Archive for June, 2008
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 30, 2008 at 8:22 pm · Filed under Anju Links
I HOPE YOU ENJOYED the show. That’ll be $2.5 million.
SORRY ‘BOUT THAT! Yet again, the South Korean government endangers the families of its forgotten prisoners of war.
DON’T THINK OF THEM AS LOVED ONES. Think of them as hostages (more).
FOR THE FIRST TIME, senior South Korean officials have commemorated the anniversary of a 2002 sea battle with North Korean patrol boats that left six South Korean sailors dead.
THE HOTTEST ITEM FOR SMUGGLERS in Sinuiju, along the Chinese-North Korean border, is food. Juxtapose that with an al-Yahoo headline implying that America was starving the North Korean people until it got that half-assed nuclear “declaration” of theirs.
IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE ANYWHERE NEAR BRUSSELS, there will be a screening of the film “Crossing” tomorrow night at 7 p.m. The location is Alsembergsteenweg 1131, Beersel, 1650, Tel. 02-380-43-15. More information at www.maporama.com.
LIFE IN PYONGYANG, as told by the Times of London: There won’t be much that’s new there for regular readers.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 30, 2008 at 10:43 am · Filed under China, Human Rights, China & Korea, Refugees
You read it here first, but now it’s getting some big media coverage:
North Korean guards, newly armed with Russian Dragunov sniper rifles, have shot dead refugees attempting to ford the river that divides their hungry homeland from China, according to human rights campaigners.
On the Chinese shore alone, two bodies, marked by several bullet holes, were found by a local activist, said Tim Peters, an American pastor who runs a Christian group supporting the fugitives.
The shootings indicate a coordinated change in tactics by North Korea and China to deter refugees from crossing. They want to stamp out bribery among border guards who let the refugees go and to catch those who make it to safety.
The two countries, nominally socialist allies, have agreed to tighten security measures to ensure “stability” in the run-up to the Olympic Games and to stop any embarrassing demonstrations by the refugees. [Times Online, Michael Sheridan]
But we mustn’t politicize the Olympics … unless it’s to “create a harmonious and stable environment for the Olympic Games.” Understand? Good.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 30, 2008 at 10:14 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Media Criticism, Appeasement, WMD, Proliferation
Dick Cheney and the New York Times have one thing in common: both have opinions about the latest version of Bush’s North Korea policy:
Cheney froze, according to four of the participants at the Old Executive Office Building meeting. For more than 30 minutes he had been talking and answering questions, without missing a beat. But now, for several long seconds, he stared, unsmilingly, at his questioner, Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation, a public policy institution.
Finally, he spoke: “I’m not going to be the one to announce this decision,” the other participants recalled Cheney saying, pointing at himself. “You need to address your interest in this to the State Department.”
He then declared that he was done taking questions, and left the room. [N.Y. Times]
Cheney is a favorite whipping boy for a lot of facile criticism, much of it from the sort of people who don’t actually understand this issue but tend to drive by when it hits page one, but I’d lay good money that history will have vindicated him by this time next year.
The New York Times, on the other hand, has opted to cover every base. In an “analysis” story, the Times calls Bush’s new Agreed Framework 2.0 ”a triumph of … diplomacy,” which is the sort of language left-leaning journalists, academics, and diplomats tend to use when America throws its interests away and gets nothing in return. Such things seldom trouble the Times, but at least they’ve sense enough to realize that Kim Jong Il won’t actually disarm – heck, they’ve told us so — so the Times is already hedging its bets and managing our expectations. All of which is rather hard to reconcile with what the Times was saying not so long ago:
That [diplomatic] effort unfortunately has stalled, and the fault — at least this time — is undeniably Pyongyang’s. [….]
North Korea has said it would produce the accounting, but first it wants Washington to remove it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and lift certain sanctions. Washington says the sequencing can be worked out if Pyongyang is prepared for full disclosure.
The Bush administration has a long history of using any excuse to scuttle any diplomatic deal, but in this case it is right. Pyongyang clearly agreed to full disclosure and the deadline. Since then serious questions have also arisen about Pyongyang’s nuclear cooperation with Syria. That must also be disclosed. [New York Times Editorial, January 28, 2008; emphasis mine]
Here, reproduced in full, is the text of North Korea’s disclosure about nuclear cooperation with Syria:
[This space intentionally left blank]
Huzzah! It’s a triumph of diplomacy!
The closest I can come to distilling consistency from this is that the Times agrees with skepticism about Kim Jong Il’s nuclear proliferation until Dick Cheney expresses it. United we stand! Perhaps the problem with the Times isn’t so much its willingness to inject its views into its coverage so much as the coherence of the views themselves.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 28, 2008 at 3:40 pm · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, U.S. Politics
[Update 1 Jul 08: According to a reader tip, the day after I published this post and the photos below, a State Department desk officer contacted Mrs. Kim through supporters to talk about her letter. So Chris Hill can’t tell this particular lie again, but he’s still going to do what he wants to do. The next lie, I suspect, will be delivered directly to Mrs. Kim. It will consist of unenforceable promises to account, eventually, for the fate of her husband … long after the North Koreans have what they want from us. At what point does a character flaw become a clinical diagnosis? I’d bet a psychological profile of Chris Hill would make for fascinating reading.]
You will recall that last week, I posted about a letter from Esther Kim, the widow of lawful permanent U.S. resident Kim Dong Shik, who was ”disappeared” by the North Koreans in 2000. Mrs. Kim wrote to U.S. negotiator appeaser Christopher Hill, pleading with him to use his good offices to save her husband (now believed to have been starved to death by his captors). This month, a Washington Post reporter finally asked Hill about Esther Kim’s letter:
Kim’s wife said she did not receive a reply. Hill has no memory of receiving her letter, a State Department official said, but would answer it if she re-sent it.
“We are concerned about this case and all the other cases of abductions,” Hill said in a statement. “I have raised repeatedly with North Korea the need to address concerns about the abduction issue, not only with respect to Japan, but other countries as well, including South Korea.” [Washington Post, Glenn Kessler; emphasis mine]
(In case anyone at State should ever again suggest that they haven’t seen Mrs. Kim’s letter, I posted it online. This site receives frequent visits from the State Department.)
Shortly after the Washington Post published its story with Hill’s denial, readers started contacting me about it. Acting on a tip from one of them, I made contact with Professor Yoichi Shimada, who confirmed in unequivocal terms that he personally gave Hill Mrs. Kim’s letter. I quoted Professor’s contradiction of Hill in my post. Another reader who read that post contacted me to provide additional information. It turns out that Prof. Shimada wasn’t the only one who gave Hill Mrs. Kim’s letter that day. And this time, a Kyodo News Service photographer was present (my deepest thanks to Kyodo for permission to republish them).
The first two photographs show Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, meeting with Esther Kim, the widow of Kim Dong-Shik, on November 15, 2007.
Also present are the family members of Japanese who were kidnapped by the North Koreans, and who want their loved ones back before North Korea is de-listed as a sponsor of terrorism. In that meeting, Mrs. Kim gave Rep. Ros-Lehtinen a copy of her letter. Rep. Ros-Lehtinen told Mrs. Kim that she would present the letter to Assistant Secretary Hill later that day.
An OFK reader with direct knowledge of the fact confirms that the photographs below show Rep. Ros-Lehtinen meeting with Hill in her office that same day and actually handing Mrs. Kim’s letter to Hill. That’s the same day Professor Shimada met with Hill and also gave him a copy of Mrs. Kim’s letter. This is the same letter Hill says he can’t remember receiving.
Words that come to mind: shameless, flagrant, bald-faced. Does anyone actually believe that all of this just slipped Hill’s mind? Ros-Lehtinen had previously raised this issue in a March 2007 letter to Hill’s boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:
Additionally, there is the unresolved kidnapping of the U.S. permanent resident, Reverend Kim Dong-Shik. A South Korean court has confirmed North Korean official involvement in this kidnapping. The Illinois Congressional delegation has made its interest over the Reverend Kim crystal clear in a letter sent two years ago to the North Korean UN Ambassador. The lack of a response, or even an acknowledgement of the letter, is a further cause for Congressional concern. It is our firm belief that North Korea should remain on the terrorist list until the kidnapping issues with both Japanese citizens and the U.S. permanent resident are resolved and assurances are given regarding any such future acts. [House Foreign Affairs Committee]
It’s flatly implausible that Hill truly had no memory of receiving Mrs. Kim’s letter. Just consider the importance to Hill of striking North Korea from the terror list, and what an obstacle North Korea’s recent kidnapping and murder of Kim Dong Shik must have seemed to his obsessive goal. Consider all of the congressional, international, and (later) media attention this case had attracted. And if you can bring yourself to believe Hill’s convenient lapse of memory, then you have to concede that Hill was lying when he said that he was concerned about Rev. Kim’s case, despite having forgotten all about it just seven months after receiving an impassioned appeal from his widow.
The two possibilities aren’t mutually exclusive, either. I happen to believe that Hill lied about having no memory of Esther Kim’s letter, and about being concerned about Rev. Kim’s fate. Having previously caught Hill in a demonstrable lie, I no longer afford him a presumption of integrity. And if Hill wants to prove me wrong, my comments section is open.
It’s remarkable how one letter from one widow has become such a revealing test of the character of two men on whom America may soon invest so much. One of those men is negotiating a largely unwritten and endlessly flexible deal to disarm the North Koreans in exchange for most of the leverage we could use to conform their behavior to the standards of humanity. Hill wants us to believe the North Koreans are actually serious about disarming, but at least one other recent visitor to Pyongyang is telling us that the North Koreans say otherwise. We’ve wagered the security of our nation on the good faith of Kim Jong Il and the veracity of Chris Hill. How much comfort should that really give us?
The other man to fail this test of character was a freshman senator from Illinois in 2005, when he signed this letter promising to oppose de-listing North Korea as a terror sponsor until the North Koreans answered for Esther Kim’s husband. It’s unfortunate that the wife and children of Rev. Kim Dong Shik have become early casualties of a “greater good,” the ambitions of Barack Obama. That’s neither change nor anything we can believe in.
Related: I find it equally implausibe that Hill’s infamous meeting with the North Koreans in Berlin was “accidental,” or that Hill acted alone to arrange it. Taken at face value, it would be an example of Hill being gleefully deceptive toward his own superiors, but I have no doubt that Hill’s superiors — at least within the State Department – knew exactly what he was doing there. Hill is “burdened” with the duty of lying, because we can see how easily it comes to him.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 28, 2008 at 2:50 pm · Filed under An Alliance?, Korean Politics, Anti-Americanism, Korean Society
Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode.
It is an inviolable rule of today’s South Korea that all social movements will eventually become violent and anti-American. So inevitably, a movement that was, at first, ostensibly about food safety has descended into a violent anti-American riot, with protestors ransacking the offices of newspapers that don’t echo the street’s bleat. I’d love to know a little more about who the shepherds are:
Junior Naver, the children’s site of the country’s largest web portal, is a prime example. When typing in the search term “mad cow disease,” users connected to the Juniver Knowledge Section, which is full of preposterous questions and answers posted by young children and students. Claims include that Americans import safe beef from grass-fed Australian cattle while exporting beef “even beggars don’t eat.” The situation is similar at Yahoo Kids, where one post says all American cattle older than 20 months have BSE. Children are actively spreading the information they obtain from web portals via text messages, Internet postings, web community sites, e-mail or online chatrooms. [Chosun Ilbo]
So apparently, Mad Sheep Disease differs from Mad Cow in that it starts manifesting symptoms at about 14 years. Unlike Mad Cow, Mad Sheep quickly spreads through entire herds and has powerful degenerative effects on entire nations and economies:
Montana Senator Max Baucus said in a statement the additional meetings violate the April 18 bilateral trade agreement for Korea to import all cuts of U.S. beef. Senator Baucus says there’s no scientific proof for Korea’s claim that beef from older cattle pose a health risk, citing the world organization for animal health has said it is safe to eat. He says both sides should abide by the agreement reached earlier and that the outcome of the free trade agreement signed between Korea and the U.S. is in Seoul’s hands. Other senators echoed his words with some adding that the latest moves could bring difficulties to passing the bilateral free trade deal. [Arirang News, via Chosun Ilbo]
Here is a list of nations in strategic locations with growing economies, with which we don’t have an FTA and a large military presence, but with which we have friendly relations: Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. I think you see my point.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 27, 2008 at 1:26 pm · Filed under Famine & Food Aid, Refugees
With the worst of this year’s North Korean famine concentrated in southern coastal areas, flight across the Tumen River to China is no longer the easiest way to flee North Korea. This famine map, courtesy of Good Friends, is instructive (click for full size):
In the past, North Koreans have fled to South Korea by sea in onesies and twosies. The first attempt at mass defection by sea ended with disastrous results — the South Koreans sent them back to North Korea, where all 22 were shot.
Today comes word of a slow but steady trickle of defections by sea.
Ten North Koreans have defected by boat to the South this month, coming in a total of six trips, four of which were reportedly taken in stolen motor boats. [….]
More than 2,000 North Koreans came to the South in 2006 and 3,000 defections are expected this year according to the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. [Chosun Ilbo]
The North Koreans have reportedly reacted by keeping a close watch on who boards its fishing boats, and how much fuel they’re putting in the tank.
If you want to read more about what the North Koreans are fleeing from – purges, famine, and unsustainable human excrement quotas (!) seem like good ones – I’ve posted a few Good Friends updates from inside North Korea below the fold.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 27, 2008 at 7:19 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, U.S. Politics
For all the failings of his accord with Kim Jong Il, Bush has made remarkable progress in unwittingly brokering an accord between a liberal Democratic presidential nominee, the House’s most conservative Republicans, and the Republican presidential nominee. To various degrees, all have noted the inadequacy of Kim’s declaration and declared their opposition to de-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terror unless it permits verfication. (Which it won’t, of course):
This is a step forward, and there will be many more steps to take in the days ahead. Critical questions remain unanswered. We still have not verified the accuracy of the North Korean declaration. We must confirm the full extent of North Korea’s past plutonium production. We must also confirm its uranium enrichment activities, and get answers to disturbing questions about its proliferation activities with other countries, including Syria.
The declaration has not yet been made available, so Congress has not had a chance to review it. Before weighing in on North Korea’s removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, Congress must take the next 45 days to examine the adequacy of the North Korean declaration and verification procedures. Sanctions are a critical part of our leverage to pressure North Korea to act. They should only be lifted based on North Korean performance. If the North Koreans do not meet their obligations, we should move quickly to re-impose sanctions that have been waived, and consider new restrictions going forward. [Barack Obama]
Later, however, Obama cites North Korea’s “declaration” as an example of “direct and aggressive diplomacy with North Korea that can yield results.” This is both a defense of his own support for direct talks with Kim Jong Il and an implicit — but highly conditional — endorsement of this deal. It leaves him room to sound hawkish later after his staffers read the fine print, and after the North Koreans stall on verification.
McCain’s statement is remarkably similar:
“The announcement today that North Korea has provided information concerning elements of its nuclear program is a modest step forward, as will be the destruction of the disabled cooling tower of Yongbyon. But it is only a step covering one part of North Korea’s nuclear activities. It is important to remember our goal has been the full, permanent and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. That must remain our goal. The Six Party agreement called for North Korea to make a full declaration of all its nuclear weapons and nuclear programs. Many questions remain about North Korea’s programs, including the disposition of plutonium at Yongbyon, the number and status of nuclear weapons, the nature of the highly-enriched uranium program, and the extent of proliferation activities in countries like Syria. I also want to make sure we fully account for the legitimate concerns of our South Korean and Japanes e allies as we move forward. I understand certain sanctions were lifted today, some may be lifted in 45 days, and others remain in place.
“As we review this declaration and attempt to verify North Korean claims, we must keep diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea to meet all of its obligations under the Six Party agreement, including denuclearization. If we are unable to fully verify the declaration submitted today and if I am not satisfied with the verification mechanisms developed, I would not support the easing of sanctions on North Korea.” [John McCain]
Neither candidate wants to seem “anti-peace,” nor does either candidate want to associate himself with an obviously weak, insufficient, unverified, and probably unverifiable deal with a flagrantly mendacious regime. Importantly, both candidates are saying they’ll oppose the de-listing of North Korea as a terror sponsor without further substantial performance.
Other members of Congress were less nuanced. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, expressed “profound disappointment” at Bush. Senator Sam Brownback expressed “extreme disapproval”:
“I am particularly disheartened that the Administration failed to link our country’s concessions to the improvement in human rights for the North Korean people. It is unconscionable to ignore clear evidence of massive concentration camps, systematic starvation, and official oppression, and instead to lift sanctions against the regime of Kim Jong Il.” [Senator Sam Brownback]
Pete Hoekstra, the Ranking Republican on the House Intel Committee, was blistering:
“This decision by the administration turns trust but verify on its head. Serious questions remain unanswered about North Korea’s involvement with the destroyed Syrian nuclear reactor and its commitment to fully disclose and halt its nuclear program. Instead of greeting North Korea’s declaration with deserved skepticism, the administration seems all to willing to ignore North Korea’s long-established history of nuclear mendacity.
“A decision seemingly has been made that it is more important for the White House to reach a legacy agreement than to get to the bottom of North Korea’s nuclear efforts. The administration has repeatedly delayed briefing Congress on North Korean proliferation because it knows any deal reached would not likely survive the scrutiny of openness. It has never sought to hold North Korea accountable for its nuclear weapons tests, its known nuclear proliferation activities or its willingness to sell arms to any nation or group that can pay.
“Lifting sanctions and removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism flies in the face of history and rewards its brutal dictator for shallow gestures. Just as the Clinton administration was fooled by the Kim Jong-Il regime, time will soon tell if the Bush administration will fall for the same bait.” [Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R, Mich., opens in pdf]
There is such a thing as too much nuance. Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tried to sound cautious without quite saying anything:
North Korea’s declaration of its nuclear programs and activities is a step toward the goal of verifiably eliminating the North’s nuclear weapons and related facilities, but a lot of tough work lies ahead.
“The United States and its partners in the Six Party talks must now verify the accuracy of the declaration and also confirm the full extent of North Korea’s past efforts to enrich uranium. It is critical to understand the nature and extent of North Korea’s nuclear cooperation with Syria and any other countries. Without clarity on these issues we cannot proceed with confidence to the next phase of the negotiations – the dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear facilities and the removal of any fissile material from the country. [Sen. Joe Biden]
Although I believe the Republicans I quoted above are sincerely opposed to this deal, they’re not the majority and may not even speak for their own party in Congress. Time will tell whether more Republicans will be drawn into the fight, and whether the skepticism of Democrats is real or merely posturing. I don’t doubt that to many of them, this is a bad deal they’d prefer to have made, and made on a Republican president’s watch.
Other commenters of various ideological orientations either lukewarm or hostile:
The lesson to date is that America, faced with nuclear blackmail, will bow down, dignify and fortify tyrants, fork over loot, and celebrate the process as a victory for diplomacy. [Claudia Rosett]
Some have argued that it would make more sense to wait until the list is delivered and verified before restrictions are lifted, and they are probably right. Unfortunately, that was not what Washington promised. [Ralph Cossa at Nautilus]
Which is very revealing about how our diplomatic class approaches North Korea’s noncompliance: the rules only allow North Korea to break the rules. For a more detailed and analytical take, see Bruce Klingner’s Heritage Foundation Web memo.
The more Congress pays attention, the less room Chris Hill has to give everything away. Kim Jong Il isn’t going to agree to satisfactory verification, of course. That would be anathema to him. A smart approach for opponents of this deal would be to enlist Kim Jong Il’s own assistance in killing it. Borrowing from Condi Rice’s own words (below), they can set specific performance benchmarks for the North Koreans: random on-site inspections, examination of the reprocessed plutonium (including that which is loaded into bombs), and even interviewing North Korean scientists at “neutral” locations outside North Korea, with their families present just in case.
And lest we forget that the designation in question is about support for terrorism, Congress should ask the Directorate of National Intelligence to examine the allegations in this report by the Congressional Research Service.
The problem, of course, is time. As State well knows, Congress will burn up most of its 45 days to object to the de-listing while it’s in recess. This almost suggests a certain degree of political connivance between the State Department and the North Koreans.
In the end, even Condi Rice’s defense of the deal mostly lays down the mattress for her own legacy if the deal fails, reciting multiple reasons to doubt and suspect North Korea’s motives and veracity:
It may be the case that North Korea does not want to give up its nuclear weapons and programs. That is a real possibility. But we should test it, and the best way to do that is through the six-party framework. Is it right to proceed cautiously? Absolutely. But in the final calculation, do we think our current policy is better than the alternatives? Yes, we do. We believe that the six-party framework is the best way to learn more about the threat posed by this closed and opaque regime, and ultimately, together with partners, to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons and programs. [Wall Street Journal]
Aside from nuclear theater, that’s all the advocates and non-opponents of this deal really have left — their own inability to think of any better ideas. They then proceed to impute this failing to the rest of us, although the alternatives are there for all to see (that last link is particularly for the benefit of one who one who linked here).
To the extent that there is value in any agreement with North Korea — I can’t think of one they’ve ever kept – recent history shows that those deals were obtained by economic pressure. It was not a coincidence that the September 19, 2005 agreement followed the September 15, 2005 announcement of the sanctions against Banco Delta Asia. And when Kim Jong Il made the February 2007 agreement, it was because those measures had driven his regime’s palace economy to disaster, and to the brink of collapse.
Without pressure, after all, Secretary Rice wouldn’t have had Agreed Framework 2.0 to begin with.
Below the fold, a transcript of National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley in a long Q&A with the press.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 26, 2008 at 6:06 am · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Diplomacy
[Updated below: Today, President Bush embarks on the process of throwing away most of our diplomatic leverage against North Korea in exchange for a declaration that’s incomplete, incorrect, and unverified. Those who rightly criticized President Clinton for appeasing North Korea after the 1994 Agreed Framework should be honest enough to admit that Bush’s eleventh-hour grasp at a diplomatic legacy is probably even more dangerous.]
[Original Post, 24 Jun 08] In a speech at the Heritage Foundation last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reported that North Korea’s nuclear declaration is imminent again.
Or not. North Korea was supposed to begin “discussing” the full disclosure of its nuclear programs and weapons by mid-April of 2007. The full written disclosure was due during a subsequent ”implementation phase,” though there was no deadline. In November, the North Koreans handed chief U.S. negotiator appeaser Chris Hill their idea of a declaration, but it was apparently so deficient that Hill told a little white lie and denied having received it. A deadline was set for the end of 2007, when the declaration was imminent until it wasn’t. It was briefly imminent again in January and in April.
This week, as Rice heads for Seoul and Tokyo, the declaration is rumored to be imminent again. It might coincide with an expensive act of what proliferation expert Henri Sokolski calls “nuclear theater“ – the demolition of the Yongbyon cooling tower on live TV. (It will cost us, of course.) There is even talk of Rice visting Pyongyang.
If you’re a superficial observer of this illusion – I’d say that describes AP correspondent Matthew Lee pretty well – you will believe. And ironically, that belief will find its widest acceptance among those who are usually Bush’s harshest critics.
False, Late, and Incomplete
But if the North Koreans finally do hand over their “disclosure,” we know it will be incomplete and incorrect. Our negotiators let the North Koreans know at the beginning of this year that we were willing to accept an incomplete declaration. Full disclosure has since been renegotiated down to a disclosure that essentially covers one worn-out 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon that age, overuse, and shoddy concrete disabled with greater speed and efficiency than our finest diplomatic minds could.
Absent from the declaration will be North Korea’s other, larger reactors, its proliferation activities, its uranium enrichment program, its completed fissile material, or its completed nuclear weapons. That’s not much of a declaration, and honest observers and experts of most partisan persuasions are in uncanny agreement about that:
“We appear ready to accept considerably less than the original agreement,” said Michael Green, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Bush administration National Security Council official. “It appears that there have clearly been some corners cut. Acknowledging U.S. concerns about the (uranium enrichment) program, or proliferation, is not a declaration,” he added.
Bruce Klingner, a former CIA analyst and Korea expert now at the Heritage Foundation think tank, said the administration appeared upbeat about the declaration and welcomed movement on ending its plutonium program. “Any progress on getting North Korea working towards plutonium denuclearization is all to the good,” he said, but he added Pyongyang should not be allowed to “skate by” on giving information about any uranium and proliferation programs. [Reuters, Arshad Mohammed and Susan Cornwell]
More specifically:
Quid: What the North Koreans Will Do.
North Korea’s Existing Nuclear Weapons. North Korea will not disclose how many completed nuclear weapons it has, what their yield is, or where they are. Not now, and if listen to what they’re saying, not ever.
Fissile Material. Ditto. The North Koreas won’t have to tell us how much reprocessed plutonium they have ready for molding into nuclear weapons, or for resale to the highest bidder. Maybe this fall, maybe never. [See Update 1 below. The North Koreans are expected to disclose some amount of plutonium, although that amount is likely to be several bombs short of our own estimates. Regardless of the amount, it will be unverifiable for the foreseeable future, and the North Koreans say they’re keeping it.]
Other Reactors. I’ve been suggesting for months that disabling the 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon would mean very little if the North Koreans are almost ready to start up a 50-megawatt reactor next door. Judging as best I can from these Google Earth images I downloaded recently, the 50-megawatt reactor looks finished, but a 200-megawatt reactor 13 miles away appears to have a way to go yet. North Korea isn’t disabling either of these reactors.
Proliferation. As with its uranium program and fissile material, North Korea admits nothing, and we all ”sidestep a dispute over how much detail North Korea must provide about any past uranium enrichment-related activities and its involvement in a mysterious Syrian facility.” That facility has become more mysterious this week following a report by that notorious neocon mouthpiece, Der Spiegel, that the North Koreans weren’t just helping Syria get The Bomb, they were also helping Iran:
The weekly said the Syrian site at al-Kibar was used to produce nuclear material the Iranian regime needed to make a bomb. North Korean scientists worked alongside Syrians and Iranians at the site, where a reactor was being built to produce weapons-grade plutonium, Der Spiegel quoted the intelligence reports as saying. The report said Iranian scientists had made progress in enriching uranium but had no experience with plutonium and sought the help of the North Koreans. [Deutsche Presse-Agentur, via Ha’aretz]
See also the Khaleej Times, New Kerala, and the Irish Sun (which is both a newspaper and an oxymoron). Not that this should astonish us. At least as early as 2005, there were reports of an Iran-North Korea oil-for-nukes deal.
Uranium Enrichment. The ink on the 1994 Agreed Framework had barely dried when the CIA caught the North Koreans secretly dealing with Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan to build a capability to enrich uranium, an alternate route to a nuclear weapons capability that’s easier to conceal from our spy satellites (more).
The Clinton Administration chose to ignore this. When the Bush Administration confronted the North Koreans with the evidence in 2002, the North Koreans admitted it. Then they went back to denying it again, although we’ve since intercepted aluminum tubes suitable for centrifuge casings on their way to North Korea. Pakistan has since confirmed selling the North Koreans complete centrifuges. The Directorate of National Intelligence still thinks the North Koreans had an undisclosed uranium enrichment program, but the North Koreans have been far more stubborn in refusing to re-admit this than we have been in demanding that they come clean. The result was an agreement that the State Department would write North Korea’s declaration for it, and that North Korea would merely “acknowledge” our concerns. This makes it all the easier for them to disavow them later.
Last year, the North Koreans took one of our diplomats to a missile factory to prove that the aluminum tubes were merely for rocket fuselages. They agreed to provide a sample of the aluminum but insisted on smelting it down first. The sample tested positive for enriched uranium.
In May, the North Koreans handed over 18,000 pages of documents about their plutonium reprocessing. The State Department, under withering fire for giving away much and getting too little in return, paraded the documents before the press without having even translated them. And would you believe?
The United States in recent weeks has obtained new intelligence — fresh traces of highly enriched uranium discovered among 18,000 pages of North Korean documents — that are raising new questions about whether Pyongyang pursued an alternative route to producing a nuclear weapon, according to sources familiar with the intelligence findings.
Officials at the State Department and with the director of national intelligence declined to comment on the new information, but sources said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an oblique reference to it in a speech on North Korea policy to the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday.
“As we’ve gotten deeper into the process, we’ve been troubled by additional information about North Korea’s uranium-enrichment capability,” Rice said. “And this information has reaffirmed skepticism about dealing with North Korea.”
The new intelligence arrived at an awkward moment for the Bush administration. North Korea next week plans to submit its long-awaited declaration on its nuclear programs, which is expected to disclose that its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon produced about 37 kilograms of plutonium. Then, on June 27 or 28, North Korean officials are expected to blow up the cooling tower attached to the facility, diplomats said. [Washington Post, Glenn Kessler]
This report seems inconsistent with Sung Kim’s statement at that press conference that the documents were only photocopies. Call that another unresolved question.
Quo: What We Will Do for Kim Jong Il
Food Aid. No, we shouldn’t punish the North Korean people for Kim Jong Il’s actions. Yes, we should provide food aid, and yes, we ought to monitor it so that we know that the regime and the military won’t steal it. But that’s not what we’re doing.
Proliferation Aid. We’re paying for all of North Korea’s “disabling” activities. The State Department is currently seeking a waiver of sanctions under the Glenn Amendment.
Energy Aid. The rest of North Korea is slipping back into famine, but regime tour guides are boasting to foreign journalists that there are no more blackouts in Pyongyang. That’s because of the heavy fuel oil the United States has been shipping while North Korea proliferated and stalled on meeting its own obligations. (There have been reports that North Korea has diverted the oil for military use, but I put little credence in them. Heavy fuel oil is probably too thick to be re-refined into a suitable fuel for vehicles or aircraft.)
Diplomatic Relations. All of President Bush’s talk about human rights was just that. Concentration camps, gas chambers, infanticide, crushing repression, and the use of food as a weapon appear to be no impediment to recognizing Kim Jong Il’s regime and exchanging ambassadors, which could only mean that we have no standards whatsoever. North Korea is still counterfeiting our money and they’re running what may be, on a per capita basis, the most repressive regime in the history of mankind, but those are differences we can live with ”in the context of two states that have diplomatic relations.”
Terror Sponsorship De-Listing. Never mind the unexamined findings of the Congressional Research Service that North Korea has recently aided Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers. The State Department is determined to de-list North Korea and throw away most of our leverage:
“We are looking to receive the declaration soon,” Hill said after talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura and the Japanese and South Korean nuclear envoys. “We’ve done a lot of work on it.” Komura hinted the declaration may not be as thorough as previously hoped. “The Japanese government believes that a complete declaration is necessary for complete abolition” of the North’s nuclear weapons, Komura told reporters.
“But there’s an idea that it’s better to ease the stalemate and move forward, even by lowering (the hurdle) for the sake of reaching our goal of denuclearization,” Komura said. The U.S. has pressed North Korea, which conducted a nuclear test in 2006, to clear up allegations that it helped Syria build a nuclear facility and ran a secret plutonium program. The U.S. reportedly earlier agreed to let North Korea simply acknowledge the allegations without confirming them.
The reports triggered a backlash among conservatives in the U.S. They accused US President George W. Bush, who once branded North Korea part of an “axis of evil,” of rushing a deal in his last months in office. [AFP]
The idea of lifting this designation is to make it possible for Kim Jong Il to obtain the massive windfalls of World Bank loans and trade with the United States. North Korea is a Tier 3 country for human trafficking, which raises questions about Tariff Act prohibitions against importing goods made with forced labor.
Japan, our most important Asian ally, also sees these sanctions as important leverage in forcing Kim Jong Il to return the unknown number of Japanese citizens it has abducted. Japan reportedly will ask Rice not to remove North Korea from the terror-sponsor list. Refusing Japan’s request will strain our most important Asian alliance for dubious returns.
For those who are interested, I’ve added two press conference transcripts below the fold; one from Chris Hill and one from Condi Rice.
Update 1: According to this, the North Korean declaration — now expected this Thursday – will discuss other nuclear facilities besides the 5-MW reactor at Yongbyon, although it’s anyone’s guess which ones. There’s a link below to Google Earth images of the major ones. Chris Hill also contradicts me regarding the disclosure of plutonium, and giving Hill the benefit of the doubt for the time being (I see that one of my links is dead), I’ve made a correction to the post below:
“The key element of the declaration of course is the North Koreans, in addition to laying out all their facilities, giving us a verifiable figure on how much plutonium they have,'’ Hill said today in Beijing. “Plutonium here is really the heart of the game because that’s the stuff they make bombs out of.'’ [Bloomberg]
So the actual bombs they’ve already built — or sold — are not really the heart of the game?
If the North Koreans provide a disclosure on plutonium, they are likely to disclose an amount of reprocessed plutonium that’s far lower than our own estimates. And because there’s no verification mechanism in place, we’ll have no way of knowing for sure. And of course, disclosing some amount of plutonium is one thing; actually handing it over is another.
The Donga Ilbo gives more explanation of why the detonation of the Yongbyon cooling tower is mostly for show. But not so fast, say the North Koreans:
North Korea wants to obtain “final assurance” from the U.S. that it will remove the communist nation from its list of terrorism-sponsoring nations as promised, a South Korean government official said Tuesday, with the six-way talks on the nuclear crisis expected to resume soon. [Yonhap]
It’s clear from the article exactly what the North Koreans will stall, other than the next round of talks, if they don’t have their advance assurance of the de-listing, something that is certain to draw congressional opposition. In another sign of trouble, Japan continues to hint that it may publicly oppose de-listing North Korea as a sponsor of terrorism.
Update 2: They’ve handed it over, whatever it is. The uncritical shallowness of most of the coverage — even on generally conservative blogs — excrutiates, with only a few observers mentioning what’s not in this declaration. The Administration has most journalists looking at this story through its soda straw.
Uncharacteristically, the McPaper asks about The Pink Elephant in the Room: “One item that won’t make the declaration … will be North Korea’s nuclear bombs. The omission means the world will have to wait for an answer to the question at the heart of the nearly six-year-old standoff: Is the North ready to give up its nuclear weapons?”
The AP provides some background for how the North Koreans talked us down to a declaration that declares no weapons, uranium enrichment, or proliferation through “months of haggling,” but buries it deep inside its story. This story is slightly more inquisitive, but also deep down in the text:
Besides providing information about its nuclear facilities, North Korea’s declaration is to provide a verifiable figure on how much plutonium they have. That still won’t answer the question of how many bombs North Korea has stockpiled, but plutonium is the “heart of the game because that is the stuff they make bombs out of,” says Christopher Hill, the lead U.S. negotiator in the talks under way between Pyongyang and the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
What’s not in the declaration is as important as what it includes.
It won’t illuminate North Korea’s suspected program of developing weapons fueled by enriched uranium. As a result of the six-nation nuclear talks, the North has stopped making plutonium and begun disabling its nuclear facilities, but it still has a stockpile of radioactive material that experts believe is enough to build from six to 10 bombs.
The North proved it could build a working nuclear bomb when it carried out an underground nuclear test blast in October 2006. Details on the bombs, however, will be left to the next stage of the talks, when Pyongyang is supposed to abandon all its nuclear weapons program.
North Korea’s declaration also won’t give a complete accounting of how it allegedly helped Syria build what senior U.S. intelligence officials say was a secret nuclear reactor meant to make plutonium, which can be used to make high-yield nuclear weapons. Israeli jets bombed the structure in the remote eastern desert of Syria in September 2007. [AP, Deb Reichmann]
On the other hand, Don Kirk gets it: absolute must read.
The White House’s press release and a transcript of President Bush’s statement in the Rose Garden, with some Q&A, is added below the fold.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 25, 2008 at 2:47 pm · Filed under Abductions, Korean War
The anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s invasion of South Korea is a fitting time to post about just the latest Ssouth Korean prisoner of war to return home after being held in North Korea since a 1953 Armistice agreement in it agreed to return its prisoners.
A prisoner of war (POW) escaped from North Korea 55 years after being captured and is currently staying in China awaiting entry to South Korea, the association of abductees’ family members said Tuesday.
Kim Jin-soo, 74, who fought in the Korean War (1950-53) at the age of 17, crossed the Tumen River on June 14 and is now in China, Choi Sung-yong, leader of the association, told a press conference in Seoul. Choi said Kim was taken to the Stalinist state with a gunshot wound before the armistice was signed in July 1953. The South Korean army reported he was dead and included him in the roll of fallen soldiers. [Korea Times]
Instead of repatriating Kim, the North Koreans sent him off for an effective life sentence of hard labor — at first, in the coal mines, and later, on a farm (can anyone name an agreement the North Koreans have ever not flagrantly violated?). Along the way, he married and had five children. He had to leave his family behind in the North.
The POW sent President Lee Myung-bak a written petition last Tuesday to ask for help. Choi also urged the authorities and citizens to help save abductees and POWs.
Describing Kim’s condition, “he was 150-centimeters tall when he participated in the war but now he has shrunk to 140-centimeters and weighs only 35 kilograms. We should recognize the pain of POWs who work in coalmines for about 40 years,'’ Choi said.
Saying most of the POWs are old, Choi claimed that North Korea should send them back to their hometowns and South Korean should begin negotiations over their repatriation. [Korea Times]
Kim is now staying in a “third country.” The South Korean government is said to be negotiating his return to South Korea. I wonder how much conversation with his young grand nieces and nephews Kim will be able tolerate before he realizes that his country barely remembers or cares where in hell he was.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 25, 2008 at 10:47 am · Filed under An Alliance?, Anti-Americanism
Via Robert, there is finally confirmation for something I’ve long suspected — the South Korean government brings anti-Americanism to the bargaining table and uses it as a negotiating tool:
Hong Seong-tae, a sociology professor at Sangji University, said, “The anti-American sentiment, voluntarily created by citizens, helps South Korea increase its negotiating power in its relations with the U.S.”
In fact, Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon said, “Whenever the negotiations were at risk of failing, I produced a picture of the candlelight demonstrations.”
In a self-congratulatory statement, the government gave itself 90 points out of 100 to its handling of the additional round of negotiations with the United States that resulted in new sanitary rules for beef imports.
In the end, the anger sparked by the candles, rather than appearing as a flash in the pan with the South Korean government kowtowing to the United States, has enabled the country to revise some of the terms of the deal. [The Hankyoreh; emphasis mine]
As I said, I’ve long suspected the same in the case of SOFA and cost-sharing negotiations, so I’m not sure why I find this so infuriating. Maybe it’s simply the fact that we put up with this. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m not sure who is governing South Korea, or whether South Korea is even governable above a basic roads-and-utilities level.
Speaking of cost-sharing, GI Korea links to South Korea’s latest creative scheme for sharing an even smaller portion of the cost of its own defense while sucking even more dollars out of the wallets of American taxpayers:
South Korea will likely start paying its share of the cost of maintaining U.S. troops here in goods rather than cash, officials said Friday, in an apparent move to limit Washington’s use of the money to pay for the ongoing relocation of frontline U.S. bases here. [Yonhap]
Another obvious purpose for this would be to channel USFK’s procurement toward preferred Korean vendors instead of the lowest bidder or U.S. manufacturers. This way, South Korea can capture even more of the “downsteam” economic benefits of USFK from what would otherwise be U.S. government contractors, some of which would be American.
The United States has long used part of the fund provided by Seoul to pay for the southward relocation of its frontline bases in what many South Koreans view as a diversion of the funds intended to pay for the cost of maintaining the U.S. forces in Korea. [Yonhap]
I’m not an expert on government contracting or procurement law, but I’d love to see what the GAO thinks of that. Personally, I like GI Korea’s suggestion about how to respond to this.
This is more evidence that, from the perspective of U.S. interests, South Korea is more parasite than ally. Personally, I’ve given up on the idea of a “conservative” government repairing an alliance that neither America nor Korea has needed for at least a decade. What U.S. interests does our expensive and strategically risky military commitment to South Korea really advance? We get along well enough with Chile, Singapore, Nigeria, and Moldova without stationing troops there.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 25, 2008 at 8:06 am · Filed under An Alliance?, Anti-Americanism, Korean History
Today is June 25, 2008, the 58th anniversary of Japan’s America’s North Korea’s invasion of South Korea. I hope you’ll excuse my temporary confusion; my han has been acting up again:
More than half of teenagers here do not know when the Korean War broke out or who started it, showing ignorance about the country’s history and national security.
The Ministry of Public Administration and Security said Monday that a survey of 1,016 middle and high school students showed nearly 57 percent didn’t know the war started on June 25, 1950. Moreover, 51 percent did not know that the war started with North Korea’s invasion of the South. About 14 percent picked Japan as the nation responsible for the war; 13.4 percent, the United States, and 11 percent Russia. About 2 percent even said it was the South invading the North.
While the United States is regarded as the main ally of the country, 28 percent said it was the key “threat'’ for national security, 4 percentage points higher than North Korea.
Only 56 percent said they felt threatened by the North’s nuclear weapons development, adding that the chance of another Korean War taking place was very low. [Korea Times, emphasis mine, ht to Brian]
Everybody — We’re number one! We’re number one! Be sure you shout it twice.
And the purpose of a multi-billion-dollar military commitment to this country is what, exactly? (More)
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 23, 2008 at 5:09 pm · Filed under Blogs & Blogging
Thanks to everyone of every point of view who linked to this post. Of course, any high traffic post is a mixed blessing. You get good links and comments and widen the circulation of your ideas, and you also dredge the swamp. I’d have to say that the call by Kos diarist “Gramarye” for prayers for Michelle Malkin’s death (and after her blog linked this one) sets a new low. Seriously:
According to her blog,
“Take me now, Lord. My life as a blogger is complete.”
[….] So let’s all help Michelle’s request along and say a little prayer to the Lord. [….] But I have HOPE for Michelle’s plea. [Daily Kos]
I recall reading that Michelle has a husband and young daughter, which I suppose makes this especially classless. This would not be the first time Kos’s rhetoric was an embarrassment to itself. Yes, I kept screenshots. In fairness, many of the Kos commenters disapprove.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 22, 2008 at 11:33 am · Filed under Appeasement, U.S. Politics
[Update: Well, that didn’t take long. Welcome from Little Green Footballs, Michelle Maklin, the Jawa Report, the unlinkable Memeorandum, and my good friend at Gateway Pundit. Regulars here know that I’m completely disgusted with Bush’s own appeasement of Kim Jong Il, but while you’re here, don’t miss the story of Esther Kim, an Obama constituent whose husband was kidnapped and killed by the North Koreans. Obama inspired her Hope, then crushed it with Change.]
The Chosun Sinbo, the mouthpiece of North Korea’s Japanese front organization Chongryon and often for the North Korean regime itself, has announced its preference for Obama over McCain, whom it calls “a variant of Bush” and “nothing better than a scarecrow of neoconservatives,” which is a bit odd considering that the Bush Administration’s giveaway diplomacy is better for Kim Jong Il than even Clinton’s awful performance.
[Update 2: Original Korean here:
조선반도와의 관계에서 본다면 부쉬정권의 잘못을 엄하게 비판하고 조선의 지도자와 조건없이 만나겠다고 공언해온 오바마가 《부쉬의 아류》이자 네오콘의 허수아비나 다름없는 매케인보다 낫기는 낫다. [Chosun Shinbo]
I’m sure someone can improve on this translation:
We will see a better relationship between the U.S. and the Korean Peninsula with Obama, who sternly criticizes Bush and who would meet the leader of Chosun without pre-conditions, than with the “Bush clone” and scarecrow of the neocons McCain.
Somehow I had neglected to put the World Tribune link in there before. I’ve fixed that.]
It’s worth pausing to consider the disturbing rhetorical similarity between the Chosun Sinbo and Daily Kos, although the sheer incoherence of Bush’s North Korea policy makes any comparison to it questionable.
Bush’s North Korea policy may be a poor baseline for comparison, but the candidates themselves have given the North Koreans plenty to judge them by. Both Obama and McCain have told us how they’d deal with the North Koreans. McCain has expressed his distaste for the latest variation of Bush’s policy and emphasized his willingness to raise uncomfortable topics, including human rights. Obama has already shown a disappointing lack of consistency in holding North Korea accountable for its intolerable behavior. If I understand Obama’s policy to consist of direct summit talks, aid, and trying to coax North Korea into opening itself up, that same policy was tried for years, without success, by the South Koreans, and it’s now being tried without success by President Bush. If I understand McCain’s policy to consist of tightening sanctions until North Korea verifiably disarms, that was tried briefly by the Bush Administration and showed signs of considerable success until its inexplicable and premature abandonment.
(Bear in mind that the sanctions the Bush Administration applied for just 17 months were a pale shadow of the power we could potentially apply but did succeed in driving Kim Jong Il back to the bargaining table. When we lifted the pressure, the North Koreans resorted to form and balked at full disclosure or disarmament. And as we’ve since learned, they weren’t dealing in good faith to begin with. The key to any successful negotiation with the North Koreans is showing them that you’re fully capable and prepared to hasten and accept the collapse of the regime as an alternative.)
North Korea’s endorsement of Obama will probably draw comparisons to the unwanted Hamas endorsement of Obama. Hamas withdrew the endorsement after Obama spoke at AIPAC’s convention. Fidel Castro, by contrast, took a more sophisticated and self-aware approach:
[O]n Monday [Castro] gave Senator Barack Obama an endorsement of sorts, calling him “the most progressive candidate to the U.S. presidency” while also berating him for his plan to continue the trade embargo against Cuba. “Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries an enormous favor,” Mr. Castro said. “I have therefore no reservations about criticizing him.” [N.Y. Times, The Caucus]
Which Castro then proceeded to do, on Obama’s stated support for trade sanctions during a campaign speech to Cuban exiles in Miami.
The Republicans’ efforts to capitalize on the Hamas endorsement made me slightly squeamish, because there are separate issues here that shouldn’t be mixed. It isn’t fair for anyone to imply, based on an unwanted endorsement, that a candidate in any way supports the endorsing entity’s ideology or actions. It is fair to ask whether the endorsement suggests that the endorsing entity knows something about the candidate. Why would Hamas or Kim Jong Il both believe that if Obama is elected, his policies would mean boom times for evildoers? Are they wrong?
Finally, as with Ron Paul’s refusal to return contributions from white supremacists, it’s reasonable to demand that a candidate unambiguously disavow the endorsement and denounce the endorser. In the case of Hamas, Obama rightly did this. Given that North Korea’s human rights atrocities are as repellent as any since the Khmer Rouge was driven from Phnom Penh 30 years ago, Obama has both the duty to speak out about the evils happening in North Korea today and an opportunity to refute those who say he would merely appease tyrants.
Update 3: Now I’m been linked by the Hillary Clinton forum:
One of the reasons he supports Obama is that he knows he’s a fool and Obama flip flopped on removing N. Korea (de-listing) from the terrorist nation list. He NOW says he would remove them even though they haven’t divulged the whereabouts of Rev. Kim (a legal US citizen living in N. Korea). See my post about compiling a list of Obama’s broken promises.
This needs to be blogged and sent everywhere!! Obama is a very dangerous man! Fearing him is not paranoia. It is rational thought!
Update 4: Thanks to Ace, Neal Boortz, and the Freepers for linking.
And we have dredged a swamp. Pandagon, which will forever be remembered (by most of those who do at all, at least) as an embarrassment to the John Edwards campaign, offers a characteristically incoherent and foul rant. Your thirteen minutes are over, ladies. I can say “ladies,” can’t I? See your doctor if any of that seems coherent to you. I didn’t think we could set a lower bar, but Kos diarist “Gramarye” links with this fatwa calling for prayers for Michelle Malkin’s death. No, seriously:
According to her blog,
Take me now, Lord. My life as a blogger is complete.
[….]
So let’s all help Michelle’s request along and say a little prayer to the Lord. [….] But I have HOPE for Michelle’s plea. [Daily Kos]
Hey, they have standards to uphold over there. Yes, I kept screenshots. To be fair, even most of the Kos commenters are aghast.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 22, 2008 at 9:54 am · Filed under Famine & Food Aid
Good Friends had previously passed along rumors that an avian flu epidemic is spreading through northeastern North Korea. Now, the regime is denying that, for whatever it’s worth.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on June 20, 2008 at 4:19 pm · Filed under Six-Party Talks, Appeasement, Refugees, Diplomacy, Abductions, Washington Views, U.S. Politics
Chris Hill is the man in whom Congress will have to invest its trust if it decides to throw away America’s leverage and let the State Department de-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism this summer. The terms of Hill’s deal with Kim Jong Il are so hopelessly vague and endlessly flexible that the viability of this whole process rests on two thin and brittle reeds: Kim Jong Il’s good faith and Chris Hill’s veracity. Enough said? If not, read on.
Today, Hill’s credibility finds itself wedged between Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post and one Professor Yoichi Shimada, a Professor of International Relations at Fukui Prefectural University in Japan and a well-known activist on behalf of Japanese abducted by North Korea. Shimada is sufficiently well regarded to have testified before the House International Relations Committee in April 2006. At issue is a letter Shimada says he delivered to Hill from the widow of Rev. Kim Dong Shik, a wheelchair-bound missionary, lawful permanent U.S. resident, and humanitarian who was trying to rescue North Korean refugees. The North Koreans kidnapped Rev. Kim in China in 2001, carried him back to North Korea (without China’s knowledge, we must suppose), and starved him to death, thus consigning him to the same fate as millions of North Koreans.
In his June 18th article about Rev. Kim and the government that forgot him, Kessler writes:
Advocates for Japanese abductees met last November in Washington with Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, the administration’s chief negotiator with North Korea, and say they handed him a letter from Kim’s wife urging the administration to demand a full accounting of her husband’s fate. “How can it be true that North Korea is no longer a terror-sponsoring nation,” the letter asked, when Kim “was kidnapped and his fate is still not known to us?”
Yoichi Shimada, a Japanese professor who accompanied a Japanese lawmaker to the meeting, said that when they gave Hill the letter, “we reiterated that the abduction issue was not a Japan-NK bilateral one but an international one involving even a U.S. permanent resident.” He said Hill made no comment.
Kim’s wife said she did not receive a reply. Hill has no memory of receiving her letter, a State Department official said, but would answer it if she re-sent it.
“We are concerned about this case and all the other cases of abductions,” Hill said in a statement. “I have raised repeatedly with North Korea the need to address concerns about the abduction issue, not only with respect to Japan, but other countries as well, including South Korea.” [Washington Post, Glenn Kessler; emphasis mine]
Significantly, Kessler can barely contain his crush on Hill and features him prominently in a book he’s now hawking. Perhaps unwittingly, Kessler sets Hill up to be directly refuted by Prof. Shimada, to whom I wrote today, and who gave me permission to publish his response:
Since the meeting on Nov. 15th, 2007, was held as one between the Japanese delegation and Chris Hill, Mrs. Kim Don-shik was not present there.
However, we handed Chris Hill her letter on the spot explaining abduction was not at all Japan-NK bilateral issue like I told a Washington Post reporter.
We handed Mr. Hill, not his subordinate or anyone else, Mrs. Kim’s letter directly. Period. [E-mail message from Prof. Yoichi Shimada to OFK, June 21, 2008; emphasis mine]
Both stories can only be true if you really believe Hill simply forgot this, in which case he must concede his own callousness and the falsity of his expressions of concern about Rev. Kim’s kidnapping and death.
The other possibility is that he didn’t forget. I believe I previously caught Hill lying to an assemblage of reporters last year when he denied having had “a chance” to review North Korea’s nuclear declaration during a November 2007 visit to Pyongyang. The North Koreans later alleged, and State was forced to admit, that they offered a declaration that was so facially deficent that State refused to accept it. Hill had a motive to deny the abortive declaration to conceal North Korea’s bad faith. (A rumor passed along by a friend is that the North simply re-offered its old 1994 declaration, which Hill refused to accept. I’ve never heard Hill’s or State’s explanation for this, but Victor Cha bravely obfuscates in an effort to defend Hill despite Cha’s evident distaste for Hill’s media exhibitionism — see the bottom of page 1.)
On a related note, we are still awaiting word from the General Accountability Office as to whether the April 2007 return of millions in criminally derived funds from a Macau bank to the North Korean regime, at Hill’s urging, violated U.S. money laundering laws, to say nothing of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718.
At the very least, someone should explain to Mrs. Kim why everyone in her government from either party has betrayed her, her husband, their children, and the cause for which he gave his life at a time when President Bush was paying it the supreme tribute of false words. Just so that we can dispense with the nonsense that State hasn’t seen Mrs. Kim’s letter, I’ve uploaded the full text:
mrs-kim-dong-shik-letter-to-hill1.doc
You may say that the story of Rev. Kim Dong Shik is only the story of one man who lies dead and buried a nation filled with mass graves. You might argue the situational ethics of subordinating the interests of those who knew and loved him to the security of millions, if only Hill’s diplomacy were remotely likely to produce such a result. But there is more significance to the story of Kim Dong Shik than the little white lie of absolving Kim Jong Il of terrorism. This story is a microcosm of North Korea’s refusal to conform its behavior to any norms of civilization, and of America’s endless willingness to accommodate itself to Kim Jong Il’s every lie, insult, threat, crime, and atrocity. Not only does it illustrate why we can’t trust Kim Jong Il, it illustrates why we cannot trust Chris Hill.
Kim Jong Il won’t give up his nukes, ever. His own minions have has told us so, if we’re willing to listen. Not even Chris Hill could possibly believe otherwise. If Hill has other motives for pressing on with his failing initiative, he should explain what they are so that we can have an honest discussion about them. Given the fact that State, on Hill’s advice, has put off demanding up-front disclosure or disarmament for the foreseeable future, we’re entitled to be skeptical about a process that has descended into diplomatic onanism, because we’re only negotiating against ourselves now.
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