Search Results for “commission of inquiry”

January 8, 2015

FBI Director: Yes, I’m sure North Korea did it. (Update: So is NSA’s Director)

The other day, a reporter asked me whether the “considerable doubt” about Pyongyang’s responsibility for the Sony hacks and terror threats undermined the legitimacy of the President’s response. I suppose the answer depends on your perspective. I’m not privy to the FBI’s evidence against North Korea, but my greater doubt is whether the President’s response, so far, is meaningful. A week ago, however, I decided that the FBI was losing the battle for public opinion. I recalled the CIA’s video...

Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)

December 29, 2014

Christine Hong has been curiously silent about North Korea’s racism

By now, most of you have probably read that North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency, referring to President Obama’s failure to censor “The Interview,” said that “Obama Reckless always in words and Deeds Goes like a Monkey in a Tropical Forest.” (KCNA.kp is unlinkable, but I’ve pasted the full article below the fold. The article in question is dated December 27, 2014.) This is the third racist attack on President Obama KCNA has printed, and the second it has printed...

Racism/Useful Idiocy

August 15, 2014

Pyongyang, as Leni Riefenstahl might have seen it*

Last week, a slick new video of Pyongyang by Rob Whitworth and JT Singh infected many writers and readers who don’t know much about North Korea with the Madonna Syndrome, defined as the illusion of entering virgin territory actually while plodding along a tired, well-worn, loveless, and morally ambiguous path in the footsteps of Dennis Rodman. The chirpy reaction of Washington Post blogger Abby Phillip was typical: A new video aims to show a different side of Pyongyang. It is...

Foreigners in N. Korea/Propaganda

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...

Sanctions

July 9, 2014

Open Sources, July 9, 2014

~ 1 ~ NORTH KOREA LAUNCHES MORE SCUDS into the Sea of Japan. I reckon that somewhere in Washington, someone who worked at the State Department in the 1990s is thinking that by launching missiles on July 2nd and July 9th (but not the 4th), North Korea was really being conciliatory. ~ 2 ~ PARK GEUN HYE CALLS for the “international community,” which is an oxymoron, to pay more attention to the rights of North Korean...

Anju Links

June 27, 2014

Open Sources, June 27, 2014

~ 1 ~ A REMARKABLE COINCIDENCE: Say, do you suppose there could possibly be any link between the decision of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda of the Gambia, to close her investigations of the Cheonan and Yeonpyong incidents four years ago, and the visit by North Korea’s Foreign Minister to Gambia earlier this month, at which time the two governments discussed “boosting the bilateral relations of friendship and cooperation and on matters of...

Anju Links

June 19, 2014

ROK Human Rights Ambassador uses “G” word at congressional hearing

You can watch yesterday’s hearing before the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations at this link. I don’t have time to hit all of the main points, but broadly – (1) I was astonished by the strength of Amb. Lee Jong-hoon’s remarks. Lee is South Korea’s Ambassador-at-Large for Human Rights. Along with his prepared statement, he presented this report by the British law firm Hogan Lovells, which draws from the U.N. COI report’s evidence...

Human Rights

March 19, 2014

The U.N. Panel of Experts is starting to follow Kim Jong Un’s money.

The main headlines that will come of the U.N. Panel of Experts’ new report on the enforcement of North Korea sanctions will mostly cover the Chong Chon Gang incident — the large amount of weapons seized, the brazenness of its deception, and the complexity of its corporate and financial links to entities operating from Russia, Singapore, and China. There has been relatively little attention paid to the newly revealed evidence that North Korea has helped Syria and Iran arm terrorists....

"United" Nations/Money Laundering/Sanctions

March 12, 2013

Last week’s Senate hearings on N. Korea marked by skepticism and ambivalence

Last Thursday, two days after the hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also held a hearing (on video here). This time, consensus was much less evident than ambivalence, and the views of the State Department were much more in evidence. Most of the oxygen was consumed by the first witness, Special Envoy Glyn Davies. Our Special Envoy’s testimony, by the way, was sponsored by Deer Park Bottled Water (written statement here). Chairman Bob Menendez...

U.S. Politics/Washington Views

February 26, 2013

Birth control, Pyongyang Style: Lady-Mullets!

Sure, you say, a list of 18 state-approved hairstyles certainly seems generous and libertine, but on closer examination, it’s actually more like 18 pictures of three hairstyles — three hideous, man-shriveling hairstyles — one of which (6, 10) is a mullet, and the rest of which appear to have been inspired by the 80s metal band Queensrÿche. According to late-breaking news from New York, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has demanded an inquiry, but China has blocked it. And at the...

Humor/Satire/WTF?

May 1, 2011

Announcing the Jimmy Carter-Kim Jong Il Habitat Foundation*

Hello, Jimmy Carter here. Some of you may remember me for my successful negotiations that preceded the freeing of American hostages from our embassy in Iran, brought peace to the Middle East and free elections to China, and secured the peaceful nuclear disarmament of North Korea. But of course, you say, I’m remembered for something else, too — for my tireless campaigning on behalf of the downtrodden and oppressed everywhere from 1973 to 1975, and since 1983. As my covenant...

Humor/Satire/Useful Idiocy

April 17, 2010

Avoiding the Next Korean War

Of course, it is premature for any government to assign blame for the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan before reviewing the detailed findings of a completed investigation. But for many South Koreans, the conclusion is already inescapable that North Korea did it. That’s my hunch, too. If I had to pick a favorite theory, it would involve North Korea’s semi-submersibles — they operate well in shallow waters, are hard to see on radar, can move quickly on the...

Cheonan Incident

March 10, 2010

Newly Released Soviet Report Details Atrocities in North Korea

Something tells me the Putinjugend Nashi web site isn’t going to feature, by popular demand, this newly released 1945 report by a Soviet Lieutenant Colonel who drove through Hwanghae and North and South Pyongyan provinces just after the war’s end. The officer’s detailed, 13-page report on the behavior of Russian soldiers in North Korea makes drunk G.I.’s in Itaewon look like Mormon missionaries by comparison: The handwritten document in Russian was discovered by the Woodrow Wilson International Center, a U.S....

History/Korean History/Russia/Russia & Korea

January 25, 2010

New Reports Highlight Failure of U.N., Ban Ki Moon to Address North Korean, Chinese Atrocities

A series of new reports on (the absence of) human rights in North Korea will not, by itself, change much, but they signify that for now, South Korea has stopped ignoring the issue. They may also complicate the State Department’s preferred course of doing the same. On the 20th, Human Rights Watch released its 2010 “World Report,” which brings together a review of all the most important issues in the field of international human rights during 2009. As usual, North...

"United" Nations/Human Rights/North-South

September 20, 2007

We must be smoking what they’re growing

North Korea was dropped from the U.S. list of countries producing illicit drugs, a sign of further relief of tensions between the two countries. “North Korea is not affecting the United States as much as the requirements on the list,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Christy McCampbell said on Sept. 17 in Washington, according to a transcript of her speech on the State Department Web site. [Bloomberg] And that decision is based on what? On absolutely nothing but the interests...

Appeasement/Axis of Evil/Drugs & N Korea/Six-Party Talks

June 25, 2007

House Moves to Cut Funds for UNDP, Human Rights Council

Each entity has recently brought particular discredit on itself, and in each case, there is a North Korea nexus. The UNDP recently failed a UN internal audit after U.S. diplomats outed the organization for allowing its Pyongyang operations to become, as a U.N. staffer put it, “an ATM machine” for the regime. It turns out that North Korea used some of the funds to buy overseas real estate and dual-use equipment, and that the U.N. even had a stock of...

"United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Korean Education

January 22, 2007

Ban Ki Moon Orders Review of U.N. Programs

Update 2: Reuters reports that Ban is now backtracking and saying that the new audits will focus only on programs where the financial practices are shady. Monday’s U.N. statement said Ban would assign auditors only to U.N. funds and programs “in countries where issues of hard currency transactions, independence of staff hiring and access to reviewing local projects are pertinent.” Audits would be “simultaneously carried out in select cases of countries” identified by the funds and programs, it said. Funding...

"United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Washington Views

November 1, 2005

Minister of Historical Amnesia

Updated again Nov. 3; thanks to reader usinkorea for the hat tip; thanks to the Marmot for linking and to his readers for stopping by. Once again, anti-Unification Minister Chung Dong Young has opened his mouth, and once again, nothing good came out of it. The latest nominal justification for giving Chung a supply of ink so far out of proportion to his intellect is the 55th anniversary of the Korea Times. Chung’s first sentence, however, makes it apparent that...

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Search Results for: commission of inquiry