Archive for September, 2010
Posted by Joshua on September 20, 2010 at 7:45 pm · Filed under Anju Links
This is how we seize defeat from the jaws of victory:
Anxiety is rising on both sides of the Pacific that tightened sanctions and joint military exercises - what U.S. officials have called “strategic patience” - could, if continued indefinitely, embolden hard-line factions in the North to strike out against South Korea or to redouble efforts to proliferate weapons of mass destruction. [WaPo, John Pomfret]
It’s not the talking that worries me. It’s what always follows the talking.
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Had the state media not made a clear and unequivocal statement about the conference’s timing, the delay likely wouldn’t have attracted much attention. But official documents gave specific dates for the event, which was to be the party’s first conference in 44 years and the first formal gathering of its representatives in 30 years. [Andrei Lankov, WSJ]
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We will sell them the rope they’ll use to hang us. And the rope will be trans-shipped through China.
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Multiple reports from North Korea now say that shortages and the succession have caused the people’s morale to fall even further than before, although based on what I’ve read for the last several years, it’s hard to see how that’s even possible.
“Of 10 people I talk to,” he said, “all 10 have a problem with Kim Jong Eun taking over.” [WaPo]
I hope the people are getting angrier, because things will never improve until they do.
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Some 200 members of the North Korean defectors’ group Fighters for Free North Korea and conservative South Korean organizations sent 100,000 pamphlets attached to 10 helium balloons to North Korea on Thursday, the 62nd anniversary of the establishment of North Korea.
The pamphlets condemn North Korea’s three generations of hereditary rule. “Was 62 years of dictatorship not enough to oppress the people of North Korea? Do you not feel any compunction about three generations of hereditary dictatorship?” the pamphlets read in part. [Chosun Ilbo]
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There are times when I suspect that the average North Korean defector has a better grasp of the concept of free speech than the average South Korean civil servant.
Posted by Joshua on September 17, 2010 at 9:09 pm · Filed under Cheonan Incident
The report obviously won’t do anything to budge the doubts of the roughly 30% of South Koreans who refuse to believe North Korea did it, regardless of the evidence.
Bruce Klingner’s comments are, as always, worth reading.
Hat tip to a friend.
Posted by Joshua on September 12, 2010 at 10:18 pm · Filed under Anju Links
As I mentioned previously, there isn’t going to be much blogging time this month, given the convergence of some personal and professional projects. Some of you have been sending me links in the meantime. That’s great, and I appreciate it, but don’t expect much in the way of reaction. Unfortunately, it will probably be old news before I even find the time to read it.
Instead, why not share them with everyone else in the comments here? Give us a a link, a brief and pithy quote, and if you’d like, add some comment of your own. It’s not exactly an open thread — not a concept I’m fond of, frankly — since I’ll stop in to moderate it and delete anything uncivil, not related to North Korea, or which otherwise runs afoul of my arbitrary plenary authority. Now go forth, link, and thank you.
Posted by Joshua on September 10, 2010 at 6:31 am · Filed under WTF?, China
The Telegraph reports on the case of a Chinese diplomat working as Ban’s Undersecretary General for Economic and Social Affairs, who recently staggered into the glow of Diogenes’s lamp while on a retreat for U.N. commissars in Austria, with Ban Ki Moon in attendance.
“I know you never liked me Mr. Secretary-General – well, I never liked you, either,” said Mr Sha as Mr Ban looked on, smiling and nodding awkwardly during the 15-minute toast attended by the UN’s top brass.
“You’ve been trying to get rid of me,” said 62-year-old Mr Sha according to the senior UN official present, “You can fire me anytime, you can fire me today.”
Oh, don’t worry. He won’t.
Later in his impromptu speech Mr Sha turned to an American colleague, singling out Bob Orr, from the executive office of the secretary-general.
“I really don’t like him: he’s an American and I really don’t like Americans,” he said.
A second senior UN official who was at the dinner said: “It went on for about ten or fifteen minutes but it felt like an hour.”
I’d just like to make note of the implicit promise that everyone would fall in love with us all over again now that a certain neocon cowboy has gone back to Texas.
Posted by Joshua on September 9, 2010 at 5:54 am · Filed under Money Laundering
Via The Diplomat, the restaurants’ setbacks defy their limitless supply of morally retarded clientele:
The Pyongyang eateries are known for being friendly but a little pricey and it’s unclear where exactly any profits go. Still, the ultimate destination of the cash spent in the restaurants hasn’t put customers off visiting.
‘I didn’t object to paying (what I did) for my meal, or feel that I was supporting a tyrant,’ says Don Douglas, an American NGO worker who recently ate at a branch in Kathmandu. Like many people who go there he says he wanted to try it once to satisfy his curiosity.
A string of actual and attempted defections has shut several of the restaurants down, The Great Confiscation crimped their cash flow, and reports linking them to money laundering have scared away potential business partners. Restaurants, it seems, can bring bundles of cash to their banks without prompting quite as many questions.
Posted by Joshua on September 8, 2010 at 10:16 pm · Filed under Anju Links
This month, a few professional and personal projects are converging, and I won’t have much time for anything else. Here are some links of interest (to me) in the meantime.
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Evan Ramstad of the Wall Street Journal talks to North Koreans in China about their morale.
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The Heritage Foundation criticizes U.N. programs in North Korea.
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The Christian Science Monitor thinks that sanctions against North Korea are also aimed at China.
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And finally, for those who haven’t seen it yet, Robert Park’s interview in Christianity Today.
Posted by Joshua on September 4, 2010 at 10:55 pm · Filed under WTF?
I can’t decide whether I’m more embarrassed for myself for having clicked this link, or for Gregg for being quoted right between the bartender and the shrink with the radio talk show, giving his advice on how to pick up chicks.
Donald P. Gregg, former ambassador to South Korea
“I think showing you have a sense of humor is a real door-opener. A willingness to be self-deprecating is often helpful. And remember that sometimes it’s a question of not saying too much — not falling all over yourself. Being low-key is good. And remember: staring over your shoulder or looking beyond the person you’re talking to as if to see who else is there — that’s a killer.”
Still, it probably doesn’t drive them away as fast as an awkward segue into a zany conspiracy theory.
It’s been a tough week for the dignity of the diplomatic corps.
Posted by Joshua on September 4, 2010 at 9:58 am · Filed under U.S. Law, Sanctions
When the survivors of the U.S.S. Pueblo, joined by the widow of their captain, sued North Korea for the horrific torture they endured in 1968, the real question wasn’t whether they were entitled to compensation, it was whether they could ever collect any. North Korea, as it has done with all of the other suits against it in U.S. federal courts, refused to respond to the suit after being duly served at its U.N. mission. Consequently, the court entered a $68 million judgment for the plaintiffs (by contrast, North Korea has been litigious in the British courts).
The Hawaiian Good Luck Sign
I’ve periodically reviewed the public court records regarding each of these cases. My most recent review of the docket of Massie v. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea today indicates that Richard Streeter, who represents the Pueblo plaintiffs, is now poring through a trove of information turned over by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, about North Korean assets within American jurisdiction. This information is largely a matter of speculation to those of us whose access is limited to open-source information. Here, OFAC claims that public disclosure would be prohibited by the Trade Secrets Act. But as it has done in similar previous cases, OFAC agreed to share information about blocked North Korean assets with Streeter, subject to a protective order. Here’s some text from OFAC’s unopposed motion for that protective order:
OFAC has agreed to provide plaintiffs with certain information responsive to the subpoena, pursuant to the terms of the attached proposed protective order.1 Without a protective order, the release of this information might violate the Trade Secrets Act (“TSA”), 18 U.S.C. § 1905, which imposes criminal penalties for the disclosure of information falling within its terms without appropriate authorization of law. Thus, while OFAC does not waive any right, privilege, or immunity to which it may be entitled with respect to any further response, it respectfully requests that, in light of the prohibitions of the Trade Secrets Act, the Court authorize its disclosure of information responsive to plaintiffs’ subpoena via the attached proposed protective order.2
OFAC explains why the information must remain protected from public disclosure:
Here, the information OFAC is willing to disclose was provided to it pursuant to 31 C.F.R. § 501.603, which requires financial institutions and other holders of blocked property to file reports with OFAC within ten business days of 4 Case 1:06-cv-00749-HHK Document 16 Filed 10/05/09 Page 4 of 6 the blocking of the property, as well as annually. The requirement is “mandatory,” see id., and “[r]eports filed are regarded as privileged and confidential.” Id. subsection (a). In the absence of a protective order, disclosure of information submitted to OFAC under § 501.603 would adversely affect OFAC’s administration of its programs relating to terrorist financing and economic sanctions, which depends in large part on OFAC’s ability to maintain the confidentiality of the information submitted to it.
This implies, but doesn’t necessarily mean, that there are assets within OFAC’s reach to satisfy the judgment. Note also that according to public court records, Streeter filed a writ of garnishment, presumably for something. This does not mean, however, that whatever assets there may be are subject to attachment. In fact, OFAC has carefully reserved its position on whether any blocked assets are subject to attachment under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. One hopes that the government of this country will not frustrate the pursuit of justice by those who suffered so much to defend that same country. With Treasury now revitalizing its own hunt for North Korean assets to block, the various plaintiffs with claims against North Korea may have access to more attachable assets.
While this is an interesting glimpse at Streeter’s strategy, we’ll have to wait and see whether he manages to collect any of Kim Jong Il’s yacht money. Meanwhile, this is one more complication and disincentive for anyone contemplating new business transactions with Kim Jong Il’s regime.
Related: The Calderon-Cardona plaintiffs, who recently won that massive $378 million judgment against North Korea, filed a similar protective order, as agreed with OFAC, just last week. The court has also permitted them to register their judgment in other jurisdictions, noting cryptically that although the protective order prevents them from disclosing where the North Korean assets are, they aren’t within the District of Puerto Rico.
Meanwhile, the family of the Rev. Kim Dong Shik has also won a default against North Korea. Even so, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act requires a plaintiff to prove the liability of the defendant to the court’s satisfaction. No hearing date has been set, but it looks like it could happen this month.
Posted by Joshua on September 3, 2010 at 7:04 pm · Filed under Reconstruction
Nearly five years ago, before Lee Myung Bak was even a candidate for his country’s presidency, I expressed my reservations about his pushy style of governance and his history of gaffes. I do not share his love of grandiose and costly projects of questionable merit (something about water seems to unhinge him). But Lee has performed admirably at governing a nation that often seems ungovernable, and during some very difficult times. Competently.
Lee’s first real test stuck shortly after his inauguration — a mass protest movement founded on urban legends, and spread by state-owned broadcasters who were willing to lie for sensational appeal. Lee survived this. Later, he steered South Korea relatively unscathed through an international economic crisis that ought to have hurt a country with such inflated real estate values far worse than it did.
Lee has also stood firm in the face of plenty of extortion from North Korea. Breaking from the course of his predecessors, Lee refused to go on expanding — and even curtailed — South Korean subsidies to a regime that nonetheless felt entitled to murder, kidnap, and detain South Korean citizens, and which refused to take seriously its commitments to dismantle its nuclear programs. When North Korea responded with the most brazen act of war since its attempted hit on Park Chung-Hee in 1968, Lee might have caved (as Roh Moo Hyun and Kim Dae Jung assuredly would have) or let himself be provoked into a military conflict. He did neither. Instead, knowing the exceptionally gullible brand of “skepticism” that prevails within South Korea’s political left, Lee skillfully borrowed global legitimacy by convening an international board of experts to investigate the sinking of the Cheonan, exhausted his options in the U.N., and used the incident to repair his damaged alliance with a liberal American president whom many initially expected would be an uneasy ally. Lee hasn’t always responded as I’d have responded, but Lee has shown a canny sense of just how far his voters will let him go, and that’s certainly a sense I admit to lacking. I seldom claim the ability to make sense of how South Koreans will react to anything.
I approve, mostly, of the way Lee has handled North Korea, but I am of two minds about his success at influencing President Obama. The extent of Seoul’s influence in Washington dismays me, because I perceive such an excess of “clientitis” in our government. Why else do liberal South Korean presidents get the policies they want from conservative American presidents, and conservative South Korean presidents get the policies they want from liberal American presidents? I admit that this bothered me more when I didn’t like the way the influence moved us. I believe it pushed us to act against America’s own interests when Roh Moo Hyun was president. That caused me to weigh the other side of the ledger of risks and rewards, and question the value of the alliance as a means of securing America’s interests in the region. I still question it today, but now, I wish Lee well and want our government to find other, less risky ways of supporting his security objectives. And what better way to end our military presence in South Korea than to extinguish the very need for it?
That’s why I welcome Lee Myung Bak’s most grandiose and expensive undertaking yet:
President Lee Myung-bak’s proposal that South Koreans consider a unification tax aims to start what officials say is an overdue national conversation about the country’s future relationship with North Korea, the minister responsible for dealing with the North said.
“The government wants to make unification a public issue, make people have discussions over it and build consensus around it,” Hyun In-taek, minister of unification, said in an interview Thursday. [Wall Street Journal, Evan Ramstad]
Predictably, the idea of imposing a new tax caused some discomfort among conservatives, too, and Lee had to explain that there are no immediate plans for a specific tax — yet — only an acknowledgment that reunification is likely to be sudden and costly, and that the money to pay for it will have to come from somewhere.
Below the subscriber wall, Ramstad also notes so far, what Lee has done to begin this national conversation consists of launching some “surveys, workshops, and media events” among opinion-makers and intellectuals in government, academia, and business. One particular focus is on determining just what reunification is likely to cost, which is a calculation that must take place in a factual vacuum.
Naturally, this debate has horrified anyone who knows that there are probably gold stars on his dossier somewhere in the archives of the Reconnaissance Bureau in Pyongyang. Just as naturally, Lee’s people insist that they aren’t trying to encourage regime collapse (Who, us? Perish the thought!). At the same time, they say that the want the kind of unification that includes “denuclearization,” “economic cooperation, and most impossibly, as long as the Kim Dynasty holds power, “a political community where the freedom and dignity of Korean people are upheld.” Who could possibly disagree with these perfectly commendable objectives? Or so you might ask if you don’t follow Korean politics.
Whatever you believe Lee’s true intentions to be, and whatever you may think about the merits of those intentions, South Korea needs to have this conversation now. I’ll add that defectors from North Korea need to have a prominent role in it. Recent events have discredited the idea of gradual unification, and not because of anything that Lee could have done differently. The last thing North Korea wants now is an opening of its society — and least of all, unification — under any terms. The North must know that it is no longer capable of absorbing the South’s population, industry, prosperity, ideas, or its belief in gods not sanctioned by the state. Its ideal outcome for South Korea now is to finlandize it and extort regime-sustaining cash from it, just like it did throughout the decade before Lee came to power.
The North Korean system must change, yet it seems determined not to. Will the death of Kim Jong Il be the catalyst for North Korea perestroika? Perhaps at the margins, but North Korea will still be in the hands of people who know that isolation and repression are all that stand between them and the fate of the Ceaucescus. As they see it, perestroika exactly didn’t lead to an optimal outcome. And now that I think about it, Gorbachev and even Putin probably feel the same way.
For all of the hopeless idealism of his (non-)reunification policy, Kim Dae Jung was right about one thing. The Koreas can’t reunify overnight. The absorption must be gradual to give a provisional government time to bring North Korea’s public health crisis under control, repair its infrastructure, reorganize the security services, restore order, secure its WMD facilities, and ameliorate its most immediate environmental catastrophes. It will have to relax migration controls across the DMZ, and even within North Korea, gradually. And all of this must happen without inviting Chinese intervention, which could re-draw the DMZ and ignite a larger regional war (which is why I would offer a withdrawal of U.S. ground forces from all of Korea and no U.S. forces north of the DMZ after reunification — period — in exchange for a Chinese commitment of non-intervention). As you’ve probably inferred by now, what I’m speaking of here is a controlled and phased reunification under a provisional government under South Korean direction, and after a dramatic event in North Korea, such as a coup. What, you thought Jang Song-Thaek was just going to agree to this? Of course you didn’t.
Even so, it is right for us to remain open to unmistakable signs of genuine reform in the North under future leaders, no matter how doubtful it may be that anyone who holds national influence within the current system will allow the system to change faster than the movement of history will eventually demand. When those demands come due, South Korea must be ready — financially, politically, diplomatically, and psychologically. And if Lee accomplishes what he is setting out to do, he will deserve to be remembered as one of the greatest men in his nation’s history, a liberator and a unifier.
Posted by Joshua on September 2, 2010 at 6:49 am · Filed under Useful Idiocy, Aijalon Gomes
First, Carter brought Aijalon Gomes home. Second, he apparently gave away nothing in exchange. Third, he felt so snubbed he hasn’t even been on the talk show / op-ed circuit (at least not yet, fingers crossed) telling everyone how prepared North Korea really is for dialogue. Fourth, Carter’s apparently intentional snubbing has demonstrated to most vaguely reasonable minds that North Korea is not ready for dialogue, and that not even Carter’s generous assistance to North Korea’s nuclear program has earned him Kim Jong Il’s respect and gratitude. As long as Carter (a) keeps his mouth shut, or (b) remains largely ignored, it will continue to be the case that Carter’s trip did more good than harm.
Victor Cha says that “[m]any journalists in Washington and Seoul have dubbed the trip a failure at worst or a non-event at best, given Carter’s inability to take the diplomatic initiative of his own as he had done in 1994 in the first nuclear crisis.” I would brand the trip as successful for that very reason, and wonder if the journalists in question have been sequestered in solitary confinement since 1993 or simply lack any capacity to draw inferences or learn from the repetition of past events. Try not to think that the fourth branch of our government is composed of people like this. You need your rest. I only wish they possessed the capacity to see, as Sung Yoon Lee does, how predictable the North Koreans’ playbook really is, even if the precise provocations, inducements, and deceptions may not be.
Because Carter has been so quiet, Donald Gregg offers this bizarre and rambling manifesto, which the New York Times deemed fit to print, and which comes down even to the left of John Feffer in its flirtation with 3/26 conspiracy theories:
Given the difficult agenda he inherited when he came into office, President Barack Obama did not give high priority to dealing with North Korea, whose leaders were seen as obscure and irascible.
“Obscure” wouldn’t be the word I choose for people who do this to other people and their children, but if you’re making a conscious effort to desensitize your readers to the implications of evil this profound and irreconcilable, adjectives are as good a tool of distortion as any other. And though there’s no question that Obama inherited a difficult situation with North Korea, so did his predecessor. And we all know how uncompromising he was with the North Koreans, don’t we?
For example, a suggestion last year that the White House invite Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il’s youngest son and probable successor, to the United States was not seriously considered.
The only thing I can really say to that suggestion is that I’d like to know the precise address where Gregg scores his weed.
Instead, President Obama formed a strong relationship with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, whom he saw as the dynamic leader of a strong American ally, and was content to let Seoul set the pace in terms of dealing with Pyongyang.
Imagine that! For some strange reason — possibly the fact that one of them has a significant gross domestic product, a functioning economy, a representative government, and facilities that still inexplicably host 29,500 U.S. military personnel — President Obama played favorites between North Korea and South Korea. President Obama’s foreign policy no longer frightens me much. For many of the same reasons Gregg finds it so disappointing, it’s far better than his predecessor’s. I’m only frightened when I try to conceive the expectations of men like Gregg when they voted for Obama (or so I presume, and it’s not a long limb I’m out on there). You’re about to see what I mean by this:
One problem, however, is that not everybody agrees that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea. Pyongyang has consistently denied responsibility, and both China and Russia opposed a U.N. Security Council resolution laying blame on North Korea.
In June, Russia sent a team of naval experts to look over the evidence upon which the South Korea based its accusations. Though the Russian report has not been made public, detailed reports in South Korean newspapers said the Russians concluded that the ship’s sinking was more likely due to a mine than to a torpedo. They also concluded that the ship had run aground prior to the explosion and apparently had become entangled in a fishnet, which could have dredged up a mine that then blew the ship up.
I won’t repeat all of the reasons why this elaborate and unlikely theory is completely lacking in any scientific basis, other than to wonder why, in recent decades, we’ve seen no similar occurrence with the many boats in that area that actually use fishing nets. The pictures alone refute it.
Oh, and did I mention that Donald Gregg is the former U.S. Ambassador to Korea? Yes, I mean South Korea. This man was appointed by the President of the United States, confirmed by the Senate, and embraced by the brain trust of our foreign policy establishment. I seem to recall that he was even with the CIA. He is, in other words, the pairing of an extraordinary resume with a mediocre mind.
Putting further pressure on Pyongyang also only strengthens its dependence on China. The increasing frequency of Kim Jong-il’s trips to China, and the quality of the reception he receives, are clear indications of this trend.
Or, clear indications that China is using Kim Jong Il to create security problems for the United States and advance its own hegemonic interests, and that it’s time for us to make North Korea China’s problem, too.
American pressures are also likely to instill a mistrust and hostility toward the United States in the mind of Kim Jong-un, who is in his mid-20s and about whom little is known.
Because for all we know, nothing else in Kim Jong Eun’s background could possibly have exposed him to the idea that Americans are irascible, predatory, subhuman beings.
The disputed interpretations of the sinking of the Cheonan remain central to any effort to reverse course and to get on track toward dealing effectively with North Korea on critical issues such as the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Admittedly, the idea that the most appropriate response to a premeditated attack by a rogue state on a traditional ally, or even on our own selves, is to simply deny it does certainly does open up bold new approaches to the art of conflict resolution. For that matter, why should South Korea have a military at all if it’s just waiting to experience mysterious accidents, none of which are truly capable of objective explanation and thus subject to “disputed explanations,” and each of which is a potential obstacle to us “reversing course” and forking over whatever the attacker besieged and desperate interlocutor demands as a precondition to the next negotiation?
And yet something gnaws at me, suggesting that all of this will not end as quickly and cleanly as Gregg imagines. There is also this part of me that supposes that if North Korea shelled Seoul, Donald Gregg would pick his way through the rubble, find a takkoji stand that had somehow escaped destruction, and then write an op-ed declaring that it was a goodwill gesture and — that exhausted cliche — an olive branch.
In the end, it’s proof enough who saw and seized opportunity in Aijalon Gomes’s stroll across the Yalu. I hope no one else will think of doing anything like this again.