The power to tax is the power to destroy — Daniel Webster As the Obama Administration inherits an intractable, non-compliant, bellicose, and terroristic North Korea, the administration’s great challenge is to see beyond a strategy based on concessions alone. Via GI Korea, the new administration appears to be polarizing into factions, just as the Bush Administration did eight years ago. One of the factions advocates “normalization of relations with North Korea as soon as possible,” in other words, giving even...

That Orascom’s big new investment in North Korea would fail has always been predictable, but it was always incomprehensible how Orascom’s business model centered around introducing the one thing with the most potential to destabilize the regime’s hold on power: a mobile phone network. Not surprisingly, Orascom and the North Korean regime are already at odds over Orascom’s plan to pass out 100,000 free phones to generate a base of bill-paying subscribers. Instead, the regime is selling them for $235...