Search Results for: burma

June 23, 2011

A Syrian Solution for North Korea

So now that the Syrian army is invading town after town from Dara’a in the south to its restive border with Turkey, can we call it a civil war yet? Worse things could happen there, and absent this wave of unrest, probably would have. If Syria isn’t likely to become a democracy within the next year, a destabilized Syria is probably the next best thing. If Bashar Asad is preoccupied fighting to survive, he’ll be impeded in his capacity to...

Categories Resistance
June 14, 2011

Another North Korean Vessel Intercepted, Turned Around

In an incident reminiscent of the Kang Nam I incident, a U.S. Navy ship has forced another suspected North Korean arms ship to turn around at sea, rather than face the risk of being searched in port. David Sanger of the New York Times reports: The most recent episode began after American officials tracked a North Korean cargo ship, the M/V Light, that was believed to have been involved in previous illegal shipments. Suspecting that it was carrying missile components,...

Categories "United" Nations/Anju Links/Sanctions/U.S. Military
January 31, 2011

North Korea Isn’t Egypt

So in response to some questions I’ve received via e-mail and this, no, what’s happening in Egypt can’t happen in North Korea, at least not in the foreseeable future. The two systems are not remotely comparable. Few of Mubarak’s soldiers would kill civilians if ordered to do so. The Egyptian people know this, which means he’s doomed. Mubarak is a dictator, but he’s merely an authoritarian dictator, not a totalitarian on the model of the leaders of Burma, North Korea,...

Categories Regime Change
December 7, 2010

Victor Cha: “There is a real possibility of war on the Korean Peninsula.”

So begins a very sober assessment from a man not known, to put it mildly, for his erratic mood swings or his turbulent creative energy. If anything, I think Cha understates the gravity of the situation. North Korea — by the way, it was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 — has already sunk a South Korean warship, shelled a South Korean island, killed and maimed Marines and civilians, and turned the survivors...

Categories ROK Military/Yeonpyeong Attack
August 2, 2010

Plan B Watch: Robert Einhorn Visits Seoul; State Directs Strong Criticism at China

Robert Einhorn, President Obama’s special adviser for non-proliferation and arms control, is visiting Seoul and Tokyo this week. He is accompanied by Daniel Glaser, who works with Treasury’s Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and who was a key architect of the Banco Delta Asia sanctions in 2005 and 2006. At the risk of making a comparison that Glaser might not necessarily welcome, his presence in Seoul has far more deterrent value than parking an aircraft carrier off the coast...

Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions
July 29, 2010

My God, how I would love to attend one of these: Around 150 people gathered at a park at Imjingak near the border to release ten giant balloons carrying some 100,000 leaflets, 300 DVDs and 1,000 one-US-dollar notes. An activist shouting ‘Down with Kim Jong Il’ ripped up a North Korean flag with a knife. Another wore a traditional Korean funeral hat with the message ‘Congratulations, Kim Jong Il’s death’. The leaflets and DVDs criticised Pyongyang’s human rights record and...

Categories Anju Links
July 6, 2010

A Fond “Good Riddance” to Chris Hill: “The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and former envoy to South Korea Christopher Hill will retire from public service and become dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver from September.” If Hill had departed so soon after being nominated by a President the news media liked less, I have a feeling we’d hear a lot more media speculation — or even actual reporting — about why he’s...

Categories Anju Links
May 24, 2010

Overthrowing Kim: A Capitalist Manifesto

[Originally published at The New Ledger, May 2010; edited for brevity in October 2017] Within the next 48 hours, South Korea is expected to announce that North Korea torpedoed and sank the warship Cheonan and killed 46 of her crew. Among the evidence the multinational investigation will cite will be the North Korean serial number on the torpedo’s propeller, recovered from the ocean floor. The sinking of the Cheonan may be the most serious North Korean provocation since 1968 —...

Categories Capitalism/Regime Change
May 13, 2010

Cheonan conclusions will mean tougher N. Korea policies … for a while, anyway

It certainly looks like every government official outside Beijing who has seen the evidence now believes that North Korea sank the Cheonan and killed 46 members of its crew. Among those who have drawn their conclusions are the South Korean government, the Obama Administration, and the Republicans in Congress. The multinational investigation is now sufficiently advanced that the official Yonhap News Agency says that the findings could be released as early as next week. One interesting leak references a stray...

Categories Cheonan Incident/North-South/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
May 12, 2010

North Korea Arms Terrorists, State Department Dozes

The Foreign Minister of Israel has become the first government official to openly accuse North Korea of arming terrorists since the U.S. government removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2008: The Israeli foreign minister said on Wednesday that North Korean weapons seized in Thailand last year were headed for Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. [….] “With huge numbers of different weapons … (it had the) intention to smuggling these weapons to Hamas and to...

Categories Axis of Evil/Proliferation/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
February 14, 2010

China’s Loathesome Treatment of North Korean Children

I make no secret of my contempt for the Chinese dictatorship, because the Chinese dictatorship holds humanity in contempt. It cuts down the hopes of its people with machine guns and crushes them under tanks. It considers itself entitled to intrude into and oppress their aspirations anywhere on earth. It murders innocent refugees, then it forces their innocent and vulnerable children to live in terror: According to the foster father, who preferred to remain anonymous, “It is illegal [so] we...

Categories China & Korea
February 8, 2010

Will North Korea’s Failure to Control Markets Mean the End of the Regime?

Reuters has a long round-up on the failure of the Great Confiscation, with this being the bottom line: “The collapse of the market system brought about by the currency revaluation produced rare civil uprisings. But the violence appears to have been sporadic and should fade as long as the North allows market activity to return.” Marcus Noland, catching up on the latest reports for the BBC, wonders if the failure of the Great Confiscation has damaged Kim Jong-Eun’s succession prospects....

Categories NK Economics/Regime Change
January 10, 2010

10 January 2010: Value of North Korean Won Continues to Plummet

MORE REPORTS OF DRASTIC FOOD PRICE INFLATION in the North: Prices probably also vary dramatically between regions. The series of diktats I’ve called The Great Confiscation has the potential to become the grimmest and most unnecessary humanitarian tragedy since the Arduous March, but unlike the 1990’s, North Koreans know more about life on Earth, and there are no more obedient subjects left outside Pyongyang who’d just die passively. The question isn’t whether North Koreans will resist; it’s is whether the...

Categories Anju Links
August 28, 2009

UAE Intercepts N. Korean Arms Ship

[The ANL Australia, photo from here] The ship was on its way to Iran, carrying weapons whose trade is embargoed by UNSCR 1874: Diplomats at the UN identified the vessel as the Bahamian-flagged ANL-Australia. The vessel was seized some weeks ago. The UN sanctions committee has written to the Iranian and North Korean governments pointing out that the shipment puts them in violation of UN resolution 1974. [Financial Times, Simeon Kerr and Harvey Morris] Because they probably had no idea....

Categories "United" Nations/Axis of Evil/Iran/Proliferation/Sanctions
August 11, 2009

Treasury Knocks Over Another North Korean Bank

The Korea Kwangson Banking Corporation (KKBC) was been sanctioned under Executive 13382 today, for facilitating WMD proliferation: “North Korea’s use of a little-known bank, KKBC, to mask the international financial business of sanctioned proliferators demonstrates the lengths to which the regime will go to continue its proliferation activities and the high risk that any business with North Korea may well be illicit,” said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey. Since 2008, Tanchon has been utilizing KKBC to...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
August 10, 2009

Kremlinology Watch, Washington Edition: Did the Clintons Just Screw Up Our North Korea Policy Again?

How far has Kim Jong Il’s skillful use of two American hostages set back our efforts to disarm him? Assuming, as we safely can, that President Obama made some concessions for their release, all now depends on whether the President is willing to let himself be upstaged by the Clintons, be cornered into making concessions under the duress of an implicit threat to the safety of two American hostages, and give needlessly fastidious honor to a deal between two men...

Categories Appeasement/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
August 9, 2009

Hey, Over There! Isn’t that a North Korean WMD Smugging Ship?

Some ferry passengers off the Andaman Islands probably never figured they’d be signing up to join the Proliferation Security Initiative when they bought their passage: The sources said the observant passengers were on their way from Port Blair to Hut Bay on a ferry called “˜”˜M V Hut Bay”. They first noticed the ship about 7 km from Hut Bay, the entry point for the Little Andaman islands, in a highly isolated stretch of the sea. One of the passengers...

Categories Proliferation/Sanctions
July 31, 2009

Ban Ki-moon to Save the Day?

Last night the Facebook page for Laura Ling and Euna Lee posted an an Agence France-Presse article stating that U.N. head Ban Ki-moon has “launched an initiative to secure the release of two US journalists detained in North Korea but would not disclose details.” Call me cynical, but if he can actually free these two reporters, it will somewhat restore my lost faith in the ability of Ban – and the U.N. for that matter. Although I must admit, crazier...

Categories "United" Nations/Ling/Lee Incident