Archive for June, 2009
Posted by Joshua on June 30, 2009 at 2:38 pm · Filed under "United" Nations, Proliferation, Sanctions
U.S. officials said Tuesday that a North Korean ship has turned around and is headed back in the direction it came from, after being tracked for more than a week by American Navy vessels on suspicion of carrying illegal weapons.
The move keeps the U.S. and the rest of the international community guessing: Where is the Kana Nam going? Does its cargo include materials banned by a new U.N. anti-proliferation resolution? [AP, Pauline Jelinek]
The ship apparently turned around last Sunday, and we’re just finding out now.
What happened? I can offer some guesses:
- Burma, or whatever the destination was, decided that it didn’t want this headache and waved them off, or made it known that it would inspect the cargo in port. If so, that might be the result of honest-to-goodness smart diplomacy, for which the administration deserves some cred.
- The old rust bucket threw a rod.
- The old rust bucket didn’t have enough fuel to make it to a “safe” port.
- We made it known that we were prepared to stop and board the ship. Also smart diplomacy, if true.
If you’re so inclined, you can add a fifth possibility:
- Kim Jong Il bowed to the awesome moral authority of an unenforceable U.N. resolution.
One thing is certain: whatever is in those cargo holds, the North Koreans don’t want us to know what it is.
Posted by Joshua on June 30, 2009 at 12:30 pm · Filed under WTF?, Kim Jong Il
What other explanation could there possibly be for Kim Jong Il to be photographed while wearing a heavy winter coat in June?
It’s stuff like this that makes North Korea such a delight for everyone who lives somewhere else.
Posted by Joshua on June 30, 2009 at 11:33 am · Filed under Sunshine, North-South
About one-fifth of South Koreans think North Korea is trustworthy, a poll said Thursday, the lowest level in a decade amid heightened tension over the communist state’s recent belligerent acts.
The survey by Hyundai Economic Research Institute, a Seoul-based private think tank, showed 22.2 percent of the 623 respondents felt that North Korea could be trusted as a “partner for dialogue.” [Yonhap]
That’s down from a high of 52.3 percent in 2000, after the summit between Kim Jong Il and Kim Dae Jung, and before it emerged that DJ has paid somewhere around half a billion dollars for the privilege.
Posted by Joshua on June 30, 2009 at 10:44 am · Filed under Washington Views, Money Laundering, Sanctions
A year ago, who would have suspected that we’d be celebrating the replacement of a liberal accommodationist named George W. Bush with a hard line neocon named Barack Obama, who would finally show signs of grasping not just the reality of North Korea’s bad faith, but some of the very best tools for breaking it? Christine Ahn’s misery (and Selig Harrison’s, and Leon Sigal’s) is my pleasure:
The Treasury Department’s 2005 blacklisting of Macau’s Banco Delta Asia, which held a large number of North Korea accounts, is viewed today as a model for how the private sector can punish rogue states. The Treasury didn’t initially ban U.S. firms from engaging the bank, but simply warned that such transactions risked skirting U.S. law. The result was a run on the bank’s accounts and a contagion effect that nearly froze North Korea out of the international banking system in 2006, said current and former U.S. officials.
Mr. Bush eventually eased the clampdown as an incentive for North Korea pushing ahead with disarmament talks.
Senior Obama administration officials say this decision was a mistake that eased pressure on Pyongyang before it took irreversible steps to dismantle its nuclear program. They also said it reaffirmed Pyongyang’s belief that it could use international diplomacy to win economic concessions from the U.S. [Wall Street Journal, Jay Solomon]
How many layers of irony can you identify there? For one, Christopher Hill was not available for comment. For another, it should be a caution to ignore those who analyze Korea policy in strictly partisan terms, as shallow observers (Klein, Froomkin, etc.) tend to do when North Korea hits the headlines and their editors task them with writing about something they don’t really know much about. In practice, the partisan affiliation of the president in power has been a very poor predictor of the president’s actual policy.
The White House isn’t playing coy about its implementation of Plan B, as demonstrated by the fact that yesterday, the White House brought in some “senior administration officials” to the Press Secretary’s office and held a briefing for reporters. The full text of that briefing is below the jump (thanks to a reader and friend). That’s an unusual step, and one clearly designed to generate news coverage — such as the Wall Street Journal story I’ll quote momentarily — and show the American people that President Obama is “getting tough” with the North Koreans. The test will be Obama’s persistence, but for now, his people are certainly saying the right things:
“We want to get out of the mindset where the North Koreans are conditioned that these are somehow temporary measures that we’ll renegotiate with them at various occasions,” said a senior Obama administration official involved in the diplomacy.
They’re also saying that this time, sanctions will be more comprehensive:
U.S. officials said Treasury’s targeting of a wider number of North Korean banks could potentially have a much more punishing effect on Kim Jong Il than the lone BDA action. These officials also said Pyongyang’s recent second nuclear test and a string of missile tests have hardened the resolve of the international community to punish Pyongyang.
Yesterday, I said one of the things to watch was whether Treasury would go on tour, talking to foreign bankers and officials about avoiding North Korea’s business. We learn today that they are, and “they,” specifically, means the same people who went on tour in 2005 and 2006:
Two of the architects of Mr. Bush’s action against Banco Delta Asia, the Treasury Department’s Stuart Levey and Daniel Glaser, are overseeing President Barack Obama’s financial clampdown on North Korea, said U.S. officials.
Last week, the White House named Ambassador Philip Goldberg, who served in Bolivia before his expulsion by the government there last year, to head an interagency body focused on implementing the North Korea sanctions. Messrs. Goldberg and Glaser are scheduled to travel to China and Southeast Asia in the coming week to seek consensus on targeting Pyongyang’s finances.
For now, with respect to the creation of a more effective diplomatic strategy, all the stars are aligning correctly. Now, all President Obama has to do is stick with it until (a) North Korea is verifiably disarmed, which I don’t expect; or (b) the regime, probably for a combination of reasons, finally cracks. The question now is whether President Obama is prepared to press this plan to either alternative.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua on June 30, 2009 at 5:18 am · Filed under NK Economics
The Egyptian conglomerate that is rebuilding the Ryugyong Hotel, and whose relationship with North Korea showed signs of trouble several months ago, is reporting that it’s actually selling mobile phones to North Koreans:
Egypt-based mobile operator Orascom Telecom earned US$312,000 in first-quarter sales this year from its mobile service in North Korea on surging demand among the communist nation’s upper class, a company press release said Thursday.
More than 19,200 people have signed up for Orascom’s mobile phone service as of March since it began with 5,300 subscribers last December, according to the firm’s report on its first quarter earnings in 2009. [Yonhap]
The Joongang Ilbo adds:
Naguib Sawiris, the firm’s chief executive, said in a conference in Seoul last week the number of subscribers hit 40,000 in April and is expected to break the 100,000 mark by the end of this year. [Joongang Ilbo]
I admit to some ambivalence about this. On one hand, the greatest obstacle to the subversion of the regime is the mutual isolation of its subjects. To the extent the proliferation of mobile phones affects that, it’s a positive development. Frankly, I’m amazed that the regime is letting this many subjects have cell phones at all. Unfortunately, the regime has certainly thought of these risks, too; as a result, the phones will be heavily monitored and restricted to the trusted elite. They’re also part of a transaction that must be highly profitable for the regime.
The debate may be academic anyway. With tough new sanctions apparently on the way, it’s hard to imagine how Orascom can finance its operations or recoup its profits. Next quarter’s results will be more telling.
Posted by Joshua on June 29, 2009 at 10:14 am · Filed under Diplomacy, Washington Views, Money Laundering, U.S. Politics, Sanctions
The Washington Post is reporting that President Obama is forming an inter-agency team, much like the Illicit Activities Initiative that David Asher headed in G.W. Bush’s first term, to coordinate sanctions against North Korea:
The White House is forming an interagency team to coordinate sanctions efforts against North Korea with other nations, senior administration officials said yesterday. The team will be led by Philip S. Goldberg, a former ambassador to Bolivia who is slated to leave for China in the near future as the United States seeks concerted action to punish North Korea for recently conducting a second nuclear test. [Washington Post, Michael D. Shear]
Goldberg is an interesting choice to head the project. Like OFK nemesis Christopher Hill, Goldberg previously served in Bosnia and appears to be a crony of Richard Holbrooke. But on a more encouraging note, while serving as U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Goldberg was accused of supporting the opposition, declared a “persona non grata,” and expelled by leftist thug Evo Morales. For now, Goldberg’s mission in life will be to squeeze Kim Jong Il:
“There is a broad consensus about the need to have a focused and engaged effort to see that these sanctions are implemented . . . and that we’re sharing information with each other,” one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The officials said they are hoping the group — with representatives from the State Department, the White House, the National Security Agency, the Treasury Department and others — will help “shine a spotlight” on Pyongyang’s actions.
“We wanted somebody who woke up every morning and thought about nothing but sanctions implementation,” one official said. “It’s a huge difference when you have somebody who isn’t worried about any of the other aspects of this.” [….]
Administration officials say they will not stop pursuing sanctions unless North Korea takes “irreversible steps” to dismantle its program to show it is serious about talks. [Washington Post, Michael D. Shear]
The New York Times adds:
The administration is focusing much of its efforts on freezing assets and cutting off financial flows that support North Korea’s trade in weapons, missiles and nuclear technology. These efforts are being led by Stuart A. Levey, an under secretary of the Treasury, who was one of the few senior members of the Bush administration to be held over by President Obama.
The appointment of Mr. Goldberg is intended partly to head off the kind of turf battles that have grown out of Mr. Levey’s actions. For example, in 2005, the Treasury Department moved against an obscure bank based in Macao that handled transactions for the North Korean government, a campaign widely regarded as one of the most successful efforts to squeeze the North.
But later, when the State Department was trying to negotiate with North Korea over its nuclear program, the Treasury sanctions against the bank proved to be an irritant, and difficult to unwind.
Mr. Goldberg’s primary task, another administration official said, would be “to make sure there is broader interagency coordination,” not just between the State Department and the Treasury, but also the Pentagon, the Commerce Department and the Department of Homeland Security. [N.Y. Times, Mark Landler]
For now, Obama is probably doing what a consummate politician always does — trying to stay on the right side of the mood in Congress and public opinion. Both have turned surly:
Obama told CBS, “What we’re not going to do is to reward belligerence and provocation.”
A diplomatic source in Washington who is familiar with the Obama administration’s Korea policy said the strengthened position of the U.S. government is a reflection of the public anger mounting against North Korea. “Most Americans are worried and angered by the North’s missile and nuclear threats, especially during this tough economic situation,” the source said.
A Gallup poll conducted last week suggested that 51 percent of Americans believe North Korea poses the greatest direct threat to U.S. security. About 46 percent said Iran was a direct threat to the United States, while 35 percent said Iraq and 35 percent, Afghanistan.
In a recent poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and MSNBC, more Americans appear to support military action against North Korea than those opposing it. In a similar poll conducted shortly after the North’s first nuclear test in October 2006, the public was split over possible U.S. military action.
A prominent U.S. politician also toughened his position toward the North. Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Senator John McCain said the U.S. military should board North Korean ships even without North Korea’s permission if there is evidence the vessel is carrying cargo in violation of UN resolutions. [Joongang Ilbo]
Conservatives continue to criticize Obama for a weak response to North Korea. Some of the criticism, particularly that which suggests a direct military option, is extremely ill advised. Some of the criticism has merits: in particular, Obama’s diplomats at the U.N. should have insisted on the right to board North Korean WMD ships on the high seas, by force if necessary. The futile tracking of the Kang Nam I illustrates this.
On the other hand, President Obama’s emerging economic strategy against North Korea is, for now, shaping up exactly as it should. With a single alert issued by the Treasury Department, President Obama may have focused more economic pressure on the North Koreans than President Bush ever did. Obama should also be credited for not kowtowing to North Korea’s belligerence and seeking another pointless Agreed Framework, as Bush ultimately did. President Obama still needs to do much more. Watch for the following signs:
- Will President Obama ask the Democratic leadership in Congress to work with Republicans who are now drafting tough economic sanctions legislation against North Korea? That legislation, of which I’ve seen drafts, would empower the President to implement UNSCR 1718 and 1874 as intended, and to put real economic pressure on the regime. If Senators Reid and Kerry, and Representatives Pelosi and Berman, continue to balk at supporting this legislation, it suggests either that President Obama isn’t seeking more powerful tools against the Kim dynasty or isn’t taking a coordinated approach to applying them.
- Will senior Treasury Department officials go back on tour to speak to bankers in Russia, Switzerland, and China to discourage them from doing business with North Korea? Will they make subtle hints or leaks against banks that don’t initially cooperate?
- Will the Treasury Department designate North Korea — its entire government — as an entity of primary money laundering concern under the PATRIOT Act amendments to the Bank Secrecy Act? In particular, watch for which special measures Treasury imposes under Section 5318A of Title 31. The most powerful of these, the Fifth Special Measure, would completely sever North Korea’s links to the international financial system and do severe harm to its ability to feed and pay its military and elite.
- Will the Justice Department issue indictments against North Korea for its counterfeiting of U.S. currency? Several months ago, I was informed by a reliable and knowledgeable source that during President Bush’s first term, Justice Department attorneys had prepared an indictment against North Korea for printing and laundering counterfeit currency. The indictment was complete and ready to be filed, but at the eleventh hour, the State Department intervened and blocked the indictment. No doubt, someone in the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section still has a copy, somewhere in a hard drive or a dusty accordion file. The time has come to dust that file off.
Each of these options would have been unthinkable in the period of time between December 2006 and May 2009, when American Presidents had invested their policies in Kim Jong Il’s good faith. Certainly, this does not exhaust the options for us to pressure the Kim dynasty. The greatest threat to his system of government continues to be the great majority of his own population, which overwhelmingly resents its government, but in a manner that’s probably unfocused, misdirected, and without real hope for realizing a better system. The most effective pressure would be to extend our subversive outreach to their discontent. Of this, I intend to say much more another day.
Treasury acknowledges that economic pressure will take time to “bite.” How much time? Treasury levied sanctions on Banco Delta Asia in September 2005, and by December 2006, North Korea’s regime was beginning to experience a degree of the economic distress to which it has subjected its people for decades. They sought out Chris Hill, looking for a way to take the pressure off, and found a willing accomplice. It’s hard to say how much longer it would have taken for the pressure to build sufficiently to allow Hill to get a much better deal — one with strict deadlines, an admission of the uranium enrichment program, and a commitment to real transparency.
It’s also worth remembering that last time, economic pressure was effective in spite of Chinese and South Korean efforts to undermine it. South Korea has since flipped back to our side; its aid to North Korea has fallen dramatically, and it will fall much further when the terminal illness of the Kaesong Industrial Park terminates. China is already balking at the financial provisions of UNSCR 1874 and signaling that it will not impose sanctions, which was to be expected but should not be tolerated. Our goal should be to pressure China sufficiently to prevent it from effectively offsetting and undermining the effect of the combined sanctions of the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Europe. The pressure begins with abandoning the pretense of unity:
“China has been unhelpful, especially on the issue of North Korea,” said McCain, his party’s 2008 presidential candidate, as he and two other leading senators unveiled plans for legislation to help Iranian dissidents.
“I think it’s time we told the Chinese that an important part of our relationship is how they react as far as North Korea is conncerned, but also as far as Iran is concerned,” the Arizona lawmaker added. [AFP]
If President Obama can manage to block Chinese enabling of North Korea while other nations constrict it, it’s reasonable to believe that by the end of his first term, North Korea can be forced into permanent and irreversible disarmament of all of the weapons we know about, or which our inspectors are allowed to find.
The limitations of this are obvious — the combination of our intelligence assessments and North Korea’s disclosures will almost certainly fall short of North Korea’s full WMD capability, and the greatest danger to effecting lasting disarmament remains President Obama’s unpredicatable commitment to sustaining economic pressure until it achieves concrete national security objectives. Obama’s supporters on the extreme left have already rebelled against his tougher approach, and when North Korea expresses a willingness to deal again, Obama will be sorely tempted to secure a deal — even an imperfect one that gets worse as North Korea steadily balks at and reneges on key terms. This is how North Korea always slips away without disarming. The best defense against this tactic is to keep sanctions in effect with full force until all of the Yongbyon facilities are completely destroyed, along with what we assess to be North Korea’s complete nuclear arsenal, stockpiles of fissile material, and uranium enrichment program.
If North Korea shows no interest in those terms, of course, there’s always the alternative of turning the screws until a different Korean leader gains control over North Korea’s nuclear programs. Here, I speak not of Kim Jong Un, but of Lee Myung Bak.
Posted by Joshua on June 29, 2009 at 8:24 am · Filed under NK Economics, China, WMD, NK Military, Proliferation
China, which the unmitigated chutzpah we’ve come to expect of it, reassures us that it is “deeply committed” to the enforcement of UNSCR 1874. Today, Blaine Harden of the Washington Post reports the facts that shatter that mendacious claim. In a new report, he provides fresh evidence of China’s economic colonization of North Korea, which fits neatly with its agenda of undermining U.N. sanctions against the North. It’s a must-read, but here’s a money quote:
As U.N. sanctions mount and business between the two Koreas fizzles, North Korea’s trade with China is setting new records. It rose 41 percent last year, while China’s share of the North’s overseas trade mushroomed to 73 percent. [….]
By funneling hard currency to the military, Chinese enterprises seem to be insulating the confrontational core of Kim’s government from the international consequences of its behavior. “To the extent that these transactions are increasingly controlled by government entities, particularly the military, North Korea’s response to sanctions and diplomatic concerns are almost surely diminished,” said Marcus Noland, a North Korea expert at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. [Washington Post, Blaine Harden]
What’s interesting (and mildly encouraging) is that virtually no one in our government appears to believe China’s protestations of good faith:
“They are certainly saying quite strenuously that they are deeply committed to full implementation of the provisions that are in the resolution,” the senior administration official said, referring to China.”The real test now will be in implementation,” the official said.
“We are going to obviously take their word seriously, but we’ll see in the end what they are prepared to do.”
Beijing is often criticized in the United States for its willingness to join, or carry out tough sanctions regimes against North Korea, particularly in congressional circles.
On Thursday, Republican Senator John McCain said that China had been “unhelpful, especially on the issue of North Korea.”
“I think it’s time we told the Chinese that an important part of our relationship is how they react as far as North Korea is concerned, but also as far as Iran is concerned,” the defeated 2008 presidential candidate said. [AFP]
As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, China not only shields North Korea from the consequences of its threats to the security of the world and its atrocities against the North Korean people, China is also a co-conspirator and partner in North Korea’s proliferation industry. The United States should identify the Chinese entities that are enabling and enriching the North Korean military and sanction them under Executive Order 13382. It may also be time to consider adding new and greater authorities to that executive order, under which Chinese companies have been sanctioned repeatedly.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua on June 29, 2009 at 5:56 am · Filed under "United" Nations, Proliferation
The United States said it was monitoring “multiple” North Korean ships suspected of carrying weapons and that it would discuss with its allies what to do with one suspect vessel it is tracking.While the United States has been tracking the Kang Nam since last week, the Pentagon said it is closely monitoring several other North Korean ships allegedly carrying weapons. “We have been interested in this one ship [the Kang Nam], but we’ve been interested in, frankly, multiple ships,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. [Joongang Ilbo]
UNSCR 1874 clearly prohibits North Korea’s weapons trade and deliberately fails to give any member state an effective way to enforce it. Because China is intentionally trying to thwart sanctions against North Korea, and because of the unhappy accident of Burma’s location as an idea way station to the Middle East, North Korea can go on trading in prohibited weapons despite UNSCR 1874. Congressional Republicans are, quite rightly, dismayed about this:
McCain dismissed “toothless” UN sanctions to curb North Korea’s alleged spread of weapons and nuclear know-how, pointing to news reports that a North Korean ship, potentially carrying arms, was headed for Myanmar. [AFP]
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell added this:
The United States needs to “figure out some way” to board and search North Korean ships suspected of carrying weapons or nuclear know-how, a senior US lawmaker said Thursday.
“There’s no question that our goal here ought to be to get into a position to board and search these ships,” said Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who described as toothless a UN Security Council resolution adopted two weeks ago that calls for inspections of ships but rules out the use of military force to back up the searches.
“It has some serious limitations,” he told AFP, underlining that North Korea would have to consent to a search on the high seas, which the secretive Stalinist regime has made clear it will never do.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua on June 28, 2009 at 5:17 pm · Filed under Diplomacy, Washington Views, U.S. Politics, Sanctions
Now, he’s holding the nomination of Kurt Campbell to replace Chris Hill as Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Recently, Brownback has used the power of the nomination hold to become the congressional oversight over State’s spectacularly unsuccessful North Korea policy that no one on the Foreign Relations Committee is willing to be. He’s brought a degree of public scrutiny to some of State’s dumbest decisions, and has managed to slow down — but not stop — the steamroller that was trying to give North Korea every conceivable concession, even as North Korea reneged on all of its commitments.
Senator Brownback is working with colleagues in the Senate on a very strong North Korea sanctions bill. To the extent my views matter here, the price of lifting the hold on Campbell ought to be forcing Harry Reid and John Kerry to give Brownback’s bill get a vote in the full Senate.
Posted by Jodi Kiely on June 28, 2009 at 10:28 am · Filed under North Korea, China, Regime Change
Had an interesting conversation this weekend with a North Korea watcher where for the first time, the idea of reunification seems realistic and within reach, yet at the same time, also at risk. It all has to do with the current health of Kim Jong Il who appears to be hanging on by a thread, the relatively short grooming period of his son to succeed him, and of course, China and the U.S. But not South Korea interestingly… Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua on June 28, 2009 at 10:04 am · Filed under Counterfeiting, Money Laundering, NK Crime, Sanctions
It’s very short on specifics, but it’s the first published report affirmatively linking those fake bonds to North Korea:
An Italian newspaper reports a recent mysterious case involving US$134.5 billion worth of counterfeit bonds has a North Korea connection. Earlier this month two Japanese nationals were caught in Italy allegedly trying to smuggle the bonds into Switzerland.
Il Messaggero says the fake bonds may have been manufactured in North Korea since the two men are North Korean agents and are believed to have been seeking to purchase weapons. [Chosun Ilbo]
When the Justice Department first indicted the former IRA terrorist, Stalinist splinter cell leader, and alleged supernote co-conspirator Sean Garland, it claimed that one of the purposes of the plot was to destroy the U.S. economy. North Korea appears not to have printed anywhere near enough supernotes to do that, but printing good facsimiles of bearer bonds worth billions would be another matter entirely. Fortunately, the bonds appear to have been obvious fakes, despite the good quality of the printing:
“They are all fraudulent, it’s obvious. We don’t even have paper securities outstanding for that value,’’ said Mckayla Braden, senior adviser for public affairs at the Bureau of Public Debt at the US Treasury department. “This type of scam has been going on for years.’’
The Treasury has not issued physical Treasury bonds since the 1980s – they are handled electronically – though they still issue savings bonds in paper format.
In Washington a US Secret Service official said the agency, which is working with the Italian authorities, believed the bonds were fake. [Financial Times]
I will note that the Financial Times had reported that police speculation had originally focused on the Italian mafia, based on a previous alleged scam done jointly with crooked bankers in Venzuela. That report was printed ten days ago, however, so it’s possible that the investigation has developed further since then.
Either way, it seems odd that Italian police later released the two Japanese men, despite having caught them with the bonds in false-bottom suitcases. Although both men were holding Japanese passports, the Japanese government professes not to have been told who these guys were.
Previous posts on North Korean supernote counterfeiting here and here.
Posted by Joshua on June 26, 2009 at 1:25 pm · Filed under China, "United" Nations, Proliferation
The North Korean ship Kang Nam I may be carrying missiles to Burma, and then again, it may be headed for a stopover in Burma as it transits to points west. And then again, it may merely be carrying “small” arms and bullets for shooting dissidents and uppity monks (for which their next of kin will be duly billed). The official Burmese version is that they aren’t expecting the Kang Nam I in any of their ports.
For some reason, however, the U.S.S. John S. McCain has tracked the Kang Nam I all the way from the Yellow Sea though the Taiwan Strait at taxpayer expense, just so that we can flash a green light at it:
The United States will not use force to inspect a North Korean ship suspected of carrying banned goods, an American official was quoted as saying Friday.
An American destroyer has been shadowing the North Korean freighter sailing off China’s coast, possibly on its way to Myanmar. [AP]
Whatever the Chinese slipped in Ban Ki Moon’s drink has had the desired effect; this is how U.N. resolutions die within weeks of being passed. Through the simple artifice of allying itself with other nations that are willing to disregard the U.N.’s writ, North Korea can flout its practical impunity to proliferate at will. Tell me I’m wrong:
Flournoy said the U.S. still has “incentives and disincentives that will get North Korea to change course.”
“Everything remains on the table, but we’re focused on implementing the resolution fully, responsibly and with our international partners,” she said.
Given that we were still seeking the cooperation of those “partners” a few days ago, I can see how our smart, tough new diplomacy worked for us. Those partners can be forgiven for reaching the same conclusion that I did — that there’s no apparent legal authority in UNSCR 1874 or anywhere else to board this ship by force.
Of course, they could also be forgiven for concluding (as I also did) that some liberties must be taken with any law that becomes a gift certificate for a session with Dr. Kevorkian. The best venue for taking those liberties might have been the Strait of Malacca, where the Kang Nam I would have had to pass within the territorial waters of Singapore, Malaysia, and/or Indonesia.
So now, all that’s really left to do is to awaken in rage at how China has spent the last two decades date-raping our diplomats and the entire United Nations while it helped North Korea go nuclear and shielded it from the consequences of doing so. Which brings us right back to the same “incentives” and hobbled disincentives that never worked before and never will.
Say, do you taste something funny in your drink? Me neither.
Posted by Joshua on June 26, 2009 at 11:14 am · Filed under Propaganda
Take two drinks; they said “brigandish” two more times.
Posted by Joshua on June 26, 2009 at 6:50 am · Filed under China & Korea, Kremlinology, "United" Nations
A recent report claims that even as North Korea was preparing missile and nuclear tests, China helped North Korea flout a U.N. Security Council Resolution for which it voted and which it has promised to implement in good faith. UNSCR 1718, in effect since October 2006, bans the export of luxury goods to North Korea. It has since been reinforced by UNSCR 1874:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il doled out foreign-made cars to senior intelligence officials to ensure their loyalty to his youngest son when he put the 26-year-old in charge of the country’s powerful spy agency, a report said Wednesday.
This report comes by way of the Donga Ilbo, quoting unnamed sources, so take it for what it’s worth. The Donga hasn’t posted an English version of the story yet.
Five luxury cars, each worth some $80,000, were given as gifts to the officials, it said. The paper did not say which cars were given, but Kim has long been known to favor Mercedes and French wine as gifts to ensure his inner circle’s loyalty. [AP, Jae Soon Chang]
So obviously, the world’s purest, most egalitarian socialist paradise has ended poverty, hunger, and mass starvation once and for all. Just to add some perspective, about 30% of North Koreans live hand-to-mouth, our best estimate of its per capita income is just over $900 a year, and Kim Jong Il personally owns 200 S-Class Sedans.
Clearly, Kim Jong Il has money to burn these days. Any guesses on where it could have come from, if not China? China has also helped Kim Jong Il find ways to spend it, since rice and infant formula appear not to have occurred to the planners in Pyongyang:
Meanwhile, the U.N. resolution left the definition of luxury goods and the implementation of the embargo up to individual countries, enabling Russia to exclude watches under $2,000 and fur coats under $10,000. China—North Korea’s largest trade partner—declined to even publish a list of embargoed goods, and it appears that Chinese luxury exports to the North actually increased. Such goodies matter greatly to Kim, who uses handouts, ranging from Mercedes sedans to Hennessy cognac, to buy political loyalty. [Marcus Noland, Newsweek]
Whatever pressure we’ve put on the Chinese not to undermine these sanctions, it obviously hasn’t been enough. We’ll know that the Obama Administration is serious about this if we start to read more leaked reports about the disparity between what China says and what it does.
Related: Senator Brownback calls for Treasury to target North Korea with money laundering sanctions, something that now seems like a real possibility.
Posted by Joshua on June 26, 2009 at 5:36 am · Filed under Propaganda
Punching their fists into the air and shouting “Let’s crush them!” some 100,000 North Koreans packed Pyongyang’s main square Thursday for an anti-U.S. rally as the communist regime promised a “fire shower of nuclear retaliation” for any American-led attack.
Several demonstrators held up a placard depicting a pair of hands smashing a missile with “U.S.” written on it, according to footage taken by APTN in Pyongyang on the anniversary of the day North Korean troops charged southward, sparking the three-year Korean War in 1950.
North Korean troops will respond to any sanctions or U.S. provocations with “an annihilating blow,” one senior official vowed …. [AP]
You know, I thought the North Koreans would be a lot nicer by now, without George W. Bush around saying all those mean things about them.
·
Next entries »