Search Results for: burma

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
May 20, 2014

Open Sources, May 20, 2014

~   1   ~ BREAKING: N. KOREAN WARSHIPS CROSS NLL: “Three North Korean military vessels briefly crossed the western maritime border on Tuesday, prompting the South Korean military to fire warning shots to force their retreat, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. ‘Two patrol boats and one government ship from North Korea crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the Yellow Sea at around 4 p.m. in succession,’ the JCS said in a statement.” ~   2  ...

Categories Anju Links
March 11, 2014

U.N. Panel of Experts releases new report on N. Korea sanctions enforcement

The report, which you can find here, publishes photographs and a detailed description of the weapons seized from the Chong Chon Gang. I had not realized how big the shipment was: 72. The Panel found that the hidden cargo (see figure XI, a complete list at annex VII and detailed analysis at annex VIII) amounted to six trailers associated with surface-to-air missile systems and 25 shipping containers loaded with two disassembled MiG-21 aircraft, 15 engines for MiG-21 aircraft, components for...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
January 7, 2014

Source: Dennis Rodman brought luxury gifts to Kim Jong Un (and that’s punishable by 20 years in prison).

Writing at The Weekly Standard today, Dennis Halpin informs us that Dennis Rodman (no relation) was bringing more than his august presence to Kim Jong Un’s birthday party. Halpin, citing a “diplomatic source” he understandably won’t name but says is reliable, claims that Rodman was also carrying “several hundred dollars’ worth of Irish Jameson whiskey,” “European crystal, an Italian suit for him, and Italian clothing, a fur coat, and an English Mulberry handbag” for Kim’s wife, Ri Sol Ju. The level...

Categories Sanctions/Useful Idiocy
November 25, 2013

How the Iran deal affects North Korea policy

You would think that the world’s biggest government would be capable of handling more than one global proliferation crisis at a time. Unfortunately, Washington isn’t wired for that kind of bandwidth. Major policy initiatives require political capital, and it will take all of this administration’s dwindling reserves to fend off a new round of Iran sanctions in Congress.* The administration couldn’t defend a deal with North Korea now if it had one, and that goes double for the sort of...

Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Sanctions
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 28, 2013

Is the next Banco Delta Asia in Malaysia?

Over the weekend, a lot people were giggling at the decision by Paul Chan, President of HELP University, to award an honorary degree in economics of Kim Jong Un. Foreign Policy’s Isaac Stone Fish, who first revealed the story, obligingly prints Chan’s manifesto, which reads like the work of a true belieber — a man who writes as if he has spent an inordinate amount of time watching High School Musical over and over again. I have fond memories of...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/Useful Idiocy/WTF?
October 23, 2013

Not all sanctions were created equal.

David Albright has questioned the conclusions of Josh Pollack, in a to-be-released academic paper, that North Korea has now acquired the ability to advance its nuclear weapons with indigenous technology, that the technological horse is out of the barn door, and that there’s nothing more that sanctions can do. (Implication: North Korea is a nuclear state, and we just have to live with that.) Only we really don’t know the exact parameters of what Pollack concludes, because (at least according to...

Categories Sanctions
October 12, 2013

Open Sources, Oct. 12, 2013

WHAT’S THAT, YOU SAY? And they’re floating it into North Korea? That’s really too good to be true, and I’m checking with a contact to see if it is. One thing’s for sure–if it is true, I’ll report it before the AP does. Update, 10/14: According to a knowledgeable reader, the “conservative groups” in question are still attempting to acquire the alleged video, but do have an (again, alleged) photo of Ri naked with another man, which they’re floating into...

Categories Anju Links
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
August 21, 2013

North Korea’s “charm offensive” coincides with growing international financial pressure

Observers in the West and South Korea tend to grasp (even gasp) at subtle or superficial changes in the tone of North Korea’s words, but the consistency of North Korea’s actions has always refuted the interpretations of these observers.  No charm offensive ever interrupted Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons or its willingness to proliferate nuclear or chemical weapons technology.  Even its provocations, often described as “unpredictable,” follow a cycle that has become familiar to Korea-watchers, including the President of South Korea....

Categories Anju Links/Money Laundering/Sanctions
March 19, 2013

Open Sources, March 17, 2013: Plan B Watch Edition

WHACK-A-MOLE:  The news that Treasury has designated North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank under Executive Order 13382 leaves me underwhelmed.  This executive order provides for the blocking of assets of entities involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and restricts transactions with those entities, assuming we can reach them.  I’m dubious about how many assets or transactions are within our reach, but the pin-pricky targeting suggests that this approach is far less comprehensive than what’s needed to defang North Korea....

Categories Anju Links/Money Laundering/Sanctions
December 3, 2012

Open Sources, December 3, 2012

VIDEO:  A wooden boat with fading Korean characters painted on it washes up on Japan’s West Coast.  Aboard are the decomposing bodies of five men. ————————————————– WHERE HAS THE U.S.S. PUEBLO GONE? ————————————————– I, FOR ONE, FULLY SUPPORT THEIR DECISION:  North Korea to confiscate property from companies at Kaesong that fail to pay punitive taxes.  Good luck attracting more investment with that strategy! ————————————————– NORTH KOREAN PERESTROIKA WATCH:  According to an unverifiable report attributed to “sources,” North Korea has replaced...

Categories Anju Links
November 20, 2012

Open Sources, November 20, 2012

CAMP 22 UPDATE:  Radio Free Asia is doubling down on its report of the liquidation and re-purposing of the camp, but after reviewing the satellite imagery and seeing Joe Bermudez’s interpretations reenforce my own conclusions, I find this very difficult to believe.  The truth we can more-or-less prove is horrible enough. ——————————————— HITCHENS HASN’T BEEN DEAD A YEAR and I miss him already: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is, as Christopher Hitchens once described the occluded realm ruled by the Kim family in Pyongyang, a...

Categories Anju Links
May 19, 2012

Anju, May 19, 2012

IT’S BEING REPORTED THAT Chen Guangcheng is on his way to the United States. This is great news, and it won’t be lost on the Chinese people where Chen went when he feared the thugs of his own government. I suppose credit is due to the Obama Administration for negotiating this solution, but credit is also due to the Congress, which was making an election-year issue of the Administration’s initial bungling of the matter. In the end, China decided it...

Categories Anju Links
May 9, 2012

Welcome Back, Washington Post Readers

Chico Harlan of The Washington Post has written a story about that lengthy new report from South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission, and graciously threw me a couple of nice, fat links in the story (thanks, Chico!). This is a good thing for the North Korean people if more of us learn of their suffering. It’s also great for this blog, although it’s a bit like having a distinguished visitor stop by when you’re unpacking from a big move. This...

Categories Anju Links/The Camps
May 8, 2012

Nobel Prize Winning President Ignores World’s Worst Human Rights Violations

Most of the people reading this blog probably have no idea who Robert King is, and that is a sad comment in itself.  King’s title is Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, a position that was created back in 2004, under a mostly forgotten and disregarded law called the North Korean Human Rights Act. In the Bush Administration, the office was initially filled by Jay Lefkowitz, a well-meaning man who initially came to Bush’s attention for his opposition...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights
June 25, 2011

Open Sources: U.S. and S. Korea keeping up the pressure, for now; China’s diplomacy not looking so brilliant after all

President Obama has extended sanctions against North Korea, but still hasn’t re-added it to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, despite its extensive and recent use of its state media, its spies, and its military to commit acts that meet the statutory definition of international terrorism. ______________________________________ Treasury moves to cut Kaesong out of American markets: The Executive Order and by extension the new regulations contain the troublingly vague prohibition on “the importation into the United States, directly or...

Categories Anju Links