Search Results for “luxury”

March 2, 2016

The U.N.’s new N. Korea sanctions will change the game … if they’re enforced.

The U.N. Security Council has just approved a new resolution, UNSCR 2270, sanctioning North Korea under Chapter VII and Article 41 of the U.N. Charter. Now that the Security Council has approved the resolution, I’m publishing this post, which I’ve been holding. It’s a strong text — very strong. In reviewing it, it’s useful to begin with my own wish list: Requiring member states to report North Korean property, accounts, and transactions to the U.N. Panel of Experts; Shipping sanctions...

"United" Nations/Sanctions

February 19, 2016

Aid agencies struggle to feed hungry kids as N. Korea cuts food imports to 10-year low

Wasn’t it only Groundhog Day when the U.N. released $8 million in emergency aid to “enable life-saving assistance for more than 2.2 million people” in North Korea who are the “most vulnerable and at risk of malnutrition?” Wasn’t it just last month when UNICEF warned that “25,000 children in North Korea require immediate treatment for malnutrition after a drought cut food production by a fifth and the government reduced rations?” North Korea’s overall food imports from neighboring China fell by a quarter...

Class Warfare/Famine & Food Aid

February 18, 2016

What the U.N.’s new North Korea sanctions resolution should (and should not) do.

Yonhap reports that the U.S. and China have made progress toward an agreement on a draft U.N. Security Council resolution. Although we’ve seen few hints about exactly what sanctions China is willing to sign up for — much less enforce — China is paying lip service to the notion that North Korea must pay a “necessary price” for its behavior. Has Xi Jinping relented in his unprecedented stubbornness, or was it always China’s plan to relent after stalling us, in the hope that...

China & Korea/Class Warfare/Diplomacy/Sanctions

February 15, 2016

The rebirth of an alliance: The U.S., South Korea & Japan are finally getting North Korea policy right

As you and I both know, I spend a lot of keystrokes here kvetching about the lax enforcement of sanctions against North Korea, but I’ve also written that diplomacy is essential to making sanctions work. Now, for the first time I can recall, the U.S., South Korea, and Japan are coordinating their policies as allies should. They’ve coordinated their defense responses to the North’s missile test, their calls for tougher U.N. sanctions, their strategies to strengthen sanctions enforcement, and their recruitment of new...

Diplomacy/Kaesong/Sanctions/Sunshine

February 10, 2016

On North Korea policy, the opinion pages suddenly read like posts from this blog

Since January’s nuclear test, I have noted with satisfaction the signs that Washington’s consensus on North Korea policy has taken a decisive turn toward views I’ve advocated at this site for years. This week, OFK readers have been sending me a great deal of better-placed commentary about North Korea, asking me, “Did you write this?” I swear I didn’t write, for example, this Washington Post editorial, published yesterday: What is needed is a return to the only non-military strategy that brought...

U.S. Law/Washington Views

February 9, 2016

NYT: How China helped N. Korea buy ski lift cable cars, and break U.N. sanctions

Yesterday, I posted about hunger in North Korea, the fact that Kim Jong-un is spending the nation’s lunch money on missiles and ski resorts, and the importance of helping the North Korean people make that connection though a comprehensive information operations strategy. The New York Times has bolstered the evidence of North Korean and Chinese culpability for this tragedy with a detailed report on North Korea’s purchase of the equipment for its ski resort through China. Previously, NK News revealed that the...

China & Korea/Class Warfare/Luxury Goods

February 8, 2016

Rice, peace & freedom: It’s time we told the N. Korean people the truth about why they’re hungry.

It is fitting that Groundhog Day was a busy day in North Korea. On the same day that Pyongyang announced that it would test a long-range missile, the U.N. released $8 million from its emergency aid fund “to assist [the] most vulnerable women and children” in North Korea. Bangkok, 2 February 2016) United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 29 January 2016 released US$ 8 million from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) for severely underfunded aid operations in the...

Class Warfare/Famine & Food Aid/Missiles

January 23, 2016

Arguments to Impotence, Part 2: A response to Joseph DeThomas

As Professor Lee and I have flogged, and flogged, and flogged, and flogged this horse that our sanctions against North Korea were far weaker than was widely assumed, we knew a few of you were rolling your eyes and wondering how long we would go on flogging it. The answer, of course, is, “As long as it takes.” If the published opinions of Michael Green, Victor Cha, Bruce Klingner, Scott Snyder, the editors of The Washington Post, Evans Revere, Robert Gallucci, and...

Anju Links

January 17, 2016

If S. Korea won’t close Kaesong, let it pay N. Korea in food.

The bad news from North Korea’s nuclear test is that its yield exceeded those of its 2006, 2009, and 2013 tests. The good news is that while the blast wasn’t thermonuclear, it was still hot enough to burn away plenty of policy fog. In Congress, sanctions legislation has sailed through the House, and seems to have good prospects in the Senate. Opinions are shifting among Korea scholars here, too. This morning, I had a chance to finish reading last week’s testimony before the...

Kaesong/Sunshine

January 6, 2016

North Korea says it just tested an H-bomb. Here’s how we should respond.

North Korea has just announced that it tested a hydrogen bomb. The announcement came shortly after the U.S. Geological Survey measured an artificial earthquake in the vicinity of North Korea’s Punggye-ri test site (Google Earth images of the site, and the gulag next to it, here). Events are moving faster than reporters can type right now, but the most comprehensive reports at this moment are at NK News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post....

Proliferation/WMD

December 7, 2015

Defectors: PUST is training North Korean hackers

Not for the first time, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a showpiece for academic engagement between North Korea and the Outer Earth, stands accused of teaching its elite students to work as hackers in Kim Jong-Un’s notorious cyberwarfare units. North Korea is reportedly recruiting graduates from Pyongyang University of Science and Technology for cyber warfare. North Korean defector Jang Se-yul, who worked in the North’s electronic warfare command, and another defector Yi Chol claimed on Wednesday in a news conference...

Cyberwar/Engagement

November 10, 2015

North Koreans need food & medicine, not Guus Hiddink’s “futsal” stadium

South Koreans remember Dutch soccer coach Guus Hiddink as the man who led their team to a successful performance in the 2002 World Cup. But when the history of a united Korea is written, North Koreans are likely to remember him less fondly. Hiddink has just returned from Pyongyang, where he signed a deal to help Kim Jong-Un build yet another expensive leisure facility that falls low on the average North Korean’s hierarchy of needs — a new “futsal” stadium:...

Class Warfare/Famine & Food Aid/Sports

November 3, 2015

China helps N. Korea nuke up & break sanctions, then says sanctions don’t work.

Two weeks ago, the Obama Administration’s point man on North Korea policy told Congress that sanctions are hurting Pyongyang. I must confess to some skepticism. [Ski lift made in China.] Instead, the evidence suggests that North Korea’s rich are getting richer, and its poor are staying poor. Materially speaking, the capital’s elites have never had it better, and openly buy imported consumer goods with dollars. Marcus Noland also sees evidence that, whatever the official statistics tell us, Pyongyang’s palace economy...

Anju Links

November 2, 2015

Tourists put $43M in Kim Jong-Un’s pockets last year

Despite a string of high-profile arrests of foreign tourists recently, Darwin’s light continues to draw slummers — and record hauls of their money — into Pyongyang: North Korea earned tens of millions of dollars from foreign tourists in 2014, around half of the hard currency it won from the lucrative inter-Korean industrial park, a researcher said Sunday. North Korea’s income from foreign tourists is estimated at US$30.6 million to $43.6 million last year, considering about 95,000 Chinese tourists and 5,000...

Engagement/Foreigners in N. Korea

November 1, 2015

Sam Pa, 88 Queensway, KKG & Bureau 39: A case study in how China helps N. Korea evade sanctions

Last week, I highlighted Andrea Berger’s excellent post at 38 North, calling for the U.N. Security Council to sanction North Korea’s third-party enablers. Berger named some of those enablers, but I’d like to name another one of the most important ones — the Hong Kong-based 88 Queensway Group, headed by one Sam Pa, also known by his birth name “Xu Jinghua” or any of “at least eight aliases,” each with its own matching passport. According to multiple news reports, Pa has extensive connections to Chinese politicians, and with its intelligence services....

Anju Links/China/Money Laundering/Sanctions

October 12, 2015

The Myth of North Korean Socialism: How Pyongyang’s Profiteers Fooled the World

Over this long weekend, I’ve been reading Brian R. Myers’s new book, “North Korea’s Juche Myth,” a copy of which Prof. Myers was kind enough to send. Myers argues that juche, that cryptic ideology reporters often mention but never explain, is a sham ideology that is both overblown and seldom understood, by foreigners as well as North Koreans. Very roughly translated, juche means that man must be the master of his own destiny (in contrast to North Korea’s reality, in...

Class Warfare/Engagement/Propaganda/Sunshine/Useful Idiocy

October 7, 2015

Sens. Gardner, Rubio & Risch to introduce new North Korea sanctions bill (updated)

The new bill was revealed in this column by Josh Rogin, and includes a link to the full text. The bill, which still has no number, will be the Senate’s second version of the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, following the introduction by Senators Menendez and Graham of S. 1747 in July. Both bills follow the lead of Ed Royce and Elliot Engel, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who introduced H.R. 757 in January. H.R. 757,...

Anju Links/Sanctions

October 1, 2015

@GloriaSteinem @ChristineAhn & @WomenCrossDMZ: When will you call on Kim Jong-Un end the rape & murder of women prisoners?

The European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea’s new report on forced labor is rightfully attracting media attention for calling out 18 countries — Algeria, Angola, China, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Malta, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Poland, Qatar, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates — for using North Korean slave labor. (In fairness, they might have included South Korea on the list, too.) What reporters should not overlook, however, is the section of the report on slave...

Human Trafficking/The Camps/Useful Idiocy

Search Results for: luxury