Anju, May 4, 2012

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? Our U.N. Ambassador’s proposed response to North Korea’s missile launch was to add 42 companies to the sanctions list. China proposed two, and we compromised at … three. All of those entities — Green Pine, Amroggang Development Bank, and Tanchon Commercial Bank were already sanctioned by Treasury for their involvement in WMD proliferation.

Back when John Bolton was at the U.N., the Security Council was passing tough and potentially effective resolutions against North Korea. People bitched that Bolton said mean things and hurt people’s feelings, but none of those people bother to mention that Bolton wrote — and got the Security Council to pass — the same resolutions that Susan Rice is trying — and failing — to get China to comply with today, six years later. The irony here is that Bolton showed us that the U.N. might have moments of effectiveness. Nothing John Bolton said has denigrated the U.N. quite so effectively as what Susan Rice can’t get the U.N. to do.

_________________________________REP. ED ROYCE: Our North Korea policy has become a blind trust. After a not-terrible start, the Obama Administration seems to have had no North Korea policy at all for the last year.

_________________________________NORTH KOREA, WHICH WAS REMOVED from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, is now jamming the GPS civilian airliners use to find their way to Incheon International Airport.

_________________________________AN INTERESTING PIECE on hiking Bukak-san in Seoul.

_________________________________MUST READ: Well, I didn’t think anyone could top Walter Russell Mead, but Prof. Minxin Pei has written the most interesting thing I’ve read about China in the last five years. Don’t miss it.