November 29, 2015

Obama sanctions Burundi (but not North Korea) for human rights violations

Last week, President Obama signed a new executive order blocking the assets of four current and former officials of the government of Burundi for “killing of and violence against civilians, unrest, the incitement of imminent violence, and significant political repression.” The targets certainly seem deserving.  On closer investigation, this turns out to be another case of the U.S. leading from behind; the EU designated an overlapping list of Burundian officials a month ago. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sanctions always work...

Categories Human Rights/Sanctions
November 29, 2015

Orascom’s Big Turkey Drop: Why the SEC should require disclosure of investments in N. Korea

For years, Koryolink was the showpiece of economic engagement with the North Korean government. The service, a partnership between Pyongyang and the Egyptian conglomerate Orascom, provided cell phone service to North Korean officials, elites, security forces, and a few other customers with enough cash and connections to afford them. As a sweetener for Kim Jong-Un, Orascom also clothed the Ryugyong Hotel, the awkwardly naked (and still vacant) colossus of an embarrassment to Pyongyang’s economic system. According to the Daily NK,...

Categories Engagement/Sanctions
November 25, 2015

The Great Engagement Debate: Stanton v. Delury at NCNK

On October 22nd, the National Committee for North Korea invited me and Professor John Delury of Yonsei University to a debate, in which we each offered three proposals for the next president on North Korea policy, all premised on a delusion of grandeur that Donald Trump really cares what either of us thinks. The debate was held in a beautiful conference room on the top floor of the Hart Senate Office Building overlooking the Capitol. There was a great crowd...

Categories Engagement/Sunshine/Washington Views
November 25, 2015

In North Korea, too, Putin fishes in troubled waters

Last week, the Third Committee of the U.N. General Assembly voted to condemn North Korea for crimes against humanity by a vote of 112 to 19, with 50 abstentions. (HRNK intern Raymond Ha, the extraordinarily bright young man who checked every footnote in my report on North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism, has a new post out analyzing the voting patterns on recent UN resolutions.) Russia, of course, has voted against all recent attempts to hold North Korea accountable in the...

Categories Russia
November 24, 2015

Jeffrey Fowle’s mission to N. Korea no dumber than the rest of them

In this age of click-bait listicles, The Atavist has published a rare example of real journalism, in which reporter Joshua Hunt traces the story of Jeffrey Fowle from its origins (in a dream!) to its anticlimax. Fowle, you will recall, is the Ohio municipal worker who went to North Korea, “certain that God had a plan for him,” left a Korean-language Bible next to a toilet in Chongjin, got himself arrested and detained for six months, and nearly lost both his job and his wife. Later, asked if...

Categories Engagement/Foreigners in N. Korea
November 23, 2015

Scott Snyder: increase sanctions, including secondary sanctions, on Pyongyang

In a new paper for the Council on Foreign Relations, Snyder has called for increasing pressure on Pyongyang through sanctions, to persuade it that it must disarm or perish: Since defecting from Six Party negotiations on denuclearization in 2008, North Korea has pursued nuclear development unchecked by international constraints. Barack Obama’s administration has demanded that Pyongyang make a strategic choice to denuclearize and tried to build a regional consensus opposing North Korea’s nuclear efforts, but it has been unable to halt the...

Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions/Washington Views
November 20, 2015

China arrests 10 N. Korean refugees, including a family with a baby; protest tomorrow at Chinese embassy

A group of North Korean defectors who were being smuggled across the China-Vietnam border have been detained, and are at risk of being repatriated to North Korea. A South Korean government official who spoke to News 1 on the condition of anonymity said 10 defectors in total were taken into custody in the Mong Cai region of northern Vietnam. All have been sent back to China, and 9 of the 10 are at risk of being repatriated to North Korea,...

Categories China/Refugees
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...

Categories Engagement/NK Economics
November 16, 2015

Treasury blocks assets of North Korea’s ambassador to Burma

Although I suppose it’s probably a complete coincidence that Treasury finally blocked the assets of four North Korean proliferators in Burma last Friday, I’d like to think it stung a bit when, a few weeks ago, at this conference at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, I said this: Here’s a link to Treasury’s announcement of the designation of four individual North Koreans, including Pyongyang’s Ambassador to Burma: HWANG, Su Man (a.k.a. HWANG, Kyong Nam); DOB 06 Apr 1955; nationality Korea, North;...

Categories Proliferation/Sanctions/Southeast Asia/WMD
November 12, 2015

Choe Ryong-Hae’s latest non-appearance fuels purge speculation.

The Wall Street Journal‘s Alastair Gale reports: Speculation about a possible new high-level purge in North Korea grew on Thursday after a close aide to leader Kim Jong Un appeared to miss a gathering of the Pyongyang leadership. Since taking the North Korean leadership at the end of 2011, Mr. Kim has executed around 70 officials as part of efforts to solidify his position, according to South Korean authorities who closely monitor their neighbor for signs of instability. Speculation over...

Categories Kremlinology
November 11, 2015

House Subcommittee Chair calls for re-listing North Korea as a terror sponsor

Last month, I posted video of a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-proliferation and Trade, where Chairman Ted Poe of Texas and Ranking Member Brad Sherman of California grilled a hapless State Department official about North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism, and why North Korea wasn’t listed. State’s performance at the hearing wasn’t just bad, but exceptionally so. Poe and Sherman were both visibly exasperated with State’s stonewalling, and seemed convinced that State was ignoring the law. Now, Poe has put his...

Categories Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law
November 10, 2015

North Koreans need food & medicine, not Guus Hiddink’s “futsal” stadium

South Koreans remember Dutch soccer coach Guus Hiddink as the man who led their team to a successful performance in the 2002 World Cup. But when the history of a united Korea is written, North Koreans are likely to remember him less fondly. Hiddink has just returned from Pyongyang, where he signed a deal to help Kim Jong-Un build yet another expensive leisure facility that falls low on the average North Korean’s hierarchy of needs — a new “futsal” stadium:...

Categories Class Warfare/Famine & Food Aid/Sports
November 9, 2015

This isn’t the first purge rumor about Choe Ryong-Hae

Choe Ryong-Hae’s omission from Marshal Ri Ul-Sol’s funeral committee has South Korean experts and officials speculating that Choe, thought by some to be North Korea’s third-ranking official, may have become the latest of many North Korean officials to be purged by Kim Jong-Un: Even if unwell, Choe would normally be on the list and experts said the omission of someone of his stature could not be put down to oversight. “It’s almost impossible that this happened unless Choe … was removed...

Categories Kremlinology
November 3, 2015

China helps N. Korea nuke up & break sanctions, then says sanctions don’t work.

Two weeks ago, the Obama Administration’s point man on North Korea policy told Congress that sanctions are hurting Pyongyang. I must confess to some skepticism. [Ski lift made in China.] Instead, the evidence suggests that North Korea’s rich are getting richer, and its poor are staying poor. Materially speaking, the capital’s elites have never had it better, and openly buy imported consumer goods with dollars. Marcus Noland also sees evidence that, whatever the official statistics tell us, Pyongyang’s palace economy...

Categories Anju Links
November 2, 2015

Tourists put $43M in Kim Jong-Un’s pockets last year

Despite a string of high-profile arrests of foreign tourists recently, Darwin’s light continues to draw slummers — and record hauls of their money — into Pyongyang: North Korea earned tens of millions of dollars from foreign tourists in 2014, around half of the hard currency it won from the lucrative inter-Korean industrial park, a researcher said Sunday. North Korea’s income from foreign tourists is estimated at US$30.6 million to $43.6 million last year, considering about 95,000 Chinese tourists and 5,000...

Categories Engagement/Foreigners in N. Korea
November 2, 2015

Seoul & Pyongyang join forces to fund N. Korea’s rich, starve its poor

Our endlessly unrequited vigil for North Korean reform continues: Hyeonseo Lee is also increasingly worried about her personal security since the July publication of the best-selling memoir about her escape from North Korea, “The Girl with Seven Names”. Defectors living in South Korea contact relatives in the North through Chinese mobile phones that are smuggled across the border. They communicate through transmission towers on the Chinese side of the border. It’s all arranged through brokers on the Chinese side, who...

Categories Border Control/Capitalism/Refugees
November 1, 2015

Sam Pa, 88 Queensway, KKG & Bureau 39: A case study in how China helps N. Korea evade sanctions

Last week, I highlighted Andrea Berger’s excellent post at 38 North, calling for the U.N. Security Council to sanction North Korea’s third-party enablers. Berger named some of those enablers, but I’d like to name another one of the most important ones — the Hong Kong-based 88 Queensway Group, headed by one Sam Pa, also known by his birth name “Xu Jinghua” or any of “at least eight aliases,” each with its own matching passport. According to multiple news reports, Pa has extensive connections to Chinese politicians, and with its intelligence services....

Categories Anju Links/China/Money Laundering/Sanctions