Search Results for: coal sanctions

March 20, 2013

Follow the money. All of it.

Marcus Noland has published two fascinating charts on recent changes in North Korea’s palace economy. According to one, North Korea has begun posting a current account surplus by squeezing its poor, and by taking in foreign exchange from mysterious (but probably Chinese) sources.  That would certainly explain some of its recent, more aggressive behavior — a well-funded North Korea is menacing; an underfunded North Korea is relatively, if temporarily, conciliatory.  Judging by North Korea’s aggressive WMD development and investment in white elephants (gray...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
February 13, 2013

Open Sources, Feb. 13, 2013: Special Non-Nuclear Edition

I’D BEEN SAVING UP some anju links for later this week, but in light of the latest nuke test, I’m going to just clear the decks now. First, in response to J’s request, I set up an e-mail subscription feature. Tell me how that’s working for you. * * * AP WATCH, PT. 1. The AP’s Vice President admits, in effect, that the only thing AP has gotten access to is the regime’s propaganda:

Categories Anju Links/AP Watch
June 23, 2011

A Syrian Solution for North Korea

So now that the Syrian army is invading town after town from Dara’a in the south to its restive border with Turkey, can we call it a civil war yet? Worse things could happen there, and absent this wave of unrest, probably would have. If Syria isn’t likely to become a democracy within the next year, a destabilized Syria is probably the next best thing. If Bashar Asad is preoccupied fighting to survive, he’ll be impeded in his capacity to...

Categories Resistance
January 13, 2011

Or, Maybe It’s Just the Same Old “Reign of Terror”

The other day, Adam found fault with a Chosun Ilbo report that claimed that North Korea’s cross-border slaughter of five refugees represented an escalation of its shoot-to-kill policy. I found the criticism rather pedantic and pointless, although the evidence on the whole suggests that crossing borders and shooting escapees are part of a long-standing pattern of North Korean atrocities. It’s too bad Adam didn’t wait a few days, because the Chosun Ilbo has presented him with a much softer target...

Categories Human Rights/Refugees
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
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
June 21, 2010

Kim Jong Il’s on-the-spot guidance does for North Korean soccer what it did for North Korean agriculture and industry

At last, something interesting has happened at the World Cup after all. The North Korean team was crushed by Portugal in the most lopsided World Cup score in eight years, eliminating North Korea from the competition, and greatly advancing my personal objective of ignoring the rest of the World Cup. The question on everyone’s lips now is whether the North Korean players or their families will face retribution for this loss. I really don’t know the answer to that, and...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Sports/WTF?
June 19, 2010

Is the Obama Administration Ready for Plan B at Last?

Well, finally! The Obama administration is considering going after the assets of North Korean entities and individuals to punish Pyongyang after the sinking of a South Korean warship, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. Freezing offshore assets would be the first tangible U.S. action to make North Korea pay a price for the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan corvette in which 46 South Korean sailors died. Pyongyang has denied responsibility for the incident. While there have been...

Categories "United" Nations/Cheonan Incident/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions
September 29, 2009

Obama Administration Says First Words About Human Rights in North Korea

Eight months, a missile test, and a nuclear test after President Obama’s inauguration, he has finally gotten around to nominating Bob King to be Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, a move mandated by the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 and the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act of 2008. The United States said Friday it was “very concerned” about human rights violations in North Korea, as President Barack Obama named an envoy to focus on...

Categories Activism/Diplomacy/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
June 30, 2009

Plan B Watch

A year ago, who would have suspected that we’d be celebrating the replacement of a liberal accommodationist named George W. Bush with a hard line neocon named Barack Obama, who would finally show signs of grasping not just the reality of North Korea’s bad faith, but some of the very best tools for breaking it? Christine Ahn’s misery (and Selig Harrison’s, and Leon Sigal’s) is my pleasure: The Treasury Department’s 2005 blacklisting of Macau’s Banco Delta Asia, which held a...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/Washington Views
March 26, 2009

Chris Hill Lies to Entire Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Sam Brownback’s Finest Hour

[Updated below.] [A]s the current assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, [Christopher Hill] presided over negotiations with North Korea that deliberately minimized focus on the bleak human rights record of that country, ignored its nuclear proliferation, and had the practical effect of affirming its nuclear weapons capability. Hill also has a troubling hotdog tendency to play by his own rules, to the detriment of U.S. diplomacy…. Hill’s brand of cowboy diplomacy might be justified if it...

Categories Human Rights/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics

Holocaust Now: Looking Down Into Hell at Camp 22

Those who have lived to tell us about Camp 22, located in the bleak northeastern tip of North Korea, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and all of them are former guards or staff. Of all of North Korea’s numerous labor camps and detention facilities, large and small, Camp 22 is one of the largest, and almost certainly the most terrible, if only for the inhuman experiments witnesses say were done to the men, women, children, and...

Comments: 55
November 21, 2008

Obama Cabinet Looking Surprisingly Centrist and Responsible

The L.A. Times reports that Obama is seriously considering either Hillary Clinton or Richard Holbrooke for State and retaining the effective Robert Gates at Defense.  We are already hearing the first sorrowful wailing from those for whom the highest form of patriotism is the emotional investment in America’s defeat and dimunition, in a way that is only coincidentally similar to the patriotism of its enemies.  At least one of them had the deficiency of judgment to actually believe that Dennis...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
October 8, 2008

Lee’s N. Korea Policy Will Be, as Lee Says, ‘Pragmatic.’

Suzanne Scholte has accepted the Seoul Peace Prize, offering this prescient comment in her speech: “When all the atrocities committed by North Korean dictators are exposed in the future, people will assess how adequately the Seoul government then responded,” said Scholte, referring to the current administration. “Consider the judgment of history.”  [Chosun Ilbo] I’m hoping to have a guest post from a reader who was there.  Warning:  this post will now enter a stream of consciousness. You can already see...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
July 9, 2008

Obama ‘Pivots’ Positions on N. Korea Terror De-Listing

The New York Sun picks up the story of Kim Dong Shik and Barack Obama’s first broken promise: In an interview yesterday, the executive director of the Korean Church Coalition for North Korean Freedom, Sam Kim, said he traveled to Congress in early June to remind Illinois legislators of a 2005 letter signed by Senator Obama, among others, that called on the North Korean regime to provide details about the case of the Reverend Kim Dong-Shik. Rev. Kim, who helped...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
June 27, 2008

George W. Bush: A Uniter at Last!

For all the failings of his accord with Kim Jong Il, Bush has made remarkable progress in unwittingly brokering an accord between a liberal Democratic presidential nominee, the House’s most conservative Republicans, and the Republican presidential nominee. To various degrees, all have noted the inadequacy of Kim’s declaration and declared their opposition to de-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terror unless it permits verfication. (Which it won’t, of course): This is a step forward, and there will be...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
May 27, 2008

“China Hand” Owes Me a Retraction

[Update, 31 May 08: China Hand publishes a retraction: In a comment on Arms Control Wonk in 2007, I made the statement that the website Onefreekorea had apparently received an advance copy of a government ruling concerning Banco Delta Asia. I inferred this from my reading of the timestamp on the OFK post, which I believed indicated that the post had been put up the day before the ruling was officially announced and publicly available. OFK’s proprietor has advised me...

Categories Blogs & Blogging