Search Results for “Stuart”

April 26, 2007

Anju Links for 26 April: Who’s Afraid of Victor Cha, and the Sexual Psychology of Military Parades

* It has now been 13 days since April 13th, the day North Korea was supposed to have shut down the Yongbyon reactor, begun discussions on the full extent of its nuclear weapons and programs, invited in U.N. inspectors, and rejoined six-party talks (to include actually talking). North Korea has (surprise!) broken every one of those agreements. Victor Cha has since reportedly warned them that our patience is limited. So in Pyongyang they ask …. * Or Else,...

Abductions/America/Japan & Korea/Refugees/Six-Party Talks/Southeast Asia/Terrorism (NK)/Terrorism/Iraq/WMD

January 9, 2007

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 17

After North Korea showed up at last month’s disarmament talks just long enough to give the United States the finger, you wouldn’t expect us to go wobbly on our financial measures against North Korea’s financing of WMD’s, counterfeit currency, and other illegal proceeds. With the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1695 and 1718, those measurements have become requirements. The good news is that we’re not going wobbly. Treasury, mainly in the physical form of Undersecretary Stuart Levey, has been...

"United" Nations/Axis of Evil/Counterfeiting/Iran/Money Laundering/NK Economics/WMD

November 5, 2006

Wobble Watch: Treasury Won’t Lift Sanctions on Kim Jong Il’s Macau Accounts

New press reports link the bank accounts that mean so much to Kim Jong Il with his nuclear and other WMD programs. North Korea used its accounts at a Macau-based bank, suspected of having served as a base for the North’s alleged illicit activities, to pay for devices that could be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons, a Japanese daily reported Saturday. Quoting unidentified sources, Yomiuri Shimbun said China froze North Korean accounts worth US$24 million...

Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD

September 28, 2006

Greeks Intercept Counterfeit N.K. Cigarettes

Officials in Greece nabbed a North Korean freight vessel that was carrying 1.5 million cartons of contraband cigarettes and arrested the seven seamen aboard, it was announced Monday. [link] Let’s hope there’s a trial, and that this one won’t be a goose egg like the Pong Su case was. Whether the Aegean could use another artificial reef, I leave to the Greeks, but Greece is always happy to do the exact opposite of what America asks. The Greek Merchant Marine...

Counterfeiting/Money Laundering

September 8, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 9

The Treasury Department is not through with Kim Jong Il. Undersecretary Stuart Levey has set his sights on two of North Korea’s last two lifelines, South Korea and now, Russia: The United States is not yet satisfied with the results of sanctions aimed at changing North Korea despite the impact the sanctions have had, a senior Treasury official said Friday. The U.S. will watch how the situation develops with Russia, which reportedly has become one of the very few havens...

Money Laundering/NK Economics

September 8, 2006

The Seven Billion Dollar Man

[Update: The actual figure turns out to be over $7 billion, if you include all aid since 1995 and add in Kim Dae Jung’s $500M bribes. It still excludes money from South Korean corporations, and of course, aid from the U.N. or other countries. South Korea now provides 46% of North Korea’s support. h/t The Nomad.] Let’s briefly review where we’ve been with North Korea over the last year — missile tests, nuclear scares, crude insults, food aid stolen from...

Appeasement/Money Laundering

September 5, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 8

Nigel Cowie, North Korea’s most “legitimate” banker, is selling out, and this time, that’s not just a moral judgment. Richardson links this piece, written by none other than Bradley K. Martin, indicating that he’s selling his Daedong Credit Bank to the British-based Koryo Group, but will stay on to help manage the bank. As for the issue of Daedong’s much-proclaimed legitimacy, Martin adds what strikes me as a highly salient fact: The minority owner of Daedong Credit is Korea Daesong...

Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Money Laundering/NK Economics/WMD

September 4, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 7 (Updated)

[Update: My closing comment below about an expansion of our goals was an understatement: The U.S. Treasury Department, in a shift in its policy toward North Korea, has decided to treat all transactions involving the nation as suspect and subject to sanctions while dictator Kim Jong Il develops nuclear weapons. “Given the regime’s counterfeiting of U.S. currency, narcotics trafficking and use of accounts worldwide to conduct proliferation-related transactions, the line between illicit and licit North Korean money is nearly invisible,”...

Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics

August 29, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 6

From the AP: The financial noose is tightening around North Korea as international banks sever ties with the nation – a move championed by the United States, a top Treasury Department official says. [….] “There is sort of a voluntary coalition of financial institutions saying that they don’t want to handle this business anymore and that is causing financial isolation for the government of North Korea,” Stuart Levey, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in an...

Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/Money Laundering/NK Economics

August 23, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 5

Stuart Levey’s visit to Asia last month is paying off. Yet another nation is cutting off Kim Jong Il’s finances. Vietnamese banks have already closed down North Korean accounts over the past few weeks, most likely forcing Pyongyang to move its money to its last remaining haven, Russia, said Peter Beck, head of the International Crisis Group’s Seoul office, on Tuesday. Beck said Nigel Cowie, general manager of North Korea’s Daedong Credit Bank in Pyongyang, e-mailed him last week and...

Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Drugs & N Korea/NK Economics

August 7, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 2

During Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levy’s recent visit to a series of Asian nations, I wondered just how Treasury’s green eyeshades had landed on a particular series of bank accounts that attracted his attention. Via a U.S. Treasury official who spoke with the Donga Ilbo, we now know that the answer is linked to the first two questions I asked after the mass arrests that came of Operation Smoking Dragon last August: 1. Were any North Korean nationals caught or implicated?...

Counterfeiting/NK Economics

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

July 27, 2006

Now What? Part 4: Someone Didn’t Get the Memo

[Several very interesting updates here; scroll down.] Recently, it has often seemed that different parts of South Korea have been applying different policies to the same issue. Take South Korea’s response to the new U.N. Security Council Resolution 1695, which requires countries and companies to exercise “vigilance” in making sure they don’t supply North Korea with the components or funds to build more missiles. UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok has opted for a “don’t ask, don’t tell” interpretation of that resolution,...

Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD

July 24, 2006

On Again

Update 7/25: Off again. How do you say “stall” in Korean? The North Koreans now say they’re returning to the six-party talks. Let’s hope the Bush Administration doesn’t call off Stuart Levy. I suspect his variety of communication has been much more effective than Nicholas Burns’s. Odd, isn’t it, that all of that alleged Chinese pressure and dearly purchased South Korean influence couldn’t bring them back to the table for so many months? Yet when a U.S. Treasury official flies...

Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Six-Party Talks

July 22, 2006

Now What? Part 2

Right after North Korea launched its round of missiles, I outlined a series of options, mostly financial, that the U.S. and other countries could take in response. Two weeks later, several aspects of that forecast are holding up well. What looked at first like another U.N. farce, then a modestly successful sanctions effort (by U.N. standards, anyway), now looks to be an important and hard-won component of a coordinated effort to tighten the squeeze on the regime-sustaining half of North...

Appeasement/Counterfeiting/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD

July 19, 2006

An Image I’ll Never Shake

… the head of a murdered child, laid out in a field in a North Korean village, with residents brought down to see if anyone knew whose child this had been. Like twelve other wandering, homeless children before him, he had been lured into one of the last remaining restaurants in the starving district. Once the owner lured the children in, she would bathe them, and then strangle them. And butcher them. And then, she would sell their flesh to...

Activism/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Washington Views

April 4, 2006

Treasury Official: NK Sanctions Are Leaving a Mark

Last week, we heard that Kim Jong Il was trying to wait out President Bush. This week, a new report suggests that the converse may also be true: The U.S. Treasury Department says its ongoing financial sanctions against North Korea put “huge pressure” on the regime that could have a “snowballing … avalanche effect.” Under Secretary Stuart Levy was quoted in the latest edition of Newsweek, which analyzed the possible effect on the regime from Washington’s identification of the Banco...

An Alliance?/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/Uncategorized/WMD

October 28, 2005

The Great Uri Crackup

First, I strongly recommend Andy Jackson’s district-by-district rundown of this week’s bi-elections at The Marmot’s Hole, although I could summarize by saying that, the Uri and DLP lost everywhere they should have won, and also lost everywhere else. Here’s a breakdown of the composition of the new National Assembly: 144 Uri Party (leftist) 127 Grand National Party (conservative) 11 Democratic Party (fmr. Millenium Democratic Party, center-left) 9 Democratic Labor Party (stark-raving pinkos) 3 United Liberal Democrats 5 Independents ———————————————————————- 150...

Uncategorized

Search Results for: Stuart