Search Results for: of fools and their money

February 22, 2010

In Case You Weren’t Listening for the Last 20 Years: North Korea Swears Never to Disarm

The North Korean regime seldom makes a promise, in my opinion, that it really intends to keep. For instance, I don’t think it has the slightest intention of spending all that confiscated cash on meat soup instead of yachts and other goodies of that sort for The Great Fishwife. But I think, for once, they’re sincere when they say this: North Korea vowed Friday (February 19) not to give up nuclear arms for “petty economic aid”, claiming it has only...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 12, 2010

12 February 2010: A Blissful Absence of Unifictions

I’m a sports agnostic and the Olympics especially boring to me, but I’m gratified there will be no wretch-inducing hippie unifiction of the Korean Olympic teams this year. The dishonesty of it — the moral decision to intentionally overlook what the North Korean regime really represents — always grated on me.________________ South Korea says the time is not ripe for cross-border tourism. A good case could be made that the exorbitant price the North Koreans charge for these tours triggers...

Categories Anju Links
January 5, 2010

North Korea’s Foreign Investment Strategy Explained

Reading of North Korea’s new plans for yet another trade zone, just as the Kaesong experiment collapses, must make some observers wonder what Kim Jong Il could be thinking: who could possibly expect to attract significant foreign investment with such uneven policies toward investment? My response: they don’t want to attract significant foreign investment. That would require some significant opening of their economy and the lowering of the state’s vigilance against the subversive power of ChocoPies. North Korea’s foreign investment...

Categories NK Economics
November 18, 2009

Human Rights Watch: Raise Human Rights in Bilateral Talks with North Korea

Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch is one of the few people doing laudable work in an industry so invested in defending terrorists of late that it’s often too distracted to address the worst atrocities since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. This time, however, HRW’s letter, addressed to Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth, is a useful contribution to the policy discussion about North Korea: For too long has the world sidelined human rights in North Korea while single-mindedly focusing on...

Categories Activism/Diplomacy/Human Rights
June 30, 2009

Orascom Watch

The Egyptian conglomerate that is rebuilding the Ryugyong Hotel, and whose relationship with North Korea showed signs of trouble several months ago, is reporting that it’s actually selling mobile phones to North Koreans: Egypt-based mobile operator Orascom Telecom earned US$312,000 in first-quarter sales this year from its mobile service in North Korea on surging demand among the communist nation’s upper class, a company press release said Thursday. More than 19,200 people have signed up for Orascom’s mobile phone service as...

Categories NK Economics
June 5, 2009

Obama Gears Up for “Plan B;” John Kerry Blocks Terror Re-Listing

I really don’t know what to make of this.  A young, inexperienced president, one whom the North Koreans arguably endorsed, comes into office showing every sign of being easier meat than Lance Bass in Riker’s Island.  The North Koreans, true to Joe Biden’s prophetic gaffe, and with their exquisite sensitivity to American weakness, don’t even let the man get inaugurated before they begin the noisy repudiation of every agreed framework, U.N. resolution, and armistice they can stuff into a shredder....

Categories "United" Nations/China/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Crime/NK Economics/Proliferation/Sanctions/U.S. Politics
January 30, 2009

Hostile Policy Update: North Korea Kills Off Sunshine

[Scroll down for updates] I don’t know why it comes as a surprise to anyone when North Korea reneges on anything: North Korea said Friday it is ditching a nonaggression pact and all other peace agreements with South Korea, in an apparent attempt to use the threat of an armed clash to press Seoul to give up its “confrontational” stance. The communist nation also said it will no longer respect a disputed sea border with the South, raising the prospect...

Categories Appeasement/NK Military
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  …...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics/Money Laundering
September 22, 2006

The Case for Blocking Ban Ki-Moon

The United Nations is facing new denunciations for being feckless, ineffective, and corrupt. The sun also rose, obituaries were published, children went off to school, and leaves in the northern latitudes began to change color. There was something different about the latest criticism, however: despite its general similarity of content, it came from The Guardian, the flagship of the British left, and The Hudson Institute, virtually the Jesuit order of Washington neoconservatism. That’s a stunning convergence from two groups with...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
July 4, 2006

Now What?

North Korea’s missile test opens up new options for the United States. Here is a list of them. [Scroll down for updates.] It too easy to say, as many will in the coming days, that there is little that the United States and other nations can do to North Korea diplomatically or economically now that it has done the unthinkably stupid and launched its (taepo)dong and (count ’em!) five smaller missiles [Update: make that six]. Let me express my respectful...

Categories Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Geopolitics/NK Economics/U.S. Law/WMD
May 12, 2004

It Sucks to Be Right

On April 21st, I blogged about the new Radio FreeNK and closed by presciently asking, “How long till Roh shuts it down?” We have our answer. South Korea is trying to shut down FreeNK, a radio station that broadcasts independent journalism into North Korea from Seoul. First, they banned the Kim Jong-Il comic book that went on to become a bestseller in Japan. Then, last summer, they beat up Norbert Vollertsen when he tried to send radios into North Korea...

Categories Uncategorized
May 12, 2004

It Sucks to Be Right

On April 21st, I blogged about the new Radio FreeNK and closed by presciently asking, “How long till Roh shuts it down?” We have our answer. South Korea is trying to shut down FreeNK, a radio station that broadcasts independent journalism into North Korea from Seoul. First, they banned the Kim Jong-Il comic book that went on to become a bestseller in Japan. Then, last summer, they beat up Norbert Vollertsen when he tried to send radios into North Korea...

Categories Uncategorized