Search Results for “frag”

November 11, 2014

Daniel Drezner, on the fall of the Berlin Wall

The thing about the collapse of the East German regime is how sudden it was. I was in East Berlin in the fall of 1989, and there was no inkling of a regime in trouble. Compared to other Warsaw Pact countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, East Germany’s civil society movement was much smaller and more fragmented. East Germany’s protests grew out of a weekly prayer vigil in Leipzig in the fall of 1989, but according to Sarotte, the Stasi...

Regime Change

September 29, 2014

H.R. 1771: A response to Stephan Haggard

Stephan Haggard has published the second of two comments on H.R. 1771, the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, at KEIA’s blog, following Bruce Klingner’s first post on the subject. Haggard and I have a history of genial disagreement about North Korea policy, but I find much more in this thoughtful and well-considered post to expand on than to argue with. Haggard has obviously read and understood the legislation before opining about it. (Marcus Noland, Haggard’s co-author at Witness to Transformation,...

Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law

September 18, 2014

What Bob King should have said about travel to North Korea.

Ambassador Robert King, whose title is Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues, has written to The Washington Post in response to Anna Fifield’s reporting on North Korea’s efforts to market itself as a tourist destination (which may be more accurately described as the efforts of foreign collaborators to sell North Korea as a fine place to go slumming). King wishes that Fifield had given more emphasis to what should be obvious to anyone with good sense — that “[t]ravel to...

"United" Nations/Anju Links/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Foreigners in N. Korea

June 4, 2014

Coalition against N. Korea crumbles due to U.S. incompetence, betrayal, and weakness

Last week, Japan and North Korea announced an agreement under which Pyongyang would “conduct a comprehensive survey” of the whereabouts of “Japanese spouses, victims of abduction and mission persons,” both dead and alive, and return them to Japan. In exchange, “Japan has announced that it is lifting sanctions against North Korea on travel, reporting remittances and humanitarian shipping.” Japan also agreed “to examine humanitarian aid to Pyongyang at an â€˜appropriate time.’” Xinhua also reports that Japan may send monitors to...

Abductions/Diplomacy/Japan/Six-Party Talks

May 22, 2014

N. Korea Perestroika Watch: Man executed for calling China

The Daily NK provides us some updates on Kim Jong Un’s ongoing crackdown on unauthorized contact with the outside world, via sources in North Hamgyeong Province, in the far northeast: The North Korean authorities recently added five extra clauses to Article 60 of the country’s criminal code, which pertains to attempts to overthrow the state. The additional clauses codify harsh punishments for acts including illicit communication with the outside world, which could in principle now incur the death penalty. [….] The...

Border Control/Inside NK/NK Economics

May 18, 2014

If a building falls in Pyongyang and AP doesn’t hear it, why the fuck is it even there?

This weekend, we hear news of a terrible tragedy in Pyongyang, the collapse of a 23-story apartment building in the central Phyongchon District. The building was still under construction, but apparently, North Koreans move into apartment buildings before the construction is completed. Sources in South Korea’s Unification Ministry told Reuters that hundreds may have died, and KCNA’s expression of “profound consolation and apology … to bereaved families” seems to corroborate that there were many dead. KCNA says the accident “claimed casualties,” but doesn’t...

AP Watch/Inside NK/Media Criticism

April 4, 2014

At Kaesong, “engagement” teaches S. Korean corporations the dying art of slavery

slavery n 1. (Law) the state or condition of being a slave; a civil relationship whereby one person has absolute power over another and controls his life, liberty, and fortune; 2. the subjection of a person to another person, esp in being forced into work; 3. the condition of being subject to some influence or habit; 4. (Industrial Relations & HR Terms) work done in harsh conditions for low pay A good test of whether any particular “engagement” program with North Korea has lived up...

Anju Links

January 27, 2014

Open Sources, January 27, 2014

~ 1 ~ NORTH KOREA PLANNED AN ATTACK ON INCHEON AIRPORT? If Park Geun Hye seems “skeptical about North Korea’s recent conciliatory proposals” and suspects that they could be “a prelude to an attack on South Korea” this may be why: North Korea secretly carried out military exercises simulating an attack on a civilian airport in South Korea, mobilizing special jet fighters designed to infiltrate Southern territory, a source told the JoongAng Ilbo. A South Korean government official who is...

Anju Links

January 14, 2014

N. Korea’s new “reign of terror” stirs fear, flushes out dissent

Rimjingang, the guerrilla news service that brought us the footage we’ll see in Frontline: Secret State of North Korea, has published a spate of reports that give credence to Park Geun-Hye’s prediction that a “reign of terror” would follow the purge of Jang Song-Thaek. The reports clearly rely heavily on third-hand rumor, so I wouldn’t necessarily consider them so much for the truth of the matters asserted as for what they say about the mood on the street. But amid...

Inside NK/Regime Change/Resistance

October 3, 2013

Sanctions are working in Iran. They’ll work better against North Korea, and here’s why.

Drag a modest grant check through DuPont Circle and you’ll accumulate at least ten pundits, several dozen grad students, and a multitude of assorted kooks who would willingly write you an academic paper entitled, “Why Sanctions Never Worked.” And that’s true, except for South Africa, Yugoslavia, Burma, Nauru, Al Qaeda, Iran, and North Korea, and only if you limit the argument to trade sanctions and exclude other tools of economic pressure, like coordinated divestment, third-party financial sanctions like those in Section...

Axis of Evil/Iran/Money Laundering/Sanctions

September 27, 2013

RAND’s study of N. Korea collapse should be required reading at State, USFK

This week, the World Bank recently analyzed a series of governance indicators to conclude that the North Korean regime is stabilizing. Not surprisingly, not everyone agrees. Bruce Bennett of RAND has just published an indispensable, readable, and plausibly terrifying new study of the regime’s stability, and he reaches a very different conclusion. To Bennett, a violent and chaotic collapse looks increasingly likely as North Korea tries to consolidate succession to its third hereditary ruler. (Thanks to a reader for forwarding)....

Reconstruction/Regime Change

September 16, 2013

Releases and higher mortality shrink North Korea’s prison camp population

The newest update on Camps 18 and 22 from the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) continues to draw news coverage, most recently in the form of this grim report by Chico Harlan of The Washington Post. Harlan reports that the camps’ population is now likely between 80,000 and 120,000, much lower than the previous estimate of 200,000. Part of this decline reflects a correction of previous overestimates of the population. I’d mentioned here and here, for example, my...

The Camps

November 30, 2012

So … does this mean KCNA believes in unicorns?

America’s finest news source, The Onion, is presented as parody but can be mistaken for reality. North Korea’s finest news source, KCNA, is presented as reality but can be mistaken for parody. But if you compare the best work of each news source, KCNA is clearly funnier: Pyongyang, November 29 (KCNA) — Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom...

AP Watch/Unintended Humor/WTF?

April 15, 2012

Who Else Flubbed N. Korea’s Rocket Launch? The Press, the U.N., and the Obama Administration

By now, everyone knows that the North’s missile test was a fiasco, but North Koreans don’t have this fiasco all to themselves. For example, until the day of the launch, the North had never done a better of job handling of the foreign press. It had successfully co-opted the largest wire service in the United States into a megaphone for its propaganda, and it had so effectively focused much of the rest of the U.S. media on its stage-managed rocket...

"United" Nations/AP Watch/Media Criticism/Missiles

April 11, 2012

A New Approach to North Korea: Contain, Constrict & Collapse

Sometime in the next few hours, North Korea will launch a prototype for an intercontinental ballistic missile, in flagrant violation of three U.N. Security Council resolutions. The North Koreans announced the launch two weeks after agreeing to a deal to freeze their missile and nuclear programs in exchange for U.S. food aid. It now seems they will follow their missile test with a nuclear test. Traditionally, Chinese obstructionism delays U.N. Security Council action by about three weeks after a North...

Diplomacy/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/Subversion/WMD

March 5, 2012

Col. David Maxwell, on why the North Korean people don’t rebel

It’s funny how life moves in oddly circular ways sometimes. I first met Col. David Maxwell more than a decade ago on Okinawa, when I was an Army defense counsel and he was commanding a Special Forces battalion. This unequal juxtaposition of his cred versus mine makes me begin this post feeling sheepish about disagreeing with one of his conclusions here, that the North Korean people are so thoroughly indoctrinated that they would not consider rising against the system. I...

Resistance

February 3, 2012

Why we should support the Syrian opposition, in spite of everything we know

Things sure aren’t looking too good in Egypt these days. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised by this. For decades, the true character of its society lay latent behind the veil of a dictator friendly to our interests, who mouthed words we like to hear about moving toward a more open, secular society. This never really happens under unrepresentative governments, of course. What happens instead is that the people seethe and their grievances build, and they’re drawn to well-organized, well-financed...