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March 21, 2008

Changing Channels, Part 2

NORTH KOREA’S AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N. has been suddenly and unexpectedly replaced for the second time in just 18 months: North Korea’s Ambassador to the UN Pak Gil-yon will be replaced in April, it emerged on Wednesday. A South Korean government official said, “I understand that Ambassador Pak will return to North Korea soon. It doesn’t seem likely that he is leaving his post for health reasons.”  [Chosun Ilbo] Recall that the last North Korean Ambassor to the U.N., Han Song-Ryol,...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy
March 17, 2008

Bread, Peace, and Kalashnikovs for Tibet (Not Necessarily in that Order)

Those Tibet protests continue to spread, although more outside Tibet proper than inside. Lhasa looks like an armed camp: CNN reports on the spread of the protests to other regions: The Chinese are making the best traction they can by reporting on the excesses of Tibetan protestors, while effectively keeping their own excesses off the TV screens. One thing the Chicoms do with great efficiency is censorship. They’re blacking out CNN, too: And of course, the usual suspects — U.N.,...

Categories "United" Nations/China
February 28, 2008

Louise Arbour, an Exceptionally Ineffective U.N. Bureaucrat, to Step Down as High Commissioner for Human Rights

I would like to think that on defending human rights, the U.N. may soon become a little less worthless, but we might have said so when Mary Robinson stepped down, too. Recent history isn’t encouraging. You can’t defend something you can’t define. Still, Rep. Ileana-Ros Lehtinen is pleased: (WASHINGTON) ““ The announcement that United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour would not be seeking a second term is “the first step toward saving the broken UN human rights...

Categories "United" Nations/The Camps
February 10, 2008

Yonhap: N. Korea Using Heavy Fuel Oil for Military Exercises

[Update: I have to say that my doubts about this one, as expressed by my question below about refining, are considerable. Heavy fuel oil is nearly as thick as asphalt, not something I’d think could be refined into lighter, higher octane products cheaply. Bruce Klingner’s comment below adds to those doubts, and I offer a more plausible explanation. As with every other question about the diversion of aid to North Korea — and here is yet another such question —...

Categories "United" Nations/Six-Party Talks
January 24, 2008

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Senate Subcommittee Finds Massive Irregularities in UN’s North Korea Development Aid

[Scroll down for updates.] The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has just released its report on the UN Development Program’s North Korea scandal.  Previous postings here concern the U.S. Ambassador’s original complaint,  Ban Ki Moon’s unrealized promises  of a full investigation, and the suspicious  termination of a whistleblower.  First, the main findings: 1. UNDP operated in North Korea with inappropriate staffing, questionable use of foreign currency instead of local currency, and insufficient administrative and fiscal controls.   2. By preventing...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/U.S. Politics
January 12, 2008

South Korea to push U.N. for return of its POW’s

President-Elect Lee Myung Bak’s transition team  is speaking more about its plans to finally bring home about 560 prisoners of war  it believes North Korea is still holding, in violation of the 1953 Armistice agreement.  South Korea may seek help from the international community in pressing North Korea to return South Korean prisoners of war, the Defense Ministry said Saturday.   North Korea has so far balked at South Korean requests to return POWs, saying it has never held any South...

Categories "United" Nations/Abductions/Korean War
December 26, 2007

Two more North Korean refugees coming to U.S.

Two North Korean defectors are in the U.S. with the help of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.The UNHCR’s Beijing office says a man in his 20s and a woman in her 30s have been under UN protection since July last year and were granted approval for asylum in the U.S. by Beijing and Washington. [Chosun Ilbo] The report marks only the second known occasion of the UNHCR performing its assigned mission on behalf of North Korean refugees, and...

Categories "United" Nations/Refugees
November 24, 2007

Casualties of Banalities: The Arrest and Coming Death of Yoo Sang-Joon

One of the bravest men I have ever met is locked in a Chinese prison this weekend, facing the risk of being sent back to certain execution in his native North Korea.  His story stands for the human suffering that endures while diplomats craft a controversial agreement to disarm North Korea of its nuclear weapons and to grant its dictator, Kim Jong-il, the peace treaty and the recognition that his regime has sought for decades.  [The Sunday Times, Michael Sheridan]...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. Politics
November 23, 2007

South Korea Abstains Again

. . . in a U.N. vote  to condemn  North Korea’s human rights  atrocities (via Korea Unification Studies).  They abstain, for the record, from condemning this, or this, or this.  Or this. Almost exactly a year ago, after years of abstentions, the South Koreans finally yielded to intense pressure and voted in favor.  What changed?   My theory is that America’s betrayal gave the South Koreans cover.  Remember that next time anyone tries to argue that our diplomacy with North Korea...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 19, 2007

Beyond the U.N. Experiment

What serious thinker still believes the United Nations still reflects the values of its own charter, much less contributes to seeing them realized?  Much has been said about what was unexpectedly not found in Iraq, much less so about what was unexpectedly found:  proof of just how completely the U.N. had been corrupted by arguably the second-worst dictator on earth.  Not that all of the U.N.’s corruption is monetary: Recall what Churchill told the audience at Fulton about the United...

Categories "United" Nations
August 22, 2007

Ban Ki Moon’s ‘Quiet Diplomacy’ Fails the North Korean People and the U.N., Again

Not only is the UNDP scandal  not going away, it’s confirming how little has changed with both the U.N. and Ban Ki Moon.  For the U.N., corruption and cronyism still triumph over accountability.  For Ban, the fear of offending Kim Jong Il and of controversy in general to be the guide that principle and promises of reform aren’t.   A pattern emerges in which (1) Ban is confronted with U.N. inefficiency and corruption; (2) Ban promises bold reforms; (3) Ban engages...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
August 4, 2007

Beyond the Drum Circle: Stopping Genocide in the Real World

There is within us some hidden power, mysterious and secret, which keeps us going, keeps us alive, despite the natural law. If we cannot live on what is permitted, we live on what is forbidden. That is no disgrace for us. What is permitted is no more than an agreement, and what is forbidden derives from the same agreement. If we do not accept the agreement, it is not binding on us. And particularly where this forbidden and permitted comes...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/U.S. Law
July 9, 2007

All Quid, No Quo

If Andrei Lankov is right and most North  Koreans secretly  know that they don’t really live in an earthly  paradise, these must be confusing times.  Any of them who mull the oddities of the wider world in the privacy of  their own minds must be asking themselves:  “Why do they pay us?”  If North Korea has few natural resources and a  dwindling population of a few million, why does it seem that  everyone on earth lines up to pay tribute...

Categories "United" Nations
June 25, 2007

House Moves to Cut Funds for UNDP, Human Rights Council

Each entity has recently brought particular discredit on itself, and in each case, there is a North Korea nexus. The UNDP recently failed a UN internal audit after U.S. diplomats outed the organization for allowing its Pyongyang operations to become, as a U.N. staffer put it, “an ATM machine” for the regime. It turns out that North Korea used some of the funds to buy overseas real estate and dual-use equipment, and that the U.N. even had a stock of...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Korean Education
June 1, 2007

‘[W]e believed the United Nations could save us.’

I wonder how many mass graves could be marked with those words.    That quote — it would be funny, though epitaphs  seldom are — comes from this testimonial of a Yodok survivor, via the International Herald Tribune.  In 1999, a group of seven North Koreans fleeing their country was intercepted in Russia. The Russian authorities, rejecting appeals from the United Nations and human rights groups, sent them to China. China returned them to North Korea. In the ensuing uproar...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/Refugees
April 25, 2007

Anju Links for 25 April 2007: The Children of Arirang, Questions About Treasury’s WMD Sanctions, and More Blackmail Boasts from Pyongyang

* Arirang, Child Exploitation Tourism: Haven’t you ever wondered about how such young children are taught such precise choreography, and why those robotic smiles are frozen on their little faces? The reality of Arirang is different however, according to vivid testimony of the parents whose children participate in the performance. Their children’s eyes are tense after robust mechanical drilling by their director. The training period for the Arirang is over 6 months. Particularly delicate dancing or movement may require training...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/WMD
April 24, 2007

Anju Links for 24 April 2007: China and South Korea Claim Their Largesse Has Limits, Another Fresh-Faced Septuagenarian Rises in Pyongyang, and Why the Defunding Debate Should Focus on the U.N., Not Our Troops

*   North Korea is now eleven days past the April 13th deadline by which  it agreed to shut down and seal the Yongbyon reactor, make a meaningful showing at another session of six-party talks,  begin discussions about the full extent of its nuclear programs, and invite U.N. inspectors back in.  As of today, it has failed to fulfill any of those conditions.  I  just  wanted to point that out in case Chris Hill is reading or Kim Jong  Bill...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Kremlinology/NK Economics