Search Results for: syria chemical

July 17, 2014

Treasury nukes bank with possible North Korea links (updated)

The Treasury Department has gone full Banco Delta on Cyprus-based, Tanzanian-chartered FBME Bank for money laundering, terrorist financing, and possibly even Syrian WMD proliferation — proliferation that is closely linked to North Korea. According to Treasury’s press release, FBME promoted itself as a provider of no-questions-asked banking services with loose anti-money laundering controls, although I saw no evidence of this at FBME’s Web site. But according to Treasury’s more detailed Notice of Finding, FBME was laundering money for Hezbollah, illegal...

Categories Money Laundering/Proliferation/Sanctions
July 10, 2014

Obama administration sanctions everyone except Kim Jong Un

The boys at Treasury have been busy sanctioning nasty people lately … just not nasty North Korean people. In the last 30 days, they’ve imposed sanctions on new targets in Syria, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Ukraine, and put a shiny new Executive Order on the President’s desk blocking the assets of human rights violators in Democratic Republic of Congo. Really? We do that sort of thing? Yes, we do that sort of thing — just not...

Categories Sanctions
April 29, 2014

Just test the damn thing already.

So the news this week is that the Obama Administration, which for the last five years has stayed its hand from sanctioning North Korea because of Chinese sensitivities, has just blocked the assets of top members of Vladimir Putin’s government over their seizure of the Crimea. That sounds like an effective way to piss them off, but I can’t see how it poses a serious threat to Russia’s economy or Putin’s domestic support, or how it will deter his next...

Categories Sanctions/U.S. & Korea/WMD
March 17, 2014

POE Part 2: Terrorist rockets that landed in Israel may have had N. Korean fuses

When the Syria collapsed into civil war in 2011, Hamas and other Sunni Palestinians broke with their sponsors in Damascus for sectarian reasons, while Hezbollah sent troops to defend the Assad regime. But in 2009, before the civil war, Assad and his own backers in Iran armed both Hamas and Hezbollah. The year 2009 was a big one for interceptions of North Korean weapons bound for Iran and its terrorist clients. The UAE found rocket propelled grenades and explosives inside...

Categories "United" Nations/Terrorism (NK)
March 6, 2014

Open Sources, March 6, 2014

~  1  ~ THANK YOU TO THOSE WHO CAME to this event on Capitol Hill yesterday and helped make it a huge success. We filled the room well beyond its capacity. There was an energy in the room that went beyond the question of numbers. It was who was there — young, old, in-between, conservatives, liberals, and a variety of ethnicities, including a very sizable Korean-American contingent. I don’t have words to express my admiration for the leadership of Suzanne...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Proliferation/Sanctions/U.S. Politics
October 17, 2013

Open Sources, October 17, 2013

PEACE IN OUR TIME, Part 1: South Korea says that the North is ready for another nuke test any old time, and reveals that at the height of Sunshine and Agreed Framework II, the North was building missile silos: Several South Korean government sources confirmed yesterday that the North has numerous underground missile launch facilities around 2,000 meters (2,190 yards) south of Mount Paektu. The silos, they said, were constructed in the mid-2000s and were determined to have been completed...

Categories Anju Links
October 11, 2013

N. Korea says Park GH’s father “smelled of elderberries,” S. Korea responds with “large wooden badger” plan

I don’t know about you, but I sure got tired of Park Geun Hye’s hippie Earth mother act last summer, after North Korea started making nice, right after banks all over China and Europe started blocking North Korean accounts. Thank God that’s over with. We’re back to steaming reactors, spinning centrifuges, war drums, nasty taunts, and all the things we’ve grown to love and miss about North Korea. The North was uncharacteristically quietly during August’s Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises, but for reasons known only...

Categories North-South/ROK Military/Sunshine/U.S. Military
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...

Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Money Laundering/Sanctions
September 19, 2013

Open Sources, September 19, 2013

~          1          ~ QUICK! TO THE VANKMOBILE! I hate to break it to “Jonathan Smith,” but no, South Korea is not known as the “PRK,” which I assume is supposed to stand for the “Peoples’ Republic of Korea.” Smith has set up a web site intended to reassure readers that their travels in North Korea will be perfectly safe (Ken Bae and Park Wang-Ja were not available for comment). His choice of a Q&A format–along...

Categories Anju Links
September 18, 2013

U.N. Commissioner: N. Korean atrocities unlike any since the Khmer Rouge, Nazis

Reader Chris Beaumont* emailed me yesterday to draw my attention to the web site of the U.N. Commission on Inquiry on human rights abuses in North Korea. On this page, you can find links to videos of all of the Commission’s hearings in Seoul (English and Korean) and Tokyo (English and Japanese). I haven’t had time to review the complete record, but in this one, Shin Dong Hyok testifies about Camp 14 with the aid of Google Earth imagery. There...

Categories Anju Links
September 9, 2013

Cartmanland, The Country (Or, Kim Jong Un’s North Korea and the End of Juche)

Maybe I’ve learned something from Dennis Rodman’s visit to North Korea after all, which is that I was probably incorrect when I denied that Kim Jong Un had enough power to make decisions that affect North Korea’s national priorities. Unbelievable as I find it to be, he really does seem to be in charge of something, and quite probably, everything. What causes me to reverse my thinking on this important question? The fact that Rodman has made a ridiculous and...

Categories Kim Jong Un
September 7, 2013

Open Sources, Sept. 7, 2013

PRAISE BE TO ZEUS, I DON’T HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THAT IMBECILE DENNIS RODMAN again, because Sung Yoon Lee has already done it so much better than I could. It’s not an easy thing to write a fat joke with the subtlety a respected academic must use to get invited back on the PBS News Hour to (polemically speaking) deflower those paired with him–or to the Oval Office. Lee not only manages this, he begins with a silly-yet-tragic story about...

Categories Anju Links
December 28, 2012

Open Sources, Dec. 28, 2012: Special Schadenfreude Edition

PSY BOMBS:  Good.  South Korea’s America-hating, North Korea-sympathizing fad really needed a poster child to tell the world just how repellent it really was. ———————————————————— KORYO TOURS’ MOST RECENT venture into tasteless exploitation bombs.  Also good.  One day, Treasury really needs to get around to freezing their assets. ———————————————————— THE MOONIES’ NORTH KOREAN INVESTMENT BOMBS:  Also good.  Hat tip and nice Hemingway reference there, Marcus. ———————————————————— KIM JONG IL IS STILL DEAD, also good.  Evan Ramstad posts on the newest...

Categories Anju Links
September 11, 2012

Open Sources, 11 September 2012

LEVI AMMUNDSEN IS BIKING ACROSS NORTH AMERICA to raise awareness about human rights in North Korea. Ammundsen attributes his inspiration to Blaine Harden’s “Escape from Camp 14.” —————————————— MICHAEL TOTTEN watches the ascendancy of the Salafists from Syria’s formerly non-violent, pro-democratic protest movement and concludes, “I’d like to sketch a plausible endgame for Syria that isn’t horrifying, but it gets harder and harder each month.” I’d add that the longer it takes us to identify and empower the least offensive...

Categories Anju Links
April 20, 2012

Anju, April 20, 2012

CHINA DENIES selling missile transporters (TELs) to North Korea, but the U.N.’s sanctions committee will investigate. Look for China to block the report if it comes up with any evidence that China, yet again, violated UNSCR 1874, 1718, and 1695. That’s how China responded to a previous report that it helped North Korea sell missiles to Iran. Last year, it also blocked a U.N. report on North Korea’s uranium enrichment program. Look for them to do the same when the...

Categories Anju Links
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...

Categories Diplomacy/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/Subversion/WMD
March 9, 2012

Did Iran test a nuke in North Korea?

It would be a very serious matter if Iran had tested a nuclear weapon in North Korea in 2010, as this German language report in Die Welt claims. The claim has received much less attention in the U.S. press than it would seem to merit, and most bloggers who have picked up the story have merely wondered aloud whether it could be true (the notable exception being Stephan Haggard). I’ll add my summation of the evidence to Stephan’s, but I’ll...

Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Proliferation
September 6, 2011

Open Sources: International Protest Against China’s Repatriation of N. Korean Refugees, September 22nd

The North Korean Freedom Coalition is organizing a wave of international protests for September 22nd. The protests will occur in front of Chinese embassies and consulates in 12 different countries, including Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo, but also Sydney, Brussels, Prague, Tallinn, Helsinki, Mexico City, Warsaw, Busan, Bucharest, Kiev, London, Dublin, Chicago, Houston, New York, Chicago, L.A., and San Francisco. If your city isn’t listed there and happens to have a ChiCom consulate, it’s not too late to become an organizer....

Categories Anju Links