“SIX PARTIES, ZERO PROGRESS:” The Weekly Standard aptly describes the current state Bush Administration’s Korea policy: The real state of play, then, is that North Korea will not fully declare, much less disable or dismantle, its nuclear weapons programs, and it has continued to proliferate. To mask this noncompliance, the State Department will talk optimistically of the next phases of diplomacy, continuing to provide North Korea with heavy fuel oil, removing it from the list of state sponsors of terror,...

MY, WHAT BIG BRASS COCONUTS YOU HAVE: North Korea fires missiles toward and over Japan, Japan builds a missile shield, and then North Korea has the chutzpah to say — Their extreme hostile policy toward the DPRK is heightening the hatred of the army and the people of the DPRK toward Japan. Should the Japanese reactionaries persist in their moves for reinvasion, accelerating the building of missile shields targeted against the DPRK, this will entail catastrophic consequences. The Japanese reactionaries...

I’LL BELIEVE IT WHEN THEY SEE IT: The New York Times reports that the N.Y. Phil’s concert in Pyongyang will be broadcast live on North Korean TV. I doubt it. North Korea has perfected pulling away the football an instant before Charlie Brown kicks it. That would be as easy as letting the power go out. Then there’s this question: how will anyone really know? Does the fact that something shows on TV in the Koryo Hotel means that North...

MINISTER OF SILLY TALKS: Chris Hill is seen entering the North Korean Embassy in Beijing to try to rescue the deadlocked Agreed Framework 2.0. I’d say hopelessly deadlocked, except that we have no idea what Hill is prepared to offer in exchange for more of Kim Jong Il’s lies. Be very afraid. So far, however, the talks seem to have been unproductive. YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: The Chosun Ilbo links and quotes Pajamas Media’s interview with John McCain. Really,...

MAY IT BE HIS LAST: It’s Kim Jong Il’s birthday: The North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper ran a lengthy editorial full of praise for Kim for making the communist nation an “undefeatable strong country” by strengthening its “political and military force.” “We have to unite and unite again around the leadership, upholding the slogan ‘Let’s safeguard the revolutionary leadership led by Comrade Kim Jong Il with our lives!’” the paper said, according to the North’s Korean Central News Agency. It...