Search Results for “coal sanctions”

January 9, 2020

Moon Jae-in’s Wednesday Night Massacre threatens the rule of law in Korea

IF ONLY HE’D MASSACRED THEM ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, the metaphor would have been impeccable. But when South Korea’s President, Moon Jae-in, directs his Justice Minister, Choo Mi-ae, to reassign 32 prosecutors as they closed in on political corruption in his office–four months before elections will decide whether his party will have a majority to pass laws or a supermajority to amend the Constitution–it should have been the biggest news since the impeachment of his predecessor, Park Geun-hye. Last night,...

Censorship/Democracy/Korean Law/Korean Politics

November 4, 2019

Christine Ahn, Pak Chol, and the United Front Department

A week ago, I fisked a report by the NGO Korea Peace Now! about the impact of sanctions on the North Korean people, which at least some journalists covered without questioning its many factual or logical flaws. The report was calculated to absolve Pyongyang of the blame for seizing land and destroying crops the poor grow on it, for its massive diversion of resources from food to weapons, for exporting scarce food for cash, for the gross inequality Kim Jong-un...

Useful Idiocy

October 30, 2019

Report: Kim Jong-un starves his people, America blamed, women hardest hit

It has now been five years since a U.N. Commission of Inquiry found exhaustive evidence of Pyongyang’s culpability for “crimes against humanity, arising from ‘policies established at the highest level of State,’” including “the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.” It has been less than a year since Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of witnesses to find that North Korea’s government has built a pervasive culture of rape, where officials prey on women with impunity. But now, a group...

Famine & Food Aid/Propaganda/Useful Idiocy

May 10, 2019

I’ll give you a topic. The final voyage of the “Wise Honest” was neither. Discuss.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has seized and sued to forfeit a 17,000-ton North Korean bulk carrier that was hauling neither rice, nor corn, nor milk, but coal to enrich Kim Jong-un, and machinery to keep his mines and his military-industrial complex from shutting down.1 And it was doing it with money laundered through correspondent banks in our country, in New York City. This is the great, uncharged crime of the M/V Wise Honest,...

Money Laundering/Shipping sanctions/U.S. Law

February 28, 2019

How to negotiate a lasting peace in Korea, feed the hungry, and heal the sick

Let’s say you still believe in a negotiated disarmament of North Korea, something to which I assign a ten percent probability at most. Or, let’s say you don’t. Suspend your disbelief and assume that aggressive sanctions enforcement—the enforcement Kim Jong-un tricked Trump into calling off nearly a year ago—becomes a sufficient threat to the solvency and cohesion of Kim Jong-un’s regime that he comes back to the table next year, offers to submit a complete declaration of his WMD programs...

Class Warfare/Democracy/Diplomacy/Sanctions/U.S. Law

November 27, 2018

DOJ sues to forfeit $3M linked to N. Korean money laundering, proliferation financing & slave labor

This afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia filed suit to forfeit just over $3 million that three defendants allegedly laundered for an interconnected network of North Korean banks and front companies, in violation of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act: $599,930.00 in funds “associated with” Cooperating Company 1 of Singapore, which agreed not to contest the forfeiture (and hopefully more), and which used “a bank account in...

Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law

November 19, 2018

How engaging the wrong North Koreans set back openness, reform & peace

South Korea’s social-nationalist government, joined by too many Western academics of the sort who bask in its generosity and fear the withdrawal of it, has re-embraced the “Sunshine” hypothesis. This hypothesis equates nearly all economic “engagement” with North Korea’s military-industrial complex — also known as “the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” — with economic openness, and economic openness with political openness, disarmament, prosperity, and peace. The Western exemplar of no-questions-asked engagement is the NGO and media darling known as Choson...

North-South/Sunshine

November 13, 2018

North Korea’s mining industry is collapsing, and steel may be next

OVER THE LAST YEAR, THE BRAVE COVERT CORRESPONDENTS of the Daily NK and Rimjin-gang have reported from inside North Korea on the effects of sanctions on North Korean industry. It’s now clear that those effects have been severe. That’s good news, because North Korea’s mining and steel industries are closely linked to its military and its WMD programs. It’s also terrible news, because a lot of people who depended on those industries are now living through some very hard times....

NK Economics/Sanctions

September 24, 2018

From Sunshine to solar eclipse: Can Moon Jae-in censor his way to reunification?

FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS, THE STATED PREMISE OF THE SUNSHINE THEORY of “engagement” with the regime in Pyongyang has been that economic incentives and integration would gradually draw it into the community of civilized nations and spur political reform, disarmament, peace, and eventual reunification. The Sunshine Policy and its progeny promised that the gentle suasion of liberalization would win over even those responsible for “crimes against humanity, arising from ‘policies established at the highest level of State,’” including as...

Censorship

August 24, 2018

Why the domestic troubles of Trump & Moon are grave news for Koreans

POLITICIANS DO THEIR WORST DIPLOMACY WHEN THEY’RE WEAK AT HOME. SCANDAL TEMPTS THEM TO SEEK GLORY ABROAD. The hyenas of the world’s ecosystem see them limp and decide to prey on them, or on the calves they can’t protect. Of Mr. Trump’s troubles, you already know plenty that I need not repeat here. Whatever your view of those troubles, they aren’t going away, and if you correctly acknowledge their political element, they’re apt to be more serious next January. The...

America/An Alliance?/Korean War II/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics

August 15, 2018

South Korea has been caught violating 3 UN resolutions this week (so far)

South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade now admits that it first suspected that subsidiaries of its national power company were importing North Korean coal as early as October 2017. For those of you who don’t do math, that was ten months ago. The result of that extensive ten-month investigation? Despite all the red flags that should have put everyone involved in this transaction on notice that they were buying North Korean coal right up until last week, the South...

An Alliance?/Sanctions

May 2, 2018

North Korean Freedom Week is the next test for free speech in “free” Korea

A FEW OF US WILL ALWAYS STUBBORNLY INSIST THAT WE DISREGARD THE LIVES AND DIGNITY of North Korea’s oppressed people at our own peril. We argue that there can be no verified disarmament of a North Korea that remains a closed society, no security in its promises as long as it mendaciously denies the existence of its prison camps, no lasting peace as long as it holds human life in contempt, no reunification between a liberal democracy and a tyranny...

An Alliance?/Censorship/Korean War II/Sunshine

March 5, 2018

Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s board, search & sink their smuggling ships & show it on TV.

LAST WEEK, REUTERS REPORTED THAT THE WHITE HOUSE is considering a proposal to board and search North Korean merchant ships for contraband on the high seas. This is one of the few forceful options against Pyongyang I could get behind. Unlike “bloody nose” proposals (which sound like they’re an urban myth anyway) and preemptive strike proposals (which exist, at least on the op-ed pages) the boarding of North Korean smuggling ships at sea is unlikely to trigger a sudden use-it-or-lose-it...

Arms Trafficking/Shipping sanctions

February 28, 2018

You want maximum pressure? Oh, I’ll show you maximum pressure.

SINCE LAST WEEK, WHEN THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT announced 56 designations of ships, shipping companies, and trading companies, reporters have been emailing me to ask whether this is finally the “maximum pressure” the Trump administration has been talking about. The short answer is “no.” In terms of length alone, yes, this was the largest set of North Korea designations ever, although we should discount for the fact that most of the 28 ships were effectively designated twice (once per ship, and...

Money Laundering/Sanctions/Shipping sanctions

February 2, 2018

Dandong Delenda Est: A little-noticed law may soon raise the pressure on China over N. Korea’s smuggling

IF OUR CHOICES FOR ADDRESSING THE KOREAN MISSILE CRISIS come down to (a) a trade war with China, or (b) a nuclear war with North Korea, which option is worse? If you still believe that begging Kim Jong-un for another piece of paper he doesn’t want and wouldn’t keep is the answer, no amount of evidence will convince you. To accept Pyongyang’s nuclear status in the mistaken belief that conventional means can deter Kim Jong-un’s campaign to gradually blackmail, censor,...

Sanctions/Shipping sanctions

December 5, 2017

So, who else has cut trade with North Korea lately, and who still hasn’t?

With the pace of news of North Korea sanctions news lately, my bookmarks folder is starting to look like what the paramedics found at the Cat Lady’s house after the neighbors noticed a foul odor. Today, I want to catch up with our efforts to deny Pyongyang a haven for its money laundering network, with a focus on Southeast Asia. To review the administration’s progress since January, you may want to start here and here. Ambassador Nikki Haley also gave...

Arms Trafficking/Diplomacy/Sanctions/Southeast Asia

December 4, 2017

Korean War II: What the Joint Statements tell us about Pyongyang’s strategy

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” – George Orwell On June 15, 2000, Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il signed a joint statement agreeing to seek “independent” reunification and an inter-Korean coalition government. It was not the first joint statement between North and South. This relatively modest one from 1972 calls for “both parties [to] promote national unity as a united people over any differences of our ideological and political systems.” In retrospect, this...

Diplomacy/Korean War II

December 1, 2017

Cash & credit squeeze hits China-North Korea trade

One of the more maddening tropes I see in reporters’ coverage is a question that’s usually presented as dispositive to the success of sanctions: “Will China cooperate?” For reasons I’ve already explained and don’t have time to repeat today, I always answer that question by asking what the questioner means by “China.” The point being: yes, it would be nice if Xi Jinping finally came around to the rising risk that Kim Jong-un will bring war, instability, disrepute, and bankruptcy...

China & Korea/Money Laundering/Sanctions

Search Results for: coal sanctions