Search Results for: luxury

December 4, 2006

EU Investigating Forced N. Korean Labor

Update:   More at the Daily NK.   You may recall my previous post (and R. Elgin’s) about the use of female North Korean slave laborers to stitch upholstery for German luxury sedans, which certainly brings back a few memories about the golden age of German business ethics.  It looks like that source of income will soon come to an end, as the European Parliament is now investigating the conditions under which North Koreans labor in the Czech Republic and...

Categories Europe/Human Rights/Human Trafficking
December 2, 2006

John Bolton on North Korea Sanctions

While looking for something else, I picked up this exchange, which I thought might interest you: Reporter: The North Korean — DPRK Sanctions Committee is going to meet today, and they seem to be rather slowly getting up to speed on their reporting and all the other work they have to do, and it’s kind of dragging on for a while. There’s some indication that perhaps some countries might be delaying action in the Sanctions Committee. Do you have a...

Categories "United" Nations/WMD
November 29, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 15

The United States has leaked a new set of sanctions on “luxury items” that can no longer be exported to North Korea, in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718: [T]he list of proposed luxury sanctions, obtained by The Associated Press, aims to make Kim’s swanky life harder: No more cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis. Electronic goods like I-pods and plasma TV’s are also banned.  Defectors helped...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/Washington Views
November 21, 2006

The Case for Starving the People

I noticed this interesting graf in a story about the effect of the luxury  items sanctions in UNSCR 1718.  For reasons that escape me entirely, some people believe that it’s counterproductive to bar Kim Jong Il from buying sashimi, S-Class sedans, and Omega watches while his people are starving – to – death,  some seem so quick to forget. Over past years, U.S. leaders have described the North Korean regime as an axis of evil, an outpost of tyranny, an...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il/Korean Education/Washington Views
November 17, 2006

Proliferation Security Watch

The AP has a very detailed story on the search of a North Korean ship in the Indian Ocean, along with a nice summary of other searches in the recent past.  In this case, it sounds like all they found was cement. In other searches, Hong Kong authorities detained two North Korean cargo ships in October for safety violations apparently unrelated to the U.N. sanctions. Myanmar permitted a North Korean cargo ship in distress to anchor at a port in...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China & Korea/Japan & Korea/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/WMD
November 11, 2006

North Korea’s Food Crisis and the Theory of Comparative Advantage

Donor fatigue has hit the World Food Program’s much-reduced North Korea operations: James Morris, the agency’s outgoing chief, told the WFP executive board session in Rome earlier this week that the operation in North Korea “is dramatically underfunded.” “If we are to continue, and you overwhelmingly have said you want us to stay there and want us to be helpful in addressing the humanitarian agenda, we are going to need some help,” he said. “Otherwise, come February, we will be...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
November 2, 2006

North Korea Wants Its Drug Money Back

[Update:  A senior Korean official suggests that the U.S. will do just that right after the talks resume.  Scroll down.] [Update 2:  The Washington Post post also suspects that North Korea’s announcement is merely an effort to foil the American economic pressure: We hope Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, who conducted lengthy talks with his North Korean counterpart in recent days, is justified in expecting “substantial progress” from the new round. But history suggests that both North Korea...

Categories "United" Nations/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks
October 15, 2006

U.N.S.C.R. 1718: Who Won, Who Lost (Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 13)

John Bolton: Winner. I’d like to hear John Bolton’s critics deny that, as with Resolution 1695, he has wrung far more effectiveness from the U.N. than we had come to expect. Not only should we confirm this man, pronto, we should clone him. Madeleine Albright never got results like these. The United States: Winner. We got everything we really wanted here: help constricting Kim Jong Il’s financial arteries the right to search his ships and planes. an embargo on the...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Geopolitics/Japan/Japan & Korea/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 14, 2006

U.N. Security Council Resolution Takes Shape Passes Resolution 1718

Update: Too good to be true? Looks like the vote will be delayed … probably so that the Chinese and Russians can water this thing down. —– Update 2:   On again.   Supposedly, there will be a vote today. —– Updated 3:   It passed; analysis below, and the full text at the bottom of this post.   Naturally, the North Korean delegate walked out and denounced everyone for being “gangster-like. This is what the psychologists refer to as “projection.” ...

Categories "United" Nations/NK Economics/NK Military/WMD
October 10, 2006

U.S. to Propose Arms Embargo on North Korea

I’d proposed it two days before July’s missile tests, because of the rising danger of another preventable famine, but  it now looks as if John Bolton is circulating  this concept  as part of what he’d tried to get from the U.N. after the July missile tests: The United States circulated a draft U.N. resolution late Monday that would condemn North Korea’s nuclear test and impose tough sanctions on the reclusive communist nation for Pyongyang’s “flagrant disregard” of the Security Council’s...

Categories "United" Nations/China/China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Money Laundering/NK Economics/WMD
September 21, 2006

John Feffer’s Dubious History of the Great North Korean Famine

John Feffer provides a deeply informed and lucid account of all these matters, full of insight, pointing the way to constructive solutions that are within our grasp.” — Noam Chomsky It’s no simple thing to be a North Korea apologist these days, and that’s never been truer now that any intelligent observer can see that the food situation in the North is getting worse fast. There are several converging reasons for this: expulsion of (most of) the World Food Program,...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights
July 23, 2006

MUST READ: NYT on NK Counterfeiting

The New York Times has a very extensive article on North Korea’s counterfeiting operations: By 1984, as North Korea’s planned economy began to fall apart, Kim Jong Il, who by that time was effectively running much of the government, issued another directive, according to the North Korean specialist, who told me he has obtained a copy of the document. It explained that “producing and using counterfeit U.S. dollars” was a means, in part, for “overcoming economic crisis. The economic crisis...

Categories Counterfeiting/NK Economics/Washington Views
June 19, 2006

The Peace of the Grave

It’s another failing grade for those who administer the “Global Test” — a group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates gathered in Kwangju at the invitation of Roh Moo Hyun and Kim Dae Jung, and returned the favor by calling on the U.S. to “ease up” on North Korea. I searched for the full text of their statement and found none, perhaps because no one outside South Korea really cares about a join statement by a huddle of sanctimonious has-beens. This...

Categories Uncategorized
May 2, 2006

Jay Lefkowitz Is Right About Kaesong

The debate about South Korea’s role in (not) improving human rights in the North seems to intensify by the hour. Freedom House is the latest to testify for the prosecution. If you believe the latest report from the Chosun Ilbo, the State Department is reeling from the vitriolic South Korean reaction to U.S. Human Rights Envoy Jay Lefkowitz over labor conditions in North Korea’s Kaesong Industrial Park: Another U.S. government insider also said the controversial piece by Lefkowitz had not...

Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Media Criticism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law/Uncategorized/Washington Views
April 6, 2006

Is Kim Jong Il Bankrupt?

There is more evidence to suggest that North Korea really is in dire financial straits after all. Some would not call this a novel conclusion to make about a country in which 2.5 million people have starved to death, but a careful reading of what NGO workers and refugees tell us of how the food was passed out suggests that the North Korean regime was not unduly upset about that, as long as its elite ate well and never lacked...

Categories China/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/NK Economics/Uncategorized
January 25, 2006

Sick Day Post: Refugee Update; More Bad News for the Alliance; Politics; Are Independent Businessmen Running North Korea’s Counterfeiting Racket?

My advice to everyone who values his health: do not have children. I think I’ve been sick now for a whole month, courtesy of the adorable little biohazards at my son’s preschool. To save time, I put everything into one post (HT to LiNK for most of these). _________________ . We Are (Not) One! Via MSNBC, we have more evidence, if any were needed, that South Korea’s popular enthusiasm for unification doesn’t necessarily extend to the people of North Korea....

Categories Uncategorized
October 31, 2005

That’s funny. My watch says it’s time to expropriate your watch.

How many kids could you feed for one of these? SEOUL, Oct. 29 (Yonhap) — Luxury Swiss watches have recently gone on sale at a new store in North Korea, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan said Saturday. “Pyongje Co., a dealer for Swiss watch brands Longines and Tissot established in April, is selling their watches at a store in downtown Pyongyang,” Choson Sinbo said in its Internet edition. North Korea had previously purchased watches in Switzerland for use as special...

Categories Uncategorized
April 7, 2005

They Will Say They Did Not Know

Germany, 1945. Again, the Korean government will abstain from a U.N. Resolution “expressing concern about “human rights abuses in the Stalinist country [of North Korea] such as concentration camps for political prisoners. It calls on Pyongyang to ratify the Convention Against Torture and guarantee that the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea is allowed to operate freely. The special rapporteur was created by last year’s resolution.” Just consider the sheer dumfounding illogic of it. Half of this...

Categories Uncategorized