Search Results for “Kumgang sanctions”

February 22, 2010

22 February 2010: The End of the Age of Unifictions

Some 56 percent of South Koreans have a negative view of North Korea and 70 percent feel threatened by the North’s nuclear arms, a poll suggests. But 87 percent support another inter-Korean summit. [….] “The percentage of people with a negative view of the North in the latest poll is now as high as before the Sunshine Policy,” said Choi Jin-wook, a senior researcher at KINU. “It seems that the poll reflects how people were affected” by the North’s second...

Anju Links

January 21, 2010

Why, You Ask, Does North Korea Need Another Bank?

It probably doesn’t have anything to do the reason cited in news reports about a “thaw” (as if) in relations with the South or the United States. A body known as the Korea Taepung International Investment Group held its first board meeting to launch a state development bank, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency reported late Wednesday The bank will finance state projects “after being equipped with advanced banking rules and system needed for transactions with international monetary organisations and...

Money Laundering/Sanctions

November 25, 2009

Feed Me, Seymour

It’s a fine line between extortion and aggressive panhandling. Inexplicably, extortion and outright terrorism have failed to produce a financial harvest (until now, a perennial success) to make up for the agricultural kind (since 1993, a perennial failure). Suddenly, a slightly more obsequious North Korea is … begging for South Korea to resume those Kumgang Tours and for the U.N. to keep its commitments on the delivery of food aid. If there’s one word in the North Korean vocabulary more...

Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics

June 12, 2009

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 (Updated with Analysis)

For better or for worse, they passed it. As with UNSCR 1695 and 1718 before it, this will be as effective as the implementation. Much has been said about how China undermined both of those resolutions, and that is true, but too little has been said about how much the U.S. State Department also did to undermine them for the sake of a failure called Agreed Framework II. The good news is that this time, there are some early and...

"United" Nations/Sanctions

June 5, 2009

Anticipating Kim Jong Il’s Next Move

The North Koreans seem to be itching for a fight with Lee Myung Bak, but they’re afraid he might actually tell his military to shoot back. He knows that if that happens, he risks a national humiliation at a delicate moment. He might, just might, be engineering a tricky sucession as we speak. Some are even speculating that a bloody purge may be on the horizon. What does a tyrant have to do to raise the bar from a nuclear...

Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology

December 18, 2008

Of Fools and Their Money

When North Korea first started ejecting South Koreans from Kaesong, I noted that the Kaesong project was already economically marginal and falling well short of its ambitious goals. I also predicted that the North Korean move would be fatal to the project’s efforts to coax cowardly capital into a potential war zone controlled by the world’s most opaque, least capital-friendly regime. That prediction has already come true. The leftist Hankyoreh is reporting that South Korean companies are fleeing for the...

NK Economics

December 14, 2008

North Korea Imposes Harsher Penalties for Unauthorized Border Crossing

Although I recall hearing someone say recently that human rights would be an important part of the State Department’s negotiations with North Korea, I have yet to see any recent evidence that State’s masters of cerebellingus have applied their techniques to the task of lifting North Korea to a shallower level of hell. Somone had better tell Glyn Davies that a few more adjectives will have to be sacrificed for the cause: North Korea has imposed stiffer punishments on those...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees

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...

Activism/Human Rights/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...

Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks

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...

Anju Links

March 17, 2008

Anju Links for 17 March 2008

CONDI RICE, COMMENTING ON THE FAILURE of the bilateral nuclear talks in Switzerland last week, confirms that “substantive differences remain” with North Korea, and that “she does not expect any immediate breakthrough.” Not even Chris Hill can deny it: Top U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill indicated Sunday that North Korea has, for now, responded unfavorably to U.S. proposals he presented to his North Korean counterpart to resolve a snag in the six-party process for denuclearizing the country. But the U.S....

Uncategorized

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

December 30, 2007

Ralph Cossa is wrong; Pressure on North Korea worked, when applied

Generally, I agree with Robert Koehler that Lee Myung Bak’s landslide victory was anything but a mandate for a better, more moral North Korea policy. It will put less irrational people in charge, but the policy will not be the improvement that Nicholas Eberstadt hopes for unless Kim Jong Il gets seriously on the wrong side of Lee Myung-Bak’s temper. Why? First, the election was all about money. Second, Lee Myung Bak is all about money. Third, South Korean voters …...

Appeasement/Korean Politics/Money Laundering

March 11, 2007

I Can Already Write The Rest of This Story. So I Did.

BEIJING, March 10 (UPI) — North Korea’s chief nuclear envoy Saturday said the United States has promised to lift its financial sanctions against his country. “The North is keeping a close eye on the promise,” Kim Kye-gwan told reporters at Beijing’s Shoudu Airport as he headed home to Pyongyang, the Korea Times reported. “If the U.S. fails to solve the issue completely, we will have to take partial actions against it,” Kim said. I wonder if this could be true. ...

Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD

December 11, 2006

A Human Rights Lawyer Who Can’t Read a Two-Page U.N. Resolution?

President Roh Moo-hyun on Saturday told South Korean expatriates in New Zealand that preventing North Korea’s possible collapse is a “very important strategy” for our government because the North “will never wage war unless attacked or collapsing.” Seoul is therefore “concerned” about the suspension of humanitarian aid to the North under UN Security Council Resolution 1718, he added. [link] Leave aside the sheer density of illogic in that brief statement, most of which speaks for itself. Either Roh, a former...

"United" Nations/Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid/WMD

November 6, 2006

A (Blue) House Divided Against Itself

Kim Jong Il can count dividing the U.S.-Korea alliance as one of his recent successes, but in the process, he’s also divided his friends in South Korea. The left finds itself split among accomodators, appeasers, and outright agents, and those factions are going into an election year at war with each other. One of the most divisive of the internecine struggles is Seoul’s to-join-or-not-to-join agony over the Proliferation Security Initiative. Today, Yonhap has a long story on the subject. President...

"United" Nations/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/WMD

November 3, 2006

Someone Please Staple Kim Geun-Tae’s Lips Together

This is an act that damages our national pride and is not appropriate for the South Korea-U.S. alliance.” — Kim Geun Tae, head of S. Korea’s ruling party and North Korea’s favorite dancing piggy, on hearing that the United States actually intends to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718. When I worried aloud that the United States would ease sanctions on North Korea during the pendency of the next round of endless, pointless six-party extortion denuclearization talks, I based my...

An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Unintended Humor/WMD/WTF?

October 19, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 56

At the end of this post, there is big news, but if I told you now, I couldn’t wring the last full measure of absurdity out of it. So please stick with me here. I have accused the South Korean government of promoting anti-Americanism. When I do, I speak of things like this: The chief presidential secretary for security Song Min-soon on Wednesday said South Korea would be the greatest victim in a war on the peninsula due to the...

An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD/WTF?

Search Results for: Kumgang sanctions