Archive for May, 2010
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 31, 2010 at 11:29 am · Filed under China & Korea, Counterfeiting, U.S. Law, Washington Views, Money Laundering, Sanctions, Cheonan Incident
The Joongang Ilbo is reporting that Clinton Administration alumnus and counter-proliferation expert Robert Einhorn is going to be put in charge of “streamlining the process by which it implements” international sanctions against North Korea, sanctions that are likely to be enhanced after an international investigation found that North Korea torpedoed and sank the South Korean warship Cheonan.
“The U.S. administration was seeking more efficient management of implementation of sanctions, which had been divided between the State and the Treasury departments,” the source said. “Philip Goldberg, the assistant state secretary at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, had been doubling as the implementation coordinator, but Einhorn is poised to take over.
“The U.S. government also tried to strengthen its sanctions system after the second North Korean nuclear test last year, when Goldberg was named the coordinator,” the source said. Goldberg was appointed to his Bureau of Intelligence and Research post in February.
Another source said Einhorn’s nomination is also part of the U.S. government’s efforts to follow up on President Barack Obama’s order to review “existing authorities and policies” on North Korea. Soon after South Korean President Lee Myung-bak unveiled Seoul’s countermeasures against Pyongyang Monday, the White House expressed its support and said in a statement, “This review is aimed at ensuring that we have adequate measures in place and to identify areas where adjustments would be appropriate.”
You can read more information about Philip Goldberg here and here. Previous reports suggested that he would quit as North Korea sanctions coordinator, but he continues to occupy a senior post within the State Department.
My research and inquiries about Einhorn suggest that we could do worse. He was deeply involved in negotiating Agreed Framework I, but since then, Einhorn has caught on faster than most of those in the foreign policy industry. His statement in 2007 that North Korea was “backtracking” on its promises to disarm suggests that he could see how Agreed Framework II would end a year before most reporters would see through Chris Hill’s glib deceptions.
“Aside from his knowledge of North Korean nuclear issues, Einhorn is tight with Gary Seymour, the weapons of mass destruction coordinator at the White House, and other nonproliferation officials in the Obama administration,” another source in Seoul said. “Einhorn should be able to provide leadership in his new role.
This is another good sign. The report probably means to refer to Gary Samore, an Obama Administration official whose validation of longstanding suspicions that North Korea was secretly enriching uranium departed from Democratic orthodoxy that the Bush Administration’s 2002 uranium enrichment accusations blew up a perfectly good disarmament deal with North Korea over sketchy evidence. Today, the evidence of North Korea’s cheating is so overwhelming that the Obama Administration is also insisting that North Korea disclose its uranium enrichment activities.
Is it bad news that someone from State, rather than Treasury, is going to lead the implementation effort? Yes, State ought to be handling our dealings with foreign governments, but Treasury — and I single out Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey in particular — has generally been much more determined and effective than State in making sanctions work. The last time State and Treasury confronted one another over sanctions, Chris Hill rolled Treasury and got sanctions lifted against North Korea, in spite of Treasury’s persistent belief that North Korea continues to counterfeit U.S. currency. My suspicions are fueled by this recent history, and also by the fact that the same people are running State’s East Asia Bureau and Treasury’s Bureau for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence now as during President Bush’s second term. All of the key players in both departments are holdovers or career civil servants. During the Bush Administration, the absence of strong leadership at State, the White House, and the NSC meant that more junior officials like Christopher Hill could effectively set policy. Today, the White House and the NSC seem to be setting policy for the more junior officials to implement.
What the policy will be comes down to the question of political will, but the more reliable information I’ve heard, both before and after the Cheonan report, indicates that the Obama Administration is determined to pressure Kim Jong Il rather than caving in and signing Agreed Framework III. Einhorn isn’t one who appears to favor talks for the sake of talks, at any price. There’s reason, then, for cautious optimism. The question, of course, is where the pressure is taking us. Is the objective to force Kim Jong Il back to talks? There isn’t much point in that if, as almost everyone agrees, he’ll never disarm anyway. That’s especially so when China continues to signal that it will block and undermine sanctions against North Korea, and fails to enforce the sanctions in effect now. At some point, one can only hope that the administration decides to make North Korea China’s problem by trying to destabilize the regime.
Another diplomatic source said the Obama administration needed to tighten its sanctions regime. The source said when North Korean overseas accounts were closed off by U.S. sanctions, they simply changed the name of the individual or the company which had opened the account and resumed transactions. The sanctions were aimed at banning transactions by companies or individuals suspected of involvement in the North’s weapons of mass destruction programs.
“U.S. officials have taken note of such [name-changing] practices and they’re preparing measures to eliminate them,” the source said.
At the same time, the Chosun Ilbo reports that the Obama Administration intends to devote more attention to finding and freezing Kim Jong Il’s substantial personal accounts stashed in overseas banks. This is something I’ve been calling for for years.
Sanctions against North Korea by the U.S. government are expected to focus on Kim Jong-il’s personal slush funds. The aim is to tighten the noose around Kim and the rest of the North Korean leadership rather than to increase pressure on the North Korean people, in a parallel with the 2005 freezing of what was apparently money for Kim’s private use in the Banco Delta Asia in Macau.
U.S. and South Korean intelligence are exchanging information about the bank accounts managed by a department of the North Korean Workers Party’s Central Committee codenamed “Room 39,” which manages Kim’s personal coffers. “We discovered long ago that most of the overseas bank accounts that received money from South Korean businesses involved inter-Korean projects were owned by the North Korean military,” said a South Korean government official.
I’ll just pause here to let you bask in the warm, gentle glow of Sunshine and reflect on how much kinder and gentler it has made North Korea.
Room 39 is expected to be the main target of the latest financial sanctions. It has 17 overseas offices, some 100 trading companies, a gold mine and its own bank. The $200 million to $300 million earned by subsidiary companies have gone straight into Kim’s overseas bank accounts. The director of Room 39, Jon Il-chun, is expected to face financial sanctions as well. Kim appointed Jon after the former head, Kim Tong-un, was put on a blacklist of North Korean officials by the EU in December.
The U.S. government may also freeze overseas bank accounts held by North Korea’s Reconnaissance Bureau, which is believed to have orchestrated the attack on the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan in March. But some experts say the U.S. may find it more difficult to apply financial pressure on North Korea because the North moved most of its money to accounts in China and Russia.
Are these developments connected? I can’t say for certain, but Einhorn has previously expressed support for tightening sanctions on luxury goods that support Kim Jong Il’s patronage system. The overseas accounts probably consist largely of proceeds of illicit activities, or those banned under U.N. Security Council resolutions. The funds in those accounts are probably paying for the yachts, cars, booze, and other luxuries that Kim Jong Il continues to import in violation of those resolutions.
How can the U.S. government reach those funds? I can think of at least two ways off-hand. One is to designate North Korea, Bureau 39, and/or Kim Jong Il as primary money laundering concerns under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, which would force any bank holding those accounts to freeze them, or risk losing its access to its correspondent accounts with U.S. banks. As the example of Banco Delta Asia showed, access to correspondent accounts in the United States means access to the global financial system. Depositors who are engaged in international business transactions can’t bank at an institution without that access. With the marginal rate at which banks are capitalized, even the threat of Section 311 sanctions would render most banks insolvent.
Another alternative would be to issue indictments and forfeiture counts against the North Korean accounts themselves, under 18 U.S.C. sec. 1956, our strongest money laundering statute. Because North Korea never contests litigation in U.S. courts, the Justice Department would win convictions on the criminal forfeiture counts, and correspondent accounts of the banks holding those assets would be blocked. The banks, in turn, would have to freeze the accounts to avoid absorbing the loss. Because the money laundering statute has extraterritorial jurisdiction, Justice could pursue the assets almost anywhere in the world. But how would we prove that all of the funds were proceeds of illicit activity? We wouldn’t have to. A long-standing principle of money laundering laws is that if illicit funds are “co-mingled” with legitimately derived funds, the entire amount is considered tainted and can be forfeited.
What charges would we be able to prove? First, Justice would have indicted North Korean entities for the supernote counterfeiting conspiracy years ago, had it not been for the State Department’s intervention. Second, an Australian newspaper recently reported that indictments could be forthcoming for the transactions associated with the 2009 Bangkok weapons seizure.
Finally, does the fact that many of Kim Jong Il’s funds have moved to Russian and Chinese banks put them beyond the reach of Treasury and Justice? No. Like every bank that needs access to the international monetary system, Russian and Chinese banks need their correspondent accounts in U.S. banks to operate. Back in 2005, when the Treasury Department first announced its sanctions against Banco Delta Asia, there were also reports that the Bank of China was also under suspicion. This caused such extreme consternation in the Bank of China that two years later, its officers refused to touch the frozen Banco Delta funds that both the U.S. and Chinese government wanted it to transfer back to North Korea to facilitate Agreed Framework II. For China’s government, the downside of its transition to a market economy is that even it doesn’t have complete control over its capital. And in the face of any hint of a Treasury Department investigation, capital is a coward.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 29, 2010 at 1:14 pm · Filed under Propaganda, Subversion
The ROK government is still sending people to question the balloon people, but it’s not the Unification Ministry anymore. Even the Lee Administration clearly wasn’t comfortable with their activities. Now, however, it’s the boys from ROK Army psyops that are asking the questions. Although it’s not completely clear from this Joongang Ilbo article, I take this as a good sign:
“Only a while ago, we had officials from the Unification Ministry telling us to refrain from sending leaflets,” said Park Sang-hak, head of the civic group. “But I guess the government stance has changed since.”
The JoongAng Ilbo interviewed Park, 42, on Wednesday, the same day he was visited by two Defense Ministry officials handling psychological operations. Park - an old hand at these interrogations, having been questioned by police a dozen times during previous administrations whose policy was to engage North Korea - was grilled about who wrote the messages on the leaflets, and how the group was printing them. Park later gave the officials samples of the leaflets, as well as a CD containing videos showing how they are produced.
Lots of interesting stuff in that article about how the balloons work; I recommend you read the whole thing.
The Army’s money might be best spent by simply supporting Park’s group, since North Koreans may be the most knowledgeable about what messages might appeal to other North Koreans. If you want to contribute to the leaflet campaign, you can do so through the North Korean Freedom Coalition.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 29, 2010 at 10:14 am · Filed under WTF?, Cheonan Incident
Another day, another chutzpah record broken in Pyongyang:
“The South Korean puppet regime’s faked sinking of the Cheonan has created a very serious situation on the Korean peninsula, pushing it towards the brink of war,” Maj. Gen. Pak Rim Su, director of the commission’s policy department, said at the press conference, according to broadcaster APTN.
A number of people attended, including some foreigners who may have been Pyongyang-based diplomats, footage showed. A uniformed foreign military officer could be seen watching the proceedings, which were aired in full on state television. [….]
“These anti-North Korean confrontations are an open declaration of war against us and an extraordinarily criminal act that pushes inter-Korean relations into a state of war,” Pak said.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 28, 2010 at 7:57 pm · Filed under An Alliance?, Anti-Americanism, Korean Society, North-South, Cheonan Incident
South Koreans’ unifiction mania may have cooled for the moment, but B.R. Myers tells us that public anger toward North Korea doesn’t approach that directed against America after the 2002 accident, and that plenty have made the decision to disbelieve the evidence that North Korea sank the Cheonan:
It would be unfair to characterize these skeptics as pro-Pyongyang, but there is more sympathy for North Korea here than foreigners commonly realize. As a university student in West Berlin in the 1980s, I had a hard time finding even a Marxist with anything nice to say about East Germany. In South Korea, however, the North’s human rights abuses are routinely shrugged off with reference to its supposedly superior nationalist credentials. One often hears, for example, the mistaken claim that Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Il-sung, purged his republic of former Japanese collaborators, in alleged contrast to the morally tainted South. [….]
South Korean nationalism is something quite different from the patriotism toward the state that Americans feel. Identification with the Korean race is strong, while that with the Republic of Korea is weak. (Kim Jong-il has a distinct advantage here: his subjects are more likely to equate their state with the race itself.) Thus few South Koreans feel personally affected by the torpedo attack. [….]
This urge to give the North Koreans the benefit of the doubt is in marked contrast to the public fury that erupted after the killings of two South Korean schoolgirls by an American military vehicle in 2002; it was widely claimed that the Yankees murdered them callously. During the street protests against American beef imports in the wake of a mad cow disease scare in 2008, posters of a child-poisoning Uncle Sam were all the rage. It is illuminating to compare those two anti-American frenzies with the small and geriatric protests against Pyongyang that have taken place in Seoul in recent weeks.
If demographics are destiny, accounts like Myers’s suggest that our alliance with South Korea has no long-term future. Like Robert, I don’t think this is the time to speed up our disengagement or appear to abandon South Korea, but it’s as appropriate as ever to proceed with an orderly transition to an independent South Korean defense from which both countries will emerge stronger.
Hat tip to a reader.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 28, 2010 at 10:42 am · Filed under Anju Links, Cheonan Incident
Axis, Schmaxis: “The seven-member panel monitoring sanctions against North Korea said in a report obtained by The Associated Press late Thursday that its research indicates that Pyongyang is involved in banned nuclear and ballistic activities in Iran, Syria and Myanmar.“
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Japan is moving to tighten restrictions on cash remittances to North Korea, and may authorize its coast guard to inspect North Korean ships in international waters. That would be a bold move, because North Korean vessels have previously refused to stop and even opened fire when hailed by the Japanese coast guard (video here).
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More bad press for the ChiComs: This time, it’s a New York Times editorial that calls for China to “stop covering for its client,” but doesn’t really demand anything of substance. It’s going to take more than editorials to change Chinese policies. China will have to face serious economic and strategic consequences for its own behavior.
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We are all neocons: I put little value in Richard Haass’s analysis except as a barometer of conventional wisdom in the foreign policy industry, which is why I think it’s significant that Haass, too, has concluded that talking to North Korea is a waste of time. Actually, I favor keeping some working-level channels of communication open for whenever the North Koreans want to talk; I just think we should be realistic about what talks can achieve. The six-party talks, frankly, have much more potential as five-party talks in which neighboring states talk about (but not with) North Korea. For now, talks with North Korea are mostly a useful way to exchange prisoners and hostages, or to convey sincere threats for deterrent purposes. If the time comes that this regime is squeezed to the verge of extinction by pressure we’ve applied, talks may prove useful for negotiating fundamental transparency (as if) or safe passage to Beijing.
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PsyOps Update: “Since Monday, South Korea’s military has started anti-North radio broadcasts. The four-hour program titled “Voice of Freedom” is being aired three times a day.”
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Curtis posts a very interesting series of before-and-after pictures of the Sunchon Vinalon Complex, which is rumored to produce chemical weapons.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 28, 2010 at 7:34 am · Filed under Media Criticism, Fiskings
Next time my brother and I argue about why I’m not big a fan of Fareed Zakaria, I think I’ll point him to this CNN.com link where Zakaria gives us his “analysis” of the Cheonan Incident. The interviewer asks him a series of questions, which I rephrase. Zakaria then spits up State Department talking points and pulp he stole from wire service reports, and then blends this with his own analysis.
I’ve hosed the pulp, talking points, and context off of Zakaria’s analysis, leaving it naked and exposed for you to gawk upon. So Fareed — the Norks sank that ship. What’s up with that?
The truth is that North Korea is such a strange and strangely governed place that no one really knows.
So is there a danger we’ll end up going to war?
It’s dangerous because it suggests that North Korea is acting in an unpredictable way.
So why did Kim Jong Il do it?
What’s strange about this is that it’s not entirely clear what the purpose behind it is.
And what about the ChiComs? What’s their deal, Fareed?
That, to me, is the greatest mystery of this whole puzzle.
Thank you, Mr. Zakaria, for that penetrating insight. Does being an expert on all things mean that the words “I have no idea” and “I actually bring no useful knowledge or insight to this discussion” must be purged from your vocabulary? Because Zakaria certainly manages to find a lot of ways to say that … and to collect a paycheck for it. All he needs is an infomercial to run on the Home and Garden channel at 2 a.m.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 27, 2010 at 6:30 am · Filed under Terrorism (NK), Cheonan Incident
[T]he Obama team is clearly signaling that it does not intend to do what many lawmakers want: put North Korea back on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The calculation is that the listing, which administration officials see as having been overly politicized during the George W. Bush years, is more trouble than it’s worth. [WaPo, The Cable]
Not worth the trouble? Are you joshing me? This, from the same crowd that went all the way to Yongbyon to personally schlep home seven boxes of radioactive documents — taking the long way, across the DMZ, for a better photo op — all for the sake of a nuke deal that the North Koreans were already clearly not going to keep?
[T]he original reasons for listing North Korea, when it blew up half the South Korean cabinet in Rangoon in 1983 and then bombed Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987, do not appear to be enough to put Pyongyang on the list today. Nor do other reasons listed in State Department reports as recently as 2007, namely that North Korea hasn’t answered for 12 Japanese abductees and harbors members of the Japanese Red Army.
The sinking of the Cheonan, a military vessel, falls outside the definition of a terrorist act.
I’m all about making the list of state sponsors of terrorism a place where we impose consequences on states for sponsoring terrorism — you know, stuff like sending assassination teams to cut the throats of exiled dissidents and shipping man-portable surface-to-air missiles and other weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas. For good measure, you might even consider using state media to threaten foreign countries. And if you want to obfuscate by saying that direct state terrorism doesn’t count as sponsorship, we obviously need another list.
Leading Asia experts lament that the process was reduced to a political negotiation at the very end of the Bush administration, when then-North Korea negotiator Christopher R. Hill agreed to delist Pyongyang in exchange for North Korea’s promises to keep alive the six-nation nuclear talks. Those promises have gone unfulfilled.
What better way to undo the politicization of the list than by putting North Korea back on it? In that light, I actually happen to agree that the sinking of the Cheonan, an act of war, is probably not the best available reason to list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, just like Chris Hill’s Not-Quite-Agreed Framework and the broken promises it was mean to induce were a lousy reason to de-list it. Let’s just not argue over half-truths here.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 26, 2010 at 10:51 pm · Filed under Fiskings, Useful Idiocy, Cheonan Incident
As a public service to OFK readers, I’d like to remind you that on Day Two of the Cheonan crisis, Noam Chomsky’s favorite Korea analyst and military expert, John Feffer, was quoted thusly:
“I doubt that North Korea was involved in the incident,” said John Feffer, co-director of the Foreign Policy in Focus program at the Institute for Policy Studies. “It didn’t seem to involve any artillery fire from the North.”
Feffer disagreed with the assumption that North Korea attacked the South Korean naval vessel, noting this incident is different from the previous clashes that involved fishing boats of the two Koreas crossing their sea border.
“There have been naval clashes between North and South in the past, but these have usually involved rising tensions, warnings, fishing boats crossing the NLL,” he said. “But this was, as far as we know, a surprise. And there was no larger reason why the North might engage in such a surprise attack.” [Yonhap]
Today, readers (thank you) point me to Feffer’s return from seclusion. He now concedes the North Korean culpability that he’d initially denied, and even admits that President Lee was “reluctant to point the finger at North Korea in the first place.” This might have been a good beginning to an honest admission that he’d erred before a global audience because of his lack of objectivity, and his general ignorance of North Korea and military matters in general. Lacking this capacity, Feffer asks us to join him in seeing the humor in his complete, verifiable, and irreversible discrediting. There are two main problems with this. First, Feffer isn’t funny. Second, Feffer’s attempt at humor is tasteless:
Kim Jong Il must work for the American Enterprise Institute. Or maybe it’s the Heritage Foundation. The North Korean dictator doesn’t talk much about his non-resident fellowship at a right-wing U.S. think tank. It might not go over well with the Politburo in Pyongyang. [….]
North Korea’s sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean ship that went down in March in the Yellow Sea near the maritime border between the two countries, is just what the right-wing doctors have ordered. Japan was looking a little squishy on the Okinawa base issue. China needed some reminders about just how rogue its erstwhile ally really is. And South Korea’s conservative President Lee Myung Bak wanted confirmation that his containment approach to the north was justified. [….]
If the Dear Leader didn’t receive under-the-table payments from John Bolton and friends, what on earth motivated such a self-destructive act?
Ordinarily, I would say, “Keep your day job.”
Still, it’s funny — not because Feffer’s evocation of Heritage scholars toasting the drowning of the Cheonan crew members induces peals of laughter, but because I couldn’t help thinking that John Feffer must work for Kim Jong Il, only he doesn’t talk about it much because it might cause him to be dismissed as a fascist tool and purged from journalists’ blackberries everywhere. And if you think about it, that would mean that John Feffer actually works for the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, and how the hell would he ever live with that kind of moral stain on his soul karma?
North Korea’s sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean ship that went down in March in the Yellow Sea near the maritime border between the two countries, is just what the right-wing doctors have ordered. Japan was looking a little squishy on the Okinawa base issue. China needed some reminders about just how rogue its erstwhile ally really is. And South Korea’s conservative President Lee Myung Bak wanted confirmation that his containment approach to the north was justified.
There is an alternative theory: North Korea’s sinking of the Cheonan has exposed John Feffer’s delusions about North Korea to sensible people all over the world. Because in the end, most people don’t really think this is all about John Feffer, or how sorry we should all feel for him because Kim Jong Il makes him look st00pid. They think this is about how to deter the sort of sociopath who, without provocation and with malice aforethought, pins 46 young sailors inside the twisted wreckage of a ship sinking in a cold, dark sea, or the grief-stricken loved ones they thought of as they took their last breaths on this earth.
But then, you can only judge that sort of thing if you hate peace.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 26, 2010 at 7:33 pm · Filed under Anju Links
Belle, grosse linques for Curtis and me from Le Monde today. Bienvenue!
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Or, maybe they’re just assholes: The Washington Post asks the timeless question of why the North Koreans behave like North Koreans.
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A former North Korean army officer, now living in London, plots to overthrow the regime.
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Bruce Bechtol thinks the North Koreans’ objective is to move the sea boundary south. Although the theories aren’t mutually exclusive, I continue to favor the B.R. Myers theory that this is about succession. I think they’re trying to build cred for Kim Jong Eun, which means they have an interest in provoking a limited war.
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The Washington Times on North Korea’s ruling class and international crime.
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There are mixed signals on whether Hillary Clinton has made progress in persuading China to back sanctions. Yonhap says she “struggled, apparently unsuccessfully,” but my guess is that the Chinese are bargaining hard to try to water down a resolution they’ll eventually vote for. And violate.
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Fighting words from an unlikely source: “It is disgusting the way the Chinese just sit on their hands and do nothing. This backward and clumsy behavior is not fitting their supposed place as the predominant power in Asia,” said Victor Cha, a former National Security Council Asia director who now is at a Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies.”
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Yesterday’s fad: capitalism failed and the dollar is dying. Today’s fad: socialism failed and the Euro is dying. Is either fad true? I’m no economist, but we’ll never really know if the United States bails Europe out, will we? Now here is an issue where I’d love to see some well played election-year demagoguery.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 26, 2010 at 10:46 am · Filed under Appeasement, Diplomacy
Mike Chinoy was an absolutely, positively objective CNN reporter until he wrote a book accusing the Bush Administration of sexing up evidence of North Korean uranium enrichment to wriggle out of the first Agreed Framework. Poor Chinoy. Before his book even went to print, samples submitted by North Korea to the State Department began to test positive for highly enriched uranium, and in due course, Meltdown wasn’t just Chinoy’s title, it became a fitting description for his central thesis.
But because people like Chinoy are even harder to deter than Kim Jong Il, he now argues that the right response to the premeditated sinking of a South Korean warship is to sit down with them, presumably to ask them what it will cost to make them keep quiet for six more months. Because it worked so well before, right? Of course, this assumes that the North Koreans even want to sit down with us, except for their demand for access to the wreck of the Cheonan to do their own “independent” investigation. Chinoy, with his characteristic talent for finding hope in unlikely places, takes this demand seriously.
It is at moments like this that we should all pour out libations to Zeus for a president who, thus far, has not taken the counsel of men like Mike Chinoy. It’s why I feel a need to defend President Obama’s North Korea policy, for all of its flaws, from conservative critics who assume that Obama appeases Kim Jong Il (and that George W. Bush did not). They ought to be more careful in their criticisms. If this President sees no point in pursuing a tough policy anyway, he might just opt for a weak one.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 26, 2010 at 8:44 am · Filed under NK Economics, Appeasement
[Update: So did they mean it or not? Damn Kim Jong Il never keeps a promise ….]
President Lee can heave a mighty sigh of relief. Not only will the Kaesong Industrial Park be closed after all, but also, Chung Dong-Young, the Hankyoreh, and the usual suspects among Korea’s nationalist left can’t possibly criticize him for it without abandoning all pretense of logic.
Oh, wait ….
In any event, this is all proceeding very much like I’ve been predicting for years now, and better than I’d feared: the South Korean workers at Kaesong are being expelled rather than taken hostage, so far. You will recall that President Lee has been planning his response to a North Korean closure of Kaesong for at least a year now, but don’t ask me how.
Here’s the North Koreans’ statement:
“1. All relations with the puppet authorities will be severed.
“2. There will be neither dialogue nor contact between the authorities during (South Korean President) Lee Myung Bak’s tenure of office.
“3. The work of the Panmunjom Red Cross liaison representatives will be completely suspended.
“4. All communication links between the north and the south will be cut off.
“5. The Consultative Office for North-South Economic Cooperation in the Kaesong Industrial Zone will be frozen and dismantled and all the personnel concerned of the south side will be expelled without delay.
“6. We will start all-out counterattack against the puppet group’s ‘psychological warfare against the north.’
“7. The passage of south Korean ships and airliners through the territorial waters and air of our side will be totally banned.
“8. All the issues arising in the inter-Korean relations will be handled under a wartime law.
“There is no need to show any mercy or patience for such confrontation maniacs, sycophants and traitors and wicked warmongers as the (South Korean President) Lee Myung Bak group.” [Reuters]
The closure of Kaesong is good news for many reasons. First, it ends South Korea’s “material support for a rogue government, its nuclear ambitions, and its human rights atrocities.” Second, it removes a tremendous credibility problem from President Lee’s argument that other nations should isolate North Korea economically. Third, it crushes the dreams of billions of hippies.
Of course the Hankyoreh will find some way to blame President Lee for the North Koreans’ closure of Kaesong. I’m sure they’re writing the editorials as I write this. But what we should remember is that the North Koreans have their own reasons for shutting Kaesong down — the same reasons why they stalled the expansion of Kaesong that Roh Moo Hyun wanted so much. Kaesong workers probably never received any actual wages and depended on their ability to move South Korean consumer goods onto the black market to earn a profit. Kaesong’s fate was sealed once the North Korean generals saw the subversive power of ChocoPies, and there’s nothing any South Korean president could have done to change that.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 25, 2010 at 9:58 pm · Filed under Korean Law, The Fifth Column
What is it with the North Korean spy agencies’ recent proclivity for using “women of a certain age” to target horny South Korean men? First, there was Won Jong-Hwa, who seduced, inter alia, a young South Korean army captain for classified information, and possibly a lieutenant as well, assuming that both officers weren’t actually the same person.
Now, there is the story of Kim Soon-Nyeo, whose targets included a 29 year-old college student, two travel agency workers, and her grand sugardaddy, a former executive of the Seoul Subway system.
You may thank the OFK Editorial Board in the comments for the many available metaphors it deemed unfit to print, as this discussion is about to become very serious.
The spy collected “confidential” information about the subway system from Oh, information about local universities from the student, and a list of names of high-ranking police and public officials from the travel agents.
Oh maintained extramarital relations with the spy since his first encounter with her in China in May 2006, and transferred nearly 300 million won ($252,000) to “help” her cosmetics business. In June 2007, he became aware that she was a North Korean spy, but continued the relationship.
“What Oh handed over to the spy included contact information of emergency situation responses and other not-so-important internal data,” Kim Jung-hwan, a Seoul Metro spokesman, told The Korea Times, dismissing concerns that it could be used in possible acts of terrorism here by the North. Kim retired from his post in 2008. [Korea Times]
I shudder at the thought of why the North Koreans want to know these things. That is why, as much as I like Richard Halloran’s writing and analysis, I don’t think he has quite grasped the worst case scenario when he calls for the bombing of North Korea’s artillery sites. Yes, I can imagine a circumstance in which we or South Korea might face a provocation or a threat so serious that we have to do something more dramatic, in which case what Halloran calls for might have to be our first step. But I’m not there yet, because I fear that North Korea’s most dangerous weapons are already inside South Korea. Nor do I share Halloran’s confidence that North Korea’s front line troops are poorly trained, or that they would “stand down” if attacked.
On the contrary, I advocate the (admittedly also risky) gradualist approach of constricting the regime economically and subverting it politically because the last thing I want to do is force a stroke-addled tyrant to make sudden “use it or lose it” decisions. I want to create the conditions for a favorable power shift about when that tyrant goes off to his meat locker mausoleum.
By comparison, John Bolton’s recommendations seem sedate and reasonable, although the part about China supporting a One Free Korea policy is implausible until we make North Korea China’s problem. Think: nukes for Taiwan and a shiny embassy for the Dalai Lama on Connecticut Avenue (or, just to make it even more fun, exactly the opposite!). Here in Washington, we spend a great deal of thought and worry about our relationship with China, but hardly anyone ever has to worry about China’s relationship with us. Hail ants!
I recently noted North Korea’s tendency to give its spies on the job training in China, whose government allows North Korean spies to operate as they hunt down defectors and send them back to the gulag (or a firing squad).
Someone remind me again why human rights is a distraction from the bigger issues.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 25, 2010 at 9:22 am · Filed under Subversion
So no sooner do I publish my Capitalist Manifesto than I read that the Anjeonbu, notorious for operating all of North Korea’s large kwan-li-so prison camps except Camp 18, has been sent out among the provinces as a counter-subversion force:
According to sources, special police squads have been formed in each province under the People’s Safety Ministry (PSM) to take action to block out information on foreign countries and root out anti-regime suspects.
A source from Shinuiju reported on Tuesday, “The special police squads consist of some 300 agents in each provincial office of the Peoples’ Safety Ministry. Their purpose is to crack down on offenders against the regime and its system.” [….]
The Shinuiju source said, “Pyongyang is trying to enhance the position of the People’s Safety Ministry. They will now deal with usage of cell phones in the border region, circulation of foreign video clips, spreading of leaflets, denouncements of the authorities and other anti-regime offenses.”
Bearing in mind the Cheonan incident, there is a possibility that the North Korean authorities are preparing for confrontation following the impending re-launch of South Korean psychological warfare. North Korea has already said it will attack the broadcasting facilities if South Korea follows through on its promise to restart the broadcasts. [Daily NK]
There is no greater evidence that what I propose is a potential threat to the regime than the fact that the regime appears to agree with me.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 25, 2010 at 6:18 am · Filed under Propaganda, Subversion
While most of the reporting has focused on the rather futile gesture of blaring propaganda from loudspeakers, it seems that South Korea is doing something else that’s more likely to reach a wider North Korean audience:
South Korea’s military resumed radio broadcasts airing Western music, news and comparisons between the South and North Korean political and economic situations late Monday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military also planned to launch propaganda leaflets by balloon and other methods Tuesday to inform North Koreans about the ship sinking. [AP]
The leaflets may or may not reach a lot of people, but if the South Koreans send enough of them, they’ll put a significant strain on the morale and maintenance of any units sent out to comb the countryside for them. It should be an explicit goal of South Korean psyops not just to propagate information, but to overload the security forces’ capacity to suppress it.
If they’re willing to drop leaflets, why not radios, cell phones, MP4 players, and crank chargers? If they’re willing to broadcast a radio broadcast signal, why not a cell phone signal? Here’s hoping that’s the next step. North Koreans do need information, but what they need most is for their isolation to be broken down.
I remain disappointed that Lee hasn’t yet made the decision to close down Kaesong, but his decision to restart psyops and information operations against North Korea is more consequential than any other response to the sinking of the Cheonan.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on May 24, 2010 at 1:40 pm · Filed under Regime Change, Cheonan Incident
In the final installment for the foreseeable future, I discuss what we, and a North Korean underground, could hope to accomplish against the world’s most totalitarian state with a standing army of more than a million men.
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