Archive for July, 2010
Posted by Joshua on July 31, 2010 at 10:19 pm · Filed under Useful Idiocy
Just when it seemed that no one would, Dennis, the Anarcho-Syndicalist-sounding Congressgnome from Middle Earth, has stepped up to save North Korea from being repressed by the violence inherent in the system:
“If North Korea presents some kind of a limited missile threat to any part of the United States coastline, the obvious solution would be to go to North Korea, and to negotiate with them and to talk to them, and to work with them to avoid any confrontation,” Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) told a gathering here organized by the National Campaign to End the Korean War. [Joongang Ilbo]
Right, Dennis. If only someone had thought of that before.
Kucinich’s solution won’t be so obvious to me until he explains the whole point of negotiating a peace treaty with a regime that just unilaterally withdrew from the Korean War Armistice and then premeditated the unprovoked sinking of a neighboring state’s warship. Personally, my “obvious” answer to a flagrant violation of the Korean War armistice wouldn’t be to negotiate a peace treaty for North Korea to violate flagrantly, and I’ll personally drywall Kucinich’s hollow tree if he can name one international agreement North Korea ever did keep, or explain why a peace treaty would be any different, or why he’s stealing all those underpants, or what the hell Phase II is.
Then again, maybe I just don’t like peace as much as Dennis Kucinich does. But you already knew that.
And yes, this would be Kucinich’s pal Christine Ahn’s “National Campaign to End the Korean War.” Now, look: I realize Christine Ahn is a mostly harmless fringe crank. This is a free society, and I suppose there’s no harm in a little bit of discreet ahnanism as long as your private fantasy world doesn’t become a substitute for reality. The problem is, this neurosis has now metastasized to harmless fringe crank members of Congress. And if stinking up one American institution isn’t enough for one week, she’s now cost the New York Times editorial page the respect of a few more readers from that increasingly selective audience to which it appeals:
In a move intended to punish North Korea for its alleged sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, the United States and South Korea are flexing their military might by mobilizing American and South Korean ships, over 200 aircraft, including the F-22 Raptor fighters, and 8,000 troops.
If anything, the military provocation by all sides demonstrates the frailty of the Korean armistice agreement, which was signed by North Korea, China and the United States on July 27, 1953.
… and unilaterally repudiated by North Korea on May 27, 2009, an omission that neither Ahn, nor the legions of New York Times fact-checkers and editors, considered significant. Emphasis mine. Naturally, Ahn wants you to know that neocon shape-shifter Barack Obama’s sanctions will starve North Korean babies. Being the helpful sort, I’ve added the links that Christine forgot:
The freezing of North Korean assets, in particular, restricts the country’s ability to purchase the materials it needs to meet the basic food, healthcare, sanitation and educational needs of its people.
Hey, mini-me needs a new yacht.
Moreover, sanctions have not succeeded in pressuring North Korea to disarm. To the contrary, North Korea considers economic sanctions to be an act of war, and has responded by accelerating its nuclear weapons program.
By which, Ahn refers to the nuclear program that North Korea accelerated in 1991, without letting the starvation of 2.5 million expendable citizens appreciably slow its progress. No American president could possibly indulge the Kim Dynasty enough to suit Christine Ahn’s liking.
The international community’s response to tensions arising from the sinking of the South Korean naval vessel was clearly outlined in the July 9th United Nations Security Council statement, which calls urgently “for full adherence to the Korean Armistice Agreement” and “the settlement of outstanding issues” through “direct dialogue and negotiation” so as to avert “escalation.”
See also Robert’s reaction:
Yes, food, medicine, sanitation and school books — all priority budget items for North Korea, I’m sure. Of course, I have to agree with Ms. Ahn that North Korea considers economic sanctions an act of war, which is sort of odd, considering that it seems to think open seas piracy, dispatching commando teams to kill South Korean leaders, blowing up civilian airliners, bombing the South Korean cabinet in a third country capital, kidnapping Japanese and South Korean nationals and sinking South Korean warships aren’t.
There is only one reason I can see for making an argument this vapid and irrational: it’s the party line. The only violation of the Armistice Agreement Ahn sees is … Barack Obama’s. You just can’t make any sense of this at all unless you deny that North Korea really did sink the Cheonan. Ahn carefully avoids taking a position, to which I ask: HEL-LO?
Speaking of which, South Korea’s elite 3/26 twoofer squad also made a special guest appearance in Washington this week, where they were greeted with an even blend of curiosity, amazement, and pity by Democratic congressmen, liberal diplomats, and no doubt, plenty of 19 year-old high school graduates who’ve scored summer jobs in congressional offices asking, “Do you have an appointment, sir?”
A group of liberal South Korean activists told U.S. officials and lawmakers they doubted a North Korean torpedo attack sunk a South Korean warship in March, but got a frosty reception. A delegation from the South Korean Committee for Implementing June 15 Joint Declaration - an inter-Korean group established to fulfill the 2007 agreement by then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il - paid a visit to the U.S. State Department and attended a forum at the U.S. Congress to convey its opinion.
I take the term “inter-Korean” to mean that the group is welcome in Pyongyang, has North Korean members, and has the official sanction of the North Korean regime.
Kim Sang-geun, the head of the committee, and Chung Hyun-back, a history professor at SungKyunKwan University and the head of the civic group People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, visited the State Department on Tuesday and met with Sung Kim, chief U.S. negotiator for the six-party talks to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and Ambassador Robert King, Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues. According to sources, Kim delivered a letter to the U.S. officials, expressing the group’s “disappointment” at the Barack Obama administration’s North Korea policy and urging Washington to have bilateral negotiations with Pyongyang as soon as possible.
Chung mentioned the March sinking of the Cheonan during the meeting. “The South Korean community has a different view from the government’s description of the Cheonan’s sinking,” she was quoted as saying by a participant in the meeting. “According to opinion polls, about 30 to 50 percent of Koreans do not trust the government’s conclusion. We hope the U.S. plays a role to resolve the difference.”
According to the source, the chief U.S. negotiator rebuffed the group’s argument about the Cheonan’s sinking. He told the visitors that an international investigative team’s conclusion was based on an objective and scientific investigation and that the U.S. fully trusts its findings. He also said Washington is willing to talk to Pyongyang at any time if the regime changes its position. Sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council, he added, are just because the North staged the attack on the Cheonan. [Joongang Ilbo]
Part of me hopes these people come back again soon, because too many Americans, including sensible people with influence on U.S. government policy, would benefit from a more intimate understanding of just how dangerously zany the Korean left really is.
Posted by Joshua on July 30, 2010 at 6:13 am · Filed under Aijalon Gomes
It should go without saying that I am in sympathy with the goals of Robert Park and Aijalon Gomes, and in complete disagreement that they advanced those goals through their quixotic walks into North Korea. Most people today only remember Park for his bizarre confession and his crypic references to the sort of sexual torture that, without knowing more, sounded like something more than a few of us have purchased for our friends at bachelor parties in our boorish youth.
Picture hat tip to Kushibo
Aijalon Gomes may be made of sterner stuff. After seven months in a North Korean prison — try to imagine how interminable each of those months must have been — we’ve heard no confession, only the troubling report that he tried to take his own life. That still doesn’t mean he’ll make North Korea a less cruel place for having gone there. If he becomes “Kim Jong Bill” Richardson’s justification for another self-serving ransom mission to Pyongyang, he’ll only have helped to advance the Kim Dynasty’s diplomatic, political, and financial goals. Park and Gomes would have done more good and spread their message more effectively by joining in the leaflet balloon campaign. And although Gomes did not publish a manifesto when he crossed, it seems that he took his inspiration from Robert Park, who said he didn’t want anyone in our government to do anything to secure his release. Of course, that’s not a wish that any citizen can reasonably expect his government to honor, but I would certainly oppose giving any concession of any kind for his release.
But what other plausible justification is there for holding Aijalon Gomes in a jail cell for seven months? Nothing Aijalon Gomes did was vaguely violent, surreptitious, or criminal.
I may value my discretion more than Gomes’s valor, but I can’t deny that I envy the courage of this 31-year-old English teacher from Boston. Having just spent the better part of last weekend absorbed in this remarkable archive of historic newspapers from Georgia — including contemporary accounts of slavery by its defenders — I am tempted to think that Aijalon Gomes’s greatest error was an excess of sincerity in taking up the abolitionist cause of his African ancestors so that Asians will not be enslaved today. There is something exceptional about this in our age of individual and ethnic selfishness. If so, this certainly mitigates Mr. Gomes’s fault. Indeed, it honors him.
Enough is enough. Aijalon Gomes has committed no crime but to demand justice from the unjust. The time has long passed for him to be set free. The men who represent Aijalon Gomes in Congress must see his captivity for what it is — a thinly veiled demand for ransom. Scott Brown must inform himself of the plight of his constituent, and John Kerry, who has misbegotten the notion that he represents Kim Jong Il on the Foreign Relations Committee, must remember that he really represents the Gomes family in the Senate. It is time for Aijalon Gomes to come home, something that is most likely to happen soon if we attach legal and financial consequences to his captivity. Specifically, members of Congress ought to remember that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act would allow the Gomes family to file suit against North Korea — imagine that, someone actually suing the responsible party! — for any act that causes it to be listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. If there will be renewed moves to list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism anyway, and I think there will be, then I hope the staffers who write the bills and their findings of fact will think of Aijalon Gomes and his family.
Posted by Joshua on July 29, 2010 at 8:03 pm · Filed under Anju Links
My God, how I would love to attend one of these:
Around 150 people gathered at a park at Imjingak near the border to release ten giant balloons carrying some 100,000 leaflets, 300 DVDs and 1,000 one-US-dollar notes. An activist shouting ‘Down with Kim Jong Il’ ripped up a North Korean flag with a knife. Another wore a traditional Korean funeral hat with the message ‘Congratulations, Kim Jong Il’s death’. The leaflets and DVDs criticised Pyongyang’s human rights record and carried detailed claims that it sank a South Korean warship in March, with the death of 46 sailors.
Unfortunately, the winds didn’t cooperate and blew the balloons back into South Korea, but no matter. They might do just as much good if they land on any college campus in Seoul.
_____________________
One day, they must be held accountable for crimes against the English language: “They, at the same time, powerfully demonstrated the will of the strong revolutionary army of Mt. Paektu to mercilessly wipe out the U.S. imperialists and their stooges hell-bent on the moves to ignite a new war by the force of arms of Songun bolstered up and defend the socialist country as firm as an iron wall if they dare intrude into even an inch of the inviolable sky, land and seas of the DPRK.” That’s one sentence. And there’s more where that came from.
_____________________
I’m glad to see that Angela Jolie is “very concerned about the North Korean people,” as generic a statement as that may be, but I wish she was more concerned about how little the UNHCR seems to share that concern. If she knew more about how badly the UNHCR has failed to fight for the rights of North Korean refugees in China, a few well-chosen words could really do some good.
_____________________
Burma, North Korea, and Nukes: The evidence just keeps piling up.
_____________________
Those joint naval exercises in the waters off Korea have ended without incident, and probably without much useful deterrent effect, either.
_____________________
Like Kushibo says, China’s biggest problem is China: “A Japanese government panel will recommend deploying more armed forces in coastal areas where Chinese naval traffic has increased and relaxing rules on nuclear arms transfers.”
Posted by Joshua on July 29, 2010 at 9:36 am · Filed under Sports
Once again, this is why North Korea should be banned from FIFA play pending further investigation and monitoring of how it treats its players and coaches:
The team and coach Kim Jong Hun were summoned to a meeting at the People’s Palace of Culture in Pyongyang on July 2, the U.S.-financed Radio Free Asia reported Monday. Sports Minister Pak Myong Chol was among some 400 government officials, athletes and others at the six-hour-long closed-door session, the report said. Team members were forced to reprimand their coach at the end of the gathering, the report said. [….]
The report cited two unidentified sources in North Korea and a Chinese businessman named Yu, described as knowledgeable about North Korea affairs. [AP]
Of course, these “criticism” sessions are a part of everyday life for all North Koreans, and hopefully, this doesn’t necessarily mean the players or the coach will suffer a darker fate. It just raises an obligation for FIFA not to look the other way.
Posted by Joshua on July 28, 2010 at 8:21 pm · Filed under China, China & Korea, Counterfeiting, U.S. Law, Money Laundering, Sanctions
Hey, did the State Department threaten the Bank of China and the Bank of Shanghai? Or to put the question more bluntly, did someone just grow a pair?
A diplomatic source here said the U.S. will blacklist more North Korean entities and individuals in the coming weeks so that international financial institutions would cut off ties with them.
Any foreign banks refusing to sever business ties with the North Korean entities and individuals in question will have U.S. financial institutions suspend ties with them, the source said. “Think of Citibank or Bank of America suspending business ties with Bank of China or Bank of Shanghai. That will be a great burden to China.”
What I wouldn’t give to see the case of the vapors Peter Lee must be having at this moment. Of course, I care little and know less about Lee’s background, but I wonder if the manic oscillation between contemptuous arrogance and resentful victimhood is a function of life in a society where destiny is so often imposed on the resentful by the arrogant. If it’s futile or worse for a Chinese citizen to curse the policies of his own government, there’s no less futility in cursing the policies of the American government.
Crowley said last week that the U.S. will not only use existing measures like the Patriot Act, but will also establish “new executive authorities” to blacklist more “entities and individuals supporting proliferation, subjecting them to an asset freeze; new efforts with key governments to stop DPRK trading companies engaged in illicit activities from operating in those countries and prevent their banks from facilitating these companies’ illicit transactions.” [Yonhap]
They certainly do sound very serious about this. And thorough:
Robert Einhorn told the Voice of America that the U.S. has tracked down every trading company and individual in North Korea doing illegal business activities overseas and will freeze their assets. It was the first interview Einhorn has given since being made the U.S. government’s special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control.
Einhorn said the legal basis for past sanctions, which he called “existing authorities,” will be more actively applied and used to freeze assets of North Korean organizations, trading companies and individuals involved in terror or nuclear proliferation activities.
The new sanctions, on the other hand, will be focused on restraining other illegal activities such as trade in conventional weapons, luxury goods, tobacco, counterfeit bills and drugs, he said. He said the U.S. is drafting “authorities” to control those non-terror or nuclear proliferation areas. He said once the new authorities are arranged, the ability of the U.S. to freeze those illegal activities by the North will be strengthened. The details of the new sanctions will be announced by next week, he said. [Joongang Ilbo]
All of this has the potential for some very interesting money laundering prosecutions in the courts. The measure to watch for, however, is whether Treasury will simply declare the entire country of North Korea to be a primary money laundering concern and deny its entities access to the U.S. financial system, something that my spies tell me key people in Treasury have seriously considered. This so-called Fifth Special Measure is to Plan B what the Public Option is to Obamacare. And it wouldn’t be unprecedented. We’ve done this to Nauru and the Ukraine, among other places.
It’s encouraging that the old partisan reflexes really aren’t very probative of how people in Washington see the issue of financial pressure. Most hard-liners agree that all kinds of pressure have to be applied in tandem with at least an offer to negotiate, in the unlikely event that North Korea is prepared to accept the kind of fundamental transparency that even most soft-liners now know it never will.
Posted by Joshua on July 28, 2010 at 6:35 am · Filed under China, China & Korea, Refugees, Korean War
When someone escapes from North Korea and makes contact with South Koreans, and when China then repatriates that person to North Korea, the North Korean authorities typically execute that person, or send him to die in a prison camp. China has known this for years. That’s why the Chinese government is an accessory to murder when it does things like this:
China has repatriated an 81-year-old former South Korean prisoner of war who had fled North Korea decades after being captured, a newspaper report and an activist said Tuesday. Dong-A Ilbo quoted an unidentified government official as saying the man surnamed Jung was sent back despite intensive diplomatic efforts by Seoul to bring him to the South. [….]
“The government made tremendous diplomatic efforts but he was eventually sent back to the North,” the source was quoted as saying. South Korea had contacted Chinese diplomatic authorities more than 50 times since Jung’s arrest, the daily said. Choi Sung-Yong, an activist who campaigns for the return of South Korean abductees, said Jung was forcibly returned to the North in September last year, about a month after being arrested in China where he was hiding. He said Jung was arrested eight days after he fled the North with the help of South Korean activists. [AFP]
In the end, all of our differences with China over Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Korea, and everything else come down to its contempt for the rights of individual human beings. If China recognized that the condition of humanity carries with it certain basic rights and liberties, it would be a threat to no one, it would have peacefully reunified with Taiwan decades ago, it wouldn’t be plagued with ethnic and labor unrest today, and wary Asian nations wouldn’t be looking for alternative structures to check its thuggish conduct, its hegemonic predations, and most recently, its aggression through its North Korean proxy. That is why Pacific nations need a military alliance, patterned after NATO during the Cold War, to contain China for next 20 years until demographics, economics, religion, and politics catch up with its anachronistic statism. There already is a new Cold War in Asia — it’s just that some would rather not admit it. But I suspect that historians will record that it was presaged by the ugly nationalism of the 2008 Olympics, and “officially” began with the Cheonan Incident.
The Chinese reaction to such an expansive argument will certainly be that I am making too much of one man’s life, which is just my point. Societies and nations are composed of individuals who want the state to serve them, and not the other way around. Gradually, those who can see the significance of an individual’s life are learning to loathe China’s oligarchy, one small injustice at a time. Because this includes growing numbers of the Chinese people, this will be the downfall of the fascist experiment that has functionally replaced the failed Maoist one. In the case of China, that downfall is likely to be more episodic than cataclysmic, but a system can only brutalize so many people before their rage eventually consumes it.
Posted by Joshua on July 27, 2010 at 9:30 pm · Filed under WTF?, Korean Law, Afghanistan
So it never occurred to these fools to sue the Taliban to get back some of that $20 million in ransom money, courtesy of our dead grateful ally, Roh Moo Hyun? Do people never take responsibility for their own stupidity? And is it any wonder why people hate lawyers so much?
Posted by Joshua on July 27, 2010 at 6:15 am · Filed under NK Economics
This seems rather badly timed, somehow. In Forbes, grad student Koen C. Munneke argues that “[i]nstead of following the previously ineffective path of applying pressure and saber-rattling, the international community should switch to ….” Let me guess: the previously ineffective path of trying to use investment to better the lives of ordinary North Koreans and broadening the minds of their overlords, in the hope that they might again promise to disarm? If only someone had thought of that before!
It’s strange how ten years of unrestricted, unconditional Sunshine Policy and two agreed frameworks don’t count as “previously ineffective,” yet two brief experiments with freezing the proceeds of illicit activity somehow do. So let’s just be clear about this: when the proponents of unrestricted appeasement of Kim Jong Il’s regime talk about North Korea already being the most sanctioned country on earth, they’re either ignorant or just being disingenuous. In Munneke’s case, I’ll charitably assume the former.
My first suggestion to those who repeat this cliche is that they should at least bother to read the Treasury Department’s summary of the U.S. government’s North Korea sanctions program. With the exception of counter-proliferation sanctions that keep North Korea from buying weapons and dual-use technology, and the Treasury Department licensing program needed to enforce these focused sanctions, most trade sanctions with North Korea were lifted back during the Clinton Administration as a reward for North Korea’s long-since-broken promise not to test any more ballistic missiles. That was three U.N. Security Council resolutions and at least two presidential statements ago. President Bush lifted most remaining trade sanctions under the Trading With the Enemy Act in 2008. It would not be so if it were my decision, but Americans are free to take overpriced potemkim ad ridiculum tours of Pyongyang and see its creepy ghost dance spectacles. Aside from these sanctions and some vague Treasury Department warnings about potential money laundering risk, the U.S. government has been permissive of trade with North Korea, and with the exception of suspected financing of illicit activity, still is. And I’m saying this like it’s a bad thing, because it is. All of this trade is perpetuating a system that enslaves 23 million people, refuses to provide for their basic needs, resists reform, and richly deserves ignominious extinction — something that will certainly be expensive, but probably less so than the U.S. city we might yet lose to a North Korean-supplied nuke.
Beyond this, the United States has been trying for years, through generous offers of monitored humanitarian aid, to meet a need that ought to trump any commercial interest: keeping the people of North Korea from starving.
Surely Munneke doesn’t expect the Obama Administration to be equally solicitous of illicit trade and money laundering, but he criticizes Treasury’s enforcement action against one crooked bank in Macau, an effort that lasted just 17 months from its inception to its premature abandonment by failed diplomat Christopher Hill. Contrary to the overwhelming weight of the evidence, Munneke claims that the North Korean regime thus proved itself “immune to sanctions.” The evidence actually suggests that the sanctions panicked Kim Jong Il and forced him to make concessions, at least until we lifted the sanctions and he reneged again. It seems more likely, in retrospect, that North Korea, South Korea’s then-leftist government, China, and our own State Department all wanted the BDA sanctions lifted not because they weren’t working, but for the precise reason that they were so much more effective than expected that they’d become a threat to the stability of the regime.
The Obama Administration has since concluded — and commendably so — that the sanctions worked, and should not have been lifted without more concrete progress toward disarmament. Since then, to my disappointment and Munneke’s apparent ignorance, trade with North Korea has been reasonably free, at least until several months after Kim Jong Il ordered the sinking of a South Korean warship. Munneke summarily dismisses this murder of 46 South Korean sailors as something we must “move beyond” in the interest of being “pragmatic.” Yet Treasury has now been loosed, not to halt all North Korean trade, but to hunt down the proceeds of North Korea’s illicit activity. Does Munneke really suggest that we are required, in the interests of endlessly pointless talks, to absorb unilateral warfare, tolerate crime and proliferation, and grant Kim Jong Il a franking privilege over our currency? Apparently so! Some of the assets various foreign governments and banks are now said to be blocking at Treasury’s urging may be co-mingled with assets derived from legal activity, but so what? The essential act of money laundering is co-mingling it to disguise its origins, confuse its legitimacy, and facilitate the superficial arguments of the ill-informed.
It’s not North Korea’s inability to buy helicopter gunships and Escalades from us that’s throttling its trade relations with the world, it’s North Korea awful credit rating, which is a function of the fact that it doesn’t keep its obligations and never allows foreign investment to penetrate so far into its society that ordinary people are exposed to its influence. But then, trade isn’t the only place where the North Korean regime has this same fundamental problem. If ten years of Sunshine Policy didn’t change that, nothing Munneke proposes will, either.
Posted by Dan Bielefeld on July 27, 2010 at 12:51 am · Filed under Human Rights, Southeast Asia, History
As the first sentence is finally handed out to a former member of the Khmer Rouge regime, it reminds us of a human rights catastrophe still in progress.
Admittedly, I don’t know much about the history of Cambodia, including the nightmare under the Khmer Rouge, but this is a reminder that someday (may it be very soon), decisions made today will determine the fate of many now running the regime in North Korea.
The details and issues addressed in South Korea’s pending North Korean Human Rights Act* will help shape how the process attempting to achieve some sort of justice plays out and which SK government agencies will be responsible for what between now and then (eg, properly interviewing, recording, and storing witness testimony for later prosecution). For a discussion of some of the “details and issues”, see this post from last year.
Obviously, other factors (how the regime falls and neighboring countries’ roles in that and the aftermath) will be involved in what happens to the perpetrators of mass human rights violations in the North, but to the extent it has a say, South Korea, needs to awaken from its apathy now to be ready later.
If there ever is an attempted reunification, as Vitit Muntarbhorn said on this very topic at the PSCORE seminar this spring, “If you don’t know the truth, you cannot heal properly.” (this quote came at 4:42, but he starts talking about the NKHR bill around 1:36)
Let us hope the North Korean people won’t have to wait 30 years after liberation for their shot in court!
*For those of you in Seoul, there will be a seminar Wednesday on the pending NKHR bill:
A Second Discussion on North Korean Issues and Policy
Subject: How Shall We Proceed with the NK Human Rights Bill?
When: Wed., July 28th, 2-4pm
Where: National Assembly — Constitutional Memorial Hall, 2nd Floor, Large Lecture Hall (헌정기념관 2층대강당)
Sponsored by: National Assemly Human Rights Forum and the Association of NK Human Rights Organizations (ANKHRO)
북한인권문제정책협의회 제2차 북한인권토론회
주제: 북한인권법 어떻게 할 것인가?
주최: 국회인권포럼 ,북한인권단체연합회
일시: 7월 28일(수) 오후2시~4시
장소: 국회의사당 헌정기념관 2층대강당
☞ 오시는 길
[9호선 국회의사당역 하차] 1번, 5번 출구로 나와 도보 이용
[5호선 여의도역 하차] 5번 출구, 버스 162, 261, 262, 461번
[1호선 대방역] 360, 363번 버스 이용
[1호선 영등포역] 5615, 5618번 버스 이용
Posted by Joshua on July 26, 2010 at 6:04 am · Filed under Counterfeiting, Money Laundering, Sanctions
According to multiple newspaper reports published since late last week, the Obama Administration’s new asset-freezing campaign against North Korea began in earnest in June. The Treasury Department, having identified about 200 accounts worldwide suspected of storing the proceeds of banned weapons sales, currency counterfeiting, counterfeit cigarettes and Viagra, proliferation, drug trafficking, and other things that all sovereign nations to do pay for yachts for their despotic rulers.
Treasury focused on 100 accounts where its evidence was strongest and quietly persuaded the banks holding those accounts to freeze them. In contrast to the approach applied in the case of Banco Delta Asia, Treasury approached these banks quietly and got their more-or-less voluntary cooperation — and given the conspicuous example of BDA, who wouldn’t cooperate? (FYI to the Hankyoreh: the amount frozen in North Korea’s BDA accounts was $25 million, not $250 million. Not that the Hanky’s reporting on North Korea reveals much accuracy, insight, objectivity, or any of the other qualities one looks for in journalism.)
Reading between the lines of the stories, Treasury appears to be going after patterns of large cash deposits and withdrawals, of the sort that would require the filing of a Suspicious Activity Report if conducted in an American financial institution. A common example of a suspicious activity would be a low-level employee of a North Korean diplomatic mission making a large cash deposit, or purchasing, say, a quantity of Omega watches out of all proportion to his likely salary.
The banks in question are variously reported to be in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Russia, whose organized crime industry is said to be helping Kim Jong Il launder his money. One account in Liechtenstein was apparently exposed by an employee and whistleblower. The Chosun Ilbo also reports (below) that the South Korean government has identified 10 to 20 suspicious North Korean accounts in its banks. (And I can only hope that the Calderon and Massie plaintiffs are reading this.) At least one entity in China, a Hong Kong-based trading company, is also a reported target.
The stories are too full of interesting detail, some of them slightly varying with each other, not to blockquote at great length. Overall, however, the stories are detailed and consistent enough to suggest that someone in the administration has been directed to speak to the Korean press on background. While the South Korean newspapers are reporting on the asset-freezing campaign extensively, there is surprisingly little coverage of this level of detail in American newspapers. The Washington Times speaks generally about the need for tightening sanctions against North Korea, with quotes from Nick Eberstadt, Bruce Klingner, Kim Kwang Jin, and Chuck Downs.
You can read the longer quotes below the fold. Collectively, they suggest that the administration is making the kind of comprehensive effort that is needed here, and which should have the desired (to me) effect of starving the “palace economy” of cash. And while the cessation of illicit activity and proliferation isn’t a bad thing in itself, the reports say little more about the greater purpose of this. Which, I suppose, is fine for the time being. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Joshua on July 22, 2010 at 7:39 am · Filed under An Alliance?, Counterfeiting, U.S. & Korea, Money Laundering, Sanctions, Cheonan Incident
Well, it’s about damn time:
The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it would impose further economic sanctions against North Korea, throwing legal weight behind a choreographed show of pressure on the North that included an unusual joint visit to the demilitarized zone by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
The measures, announced here by Mrs. Clinton after talks with South Korean officials, focus on counterfeiting, money laundering and other dealings that she said the North Korean government used to generate hard currency to pay off cronies and cling to power. [N.Y. Times]
Clinton announced the sanctions as she visited the DMZ, while accompanied by SecDef Gates, and while displaying her supernatural frost-projection powers against a hapless North Korean border guard. I count at least three priceless expressions in this photo.
The Treasury Department announcement I linked here yesterday now looks to be just the first part of the Obama Administration’s dangerously overdue and initially weak response to the sinking of the Cheonan, using at least some of the legal and financial tools I’ve advocated using for the last several years.
“Today, I’m announcing a series of measures to increase our ability to prevent North Korea’s proliferation, to halt their illicit activities that helped fund their weapons programs and to discourage further provocative actions,” Clinton told a news conference in Seoul after high-level security talks with South Korean officials.
Clinton said Washington’s “new country-specific sanctions” will target the North’s “sale and procurement of arms and related material and the procurement of luxury goods and other illicit activities.”
“Let me stress that these measures are not directed at the people of North Korea who have suffered too long due to the misguided and malign priorities of their government,” she said. “They are directed at the destabilizing illicit and provocative policies pursued by that government.” [Yonhap]
With apologies to KCJ, this is encouraging — a strong opening message that will get the attention of the investors on whose cash North Korea depends. Unfortunately, Clinton offered few details about the sanctions, and via some inside sources, I’ve learned that the administration is still debating just what specific measures it’s going to announce. Until I see what those specific measures are, and how strong and comprehensive they are, I will reserve judgment. Or, as one observer put it:
Nicholas Szechenyi, a northeast Asia policy analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the key to effective U.S. sanctions is how they are implemented.
“If the U.S. is doing this in isolation, doing this piecemeal, then I don’t think they’ll have much effect,” he said. “But if there’s a unified effort to not only announce these sanctions as an act of solidarity with our South Korean allies but also to apply some pressure on North Korea, then I think over time it might work.”
That sounds exactly right to me. Nick Eberstadt is more skeptical, and maybe he knows something I don’t:
The moves resemble piecemeal steps of the past, they add, and are unlikely to strike where it hurts: the regime’s access to under-the-table international funds.
“If I were in Pyongyang, I would not be trembling in my boots about this,” says Nick Eberstadt, a North Korea specialist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. [Christian Science Monitor]
The real question here is what the sanctions will be designed to achieve:
“The real question, if the talks resume, is so what?” says Mr. Lieberthal. Neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have been successful over two decades at curtailing the North’s nuclear ambitions, he says, adding that the Obama administration “shows no signs of being in the mood to reward North Korea” to prompt its cooperation, a pattern he says the North has become accustomed to.
“So even if the talks resume at some point, would they produce any serious results?” he asks. “I remain very skeptical about that.” [Christian Science Monitor]
If the administration is looking for sanctions that are undone as easily as they’re done, this won’t work. Our financial power over North Korea is our power to scare away investors and sever its financial lifelines, including those that originate in China. If we try to spare Chinese entities and only target isolated investors like Orascom and various shady bankers here and there, this won’t work. If the administration nips at North Korea’s illicit financing at its fringes, a U.S.-led sanctions program will fail just as U.N. sanctions always have, because North Korea is very nimble at setting up new banks and companies to evade sanctions, and because Chinese entities will adopt a see-no-evil approach to transactions with North Korea unless it’s made clear to them that their own comingled assets are also at risk.
For what it’s worth, Hillary Clinton and Robert Einhorn will both be traveling to China to seek its cooperation. Wish them luck.
But if the administration goes all-in to hit North Korea’s finances hard before its big succession-focused party conference in September, this could be extremely effective, and might even disrupt Kim Jong Il’s plans to purge his and promote the next generation of apparatchiks to preserve his dynasty for another generation.
Posted by Joshua on July 21, 2010 at 6:26 am · Filed under China, China & Korea
Is the Yellow Sea a Chinese lake? Under ordinary circumstances, I’d understand China’s complaints about a U.S. naval exercise in an inland sea near its shores. It’s not as if I’d want Chinese ships in the Gulf of Mexico, either, but these are not ordinary circumstances. This time, North Korea has sunk a South Korean warship, and China has both shielded North Korea from any consequences for that attack and continued to provide necessary financial support to the regime that carried it out. Argue among yourselves whether this makes China an accessory after the fact, but it certainly destroys the myth of China as a mature, responsible power promoting peace and stability. That’s why the U.S. Navy is now forced to deter without any help from China.
It now appears that China’s obnoxious protestations will get at least part of a joint U.S.-South Korean naval exercise moved to North Korea’s East Coast. Given China’s indefensible behavior, that would be a very bad concession for President Obama to make. Despite the U.S. Navy’s insistence, it’s clear that there’s a message for China in these exercises, too, as there should be. But instead of China suffering some vicarious liability for North Korea’s attack, it could stand to benefit from what amounts to thuggery by proxy. If the Navy moves its exercise out of the Yellow Sea, China will have achieved a great leap forward for its regional hegemony. And while a naval exercise in the Yellow Sea is useful for showing America’s commitment to its allies in the region, it still falls far short of the sort of economic and security consequences needed to deter North Korea and China from letting something like the Cheonan Incident happen again.
One deferential commenter asks, “Will the anti-submarine warfare exercises signal an expansion of the coverage area of the U.S.-(South Korea) alliance?” I hope the answer to that is “yes.” Whereas I’ve long believed that U.S. ground forces should be withdrawn from Korea, I believe having a U.S. air component in Korea is good for both countries’ security, and that if any part of the alliance has the potential to grow, it’s the naval component. Having U.S. infantry in South Korea is an anachronism and an inviting target, but creating a multinational naval alliance between the United States and the Pacific democracies will better protect those democracies against Chinese intimidation and proxy attacks.
Rather than showing contrition and doing its share to restore regional stability by dialing back its support for Kim Jong Il, China’s behavior is bombastic (but very helpful to my side of the argument about China’s intentions). I certainly do not suggest that Peter Lee speaks for Beijing, but I do suppose his writing probably reflects the way Beijing hopes to use this incident to advance its hegemonic ambitions and divert its suppressed domestic rage toward foreign demons.
Lee betrays his misunderstanding of South Korea by suggesting that there is “a wave of excitement” there over the possibility of immediate reunification (if only!). He then frets, needlessly, that this could frustrate China’s ability to “win recognition of its national interest in the future of the peninsula, especially since its national interest seems best served by the continued existence of an impoverished, anti-American buffer state.” I hope Koreans are listening carefully. This is the sort of honesty about China’s motives you’ll seldom hear from Washington’s Foreign Policy Industry, or Seoul’s. But in the next breath, Lee nonetheless protests that China’s influence over its North Korean dependent is overstated. China is always trying to play this both ways — claiming hegemony over North Korea while insisting that it has no influence over events there. But with the decline in inter-Korean trade, China is by far North Korea’s largest source of cash, fuel, food, and trade.
Lee acknowledges the wave of anger by the Chinese people against the corruption and lack of accountability of their own government (and also, bad restaurant service). Release the mobs!
Indeed, nationalism and a thirst for vigilante justice targeting anyone from rude waitresses to corrupt officials to countries deemed insufficiently friendly and respectful have emerged as a remarkable source of potential energy, particularly on the Internet. It is easy to imagine China permitting the expression and, through the media, “amplification” of anti-foreign feeling to threaten the economic interests of countries that challenge China’s interests and self-esteem.
The strategy would have the added benefit of using vociferous and intolerant nationalism to crowd out domestic criticism of Communist Party rule and its various shortcomings, which threaten to become a dominant theme on China’s lively, massive, and indignant domestic Internet despite extensive monitoring and censorship operations and the Herculean efforts of paid sock puppets to dilute and redirect unsuitable threads.
Lee then cites the example of a K-pop concert gone bad to support dark threats that Beijing will fall back on the tired tactic of redirecting this anger toward xenophobic nationalism directed against the United States and South Korea, and that Chinese, marching as the state leads them, will riot against the foreign devils (whether digitally or physically isn’t specified). But of course, Beijing has been doing this for years, and while that hasn’t made the people of China any more content, it’s not a tactic whose historical precedents augur favorably for China or anyone else.
Posted by Joshua on July 20, 2010 at 11:09 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The Treasury Department has announced that the governments of Sao Tome and North Korea will henceforth be subject to the “enhanced due diligence” requirements of Section 312 of the USA PATRIOT Act. The measures apply to U.S. financial institutions maintaining correspondent accounts for “foreign banks operating under a banking license issued by” North Korea.
By itself, this action is likely to have little effect, because it’s doubtful that any North Korean-licensed banks have U.S. correspondent accounts. The better question, however, is what effect this may have on banks in Europe and Asia, because the Treasury action was ordered in concert with the Financial Action Task Force. The FATF is the rarest of species in this world — an effective international institution. When the FATF speaks, it means that most of the world’s major finance ministries have promulgated guidance similar to Treasury’s, or soon will.
It will be weeks, and probably months, before we know whether this action will encumber the flow of laundered North Korean assets through European and Asian banks, but Treasury’s message should send a clear warning that non-complaint institutions will be targeted for the same treatment that Banco Delta Asia received in 2005 — the dreaded “fifth special measure,” which denies the offending institution access to its correspondent accounts in American banks and effectively cuts it out of the global financial system.
This is a hopeful sign, though by itself, it doesn’t necessary mean this administration has decided to turn Treasury and Justice loose to pursue the flow of illicit cash that sustains North Korea’s palace economy. But to do so now, just as the regime is purging old comrades and preparing for the succession of a new emperor, would be the most opportune timing imaginable.
Posted by Joshua on July 20, 2010 at 12:15 pm · Filed under Washington Views
I don’t recall ever seeing Victor Cha offer a view that was particularly original, imaginative, or likely to end in a successful result, but he is a reliable indicator of Washington conventional wisdom about North Korea, which in turn is heavily influenced by Seoul’s views about the North. And here is the new conventional wisdom: we have no idea what to do now. In Cha’s own words:
North Korean behavior has gotten so bad, according to East-West Center Visiting Fellow Victor Cha, that foreign policy experts are really at a loss about what to do.
“You do want to have some sort of diplomacy or engagement, but what do you do if a country just refuses to engage, and in the meantime it continues to build nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles?” Cha said during an interview at the EWC’s recent 50th Anniversary International Conference. “It’s a real dilemma. This is really a case of a country that is operating outside the normal bounds of international relations. And when use of force is really difficult to contemplate as an option, what are you supposed to do?” [East-West Center]
For years, the conventional wisdom has been based on mirror-imaged rationalizations of North Korean motives, rationalizations that failed to understand its irrational (to us) pathology. This was needless, of course. The pathology would have been evident to anyone who confronted is capable of doing to other human human beings, and the profound pathological implications of that capability. Our foreign policy establishment, accustomed to dealing with states that respond to ordinary economic and political incentives, assumed the same of North Korea — that it seeks better trade relations, more commerce with the outside world, the exchange of ambassadors, the reduction of tensions, and a better life for its people. The Foreign Policy Industry clung to them throughout the mutual partisan recriminations (yes, a cliche) that blamed everyone but Kim Jong Il for the collapse of two agreed frameworks.
Perhaps President Obama’s election was just the first necessary element of the destruction of these false assumptions. During the last year, I’ve watched them fall, starting with North Korea’s May 2009 nuclear test, and concluding (for everyone but Mike Chinoy and a few others) after North Korea sank the Cheonan. The new consensus is that talks stand no chance of disarming North Korea, and perhaps not even of preserving the peace. The new consensus is that China isn’t a “responsible partner” that will help us restrain Kim Jong Il within the range of what passes for acceptable provocations. And while sanctions have become more attractive as a policy option, there is no “accepted” view of what plausibly attainable objective they are supposed to serve, because the conventional wisdom still sees them as an accessory to diplomacy. Simply stated, the conventional wisdom is still trying to recover from the destruction of its fundamental assumptions. It has no idea what to do next.
The first step toward a better policy is to acknowledge that the last one didn’t work, and won’t work. The second step is just beginning.
Posted by Joshua on July 20, 2010 at 10:59 am · Filed under Kremlinology
Kwon Ho Ung, who served as North Korea’s chief delegate to inter-Korean talks with the ATM known as Roh Moo Hyun from 2004 to 2007. Today’s winner will receive one execution, presumably by firing squad. Via Sonagi, here’s a blog post that provides a little more information about him.
A lot of North Korean officials must be very, very worried right now. I suppose we’ll continue to hear reports like this right up until the big September party conference. Speaking of which, the excellent North Korea Leadership Watch already has some of the graphically beautiful and ideologically repulsive propaganda posters advertising the event.
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