July 20, 2010

Plan B Watch: Treasury Requires “Enhanced Due Diligence” for N. Korean Banks

The Treasury Department has announced that the governments of Sao Tome and North Korea will henceforth be subject to the “enhanced due diligence” requirements of Section 312 of the USA PATRIOT Act. The measures apply to U.S. financial institutions maintaining correspondent accounts for “foreign banks operating under a banking license issued by” North Korea. By itself, this action is likely to have little effect, because it’s doubtful that any North Korean-licensed banks have U.S. correspondent accounts. The better question, however,...

Categories Uncategorized
July 20, 2010

The New Conventional Wisdom: We Have No Idea

I don’t recall ever seeing Victor Cha offer a view that was particularly original, imaginative, or likely to end in a successful result, but he is a reliable indicator of Washington conventional wisdom about North Korea, which in turn is heavily influenced by Seoul’s views about the North. And here is the new conventional wisdom: we have no idea what to do now. In Cha’s own words: North Korean behavior has gotten so bad, according to East-West Center Visiting Fellow...

Categories Washington Views
July 20, 2010

And today’s Great Purge victim is …

Kwon Ho Ung, who served as North Korea’s chief delegate to inter-Korean talks with the ATM known as Roh Moo Hyun from 2004 to 2007. Today’s winner will receive one execution, presumably by firing squad. Via Sonagi, here’s a blog post that provides a little more information about him. A lot of North Korean officials must be very, very worried right now. I suppose we’ll continue to hear reports like this right up until the big September party conference. Speaking...

Categories Kremlinology
July 20, 2010

“[W]e traveled with poison, so that if we were caught, we’d take it and kill ourselves.”

Sue Lloyd-Roberts continues her look at North Korea by interviewing refugees in Seoul and asking them about the images her minders allowed her to film. At 13:00, Lloyd-Roberts interviews Young Howard, a/k/a Ha Tae Kyung, the founder of Open Radio. She even sits in as he interviews a source by telephone. She seems to presume (incorrectly) that Ha is North Korean, but in fact, he’s a South Korean and a former leftist political prisoner. It’s both unsurprising and striking how...

Categories Inside NK/Media Criticism/Refugees/Useful Idiocy
July 19, 2010

Claudia Rosett proposes to kick North Korea out of the U.N.  This strikes me as a perfectly sound idea in theory and one that stands no chance of coming to pass in practice.  North Korea’s presence at the U.N. hasn’t contributed to peace or development; after all, U.N. membership isn’t a sine qua non for WFP aid, and most the focus of  diplomacy is on the six-party talks, an opera that alternates between long intermissions and broken crystal.  The fact...

Categories Anju Links
July 17, 2010

North Korea Hit with $378M Judgment for 1972 Lod Airport Massacre

I haven’t seen this reported in the news yet, but standing alongside the Pueblo judgment, this creates a basis for American victims of North Korean atrocities to try to collect several hundred million dollars from North Korean accounts and entities in third countries, using international agreements that allow for the reciprocal enforcement of foreign judgments. North Korea was held liable for its role in supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Japanese Red Army, which planned...

Categories Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
July 17, 2010

Back to Gridlock?

Secretary of State Clinton will travel to Asia, including South Korea, next week. In announcing the visit, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell gave this July 15th on-the-record briefing. In contrast to the Bush Administration’s anytime, anywhere approach to the six-party talks, you can sense a subtle shift in tone: Let me say that the United States and South Korea have always maintained, and our position is clear, that we are prepared under the right circumstances to sit down in...

Categories Washington Views
July 16, 2010

President Obama Goes Wobbly on North Korea

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...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
July 16, 2010

If This Isn’t the State Sponsorship of Terrorism, What Is?

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...

Categories Anju Links
July 16, 2010

Good Friends serves up the irony — that, or disinformation — in its penultimate update: This past June 1st, the Pyongsung City police succeeded in arresting 7 people involved in a professional counterfeiting operation. 4 out of 7 were women. Working out of a hidden location within the city, they were counterfeiting travel documents, Pyongyang residency proofs, Renminbi, dollars, and the new North Korean currency. Among those arrested included an employee of the Pyongsung currency printing press. After searching through...

Categories Anju Links
July 15, 2010

WHO Knew? North Korea’s health care system is nothing to envy.

So, aside from stultifying political repression, famine, forced labor, criticism sessions, neighborhood spies, propaganda speakers in every home, prison camps for dissenters, and the occasional public execution, what has Kim Jong Il ever done for us? Ask any Chomsky-parroting career grad student in the East Bay and she’ll say, “universal health care!” Alas, those neocons at Amnesty International have come to crush their tiny, misshapen hippie souls with this extensive report: The North Korean government has failed to adequately address...

Categories Health & Disease
July 15, 2010

RFA: Leafleter(s) in Hoeryong Got Past Tight Security

Radio Free Asia has published more details about those dissident leaflets that showed up in Hoeryong recently. According to sources, the leafleting occurred just 150 meters away from the Hoeryong Historic Pavilion, a site in Osanduk-Dong guarded by security agents, where the statue and birth house of Kim Jong Suk, Kim Il Sung’s first wife, are located. Near Osan Elementary School, School Village has the lowest crime rate in Hoeryong city due to round-the-clock patrols and surveillance by law enforcement,...

Categories Resistance
July 14, 2010

Congratulations to Suzanne Scholte

Scholte, whom I’ve known since 2003, leads the North Korean Freedom Coalition, which (among its many good works) contributes to those leaflet balloon launches that have irritated the North Korean regime so much. In 2008, Scholte won the Seoul Peace Prize. This year, she receives a new honor: Suzanne Scholte, the president of the conservative Defense Forum Foundation of the U.S., has been named the winner of the Walter Judd Freedom Award. The prize will be presented by The Fund...

Categories Activism
July 14, 2010

Embrace the Chaos: A New Report of Desertions in the N. Korean Military

The London Daily Telegraph is reporting an upsurge in the number of North Korean soldiers “defecting” to China this year. The report, unfortunately, adds little detail to the headline’s claim, aside from saying that “on one stretch of the border, Chinese troops apprehended five North Korean soldiers in May alone.” Despite the breathless headline, the text offers no evidence that a “military clash” is “imminent.” Perhaps the word “desert” more accurately describes these soldiers’ actions than “defect,” which implies a...

Categories NK Military
July 13, 2010

Götterdämmerung Watch

Open News reports that banditry by hungry North Korean soldiers is turning the population against the army: According to our source, this kind of situation, where soldiers clean out cattle pens, steal pickled cabbages, take everything from people walking in the streets, and rape women in broad day, has been going on for a long time ““ ever since Kim il-sung’s death. The source revealed, that North Korean residents looking at rice bags with American flags say, “They once said...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Military/Propaganda