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September 12, 2006

Human Wrongs Lawyer

Nice to know that Roh’s previous life experiences are still useful to him on occasion. Before he left for the United States, Mr. Roh reiterated his position on human rights abuses in North Korea. Calling such rights a universal value, he added, “Still, I don’t think there is an agreed universal principle yet in international society as to whether a country can take certain measures against another country because of the details of human rights.” He added, “South Korea has...

Categories History/Human Rights/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
September 8, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 9

The Treasury Department is not through with Kim Jong Il. Undersecretary Stuart Levey has set his sights on two of North Korea’s last two lifelines, South Korea and now, Russia: The United States is not yet satisfied with the results of sanctions aimed at changing North Korea despite the impact the sanctions have had, a senior Treasury official said Friday. The U.S. will watch how the situation develops with Russia, which reportedly has become one of the very few havens...

Categories Money Laundering/NK Economics
September 8, 2006

I Propose an Exchange

I love irony. The fellows on the left are in Korea. They’re angry that their President is trashing their country’s alliance with America, and they want him prosecuted for treason. The fellows on the right are in Seattle. They’re angry with America, of course, but also with their President. They think he’s plotting to sell their country to top-hatted Yankee capitalists. They want him brought before a People’s Revolutionary Court for bourgeois splittism, but they’ll probably vote for him until...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
September 5, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 8

Nigel Cowie, North Korea’s most “legitimate” banker, is selling out, and this time, that’s not just a moral judgment. Richardson links this piece, written by none other than Bradley K. Martin, indicating that he’s selling his Daedong Credit Bank to the British-based Koryo Group, but will stay on to help manage the bank. As for the issue of Daedong’s much-proclaimed legitimacy, Martin adds what strikes me as a highly salient fact: The minority owner of Daedong Credit is Korea Daesong...

Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Money Laundering/NK Economics/WMD
September 4, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 7 (Updated)

[Update: My closing comment below about an expansion of our goals was an understatement: The U.S. Treasury Department, in a shift in its policy toward North Korea, has decided to treat all transactions involving the nation as suspect and subject to sanctions while dictator Kim Jong Il develops nuclear weapons. “Given the regime’s counterfeiting of U.S. currency, narcotics trafficking and use of accounts worldwide to conduct proliferation-related transactions, the line between illicit and licit North Korean money is nearly invisible,”...

Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics
August 29, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 6

From the AP: The financial noose is tightening around North Korea as international banks sever ties with the nation – a move championed by the United States, a top Treasury Department official says. [….] “There is sort of a voluntary coalition of financial institutions saying that they don’t want to handle this business anymore and that is causing financial isolation for the government of North Korea,” Stuart Levey, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in an...

Categories Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Money Laundering/NK Economics
August 26, 2006

China’s Game in Korea: Choose Your Own Reality

[Update: This new report says that the growth rate of Chinese-N. Korean trade fell last quarter, but there are varying explanations. During the first months of this year, however, South Korea’s trade with the North also showed a modest rise, but a decrease in South Korean products (including aid) going North.] As Richardson noted earlier, there has been much recent speculation about the state of Chinese-North Korean relations, particularly since China voted for weakened but potentially significant sanctions at the...

Categories China & Korea/NK Economics/WMD
August 23, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 5

Stuart Levey’s visit to Asia last month is paying off. Yet another nation is cutting off Kim Jong Il’s finances. Vietnamese banks have already closed down North Korean accounts over the past few weeks, most likely forcing Pyongyang to move its money to its last remaining haven, Russia, said Peter Beck, head of the International Crisis Group’s Seoul office, on Tuesday. Beck said Nigel Cowie, general manager of North Korea’s Daedong Credit Bank in Pyongyang, e-mailed him last week and...

Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/NK Economics
August 21, 2006

Kaesong Update

[Correction: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A reader (thanks!) notes that Ms. Schwab is the U.S. Trade Representative. As it happens, the USTR has been independent from the State Department since 1962! My apologies to the State Department for the unintended defamation.] This may be the most unequivocal thing I’ve ever heard anyone in our State Department say, ever. And it pertains to including (North Korean) Kaesong products in a possible FTA with South...

Categories Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 19, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 4: Smoke ‘em While You’ve Got ‘em.

Several months ago, some misguided BBC staffer asked me to fight above my weight and debate former Ambassador Donald Gregg about the allegation that British American Tobacco was secretly making cigarettes in North Korea. (The debate was for a pilot program and never aired.) At the time, I argued that the decision to grow or import tobacco should also be viewed as a decision not to grow or import food. Amb. Gregg, now president of the Korea Society, is a...

Categories Axis of Evil/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Japan/NK Economics/Washington Views
August 10, 2006

TKL Exclusive: What Hyde Will Tell Roh

Via a reliable source I can’t name, I now have some specifics on just how pretty this won’t be. Among Hyde’s expected talking points for his visit to Korea this week are the following. Disclaimer — this is a paraphrase of a paraphrase: * You want operational control of all forces during wartime. How is that going to work? Will there be a U.S. general and a Korean general commanding the entire force jointly or two forces separately? Either way,...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/China & Korea/Human Rights/Korean Society/NK Economics/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 8, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 3

Two interesting reports from the region this week. One is this report that Japan is considering money laundering sanctions against North Korea, similar to those the United States has used with apparent success. There is also a new report that China, directly confronted by U.S. satellite photos, forced the cancellation of a flight that was to have carried North Korean missile parts to Iran. While I doubt China would sign on to a general boycott or sanctions effort, China is...

Categories Axis of Evil/China/China & Korea/Iran/Japan/Japan & Korea/NK Economics
August 7, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 2

During Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levy’s recent visit to a series of Asian nations, I wondered just how Treasury’s green eyeshades had landed on a particular series of bank accounts that attracted his attention. Via a U.S. Treasury official who spoke with the Donga Ilbo, we now know that the answer is linked to the first two questions I asked after the mass arrests that came of Operation Smoking Dragon last August: 1. Were any North Korean nationals caught or implicated?...

Categories Counterfeiting/NK Economics
July 29, 2006

Can Anyone Still Save the FTA?

The South Korean government has concluded that its proposed Free Trade Agreement with the United States has a P.R. problem. Workshop to be announced; head-scratching to follow. Let’s hope whatever discussion comes of this will be more productive than previous warnings about CIA microphones disguises as insects. Thus far, the government has been afraid to take on the extremists, thugs, and demagogues who have seized control of this debate, often forcibly, but if those people comprise a significant portion of...

Categories Anti-Americanism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
July 28, 2006

Kim Jong Il, Unplugged

“You can get a lot farther with a kind word and a gun than a kind word alone.” — Al Capone In an interview with Radio Free Asia (Korean only), Raphael Perl of the Congressional Research Service suggests exactly what I suspected about polite requests from U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey to crack down on North Korean money laundering — the polite requests are backed by some powerful veiled threats: One option available to the US government, although this is...

Categories Counterfeiting/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
July 28, 2006

Journalistic Absurdity of the Day

Yonhap News gives us this head-scratcher in the course of reporting on North Korea’s new demand for its missile launches not to affect the Kaesong Industrial Complex: Nevertheless, the joint industrial complex has been a burden for the South Korean government as there are concerns that a portion of the wages paid to North Korean workers there could be used to develop missiles. (emphasis mine) I’m in awe. Those people labor long hours in sweatshops for a pittance and still...

Categories Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Humor/Satire/NK Economics/Uncategorized/WMD