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Category: An Alliance?

July 19, 2022

The U.S. & South Korea should enforce existing sanctions against North Korea, not bargain for new ones

Between 2017 and 2022, the leaders of the United States and South Korea performed an experiment: what if they froze joint military exercises, said nothing about Kim Jong-un’s crimes against humanity, offered aid, and stopped actively enforcing sanctions? The results of the experiment are in. This week, Treasury Secretary Yellen is in Seoul, where she met with President Yoon to discuss, among other items, what each of the two government should do about Kim Jong-un’s increased missile tests, and the...

Categories An Alliance?/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law
July 23, 2020

You can’t blame Donald Trump for filling Moon Jae-in’s cabinet with pro-Pyongyang ex-terrorists

Yesterday morning, I was surprised to learn that my tweets about Lee In-young’s master plan to get around sanctions and bail out Kim Jong-un made the Chosun Ilbo and are spreading around Korean YouTube. Because you hate reading long posts—even long posts that you really should read—I decided to hold back for today my examination of why Lee and his colleagues are so motivated to aid and abet Pyongyang’s sanctions-busting, and all of its plans for Seoul’s money. We might...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column
July 21, 2020

Our S Korean ally has a plan to bail Kim Jong-un out, but it’s no better than the rest of them

I really think South Korean President Moon Jae-in wants to bail Kim Jong-un out more than I want my next breath. Even before he was sworn in, he called for the reopening of Kaesong and other joint projects to ease the burden of U.S.-led sanctions. Once in office, he called for major investments in North Korea until a call from the Treasury Department scared his bankers away. He turned a blind eye to purchases of North Korean coal, and probably to the smuggling of luxury goods, into...

Categories An Alliance?/Sanctions
March 13, 2019

UN Panel investigating South Korean sanctions violations

The U.N. Panel of Experts has released its latest report, and for the first time since it began publishing them in 2009, it is now investigating South Korea for violating the sanctions. One area the Panel is looking into is its imports of North Korean coal for ten months, in violation of UNSCR 2371, while its Coast Guard dragged out an “investigation” of those imports, allowed the smuggling ships to come and go freely without seizing them, and later charged...

Categories An Alliance?/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions/Sunshine
October 17, 2018

Moon Jae-in’s unilateral sanctions violations are decoupling South Korea’s alliance with the U.S. (updated)

A FEW JOURNALISTS HAVE (if belated and partially) figured out that Moon Jae-in’s promises to Kim Jong-un would violate a series of U.N. Security Council sanctions. The latest example of this is Moon’s promise to start rebuilding a railroad connection to Kaesong and points north before the year ends. Let’s go to the resolutions to see what provisions this most clearly offends, starting with UNSCR 2321 … “32. Decides that all Member States shall prohibit public and private financial support...

Categories An Alliance?/Sanctions
August 29, 2018

The U.S.-Korea alliance is “in jeopardy” & it’s not even (mostly) Trump’s fault

MAKING THE ROUNDS IN WASHINGTON THIS WEEK IS THIS MUST-READ REPORT, in Tokyo Business Today, by Stanford Professor Daniel Sneider: “Behind The Chaos Of Washington’s Korea Policy.” The report is based on Sneider’s discussions with insiders familiar with the administration’s North Korea negotiations and policymaking, and yes, you should be worried: [T]he spoken, and unspoken, aim of most professionals implementing North Korea policy is to hold off President Trump from meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again. They worry...

Categories An Alliance?/Sanctions/Washington Views
August 21, 2018

A new report says South Korea spends more to influence Washington than Israel, China & Saudi Arabia combined

IN WASHINGTON, THERE IS GROWING UNEASE ABOUT how far and how fast South Korea’s anti-anti-North Korean President, Moon Jae-in, is moving to undermine the pressure of U.S. and U.N. sanctions before Pyongyang takes meaningful steps to disarm. The unease is greatest in Congress, where there is also unease that both Moon and Trump have done so much to legitimize a tyrant who would, in a more just world, be hauled before a tribunal and sentenced to spend the remainder of...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
August 15, 2018

South Korea has been caught violating 3 UN resolutions this week (so far)

South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade now admits that it first suspected that subsidiaries of its national power company were importing North Korean coal as early as October 2017. For those of you who don’t do math, that was ten months ago. The result of that extensive ten-month investigation? Despite all the red flags that should have put everyone involved in this transaction on notice that they were buying North Korean coal right up until last week, the South...

Categories An Alliance?/Sanctions
May 9, 2018

To save Korea’s democracy, withdraw its American security blanket

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” – Samuel Johnson Most Korea-watchers will view the recent hints from both Seoul and Washington about a U.S. withdrawal with alarm, and as a grave risk to the security of both Korea and Japan. Indeed, it’s one more development that’s consistent with my hypothesis that Pyongyang means to coerce and cajole Seoul into submission, first by lowering the South’s...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Korean Society/Korean War II/North-South/Sunshine
May 8, 2018

Moon Chung-in throws U.S. Forces Korea out the Overton Window (Update: & so does Trump)

A PATTERN WE’VE SEEN REPEATED OVER THE LAST YEAR goes roughly as follows: First, Moon Chung-in, the left-wing South Korean President’s crazy old uncle1 shouts something wacky from his attic when the Americans are within earshot. The Americans wince and pretend they didn’t hear. President Moon Jae-in and his cabinet walk the wacky remark back and gently hush the crazy old uncle. But once Moon Chung-in has defenestrated the wacky idea out of his attic’s Overton Window, the hard-left base...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
May 2, 2018

North Korean Freedom Week is the next test for free speech in “free” Korea

A FEW OF US WILL ALWAYS STUBBORNLY INSIST THAT WE DISREGARD THE LIVES AND DIGNITY of North Korea’s oppressed people at our own peril. We argue that there can be no verified disarmament of a North Korea that remains a closed society, no security in its promises as long as it mendaciously denies the existence of its prison camps, no lasting peace as long as it holds human life in contempt, no reunification between a liberal democracy and a tyranny...

Categories An Alliance?/Censorship/Korean War II/Sunshine
April 30, 2018

Moon Jae-in just put Seoul on a collision course with U.S. & U.N. sanctions (updated)

THE ONE INVIOLABLE RULE OF INTER-KOREAN SUMMITS IS THAT THERE IS ALWAYS A SCANDAL sooner or later. Kim Dae-jung’s summit with Kim Jong-il in 2000 resulted in a Nobel Peace Prize, eight indictments, six convictions, and a bunch of suspended prison sentences for an illegal payment of $500 million to North Korea. Otherwise, it did not disarm North Korea and did not produce a lasting reduction of tensions.((Previously said $500,000. Since corrected.)) Roh Moo-hyun’s 2007 summit with Kim Jong-il also...

Categories An Alliance?/Kaesong/North-South/Sanctions/Sunshine
November 7, 2017

The Moonshine Policy failed because Kim Jong-un demands surrender, not engagement

Just before Air Force One took off for Tokyo, the New York Times printed a story by Choe Sang-hun, mourning for Moon Jae-in’s failure to revive the Sunshine Policy, wallowing in self-pitying nationalism, and pinning most of the blame for this on Donald Trump – not Moon, for failing to read the U.N. Security Council resolutions before promising initiatives that would violate them, not Korean voters who don’t trust Pyongyang and don’t want a revival of the Sunshine Policy. Choe...

Categories An Alliance?/Korean War II/Sunshine/U.S. & Korea
September 14, 2017

South Koreans like Moon Jae-in personally, but are uneasy with his North Korea policies

If Moon Jae-in and his inner circle are, in the pits of their souls, as extreme as I think they are, why hasn’t Moon moved forward with his plans to reopen Kaesong, or Kaesongograd? Probably because he can read a poll, such as this one from the center-left Korea Herald: A recent poll by Gallup Korea, conducted from Sept. 5, after the Sept. 3 nuclear weapons test by the North, shows a clear sign of hardening attitudes among South Koreans....

Categories An Alliance?/Korean Politics/Korean Society
September 11, 2017

Moon Jae-in, Putin & Kaesong 2.0: Why the state of the U.S.-Korea alliance is not strong

Of the many reasons why the U.S. and South Korea failed to prevent North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons, one of the most important is that, despite their nominal alliance, Washington and Seoul have been fundamentally misaligned on North Korea policy since Bill Clinton and Kim Young-Sam led their respective nations. The most important of these differences was their mutually canceling economic policies toward Pyongyang. As the U.S. moved (however slowly and haltingly) toward isolating Pyongyang economically to slow and...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/U.S. & Korea
July 10, 2017

Why Moon Jae-In can’t make the sun shine again

Given the background of Moon Jae-In and some of his closest confidants, the question that has nagged at me is whether Moon is (1) a closet hard-left ideologue who has managed to let everyone around him say and do the extreme things he avoids saying and doing himself; (2) just another oleaginous opportunist who paddled his canoe to the swifter currents on the left side of the stream; or (3) a hopelessly naive squish who thinks he can simultaneously charm,...

Categories An Alliance?/Korean Politics/North-South/Sunshine/U.S. & Korea
July 3, 2017

The Moon-Trump Summit: Catastrophe averted, for now

Korea-watchers are relieved that the uniquely volatile combination of Moon Jae-In and Donald Trump did not cause a catastrophe at last week’s summit. If avoiding catastrophe was the objective, then mission accomplished, for now. But if the objective was to build trust between the two governments or resolve the thorniest issues between them, the two governments achieved little. They tabled the issue of THAAD and already have an emerging split on free-trade renegotiations. Difficult USFK cost-sharing talks lie ahead. On...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
June 22, 2017

Moon Chung-In’s visit was a fiasco. Moon Jae-In’s summit with Trump might be the next one.

Next week, South Korean President Moon Jae-In will arrive in Washington for his first meeting with President Trump. North Korea policy is certain to be at the top of their agenda. Months ago, I predicted that the combination of Moon Jae-In and Donald Trump would be a uniquely volatile one, and all the indications so far are bearing this prediction out. Volumes of august and cerebral analysis may soon be nullified by 140 characters. This is partially (but only partially)...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea