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April 17, 2015

Expert: cash shortage could undermine Kim Jong Un’s succession

You won’t find a more authoritative open-source study of North Korea’s police state than the one Ken Gause did for the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. When it comes to North Korea’s internal security, kremlinology, and command systems, Gause earns a great deal of respect among North Korea watchers. So when Ken Gause tells Yonhap that Kim Jong Un “has not fully consolidated his power,” and is at risk of failing to do so “in a couple of...

Categories Kremlinology/Sanctions
April 15, 2015

Why does North Korea still need food aid? (Updated)

The UN aid agencies working in North Korea — the Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Population Fund, UNICEF, the World Food Program, and WHO (writing collectively as Relief Web) — have published a new report. I draw three main conclusions from it. First, despite some reports of improved food production, the humanitarian situation is still bad. Second, aid agencies still aren’t being forthcoming about the most important reasons for that. Third, various UN entities are working at cross purposes, and don’t...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Sanctions
April 8, 2015

On N. Korea’s crimes against humanity, Congress can do what Obama won’t and the U.N. can’t.

It’s nearly a sure bet that you hadn’t heard that last month, American diplomats in Geneva co-sponsored yet another resolution (HRC/28/L.18) at the U.N. Human Rights Council, expressing “deep concern about human rights violations in North Korea.” For those who may have lost track, that follows the HRC’s vote to begin an inquiry into human rights in North Korea (March 2013), the presentation of the report (February 2014), an HRC vote endorsing the COI report (April 2014), a General Assembly...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
April 3, 2015

With Sony in mind, Obama signs new cyberwar E.O., but will he enforce it?

On Wednesday, the President signed a new executive order authorizing sanctions against anyone the State and Treasury Departments decide has engaged in conduct we’d colloquially call cyberespionage, cyberwarfare, or cyberterrorism. The new categories of sanctionable conduct include — (A) harming, or otherwise significantly compromising the provision of services by, a computer or network of computers that support one or more entities in a critical infrastructure sector; (B) significantly compromising the provision of services by one or more entities in a critical...

Categories Cyberwar/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)
April 2, 2015

Tell me who you boycott and I’ll tell you who you are: On Indiana, S. Africa & N. Korea

As I write this, advocacy groups nationwide are recomposing the tested strategy of using economic isolation to coerce an oppressive, backward regime to improve its human rights practices. The regime, unfortunately, isn’t North Korea; it’s Indiana. That strategy, however, is a moral muscle memory to those of us who came of age as America and Europe mobilized to boycott and sanction apartheid out of existence. Then, when President Reagan came out for “constructive engagement” with South Africa, he was met...

Categories History/Racism/Sanctions
March 25, 2015

Must read: Iranian bank handled arms transactions for Tehran, Pyongyang through Seoul branch

Investigative journalist Claudia Rosett, who covered the Tienanmen Massacre and exposed the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal, has written an extensive report about the operations of Iran’s Bank Mellat in Seoul during the administrations of Roh Moo-Hyun and Lee Myung-Bak: In a cable dated March 20, State asked its embassy in Seoul to tell the South Korean government that “Bank Mellat has facilitated the movement of millions of dollars for Iran’s nuclear program since at least 2003.” Four days later, State followed...

Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
March 18, 2015

Breaking news! FINCEN rehashes same old North Korea advisory.

To hear Yonhap tell it, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network just stuffed Kim Jong Un into a size XXXXL iron maiden, financially speaking: The United States has issued another advisory on financial transactions with North Korea, designating the communist country as a jurisdiction with high money laundering and terrorist financing risks, a U.S. report said Wednesday. The guidance to U.S. financial institutions, issued Monday by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), is based on the international money...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
March 12, 2015

Russia’s nuclear cooperation with N. Korea violates at least three UNSC resolutions

My final excerpt from the draft U.N. Panel of Experts report is a lengthy graf (below the fold) describing long-standing and continuing Russian assistance to, and cooperation with, some of the same scientists involved in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. It’s hard for me to understand how this is not a violation of the UNSC sanctions. Despite the fact that key scientists in designated North Korean agencies (for example, its General Bureau of Atomic Energy) were invited to do research in...

Categories Proliferation/Russia & Korea/Sanctions/WMD
March 9, 2015

Why legal investments in North Korea are a money laundering risk

You’ve often seen me write about the importance of “financial transparency” in transactions with North Korea. For a decade, economic engagement has mostly been done by one of two models: (1) controlled interactions with members of the elite, the actual effects of which are negligible at best; and (2) barbed-wire capitalism, where a few North Korean officials relay orders from foreign managers to hand-picked workers, and where the regime seals the whole enterprise off to prevent it from influencing the local community. The former are, for the most part, of little...

Categories Engagement/Kaesong/Money Laundering/Sanctions/Sunshine
March 4, 2015

North Korea evades U.N. sanctions with shell games, spell games, and whack-a-mole

On any given day, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control may publish several pages of new designations for the list of Specially Designated Nationals. Inevitably, most of the designations will be designations of aliases. That’s because one of the oldest sanctions-evasion tricks is renaming an entity, so that when banks type its name into their software, they don’t get a hit that might warn them to decline the transaction, block the account, or file a Suspicious Activity Report....

Categories "United" Nations/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
March 3, 2015

Yes, North Korea is still using the dollar system to launder its money.

The Financial Action Task Force has re-issued its call for “countermeasures” against the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing emanating from North Korea. The FATF’s call is not significantly different from advisories the FATF has issued since 2011, but it is significant in one way. More sensible Korea-watchers are accustomed to the pavlovian response of the South Korean press, and of certain American academics, whenever North Korea hints at being willing to talk. We saw this again after Kim Jong Un’s New Year speech, which...

Categories "United" Nations/Money Laundering/Sanctions
March 2, 2015

North Korea’s arms trade flourishes as U.S. diplomacy falters

The latest U.N. Panel of Experts report is a bleak one for the U.N., and for an Obama Administration that seems content to outsource its policy to it. North Korea shows no sign of complying with the resolutions, and every sign of pursuing its WMD programs at full speed. Yongbyon was active for a while last year, and as recently as last September, there were signs of new excavation at North Korea’s nuclear test site at Punggye-ri. North Korea has improved...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
February 27, 2015

So, what “appropriate measures” *did* the feds take against Dennis Rodman for violating N. Korea sanctions?

The newest U.N. Panel of Experts report* on North Korea sanctions enforcement contains this buried treasure: The first question this raises is what those appropriate measures were. The use of passive voice conceals whether the feds took any measures at all. The second question is why there should be a “lack of information” from Rodman, when the Commerce and Treasury Departments have subpoena powers and an obligation to cooperate with U.N. authorities enforcing North Korea sanctions. The law applies to...

Categories Luxury Goods/Sanctions/Useful Idiocy
February 25, 2015

Kim Jong Un seeks friends and funds abroad as he isolates his people.

In the three years that he has been in power, His Porcine Majesty has found plenty of time for Dennis Rodman, but none for meetings with foreign leaders. Suddenly, in the last two months, he has flirted with (1) a summit with South Korean leader Park Geun-Hye, (2) inviting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Pyongyang, (3) and a visit to Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May. His central bank even “committed itself to implementing the action plan of ‘international...

Categories Capitalism/China & Korea/Class Warfare/Diplomacy/Russia & Korea/Sanctions
February 19, 2015

More food for hungry North Koreans is not “bad news” for sanctions proponents.

I don’t always agree with Scott Snyder’s views, but I’ve always enjoyed reading his work. In almost every case, I’ve found it to be well-researched and objective. In a blog post for the Council on Foreign Relations, Snyder cautiously concludes that North’s cereal production is “stable and improving” — from 5.93 million tons last year to 5.94 million tons this year, a more generous characterization than the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization report he cites, which calls North Korea’s food production “stagnant.”...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Sanctions
February 2, 2015

Why I’m concerned about the overuse of financial sanctions

As much as I’ve advocated the use of financial sanctions as a potentially effective tool against North Korea, and as much as financial sanctions against Russia appear to have played a significant role in crashing the ruble, it worries me that if we use this tool too much against the wrong targets, we risk blunting the power of our financial weapon. I think North Korea is a good target for financial sanctions because it is (a) dependent on the financial...

Categories Russia/Sanctions
January 23, 2015

Three Cheers for Obama’s Sony attribution, a golf clap for his “proportional” response.

In The Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima describes how Sony’s decision to cancel the premiere of The Interview catalyzed the Obama Administration’s decision to blame North Korea publicly: The next day, alarmed by the surrender, President Barack Obama convened his top officials in the White House Situation Room and, based on their unanimous recommendation, decided to take an action the United States had never dared before in response to a cyberattack by another nation: name the government responsible and punish it....

Categories Anju Links/Cyberwar/Russia/Sanctions