Category: Terrorism (NK)

Just what does a psychotic despot have to do to get on the list of state sponsors of terrorism?  Since President Obama’s inauguration, Kim Jong Il has – been caught twice shipping weapons — reportedly including man-portable surface-to-air missiles — to Iran, apparently for the use of its terrorist clients; sent a hit squad to assassinate a prominent defector in South Korea; threatened civilian air traffic to and from South Korea; threatened to turn the capitals of various neighboring states...

I make the legal and diplomatic case here. Update: Sadly, The New Ledger is no more, so I post my argument below the fold.

I wonder what the State Department’s finest legal minds will have to say about this. President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 1, 2008 to reward it for its progress toward complete, verifiable, and irreversible nuclear disarmament. President Obama reaffirmed the de-listing on February 3, 2010 and on June 23, 2010, citing a lack of evidence for North Korea’s recent sponsorship of terrorism. Discuss among yourselves.

I believe American citizens owe the presidents they collectively elect a clean-slate judgment that begins at the moment when they assume office. Never mind what they said during the campaign; it’s the actions of a president in office by which we judge him. And on North Korea policy — without comment on his other policies — I’ve tried to be objective in judging President Obama; perhaps because of my low expectations, I’ve found much to praise in his actions since...

North Korea denies trying to assassinate Hwang Jang Yop (also, the Korean War and the existence of concentration camps). The North Korean web site Uriminzokkiri, the very same one that just two weeks before had said, in reference to Hwang, and I quote, “Traitors have always been slaughtered with knives,” now calls the reports of the assassination plot “a ridiculous fabrication.” I look forward to John Feffer’s explanation for why North Korea’s involvement is improbable. President Bush removed North Korea...

I wonder whether, if Jimmy Carter read KCNA more often, he’d be less woebegone about North Korea’s lack of avenues to dispel misunderstandings, seek out common ground, and show us all its softer side: North Korea’s military warned South Korea and the United States on Friday of “unprecedented nuclear strikes” as it expressed anger over a report the two countries plan to prepare for possible instability in the totalitarian country, a scenario it dismissed as a “pipe dream.” The North...

Thirty American victims of Hezbollah terror attacks have filed civil action in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against the government of North Korea. The plaintiffs, injured by Hezbollah rockets fired into northern Israel during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, allege that North Korea aided the militant group by training senior Hezbollah leaders and by providing networks of underground storage bunkers meant to house Katyusha rocket launchers. [Ha’aretz] This would be the third recent civil suit against North...