Category: Miscellaneous

For the first time since 1945, the two heads-of-state of the United States and South Korea would both prefer to end their two states’ alliance. Because the alliance is popular with South Korean voters, Lee Jae-myung would deny that publicly. Privately, he wants to preserve the fiction of one, to wind it down slowly, and failing that, to evade blame for the coming divorce. Trump has no such qualms. In terms of diplomacy and policy, however, the US and ROK...

Watch. Enjoy today, as the threat of Russian bombers begins to go up in smoke, for tomorrow, we’ll all have to think about stringing steel netting over our airport terminals. *   *   * Update: I’m suddenly seized by the fear that Putin has taken Trump’s measure as his puppet and will feel free to respond with unrestrained brutality against Ukrainian civilians. *   *   * Update 2: Inevitably: *   *   * Update 3: My God. I swear, I will never piss off...

The following is a guest commentary by long-time OFK reader and commenter Rand Millar. ~   ~   ~ During the course of 2017 the considerable progress made in its nuclear warhead and ICBM development programs caused the dictatorship ruling the northern half of Korea to become the top foreign policy and security concern of the U.S. government. There are no realistic prospects of negotiations between Washington and its adversary ensconced in Pyongyang. The Pyongyang regime will no more negotiate away its...

Just this morning, I was writing about reports that President Obama would sign a new North Korea sanctions executive order. The Executive Order the President signed this afternoon takes several important steps toward implementing the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, and to a lesser extent, U.N. Security Council Resolution 2270. Full implementation will require years of aggressive investigation and designation of targets, but this is a good start. The text of the E.O. itself is strong, exceeding in several...

Whether you prefer Belgian abbey beers or stouts, I’ll buy you one if you leak me a copy.

As Professor Lee and I have flogged, and flogged, and flogged, and flogged this horse that our sanctions against North Korea were far weaker than was widely assumed, we knew a few of you were rolling your eyes and wondering how long we would go on flogging it. The answer, of course, is, “As long as it takes.”  If the published opinions of Michael Green, Victor Cha, Bruce Klingner, Scott Snyder, the editors of The Washington Post, Evans Revere, Robert Gallucci, and...

Barely four months ago, Park Geun-hye’s negotiating team exchanged high-fives and backslaps with its North Korean counterparts, and came home having secured either peace in our time, or (as I called it) an agreement to fight another day. Today, South Korea says the North’s nuke test was “a grave violation” of the August agreement, the loudspeakers are blaring on both sides of the DMZ, and North Korea says the noise is pushing the two Koreas to “the brink of war.”...

Kim Yang-gon, the head of the North’s United Front Department, has become the latest top North Korean official to assume ambient temperature. As head of the UFD, Kim was North Korea’s nearest analogue to the South’s Unification Minister, but he was also responsible for North Korea’s influence and subversion operations inside South Korea. It is one of my ruder habits to point out that the UFD has a rather substantial fifth column at its service in the South. For more...

Two weeks ago, the Obama Administration’s point man on North Korea policy told Congress that sanctions are hurting Pyongyang. I must confess to some skepticism. [Ski lift made in China.] Instead, the evidence suggests that North Korea’s rich are getting richer, and its poor are staying poor. Materially speaking, the capital’s elites have never had it better, and openly buy imported consumer goods with dollars. Marcus Noland also sees evidence that, whatever the official statistics tell us, Pyongyang’s palace economy...