Archive for March, 2007
Posted by Joshua on March 31, 2007 at 6:52 pm · Filed under Japan & Korea, Abductions
[Update: OK, I can top this. North Korea calls South Korea “fascist” for blocking pro-North Web sites.]
This deserves at least a footnote in the Funk & Wagnalls History of Chutzpah.
Chosen Soren, a/k/a Chongryon, is a North Korean-controlled organization of ethnic Koreans in Japan. A decade ago, Chosen Soren was a powerful and politically connected organization that poured millions into Kim Jong Il’s accounts through remittances, pachinko parlors, and a network of costly private schools teaching juche to the kiddies. It had even functioned as an unofficial North Korean embassy in Japan. But since the revelation that North Korea kidnapped dozens of Japanese from streets and shores in their home towns, a crime linked to Chosen Soren, the organization lost its tax-exempt status, came under close official scrutiny, became the object of popular revulsion, and has generally fallen on harder times. And thus does law become the last resort of the lawless.
A pro-Pyongyang organization in Japan filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government and Tokyo provincial government seeking compensation for damages it claims were caused by a police raid on its office, the local media reported.
According to the reports, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) lodged a complaint Friday with Tokyo’s district court, saying the investigation by the Japanese police last November was illegal.
The investigation was a political act intended to oppress the organization and its affiliates, it said. [Yonhap]
The specific basis for the investigation, at least according to Yonhap, was an allegation that an elderly member tried to ship IV-drip bags to Pyongyang, which I agree would be a rather poor exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Kyodo news is reporting other raids on illegal commerce with North Korea – two businesses that imported seafood and steel pipe joints. Meanwhile, there’s no word on Megumi Yokota’s writ of habeas corpus to Kim Jong Il.
A few anju links:
* Truth or Dare? CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden calls North Korea’s nuclear test a failure, thereby denying them recognition as a nuclear power. I say let them test a few more to prove him wrong. The higher the concentration of tritium over Shenyang, the more doubts we should express.
* I Don’t Believe that this Administration will overtly accept North Korea as a nuclear power, and I think they will also have to signal strong opposition to North Korean signals that they expect as much. At the same time, I think it’s apparent that North Korea intends to stall the part of the deal that requires them to perform, and we’re already entering the diplomatic time warp known as an election year. North Korea will try to stall, betting that the Americans won’t walk away in an election year, or that a friendlier administration will assume power in 2009 and go right back to demanding little and giving much. David Asher, an expert on North Korea’s criminal activities, speaks bluntly:
They [North Korea] want it all,” Asher said. “And, so far, they’re getting it.” [….]
“What the North Koreans want is not just $25 million in dirty money from Banco Delta back. They want us to accept them as they are, a criminal state, in effect, with nuclear weapons,” Asher said. [NPR]
If Yongbyon hasn’t been shut down and sealed two weeks from today, how will we react?
* Don’t Blame Me, I Didn’t Vote for Them. Anyone who still reads this site and believes that the U.N. Human Rights Council is something better than a complete fraud really should watch this.
* Korean Apartheid Watch. Now, it’s the Chinese. This is a very good example of something petty that has broader consequences, although South Koreans refuse to grasp it.
* I’ve become a believer in using economics as a weapon of unconventional warfare, so I was surprised to see California setting a promising trend by proposing to divest their pension fund from Iran.
* This Sounds Vaguely Scandalous. Sen. Diane Feinstein, who chaired a key military appropriations committee, has resigned after it was reported that the same subcommittee funneled billions to defense contractors her husband controlled. I recall that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid started talking about a “culture of corruption” when Randy “Duke” Cunningham got in trouble for something like this. I wonder which U.S. Attorney will take the case.
Posted by Joshua on March 31, 2007 at 6:37 pm · Filed under NK Economics, An Alliance?, Korean Politics, Anti-Americanism, U.S. & Korea, U.S. Politics
At this hour, it looks like free trade talks with South Korea are about to fail, despite their extension for another 48 hours. It may be a bit early for the Chosun Ilbo to have published this post-mortem, but any free-trade agreement we reach now will be unworthy of the name and hardly worth doing from an American perspective. Yes, I still believe an US-Korean FTA is a good idea, but it’s pretty hard to write a good one when the only Korean politicians who are talking about it, such as the gutter Ameriphobe Kim Geun-Tae, are holding their breath until their faces turn blue. After Roh Moo Hyun failed to sell the FTA for a year, it’s time for America to show its own ambivalence. In a letter to the U.S. Trade Representative, Nancy Pelosi called Korea’s trade policies an “iron curtain.” Safe to say, without fast-track authority, this thing will not fly.
Perhaps after the FTA fails, Korean politicians who haven’t spoken a supportive word on its behalf will use it as a club to hit Roh with and blame him for trashing US-Korea relations. Fair enough, at least substantively. At this point, the best we can expect is that this starts a debate on how South Korea shot itself in the foot, again.
Posted by Joshua on March 30, 2007 at 8:27 pm · Filed under North Korea, Activism
For those who noticed my absence, thanks. Work became too busy to allow any time for blogging, and what time wasn’t spent reading First Amendment cases was spent cleaning up kid-puke.
So, have you seen UsInKorea’s video? You really, really should. Especially if you’ve ever considered going to the Arirang Festival.
Update: You may recall that I’ve noted some of the same similarities of ceremony, as well as the similar ideology of racial purity shared by North Korea and Nazi Germany. James Lilley, a former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea and China who actually believes in the Sunshine Theory to a limited extent, also draws the comparison. Unfavorably.
James Lilley was ambassador to both China and South Korea. One of the few Americans to travel inside North Korea, he visited the country in 1995. According to Lilley, “Their system is so persuasive, so totalitarian. I mean, it almost makes Hitler look like a boy scout, what these guys do to their population.” Their leadership, he says, is delusional as they drag out talks on their nuclear arsenal. “They’re playing on it,” says Lilley. “They think eventually they’re going to take over the peninsula. You go up to North Korea, you’re in George Orwell country.” [CBS]
Although the Nazis certainly inflicted horrors on a far greater scale than those done by the North Koreans, the Nazis had nothing on the North Koreans at creating a society so regimented, or a system of control so omniscient and intrusive. I’ve been interested in World War II history since I was a kid, and at various times in my life, I’ve met people who lived under Nazi occupation, including one woman had been an ardent Hitler Youth member, one man who had been a member of the SS-affiliated Latvian Legion, and others who had lived under the occupation. The collective impression I got from them is that the Gestapo tended not to bother non-Jews who didn’t confront the Nazis on political issues, but that they were extraordinarily ruthless to those who got in their way. On page 73 of “Rogue Regime,” Jasper Becker writes,
Hwang [Jang Yop] repeatedly claims that Kim Jong Il has been a keen student of Hitler and his methods. ‘He worshipped Germany’s Hitler from an early date and wanted to become such a dictator as Hitler,’ wrote Hwang in one article published in the monthly magazine Chosun. The Suryong doctrine certainly seems to be a replica of the Nazi Party’s Fueherprinzip, which transformed Hitler into the divine executor of Germany’s national destiny and hence the source of all laws. The rules of the Worker’s Party are almost the same as those listed in the Organization Book of the National Socialist Party of Germany.
I treat Hwang Jang Yop’s statements with skepticism, but Becker ends this passage in a footnote, note 6 on Page 277, that quotes extensively from the Nazi Party’s Organization Book, and the similarity of the ideology is indeed striking. From there, however, the North Korean mutation shows much evidence of inbreeding. Hitler’s national socialism borrowed extensively from a former radical socialist named Benito Mussolini, and was propogated by an avowed socialist named Josef Goebbels. This leftist criticism attempts, with some success, to link Park Chung-Hee’s South Korean ideology to the confucio-fascism of Imperial Japan (Park was an officer in the Japanese Army, but he had also been accused of collaborating with Communists). This argument holds some merit in describing South Korea as it existed 30 years ago, but you could search-and-replace this article into a far better criticism of the North today.
Aside from some variations in the speed with which they expropriate wealth, national identity, industry, and religion, all of the ideologies that formed in post-World War I Europe shared the idea that Big Brother’s right and duty was to expropriate everything and everyone (though they disagreed on who should expropriate who). They all proselytized quasi-spiritual justifications for one-man totalitarian rule. In a sense, these competing forms of socialism were products of their environment — marketing in the age of newsreels, radio, and television; and organization by communes, soviets, and gaus based on industrial societies. In another sense, they weren’t new at all. The red-banner European tyrannies of the last century deified Big Brother with countless statues, portraits, and icons, although they were nominally secular doctrine and in some cases, tolerated religion. In this sense, North Korea is another outlier: its highly advanced deification, complete with its own nativity story, makes modern North Korea more like the ancient Chinese dynasties, “divine right” monarchies of medieval Europe, and Shinto Japan than Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. Indeed, one can wonder if that deification cost 40% of the national budget, even in medieval times.
The scholar B.R. Myers has written several thoughtful pieces on North Korean ideology. In a must-read article for the Atlantic Monthly, Myers destroys Bruce Cumings and Selig Harrison, and also lands a few shots on Bradley Martin, whom he accuses of fundamentally misunderstanding the subject. Myers does not explicitly compare North Korea’s ideology to that of the Nazis. He tends to see it as a uniquely vicious breed of dog, whereas I still insist on looking around the junkyard in wonder for the snarling cur’s parentage. Still, Myers makes North Korea’s ideology sound more like Hitler’s than like Stalinism or Confucianism, and he thinks the very characterization of North Korea as “Communist” underestimates the emphasis on, and the ferocity and popular appeal of, the racism and xenophobia in its ideology. Could a rotund little suckling like Kim Jong Il, who loves pizza and watches Daffy Duck cartoons, be as pathologically dangerous as Myers thinks he is? Those who comfort themselves with the thought that Western culture is an antidote to homicidal hatred of the West should study this picture.
At the risk of intellectualizing something silly, I think one of Borat’s moments of comedic genius was how it parodied its protogonist’s view of America, and thereby, much of the world’s [Spoiler warning!]. Borat falls obsessively in love with Pamela Anderson, crosses America to propose marriage, and then does so by trying to throw a burlap sack over her and carry her back to the hut in Kazakhstan he shares with a cow. The relationship between the hatred of America as a political entity, the obsession with America as an unattainable myth (thus all the more hated), and the hatred of one’s own government are related, but they are by no means as mutally incompatible as political leaders, both ours and theirs, sometimes want to believe they are. It’s one more reason to keep Americans out of post-collapse North Korea, though that collapse would come sooner if we show the North Korean people how much better life could be without Kim Jong Il around.
Posted by Joshua on March 28, 2007 at 6:53 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Kim Jong Il, WMD, Human Rights, Proliferation, Money Laundering
According to this Chosun Ilbo report, North Korea recently floated a novel interpretation of “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” under which it could, you know, keep its nuclear weapons. I wonder what they expected:
The assistant secretary of state made it clear that Washington’s goal is complete denuclearization saying, “The U.S. will not form any kind of ties with a nuclear-armed North Korea.” He stipulated that “the case of India (which signed a nuclear pact despite possessing nuclear programs) will not apply to North Korea.” [Dong-A Ilbo]
That’s an excerpt from a speech and Q&A by Chris Hill at Georgetown, which contains too many interesting remarks for me to discuss here fully. Hill also brought up human rights again:
“If the relationship between the U.S. and North Korea is to improve, Pyongyang will have to meet international standards. They need to improve their human rights conditions while having sincere talks over this matter. This is a requirement not only to have better relations with Washington, but also to be integrated into the international society. Isn’t it true that it is necessary to improve ties with the EU?”
I’m skeptical, mainly because Hill is so accomplished at deforming the meaning of his own words. On the subject of the six-party talks, and how North Korea’s behavior has bogged them down, Hill was blunt and cranky.
At the Chosun Ilbo story linked above, and at this Donga Ilbo story, South Korea’s abandonment issues about North Korea’s nuclear arsenal generate more discussion via former Korean Ambassador to the United States Han Seung-Joo. I wonder how long until Korea begins to whine about what a loyal ally it has been. Still, if you think through the end result here, you may not want to enjoy South Korea’s new sense of insecurity for long. The idea of South Korea building its own nukes scares me plenty.
Speaking of ties with the EU, the EU has just approved sanctions pursuant to UNSCR 1718.
The sanctions include a ban on the sale or export of all materials that could be used in North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, or in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.
The EU also froze the assets abroad of some North Korean officials and banned exports to the country of luxury goods like caviar, truffles, high-quality wines and perfumes, and pure bred horses. [Agence France-Presse]
A petty dispute over Gibraltar had held up the implementation of sanctions. If you wonder what non-dietary uses North Korea might have for pure-bred horses, I suspect they’d end up here. The “fl” placemarks show the triple fencing around the place, and the “G” placemarks are gates.
You can see two of the fencelines and the bunkers along them here,
The large oval object appears to be a horse track.
It’s not marked, “Kim Jong Il, the Lodestar of the Universe, lives here,” but the extraordinary security and luxury of the place suggest as much (did I mention the anti-aircraft missile sites and the airfield?). I hope to do a more complete GE tour of this place some time, along with some of the other high-end real estate on this highway, north and east of Pyongyang.
Posted by Joshua on March 27, 2007 at 6:56 am · Filed under NK Economics, WTF?, Six-Party Talks, Diplomacy, Counterfeiting, Money Laundering
McAskill, the man who sells Kim Jong Il’s gold and who recently bought the bank through which most of North Korea’s European investment is channeled, has heretofore been a strident and articulate advocate of releasing the $25 million frozen in BDA. Overnight, he has become the main obstacle:
In two letters sent to the Monetary Authority of Macao, [Daedong Credit Bank] has said that it will take legal action if any of its frozen funds are moved in accordance with the agreement reached between American and North Korean nuclear disarmament negotiators. The bank is based in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. [NY Times]
What’s so ironic about this is that the intended destination for the unblocked funds is the North Korean government, which is has promised us all that it will use the money for strictly humanitarian and educational purposes (updates). No one really believes that the North Koreans will keep that promise, but it’s a necessary fiction to preserve the pretense that we’re not flouting UNSCR 1718, which we’ll need later, when the North Koreans stomp home for good. So apparently, Treasury invests greater confidence in the North Korean regime to spend the money than it does in McAskill’s bank.
A representative of the Daedong Credit Bank, which has about $7 million frozen in Banco Delta Asia, has told the authorities in Macao, though, that it will not accept its funds being placed under the control of North Korea or moved to the Bank of China.
According to the journalist and author Bradley Martin, the North Korean regime itself is an indirect partner in DCB through the Korea Daesong Bank. This article in the Far Eastern Economic Review, citing a senior North Korean defector, reports that Korea Daesong had at one point been controlled by Bureau 39 of the Korean Workers’ Party, whose functions include the earning of foreign exchange through criminal activity (see also this U.S. Embassy Seoul document).
Colin McAskill, who has agreed to buy Daedong Credit Bank and is representing the bank in its negotiations with the Macao authorities, warned the Monetary Authority of Macao in a letter on Wednesday that he would hold the regulator “totally responsible” and would “take whatever steps necessary” if the bank’s funds were transferred without its consent.
This couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people: Kim Jong Il, his dirty Macanese bank, his criminal financiers at Bureau 39, and some unethical foreign investors who decided to get mixed up with them financially (though they vehemently insist that everything they do is legitimate). If you want to see their side of the story, here it is. Interestingly, DCB says in that statement that it has established new correspondent banking relationships in Mongolia. I had several visits from Ulaan Baatar today, which had been googling the name “Colin McAskill.” Maybe someone will respond to my questions about the gold mines?
When the final chapter is written on the BDA episode, the most salient fact will be its deterrent effect on any bank that might have considered opening an account for a North Korean entity. If Kim Jong Il ultimately walks away with DCB and McAskill’s money, it will be a powerful deterrent for anyone else considering an investment in the Workers’ Paradise. Would Kim Jong Il would really be that stupid? Every time I’ve asked the same question before, he has.
Some anju links:
* LiNK has put up its new Web site, and it looks like it was worth the wait.
* There’s Always Google Earth: A Japanese spy satellite, launched in 2003 to watch North Korea, has been disabled by an electrical glitch.
* May both sides fight to the last man: An L.A. Times report on rising red-on-red tensions and combat between Al-Qaeda and Iraq’s Sunni rebels. You have to think that enough of this will be good for the gene pool if they fight it out harmlessly in the open desert. ht: Jules Crittenden.
Posted by Joshua on March 27, 2007 at 6:50 am · Filed under WMD, Diplomacy, Money Laundering
Via Richardson:
The U.S. envoy to the North Korea nuclear talks said Monday that Pyongyang needs to meet international standards, especially in human rights, in order to have relations with Washington. “It’s a price of admission to the international community,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said. [Yonhap]
Does this encourage me? I’m not sure. It’s not a bad thing that Chris Hill is tipping his hat comb-over in this direction, although “international standards, especially in human rights” are a wee bit harder to define than “shut down and seal for the purpose of eventual abandonment” and “all of its nuclear programs.” If Hill can stand behind a consistent and straightforward definition of those latter terms, I’ll have more faith in his willingess to define “human rights” honestly, too.
Now, this discussion is about to enter the land of vanishing hypotheticals (because Kim Jong Il will never agree to any of this), but I recognize that this can’t mean making North Korea into a Jeffersonian democracy overnight. No society I’m aware of has done so successfully. It means a timeline for meaningful progress, starting with easing the worst of the abuses up front: opening the camps to the Red Cross, and allowing the World Food Program to set up and operate its own feeding stations throughout North Korea.
Here is the part that encouraged me more:
The U.S. envoy urged Pyongyang to embrace the Feb. 13 deal, with a warning that if North Korea rejects it, there is “another path.”
“I think we have enough on the table to make it clear to the North Koreans that with denuclearization, there will be a good day indeed in their history,” Hill said.
“If they turn down this process, we can try another path.”
The U.S. won’t be alone when it decides to try this other path, said Hill.
“We will be with a lot of other countries that have seen that we have done all we can do,” he said.
In other words, Hill says, we’re prepared to reapply pressure (I’m not a fan of Hill, but he’s no fool; he understands the connection between pressure and successful diplomacy, at least to a degree). And in fact, there is a lot more we can do to pressure Kim Jong Il. We could apply PATRIOT 311 or Executive Order 13,382 to North Korea’s sources of South Korean and Chinese support, or to, say, Bureau 39 of the Korean Workers’ Party, an entity swimming in the proceeds of crime. We could begin increasingly aggressive inspections of North Korean ships under UNSCR 1695 and 1718. We could probe for political vulnerabilities within the North Korean population by increasing broadcasts, accepting more refugees, and training them in the skills needed to reconstruct North Korea after Kim Jong Il’s departure from our world. We could craft new legal tools to allow North Korean forced laborers to sue investors in the North for compensation, or apply civil RICO statutes to the regime’s criminal activities, or promulgate an executive order similar to 13,382, but which would freeze assets of entities that use forced labor. We could attach significant financial consequences to China by linking its trade benefits to its support for Kim Jong Il and its repatriation of North Korean refugees to his gulag. Finally, we could reimpose the trade sanctions President Clinton lifted in 1999, to reward North Korea for the missile moratorium it violated last July. All the while, we should be saying, in very clear terms, that we’re prepared to provide generous but carefully monitored humanitarian assistance whenever the regime accepts it. And we should tell the North Korean people that, too.
And then again, this could all be noise to mollify the loud chorus of disapproval that this deal, by surrendering pressure we had built, insures its own failure at the bargaining table. If nothing else, Hill is an expert at sustaining multiple, mutually incompatible interpretations of an agreement. But as I explained here, capital is still a coward, and the pressure isn’t irrevocably lost. Even now, Treasury still can’t find a bank that will touch Kim Jong Il’s money with a ten-foot pole.
Posted by Joshua on March 26, 2007 at 6:40 am · Filed under Famine & Food Aid
As with every “revelation” that even partially originates from the North Korean government, treat this with some skepticism:
North Korea has admitted for the first time to food shortages of a milion tonnes, the World Food Programme said on Monday, adding that in the absence of better donor support, millions are vulnerable to hunger. [Reuters, Lindsay Beck]
Note that this estimated shortfall is 250,000 tonnes higher than the WFP had last estimated, and consistent with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation’s latest estimate.
In the past that food gap — which represents about 20 percent of North Korea’s needs — was met by a combination of bilateral aid, WFP support, loans and commercial interests, but those sources are all drying up, the WFP said.
“This is a very significant development that they themselves are confirming they have a gap of 1 million tonnes,” WFP Asia director Tony Banbury told Reuters.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua on March 25, 2007 at 10:26 pm · Filed under An Alliance?, UCMJ & SOFA, U.S. Military, U.S. & Korea, ROK Military, Human Trafficking
* No.Please.Stop. North Korea is threatening to pull out of the dreadful (for us) February 13th Agreed Framework 2.0 over the RSOI / Foal Eagle exercises.
“This may entail such serious consequences as escalating the tension between the DPRK (North Korea) and the US and scuttling the six-party talks for the settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, arranged with so much effort.” [Channel News Asia]
A KCNA statement wouldn’t be complete without a reference to its “self-defensive deterrence,” which is code for the nuclear weapons North Korea has supposedly agreed to give up.
U.S. and South Korean forces have been holding these exercises together annually for years. Back in 1994, the North Koreans pressured President Clinton into permanently cancelling another annual exercise, Team Spirit. They may be trying for a similar accomplishment this year.
* Sorry, Mr. Felt, We Can’t Follow It. North Korea’s perception that we’re delinquent on our blackmail payments may also have something to do with this. Starting in February, State pushed Treasury to bring its money laundering investigation of Banco Delta Asia to a quick conclusion. Enter the law of unintended consequences:
On Friday, Bush administration officials insisted that the Chinese authorities were holding up the transfer and that the Chinese were looking to U.S. officials for guidance on how to return the funds without violating regulations against money laundering that required the money to be frozen in 2005.
The impasse has puzzled and frustrated those involved in the North Korea negotiations, and some public comments in the past week have led to an appearance of finger-pointing between the U.S. State and Treasury Departments. [IHT, Steven R. Weisman]
Speaking as a complete amateur and outsider, it’s apparent that if you don’t know whose money it is, your investigation was concluded prematurely. In our rush to give North Korea something that wasn’t rightfully its own, all we’ve done is get a lot of people pissed off at each other, and at us.
* 7,000 Koreans Protest U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. If you ask me, they may as well be protesting against joining the Holy Roman Empire. For some thoughtful analysis, we turn to those who have owned this debate for the last year — the sociology majors. Says one: ”I think (the) the FTA will make it easier to fire workers.” And he bases that on absolutely nothing.
The two governments need to wrap up an agreement by March 31 because of the approaching end of U.S. President George W. Bush’s trade promotion authority, which allows him to send trade agreements to Congress for straight yes-or-no votes without amendments.
Even if a deal is struck this week, votes to ratify it are not expected for months. South Korean lawmakers would also need to approve any final deal.
While I favor a U.S.-Korea FTA in the longer term, I think we’ve done Roh Moo Hyun enough favors this year. Roh has portrayed the FTA as a humiliating burden to be borne rather than what it is – something that would be far better for Koreans than Americans (page 130). Roh has failed to sell the FTA, or his country’s relationship with the United States, to his people, but Roh does want the economic and political benefits of landing this deal. America should not reward Roh and his cohorts with a legacy and a political boost in an election year, which they’d only use to further damage bilateral relations in the end. If an FTA is a sound idea for both countries, and I think it is, there will be another opportunity to negotiate a “free trade” agreement worthy of the name.
* Because South Korea has so much to thank Kim Jong Il for, it’s bulldozing ahead with expanding the Kaesong slave-labor complex, despite the fact that it almost certainly provides income for North Korea’s WMD programs in direct violation of UNSCR 1695 and 1718. No one in South Korea asks questions like this, because Kaesong is part of the unquestioned nationalist orthodoxy, like Tokdo and Hwang Woo-Seok.
The construction project aims to build a 20-million-pyeong industrial base in three stages for South Korean companies by 2012. The complex, if completed, is expected to employ as many as half a million North Koreans to work for about 2,000-3,000 South Korean manufacturers. [Yonhap]
Consumer warning: Yonhap reports that contain the word ”Kaesong” are almost always misleading.
The state-owned Yonhap even takes a page from the Rodong Sinmun with a dig at “U.S. hardliners.” It also continues to report the long-discredited claim that North Korean workers there earn $60 a month. The truth may be closer to $8 a month, or less, after reconversion of the inflated “official” exchange rate and so-called “voluntary” payments to Kim Jong Il. Or, since the wages are paid to the North Korean government — not the workers — the workers may receive nothing at all except a food ration. That’s about as traditional a definition of slavery as you can get. What is undisputed is that the workers have no right to organize, strike, or demand better wages or working conditions, meaning that Kaesong violates ILO standards.
* So Where Are Those Unions? Funny you should ask. While their members’ jobs are being outsourced to slave camps, they’re forfeiting their tiny reserve of credibility to North Korea’s puppet trade union, for a big May Day bash.
The labor unions of the two Koreas have agreed to celebrate this May Day together in Ulsan, South Korea…. Key leaders of South Korea’s two unions including Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) chairman Lee Yong-deuk and Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) president Lee Seok-haeng on Saturday met with their North Korean counterparts, including General Federation of Trade Unions chairman Yeom Soon-gil in Kaesong, North Korea…. The three plan a rally marking the 20th anniversary of South Korea’s pro-democracy uprising in 1987. They plan a football game between South and North Korean workers and cultural performances.
Oddly enough, they’ve never commemorated a pro-democracy uprising in North Korea (the graves are all unmarked). Pity South Korean workers. Their only choices are a union that’s notoriously corrupt and another that’s little more than a North Korean puppet.
* To all of the soldiers at my former home, Camp Humphreys has a brand new Web site fully loaded with what everyone is watching this year: human-trafficking propaganda and lists of off-limits areas. Suddenly, the dreariness of life at the Hump comes back to me, although I’m sure the place bears little resemblance to its quonset-studded condition of 2001.
* Two South Korean surveillance systems, designed to give the South a capability of watching the North without relying on U.S. intelligence, have fallen substantially short of the design specifications once deployed.
Posted by Joshua on March 24, 2007 at 9:52 pm · Filed under Six-Party Talks, WMD, Famine & Food Aid, Diplomacy, Abductions, Money Laundering
* Doina Bumbea, artist, 1950-1997. From this photo, it’s almost as if she could foresee the tragedy of her own life.
The circumstantial proof seems strong, though not conclusive, that the North Koreans lured Doina from Bucharest to Japan and kidnapped her for the use of U.S. Army deserter James Dresnok, who by all accounts is an utterly comtemptible person. But Doina’s family, which didn’t know what happened to her for all these years, seems convinced. And there’s a pattern here.
Representatives from the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea testified in the U.S. Congress last year. They said North Korea abducted at least 523 people from 12 countries around the world since the Korea War broke out in 1950 — 485 South Koreans, 16 Japanese, four Lebanese, four Malaysians, three French, three Italians, two Chinese, two Dutch, and one each from Thailand, Romania, Singapore and Jordan.
[Update: For anyone who has seen the film showing Dresnok’s son, I’d be interested in knowing about how old he appeared to be. I wonder about the factual consistency between (a) Ms. Bumbea’s death in 1997, (b) the movie being brand-new, and (c) the son, as I recall reading, being about 10 years old. Yes, women can have children at that age, but I’m just interested in putting those details together accurately. And of course, if the boy isn’t Ms. Bumbea’s son, it’s still quite a coincidence that Charles Jenkins remembers that Dresnok had a Romanian wife named “Doina.”]
* Measles Outbreak Continues. There have been numerous reports of outbreaks of disease in North Korea recently, as I noted here:
Reports have noted outbreaks of scarlet fever, then typhoid, paratyphoid, and typhus. Now thousands are infected with measles, and four have died.
The Scotsman, quoting the Red Cross, reports that a total of 3,600 people have now been sickened with measles, but so far, the death toll is thankfully low, at just four. I don’t know the extent to which the Red Cross is relying on government figures.
I didn’t see many, perhaps any, such reports until late last year. Maybe the general health of the population really is declining, and then again, maybe the borders have become porous enough so that we’re finding out about things that have been happening all along.
* The Persistent Cowardice of Capital. It might even save us from the cowardice of our diplomats:
A government official said yesterday that the Bank of China, which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has foreign shareholders and is not willing to risk alienating itself from the international financial community by associating itself with money branded illicit by Washington. [Joongang Ilbo]
Like I said, it’s not about the $25 million, it’s about the money the $25 million dams up behind it. If we could give them the $25 million without compromising our positions on (1) the principle that a deal is a deal, (2) counterfeiting and money laundering in general, and (3) enforcing UNSCR 1718 and 1695, I’d call $25 a small price to pay for enabling North Korea’s own self-demonization. The fact that even the Bank of China doesn’t want to touch North Korean money, even under these extraordinarily political circumstances, is a very good sign.
“Any bank will think that there could be problems with its credit rating when dealing with money stamped illicit by Washington,” the official said. “Finding a bank to receive the money will be a difficult task.”
Cowardly capital will has an absolute phobia of Kim Jong Il, and not even Condi Rice can change that now.
* Another AF 2.0 skeptic, career Foreign Service Officer David Straub, speaks up to depress our expectations. I don’t really know much about Straub, but nothing in his bio or anything else I found suggests that he has a particularly strong ideological affiliation.
“North Korea’s attitude in the most recent talks was just another indication that it is not prepared to fully give up its nuclear programs,” said Straub.
Pyongyang’s attitude also makes unlikely a full diplomatic normalization with Washington, he said. [….]
“Direct, higher-level official talks are certainly possible and probably will occur,” Straub said.
“But a summit is extremely unlikely, and full normalization of relations appears very unlikely, given North Korea’s intentions and its attitude toward the six-party talks.” [Yonhap]
What will Kim Jong Il have to do for North Korea to become the villain of this circus in the eyes of most journalists, diplomats, and left-of-center politicians? (OK, you’re already thinking, he could register as a Republican.) Assuming their patience is exhaustible, will they support a stronger policy now that so many variations on the same old, weak one have failed? It’s one thing to bail on AF 2.0 as soon as its failure becomes manifest; they’re not invested in Bush’s success, after all. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be any less opposed to a policy of increasing pressure, much less strangulation.
Example: Nick Kristof, a strong defender of AF 1.0, concedes that North Korea had a uranium program in violation of AF 1.0 … and that we should have just ignored it. I don’t even know how to argue with ideas like that.
Posted by Joshua on March 23, 2007 at 10:07 am · Filed under Appeasement, WMD, Famine & Food Aid, Diplomacy, "United" Nations
Update: Paul Eckert of Reuters did a very fine interview with Marcus Noland.
“It could well be that a nuclear deal that resulted in greater amounts of aid would actually allow the North Korean government to intensify activities that are essentially reestablishing economic and political control over the population,” he said.
….
“When things look better … the North Korean government tries to pull back on this process of marketization and reform,” Noland said.
“One of the saddest things is that as food aid began arriving in North Korea, the regime systematically cut the amount of food it bought on commercial terms,” he said.
This suggests that without meaningful enforcement of the arms and “luxury goods” embargoes in UNSCR 1718, food aid will become just another source of liquidity for a regime that has become very accomplished at the careful calibration and exploitation of hunger.
And if you haven’t already done so, have a look at Anna Fifield’s Financial Times article, via Richardson. There are two quotes in that piece that I’d like to add:
During one visit to Pyongyang, I was having dinner with some North Korean officials when one noticed I was not eating the beef laid out in front of us at the garishly decorated foreign currency restaurant. Learning that I was a vegetarian, he responded with a laugh: “You’d fit right in here - thre’s never any meat around.”
I wonder if Ms. Fifield realizes what will happen to that official now. Not that I’m especially sympathetic in this case …. Noland is under no illusions about the importance of accountability and monitoring when we do give food aid.
“An entire cohort of children was consigned to a myriad of physical and mental impairments associated with chronic childhood malnutrition,” the authors write. “The state’s culpability in this vast misery elevates the North Korean famine to a crime against humanity.”
The authors do not think this was deliberate, although I haven’t gotten to the part of the book where they explain this. They don’t think the North Korean regime can be starved out of existence by denying it food aid, either, and I agree: historically, people who are struggling just to live never rebel. I think starving the regime itself of funds is another matter, but we now seem determined to surrender that leverage (< must-read). Our policy should be to support and ally ourselves with North Korea's have-nots and undermine its rulers. We have never made a serious effort to do that.
Original Post: After North Korea effectively expelled the World Food Program in December 2005, I was alarmist about the potential for a new famine. Because the WFP had said that it was feeding 6.5 million out of approximately 22 million North Koreans, I expected the sudden loss of that source to cause a severe shock. In my defense, so did plenty of others, with Gordon Flake being one exception. Then came the floods of last summer, which reportedly wiped out many crops, and a crackdown on the markets on which so many North Koreans had come to depend. The International Crisis Group called this a “perfect storm.”
There is no honor in being right about something like this, and at least so far, the new famine I had predicted hasn’t happened. What is happening looks more like a continuation of the constant, almost calibrated condition of marginal survival and perpetual proximity to disaster:
North Korea’s food reserves have almost dried up, leaving some people starving and aggravating malnutrition across the impoverished nation, a South Korean aid agency warned Thursday.
Good Friends, which focuses on assistance to the North, said up to 70 percent of food stored by city residents has been used up due to a poor harvest last year and insufficent foreign food aid.
“There are no concerns about a famine like that in the mid-1990s but the chronic food shortage has been aggravating malnutrition,” Noh Ok-Jae, secretary-general of the Seoul-based agency, told AFP.
The report adds that Kim Jong Il has supposedly released military food stocks to civilian use, a fact the reporters obviously have no way of confirming, but which fits with other things we know. The Daily NK recently presented, in meticulous detail, food price data from in several cities in the Northeast of North Korea indicating slight but significant decreases in the price of rice (still beyond the financial reach of the poor, who live on corn). The northeastern provinces of Hamgyeong Puk-Do, Hamgyeong Nam-Do, and Ryanggang are generally the country’s hungriest areas, food is generally the most scarce in late winter and spring, when stocks are depleted but new crops haven’t grown yet.
I speculated about the causes and significance of the price drop, wondering if the regime were shipping more food to that region to help pacify it. That would, of course, come at the expense of other areas. That might explain another data anomaly — reports that food is less available in Pyongyang. Another explanation could be the terrible condition of North Korea’s roads, rails, and ports. There are often regional differences in food supply because it’s not easy to ship food from one part of the country to another.
When the data don’t fit the model, it’s time to reconsider the model. If one-third of all North Koreans had in fact depended on the aid the World Food Program shipped each year to raise their food supply to the “marginal substence” level, and that supply food were suddenly cut off, and famine did not ensue, then either North Korea, needed less food than we had thought, had found a new source of food, or the WFP aid wasn’t feeding as many people as we had thought. The grimmest possibility is that the famine killed enough people to significantly depress North Korea’s needs, well below the WFP’s 2005 estimates. Yet we also know that North Korea is growing significantly less food than it did in 2005. Did North Korea increase its commerial food imports since late 2005? I don’t know, but I know who does. I’m currently reading Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard’s “Famine in North Korea,” (thanks to their publisher for the free copy), and hope to have an interview with the authors in April. Maybe we can get some insight from them.
On the other hand, we do know a few facts about the distribution of that aid. We know that even in 2005, WFP monitoring was woefully inadequate, and that even the best estimates of the amount of the aid diverted (Noland & Haggard’s) suggested that it could be less than 30%, or perhaps more than 50%. We also have video of the sort of direct, military-use diversion of South Korean aid, supposedly monitored in this case, that Noland and Haggard say is more the exception than the rule. We know that large areas of North Korea were completely closed off to foreign aid monitors and therefore not given any aid (note that Camp 22 is marked as an “access” area, but international monitors obviously haven’t been allowed anywhere near there).
Finally, 96% of North Koreans in China claim that they never received any international food aid (scroll down to December 2006). None. Even conceding that this is a skewed sample, to hear 2,000 respondents say that is simply staggering.
In other words, it’s entirely plausible that the WFP really wasn’t feeding all that many of North Korea’s most vulnerable people after all. Perhaps diversion was higher than expert estimates, meaning we should question the humanitarian imperative behind the entire WFP aid program to North Korea.
Some anju links:
* Richard Halloran says that the Yongbyon reactor may be a falling-down wreck anyway:
Informants who have been in North Korea or have access to intelligence reports say the walls of the plant are crumbling, machinery is rusting, and maintenance of the electric power plant, roads, and warehouses that sustain the plant has been neglected. North Korea’s impoverished economy just cannot support that operation.
Moreover, its technology is fifty years old and obsolete. It was acquired, possibly by Russians spies, by the Soviet Union from the British in the 1950’s, then passed to North Korea in the 1980’s. The North Koreans are anxious to replace it with something more modern and are expected to demand that later.
* More Gullible Travels: If South Korea can’t bring Kim Jong Il to Seoul, it may try to sent Kim Dae Jung back to Pyongyang.
Posted by Joshua on March 22, 2007 at 6:52 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, WMD, Diplomacy, Counterfeiting, Russia & Korea, "United" Nations, Money Laundering
[Sorry for the earlier comments glitch; please e-mail me if you have problems.]
OK, now the diplos have flown home.
Talks on halting North Korea’s nuclear program broke down abruptly on Thursday with the country’s chief nuclear envoy flying home after a dispute over money frozen in a Macau bank could not be resolved.
Kim Kye Gwan flew out of Beijing after refusing to take part in six-party talks to push forward a February agreement calling for North Korea to begin winding down its nuclear programs in return for energy aid and political considerations.
Kim waved to reporters when he arrived at the airport but did not say anything. [AP, Bo Mi-Lim]
How predictable. I feel compelled to repeat that this breakdown originates in the U.S. Treasury Department’s action against a bank where North Korea was laundering the proceeds of crime, including the counterfeiting of our currency. After months of insisting that “law enforcement” matters were not part of denuclearization talks, Hill met Kim in Berlin and reversed that position, apparently promising to “resolve” Treasury’s investigation into Banco Delta Asia within 30 days. We did “resolve” it, and of course, Treasury told us what everyone — especially Kim Jong Il — already knew, that BDA was a dirty bank. We never agreed to give the North Koreans back a penny, at least not on the face of Agreed Framework 2.0. If the North Koreans expected otherwise, I have to wonder why Hill didn’t dispossess them of that expectation. On the other hand, the North Koreans did agree to show up and talk this week, and that was in Agreed Framework 2.0. The North Koreans broke their word; we didn’t. So whose fault is that?
Russian envoy Alexander Losyukov, who also left for home Thursday, was quoted by ITAR-Tass news agency as saying “the whole problem came from the American side.”
He said the United States failed to assure the Chinese side that the Bank of China could receive the funds, which were linked to a counterfeiting and money laundering investigation, without fear of facing U.S. sanctions or a “negative attitude” from the banking community and the U.S. government.
To do what Losyukov, China, and North Korea wanted, here’s what Hill would have had to do: (1) grant North Korea and the Bank of China advance immunity from our banking, counterfeiting, or money laundering laws; (2) persuade thousands of bank officers and shareholders worldwide not to have a “negative attitude” about accounts whose owners still aren’t known in many cases; and (3) ingore two U.N. resolutions that we drafted and lobbied for just months ago. Incidentally, you have to wonder why it’s taking so long to sort our the ownership of the accounts and release the funds. Maybe … because someone rushed Treasury to conclude its investigation before we knew all the facts?
Let’s hear it for multilateral diplomacy. Lesson One today is that no matter how awful the behavior of the North Koreans, it’s always our fault for somehow provoking them. Losyukov’s government also voted for UNSCR 1718, but to put it mildly, there isn’t much of a rule-of-law culture in Russia, or in the U.N. itself. In a sense, Losyukov is right, which brings us to Lesson Two: you don’t have a deal unless you have “a meeting of the minds,” which is why people write and sign agreements. We did bring this on ourselves in one sense. In our desperation to reach this agreement, we allowed the other parties to harbor some unrealistic expectations that sheltered in an agreement so amorphous that it’s almost completely impossible to decipher its meaning.
“The difficulty of this issue is beyond our expectations and due to some technical and procedural issues we had not expected completely before,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a news conference.
Like I said. And as a result, the talks have broken down, nothing is achieved, and we’re the ones who get blamed. Yongbyon (GE pics here) churns out its smoke signals with nary a U.N. inspector in sight, the shutdown deadline is approaching rapidly, and of course, we — sorry, the South Koreans – are about to give the North Koreans 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil anyway, even though Chris Hill told Congress that the payoff was to be “coordinated” with North Korea’s compliance.
And if that’s not a bad enough omen, consider this:
North Korea said Thursday it will convene a parliamentary session in mid-April just days before the deadline for the shutdown of its nuclear facilities under a February denuclearization agreement.
“The fifth session of the 11th Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK will be convened in Pyongyang on April 11, according to a decision of its Presidium promulgated Wednesday,” the Korean Central News Agency said. DPRK stands for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The meeting comes just two days before the deadline set by the landmark Feb. 13 agreement for North Korea’s shutdown of its main nuclear reactor and allowing U.N. inspectors back into the country. [Yonhap]
Kim Jong Il is convening his rubber-stamp parliament, which has no power and no function but to serve as a prop audience for bombastic rhetoric, four days before Kim Il Sung’s birthday. Does that seem like an auspicious occasion for Kim Jong Il to announce that he’s giving up the “nuclear deterrent” he starved two million people to get?
If this agreement is not to degenerate into a protracted farce – and no deal at all would be a far better thing – this is our last chance to stop it. Here is what we should do now:
1. Stop the delivery of the fuel oil until North Korea shows up to “discuss” its full nuclear disclosure, as it agreed.
2. Clarify that North Korea must “shut down and seal” Yongbyon as agreed by April 13th.
3. Declare our Banco Delta obligations fully resolved and reaffirm that North Korea is bound by UNSCR 1718 in its disposition of the $25 million, and that we make no promises about what Treasury will do if the funds are unlawfully diverted to non-humanitarian purposes.
Posted by Joshua on March 21, 2007 at 6:56 am · Filed under Korean Politics, Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Abductions, Terrorism/Iraq, The Fifth Column
* It’s a pity both sides can’t lose: It’s Taliban v. Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, with high casualties on both sides (I’ll be praying for more). it’s nice to see that the bad guys are just as capable of self-destructive division as we are.
* Larry “Bud” Melman has passed away. He was 85.
* Fifth Column Update: South Korea’s far-left “civic groups” have seen a significant decline in membership. This fits with other recent evidence that South Koreans have become more “conservative,” although I suspect it’s more of a dimming of radical idealism than a resurgence of pro-Americanism or hostility toward juche.
* 50-50: The U.S. and ROK defense ministries have agreed to split the cost of the Camp Humphreys relocation.
* Kim Jong Il’s Taepodong didn’t boost itself very far off the pad, but it turns out to have been a nice boost for missile defense:
Boeing Co. on Monday said its complex system to defend against enemy missile attacks proved more reliable than expected and required less maintenance when it went on alert for a prolonged period last summer before a series of North Korean missile tests. [….]
The system was built to intercept and destroy enemy long-range ballistic missiles during the midcourse phase of their flight. It went on alert before the North Korean missile tests for “much longer than it had ever been before,” Fancher said, although he declined to give an exact timespan.
“The system was much more robust than we had hoped,” he said, referring to its software and memory banks. [Reuters]
I wish I had some Boeing stock about now, because they’re also getting some substantial performance bonuses. A successful system could also have significant diplomatic benefits for the United States. Japan is undoubtedly interested in getting itself under this, although it’s unclear if the system would be all that useful in protecting South Korea from short-range missiles. The most important participant for the preservation of regional peace, however, might be Taiwan.
* It turns out that North Korea’s method of matchmaking is a lot like Borat’s method of wooing Pamela Anderson.
* Gullible Travels: With North Korea just starting to get serious about renegeing on Agreed Framework 2.0, it’s the perfect occasion for the first direct private flight between North and South Korea. The flight will carry a delegation of officials from South Cheolla Province, so lets hope the North Koreans aren’t put off by the radicalism of their guests.
* While the surge has at least temporarily tamed the Shiite militias, the al-Qaeda strategy has been to strike “soft” — read, civilian — targets while exfiltrating into the Anbar countryside to conserve its strength. That has led to clashes with some Sunni tribes that don’t want them around. According to this account, members of one Sunni tribe recently killed 39 AQ, including two of its senior management. If one effect of the surge is to transform 2006’s Shia-Sunni killing into a Sunni-on-Sunni, Iraqi-on-AQ conflict, that will be a significant improvement.
Posted by Joshua on March 21, 2007 at 6:37 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, WMD, Washington Views
[Updated below] As I write, diplomats from five nations have decided to stick around at a resort somewhere near Beijing for a couple more days, probably for many exciting hours of CNN International, while North Korea decides whether it’s interested in talking about uranium. Contrary to reports I’d read yesterday, no one is flying home just yet, but no one expects anything to get done this week, either.
The holdup — which U.S. negotiator Chris Hill and the New York Times had said was resolved — was the release of $25 million in North Korean accounts that in large measure contain the proceeds of illegal activity. In a thinly veiled bow to UNSCR 1718, we insisted on putting this money into a special account for “humanitarian” and “educational” purposes, though everyone knows Kim Jong Il will divert the money, perhaps for a new batch of those nifty Omega watches he likes to give his prune-faced generals every Hannukah.
Incidentially, some reporters happened to ask John Bolton what he thinks of this:
‘’I think this is a mistake,'’ Bolton told reporters after a speech in New York. ‘’The idea that China’s now going to guarantee that North Korea spends this money on humanitarian programs gives me about as much confidence as what the North Koreans did with the U.N.’s money.'’ [Kyodo]
Ouch.
Sympathetic as I may be to that view, that ship sailed when we agreed to “resolve” the Banco Delta funds issue as a part of this deal. I’m not opposed in principle to linking the issues; after all, financial pressure is one of the strongest forms of pressure we have now to disarm North Korea. I am opposed to forfeiting that pressure without achieving our goals: the normalization of North Korea’s behavior, a timetable for achieving it, and a robust inspection program to verify it.
As you might have guessed, North Korea’s stall tactics have won no friends. Says Chris Hill:
“While these forms have been filed out and faxes sent, while that is going on, our nuclear talks have not made progress. That has been the real opportunity cost to this.”
Here’s South Korea’s Chun Yung-Woo:
“I don’t know why we should waste our time waiting for the obstacle to be cleared.”
More from Hill:
We all have jobs to do. Waiting around for some forms to be filled out is not usually in our job descriptions,” US envoy Christopher Hill told reporters after spending the first part of Wednesday in his hotel room.
“You cannot expect these large delegations to sit around while it is being sorted out.” [Reuters]
What is being sorted out, exactly? For one thing, whose accounts these really are. On closer inspection, some of those named as account holders turn out to be either dead or non-residents of Macau. That does tend to slow things down.
So, to sum up where we stand: Kim Jong Il gets all of his laundered money back and will probably be able to spend it however he wants. His mouthpiece still refuses to even discuss disarming or the release of hostages, and the diplomats of four of the world’s great powers (and South Korea) are in their hotel rooms playing Starcraft and drawing pay while they wait to see if he’ll change his mind.
See also: David Sanger of the New York Times can’t quite conceal his celebration of the departure of the State Department’s last conservative of importance, Robert Joseph. Joseph specifically resigned because Agreed Framework 2.0 will “prolong the survival of a North Korean government he has publicly called ‘criminal’ and ‘morally abhorrent’ while failing to require it to give up the weapons it has already produced.” I challenge anyone to make the case that (a) he’s wrong about any of that, or (b) that Joseph’s vision of diplomacy doesn’t have a far better record of accomplishment than Chris Hill’s:
Inside the White House, he drafted a new policy for aggressively pursuing trade in unconventional weapons, one that goes far beyond export controls. It became the “Proliferation Security Initiative,” a plan now supported by both Democrats and Republicans that creates a web of countries that use their national laws to cooperate in intercepting shipments.
When the new effort hit early pay dirt in the fall of 2003, intercepting a cargo ship bound for Libya with nuclear centrifuges built by Abdul Qadeer Khan’s nuclear smuggling network, it led to Mr. Joseph’s biggest success: working with American and British intelligence officials to persuade Libya to give up its nuclear program, which helped break up Mr. Khan’s network.
At moments like this, I can almost enjoy reading Chris Hill bitching about all the time he’s wasting in his hotel room while the North Koreans deliberately make a complete fool of him. It’s not as if Hill didn’t bring this on himself — and the rest of us — by disregarding Joseph’s advice. (hat tip)
Update 2: But we’re making the necessary preparations to ship the first installment of fuel oil anyway — just as I’d predicted. The fuel oil should be shipped as early as next week.
Posted by Joshua on March 21, 2007 at 6:37 am · Filed under Europe, Activism
If you plan on being in Geneva this weekend, click the thumbnail to see the full-size flyer. Thanks to a reader for sending. Adrian Hong of Liberty in North Korea and Elizabeth Batha of Christian Solidarity Worldwide will speak, in addition to David Hawk and Jared Genser of DLA Piper. Although Europe has not led on this issue, I tend to agree that strong European condemnation matters — it would inspire a more responsible European approach to business and investment, and it would be harder for South Koreans to dismiss than American or Japanese condemnation.
I hope that someone in attendance will write a summary I can publish here. The specific issue that interests me most is famine as a human rights issue.
Posted by Joshua on March 20, 2007 at 7:26 am · Filed under Appeasement, WMD, Blogs & Blogging, Diplomacy, Japan, Terrorism/Iraq, U.S. & Korea, "United" Nations
* Renaissance man Kevin Kim, a/k/a The Big Hominid, has launched his new book, “Water from a Skull.”
* Missed the train, but not the train wreck. ”Notice me!,” cries Ban Ki Moon, just as the February 13th deal starts to strike immovable objects, one of which has an atomic mass of 238.
* I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Japanese are an odd people.
* Don’t Forget to Ask for Receipts: “South Korea will spend about $250,000 to foot the bill for the training of North Korea’s visiting under-17 football squad, the Unification Ministry said Tuesday.” [Yonhap]
* Abandonment Issues: One thing about the February 13th agreement I’ve been enjoying is how its vagueness has created a new sense of insecurity among many South Koreans (see, e.g.). For years, the only Korean voices we heard were downplaying the proliferation threat to the United States or even legitimizing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Now, we hear South Koreans worry that the United States is plotting to leave North Korea in possession of nukes and focus exclusively on the prevention of proliferation:
The U.S., he said, “may have changed its goal to preventing the North from transferring nuclear materials abroad,” rather than making an issue of nuclear weapons North Korea already has. “This is what Pyongyang wants, but it’s unacceptable to Seoul,” Kang added. A fellow with a state-run think tank predicted that North Korea will pursue a “Pakistan model,” whereby it can have nuclear weapons while normalizing relations with the U.S. at the same time. [Chosun Ilbo]
When people turn to suspicions of plots and betrayal this quickly, my first non-expert diagnosis is “projection.” There’s nothing nefarious about a country worrying about its own security interests first. It’s the expectation that other countries will give those concerns the same superceding priority that’s the real oddity. Belatedly, Korea realizes that its government has forfeited the advocacy of its real security interests at the six-party talks. Instead, it invested its energies in throttling the Americans, appeasing the North, and cozying up to China, all while it seemingly expected the United States to sacrifice its own security for South Korea’s.
* But We Mustn’t Call Them “Terrorists:”
Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday. [….]
“Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back,” Barbero said. [Agence France-Presse]
I am the father of two children, and although there aren’t many people in this world I could personally dismember with a pair of needle-nosed pliers, I’d gladly do so to the baby-killing, Satan-worshipping, cowardly terrorist bags of excrement who did this to two kids and three bystanders.
As with most “insurgent” attacks in Iraq, the prime suspect here is al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda is a foreign-led force that deliberately slaughters hordes of civilians, meaning that these are not “insurgents;” they are “terrorists” who sometimes also kill the police and soldiers who are protecting Iraq’s elected government. These people started the war with us, not the other way around. Keep this in mind if you think we’re dealing with people who can be deterred, appeased, or contained. They won’t quit when they’ve destroyed Iraq, so you can’t run from them. Take out nuclear weapons and wood chippers and you’re pretty much down to shooting them or putting them in cages.
·
Next entries »
