Search Results for: John Kerry

March 25, 2014

Samantha Power, North Korea is your Rwanda

Now that anyone who cares has digested the U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s report on North Korea, the conversation has turned to a more practical question: So what? The E.U. and Japan are reportedly drafting a resolution for consideration by the Security Council that would (1) condemn North Korea for its crimes, (2) call “for its leaders to face international justice,” (3) impose travels sanctions on specific leaders deemed responsible, and (4) refer the COI report to the International Criminal Court....

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Six-Party Talks
March 7, 2014

Look how fast Treasury can freeze assets when it wants to

Yesterday, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) released this advisory to banks around the world to be on the lookout for deceptive financial practices designed to move the ill-gotten wealth of 18 former Ukrainian officials, including Viktor Yanukovich. The chilling effect of this will likely be that banks around the world refuse to move large sums of money for mysterious figures linked to these 18 people, for fear of losing their access to the financial system. Although the advisory says...

Categories Sanctions
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
February 28, 2014

Please attend next Wednesday: House Foreign Affairs Committee to host event on U.N. Commission report

On March 5th at 3 p.m., the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold an event with a panel discussion featuring leaders of prominent human rights NGOs, including Greg Scarlatoiu, Executive Director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, and Human Rights Watch. The Federation of Korean Associations in the U.S.A. will also participate — they’ve emerged as strong and highly effective advocates for the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act this year. Also present will be Suzanne Scholte, head...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
February 5, 2014

Can Park Geun-Hye prepare Korea, and the world, for reunification?

Yesterday, Yonhap reported that an unusual billboard had appeared in Times Square in New York: “Korean Unification would be an immeasurable BONANZA for any nations with interests in the Korean Peninsula.” To most of the Americans who read it, the billboard will seem odd, but Korea-watchers will recall when Korean-Americans took out similar ads in the United States, about things that matter much less. Beneath the paywall, we learn that “[t]he ad was set up by Han Tae-gyuk, a 66-year-old Korean-American man, at his own expense,”...

Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society/Reconstruction/Regime Change/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea
January 31, 2014

Open Sources, January 31, 2014

~ 1 ~ OH LOOK, North Korea restarted a nuclear reactor. ~ 2 ~ AND NOW, A LIST OF POLITICIANS WHO DID GOOD: H.R. 1771 has some new co-sponsors in the House. Rep. Pete Sessions (R, Tex.), Rep. Jeff Duncan (R, S.C.), and Rep. Adam Smith (D, Wash.) have signed on. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), joins early supporter and fellow Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard. The biggest surprise? Rep. Jim McDermott, who is known for his outspoken liberal views on foreign...

Categories Anju Links
December 18, 2013

Kim Jong Un is “reckless,” “dangerous, unpredictable, prone to violence and … delusions of grandeur,” and nuked up. Is that all?

North Korea, which was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has showered Baekryeong Island, a disputed South Korean-held Island in the Yellow Sea, and the site of the 2010 ROKS Cheonan attack, with leaflets threatening to turn the island into “a huge tomb.” [Screen grab from MBC, via the Chosun Ilbo] The leaflets did not explain why Kim Jong Un is not content to keep killing off his unwanted relatives, but a China-based,...

Categories Anju Links/Kim Jong Un/Kremlinology
December 6, 2013

Open Sources, December 6, 2013

~ 1 ~ NOT THAT “AXIS OF EVIL” NONSENSE AGAIN: New reports claim that “the U.S. intelligence community has determined that Iran and North Korea continue to develop” an ICBM together. Plaintive cries about starving babies in Iran notwithstanding, the mullahs are “financing much of the North Korean missile program in exchange for the transfer of technology, expertise and components.” More here, and much more here, in Bruce Bechtol’s new book. I’ll leave the commentary on the Iran deal to...

Categories Anju Links
November 15, 2013

Sanctions, Sanctions-Busting, and the Limits of Incrementalism (updated)

In the years since Treasury dropped the hammer on Banco Delta Asia, North Korea has adapted to make itself less vulnerable to sanctions. It has decentralized its currency flows to different banks to make it harder for Treasury to cut just one weak link. This means that achieving the same effect we achieved in 2005 will take more time today, although – and this is really just an educated guess – a determined attack on North Korea’s access to hard...

Categories Sanctions
October 31, 2013

Open Sources, Halloween Edition

~ 1 ~ ATTACK OF THE TROLLS: So the other day, while reading something at NK News, I noticed that some obvious troll(s) had claimed in the comments that the North Korean Human Rights Film Festival in Toronto was a “fake event” that never took place. Now, I wasn’t there myself, but this Al Jazeera reporter was, which causes me to suspect that some person or persons is or are trying to sow false information to discredit a message they...

Categories Anju Links
January 30, 2013

The Whole World Is Watching

Since I started this blog nearly ten years ago, I’ve had one primary objective — to do my small part to make it impossible for people with more influence than me to ignore North Korea’s crimes against humanity.  This week, for the first time, this quixotic campaign does not seem like such an exercise in futility.  Today, everyone on earth seems to be talking about Google maps and satellite imagery of concentration camps in North Korea, even posting fake “reviews”...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
January 27, 2013

Why Susan Rice’s new Security Council resolution is a great victory … for China and North Korea

The Obama Administration spin on the long-stalled U.N. Security Council Resolution 2087 is that it “tightened” U.N. sanctions against North Korea, and that securing China’s vote for that resolution represents some sort of diplomatic accomplishment for the U.S. and Susan Rice. Despite China’s rejection of proposals by the United States to add new sanctions, the Obama administration sought to characterize the vote as a tough response. “This resolution demonstrates to North Korea that there are unanimous and significant consequences for its...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
December 6, 2012

North Korea’s missile test will be Susan Rice’s big chance to be effective (for a change). Update: They did it.

As North Korea completes preparations for its latest ICBM test, the United States, Japan, and South Korea are trying to deter it with state-of-the art, laser-guided words.  Success, while unlikely, isn’t completely out of the question; after all, Kim Jong Un seemed to be preparing to conduct a nuke test several months ago, but never went through with it.  If Kim Jong Un really did defer a nuke test, I have no idea why, but it probably wasn’t because he wants...

Categories "United" Nations/Missiles/Sanctions
December 5, 2012

Ed Royce to become Chairman of House Foreign Affairs

No single member of Congress of either party, in either chamber, is a more persistent advocate of the human rights of the North Korean people than Representative Ed Royce.  Royce represents California’s 40 District in Orange County, which contains a large Korean-American constituency.  Just as the situation in Cuba seemed to inspire outgoing Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen the most, the situation in North Korea has always seemed to inspire Royce the most. Yesterday, I learned that Royce has been selected to...

Categories Anju Links
September 16, 2012

Open Sources, 17 September 2012

NORTH KOREAN REFORM WATCH, PART I: Marcus Noland writes that inflation has risen sharply, and that “macroeconomic instability” has returned to North Korea: Recent anecdotal reports of price changes conveyed in both press reports and in private communications from travelers returning from North Korea suggest a surge in inflation. Simple calculations suggest that the value of the won may have depreciated at an annualized rate of 200 percent or more over the past 6 months, with some evidence of an...

Categories Anju Links
November 12, 2010

Obama: Bush Wimped Out on Kim Jong Il

Just how weak does your diplomacy have to be for Barack Obama, recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, to call you out for it? I do not mean to imply that the answer to this question is an obvious one. I ask it because of this statement by President Obama, at a joint news conference with President Lee Myung Bak, after this Veterans’ Day speech at my former duty station: After delivering his remarks, Obama met with South Korean...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
July 30, 2010

Free Aijalon Gomes

It should go without saying that I am in sympathy with the goals of Robert Park and Aijalon Gomes, and in complete disagreement that they advanced those goals through their quixotic walks into North Korea. Most people today only remember Park for his bizarre confession and his crypic references to the sort of sexual torture that, without knowing more, sounded like something more than a few of us have purchased for our friends at bachelor parties in our boorish youth....

Categories Aijalon Gomes