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February 13, 2008

Anju Links for 13 Feb 08

STALL ALERT: More dispatches from the hopelessly deadlocked Agreed Framework 2.0: – South Korea’s nuclear negotiator says North Korea still needs more time to give us its nuclear declaration. – “I suspect that North Korea will attempt to strike a deal with the new U.S. administration that will be inaugurated next year. In that case, it seems likely that there will be no progress in the North Korean nuclear issue until summer next year.” So says Roh’s former Foreign Minister,...

Anju Links

February 13, 2008

Six months later, deafening silence about North Korea and Syria

Last Sunday, a friend invited me to attend an event at Bethel Israel Synagogue in Alexandria. The subject was “The North Korea-Syria Connection,” although the event seems not to have caught the notice of many Korea watchers or journalists. I was invited by a friend who happens to attend the synagogue. The host was NPR’s Robert Siegel, and the guests were Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post and Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times. Kessler consistently toes the State...

Proliferation/Washington Views

February 12, 2008

I Wonder How Much $4 Million Can Buy in Gitmo

There’s yet more news on our South Korea-Taliban ransom story. Last September, I told you that Mullah Abdallah Jan, one of the leaders in the kidnapping and murder of South Korean hostages, had an unexpected meeting with an American J-Dam and shortly thereafter, 72 virgin prepubescent boys. This week, when I heard that Mansoor Dadullah had been captured, it occurred to me that the name was familiar, but the Chosun Ilbo makes the connection: Pakistani authorities said that Mansoor Dadullah...

An Alliance?/Terrorism (NK)

February 12, 2008

Stage Four Watch: The Great Purge of 2008?

The Korean edition of the Chosun Ilbo is reporting on the impending execution of a beautiful 35 year-old North Korean woman, “Miss Kim,” who grew wealthy as a defection and reunion broker in Moosan, North Hamgyeong Province. To put this delicately, Miss Kim shared both her substantial wealth and (rumor has it) her substantial physical blessings with a number of senior North Korean officers and officials, so as to ensure that each passage through the border would be, erm, well...

Inside NK

February 12, 2008

The Candidates on North Korea, Part 3

I haven’t had time to dig up the various statements of Mike Huckabee and Hillary Clinton, but here are some perfectly fine efforts by Jack at DPRK Forum and Don Kirk in the Asia Times. I don’t agree with Kirk’s inference that McCain would support of keeping a large ground force in South Korea; I tend to think he’d be the most likely (except for Paul) to give the whole arrangement a fresh look. I also found this page at...

U.S. Politics

February 11, 2008

Tom Lantos, RIP

A sad day has just become sadder. Patriot, gentleman, liberator, and survivor Tom Lantos, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is gone. When we first learned that he had cancer of the esophagus, I knew that his prognosis was grim. Still, I didn’t think he’d be gone so soon. I often disagreed with Lantos. That being said, there are some people who, once lost to our world, cannot be replaced. Tom Lantos was one of them.

U.S. Politics

February 11, 2008

Goodbye, Old Friend

What words? My wife and I both feel as if an old friend we’d meant to visit again had been murdered, stolen from us by a deranged killer, a thief of beauty and history. Anyone who has lived in Seoul recently knows that it can and will be rebuit with faithful perfection. But like the Golden Pavillion of Kyoto, which I would not call Namdaemun’s equal, it will be never be the same, either. As many have already...

History/Korean Society/WTF?

February 11, 2008

S. Korea Still Denies Paying Ransom to Taliban; Larry Craig Still Not Gay

After months of wildly inconsistent estimates ($2 million? $20 million?) of just how much ransom the South Koreans paid for their two dozen-odd hostages in Afghanistan, the Taliban is saying the actual amount was “at least” $4 million. This final, authoritative answer is brought to you by an unidentified “senior Taliban commander,” so we need not ever speak of this again. Until the next time it happens: If we were going to free them without any payment, [the hostage taking]...

An Alliance?/Appeasement/Terrorism (NK)

February 10, 2008

Yonhap: N. Korea Using Heavy Fuel Oil for Military Exercises

[Update: I have to say that my doubts about this one, as expressed by my question below about refining, are considerable. Heavy fuel oil is nearly as thick as asphalt, not something I’d think could be refined into lighter, higher octane products cheaply. Bruce Klingner’s comment below adds to those doubts, and I offer a more plausible explanation. As with every other question about the diversion of aid to North Korea — and here is yet another such question —...

"United" Nations/Six-Party Talks

February 8, 2008

The Morally Retarded Lorin Maazel

I’ve already said that I’m ambivalent about the visit of the New York Philharmonic to North Korea. They will play some good music, which will probably do little harm and little good. If we would just accept the music on its face value without injecting politics into it, this visit wouldn’t be taking on such a pernicious odor. Is that too much to ask? Apparently. Spurred on by the mendacious appeaser Christopher Hill, the Philharmonic now imagines itself as an...

Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Human Rights/WTF?

February 8, 2008

Christopher Hitchens on the Rice-Lefkowitz Flap

Since Hitchens may have had something to do with goading Lefkowitz into making his original comments, I’ve been wondering how he would react to what resulted. I like to imagine that my little essay stung Lefkowitz a bit. At any event, he got up on his hind legs at the American Enterprise Institute in the third week of January and made an explicit criticism of the Bush administration that he serves. The State Department’s insistence on “diplomacy,” he argued, had...

Appeasement/Human Rights/U.S. Politics

February 7, 2008

U-Tubed, Part 4

Commenter ChosunHapa was kind enough to drop some links to Chris Hill’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday (transcript / video). Hill says that the “disablement” of (some of) North Korea’s nuclear facilities is proceeding well, contrary to what other reports tell us. He also assures us of his grave concern about Japanese abductees and human rights … which we’ll pursue on a separate track of course, after Kim Jong Il has what he wants from us....

Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks

February 6, 2008

Diplomacy as Terrorism: North Korea Threatens America With Indirect Nuclear Attack

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Tuesday, J. Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, delivered his annual threat assessment. Here are some highlights; all emphasis is mine: Despite halting progress towards denuclearization, North Korea continues to maintain nuclear weapons; Here’s the section that describes the North Korean threat in greater detail:

Proliferation/Terrorism (NK)

February 5, 2008

Seymour Hersh on North Korea, Syria, and Proliferation

Speaking of Syria and what the hell actually happened there, there’s a detailed new piece of investigative journalism that prints out to eight pages, and which will do virtually nothing to answer that question but does pick at the scabs of the various theories articulated in this factual vacuum (Here’s a run-down of those theories; here’s one more). I will tell you up front that I have some major problems with this piece: 1. Seymour Hersh wrote it. 2. Its...

Proliferation

February 5, 2008

Senators Urge Bush Not to De-List N. Korea as Terror Sponsor

Six senators, all Republicans, have signed a letter to President Bush asking him not to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism yet. The senators are Sam Brownback of Kansas, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, John Kyl of Arizona (the minority whip), Charles Grassley of Iowa, … and Larry Craig. You can see a pdf of the letter — full text, signatures, and all, here: senate-letter.pdf Many thanks to the person who sent me...

Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics

February 4, 2008

USFK Commander Against Further Troops Cuts (Update: USFK Denies)

General Burwell B. Bell III, commander of United States Forces Korea, expressed his wish to keep the status quo at a meeting last month, the sources said. South Korea and U.S. officials met for talks in Washington on Jan. 23. According to the sources, Bell asked Korean officials to back his proposal to hold force levels at the current 28,500 troops. As a part of a plan to realign US. troops around the world, Washington and Seoul have agreed to...

An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military

February 4, 2008

The Restoration: Toward a More Humane Refugee Policy?

I’ll say it again: I’m no fan of President-Elect Lee Myung-Bak, but as long as he listens to Park Jin, he’ll do fine: Park said during his visit to Hanawon, a facility for resettlement and education of defectors in Ansung, Gyeonggi Province, “The defector issue is a universal human rights issue and the first step for reunification.” He added, “While the South Korean government has neglected and disregarded the defector issue, defectors have chosen third-party countries as the path to...

Defectors/Refugees

February 4, 2008

Kaesong Workers Recoup Stolen Wages on the Black Market

With all the questions about how much pay Kaesong workers actually collect, we’ve always suspected that their earnings must be far more than most of their North Korean neighbors. For one thing, the workers are hand-picked loyalists; the regime must want to keep them relatively content. Yet no one really believed that the workers received the “official” wage of around $60 a month, after “voluntary” deductions and the bite of the inflated official exchange rate. I figured it was just...

Human Trafficking/NK Economics