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26 May 2010

Belle, grosse linques for Curtis and me from Le Monde today. Bienvenue!

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Or, maybe they’re just assholes: The Washington Post asks the timeless question of why the North Koreans behave like North Koreans.

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A former North Korean army officer, now living in London, plots to overthrow the regime.

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Bruce Bechtol thinks the North Koreans’ objective is to move the sea boundary south. Although the theories aren’t mutually exclusive, I continue to favor the B.R. Myers theory that this is about succession. I think they’re trying to build cred for Kim Jong Eun, which means they have an interest in provoking a limited war.

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The Washington Times on North Korea’s ruling class and international crime.

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There are mixed signals on whether Hillary Clinton has made progress in persuading China to back sanctions. Yonhap says she “struggled, apparently unsuccessfully,” but my guess is that the Chinese are bargaining hard to try to water down a resolution they’ll eventually vote for. And violate.

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Fighting words from an unlikely source: “It is disgusting the way the Chinese just sit on their hands and do nothing. This backward and clumsy behavior is not fitting their supposed place as the predominant power in Asia,” said Victor Cha, a former National Security Council Asia director who now is at a Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies.”

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Yesterday’s fad: capitalism failed and the dollar is dying. Today’s fad: socialism failed and the Euro is dying. Is either fad true? I’m no economist, but we’ll never really know if the United States bails Europe out, will we? Now here is an issue where I’d love to see some well played election-year demagoguery.

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6 Responses

  1. Europe can’t bail itself out and is busy buying up U.S. Dollars. Why?, well because they know that the U.S. Dollar is a stronger long term currency. Especially now that China owns 1/4 of it.

  3. “I continue to favor the B.R. Myers theory that this is about succession.”

    I also think this is likely. Do you have a link to where he says this?

  4. Not to put too fine a point on it, but “North Korean” behavior is simply hyper-Korean behavior unmoderated by interactions with commerce in the Western world. Every trait exhibited in the North Korean negotiation style can easily be observed in South Korean negotiations as well.

  5. From the Bring Your Daughter to Work Day article.

    The North Korean Torch Group was described by officials as similar to China’s “princelings,” the sons and daughters of Chinese Communist Party and military leaders who have amassed fortunes through businesses and their family connections within the ruling Communist Party system.

    The Princelings are as illigitimate as anywhere in the CCP, but they lack the sheer venality and complete disdain for rule of law of the Torch Group. The FT wrote about them here.