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November 17, 2006

General Assembly Passes N. Korea Resolution, Continues to Be Mostly Worthless

[Update:   Here is the text of the resolution.] South Korea for the first time on Friday joined other U.N. members in rebuking North Korea for gross human rights abuses, including torture, political executions and miserable prison camp conditions. A draft resolution on the abuses was passed by a vote of 91 to 21 with 60 abstentions in a General Assembly committee that includes all U.N. members, thereby assuring its official adoption by the full assembly. North Korea rejected the...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Human Rights
November 16, 2006

No Abstention This Year!

Seoul, in a surprise reversal, will reluctantly support this year’s U.N. resolution on human rights in North Korea: South Korea decided Thursday to vote in favor of a United Nations resolution condemning North Korea’s human rights abuses, citing a change in the geopolitical situation after Pyongyang’s nuclear weapon test in October.  The U.N. General Assembly is expected to vote on the nonbinding resolution drafted by the European Union, the United States, and Japan early Friday (Seoul time). Thursday’s decision, which...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Human Rights
November 14, 2006

The Reinvention of Ban Ki-Moon

He seems to have concluded that he needs to put some distance between himself and his comrades in the ruling party.  The first of two stories is this remarkable statement, timed just before Seoul is expected to abstain from yet another UN resolution on human rights in the North. UN secretary-general-designate Ban Ki-moon on Sunday called for a “more proactive position” from Seoul on North Korea’s human rights issues. Ban said the international community “has great expectations in that regard,...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/Korean War
November 13, 2006

Shame on South Korea

They’re going to abstain again.  This year, there will be  another U.N. resolution condemning North Korea’s mass murder of its own people — 2.4 million and counting, and South Korea will remain silent.  LiNK was there to make sure the world remembers this cowardly, selfish, and  reprehensible act.  One day, the North Korean people will demand an explanation.  These abstentions will add  the bitterness of betrayal to the great difficulties that are sure to come with reunification.  (Picture credits:  1,...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Human Rights
November 11, 2006

North Korea’s Food Crisis and the Theory of Comparative Advantage

Donor fatigue has hit the World Food Program’s much-reduced North Korea operations: James Morris, the agency’s outgoing chief, told the WFP executive board session in Rome earlier this week that the operation in North Korea “is dramatically underfunded.” “If we are to continue, and you overwhelmingly have said you want us to stay there and want us to be helpful in addressing the humanitarian agenda, we are going to need some help,” he said. “Otherwise, come February, we will be...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
November 10, 2006

The Next Food Crisis, Part 1: DLA Piper Report: N. Korean Famine A ‘Crime Against Humanity’

I’ve finally finished reading the DLA Piper report, which calls on the U.N. Security Council to invoke Chapter VI, and then Chapter VII, against North Korea for the crime of failing to protect its population.  As regular readers know, I’ve long placed the North Korean famine at the top of the list of its crimes against humanity, and now, for the first time, a published scholarly report is making that same accusation and tying it to specific provisions of international...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights
November 10, 2006

The Next Food Crisis, Part 2: Will Josette Sheeran Stop the Next Great Famine?

As the reports on North Korea’s food situation continue to grow more dire, I’m no longer alone in warning that the country is again on the brink of famine (see, e.g., this, this, or this, at pages 26-28).  That’s why food policy — not nukes,  missiles, or even other human rights issues —  could soon become the most urgent issue in  how the world approaches North  Korea.  It would also be a real opportunity for the U.N. to redeem itself...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights
November 6, 2006

A (Blue) House Divided Against Itself

Kim Jong Il can count dividing the U.S.-Korea alliance as one of his recent successes, but in the process, he’s also divided his friends in South Korea. The left finds itself split among accomodators, appeasers, and outright agents, and those factions are going into an election year at war with each other. One of the most divisive of the internecine struggles is Seoul’s to-join-or-not-to-join agony over the Proliferation Security Initiative. Today, Yonhap has a long story on the subject. President...

Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/WMD
November 4, 2006

‘Crimes Against Humanity:’ DLA Piper’s Report Is the Ultimate Must-Read on North Korean Human Rights

You may recall my recent post on the New York Times Op-Ed by Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel, and Kjell Magne Bondevik to treat the North Korean crisis as a human rights issue. One of the founding beliefs that inspired me to start OFK is that the issues are inseparable. Only a regime with so little regard for human life and dignity would allow its people to starve by the millions and divert those resources to weapons of mass murder. That...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 2, 2006

North Korea Wants Its Drug Money Back

[Update:  A senior Korean official suggests that the U.S. will do just that right after the talks resume.  Scroll down.] [Update 2:  The Washington Post post also suspects that North Korea’s announcement is merely an effort to foil the American economic pressure: We hope Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, who conducted lengthy talks with his North Korean counterpart in recent days, is justified in expecting “substantial progress” from the new round. But history suggests that both North Korea...

Categories "United" Nations/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks
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 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 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