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Category: Sunshine

October 18, 2013

Kaesong was not shut down properly. Would you like to restart Kaesong in safe mode?*

Like most people, I don’t know what the genius behind this shutdown strategy realistically expected to accomplish with it. Its sudden, and apparently pressured, abandonment suggests that its mastermind didn’t think through its potential economic or political consequences, and that the decision was largely motivated by emotion and impulse, most likely egged on by a few yes-men in an echo chamber. He will (and should) pay significant economic and political costs for it. Potential investors, foreign governments, domestic government officials,...

Categories Sunshine
October 11, 2013

N. Korea says Park GH’s father “smelled of elderberries,” S. Korea responds with “large wooden badger” plan

I don’t know about you, but I sure got tired of Park Geun Hye’s hippie Earth mother act last summer, after North Korea started making nice, right after banks all over China and Europe started blocking North Korean accounts. Thank God that’s over with. We’re back to steaming reactors, spinning centrifuges, war drums, nasty taunts, and all the things we’ve grown to love and miss about North Korea. The North was uncharacteristically quietly during August’s Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises, but for reasons known only...

Categories North-South/ROK Military/Sunshine/U.S. Military
September 21, 2013

Kaesong investors beware: Treasury issues new warning about N. Korea money laundering risk

Precisely what North Koreans do with earnings from Kaesong, I think, is something that we are concerned about.” – David Cohen, Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Just as Kaesong begins the process of reopening, and as the South Korean government seeks to “internationalize” investment there, the Treasury Department has issued a new warning about money laundering risks emanating from North Korea. The warning echoes longstanding concerns by the global Financial Action Task Force. Every potential investor in...

Categories Money Laundering/North-South/Sanctions/Sunshine
September 13, 2013

Kaesong Updates

The North Korean workers who were previously dispersed from Kaesong are being told to prepare to go back to work … provided that the necessary gratuities are paid, of course. Aidan Foster-Carter asks a very sensible question in a commentary at Korea Real Time: “What foreign firm in their (sic) right mind would consider investing in Kaesong?” This Joongang Ilbo report bolsters his skepticism: The ministry in charge of inter-Korean relations said that in order to attract investments from outside Korea to the park, a subcommittee...

Categories Sunshine
September 12, 2013

Can North Korea have both Kaesong and Yongbyon?

Who is the real Park Geun Hye? The uneasy coexistence of two headlines may soon tell us. The first headline tells us that, six months after North Korea withdrew its workers, the Kaesong Industrial Park will soon restart.  The second tells us that North Korea’s reactor at Yongbyon already has. Both of these developments are bad news for those who want to see North Korea disarmed, for reasons I explained here. But if Park is really as tough as some...

Categories North-South/Sunshine/WMD
August 19, 2013

Kaesong deal leaves more questions that answers

“Precisely what North Koreans do with earnings from Kaesong, I think, is something that we are concerned about.” – David Cohen, Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence I won’t conceal my disappointment that North and South Korea say they’ve reached an agreement to reopen Kaesong.  Doing so now would undermine that international financial pressure that will be necessary to disarm North Korea at a time when it’s showing signs of working, and when that pressure might help us achieve interests...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
March 15, 2013

North Korea’s cash-for-summit demands put 2010 attacks in a new light

WERE THE 2010 ATTACKS North Korea’s way of making good on extortion?  Stephan Haggard, not widely know for his hard-line views, cites an article in the Chosun Ilbo revealing that Kim Jong Il wanted a summit with Lee Myung Bak, but at a price. The sticking point was money. How much? According to the Chosun Ilbo, $500-600 million in rice and fertilizer aid, which had effectively been cut from the first of the year, and perhaps some cash too; that was...

Categories Appeasement/Cheonan Incident/North-South/Sunshine/Terrorism (NK)/Yeonpyeong Attack
January 31, 2013

The Stillbirth of Sunshine Lite

SO PARK GEUN-HYE HASN’T EVEN BEEN INAUGURATED YET, and her plans to engage North Korea — she called them “trustpolitik” — are turning out just as I’d predicted they would, and just how Sung Yoon Lee predicted in the opening paragraphs of this piece — they’re being overcome by North Korea’s own plans: Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, has ordered his top military and party officials to take “substantial and high-profile important state measures” to retaliate against American-led United Nations sanctions on the country, the North’s...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
January 3, 2013

Happy New Year, Now Pay Up

Those who read only headlines will believe that Kim Jong Un has declared peace with South Korea. Those who read on, and who know anything of the background to the story, will see that Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s Speech is a demand for Park Geun-Hye to resume massive financial aid and make territorial concessions to the North, in line with what Roh Moo-Hyun agreed in his 2007 going-out-of-business summit. It’s debatable whether the message was really all that conciliatory.  Kim,...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
December 20, 2012

Park, Lee, and Obama all had big plans to “engage” North Korea. North Korea had other plans.

Robert links to some polling data suggesting the pleasantly surprising fact that not only did North Korea’s missile test fail to swing votes toward Moon Jae-in, the ideological successor and former Chief of Staff to arch-appeaser Roh Moo-Hyun, it may have caused more conservative voters to flock to the polls to vote for Park (or against Moon).  If those voters expected Park to govern as a hard-liner, however, they’re projecting. Park didn’t run as a hard-liner in this election; in fact,...

Categories Appeasement/North-South/Sunshine
September 7, 2012

Really? DJ Horked the Whole Sunshine Thing from the Moonies?

Depending on your perspective, this revelation may soften your image of Reverend Moon, or you might be saying to yourself, “yeah, that figures.” Having lived in South Korea during the height of the Sunshine craze and observed it with more pity than anger ever since, the whole thing certainly looked like a cult to me. Moon was an early practitioner of the kind of conciliatory politics that the South Korean government would eventually embrace in its now-abandoned “Sunshine Policy,” which...

Categories Sunshine/WTF?
March 24, 2012

Told you so: Now that the FTA is in effect, South Korea wants to use it to put North Korean-made products on your store shelves

So now that the Free-Trade Agreement between the U.S. and South Korea is officially in effect, the supposedly conservative South Korean government is pulling a bait-and-switch, reviving the demand of its leftist predecessor to include products made by the virtual slave laborers in Kaesong, North Korea in the deal: South Korea is pushing to include the Gaeseong industrial zone in North Korea in its free-trade deals with the U.S. and Europe, a step that would deepen cross- border ties after...

Categories NK Economics/Sunshine
January 20, 2011

South Korea’s Credibility Problem

China’s plans for the economic colonization of Rason in North Korea have set off a great deal of fretting in South Korea about China grabbing up North Korean resources. In my experience, those who fret about this are usually setting up an argument for South Korean investment in the North. But we know how that’s always ended. Instead of pouring more money into this bottomless pit, South Korea ought to let it be known that after reunification, Korea will invoke...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
December 28, 2010

Rumors Hint at Policy Shifts in U.S. and South Korea

From Engagement to Reunification? So says the Chosun Ilbo, in describing what would be a major policy shift for South Korea. From 2008 until now, the policy would best be described as reluctant engagement, which brought out North Korea’s violent and extortionate streak. Now, according to unnamed sources in the Unification Ministry, the administration seems to be looking for ways to prepare for and even accelerate reunification: The government is shifting the emphasis of North Korea policy from exchanges and...

Categories Korean War II/North-South/Sunshine/Washington Views
November 28, 2010

Is South Korea Finally Ready to Cut North Korea Off?

The New York Times, in a report bylined in Incheon, says that the Yeonpyeong attack has caused a significant shift in South Korean views about the North. After years of backing food aid and other help for the North despite a series of provocations that included two nuclear tests, many South Koreans now say they feel betrayed and angry. “I think we should respond strongly toward North Korea for once instead of being dragged by them,” said Cho Jong-gu, 44,...

Categories North-South/Sunshine/Yeonpyeong Attack
July 9, 2010

Kaesong Updates

A bus accident, apparently caused in part by bad weather, has killed 10 North Korean workers and injured 40 others at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which, by the way, subsidizes Kim Jong Il to the tune of $50 million per month. Give a thought to the poor families of the dead … and the wounded as well. I’m not sure how much of that substantial sum goes into providing suitable medical care for the North Korean people, but my best...

Categories Human Trafficking/NK Economics/North-South/Sunshine
June 14, 2010

Kaesong Death Watch

Contrary to a recent North Korean statement suggesting that the regime was shutting down Kaesong once and for all, the factories are still shipping goods, although the experiment itself is pining for the fjords. The complete failure of South Korea or the United States to respond to the sinking of the Cheonan with sufficient measures to deter the next attack, on one hand, and the failure of North Korea to extract more money from South Korea or the United States,...

Categories North-South/Sunshine/Useful Idiocy