Category: Anju Links

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? Our U.N. Ambassador’s proposed response to North Korea’s missile launch was to add 42 companies to the sanctions list. China proposed two, and we compromised at … three. All of those entities — Green Pine, Amroggang Development Bank, and Tanchon Commercial Bank were already sanctioned by Treasury for their involvement in WMD proliferation. Back when John Bolton was at the U.N., the Security Council was passing tough and potentially effective resolutions against North Korea. People bitched...

PRESIDENT OBAMA, in a joint news conference with the visiting Prime Minister of Japan, says North Korea’s provocation are a sign of weakness, and this: “The old pattern of provocation that then gets attention and somehow insists on the world purchasing good behavior from them, that pattern is broken,” Obama said in a joint news conference with Noda at the White House. Let’s check back on that after November, when Wendy Sherman runs to the Oval Office with the blueprint...

EX-MILOSEVIC PROSECUTOR SAYS U.N. SHOULD “PUT NORTH KOREA ON TRIAL:” Unfortunately, this would require Security Council approval, so the precise means and moment of failure are completely predictable. This isn’t to say that the effort is unworthy. It would make a great thought experiment: The situation in North Korea is a clarion call for the Security Council and other U.N. members to show courage in a case of political complexity. There can be few places in the world where the...

THE ECONOMIST on North Korea’s gulag: Perhaps the scale of the atrocity numbs moral outrage. Certainly it is easier to lampoon the regime as ruled by extraterrestrial freaks than to grapple with the suffering it inflicts (The Economist is guilty). Yet murder, enslavement, forcible population transfers, torture, rape: North Korea commits nearly every atrocity that counts as a crime against humanity. A world that places any value on the idea of universal human rights should no longer overlook North Korea’s...

IF JIMMY CARTER HAS LOST RABBI SHMULEY BOTEACH, HE’S LOST … well, upper Westchester County I suppose, but still, it’s good to see things like this in the Huffington Post: So why haven’t we done more to help the innocent people of North Korea who must live under fear and tyranny, and who suffer the specter of state-organized famines? Many will say that our hands are tied due to the fact that the North has nuclear weapons, which just reinforces...

CHINA DENIES selling missile transporters (TELs) to North Korea, but the U.N.’s sanctions committee will investigate. Look for China to block the report if it comes up with any evidence that China, yet again, violated UNSCR 1874, 1718, and 1695. That’s how China responded to a previous report that it helped North Korea sell missiles to Iran. Last year, it also blocked a U.N. report on North Korea’s uranium enrichment program. Look for them to do the same when the...

CHINA ‘PAUSES’ DEPORTATIONS? The AFP, citing the Yomiuri Shimbun, reports that China has temporarily stopped sending North Korean refugees back to Kim Jong Il’s firing squads and concentration camps to punish it for its latest misadventure in rocket science: The Yomiuri Shimbun quoted two Chinese officials as saying the long-standing policy of swiftly returning any North Korean who made it across the border and into China — despite the punishment they face — had been put on hold. “If refugees...

THERE, FIXED IT FOR YOU: “UN strongly [weakly] condemns North Korea rocket launch, warns of [no] further action if new nuclear test.” Seriously, guys, it’s a presidential statement — not even a resolution. It’s not just that, it’s the swiftness with which the U.N. collectively decided to imitate parody. ____________________________________ HOW TO REPORT FROM NORTH KOREA, from a critical consumer: It isn’t rocket science, really; just tell the reader what you saw and what you didn’t see, and if you...

YES, I HAVE YOUR ROCKET PORN: We’re apparently pretty close to North Korea’s missile satellite launch, judging by these pictures taken by an AFP photographer, this Reuters report, and this AP report, which ironically contains no visible input from the Pyongyang Bureau. You’ve probably heard by now that North Korea is already doing suspicious things around its nuclear test site at Mt. Mantap. Last night, a friend asked me when we could expect that nuke test. In the past, it’s...

TEAR DOWN THIS WALL: It’s too bad almost no one reported it at the time he said it: “The day all Koreans yearn for will not come easily or without great sacrifice, but make no mistake, it will come,” Obama said. “And when it does, when it does, change will unfold that once seemed impossible. And checkpoints will open, and watchtowers will stand empty, and families long separated will finally be reunited, and the Korean people at long last will...

FAIR AND BALANCED! See? The Associated Press doesn’t only fawn over mass-murdering despots, it’s capable of fawning over elected leaders, too — just slightly less enthusiastically. ___________________________________ WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Hugh Restall thinks we should shoot down North Korea’s missile. Had you asked me about this before March 26, 2010, I’ve have been categorically opposed. Now, I incline to the view that we need to demonstrate that we have limits, and this would not cross the line...

REVERSED POLARITY: North Korea is still denying to the world that it sank the Cheonan, but according to one recent defector, it’s proudly proclaiming its responsibility at home. On the other hand, former Ambassador Donald Gregg, who as far as I know hasn’t actually defected in the geographic sense, nonetheless is still getting ink from KCNA for his Cheonan conspiracy theorizing. Maybe one of the AP’s new North Korean “correspondents” should interview him. ____________________________________ MISSILE SATELLITE LAUNCH UPDATE: Despite the...

NO ONE REALLY KNOWS what the population of North Korea is, so I’m not sure how anyone can really claim to know that life expectancy in North Korea is 11 years less than in South Korea, or that two-thirds of its children are malnourished (and one-third of them stunted as a result). I do think it’s safe to say, however, that North Korea compares unfavorably to all of its neighbors with respect to the welfare and happiness of its people,...

Has it really been just two years?

CASEY LARTIGUE EVOKES the memory of Frederick Douglass in support of North Korean refugees. I think the comparison isn’t just apt, but overdue. _____________________________________ CHRIST! DID JOHN FEFFER REALLY SAY THIS? Although such a two-tiered society is not uncommon in the developing world, North Korea once prided itself on breaking free from this model of stratified development. True, the regime traditionally maintained a rather complex political hierarchy based on perceived loyalty to the system, but this neo-Confucian system is giving...