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August 29, 2016

Defections may not foretell N. Korea’s collapse (but they could help induce it)

The defection of North Korean Deputy Ambassador Thae Yong-ho two weeks ago has tolled a ghoulish vigil in which bloggers, op-ed writers, and academics have speculated about the longevity of His Porcine Majesty. Some of them still read a long lifeline on his palm. South Korean President (and master troll) Park Geun-hye, on the other hand, sees “serious cracks” in the regime and says that the cohesion of the oligarchs is “collapsing.” “The North Korean regime is taking no account...

Defectors/Money Laundering/Sanctions

August 26, 2016

To prevent war, talk to North Korea’s soldiers about rice, peace & freedom (updated: it happened again)

When the U.S. Army wants to breach a minefield, it deploys a Mine-Clearing Line Charge to blast a path through it with 1,750 pounds of C-4. The procedure looks like this: Obviously, the North Koreans know this, so they can’t possibly think that planting a few more anti-personnel mines along the DMZ – right where U.S. and ROK forces will be watching and marking them – will do anything to stop an invasion that isn’t coming. I’m mildly surprised, by...

Border Control/NK Military

August 24, 2016

If North Korea can make fake Viagra for export, why can’t it make TB drugs for sick North Koreans?

Since the collapse of North Korea’s nominally free public health system, contagious diseases have spread widely, but only a lucky few North Koreans have been able to find medicine and medical care. Most of its people get by on whatever health care they can afford and whatever drugs they can find. A lucky few use retired doctors or doctors who moonlight after regular working hours. Some pay steep bribes to get access to care and medicine in state hospitals and...

Famine & Food Aid/Health & Disease/Media Criticism

August 23, 2016

Amid surge in elite defections, China raises bounties on North Korean refugees

The State Department, which refuses to re-designate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism despite all of the recent and well-documented cases of Pyongyang sending its agents to kidnap and kill refugees, emigres, and activists — and amid reports that it is sending more hit-men now — is calling on governments around the world to protect North Korean refugees. That’s good, I suppose. “We urge all countries to cooperate in the protection of North Korean refugees and asylum seekers within...

Defectors/Refugees

August 22, 2016

Please share: Hard-working, talented intern seeks position in a congressional staff or think tank

I don’t usually do job postings here, but I’m going to make an exception for a good friend. During my time on the Hill working on H.R. 1771, which would later become law as H.R. 757, the Foreign Affairs Committee leadership assigned a young intern to work with me on the bill. This friend now seeks a paid position on a Hill staff or in a think tank in the fields of foreign affairs, defense policy, or national security. Having worked closely...

Miscellaneous

August 22, 2016

12 N. Korean restaurant workers resettled in S. Korea amid new N. Korean terror threats

Pyongyang has finally settled on a story to explain the defection of its number two diplomat in London, Thae Yong-ho. Initially, Pyongyang’s principal puppet in Tokyo, Kim Myong-chol, had suggested that South Korean agents had coerced Thae into defecting. Now, Pyongyang is accusing Thae of embezzlement and child rape, and lashing out at Britain for aiding his escape. Until very recently, the British Foreign Office had hewed in a strongly pro-engagement direction. I wonder how this rupture will affect Britain’s...

Defectors/Refugees

August 19, 2016

Yet another North Korean slush fund manager vanishes, this time in Europe

I’m no expert, but I don’t see how this could be a coincidence. A North Korean official managing money for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Europe has disappeared, raising speculation that he might have defected with a large amount of state funds, a local media report said Friday. Citing anonymous sources, major local daily newspaper the Dong-A Ilbo reported that the official in charge of money management for the so-called No. 39 office of the Workers’ Party vanished in June....

Defectors/Europe/Money Laundering/Sanctions

August 19, 2016

Wall Street Journal calls on Obama administration to hit N. Korea with secondary sanctions

It’s always rewarding to know that someone is reading my screeds: The promise of secondary sanctions is that they can force foreign banks, trading companies and ports to choose between doing business with North Korea and doing business in dollars, which usually is an easy call. That’s what happened a decade ago when the U.S. blacklisted Macao-based Banco Delta Asia and spurred a cascade of other Chinese banks to drop their North Korean clients lest they lose access to the...

China/Sanctions

August 18, 2016

North Korean diplomats behaving badly, Part 2

On balance, I suppose Kim Jong-un probably prefers to see his foreign emissaries expelled than boarding KAL flights to Seoul. Still, since we last took inventory of Pyongyang’s distressed diplomatic corps in March, several more North Korean diplomats have been kicked out and sent home, and His Corpulency is apparently displeased. Pakistan In 2014, I wrote about North Koreans who were bootlegging alcohol in Muslim countries, quite possibly the only illicit North Korean activity that also provides a useful service to...

NK Crime/Sanctions

August 18, 2016

“Citizens of Pyongyang, my name is Thae Yong-ho.”

When the news broke yesterday that North Korea’s Deputy Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Thae Yong-ho, had defected, many reporters who knew him were astonished. Subject to the confirmation of reports that a North Korean general and several diplomats defected in China recently, Thae would be the highest-ranking diplomat to have defected from the North, and the second-highest official, after Hwang Jang-yop‘s defection in 1997. This is a new low in a bad year for Kim Jong-un. Defections are not...

Defectors

August 16, 2016

The Obama administration isn’t following Kim Jong-un’s money. Congress should ask why.

In February and March, respectively, the U.S. Congress and the U.N. Security Council responded to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test with sanctions that were, in theory, an order of magnitude stronger than any sanctions imposed on North Korea until then. Sanctions, of course, are only as good as their enforcement, and in enforcing sanctions against North Korea, the most important rule has always been “follow the money.” Money — along with the contradictions of its political system — has always...

Sanctions/U.S. Law

August 15, 2016

Facebook should test its internet drones over North Korea

Just over a week ago in the Arizona Desert, Facebook’s solar powered Aquila drone lifted off for the first time and stayed aloft for more than 90 minutes. Facebook posted video of the launch here and told of its great ambitions for Aquila. “When complete, Aquila will be able to circle a region up to 60 miles in diameter, beaming connectivity down from an altitude of more than 60,000 feet using laser communications and millimeter wave systems. Aquila is designed to...

Subversion

August 12, 2016

North Koreans don’t want to be slaves overseas after all

The last refuge of those who defended North Korea’s use of overseas slave labor is that at least it was better than slave labor inside North Korea. It was always a con, of course – the North Korean regime promised its workers big money if they went overseas to toil in Siberian forests, Polish shipyards, Qatari construction sites, or Chinese garment factories. That the officials earned steep bribes with this con gave them a motive to lie and exaggerate. The...

Human Trafficking

August 11, 2016

Angola is playing fast and loose with North Korea sanctions

Like its neighbor, Namibia, Angola aligned with the Soviet block during the Cold War. The Angolan government and the Namibian rebel movement, the South West Africa Peoples’ Organization or SWAPO, received military assistance from Cuba, which had up to 60,000 soldiers near Angola’s border with Namibia during a vicious set of guerrilla wars in the 1990s. The Soviet Union is gone, but historic alliances can be persistent things, especially when those alliances also come with financial ties. This has certainly...

Africa/Arms Trafficking/Sanctions

August 10, 2016

Are Kim Jong-un’s apologists in U.N. aid agencies doing North Koreans more harm than good?

With a government in control, it is impossible to reach those who are powerless without paying the powerful, and paying the President and the government will make them less interested in listening to their people. Instead of having to raise money through taxation and deliver services in return, they can instead use their people to extract money from donors. They can enrich themselves by keeping their population poor; such aid is an instrument of inequality. – Nobel Prize winning economist...

Famine & Food Aid

August 9, 2016

North Korean NCO kills wife, daughter of his company commander (updated)

Via the Daily NK and Yonhap, we have yet another report of fratricidal violence, corruption, and indiscipline among North Koreaâ€™s border guards, except this time, the fratricidal intent was redirected at the mother and daughter of an army officer. The incident occurred at the end of July in the Kanggu District of Hyesan City, where the sergeant majorâ€™s unit – the 25th Border Security Brigade – was stationed, a source from Ryanggang Province told Daily NK on August 7. â€œIn...

Border Control/NK Military

August 5, 2016

S. Korea’s quisling left goes all-out to bully N. Koreans out of defecting, and it just might work

We still have few details and no confirmation regarding the reported defection of that North Korean general in China, other than this Korea Times report that he absconded with $40 million, and that he “was in charge of Section 39 inside the Korean Workers’ Party.” (KBS had reported that he was in charge of regime slush funds in southeast Asia only.) The Korea Times report probably refers to what’s more commonly referred to as Bureau 39, Room 39, or Office 39, the...

Defectors/Human Trafficking/Refugees/The Fifth Column/Useful Idiocy

August 2, 2016

Why Treasury should require banks to keep records about N. Korean beneficial ownership

In my policy discussions about North Korea, two of the smartest sanctions skeptics I’ve debated are professors John Park and James Walsh. Not only are they both genuinely nice people, their skepticism points to flaws and gaps in the sanctions regime, and that skepticism ultimately serves to improve the quality of the sanctions and their enforcement. They’ve been particularly persuasive about the importance of pursuing “North Korea Inc.,” Pyongyang’s extensive and shadowy network of agents and trading companies in China,...

"United" Nations/Europe/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law