Search Results for: Obama not ready

December 6, 2009

North Korea Completes Great Confiscation (Upated)

[Updated below.] By now, it is December 7th in Pyongyang, and the period for exchanging old currency for new has passed. By filling the streets with troops and police, the regime has, for the moment, managed to contain the “fury and frustration” of people who, robbed of their savings and deprived of food rations, no longer know how they’re going to make it through the winter. For now, only isolated outbreaks of dissent are reported. The people know that this...

Categories NK Economics/Resistance
November 10, 2009

North Korean Ship “Wrapped in Flames” After Battle; No South Korean Sailors Hurt

The North Korean navy appears to have gotten the worst of it after an apparently calculated provocation along the Northern Limit Line, the Koreas’ maritime boundary in the Yellow Sea: According to Joint Chiefs of Staff officials in Seoul, a North Korean patrol boat crossed the NLL at 11:27 a.m. and attacked a South Korean one after ignoring several warning shots. The South Korean side suffered no casualties in the clash that erupted shortly after the crossing and lasted about...

Categories NK Military/North-South/ROK Military
November 8, 2009

Photos from Saturday’s March and Demonstration for NK Human Rights

I would love to write more, but at least for now, here are some photos from Saturday’s March from near City Hall (actually, just to the right of the Deoksu Palace) to Seoul Station, where we joined a somewhat larger collection of groups assembled to call for freedom for North Koreans and meant to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. The woman pictured speaking below is a North Korean survivor of sexual trafficking —...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Refugees
October 9, 2009

October 9, 2009

THE BALLOON PEOPLE are back! OBAMA IS “LEERY” of direct talks with North Korea: “[A] State Department official said Tuesday that the U.S. will not agree to one-on-one talks unless it is given assurances in advance that the outcome will be a deal to resume six-party negotiations.” Well, good for them. No talks will ever disarm North Korea, but always good to show them we mean what we say. SOUTH KOREA PLACES A CAP on what local Commie-sympathizing fifth-columnists can...

Categories Anju Links
October 9, 2009

But What Has He Actually Done?

OK, Europe, we get it already: you love Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. But what has Barack Obama has done to justify the award of a Nobel Peace Prize? I hope President Obama is sensible enough to be embarrassed by this. I see no reason to believe — and hope that I never will — that President Obama campaigned for this. As such, the award says nothing about Obama himself, something perhaps about a segment of his supporters who will...

Categories Europe
September 27, 2009

Here in America, We Are Still Very Far from 150-Day Battles, But Close to Mid-Term Elections

KCJ’s comment here, on the fawning Songs of Obama sung in a New Jersey classroom, inspired me to write a response that may warrant its own post. Here is the video KCJ is talking about: This is creepy stuff, and I’d be livid if my kids ever come home singing something like this. Now, where is the evidence that this is the work of the Obama Administration, as opposed to that of one unintelligent Kool-Aid drinking teacher? WSJ blogger James...

Categories U.S. Politics
September 16, 2009

What I Think of the Bilateral Talks Talk

I’ve let much of the sturm and drang over the announcement of a bilateral meeting with the North Koreans pass while I tried to acquire a sense of what this really means, and whether it necessarily suggests that Obama’s not-bad North Korea policy is going to revert to something weaker, something ironically like the policy George W. Bush ultimately adopted, and which failed so completely to achieve American interests. Conservatives have gotten into the habit of opposing bilateral talks with...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
September 12, 2009

Lisa Ling to Appear at LiNK Benefit Gala Tonight

[Liveblogging below. Paul Song is speaking, and Laura Ling will appear at the gala.] Wonderful. And you can watch it all here, live at 6 p.m. Eastern. For all the understandable criticism of Laura Ling, Euna Lee, and Mitch Koss for crossing into North Korea, a sentiment I’ve never understood has been the hostility by some toward Lisa Ling, whom to my eyes is guilty of nothing whatsoever here. Some have even appeared to criticize her for using her access...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Ling/Lee Incident/Media Criticism
August 26, 2009

Must Read: On N. Korean Counterfeiting

We’ve seen much first-rate reporting on North Korea’s “supernote’ counterfeiting recently, and here’s one via The Independent that frankly outdoes all of them in its scope and detail, and fills in many missing details. I’m not going to even try to quote just one part of this. Just go and read. The comments are edifying in their own way. The British left is fond of saying that it isn’t really anti-American, just anti-Bush. And yet nothing seems to have changed...

Categories Counterfeiting
August 22, 2009

Take the OFK Challenge: Name One Time Selig Harrison Was Right About North Korea

The AP’s Foster Klug interviews North Korean tool Selig Harrison, and catches him in this Kanye West moment: Harrison, addressing his critics, says: “Everything I’ve ever said about North Korea since 1972 has seemed at the time like screaming into the wilderness, and everything I’ve ever advocated has come to pass.” [AP, Foster Klug] If Harrison means that he consistently called for the U.S. to cave and it always did, Harrison is correct. Never overestimate the U.S. Department of State....

Categories Media Criticism/Washington Views
August 18, 2009

Kim Dae Jung, Fallen Liberator (1925-2009)

A few days ago, a well-informed reader and commenter on this site informed me that former President Kim Dae Jung would soon pass on, yet the time proved inadequate for me to work out my own internal conflicts about Kim, or “DJ” as many called him. Maybe Kim’s contradictory legacy just isn’t amenable to mutual reconciliation. Much will be said in the coming days — deservedly so — of DJ’s role in democratizing the South. Less will be said of...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/North-South/South Korea/Sunshine
August 9, 2009

Whoa. That’s just cold.

I’d have to say that this is the nastiest thing I’ve read yet about Laura Ling and Euna Lee.  And that said, it contains much interesting information that may or may not be at all true.  This, for example: Kim Jong Il has ruled it with absolute authority since 1994. He was born in the Forties, but his exact birthday is asecret. He wears platform shoes and a teased hairdo and is reputed to have had a string of lovers,...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident/U.S. Politics
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
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
July 27, 2009

Yachting the River Styx and the Lies of Christine Ahn

Several of you e-mailed me about the story of the luxury yachts that North Korea had attempted to purchase from the Italian manufacturer Azimuth-Benetti.  I started a post and didn’t finish it, partially because that post became something long-winded, disjointed, and unpublishable.  Meanwhile, a few more details have trickled in about the boats and the purchase.  Contrary to doubts expressed in earlier reports, Italian authorities have concluded that the boats were indeed for His Withering Majesty, although you have to...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Sanctions
July 24, 2009

Why My Diplomacy Is Smarter Than Your Diplomacy

You remember what diplomacy was like in the days before it was smart, right? When diplomats let slip undiplomatic truths about Kim Jong Il being a “tyrannical dictator” who subjected his people to a “hellish nightmare?” When Presidents “loathed” their adversaries instead of sitting down and sharing a bong with them? Thank goodness change has come! It says a lot about the North Koreans that they can’t just rise above this and hold the high ground. So does this mean...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
July 22, 2009

John Kerry Tries, Fails to Stop Amendment Calling for N. Korea to be Re-Listed as Terror Sponsor (Update: Dems Defeat Amendment, 54-43)

Progress on ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is always tenuous and remains incomplete. But the regime’s nuclear declaration is the latest reminder that, despite President Bush’s once bellicose rhetoric, engaging our enemies can pay dividends…. Now the president must not prematurely close the books on North Korea’s alleged uranium enrichment activities and nuclear exports. We must ensure there are credible verification and monitoring procedures to ensure North Korea is out of the nuclear business for the long term. —...

Categories Appeasement/Ling/Lee Incident/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics
July 1, 2009

ROK Defense Minister: N. Korea Steps Up Uranium Enrichment

I can only thank God for Chris Hill, whose Jedi mind tricks completely, verifiably, and irreversibly disarmed these people in the nick of time … not: North Korea appears to be enriching uranium, potentially giving the state that has twice tested a plutonium-based nuclear device another path to making atomic weapons, South Korea’s defense minister said on Tuesday. “It is clear that they are moving forward with it,” Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee told a parliamentary hearing, adding such a programme...

Categories Proliferation/WMD