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January 16, 2015

Actually, sanctions are looking like the best thing that ever happened to engagement

Since December 19th, when the President blamed North Korea for the Sony hacking and cyberterrorism attacks, Congress has been pushing for tougher sanctions against North Korea, and it has looked increasingly like it has been pushing against an open door. And suddenly, a North Korean leader who has never gone abroad or met a foreign leader during his three-year reign (no, Rodman doesn’t count) has taken a sudden — even urgent — interest in personal diplomacy. On January 1, Kim Jong Un made a highly...

Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions
December 22, 2014

This organization does not tolerate failure.

For weeks, I’d heard rumors that the North Korean government told its diplomats that they’d be held accountable — personally — unless they stopped the U.N. from moving human rights resolutions. There may have been some truth to those rumors. North Korea has recently replaced the deputy chief of its mission to the United Nations in New York, diplomatic sources said Wednesday, a personnel change that followed the recent U.N. passage of a unusually strong human rights resolution against the...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy
December 17, 2014

Max Fisher’s criticism of the Sunshine Policy is spot-on

Washington Post alumnus Max Fisher, now writing at Vox, presents a graph and data showing how, despite all of its abhorrent behavior, North Korea’s trade (most of it with China and South Korea) has grown, and how that leads to more abhorrent behavior. The way it’s supposed to work is that North Korea’s belligerence, aggression, and horrific human rights abuses lead the world to isolate it economically, imposing a punishing cost and deterring future misdeeds. What’s actually happening is that North...

Categories Appeasement/Kaesong/Sunshine
December 9, 2014

Of course, a better North Korea policy means more than sanctions

Professor Haggard is skeptical that a “sanctions only approach” toward North Korea could work, which compels me to expand on why I agree, and on what a better approach would look like. It should go without saying that no act of Congress can ever be more than part of a complete foreign policy, something that, by constitutional design, only the executive branch can wield. Certainly the imposition and enforcement of tough sanctions are at the heart of the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, H.R....

Categories Anju Links/Diplomacy/Sanctions
December 8, 2014

PUST’s un-Christian attacks on Suki Kim

Ms. Kim’s recollections about PUST and North Korea have obvious public interest value for citizens and policymakers, but it’s hard to believe she told us much that an astute observer wouldn’t have guessed anyway. I think the most valuable thing Suki Kim may have taught us is how invested those who “engage” Pyongyang become in imposing a code of omerta to conceal the truth from us, regardless of the ethical cost. But the author, Suki Kim, may have provoked even...

Categories Appeasement/Books & Films
November 20, 2014

Kirby: “strategy of non-criticism” gained only “crumbs” for Japan, S. Korea

In an op-ed for CNN.com, Michael Kirby talks about North Korea’s crimes against humanity, the history of the U.N.’s attempts to “engage” Pyongyang on human rights, and the broader failure of strategies that sought to transform North Korea though scented candles, mood lighting, and Marvin Gaye music alone: The strategy of non-criticism, attempted friendliness and deference was singularly unsuccessful in securing either the goal of peace, national reunification or human rights compliance. For example, the meetings in Pyongyang in September 2002 with...

Categories "United" Nations/Anju Links/Appeasement/Human Rights
November 18, 2014

I heard Obama told Putin that Kim Jong Un was too big a wuss to test a nuke to punish the U.N.

Before the committee voted Tuesday, North Korea warned that it might retaliate with further nuclear tests. Trying to punish it over human rights “is compelling us not to refrain any further from conducting nuclear tests,” said Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean foreign-ministry adviser for U.N. and human rights issues, according to the Associated Press. [Washington Post, Anna Fifield] Oh, dear God, please, please do this.

Categories "United" Nations/Proliferation/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
November 18, 2014

Today’s General Assembly vote is about the people of North Korea, and the relevance of the U.N. itself (Update: UNGA approves, 111-19-55)

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.  – Voltaire It now seems that the U.N. General Assembly’s vote on a North Korea human rights resolution is to take place this very day. Because of Justice Kirby’s report — and because of what so many survivors have told us, at the risk of their lives — no one can ever again say, “I did not know.” Unlike the bystanders of previous generations, we are free to speak, and to act. The draft resolution...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 13, 2014

Dennis Halpin: North Korea is the new “sick man of Asia”

Just as a prosperous and powerful Europe grappled for decades, ultimately unsuccessfully, over what to do about its weakest link, the strong and prosperous Pacific powers have faced, so far unsuccessfully, the dilemma of a weak but nuclear-armed North Korea. A series of diplomatic formulae, including the Agreed Framework, the Six-Party Talks, and, most recently, the aborted Leap Day Agreement of 2012, have all come to naught. Pyongyang, like Constantinople, seems on perpetual life support, gasping for air but never...

Categories Diplomacy
November 12, 2014

Claudia Rosett hopes the Obama Administration won’t screw up Iran …

policy with a bad deal the same way the Clinton and Bush Administrations screwed up North Korea policy with their own bad deals. Rosett isn’t the only one making the comparison: “Like North Korea in the 1990s, Iran will use a weak deal as cover to get nuclear weapons,” said Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, a prominent skeptic of the negotiations. [CNN] The historical record yields little cause for optimism, and the common thread that runs through much of that record is Wendy...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
October 31, 2014

Washington Post Editorial calls for International Criminal Court referral

The Editors of The Washington Post aren’t falling for North Korea’s so-called charm offensive, nor (thankfully) do they use that inapt cliché: [R]ecent maneuverings suggest that Pyongyang views the latest debate with alarm. North Korean diplomats have been attempting to head off any action that would lead to a referral to the ICC. The latest gambit was to invite Mr. Darusman to visit North Korea for the first time, a cynical gesture after the country refused to allow a visit by...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
October 29, 2014

Kirby presses China to support ICC referral of North Korea

Western diplomats say China, North Korea’s principal protector on the UN Security Council, will likely use its veto power there to knock down any attempt to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC). But Michael Kirby, a former Australian judge who led the independent UN inquiry into alleged human rights abuses in North Korea, told reporters at UN headquarters that it was by no means certain if Beijing would block an ICC referral. “I don’t think a veto...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Human Rights
October 28, 2014

Charm offensive: N. Korea threatens to nuke U.S., hands out Halloween candy

As near as I can figure, Kim Jong Un’s stages of grief over his potential indictment for crimes against humanity have included denial, homophobia, mendacity, engagement, racism, and (again) terrorism, not necessarily in that order. The North Korean model differs from the Kübler-Ross model in its inclusion of several additional stages, and also, for its lack of an “acceptance” stage. In any case, North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated and opaque countries, seems to be taking the threat...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps
October 25, 2014

Charm offensive! N. Korean “diplomats” call Botswana’s UN Ambassador a “black bastard,” laugh at testimony of gulag survivors

Discussion about North Korea’s crimes against humanity is accelerating so quickly that it’s becoming difficult to keep up with it all. Last week, among other events, diplomats from Australia, Panama, and Botswana–which severed diplomatic relations with North Korea after the Commission of Inquiry published its report–held a Panel Discussion on human rights in the North. Not surprisingly, Botswana’s U.N. Ambassador is the latest target of North Korea’s racism, according to Vice News: At one point, members of the North Korean...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/Racism/WTF?
October 25, 2014

Video: Michael Kirby on human rights and religious freedom in North Korea

This was yet another event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where Justice Michael Kirby (despite his admonition, I find it awkward to call him “Mister”) talks about North Korea’s frenetic reaction to proposals to indict Kim Jong Un, and other topics. Kirby also describes some extraordinary encounters with North Korean diplomats, the limitations of a potential ICC referral, and why he didn’t charge North Korea with genocide for the near-extermination of Christians (I still think a strong...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
October 23, 2014

Incoherence of N. Korea’s human rights “engagement” betrays its insincerity

Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il could spend the duration of their reigns answering charges of atrocities with flat denials. That hasn’t worked since the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) published its landmark report in February, or during the scrutiny that has followed. Today, Kim Jong Un must deepen his overdraft of diplomatic capital to fend off an indictment before the International Criminal Court. Ambassador Robert King, U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, describes North Korea’s diplomats as “scrambling” and “fighting...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights
October 22, 2014

Veto or not, a Security Council vote on N. Korean human rights is a victory

A draft U.N. General Assembly resolution, co-authored by EU and Japanese diplomats, may ask the Security Council “to refer North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to an international court” for his crimes against humanity, as documented extensively by a U.N. Commission of Inquiry. A draft leaked to the press on October 9th called for “effective targeted sanctions against those who appear to be most responsible for crimes against humanity,” possibly including Kim Jong Un himself. The draft also recommended “reporting the country’s...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights