November 23, 2009

Senate Confirms Robert King as N. Korea Human Rights Envoy

The Senate confirmed King on a voice vote: Speaking at a Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month, he defined North Korea as “one of the worst abusers of human rights in the world.” He pledged to protect the human rights of the North Koreans, pay attention to South Korean prisoners of war in the North and Japanese abducted to the North, and address China’s deportation of North Korean defectors. [Chosun Ilbo] More here. It’s good that King will be a...

Categories Human Rights
November 22, 2009

Blog Find: North Korea Leadership Watch

This is one of the best finds I’ve seen in a long time — prolific, funny, and full of information I hadn’t heard anywhere else. That’s all the more impressive given that blogger Michael Madden was ambitious enough to choose subject matter that most would consider droll, stultifying, opaque, and impervious to verifiable empirical analysis. Not just anyone could begin with material like that and come up with posts like, “Habemus Successor? Or Thaek it to the Limit?.”

Categories Blogs & Blogging
November 21, 2009

More North Korean Diplomats Busted for Smuggling

Not a day goes by that I don’t rue all of the commerce we’re missing out on by not having diplomatic relations with North Korea: Swedish police have arrested two North Korean diplomats on suspicion of smuggling 230,000 cigarettes into the Nordic country, the Swedish Customs Office said Friday. The pair, a man and a woman who have diplomatic status in Russia, were stopped by Swedish customs officers Wednesday morning as they drove off a ferry from Helsinki, the Finnish...

Categories Drugs & N Korea/NK Crime
November 20, 2009

Der Spiegel on the Al Kibar Strike (or Axis, Schmaxis, Part 10)

Der Spiegel has printed a very extensive story on the Syrian nuclear reactor at Al-Kibar, the Israeli air strike that destroyed it, and the aftermath. I haven’t had time to get through the whole thing, but one thing I can say is how much more soundly I sleep knowing that all that “axis of evil” nonsense is finally behind us: According to information SPIEGEL has obtained from sources in Damascus, Assad has been considering taking a sensational political step. He...

Categories Axis of Evil/Proliferation/WMD
November 19, 2009

An FTA After All?

On balance, it’s more likely that President Obama’s surprising shift in tone is about keeping up appearances on the one issue that matters most to the South Korean government. Still, you can’t deny that this is a breathtaking shift: U.S. President Barack Obama pledged Thursday morning to ratify a free-trade agreement with South Korea that has been stuck for two years, challenging the U.S. Congress to separate South Korea from other Asian nations enjoying vast trade surpluses with the U.S....

Categories U.S. & Korea
November 19, 2009

19 November 2009

WELCOME TO SEOUL, MR. PRESIDENT: “I want to emphasize that President Lee and I both agree on the need to break the pattern that existed in the past in which North Korea behaves in a provocative fashion, then is willing to return to talks, and then talks for a while, and then leaves the talks and seeks further concessions. If we’ve finally learned, I’ll admit that Obama is the last man I’d have expected to finally learn it. Call me...

Categories Anju Links
November 19, 2009

Somali Pirates Hijack North Korean-Crewed Ship (Updated Below)

North Korea’s notoriously rickety freighters must be as enticing to Somali pirates as my 1979 Impala with the red clear tape over the left taillight lens was to Rapid City, South Dakota’s finest. As recently as May, the South Korean Navy thwarted a pirate attack on a North Korean ship. The pirates, now said to be under the charismatic leadership of a fat white kid, are trying to rebound from more aggressive international enforcement efforts with a spate of new...

Categories Abductions
November 18, 2009

Press Conference on NK Human Rights Several Hours Before Obama’s Arrival in Seoul

Updated below with videos, etc. The Association of North Korean Human Rights Organizations (ANKHRO / 북한인권단체얰합회) held a press conference today at 2 p.m. near the US Embassy in Seoul. Member groups Helping Hands Korea, Justice for North Korea, Unify Korea 2009 (which also held another event in the evening -Update: BBC–), and Christians for Social Responsibility all participated. Several North Korean defectors joined the other activists, though I wasn’t sure which individual organization(s) they came with or represented. The...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. & Korea
November 18, 2009

Human Rights Watch: Raise Human Rights in Bilateral Talks with North Korea

Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch is one of the few people doing laudable work in an industry so invested in defending terrorists of late that it’s often too distracted to address the worst atrocities since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. This time, however, HRW’s letter, addressed to Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth, is a useful contribution to the policy discussion about North Korea: For too long has the world sidelined human rights in North Korea while single-mindedly focusing on...

Categories Activism/Diplomacy/Human Rights
November 18, 2009

Defector Describes Construction of DMZ Weapons Bunkers

The defector, who goes by the alias Kim Ju Song, is visiting Washington and attending closed-door sessions with congressional members and staffers, but he found time to tell Radio Free Asia about the construction of hundreds of weapons-storage bunkers along the DMZ at the height of the Sunshine Policy: Pyongyang built at least 800 bunkers, including an unknown number of decoys, to prepare for a possible invasion of South Korea while the late South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun was...

Categories NK Military/North Korea
November 17, 2009

RSF Gives Large Grant to Defector Radio Stations

After years on shoestring budgets, broadcasting services by an for North Koreans have won a large new source of funding: An international organization of journalists will provide financial help to three anti-Pyongyang radio stations in South Korea, the Voice of America (VOA) reported Saturday. According to the VOA, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontiers (RSF) will provide US$380,000 to the three radio stations — Open Radio for North Korea, Free North Korea Radio and Radio Free Chosun — which produce and transmit...

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
November 17, 2009

NGO Claims North Korea Abducted 200 Chinese Who Aided Refugees

Pyongyang’s agents over the past decade abducted about 200 Chinese citizens as part of a campaign to stop people from fleeing North Korea, a news report said Tuesday. The Chinese of ethnic Korean descent had been helping refugees who had fled across the border, Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, adding they were abducted to North Korea and jailed there. [AFP] The English version of the Chosun Ilbo article isn’t out yet as I write this (but might be by the time...

Categories Abductions/China & Korea
November 17, 2009

Lankov in the NYT, on Negotiating with North Korea

Andrei must really hate peace to say something like this: People in Washington have finally realized what should have been understood years ago: Under no circumstances is North Korea going to surrender its nuclear weapons. North Korean leaders believe that they need these weapons both as a deterrent and a diplomacy tool. Only through the existence of the nuclear program can North Korea, a destitute third-rate dictatorship, manipulate the outside world into providing generous aid. It is often suggested that...

Categories Diplomacy
November 17, 2009

If He Has to Deny It, It Must Be True

While we still aren’t sure whether our Blood Allies © paid the Taliban $2 million or $20 million in ransom, or how many American soldiers or Afghan civilians the Taliban used that money to kill, the South Korean government wants you to know that despite its refusal thus far to do more good than harm there, it did not promise the Taliban that it would keep its troops out of Afghanistan: South Korea did not offer to refrain from redeploying...

Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea
November 17, 2009

It’s time for another installment of the KCNA drinking game!

I do not think that word means what you think it means. Citing facts to prove that from a historical point of view the imperialists look down upon those countries with weak military power, force them to meet their unilateral and brigandish demands and consider them as targets of their armed intervention and aggression, the article goes on: [KCNA, Nov. 9. 2009] Take a drink! If a country, though small, increases defence capability, attaching importance to military affairs, the imperialists...

Categories Propaganda/Unintended Humor/WMD
November 16, 2009

Obama’s China Visit a Setback for American Values, Interests

After denying that he has soft-peddled human rights issues with China, President Obama not only did exactly what he denied doing, he even managed to package his message in yet another cringe-inducing apology: Obama acknowledged that the United States has struggled with race relations over the course of its history, but he said America would “always speak out” in favor of free expression, worship, political participation and access to information — which he termed “universal rights.” “They should be available...

Categories China/Human Rights
November 16, 2009

Phillip Goldberg Quits as N. Korea Sanctions Coordinator

Goldberg had been highly effective in his post, and his departure is a very, very worrying sign about the direction of the administration’s policy: A diplomatic source in Washington said Sunday Goldberg has been appointed as assistant secretary of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department. Voice of America reported that the White House informed the Senate of Goldberg’s new post last month, and a confirmation hearing will take place Thursday. South Korean and U.S. government officials...

Categories Money Laundering/Proliferation/Sanctions