Search Results for: Obama not ready

October 24, 2008

I’ll Give You a Topic: The Verification Protocol is Neither. Discuss.

It’s hardly worth discussing anyway; after all, with North Korea, there’s little point in expecting what’s agreed today to stay agreed tomorrow. We’ve already abandoned the goal of disarmament, there is always another demand, it is always followed by another concession, and someone always wants us to think that this time, it’s really the last one. Still, the State Department justifies its de-listing of North Korea as a terror sponsor by claiming that it has reached a verification protocol with...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
October 19, 2008

What Removing North Korea from the Terror List Means

If tomorrow’s Big Announcement from North Korea isn’t that the Great Leader has gone to the Great Meat Locker, it may well be that the North, having met with  such stunning  success at blackmailing the United States,  will throw some new tantrum at South Korea.  I would not credit the North with diplomatic genius for its success at isolating and blackmailing its enemies one at a time.  The trick isn’t new.  It seems more fair to credit us for the...

Categories Appeasement/Asia/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
October 10, 2008

Rumor: Bush will de-list N. Korea as a terror sponsor today.

I heard the rumor yesterday afternoon, but now I see the AP is reporting it.  According to the Financial Times, the only thing holding up the announcement is notifying / strong-arming the Japanese, and perhaps the South Koreans.  You can see Condi and her mouthpiece not answer questions about this below the fold, if you’re interested. There’s nothing quite like giving right in to extortion.  Somewhere on the troposphere of Kim Jong Il’s clot-riddled, misshapen, hideously coiffed cranium, a drooly...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
October 8, 2008

Lee’s N. Korea Policy Will Be, as Lee Says, ‘Pragmatic.’

Suzanne Scholte has accepted the Seoul Peace Prize, offering this prescient comment in her speech: “When all the atrocities committed by North Korean dictators are exposed in the future, people will assess how adequately the Seoul government then responded,” said Scholte, referring to the current administration. “Consider the judgment of history.”  [Chosun Ilbo] I’m hoping to have a guest post from a reader who was there.  Warning:  this post will now enter a stream of consciousness. You can already see...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
September 16, 2008

Joe Biden Is Blocking North Korea Human Rights Legislation, and You Can Help Un-Block It (Update: Biden’s Staff Denies, Predicts Bill Will Pass This Term)

[Update:   Not so, says Frank Jannuzi, who wrote in after I put up this post.  According to Jannuzi, Biden has never blocked this bill and has never opposed the two provisions mentioned in the post below.  As to the refugee provisions of H.R. 5834, Jannuzi says Biden supports them just as they are in the House version.  Jannuzi also says that not only does Biden support a full-time Special Envoy with ambassadorial rank, Biden offered the amendment to the...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
August 30, 2008

Suckers ….

THE FULL TEXT OF KCNA’S PENULTIMATE TANTRUM is at the link after this money quote: The U.S., however, raised all of a sudden an issue of applying an “international standard” to the verification of the nuclear declaration, abusing this agreed point. It pressurized the DPRK to accept such inspection as scouring any place of the DPRK as it pleases to collect samples and measure them. The “international standard” touted by the U.S. is nothing but “special inspection” which the IAEA...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
August 18, 2008

Dems’ N. Korea Platform Collapses Under the Weight of History and Logic

You’d think that with a cast of 300 foreign policy advisors on Obama’s team alone, the Democrats could find one who has some idea of who Roh Moo Hyun was, what he stood for, and what he would not stand against. The Democrats have rolled out their 2008 platform. Party platforms aren’t widely regarded for being repositories of substance. They’re better known dispensing crumbs to interest groups. When those interests conflict, they get resolved in the great unseen food chain...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
August 14, 2008

North Korea’s Next Tantrum

A  shoe is about to drop, but  which shoe?  Among Washington’s Korea-watching klatsch, there’s a popular parlor game that goes like this: DOVE:  The North Koreans are proud, fanatical, and emotional.  You have to be careful not to antagonize them with idle talk about human rights and  intrusive verification or you’ll spoil the negotiations.  And we’re this close (thumb and index finger a milimeter apart) to a breakthrough. HAWK:  The North Koreans are calculating and react  with malice aforethought.  Their...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
August 2, 2008

Senate Confirms Kathleen Stephens as Ambassador to Korea

[Updates below and in the text.] A couple of days ago, while traveling on business, I was informed that Sen. Brownback would lift his hold on the nomination of Kathleen Stephens to become Ambassador to the Republic of Korea. She was confirmed in a voice vote later that day. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to post about it. The Senate confirmed a new American ambassador to South Korea on Friday, after a senator dropped his objections...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
July 28, 2008

Anju Links for 28 July 2008

WHAT’S MISSING HERE? “For the past seven years, we’ve spoken out against human rights abuses by tyrannical regimes like those in Iran, Sudan and Syria and Zimbabwe,” Bush said in a speech here titled “the Freedom Agenda Introduction.”  “We’ve spoken candidly about human rights with nations with whom we’ve got good relations, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and China,” he said.  [Yonhap]   Of course, it’s not as if Bush did  much to materially advance freedom in any of...

Categories Anju Links
July 3, 2008

Anju Links for 3 July 2008

STARVING NORTH KOREAN WOMEN TURN TO PROSTITUTION:  “Around stations in big cities, you can see many pimps affiliated to inns . . . .  They approach pedestrians, euphemistically saying that “˜I am selling a bed,’ or “˜selling a flower.’”  Sadly,  some of those forced to survive this way are children.  IT’S CAUTIOUSLY ENCOURAGING to hear USAID official John Brause say something like this about the first shipment of U.S. food aid to North Korea  since 2005:  The agreement to provide...

Categories Anju Links
June 27, 2008

George W. Bush: A Uniter at Last!

For all the failings of his accord with Kim Jong Il, Bush has made remarkable progress in unwittingly brokering an accord between a liberal Democratic presidential nominee, the House’s most conservative Republicans, and the Republican presidential nominee. To various degrees, all have noted the inadequacy of Kim’s declaration and declared their opposition to de-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terror unless it permits verfication. (Which it won’t, of course): This is a step forward, and there will be...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
May 31, 2008

N. Korea to Jack Pritchard: We Won’t Disarm

The U.S. State Department on Friday bashed its former envoy to North Korea, who a day before said Pyongyang is not going to meet Washington’s requirements on denuclearization despite laborious negotiations underway.  [Yonhap] No one should be surprised by anything about  this revelation except the name of the prophet.  This has started a delicious  red-on-red, Mick-on-Keith slap fight  between Pritchard and  the State Department.  Pritchard, of course, was a Clinton holdover, an early defector from the Bush Administration, and a...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
April 18, 2008

Rice: Lift Sanctions Now, Disarm and Verify Someday

[Scroll down for a highly significant update.]   U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday that verifying any North Korean nuclear declaration would take time and suggested Washington may drop some sanctions on Pyongyang before this is complete. Separately, a senior U.S. official said an American team would visit North Korea next week to discuss how to verify the “complete and correct” accounting of its nuclear programs that Pyongyang was due to deliver by Dec. 31.  [Reuters, Arshad...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks
February 25, 2008

The Long National Nightmare Is (Officially) Over

[Update: Now that I’ve read LMB’s inaugural, I’ve posted more detailed comments / ridicule below the fold and the video.] The 17th presidency of Korea started as Lee Myung-bak formally took over presidential authority from former president Roh Moo-hyun at midnight on Monday, with the Bosingak Bell in downtown Seoul tolling the momentous hour. Lee now embarks on a government of pragmatic conservatism after putting an end to the decade-long leftwing rule. [Chosun Ilbo] Judging by Lee’s inaugural address and...

Categories Korean Politics
February 23, 2008

Agreed Framework 2.0: The Shelf Life of Happy Talk

There are probably several good reasons I’ve never really enjoyed a musical except while looking at the lovely France Nuyen, who does not sing. If legacy was its object, Agreed Framework 2.0 won’t be a positive contribution to one. President Bush must know this, or he would have mentioned it in his State of the Union speech. Events turned against the agreement during the last quarter of 2007: specifically Syria, uranium, North Korea’s false declaration, and its failure to give...

Categories Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
January 26, 2008

Fox: White House May Accept Incomplete N. Korean Declaration

“Foreign diplomatic sources” have told Fox News that Chris Hill has floated the idea of accepting a declaration that omits information about North Korea’s proliferation — to Syria, for  instance —  or its suspected uranium enrichment programs. With North Korea almost a month overdue on its obligation to provide a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs and materiel, the Bush administration — under increasing pressure from American conservatives to take a harder line with Pyongyang, or abandon the...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
January 19, 2008

Gridlock and infighting stalk collapse of Agreed Framework 2.0

You could  write the epitaph for the President Bush’s North Korea policies in six words:  There are worse things than gridlock.  Now that Agreed Framework 2.0 has reached its failure point  and not even  sympathetic media  can still deny it, the New York Times reports that the same  old factions have formed up  to battle about the fruitlessness of dealing with Kim Jong Il.  With North Korea sending signals that it may be trying to wait out Mr. Bush’s time...

Categories Google Earth