Monthly Archive: June, 2011

Reports in South Korea indicated that the government in Pyongyang on Monday ordered all universities to cancel classes until April of next year. The only exemptions are for students who will be graduating in the next few months and foreign students. The reports suggested that the students will be put to work on construction projects in major cities while there are also indications that repair work may be needed in agricultural regions that were affected by a major typhoon recently....

President Obama has extended sanctions against North Korea, but still hasn’t re-added it to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, despite its extensive and recent use of its state media, its spies, and its military to commit acts that meet the statutory definition of international terrorism. ______________________________________ Treasury moves to cut Kaesong out of American markets: The Executive Order and by extension the new regulations contain the troublingly vague prohibition on “the importation into the United States, directly or...

Apparently, no other candidates were willing to sign all-important that “I bequeath my eternal soul” clause, so it was the kind of election that not even Ban Ki Moon could lose: Ban has been criticized for his lack of charisma and his failure to decry human rights abuses in countries like China and Russia. But he has won praise for taking on climate change and nuclear disarmament and backing intervention in Ivory Coast and Libya. I don’t know how this...

Are you kidding me? Wendy Sherman? The same Wendy Sherman who pushed the policy that made North Korea a nuclear power? The same discredited policy that not even the Obama Administration can bring itself to defend today? You know how Oscar non-winners tend to say that it’s an honor just to be nominated? For all of my qualified support for the Obama Administration’s North Korea policy, it’s discrediting to serious thinkers to even consider Wendy Sherman for a post this...

Today, the signs from South Korea shifted from ominous to jumpy: South Korean marines fired rifles at a civilian jetliner as it was descending to land after mistaking it for a North Korean military aircraft, the airline said Saturday. The Asiana Airlines flight carrying 119 people from the Chinese city of Chengdu was undamaged in the incident around dawn Friday, the airline said. No one on board was hurt or aware of the shooting, and the South Korean Marine Corps...

More from Bradley Martin — a few months old, but worth reading: Appeasement doesn’t work with North Korea. In the short-term it may yield diplomatic agreements, but in the longterm it only makes the country’s political and military leaders increasingly arrogant, determined to be even more provocative so that they can extort still-larger concessions from their adversaries abroad and portray themselves at home as giant-killers. The above statement, in rough outline, would now draw agreement from the majority of serious...

One of us: It has become almost impossible to imagine a positive outcome to the long-festering problems that center on North Korea as long as the Kim dynasty reigns, enforcing the disastrously failed policies of the late “Great Leader,” President Kim Il Sung. [….] So why not just come out and say it? Not only would perennially hungry North Korea benefit from the removal of the founder’s son and heir Kim Jong Il, the “Dear Leader. But so would most...

Here’s more information about China’s growing impatience and frustration with North Korea: They seem to be expressing their frustration with high-profile photo ops and by pouring more cash into the 288-square-mile Rason zone, which is completely surrounded by a fence that may or may not be electrified (but then, pretty much all of North Korea may or may not be electrified). Unlike South Korea, expect China to hold onto whatever real estate it buys from North Korea’s failing regime. KCNA...

Did you really have to say that? According to a transcript released by the US defense department on Sunday, Gates, speaking at the annual Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore Saturday. said that Washington has no interest in carrying out regime change against Pyeongyang. Rather, the defense secretary stated that the US is interestsed (sic) in helping that regime become a normal state abiding by the norms of the international community. This is disappointing because I actually admire Gates very much; I’d...