Search Results for “Kumgang sanctions”

October 17, 2006

Of Tin-Pot Crises, and Real Ones

U.N. Resolution 1695, passed after North Korea’s missile tests, demanded that countries exercise “vigilance” to be certain that their money wasn’t paying for more missiles. South Korea adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach and continued as if nothing had changed. It even had another illegal payments-to-North Korea kerfuffle (“I apologize for the illegal remittance issue, which was caused by mismatch between law and reality” — a real classic). The focii of all these legal and ethical evasions are Kumgang...

"United" Nations/Appeasement/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD

October 15, 2006

U.N.S.C.R. 1718: Who Won, Who Lost (Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 13)

John Bolton: Winner. I’d like to hear John Bolton’s critics deny that, as with Resolution 1695, he has wrung far more effectiveness from the U.N. than we had come to expect. Not only should we confirm this man, pronto, we should clone him. Madeleine Albright never got results like these. The United States: Winner. We got everything we really wanted here: help constricting Kim Jong Il’s financial arteries the right to search his ships and planes. an embargo on the...

"United" Nations/Appeasement/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Geopolitics/Japan/Japan & Korea/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea/WMD

October 14, 2006

U.N. Security Council Resolution Takes Shape Passes Resolution 1718

Update: Too good to be true? Looks like the vote will be delayed … probably so that the Chinese and Russians can water this thing down. —– Update 2: On again. Supposedly, there will be a vote today. —– Updated 3: It passed; analysis below, and the full text at the bottom of this post. Naturally, the North Korean delegate walked out and denounced everyone for being “gangster-like. This is what the psychologists refer to as “projection.” ...

"United" Nations/NK Economics/NK Military/WMD

October 13, 2006

The Kaesong ‘Collision Course’

Whatever the U.N. is about to do about North Korea won’t matter to South Korea’s government: South Korea and the U.S. look set for a clash over the inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex and tourism to Mt. Kumgang in the North. President Roh Moo-hyun and the government have stressed the importance of joining hands with the international community in addressing Pyongyang’s nuclear test claim, but they add the industrial park in the North and the package tours have nothing to do...

"United" Nations/Appeasement/WMD

September 22, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 11: Eyes on Seoul

Green eyeshades are turning toward Seoul, Kaesong, and Kumgang. If you think things were bad before, this is where U.S.-Korea relations will be severely tested. The U.S. Treasury Department isn’t going to put up with Seoul acting as Kim Jong Il’s financier for long, and with the likely exceptions of some shady Russian banks and whatever China is secretly providing at the state-to-state level, South Korea is Kim Jong Il’s last cash cow. Kumgang That poll yesterday — the one...

Appeasement/Money Laundering/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea

August 26, 2006

Is He Crazy After All?

A big welcome to the new readers from Gateway Pundit, and as always, many thanks to Jim for his link and his support. All of us who wonder why Kim Jong Il has does some of the bone-headed things he’s done lately have shared a few common assumptions about him as we engaged in this speculative parlor game of ours: * He is sane, rational, calculating, and reasonably well informed about his foes’ thought processes (some, however, would also argue...

Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/WMD

July 22, 2006

Now What? Part 2

Right after North Korea launched its round of missiles, I outlined a series of options, mostly financial, that the U.S. and other countries could take in response. Two weeks later, several aspects of that forecast are holding up well. What looked at first like another U.N. farce, then a modestly successful sanctions effort (by U.N. standards, anyway), now looks to be an important and hard-won component of a coordinated effort to tighten the squeeze on the regime-sustaining half of North...

Appeasement/Counterfeiting/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WMD

July 19, 2006

Text of U.N. Security Council Resolution, Statements by Ambassadors

Being a practiced skeptic of South Korean UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok, I had to fact-check his narrow interpretation of U.N.S.C. 1695, that it “does not prescribe economic sanctions” and “should not adversely affect the on-going inter-Korean reconciliation projects, such as the Kaesong Industrial Park and tours to the North’s Mt. Kumgang.” Here, in relevant part, is what 1695 says: Requires all Member States, in accordance with their national legal authorities and legislation and consistent with international law, to exercise vigilance...

"United" Nations/Appeasement/NK Economics/WMD

September 14, 2005

Hyundai’s Iron Ajumma

Updated 9/14: The Chosun Ilbo reports that anti-Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young intervened with Hyun, possibly in an attempt to have Kim Yoon-Kyu reinstated, but that his differences with Hyun were “wide.” Chun is not denying that he’s trying to cobble the NK-Hyundai partnership back together, according to this Joongang Ilbo piece: “The government has responsibilities,” pool press reports from Pyongyang quoted him as saying. “In principle, this is a business relationship between a private company and North Korea, but the...

Uncategorized

July 3, 2005

A Catastrophe Unfolds

Disturbing reports of a dramatically worsening famine continue to filter out of North Korea, notwithstanding the regime’s Maoist mobilization of schoolchildren and office workers to the countryside. It’s not working, according to South Korean agricultural expert Kang Jong-Man, via the L.A. Times: The rice paddies are thin and uneven. Potato plants are pale and stunted. The fields are not properly graded. Barley still on the stalks should have been harvested weeks ago so that the same fields could be used...