Search Results for: Kathleen Stephens

August 2, 2008

Senate Confirms Kathleen Stephens as Ambassador to Korea

[Updates below and in the text.] A couple of days ago, while traveling on business, I was informed that Sen. Brownback would lift his hold on the nomination of Kathleen Stephens to become Ambassador to the Republic of Korea. She was confirmed in a voice vote later that day. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to post about it. The Senate confirmed a new American ambassador to South Korea on Friday, after a senator dropped his objections...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
June 18, 2008

Kathleen Stephens Nomination Update

The Chosun Ilbo that the White House may not be interested in expending scarce capital on this one: There is only a slim chance of the U.S. Senate approving the nomination of Kathleen Stephens as ambassador to Seoul, Radio Free Asia reported Tuesday.  Her nomination bill was passed by the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in April and sent to a plenary session for a vote. But according to the RFA, Republican Senator George Voinovich has delayed his approval,...

Categories Human Rights/U.S. Politics
May 31, 2008

Kathleen Stephens Nomination Woes Deepen

In  March, I explained why I believe that Kathleen Stephens is the wrong person to be our next ambassador to South Korea.  In  April, I  explained why  Senator Sam Brownback had placed a hold on Stephens’s nomination, effectively blocking it.  Brownback announced his opposition  by going to the Senate floor to deliver an impassioned speech — “Google Earth has made witnesses of us all” — that made use of my own satellite image grabs  of Camp 22.  State had applied...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
April 25, 2008

Sen. Sam Brownback Puts Hold on Kathleen Stephens Nomination

Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.  — The Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:8 (37a) Let me be first nice Jewish boy to say it:   “G-d bless Sam Brownback.”  One of the Senate’s oldest traditions  is the nomination  “hold.”  For judicial appointments,  holds are the exclusive prerogrative of home-state senators.  For ambassadors, senate custom allows  any senator  to place a...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
April 3, 2008

What Should the Senate Ask Kathleen Stephens?

A reader tells me that the nomination hearing for Kathleen Stephens, State’s pick to be our next Ambassador to Seoul, will take place on April 16th, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. So if you sat on that panel, what would you ask? Naturally, I presume that every single answer to that kind of question will be thoughtful and intelligent, and the most intelligent and thoughtful questions have some unquantifiable chance to be seen by the people who will write...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
March 31, 2008

Kathleen Stephens: The Wrong Person for the Job

A  few months ago, the Korean press reported that State had submitted the name of Kathleen Stephens to be the next U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, to replace the competent and affable  Alexander Vershbow.  At the time, I did not have strong opinions about Ms. Stephens’s fitness for that position.  Further research has convinced me that Ms. Stephens, though well qualified for the job and apparently a perfectly fine person, is the wrong person to be our next Ambassador to...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
June 20, 2014

Open Sources, June 20, 2014

~   1   ~ SUZANNE SCHOLTE’S CAMPAIGN ON SOCIAL MEDIA: If you feel strongly about human rights in North Korea, don’t you want there to be at least one member of Congress who feels as strongly about it as you do? If so, please support Suzanne Scholte by liking her on Facebook and following her on Twitter. ~   2   ~ AMBASSADOR-NOMINEE MARK LIPPERT gives some hints about his policy views at his confirmation hearing: “The first is...

Categories Anju Links
August 12, 2011

Who’s Borking Sung Kim?

So months after Chris Hill protege Sung Kim was nominated to be our Ambassador to South Korea, I’d assumed that he must have been confirmed in the dark of some night when I was too busy to read my news aggregators. Not so: The official confirmation for the next U.S. ambassador to South Korea designate, Sung Kim, is unexpectedly being delayed although it seemed a mere formality. Apparently some senators are stalling because they worry about the direction of the...

Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
June 6, 2011

Sung Kim Through the Retrospectoscope

The announcement that Sung Kim will be our new U.S. Ambassador to South Korea suggests continuity if a comparison of his background to Kathleen Stephens’s tells us anything. Like Stephens, Kim is a protege of Chris Hill* and comes from the State Department’s Korea Desk, which has long favored appeasement, agreed frameworks, and a peace treaty with North Korea, and had previously been caught trying to water down language in the State Department’s annual human rights report. My own fears...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
February 8, 2010

8 February 2010: I’m Sure It Depends on How You Define “Deal.”

State Department denies deal for Park’s release; also, Larry Craig still isn’t gay. If by some miracle the truth actually leaked out, State would probably say that President Obama’s announcement — the day before North Korea announced Park’s release — that he would not to re-add North Korea to the list of state sponsors of terrorism was a mere “goodwill gesture,” or an “understanding,” but not really a quid-pro-quo. When the transcript of the State Department news conference for February...

Categories Anju Links
February 1, 2010

1 February 2010

The Wall Street Journal has a feature about North Korea’s political monument export industry: This month, workers from Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies, a North Korean design firm, were putting the finishing touches on a giant copper sculpture of a family. Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade will inaugurate the African Renaissance Monument in April to mark the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence from France, a ceremony he expects the president of North Korea’s Parliament to attend. “Only the North...

Categories Anju Links
May 29, 2009

Photoblog: Seoul’s Farewell to the “Babo President”

[It’s been almost six months since I last submitted something to OFK, but I’m hoping to be able to write a bit more frequently from now on.  We’ll see.] In addition to the title “People’s President,” which is being used a lot this week, I learned today that Noh Moo-hyun was called “바보 대통령.”   I’m not so knowledgeable about the man, so that was a bit of a surprise for me to hear at the ceremony for him at...

Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society
April 17, 2009

Christopher Hill: Deep Kimchee for Iraq

Of the many things that will be written about North Korea this week, the least likely of these is, “Now there’s the kind of diplomacy we need more of.” Consider just the events of the last few days: the missile test itself, which may have hit closer to home than originally thought; the failure of the United Nations to enforce two of its violated resolutions; the broader failure of deterrence and counter-proliferation; and North Korea’s final repudiation of a February...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
March 20, 2009

Chris Hill Update: Man Tells Lie, Lie Catches Up With Man, Dog Bites Man

The Washington Times, reporting that Senator Brownback is increasingly open in his threat to hold Chris Hill’s nomination as Ambassador to Iraq, relates just the latest story of Hill misleading a member of Congress: In [a] hearing on July 31, in response to a request to bring Jay Lefkowitz, who was a special envoy for North Korea human rights, to future talks, Mr. Hill said, “I would be happy to invite him to all future negotiating sessions with North Korea.”...

Categories Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
March 16, 2009

Opposition to Christopher Hill’s Iraq Ambassador Nomination Grows

Somewhere, Anthony Zinni must be smiling. There are now four senators — Brownback of Kansas, McCain of Arizona, Graham of South Carolina, and Ensign of Nevada — who have declared their opposition to Chris Hill becoming the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Recall from the experience of Kathleen Stephens, now our Ambassador to South Korea, that it takes just one senator to hold an ambassador’s nomination. Hill’s nomination will not go forward unless those senators all lift their holds. [Oops:...

Categories Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
January 24, 2009

Jay Lefkowitz: Requiem for a Bantamweight

To the limited degree history remembers Jay Lefkowitz at all, it should remember him as a good and well-meaning man who was unequal to the great task laid before him. I have sometimes suspected that this was the very design of those who appointed him. With the change of administrations this week, Lefkowitz departed as Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, leaving behind a final report that still clings obediently to the myth of constructive engagement with sociopaths:...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Washington Views
January 18, 2009

U.S. and ROK Sign Cost-Sharing Agreement

After more than a year of acrimonious negotiations — a year that should be seen as part of a perpetual, multi-year negotiation — the United States and South Korea have signed another cost-sharing agreement. So is it a good deal? The question isn’t easily answered, with all of the bullshit you have to squeegie away to get down to the facts of it: Korea has signed an agreement with the United States to provide W760 billion to keep American troops...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
October 8, 2008

Did They or Didn’t They? (Pt. 2)

You’d think that if Chris Hill and the North Koreans had made up, the North Koreans wouldn’t be launching missiles again.  The new launches appear to have been short-range missiles launched from the island naval base at Cho-Do, which you can see in full Google Earth color here.  One thing this illustrates is why North Korea always seeks to narrow the focus of talks:  while they sell temporary concessions on plutonium, they pursue a uranium program at full speed; then,...

Categories Anju Links/Appeasement/Diplomacy/NK Military/Six-Party Talks