December 6, 2016

Treasury fires a broadside at Kim Jong-un’s slave labor racket

This blog has promoted the outstanding investigative work and legal analysis of the Leiden Asia Center in exposing North Korea’s rental of forced labor to European shipyards and construction companies, under unsafe and exploitative conditions. That work, ably led by Remco Breuker, yielded this Vice documentary and reports filled with actionable information.  Recently, Breuker wrote a long, sad, and funny opinion piece lamenting that LAC’s research has incurred much harassment from Pyongyang’s wacky bands of online sympathizers while having little apparent effect...

Categories Africa/Europe/Human Trafficking
December 6, 2016

The U.S. may (finally) be serious about capping North Korea’s coal exports

For almost three months after North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, the U.N. Security Council remained deadlocked over how to respond, with the U.S. and its allies pressing to limit Kim Jong-un’s access to hard currency and China trying to shield its belligerent protectorate from the consequences of its behavior. Among the most hotly debated questions was how to limit North Korea’s coal exports to China, one of His Porcine Majesty’s most important sources of hard currency. Although UNSCR 2270, passed...

Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
December 4, 2016

What the Treasury Department’s blocking of Air Koryo means

Last week’s North Korea sanctions designations by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control — commonly known as OFAC — go far to explain why U.N. Security Council Resolution 2321 took so long to negotiate and pass. There were many reasons why I panned the terms of that resolution last week, including new and not-improved coal export limits, and the U.N.’s failure to designate North Korea’s state airline, Air Koryo. Friday’s OFAC designations — which block any of...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea/Sanctions
December 2, 2016

Why Seoul’s blacklisting of Air Koryo & Dandong Hongxiang matters

South Korea is the first of the Free Three (the U.S., South Korea, and Japan) to announce independent multilateral sanctions on North Korea following the approval of UNSCR 2321. Some of the measures, such as the blacklisting of Choe Ryong-hae and Hwang Pyong-so, will probably mean almost nothing until some future left-wing president tries to give one of them a ticker-tape parade along the Chongro. An extension of South Korea’s ban on ships that have entered North Korean ports within...

Categories China & Korea/Korean Politics/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions
December 1, 2016

Yonhap: U.S., ROK & Japan to impose coordinated sanctions independently of U.N.

With reaction to UNSCR 2321 ranging from the skeptical to the unfavorable, U.S. and South Korean diplomats have been practicing their skills at porcine cosmetology this week. But if the generals in Pyongyang are already quaffing Hennessey to celebrate the latest advance for the byungjin policy, that may be premature. The Security Council may not have the last word on North Korea’s September 9th nuke test after all: South Korea, the United States and Japan are preparing to announce their own sanctions on...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
November 29, 2016

The U.N.’s new North Korea resolution wasn’t worth the wait

Lest anyone think I’m blindly criticizing the Obama administration as it tries to cover its exit and legacy, start with my favorable comments on UNSCR 2270. That resolution might have been the baseline for a genuinely effective global sanctions program, but the text of the new resolution the Security Council will vote on tomorrow arguably lowers the high bar set by 2270. Indeed, because of our independent authority to enforce 2270 in tandem with our allies, we would have been...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
November 28, 2016

There’s no appeasing North Korea

North Korea has violated or summarily withdrawn from an armistice, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, two IAEA safeguards agreements, an inter-Korean denuclearization agreement, two agreed frameworks, a joint denuclearization statement, the Leap Day agreement, and six U.N. Security Council resolutions — and yet, the most stubborn “engagers” of Pyongyang look on this clear historical record and declare that it calls for yet another piece of paper. Now that calls to negotiate a peace treaty with Pyongyang are metastasizing from the pro-North...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
November 22, 2016

China breaks N. Korea sanctions it says won’t work because it’s afraid they’ll work

In yesterday’s post, I linked to reports suggesting that China’s failure to agree on the terms of a new U.N. sanctions resolution responding to North Korea’s latest nuclear test may be motivated by a desire to wait out the end of President Obama’s administration. This theory would only make sense if China figures it can get better terms from President Trump next year, but my post pointed to evidence of the opposite of this — that what we know so...

Categories China/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Politics
November 21, 2016

If China is gambling on Trump to blunt N. Korea sanctions, it could lose bigly*

By all outward appearances, President Obama never really had a coherent North Korea policy. While pursuing a deal that Pyongyang either didn’t want or wouldn’t keep, it reacted to each nuclear test by building on John Bolton’s work and nominally tightening the sanctions the U.N. initially imposed a decade ago, in Resolution 1718. The idea, apparently, was to deter Pyongyang by threatening its plans to develop Hamhung and Chongjin, something it no more intends to do than the Confederacy intended...

Categories "United" Nations/China/Sanctions/U.S. Politics
November 18, 2016

If the CIA isn’t funding this covert communications network for North Korea, it should be

Many years ago, when I was a young engineering student at my small college in South Dakota, a grizzled CIA operations officer came to my school to recruit technical experts. To an aspiring man of the world living in a small, isolated island in a vast ocean of grass and sagebrush, before the arrival of the internet, the idea of meeting a real CIA man stoked an irresistible curiosity in me. You might as well have laid a trail of...

Categories Subversion
November 17, 2016

As Trump picks his cabinet, Congress flexes its foreign policy muscle

As we continue to watch Trump’s trial balloons float by on the selection of his national security cabinet, we still don’t know much about the foreign policy Donald Trump would have as President. On the other hand, most of Congress’s key players on foreign policy will still be around next year, and some of them have already begun to assert themselves. Committee chairs are (on one hand) pushing Trump to adopt more conventional foreign policy views, while (on the other) threatening...

Categories U.S. Law/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
November 14, 2016

No, Newt Gingrich did not call for us to invade Iran and North Korea

It’s faint praise to say that Newt Gingrich would likely be an improvement over John Kerry as Secretary of State. I hardly count myself as Gingrich’s greatest fan. He’s intelligent and qualified for the job, and he certainly has grand policy visions, although I’d have concerns about putting a man of his ego and temperament into the nation’s top diplomatic position. I also think he’d have more trouble than Bob Corker or even John Bolton in his efforts to bend...

Categories Media Criticism
November 7, 2016

Treasury finalizes cutoff of N. Korean banks from U.S. financial system

After a long delay, the Treasury Department has issued its final rule prohibiting financial institutions operating in U.S. jurisdiction from providing direct or indirect correspondent account services to North Korean financial institutions. In English, that means North Korean banks are now denied a critical link for accessing the global financial system. North Korea is now one of only three countries to be declared a Primary Money Laundering Concern by the Treasury Department, and is the only country subject to Special Measure...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
November 4, 2016

China’s real-name cell phone registration rules could further isolate North Koreans

North Koreans’ most important link to the outside world, signals from Chinese cell phone networks that reach over the border inside North Korea, may soon be cut off. China is starting to enforce real-name registration requirements designed to crack down on scams and harassment, and North Koreans could be hardest hit. North Koreans with relatives outside the country depend on Chinese mobile phone networks to communicate internationally, as the state’s networks are limited to calls made within the country. China’s...

Categories Subversion
November 3, 2016

The new North Korea engagement is about life after Kim Jong-un

By now, most sensible people have discarded the faddish illusions of 2012 that Kim Jong-un would be the Swiss-educated reformer they’ve been waiting for. Mainstream opinion is migrating to the view that the world would be a safer and happier place without Kim Jong-un, although one seldom hears these sentiments developed as concrete ideas. The practical obstacles to achieving them are obvious. How can we influence change in the world’s most isolated and terrorized society? How would our ally (and...

Categories Propaganda/Regime Change/Subversion
October 31, 2016

Why China and North Korea want Park Geun-hye gone

Nearly all of the news from Korea this week is about the scandal that has paralyzed President Park Geun-hye’s presidency, and may even end it. Going by Alastair Gale’s report in The Wall Street Journal, the scandal has three main elements, along with some other (mostly) unspoken elements. First, Park has said that her “friend, Choi Soon-sil, had helped her prepare speeches early in her presidential term.” She has since apologized for this, although I can’t see why. Most American...

Categories Korean Politics/Subversion
October 28, 2016

A study in media bias: Clapper said N. Korea diplomacy, not denuclearization, is a “lost cause.”

Earlier this week, I agreed with what James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, actually said about North Korea, before I criticized Clapper for saying it. Now, it’s the media’s turn. Media, if you’re reading this, most of you did an awful job reporting that story. Semantics are your business, so I’m going to get semantic here, starting with Clapper’s full quote, in context. All emphasis mine: Q: You talked about the assessment of threat in North Korea. I’m curious...

Categories Media Criticism
October 27, 2016

This time, FATF’s warning on North Korea really is a big deal

It has now been an inexplicably long four months since the Treasury Department announced its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to designate North Korea as a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern, in which it stated its intent to cut off North Korean banks’ access to correspondent accounts in the dollar financial system. Under section 311 of the Patriot Act, however, such a cutoff only becomes legally enforceable after Treasury publishes its final rule, which Treasury still has not done, and...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions