July 12, 2006

For the Bush Administration, the Moment of Truth

We learn today that China intends to veto a resolution that would impose binding sanctions on North Korea’s missile trade. Got that? No binding sanctions on a starving nation’s trade in … missile components. China and Russia introduced a resolution Wednesday deploring North Korea’s missile tests but dropping language from a rival proposal that could have led to military action against Pyongyang. Excuse me? Who said anything about “military action?” Unless they mean intercepting their nukes, missiles, and dope on...

Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/China/China & Korea/Russia/Russia & Korea/WMD
July 12, 2006

An Offer They Can’t Refuse

A few days ago, I offered a possible explanation for why North Korea launched seven missiles, despite the likely result that it would ultimately bring down an adverse response from the U.S., Japan, and other nations. According to my “Barrel of a Gun” Theory ©, North Korea launched those missiles to save face, to disguise an impending supplication as extortion for its domestic audience. And sure enough, North Korea is now demanding “protection” aid: North Korea’s Senior Cabinet Counselor Kwon...

Categories Appeasement/North Korea/Unintended Humor/WMD/WTF?
July 12, 2006

Sticker Shock: A Post-USFK South Korea Must Do Less for More

A few days ago, the Marmot linked this RAND report on South Korea’s Defense Reform Plan (DRP). The report starts with some alarming disclaimers: it could not access much of the ROK MND’s classified information on strength levels or weapons systems, and the author has no experience (!) analyzing defense budget requests. Nonetheless, the author was able to pull together enough knowable facts to convince me that the DRP will come unglued. How fast? Without a national emergency, I give...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/NK Economics/Technology/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
July 11, 2006

Don Kirk on North Korea’s Divide-and-Rule Coup; Plus, Why the T-Dong 2 Failed

Read it yourself, but I’ll tempt you with his strong close: These differences alone reveal the gulf between South Korea and the US. The North Korean missile shots have landed on target, widening the rift, deepening the discord, resurrecting the specter of the ancient Japanese foe. There may be ways to postpone a widening crisis, but no foreseeable way out.

Categories An Alliance?/Technology/U.S. & Korea/WMD
July 11, 2006

Tongsun Park Trial Update

Today, Claudia Rosett reports from the courtroom that Park was picking up the tab for Maurice Strong’s private New York office. And that matters, why? Strong, for example, served in a public capacity in 1996 as a top adviser to former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then from 1997-2005 as a special adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan. With the rank of under-secretary-general, Strong orchestrated Annan’s 1997 reorganization of the U.N. Secretariat, stayed on as a top adviser, and from 2003-2005 became...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/U.S. Law
July 11, 2006

Park Geun-Hye Consolidates May 31 Gains

Kang Jae-Sup, a protege of Park Geun-Hye, has been elected to succeed Park as Chairman of the Grand National Party (Conservative Opposition). Kang narrowly bested his main rival, Lee Jae-Oh, a protege of Park’s main political rival, Seoul mayor Lee Myung Bak. Lee and Park, the daughter of long-time military dictator Gen. Park Chung-Hee, are competing for the GNP nomination for the 2007 presidential election. Park’s own GNP chairmanship was criticized for its absence of affirmative principle and reliance on...

Categories Korean Politics
July 11, 2006

More Bad Economic News in North Korea

The Daily NK reports that the Kimchaek Iron and Steel Plant in Chongjin, North Korea’s fourth-largest city, has stopped producing: In a recent newsletter, Good Friends, a support organization for North Korea explained that “Equipment had severely deteriorated and original resources such as coal and coxtan are not supplied. …. Kim Cheak Iron and Steel Complex Operations has approximately 50,000 workers and is a special complex where people are stationed for 3 months for discipline and reform. However as factory...

Categories Inside NK/NK Economics
July 10, 2006

Leaked British Intelligence Report Accuses North Korea of Biowar Experiments on Infants

“Hundreds of prisoners die there each week, the victims of biological or chemical experiments to test out [chemical and biological] weapons for North Korea’s CBW arsenal,” claims an MI6 report. In one intelligence file is the allegation that newborn babies are taken from their mothers and injected with biological agents or given injections of chemicals that blister the skin, leaving huge keloids, the sores seen on the bodies of Hiroshima victims. Caveat: I’m lukewarm on WorldNetDaily as a source, but...

Categories Human Rights/North Korea/The Camps
July 10, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 42

China’s newest satellite won’t back sanctions against North Korea, after the North lobbed seven missiles into the Sea of Japan. The United States is actively supporting a Japanese-drafted sanctions resolution at the U.N. China is opposing it. The lines have been drawn, sides have been chosen. Seoul really didn’t even need to take part in this “camp diplomacy,” but it has. It’s yet another reason to ask: why do we provide the defense for a nation that’s neutral at best,...

Categories An Alliance?/China & Korea/U.S. & Korea/WMD
July 10, 2006

Seoul’s FTA Losing Streak

The South Korean government continues its losing streak in the FTA debate, for good or for ill. On the good side, it has realized that it stands no chance of including North Korean-made Kaesong products in the wake of Kim Jong Il’s missile tests. On the not-as-good side, the anti-FTA side, most of it comprised of radical leftists, has managed to make opposition to the FTA the new focus of anti-Americanism in Korea, while Roh’s administration failed to confront its...

Categories Anti-Americanism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea
July 10, 2006

He Needed Killing, Part 2

Shamil Basayev has gone to hell to live with Zarkawi. Although my feelings about Basaev are not complicated, my feelings on the Chechen war are. My sympathies were entirely with the Chechens when Putin re-invaded Chechyna and overthrew its elected government, led by Aslan Maskhadov (also killed recently). But as the U.S. and EU placed politics above principle and kept silent about Russia’s destruction of a historically sovereign nation, the moderate and Western-oriented resistance was squeezed by a radical wing...

Categories Russia/Terrorism (NK)
July 9, 2006

Or Else, What?

Update: Or else, we’ll give you a time-out! Even a very angry letter seems too much for the “United” Nations, an institution whose very name moves it into laughingstock territory these days. South Korea nearly managed to say nothing for a whole week, but then broke its silence long enough to play the role of dutiful North Korean enabler and Chinese lap-dog, opposing any binding sanctions. Americans are entitled to wonder why their soldiers are in harm’s way to protect...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/U.S. & Korea
July 8, 2006

Photos of Korea, Circa 1906

Many thanks to my wife for finding and saving these (she’s standing over my shoulder). Unfortunately, she didn’t think to save the link, so I’d appreciate it if anyone could tell me where these were originally published. The photographer was … some German guy. Some of the pictures seem so real, you almost expect the subjects to shoo you away. Scroll over them for captions, and look for them in a book soon to be published. Pick up an extra...

Categories Korean History/Korean Society/Miscellaneous
July 7, 2006

I May Have Figured This Out…

Why North Korea willfully pissed off the whole world by launching a rocket, that is. It’s a wrinkle on the “domestic consumption” theory: The regime is in desperate shape and is about to make some kind of face-losing concession, such as asking for food aid or agreeing to give up some weapon or activity. Kim Jong Il needed a garish display of belligerence to save face — to tell his people that any aid is really an extortion payment, or...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Kremlinology/WMD
July 7, 2006

On ‘Strategic Disengagement’

I don’t really know, of course, but what a discussion Richardson has started with one of this blog’s best-written and researched posts (pursued by James, with characteristic excellence, here). The topic: why North Korea would do something so counterproductive to its extortionate, mendacious, highly successful diplomacy as this ballistic tantrum. Richardson believes the main motive to be an intent to isolate itself from the world. He calls this Strategic Disengagement. I disagree with Richardson’s ultimate conclusion, that Kim Jong Il...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/WMD
July 7, 2006

Life Imitates ‘Team America,’ Part 2

Yesterday, I noted how the reality of the United Nations had upstaged the intentional farce of “Team America: World Police,” a movie that proved too prescient for its shelf life. Today, President Bush counsels patience as Russia and China do their “Hans Brix” impression and Republicans in Congress express their frustration. “We do know there’s a lot of concentration camps. We do know the people are starving,” [Bush] said. “But what we don’t know is his intentions. And so I...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/WMD