Posted by Joshua on September 25, 2011 at 8:00 pm · Filed under WMD, Diplomacy, Proliferation, Axis of Evil, U.S. Politics, Missiles
There’s nothing more I really care to say about what we should have done about the North Korean-built nuclear reactor at Al-Kibar in Syria, which Israel destroyed in a September 2009 air strike. This was a matter of some temporary inconvenience to Chris Hill’s efforts (abetted by the President and Secretary of State) to sell us a shiny, pre-owned agreed framework, complete with rust-proofing and warranty.
Recently, however, Dick Cheney’s memoir has revived that debate. Michael Anton, writing in The Weekly Standard, summarizes Cheney’s argument. Bob Woodward responds here, at the Washington Post. For sur-rebuttal, we have this piece by Elliott Abrams, Eliot Cohen, Eric Edelman and John Hannah, writing in the Washington Post. Among the interesting facts we learn from this is that Syria apparently had other facilities on its territory, presumably reprocessing facilities, that were designed to work with the reactor.
On a somewhat related note, although this piece by Jonathan Pollack about North Korea’s missile trade is interesting, it finds that North Korea’s missile exports declined precipitously after 2006. So how can Pollock be so sure of that? He thinks this decline coincides roughly with when the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1695, the first resolution banning North Korea’s missile program. I suspect that Pollack is partially right — North Korea probably did sell fewer missiles outright since the Proliferation Security Initiative began to bite, although I have yet to be convinced of exactly when the decline began or how steep it was. The reason? It may just be that because of said resolution, the North Koreans and their customers simply became more cagey about hiding their commerce. One way they went about this was to fly their missile parts right through the Beijing airport. Maybe Pollack has ways of registering that traffic, too, but I tend to doubt it.
Also somewhat related: I don’t find myself agreeing with Jennifer Rubin all that often, but I think failing to block Wendy Sherman’s confirmation will eventually turn out to be one of the worst decisions the Republicans in the Senate failed to make. It would have been better to let Sung Kim slip through and make Sherman the political issue, but some congressional oversight is still better than none at all.
Posted by Joshua on September 18, 2011 at 2:53 pm · Filed under Terrorism (NK)
You probably heard somewhere that President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, to reward it for promising to completely, verifiably, and irreversibly give up its nuclear weapons. You probably also know that I did not favor this decision, to put it mildly. First, North Korea never acknowledged or apologized for its past and continuing acts of state-directed terrorism, such as the abduction and murder of Rev. Kim Dong Shik, its support for Hezbollah, or its failure to fully account for foreign abductees. Second, the latter concern meant that de-listing North Korea would cause grave damage to our relations with our Japanese ally. Third, by the summer of 2008, North Korea’s compliance with Agreed Framework II was on a clear track toward repudiating the very commitments that the de-listing was meant to reward: North Korea had already been caught building the Syrians a nuclear reactor, had failed to deliver a complete declaration of its nuclear programs, was stalling on verification, and was turning over samples that were smeared with highly enriched uranium, even as it continued to repeat the lie that it had no HEU program. And given all of that has happened since 2008, President Obama’s failure to reverse President Bush’s decision was legally wrong, bad diplomacy, and irreconcilable with a credible counter-terrorism policy. There is also the matter of its inconsistency with then-Senator Obama’s promises to oppose de-listing if North Korea failed to account for Rev. Kim and keep its Agreed Framework II obligations.
Even so, proponents of de-listing could still say in the summer of 2008 that North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism was at historically low levels, at least compared to its own past history, at least as long as they could overlook North Korea’s use of its state media to terrorize the governments and populations of other states. After all, North Korea’s threats of nuclear force were so frequent before and after the listing that it’s hard to say that its removal from the terror list coincided with a measurable increase in that trend.
In other important ways, however, the de-listing of North Korea as a sponsor of terrorism has coincided with an alarming increase in the North’s willingness to arm terrorists, terrorize its neighbors, and send its agents abroad to murder its critics. Certainly before President Bush de-listed North Korea, we had not seen anything like North Korea’s sale of weapons, including man-portable surface-to-air missiles, to terrorists, at least in open sources. Before 2008, the idea that the North would torpedo a South Korean warship or shell a South Korean fishing village to punish it for cutting off aid would have been unthinkable. Those attacks transformed the military stalemate on the Korean peninsula from one of mutual deterrence and stalemate to one of limited war and failing deterrence.
In 2008, North Korea was not known to have attempted to assassinate any of its critics abroad since its assassination of Lee Han-Young in Seoul in 1997. But last July, two agents of the North Korean ruling party’s Reconnaissance Bureau were arrested and pled guilty to attempting to assassinate high-level defector Hwang Jang-Yop, a needless and reckless act given that Hwang was 87 at the time. (He died of natural causes a few months later). It wasn’t the first attempt. Before her October 2008 conviction, North Korean spy Won Jeong-Hwa unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate “a South Korean military officer in Hong Kong using an aphrodisiac laced with poison,” and “tried to but failed to meet and assassinate Hwang.” Won was also carrying poisoned needles, which she was ready to jab into “South Korean intelligence agents” when ordered to do so. In other words, the North was probably planning the first of its recent wave of assassinations in the South at the very time it was demanding that the Bush Administration de-list it as a sponsor of terrorism.
It is useful to remind ourselves that “international terrorism” is a word that means something. The U.S. Criminal Code defines it this way:
As used in this chapter -
(1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that -
(A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended -
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum; [18 U.S.C. sec. 2331]
Since 2008, poisoned needles seem to have become the North Korean terrorist’s weapon of choice. We’ve seen a wave of actual and abortive needle attacks in recent weeks:
A South Korean missionary died in the Chinese border city of Dandong last month after suddenly collapsing, a South Korean official said Friday. The 46-year-old missionary, identified by his family name Han, fell to the ground while foaming at the mouth as he waited for a taxi in the city’s downtown area on Aug. 21, according to the official of the South Korean Consulate in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang. [Yonhap]
The death follows a separate attack in which a South Korean activist — also working in northeast China — says he was stabbed with a poison-tipped needle, the Korea JoongAng Daily reported. The unidentified man said he had been stabbed in the waist with a poisoned needle after leaving a sauna in the province of Jilin, before collapsing in the street and being rushed to the hospital, the paper said. He had reportedly been openly protesting against the North’s regime.
The [South Korean] foreign ministry said it did not know whether there was any North Korean involvement in the two incidents, but its diplomats had asked Chinese authorities to ensure the safety of South Koreans near the North’s border. It said Chinese police conducted an initial autopsy but found no traces of poison. They proposed a second one but Kim’s family wanted to go ahead with cremation. The consulate “has strongly requested the related organization in the Chinese government to ensure the safety of South Koreans in border regions, and plans to take necessary measures to prevent further incidents from happening,” its statement said. [AFP]
Given the obvious suspicions about China’s candor, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know precisely what happened to these two men, but South Korean investigators aren’t the only ones who suspect the obvious suspect:
Tim Peters, a Seoul-based Christian activist, said he had a “very strong suspicion” but no evidence that the missionary who died had been poisoned by the North’s agents. He told AFP the victim had been involved in evangelical work among North Korean refugees, an activity that was taken extremely seriously by the regime.
Peters founded Helping Hands Korea, an organisation involved in evangelising and giving general assistance to refugees from the North who cross into northeast China. Asked if missionaries were in fear of such attacks, he said: “There’s a kind of sobering awareness that this is always lurking in the shadows. It’s part of the price one pays for doing missionary work in this area.”
South Korean pastor Kim Dong-Shik was kidnapped in Yanji in January 2000 and taken to North Korea, according to Seoul authorities. [AAP]
And now, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service says it has foiled a poison-needle plot against Park Sang-Hak, the leader of Fighters for a Free North Korea, a/k/a The Balloon People:
South Korea has arrested a North Korean agent who plotted to assassinate an outspoken anti-Pyongyang activist with a poison-tipped needle, the intended victim and a news report said Friday. The agent, identified only as An, was in possession of the needle and other weapons at the time of his arrest, Yonhap news agency said. The target of the apparent plot, the latest of several blamed on Pyongyang, was activist Park Sang-Hak, who is involved in launching cross-border propaganda leaflets fiercely critical of the North’s regime. [….]
An, a former North Korean special forces commando aged in his 40s, came to the South in the late 1990s as a defector but disappeared several years ago, according to Yonhap. After resurfacing in the South in February, An sought to meet Park. But Park, alerted by the anti-espionage agency, said he did not show up for a meeting with An at a subway station in southern Seoul on September 3. “An told me by phone that he was to be accompanied by a visitor from Japan who wants to help our efforts. But then I was told by the NIS not to go to the meeting due to the risk of assassination,” Park told AFP. “Following advice from intelligence authorities and police, I don’t see any strangers these days.” [AFP]
The anniversary of 9/11 is a fitting occasion to ask the extent to which we’re prepared to overlook the use of terrorism by foreign governments. North Korea was originally de-listed to induce it into nuclear disarmament, something that almost no one now believes North Korea will ever do. If de-listing was really about diplomatic and political calculations, no one really believed that counter-terrorism was one of its major policy goals. But shouldn’t it matter that since North Korea’s de-listing, it has increasingly relied on terrorism as an instrument of national policy to serve its political objectives?
As ordinary citizens, of course, we have little influence over such arcane questions of foreign policy. But one way to register your opinion effectively would be to contribute to Park Sang-Han’s Fighters for a Free North Korea through the North Korean Freedom Coalition.
Posted by Joshua on September 13, 2011 at 7:25 pm · Filed under Anju Links
Nine people who say they are from North Korea arrived Tuesday in a black wooden boat off the western Japanese coast in what authorities suspect is a rare defection from the communist nation to Japan.
A fisherman contacted authorities after spotting the unfamiliar vessel in waters near the Noto peninsula, which juts into the Sea of Japan. [AP]
Aboard were three men, three women, and three boys. All asked to go to South Korea.
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Oh, Kumgang, you octomom of ironies:
South Korea will formally ask foreign countries this week not to invest or engage in tourism activities at North Korea’s Mount Kumgang resort, officials said Monday. Earlier, Seoul said it will use all diplomatic channels to prevent foreign companies from controlling operations at the resort, which was built and funded by South Korean companies and governmental agencies. [Yonhap]
Oddly enough, North Korea’s summary expropriation of Kumgang has Kaesong investors a little worried, and the recent replacement of Kaesong’s North Korean commissar can’t be helping. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
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For a few, there’s good eating in Pyongyang:
Kim “gave field guidance to the newly built Meat Shop in Pothongmun Street”, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Thursday, as he visited with military and political officials. The large store in Pyongyang sells fresh, frozen and processed fish, beef, pork, geese, turkeys and other meat, the report said.
“He said, his face beaming with a smile, that customers can ask for different kinds of meat they like,” the report added, saying that the leader noted it was necessary to build more, similar stores. [AFP]
Any country this well-fed has a moral responsibility to contribute to the famine relief in Somalia. No doubt, Jimmy Carter would agree that not doing so is a human rights violation.
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The Peoples’ Republic of China would like you all to know that it is shocked, shocked to find proliferation and money laundering going on here:
The Guangdong Development Bank, a mainland lender partly owned by the U.S. bank Citigroup, had banking ties with a North Korean arms dealer in 2009, according to a cable sent by the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong in July 2009, The South China Morning Post reported Saturday, quoting information provided by the Wikileaks.
Now named China Guangfa Bank, the lender had banking business with Global Trading and Technology, which according to U.S. Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey was a front for Korea Mining Development Trading Corp.
When meeting with then bank President Michael Zink on July 10 that year, Levey “warned that this is just one example of a North Korean entity using deception to access the international financial system for transactions prohibited by (U.N. Security Council resolutions),” the cable said. [Kyodo News]
Etcetera, etcetera. I yearn for the day when international NGO’s and our own foreign policy establishment begin to hold China to the resolutions it votes for. I’d hate it if people got the idea that the U.N. has become a system of double standards and a tool for the cynical manipulation of those governments that happen to be representative and accountable.
Posted by Joshua on September 13, 2011 at 7:23 am · Filed under Diplomacy, U.S. Politics
Looks like my question has been answered:
The U.S. State Department is trying to persuade a senior Republican senator to lift a hold on the confirmation of Sung Kim, the nominee to become a new ambassador to South Korea, congressional sources said Monday.
Jon Kyl (R-AZ), assistant minority leader in the Senate, has been blocking the confirmation process for more than a month, according to the sources. He is known as a staunch conservative on foreign policy. [….]
“Sen. Kyl seems to be placing a hold on Kim’s confirmation due to the Obama administration’s North Korea policy, but he has not clarified the reason,” a source said, requesting anonymity. [Korea Times]
Apparently, the Senate custom is that hold letters are, at least initially, anonymous, and therefore unexplained.
I’m just glad to see that someone in the Senate is still looking over the State Department’s shoulder, now that Sam Brownback has gone back to Kansas.
Posted by Joshua on September 6, 2011 at 7:50 am · Filed under Anju Links
The North Korean Freedom Coalition is organizing a wave of international protests for September 22nd. The protests will occur in front of Chinese embassies and consulates in 12 different countries, including Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo, but also Sydney, Brussels, Prague, Tallinn, Helsinki, Mexico City, Warsaw, Busan, Bucharest, Kiev, London, Dublin, Chicago, Houston, New York, Chicago, L.A., and San Francisco. If your city isn’t listed there and happens to have a ChiCom consulate, it’s not too late to become an organizer.
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I was too busy to even write about this before, but if North Korea is indeed responsible for a cyber-attack on a South Korean bank — well, OK, it’s not as bad as shelling a village or sinking a warship, but it certainly warrants invoking the doctrine of reprisal.
South Korean officials said that 30 million customers of the Nonghyup agricultural bank were unable to use ATMs or online services for several days and that key data were destroyed, making it the most serious of a series of incidents in recent months. But even more troubling was the prospect that a belligerent neighbor had acquired the tools to disrupt one of the world’s most heavily wired nations — and that even more damaging attacks could be in store.
Fortunately, we have plenty of options for doing that. Only the will is lacking.
That said, the word “cyberterror” seems misplaced for any attack that doesn’t create an imminent threat to life.
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The Israeli newspaper Haaretz raises a good question about Syria’s al-Kibar reactor, which Israel bombed in 2007. Unlike its North Korean equivalent, al-Kibar had no radiochemical plant or other reprocessing facilities nearby. One possibility, of course, is that they’re elsewhere in Syria and that their location isn’t available in open sources. But another is that they’re in Iran, and that al-Kibar was really an Iranian facility hidden on Syrian soil. It certainly makes sense, given some evidence that Iran financed al-Kibar, along with the fairly extensive cooperation between Iran and North Korea.
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This has to be the saddest thing I’ve read all year.
According to a Chongjin source on August 31st, corner spots within the South Chongjin market in the Nanam region of the city have been occupied by individuals selling their own used goods. Referred locally to as “Stalls of Tears” they are a source of sympathy and pity from the local people.
The source said the poorest of the poor can be seen in the market selling their used household goods to scrape together enough money to eat. Their destitute station makes for a miserable sight.
“They sell whatever they can,” said the source, “starting with their cutlery and more or less anything of saleable value. Some have nothing to sell apart from used empty rice sacks.”
Such people used to get by on a rice gruel made of potato or pumpkin. Now, said the source, unable to acquire the ingredients even for this they have taken to selling their possessions in the market. Often, however, they fail to make any sales and take back home what they brought. Unable to pay the market stall fees, they are not seen again the following day.
“They have no land, no fields or such and so no hope for tomorrow,” added the source. “They came to sell their possessions in order to stay alive. But they hardly make anything and can expect little beyond the destruction of their family or death.”
I wonder what a pair of unused tap shoes would fetch.
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A translation from the original Chinese: I am shocked, shocked to see proliferation going on here.
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Not-So Splendid Isolation: On top of everything else, North Koreans now have to worry about AIDS.
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The North Korean policy towards religion is simple-annihilation. However, some changes in actual religious persecution have been noticed. This is not because the official polity towards religion has been amended, but rather because the attitudes of those who monitor religious activities have been altered.
The wealthy are not punished for their religious activities. Everyone in North Korea-regardless of their social position, or education- is primarily interested in money-the agents of the National Security Agency(or any other security force) are not immune to this. Therefore, when any issue regarding religion occurs, the first thought of the agent is typically of money.
Recently, there have been several cases in which it has appeared that religious suspects have been only lightly punished for their activities and then released. In these cases, they were released thanks to bribery. In the past, it had been impossible to avoid strict punishment, but recently a bribe is enough to secure one’s release. [Open News]
