With even U.S. negotiator Chris Hill joining in the impulse to pretend that North Korea didn’t say what I could swear they said yesterday, it’s an ironic place that I turn today for a dose of reality: Pyongyang’s own Korea Central News Agency. Wouldn’t you know it? KCNA is a hard-liner’s best friend when I need just the right ammo to win an argument: As clarified in the joint statement, we will return to the NPT and sign the Safeguards...

Remember Reigncom, the Korean manufacturer of MP3 players that ran TV commercials invoking the nationalism card against its American and Japanese competitors a few months back? Evidently, the cultivation of hatred is no substitute for making the best product at the lowest price, and competition is coming from an unexpected quarter–its own technology, in the hands of the Chinese: Korean companies that took their business and know-how to China in search of a cheaper workforce are seeing their decision come...

The Chosun Ilbo names him as General Burwell B. Bell. What about him? He’s an Oak Ridge, Tennessee native, seems the scholarly type, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and formerly commanded (gargantuan) Fort Hood and U.S. Army, Europe. Back in 1979, he held a company-grade staff job in Korea. From the looks of this letter, purportedly written by Mrs. Burwell B. Bell, the couple will not be pleased with the way some of the soldiers are...

James Na, author of The Asianist and Buns and Gutter Guns and Butter (oops, mistake fixed!! Heh.) and OFK reader, has I site I probably “refreshed” every six to eight seconds last October. Some grafs: The leftist ruling Uri Party has been divided by the new “Battle of Inchon.” Some counseled moderation while others within the party lauded the protesters as showing a “deep ethnic purity” and denounced the opponents of the protest as “ultra-rightists.” President Roh Moo-Hyun of South...

I started compiling a list of all the pundits, who, unlike me, are paid to write for expensive newspapers, and who, unlike me, had actually drawn lessons from the North Korean nuclear “breakthrough” that proved erroneous somewhere between the time of writing and time of publication. Inexplicably, none of the examples listed here had the decency to simply acknowledge that the foundation facts were so obliterated as to require pulling the flawed analyses out of simple decency to the readers....

James Robbins of NRO Calls for Regime Change in North Korea. I’ve long held the view that regime change is the only way to solve our various problems with the North Korean regime, but it seems to me that the best criticisms of such calls aren’t really about how we can justify it, but about how we can execute it, much less without starting Korean War II. For many advocates of further diplomacy, rewarding bad behavior, tolerating unchecked proliferation, and...

This week’s entry is at Commoner Sense, and it’s a good, long, detailed one.

The Flying Yangban, blogging for The Marmot, expresses disinterest in the latest North Korean nuclear machinations. Well, given the number of electrons I’ve spent on this, I don’t have that option. When it comes to diplomacy with North Korea, I consider myself a highly interested agnostic. Oranckay challenges anyone to show that the North Koreans’ statements really are inconsistent, and foolishly, I take him up on it: __________________________ Oranckay has thrown down the gauntlet: If anyone out there wants to...

Reading this piece in The Guardian will require you to suspend your disbelief that the author is crediting Kofi Annan, who was occupied with his banker in Geneva during the slaughters in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and the engineered famine in North Korea: In the final declaration last week 191 countries, including Sudan and North Korea, went along with a restatement of international law: that the world community has the right to take military action in the case of “national authorities manifestly...

Simon Wiesenthal, who built a political empire dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism and injustice worldwide, has passed away at the age of 96. In recent years, the Simon Wiesenthal Center had become a leading force in the movement for human rights in North Korea, persistently and publicly demanding that the U.N. investigate charges that the North murders political prisoners and their families in gas chambers. You can read the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s statement here. Photo credit: New York Times.

By now, you may or may not have heard that North Korea has already reneged on the deal it signed just yesterday (scroll down; next post). But in Pyongyang, agreement and disagreement are both wispy things, and you never know if we’ll have a deal again in six or eight minutes. I keep a stock ticker next to my coffee pot for just that purpose. Deal or not, it’s an interesting parlor game (albeit, one with deadly serious consequences for...

I have occasionally been accused of being somewhat, oh, bearish and skeptical about diplomacy with North Korea, if not the cynical pretense that we’re making a go of it. Yet even I expect the North Koreans to take weeks–or at the very least, days–to justify my skepticism. Today it only took hours: SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea said Tuesday it would not dismantle its nuclear weapons program until the United States first provides an atomic energy reactor, casting doubt...

Uri MP Defects to Democratic Party. Roh’s coalition idea is blamed. Uri is now down to 144 out of 298.

Supernotes Update: One of the Macau banks named in a U.S. Treasury Department investigation of North Korean money laundering, Delta Asia Bank, is reported to be on the verge of collapse as depositors run for their money. The Macau government has had to intervene, and I read between the lines that a bailout may be necessary. Delta is Macau’s number two bank, and Macau is a notorious haven for North Korean skullduggery. More background on the “wedding” that began the...

Thanks to the reader who forwarded this story to me. LOS ANGELES –Tibor Rubin kept his promise to join the U.S. Army after American troops freed him from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria during World War II. A Hungarian Jew, Rubin immigrated to New York after the war, joined the Army and fought as an infantryman in the Korean War. In 1951, Chinese troops captured Cpl. Rubin and other U.S. soldiers and he became a prisoner of war for...

Well, I must say that I didn’t expect this: BEIJING, China (CNN) — Nearly three years after ordering U.N. nuclear inspectors out of the country, North Korea Monday agreed to give up its entire nuclear program, including weapons, a joint statement from six-party nuclear arms talks in Beijing said.” This is the most important result since the six-party talks started more than two years ago,” said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, Beijing’s envoy, in a report from The Associated...

Update: Afghan Lord–yes, an Afghan blogger, has photos. Keep scrolling. You can even see a slide show here. ________________________ Today, Afghanistan held its second successful election, marking the completion of the democratic selection of its government by its people. KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghans chose a legislature for the first time in decades Sunday, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taliban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques. Violence across the country in the hours...

In what may mark the end, for now at least, of the Franco-German effort to turn Europe into a counterweight to American international power, German voters have ousted 60’s radical-turned-politician Gerhard Schroeder from office. It’s still unclear whether Angela Merkel, who campaigned on a promise to repair ties with Washington, will gain enough seats to win an outright majority with her likely coalition partners. I don’t expect to see dramatic changes in German foreign policy, particularly concerning Iraq, but we...