percent of South Koreans have broadband Internet access at home, the highest rate in the world — the country has a nearly provincial relationship to its local heroes, like Ban Ki-moon, the foreign minister who will be the next U.N. secretary general. The most famous South Korean of recent times was Hwang Woo Suk, a scientist who in 2004 and 2005 announced breakthroughs in cloning. At home,...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Korean History/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 21, 2006

Condi Rice Saves Thirty Minutes of My Life

[Update:   Senior State Department official Victor Cha flat-out says it aint so.] … by raising serious doubts about the hearsay report that Kim Jong Il had apologized to a Chinese envoy for his recent nuclear test, or promised not to do it again. I don’t think apology and regret are components of the emotional vocabulary of a psychopath or a malignant narcissist, except as a means of manipulating others.  Kim Jong Il had his reasons.  I don’t know what...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Russia/Russia & Korea/WMD