Search Results for “Lefkowitz”

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:...

Appeasement/Human Rights/Washington Views

November 24, 2008

Calling Jay Lefkowitz

According to some fragmentary reports passed along by Human Rights Frontiers, Son Jung Nam — or rather, what’s left of Son Jung Nam after more than a year of torture in a dungeon in Pyongyang — is about to be stood up against a firing squad … if he still lives, that is. (No link on the latest report, which come to me via e-mail). I previously posted on Son’s case here. In China, a group of 11 refugees between...

Appeasement/Human Rights/Refugees

August 12, 2008

If Jay Lefkowitz Falls in the Forest ….

A week after we learned that the North Koreans disinvited him from visiting Kaesong — something about which our State Department offered no adverse reaction — Lefkowitz has canceled a scheduled visit to Seoul as well. These events belie the sincerity of President Bush and even Chris Hill sporadically talking the talk on human rights again: They “shared the view that in the process of normalizing relations, meaningful progress should be made on improving North Korea’s human rights record.” This...

U.S. Politics

August 7, 2008

North Korea Rejected Lefkowitz Visit to Kaesong; We Had to Hear It from the South Koreans

A few weeks ago, after Jay Lefkowitz, the Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, cancelled a visit to Kaesong, I speculated that the North Koreans felt free to just blow him off: “One wonders whether the North Koreans, sensing how completely Lefkowitz has been marginalized in Washington, simply withdrew his permission to visit.” And that turns about to be pretty much what happened: “We understand the North has refused to register the application by the special envoy,” South...

Appeasement/Human Rights/NK Economics

February 8, 2008

Christopher Hitchens on the Rice-Lefkowitz Flap

Since Hitchens may have had something to do with goading Lefkowitz into making his original comments, I’ve been wondering how he would react to what resulted. I like to imagine that my little essay stung Lefkowitz a bit. At any event, he got up on his hind legs at the American Enterprise Institute in the third week of January and made an explicit criticism of the Bush administration that he serves. The State Department’s insistence on “diplomacy,” he argued, had...

Appeasement/Human Rights/U.S. Politics

February 3, 2008

Advantage, Lefkowitz?

The latest Bush Administration official to return from Pyongyang empty-handed is Sung Kim, who spent three days in Pyongyang and got no nuclear declaration for his trouble. It’s a well known fact of diplomacy that even when no translation is necessary, it can take 72 hours to comprehend the utterance of the word “no. The latest Bush Administration alumnus to denounce its failing last-ditch appeasement of North Korea is former speechwriter Michael Gerson, who writes in the Washington Post about...

Diplomacy/Human Rights/U.S. Politics

February 1, 2008

Anju Links: Food Woes, A Lefkowitz Resignation Rumor, OPCON, and Reforming the HRC

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE WEATHER IN CHINA? Dozens are dead and thousands of travelers have been stranded. It’s severe enough that the Chinese government is worried about its own food supply later this year. “The impact of the snow disaster in southern China on winter crop production is extremely serious,” said Chen Xiwen, the government’s leading expert on the agricultural economy. “The impact on fresh vegetables and on fruit in some places has been catastrophic.” [Daily Telegraph] Add this...

Anju Links

March 1, 2007

Why You Have to Read this Blog: Yonhap Gets Lefkowitz’s Testimony Wrong

Standing amid a crowd of journalists today, a thought entered my mind at such velocity that it shattered a tumor of remorse forming around the idea that any of them has a thousand times my audience. True, I thought. But unlike them, every word I write will be published. Oh, the power! It fills and swells my cranium! And no sooner do I see the stories they’ve filed, the frustrated resignation hits me all over again. Because they’re...

Activism/Human Rights/Media Criticism/Uncategorized/Washington Views

February 19, 2007

It’s Time for Jay Lefkowitz to Resign

I recently wrote a piece for publication on North Korea’s finances, the rumors of the then-prospective deal with North Korea, and how to increase the pressure so that we could get a truly verifiable dismantlement of their nuclear program and a real and fundamental movement toward transparency. If no favorable agreement could be achieved, our financial strategy showed real promise in collapsing the regime’s palace economy, and maybe even the regime itself, something for which my aspiration is no secret. ...

Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views

January 11, 2007

Lefkowitz on Kaesong: ‘Material support for a rogue government, its nuclear ambitions, and its human rights atrocities.’

[Updates Below; and a big welcome to everyone coming in from Gateway Pundit.] Ambassador Jay Lefkowitz, the U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, has an excellent new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (thanks to a reader!) that will provoke an absolute Category 5 sh*tstorm between the United States and South Korea, and for the best of reasons. Without question, the State Department and the Administration have not always lived up the high ideals the Special Envoy...

"United" Nations/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD

January 5, 2007

Whatever Happened to Jay Lefkowitz?

The Washington Post sets a new milestone by reading my mind when it asks the question. The position of Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea was created in the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, which President Bush signed in November of that year. After a long delay in filling the post, President Bush finally nominated Lefkowitz. Despite a few promising words and some forthright challenges to South Korean appeasement and apathy, the White House has never...

America/Human Rights/Washington Views

August 26, 2006

Lefkowitz: N.Korean Refugees Welcome in America

Updates: This chatroom for English-speaking expats in Thailand has pictures of the refugees and pages of outraged, sympathic comments. One of them points to this BBC story. The Thai government’s reaction is to increase patrols on the Mekong to keep the refugees out. Look at this baby’s face. Then try to comprehend what will happen to her if she is sent back to North Korea. . . ====== (original post follows) ====== With somewhere around 175 North Korean refugees in...

"United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views

June 27, 2006

Report: N. Koreans Will Allow Lefkowitz into Kaesong

If true, interesting. He should be prepared for an ambush before dozens of cameras, since recent visits make it apparent that North Korean guides at Kaesong are pre-loaded with approved harangues. The disadvantage of those is that the haranguer can’t adapt flexibly to questions like, “have you ever wanted to wander the streets of Rome, eat a mango, hear reggae, drive, or vote against the President?” Still, Lefkowitz will be set up as the overdog, and should not underestimate the...

Appeasement/Democracy/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized

June 2, 2006

Jay Lefkowitz to Visit Kaesong?

He must be thanking his Creator that he’s not in Chung Dong-Young’s league now. South Korea has invited the man Comrade Chung snubbed last year to Kaesong, and Yonhap reports Lefkowitz, who has publicly raised some pointed questions about the use of slave labor at Kaesong, has accepted. The latest report follows this one, confirmed by the USG, that a senior State Department official will also visit. Just one small problem here: the North Koreans haven’t granted him a visa,...

Appeasement/Human Rights/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea

May 2, 2006

Jay Lefkowitz Is Right About Kaesong

The debate about South Korea’s role in (not) improving human rights in the North seems to intensify by the hour. Freedom House is the latest to testify for the prosecution. If you believe the latest report from the Chosun Ilbo, the State Department is reeling from the vitriolic South Korean reaction to U.S. Human Rights Envoy Jay Lefkowitz over labor conditions in North Korea’s Kaesong Industrial Park: Another U.S. government insider also said the controversial piece by Lefkowitz had not...

An Alliance?/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Media Criticism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Uncategorized/Washington Views

April 3, 2006

Lefkowitz Denounces Kaesong Slave Labor; U.S. Continues to Squeeze NK’s Finances

It’s like they’re reading this blog . . . or perhaps great minds just think alike. You may recall that recently, I blogged about a media visit to the Kaesong Industrial Park. Piecing together several excellent reports allowed one to gather: (1) the extraordinary degree of control over the North Korean workers; (2) the extraordinary degree of supervision of the South Korean visitors; (3) the fact that the North Korean workers actually receive just $8 a month, not the widely-reported...

"United" Nations/Activism/An Alliance?/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Diplomacy/Human Rights/NK Economics/North Korea/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views/WMD

March 30, 2006

Jay Lefkowitz Interviewed in the Donga Ilbo

I’ll simply link this and recommend it in its entirety. The interviewer asks informed and sharp questions on refugees, regime change, and food aid. Lefkowitz’s answers were adequate but obviously scripted. He’s trying to give the impression that the U.S. will soon start accepting refugees without getting ahead of the Administration; I’m cautiously inclined to believe him, mainly based on other information I’ve heard.

Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Refugees/Uncategorized/Washington Views

February 18, 2006

Sec. Rice: Lefkowitz Will Be More Vocal

It’s the latest suggestion that the Administration is less worried than ever about upsetting Kim Jong Il: The United States will have its North Korea human rights envoy become more active in coming days to get more international attention on the issue, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday. “We are going to get him out more,” Rice said at a U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee hearing. “We need the rest of the international community to also...

Activism/An Alliance?/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views

Search Results for: Lefkowitz