Search Results for “Kim Jong Il Unplugged”

July 28, 2006

Kim Jong Il, Unplugged

“You can get a lot farther with a kind word and a gun than a kind word alone.” — Al Capone In an interview with Radio Free Asia (Korean only), Raphael Perl of the Congressional Research Service suggests exactly what I suspected about polite requests from U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey to crack down on North Korean money laundering — the polite requests are backed by some powerful veiled threats: One option available to the US government, although this is...

Counterfeiting/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views

September 13, 2017

Chinese banks are cracking down on N. Korean money laundering again. Will it last this time?

Several news sources are reporting that Chinese banks, particularly in China’s northeast, have started to freeze or close accounts held by North Korean individuals and businesses. The Daily NK, citing unnamed local sources, was the first to report this potentially important development. It says both large state-owned banks (such as the China Construction Bank) and regional banks (such as Pudong Bank) recently banned all North Koreans from opening new accounts and ordered the closure of existing accounts. It also quotes...

Money Laundering/Sanctions

July 15, 2016

When Kim Jong-un nukes off — and he will — here’s how we should respond (updated)

The U.N. Security Council was already meeting about how to respond to North Korea’s latest missile tests when Pyongyang drew the curtain on its next act of satellite theater at Punggye-ri. Even without the latest sanctions, His Corpulency would probably have carried out another nuke test within the next year, if only to help consolidate his rule, and because the U.S. and South Korea are holding presidential elections. (North Korean dictators prefer to nuke off as new administrations assemble their...

Sanctions

May 20, 2016

N. Korea sanctions update: I sense a great disturbance in the force, as if billions of dollars cried out in terror and were suddenly frozen.

[First, thank you for your patience with the light blogging recently. Most of my limited spare time has been consumed by a project that must take a higher priority than this site. That project has been perpetually at the verge of completion for weeks now, but should be done soon.] North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January was a watershed in sanctions law and policy. Until then, the U.S. and the U.N. had mostly pretended to have tough sanctions against North...

"United" Nations/Money Laundering/Sanctions

November 19, 2015

Of fools and their money: Martyn Williams on Orascom’s North Korea fiasco

Martyn Williams of the North Korea Tech blog has a must-read story at IT World about how Orascom’s investment in North Korea’s Koryolink mobile phone service “went horribly wrong.” That such a headline can be written is, by itself, a stunning reversal. During the early years of Kim Jong-Un’s reign, Koryolink was the poster child for more sanguine North Korea watchers, who believed that once a Swiss-educated reformer had taken the throne, a Pyongyang Spring must surely follow. For the...

Engagement/NK Economics

July 8, 2009

High-Level Defector Describes Regime’s Illicit Income

I’d previously mentioned that I recently had the opportunity to meet Kim Kwang Jin, a high-level North Korean defector with detailed knowledge of North Korea’s illicit financing and money laundering. Now, Kim adds much to our understanding of how North Korea pays for all those Mercedes-Benzes and missiles. Having guessed that most of the cash came from flipping houses and the inventing some of the novel kitchen applicances I’d seen Billy Mays selling on my TV, this was a cruel...

Deprogramming/Money Laundering/NK Military/North Korea/Refugees/Regime Change/Religion/Uncategorized

October 28, 2008

While America Drifts, Japan and S. Korea Stand Firm

Does it ever seem that U.S. policy toward North Korea is intentionally designed to clash with those of Japan and South Korea? No matter how necessary a coordinated approach may be to the success of any policy, and even when Japan and Korea are newly aligned toward the same strategy we’d been pursuing until February 2007, our State Department seems to delight in creating diplomatic chaos at the first sign that order might break out. Ironically, it’s now America that...

Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks

January 22, 2008

Plan B: How to Disarm Kim Jong Il Without Bombing Him

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Albert Einstein Plan A, gentle diplomacy, has again failed to disarm Kim Jong Il. Whenever this happens (every time it’s tried) advocates of doing the same thing over and over again fall back on The False Choice, whether expressly or by implication: it’s their way or war. They know better, of course, which technically makes this a lie. And usually, this lie stands uncorrected: “People lambaste...

Diplomacy/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks

September 11, 2007

Noland and Haggard: Kim Jong Il’s Palace Economy Is Broken

North Korea is a land made in the vision of John Edwards: to a greater extent than almost anywhere, there are two North Koreas. That division is even preserved by a semi-official, hereditary caste system. That’s why it wouldn’t be completely accurate to say that North Korea’s economy is near collapse; one of the North Korean economies — the peoples’ economy — collapsed a dozen years ago. What was left of it was severely disrupted by the Great Famine, when...

Money Laundering/NK Economics

March 27, 2007

Colin McAskill Threatens to Sue Over Release of Funds to DPRK Gov’t

McAskill, the man who sells Kim Jong Il’s gold and who recently bought the bank through which most of North Korea’s European investment is channeled, has heretofore been a strident and articulate advocate of releasing the $25 million frozen in BDA. Overnight, he has become the main obstacle: In two letters sent to the Monetary Authority of Macao, [Daedong Credit Bank] has said that it will take legal action if any of its frozen funds are moved in accordance with...

Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/WTF?

February 8, 2017

Leaked U.N. report reveals record seizure of North Korean arms last August (updated)

The 2017 report of the U.N. Panel of Experts isn’t due to be published for another month, but a Kyodo News reporter has already obtained and published leaked excerpts. The focus of Kyodo’s story is the now-familiar (and unquestionably accurate) castigation of member state governments for not putting enough will or resources into the enforcement of North Korea sanctions, but I’d like to start with this revelation: “An interdiction of the vessel Jie Shun was the largest seizure of ammunition...

Arms Trafficking/Shipping sanctions

April 6, 2016

The Panama papers, Pyongyang, and Nigel Cowie

Here at OFK, we keep a running list of gullible foreigners who’ve tried to get rich in North Korea, justified their support for its regime as ways to reform and open it to global commerce, and instead met the same fate as Hyundai Asan, Volvo, Yang Bin, David Chang and Robert Torricelli, Chung Mong-Hun, Roh Jeong-ho, and Orascom’s Naguib Sawaris, who I predicted back in 2008 would “eventually meet the same fate.” Regulators should require securities issuers to disclose their investments in North Korea...

Money Laundering/Sanctions

August 6, 2015

NYC insurer agrees to $271K penalty for insuring North Korean ships

This afternoon, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets control announced that as part of a settlement, Navigators Insurance Company has agreed to pay OFAC a civil penalty of $271,000 for 48 sanctions violations involving Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and North Korea. Navigators is a New York-based provider of maritime insurance. It also had a branch in London, which evidently decided to cut costs by skimping on lawyers. Here’s how that worked out for them. Between May 8, 2008 and April 1, 2011, Navigators and...

Sanctions

August 31, 2014

Of fools and their money: Volvo sold North Korea 1,000 cars. On credit.

As a tool of economic isolation, North Korea’s business ethics have proven to be far more effective than U.N. sanctions. See also Yang Bin, Senator Robert Torricelli and David Chang, Chung Mong Hun, Nigel Cowie, Roh Jeong-Ho, Albert Yeung Sau Shing and the Emperor Group, the Xiyang Group, and Lloyd’s of London. There’s actually a whole market in North Korea’s defaulted sovereign debt “involving more than 100 banks from 17 countries” dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. And still,...

Engagement

August 21, 2013

North Korea’s “charm offensive” coincides with growing international financial pressure

Observers in the West and South Korea tend to grasp (even gasp) at subtle or superficial changes in the tone of North Korea’s words, but the consistency of North Korea’s actions has always refuted the interpretations of these observers. No charm offensive ever interrupted Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons or its willingness to proliferate nuclear or chemical weapons technology. Even its provocations, often described as “unpredictable,” follow a cycle that has become familiar to Korea-watchers, including the President of South Korea....

Anju Links/Money Laundering/Sanctions

January 3, 2011

Open Sources

Several weeks ago, I blogged about the North Korean manager of a restaurant in Nepal who absconded with the till and defected. The Chosun Ilbo has several interesting updates to that story, including the fact this turns out to have been just one of two such restaurants in Kathmandu, that the manager has arrived in South Korea, and that Nepal has released the South Koreans who helped arrange the defection. Then there is this illustration of how small changes in...

Anju Links

May 31, 2010

Robert Einhorn to Lead North Korea Sanctions Implementation Effort

The Joongang Ilbo is reporting that Clinton Administration alumnus and counter-proliferation expert Robert Einhorn is going to be put in charge of “streamlining the process by which it implements” international sanctions against North Korea, sanctions that are likely to be enhanced after an international investigation found that North Korea torpedoed and sank the South Korean warship Cheonan. “The U.S. administration was seeking more efficient management of implementation of sanctions, which had been divided between the State and the Treasury departments,”...

Cheonan Incident/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law/Washington Views

Delayed, But Not Denied: American Victims Sue North Korea

Until recently, I did not know that there are three pending federal lawsuits against North Korea in the U.S. federal court system, not counting the $69 million verdict won last year by the lawyers representing the surviving crew members of the U.S.S. Pueblo. After hearing that other suits might be pending, I signed up for my very own PACER account and did some searching, and sure enough. Interestingly, although these documents are all publicly available, the newspapers haven’t reported on...

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Search Results for: Kim Jong Il Unplugged