August 7, 2009

In What Sense Is John Choe Morally Distinguishable from a Neo-Nazi?

John Choe, personifying the appellation “useful idiot” as pictured here, won’t shift U.S. foreign policy if he’s elected to represent a district in Queens in the New York City Council. Technically, Choe is correct when he evades questions about his sympathies with North Korea’s regime and demurs, “I’m not running for secretary of state–I’m running to represent the 20th district in the City Council,” Choe said. That is true in the same sense that David Duke ran for governor of...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Fifth Column/U.S. Politics
August 7, 2009

Almighty God, Please Spare Us the Retch-Inducing Stockholm Syndrome Speeches (Updated, Bumped)

[Updated below] Now that Laura Ling and Euna Lee are on their way home, I have a short list of things I do and do not want to hear from them, starting with any retch-inducing drivel about how well they were treated while they shouldn’t have been in captivity at all. Let’s make that the first thing on our list: 1.  Please spare us the Stockholm Syndrome at LAX.  Try to remember that you weren’t in North Korea to rob...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident
August 6, 2009

Upping the Ante

It is indeed good news to hear of the safe return of Laura Ling and Euna Lee after months of imprisonment in North Korea, but does this really signal an improvement in U.S.-DPRK relations? North Korea did, after all, use these journalists to get what it wanted (Bill Clinton in North Korea), and the U.S. did honor the regime’s request, although under the label of a “private” mission. While the rescue is being hailed as a “success,” it’s too early...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident/Propaganda
August 6, 2009

Jackass Mails Hash to Self in South Korea, Does Time, Compares Self to Laura Ling and Euna Lee

When the news of Laura Ling and Euna Lee’s release broke, I warned you that you were going to read a lot of really stupid things, and you are.  But a reader also forwards a link to something completely unexpected from Cullen Thomas, writing at The Daily Beast. What could be more useful in making sense of an isolated and unpredictable rogue state’s holding of journalists as hostages than the unique perspective of a hash-smoking ex-con who did time in...

Categories Fiskings/Ling/Lee Incident/The Camps
August 5, 2009

Yesterday Syria, Today Burma, Tomorrow Al Qaeda

The “experts” told us that North Korea would have no reason to threaten us if we’d only “engage,” talk, and appease them. We did, and they sold Syria a nuclear reactor anyway. Others say we should just ignore them. We did, and they’re selling Burma a uranium enrichment program: The two defectors whose briefings have created such alarm are both regarded as credible sources. One was an officer with a secret nuclear battalion in the Burmese army who was sent...

Categories Proliferation/Southeast Asia
August 4, 2009

The Bag Man: Bill Clinton in Pyongyang

[Update:  More here, at The New Ledger.  I suspect we’ve come to a fork in the road.  One way brings us to Agreed Framework III, and the other clears a major obstacle toward intensifying sanctions, and an adult response to a crisis that talks without clear benchmarks and objectives have only exacerbated.  Place your own bets.] Former President Clinton is in Pyongyang to ask for the freedom of Laura Ling and Euna Lee. As I’ve said before, it hardly matters...

Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Ling/Lee Incident/Terrorism (NK)
August 3, 2009

The Damning of Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-hyun

Video presentations from May’s Oslo Freedom Forum are now online with North Korea represented by Park San-Hak, a North Korean defector who currently works as a democracy activist. It takes a while for Park’s presentation to gain momentum, but it’s well worth watching in its entirety if you can get through the introduction because his talk eventually heats up. About midway through his presentation, Park embarks on a crusade of stinging criticism directed toward former South Korea presidents Kim Dae-jung...

Categories Activism/Defectors/Human Rights/North-South/Sunshine
August 3, 2009

Obama Persuades Liberals that John Bolton Was Right About North Korea

At the San Francisco Chronicle, Stanford Professor Joel Brinkley argues the President Obama is “wasting his time” trying to improve relations with North Korea: In the months since Obama took office, North Korea has test fired long-range missiles, threatened and belittled South Korea and conducted a nuclear test – even as Washington let Pyongyang know that it wanted to improve relations. Finally, it appears, the administration has had enough. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, attending the July 23 meeting...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
August 2, 2009

Kim Kye-Gwan Purged?

Writing in the Asia Times, Don Kirk passes along reports that Kim Kye Gwan, the man who tricked Chris Hill into Agreed Framework II and a host of unilateral concessions that followed it, has been purged. He seems to have disappeared, and nobody has a clue as to whether he’s dead or alive, working on a chicken farm or sent to a prison for re-education. Analysts here believe Kim may have become a scapegoat for hardliners in the ascendancy in...

Categories Diplomacy/Kremlinology
August 1, 2009

What’s Still Missing from Obama’s North Korea Policy

Suddenly, editors at prominent liberal publications feel safe letting stories about North Korea’s atrocities see page one, and scholars at prominent liberal think tanks feel safe raising human rights. The topic is no longer subsumed uncomfortably beneath the misbegotten hope that ignoring atrocities unequaled in these times would allow us to negotiate and verify the disarmament of a nation that remained blanketed in secrecy and terror. (Proponents of this premise, which crowned us with the glory of Agreed Frameworks I...

Categories Human Rights/Washington Views
July 31, 2009

Marcus Noland on Sanctioning North Korea

First, a note of congratulations to Mr. Noland on being named Deputy Director of the Peterson Institute.  Noland also has a paper out on the prospects for disarming North Korea though sanctions.  Here’s a teaser, and I’ll let you read the rest on your own: Given the extremely high priority the North Korean regime places on its military capacity, it is unlikely that the pressure the world can bring to bear on North Korea will be sufficient to induce the...

Categories China & Korea/NK Economics/Sanctions
July 31, 2009

Ban Ki-moon to Save the Day?

Last night the Facebook page for Laura Ling and Euna Lee posted an an Agence France-Presse article stating that U.N. head Ban Ki-moon has “launched an initiative to secure the release of two US journalists detained in North Korea but would not disclose details.” Call me cynical, but if he can actually free these two reporters, it will somewhat restore my lost faith in the ability of Ban – and the U.N. for that matter. Although I must admit, crazier...

Categories "United" Nations/Ling/Lee Incident
July 29, 2009

Breaking: N. Korea Seizes S. Korean Fishing Boat

Sounds like the boat, which carried a crew of four, strayed across the NLL when its GPS system malfunctioned: The fishing boat, skippered by a man only identified by his last name, Park, departed from the port of Geojin on the eastern coast at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday and sailed past the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto inter-Korean maritime border, as far as 20 miles off the port of Jejin, he said. Geojin is about 150km northeast of...

Categories North-South
July 29, 2009

Being Irrational and Ill-Informed Still No Barrier to Getting a Global Audience

No one in the Obama Administration sounds terribly interested in North Korea’s offer of a bilateral dialogue about what concessions America is prepared to grant North Korea this year, but at the Christian Science Monitor, Professor Zhiqun Zhu of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (you remember it from the matchbook covers, right?) calls North Korea’s statement “a rare opportunity” and writes one of the most scary-stupid things I’ve read all year: Frankly, it is unrealistic for the US to ask...

Categories Fiskings