July 1, 2010

What Sanctions Can, and Can’t Do

While President Obama expresses frustration at China’s refusal to support sanctions against North Korea for sinking the ROKS Cheonan, U.S. officials are also expressing their concerns that China will also undermine sanctions against Iran. For what it’s worth, I’m much less bullish about Iran sanctions than I am about sanctions against North Korea. The potential effect of sanctions is inversely proportional to a regime’s connections to the outside world and its possession of goods that have an export market. As...

Categories Iran/NK Economics/Sanctions
July 1, 2010

In Their Desperation to Meet With Ban Ki-Moon, N. Korean Gulag Survivors Try Borrowing a White Guy

North Korean gulag survivors are knocking on Ban Ki-Moon’s door, asking for a meeting to tell him what he’s known for a decade — that the North Korean prison camps they lived to tell about, no thanks to Ban, are the Mauthausens and Buchenwalds of our time. Odd thing is, it would be a lot easier for Ban to simply not answer if former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik weren’t knocking with them: “The profound suffering of the North...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
June 30, 2010

China, Korea, and the Persistence of Mendacity

It’s nice to see Koreans calling China on its P.R. blunders with greater frequency these days: In its feature on the 60th anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War, the International Herald Leader, a newsweekly of the Xinhua News Agency, said the North Korean army launched the war by crossing the 38th parallel and seizing South Korean capital Seoul in three days. The article immediately drew attention, with some placing significance on China’s first admission of military aggression...

Categories China & Korea/Korean War
June 30, 2010

President Obama talks to our enemies, and it does not end well

President Obama, speaking at the G-8 summit recently, sounded very much like his predecessor, saying that “shying away from ugly facts on North Korea’s behavior is, in his words, “a bad habit we need to break.” I don’t know if the similarity should gratify or worry me more, or whether those two sentiments are really mutually exclusive. The problem for President Obama is that China, Kim Jong Il’s financial backer and sponsor, is shielding North Korea from even the slightest...

Categories China/China & Korea/Diplomacy
June 30, 2010

North Korea Demands $65 Trillion Dollars from U.S. Government

In case you thought there was an end in sight to North Korea’s demands before it would agree to disarm: The Obama administration ridiculed North Korea on Friday for claiming $65 trillion from the United States in Korean War damages, saying the communist nation is an economic “basket case” due its own failed policies. Have the North Koreans actually looked at our balance sheets lately? While it’s probable that the Congressional Budget Office has been working nights to recompute our...

Categories Korean War/WTF?
June 30, 2010

North Korea’s Money Men in China

It’s a few days old, but this Daily NK piece is a fascinating insight into how North Korea’s state trading companies put revenue in Kim Jong Il’s coffers, how they’re adapting to the politics of succession: Ri, who is in his mid-40s and living in Dalian, says he enjoys extravagance which he could never have imagined in North Korea. “The Cheonan incident and other issues are complicated,” he explains, “I now believe here (China) is my hometown and where I...

Categories China & Korea/Kim Jong Un/NK Economics
June 29, 2010

The Monstrosity Industry

It is fairly common knowledge that Kim Jong Il deprives and starves his people to buy luxuries for himself and build monuments to his rule, but I did not know how many more luxuries and monuments he can now afford by selling luxuries and monuments to other statist tyrants. Only in Africa or the Middle East can Kim Jong Il still serve as a role model for great governance. According to the source, North Korea has earned $66.03 million from...

Categories Africa/WTF?
June 28, 2010

A Good Week for Lee Myung-Bak, But What America Gained Isn’t So Clear

On balance, Lee Myung Bak seems to having a pretty good week — at least better than last week’s failure to secure a serious response to the Cheonan incident abroad or even at home. This week, Lee has already won a three-year delay in the dissolution of the U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command, a/k/a OpCon transfer. He also secured a commitment by President Obama to push for an FTA that had faced strong opposition from some American labor unions and Max...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
June 28, 2010

You Say That Like It’s a Bad Thing: “China Hand” Fears Treasury Sanctions

I’m apparently not the only one who cocked an eyebrow at the refusal of a State Department spokesman recently to rule out applying new sanctions to be directed at North Korea to third-country entities. The United States Wednesday did not preclude the possibility of freezing North Korean assets in foreign banks to effectively cut off resources for the North’s development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. “I’m not going to predict any particular step that we’re contemplating, but these...

Categories China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Fiskings/Money Laundering/Sanctions
June 26, 2010

26 June 2010

Japanese activists have joined South Korean activists and North Korean defectors in that wonderfully quixotic leaflet campaign against Kim Jong Il: “We’d like to punish the Kim Jong Il government by spreading the truth written on these leaflets,” said Seo Jung-gab, president of the National Action Campaign, one of the participating groups. Also among groups participating was the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea, a group supporting the families of Japanese abducted by Pyongyang’s agents...

Categories Anju Links
June 25, 2010

Some Korean War Anniversary Links

On this, the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, it’s gratifying to see that not all Korean films are anti-American propaganda harangues: The 15-year-old boy prayed silently beside a freshly dug grave as he and other prisoners waited to be shot by a North Korean firing squad. Kim Man-kyu, barely taller than his M-1 rifle, had fought with other South Korean student volunteers in an 11-hour battle before being captured just weeks into the 1950-53 Korean War. “Suddenly, a fighter...

Categories Korean War
June 25, 2010

25 June 2010

AFP is reporting that two Chinese traders, suspected of espionage, were beaten to death in North Korea. According to South Korea’s Yonhap new agency, which quoted unnamed sources in Beijing, the two traders from the northeastern province of Jilin were allegedly killed during a trip to the North’s border city of Manpo. “We have noted the report. We are seeking to confirm it,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters without further comment. The report said North Korea was...

Categories Anju Links
June 25, 2010

Smart Diplomacy! Obama Commemorates Korean War Anniversary by Keeping N. Korea Off the Terror List

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...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
June 24, 2010

Great Moments in North Korean Fashion Design

In our last episode, we learned that Kim Jong-Il, cutting an “august” figure in his “modest-looking suits,” has “gripped people’s imagination and become a global vogue,” which I guess you can’t call entirely untrue. In today’s episode, women everywhere are tantalized by the thought of wrapping themselves in fashion designed by a government ministry. Da! The Garment Institute of the Ministry of Foodstuff and Daily Necessities Industry has recently designed new models of dresses suitable for women’s aesthetic tastes. The...

Categories WTF?
June 24, 2010

Lee, Bush Commemorate 60th Anniversary of the Korean War

Golly, this was a nice thing of President Lee to say: As we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, I offer our deepest, most sincere gratitude to all the American veterans and their families for what they did. The friendship and bond that we share is reinforced by the strong and robust military alliance, which in turn was the basis for the Republic of Korea’s remarkable twin achievements of the past six decades, namely achieving economic growth and...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Korean War/U.S. & Korea
June 23, 2010

On McChrystal and Petraeus

I can’t pass on the chance to say a few things about the firing of General McChrystal. I don’t think President Obama could have not fired him, leaving him in charge of our war effort in state where he clearly lacks the confidence of the President, his cabinet, the people, and quite probably his own soldiers. I knew few soldiers who had strong partisan views, but fewer who held much respect for conduct like this. More than a few must...

Categories U.S. Military
June 23, 2010

If You Want the U.N. to Fail, Then Ban Ki Moon Is Your Man

Let it never be said that Ban Ki-Moon’s U.N. can’t fail at more than one thing at the same time. While North Korea’s attack on a South Korean warship goes unanswered at the U.N. thanks to Chinese obstructionism and weak U.N. leadership, North Korea’s refugee crisis goes unaddressed due to … Chinese obstructionism and weak U.N. leadership. When it comes to North Korea, the U.N. has proved a highly effective instrument for China to prop up its puppet, and just...

Categories "United" Nations