Search Results for: coal sanctions

August 25, 2014

Is Obama’s North Korea policy at a tipping point?

Following of Congress’s resounding, bipartisan vote of no confidence in the Obama Administration’s North Korea policy last month, Secretary of State John Kerry has been traveling around the Pacific. In Australia, while meeting with that country’s Foreign Minister and Defense Minister, he traversed his gargantuan mandible toward Pyongyang and threatened to tighten sanctions “if it ‘chooses the path of confrontation.” If? If? “The United States — I want to make this clear — is absolutely prepared to improve relations with...

Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions
August 19, 2014

How terrorism works: N. Korea uses Japanese hostages to censor “The Interview”

Last week, I wrote that the North Koreans who had unwittingly lavished free publicity on “The Interview” by threatening its makers still had a thing or two to learn from the mobs of angry Muslim extremists who extorted President Obama into asking YouTube to “consider” removing “The Innocence of Muslims.” My judgment may have been premature. Film industry trade journals are now reporting that Sony Pictures Japan has demanded changes to the script of “The Interview” to minimize the offense...

Categories Abductions/Censorship/Japan/Terrorism (NK)
July 7, 2014

Continental drift: U.S. alliances erode despite “pivot” to Asia

Xi Jingping has departed from Seoul, where he couldn’t quite bring himself to agreeing to a joint statement with Park Geun Hye calling for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. But the statement stopped short of directly urging North Korea to give up its nuclear program, only vaguely calling for all members of the six-party nuclear talks to resolve the issue through dialogue and abide by their 2005 denuclearization-for-aid deal. [Yonhap] Some of the dire declarations I’ve seen that...

Categories Abductions/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Russia & Korea
July 1, 2014

“Happy Fourth of July!” – Kim Jong Un

It is already the 2nd of July in Korea, where Yonhap is reporting more missile launches off North Korea’s East Coast. This time, the missiles are said to be KN-09 cruise missiles,* a brand whose alleged proliferation to the North recently generated controversy between two bloggers, each of whom is not me. The latest launch follows the weekend launch of two short-range (300-mile) SCUDs missiles into the Sea of Japan from the vicinity of Wonsan. (Here is KCNA’s commentary on...

Categories Abductions/Japan/Missiles
June 27, 2014

Open Sources, June 27, 2014

~   1   ~ A REMARKABLE COINCIDENCE: Say, do you suppose there could possibly be any link between the decision of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda of the Gambia, to close her investigations of the Cheonan and Yeonpyong incidents four years ago, and the visit by North Korea’s Foreign Minister to Gambia earlier this month, at which time the two governments discussed “boosting the bilateral relations of friendship and cooperation and on matters of...

Categories Anju Links
June 17, 2014

Why North Korea’s slave gold matters

Were it not for an obscure provision of the Dodd-Frank Act, we would not have learned last week that some of America’s largest corporations have been indirectly subsidizing North Korea by buying gold supplied by its Central Bank. Dozens of companies disclosed over the last week that their suppliers use gold refined by North Korea’s central bank. These companies include Hewlett-Packard Co., Ralph Lauren Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Rockwell Automation Corp. and Williams-Sonoma Inc. IBM, for example, disclosed that...

Categories Anju Links
May 28, 2014

No, China did not cut off N. Korea’s oil supply (corrected).

The Chinese government has announced that Xi Jinping will visit Seoul next month without having ever visited Pyongyang, a reversal of the usual sequence. Although Asian diplomats place great value on the symbolism of such things, it is also possible to make too much of it. Still, I draw a few inferences from the announcement that may be important. First, the announcement of Xi’s visit would pose significant complications for Pyongyang if it plans to nuke off soon. Xi would feel...

Categories China & Korea
May 23, 2014

Open Sources, May 23, 2014

~   1   ~ SO, TO SUMMARIZE yesterday’s NLL excitement, North Korea fired artillery “near” a South Korean patrol boat off Yeonpyeong Island (which North Korea shelled in 2010), South Korea (borrowing from the North Korean lexicon) threatened a “merciless counterattack” if provoked, North Korea said it never fired but South Korea did, and South Korea called that “a blatant lie.” Now tell me which Korea was more transformed by the Sunshine Policy. ~   2   ~ WHY BUILDINGS...

Categories Anju Links
May 7, 2014

China leaks contingency plan for N. Korea collapse

Last week, North Korea unexpectedly announced that Hwang Pyong So had replaced Choe Ryong-Hae as North Korea’s top military officer and number two official. Choe had held this status since the December purge of Jang Song-Thaek. It may be a complete coincidence that Kyodo News has since reported on allegedly leaked contingency plans by the Chinese Army to seal the border and protect North Korean officials from, shall we say, summarized judicial proceedings in the event of a collapse of...

Categories China & Korea
May 1, 2014

And now, a brief Marxist-style criticism of North Korea’s class struggle and internal contradictions (Updated)

Yonhap reports that North Korea has cut its grain imports from China by more than in half in the first quarter of this year “due to an increase in the country’s grain production last year.” A fall in market prices for corn corroborates that there is a greater supply of corn than usual; ordinarily, spring is the leanest time of year for poor North Koreans. Despite Pyongyang’s decision to buy and import less grain, the World Food Program, which recently...

Categories Class Warfare/NK Economics
February 28, 2014

Please attend next Wednesday: House Foreign Affairs Committee to host event on U.N. Commission report

On March 5th at 3 p.m., the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold an event with a panel discussion featuring leaders of prominent human rights NGOs, including Greg Scarlatoiu, Executive Director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, and Human Rights Watch. The Federation of Korean Associations in the U.S.A. will also participate — they’ve emerged as strong and highly effective advocates for the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act this year. Also present will be Suzanne Scholte, head...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
February 7, 2014

Open Sources, February 7, 2014

~ 1 ~ ROK, U.S. MILITARIES PREPARE “TAILORED” DETERRENCE: In 2010, North Korea attacked South Korea twice without eliciting any military response at all. If you ask me, that isn’t entirely a bad thing. Bombing a few shriveled conscripts wouldn’t perturb Kim Jong Un a whit. He might even spin that as a great military victory. We have other, non-military options (banking sanctions and subversive information operations) that would deter him much more. Unfortunately, but for understandable reasons, military planners...

Categories Anju Links
January 31, 2014

Open Sources, January 31, 2014

~ 1 ~ OH LOOK, North Korea restarted a nuclear reactor. ~ 2 ~ AND NOW, A LIST OF POLITICIANS WHO DID GOOD: H.R. 1771 has some new co-sponsors in the House. Rep. Pete Sessions (R, Tex.), Rep. Jeff Duncan (R, S.C.), and Rep. Adam Smith (D, Wash.) have signed on. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), joins early supporter and fellow Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard. The biggest surprise? Rep. Jim McDermott, who is known for his outspoken liberal views on foreign...

Categories Anju Links
January 3, 2014

In case this isn’t self-evident, all analysis of North Korean New Year’s speeches is crap.*

In this year’s annual New Year’s Day message, Kim Jong Un boasted about his squalid little kingdom’s “brilliant successes in building a thriving socialist country and defending socialism,” its “upsurge … in production in several sectors and units of the national economy,” its “brilliant victory in the acute showdown with the imperialists,” and its “policies of respecting the people and loving them.” It’s crap like this that makes me proud of how little I’ve contributed to the torrent of junk...

Categories Anju Links/Fiskings/Media Criticism
December 19, 2013

Kim Kyong Hui leaves N. Korea for medical treatment, and the deeper meaning of Jang’s scapegoating

The Daily NK, citing “a high-level party cadre,” reports that Kim Kyong Hui (Kim Il Sung’s daughter, Kim Jong Il’s sister, Jang Song Thaek’s widow, and Kim Jong Un’s aunt) has left North Korea for medical treatment after having a seizure caused by the execution of her husband. Ms. Kim was noticeably absent from yesterday’s ceremony marking the second anniversary of her brother’s death, as Don Kirk’s report notes with almost uncanny prescience. Ri Sol Ju was there, however, looking...

Categories Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
October 11, 2013

N. Korea says Park GH’s father “smelled of elderberries,” S. Korea responds with “large wooden badger” plan

I don’t know about you, but I sure got tired of Park Geun Hye’s hippie Earth mother act last summer, after North Korea started making nice, right after banks all over China and Europe started blocking North Korean accounts. Thank God that’s over with. We’re back to steaming reactors, spinning centrifuges, war drums, nasty taunts, and all the things we’ve grown to love and miss about North Korea. The North was uncharacteristically quietly during August’s Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises, but for reasons known only...

Categories North-South/ROK Military/Sunshine/U.S. Military
September 6, 2013

Syria’s red line ought to be North Korea’s red line, too

The most ironic argument the administration has advanced to support the bombing of Syria is that it’s necessary to send a message of credible deterrence to North Korea, against its own use of weapons of mass destruction. There’s a lot to unpack there, so I’ll summarize my arguments first and expand on them below. First, I agree that we (and many other nations) have a compelling interest in deterring the use of WMD. I wouldn’t have put it quite that...

Categories Anju Links
March 21, 2013

Open Sources, March 21, 2013

THE PIANIST KIM CHEOL WOONG, whom Melanie Kirkpatrick wrote about in “Escape from North Korea,” will be here in the D.C. area to play two performances this weekend.  One will be at the “home theater” of conductor Lorin Maazel, of all people, in Castleton, Virginia, on Saturday evening.  The other will be on Sunday, March 24th, and will be sponsored by a new group, NKUS (site in Korean only).  Henry Song of the North Korean Freedom Coalition calls them the...

Categories Anju Links