Open Sources, June 12, 2014

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Victor Cha has co-written a piece in Foreign Policy about the importance of keeping human rights on the negotiating agenda with North Korea, and points to this infographic on the gulags, co-sponsored by the George W. Bush Center. The Bush Center will also host an invitation-only event on human rights in North Korea again next week.

Leave aside the mootness of arguing about the negotiating agenda with North Korea. One may as well argue about Eric Cantor’s plans for his first year as Speaker of the House.

I don’t argue with a word that Mr. Cha writes; I only ask where he and President Bush were when Condi Rice and Chris Hill were sidelining human rights in the same six-party talks, watering down their criticism of Kim Jong Il’s regime, publicly rebuking their Special Envoy for Human Rights for pointing out the flaws in their sell-out, and even pushing for full diplomatic relations with North Korea before it addressed its crimes against humanity, and implicitly, before it shut down its gulags. Surely President Bush’s entire foreign policy team did not conceal itself from his executive scrutiny by accepting a sensuous full-body tongue bath from Glenn Kessler in the pages of The Washington Post.

George W. Bush and his foreign policy team have forfeited their standing to talk about this issue. As President, he betrayed the cause of the North Korean people. His words as an ex-President mean less than a Samantha Power hashtag.

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THIS VERY INTERESTING POST at 38 North looks at loopholes in U.N. sanctions on North Korea, and makes two principal recommendations for national governments that have the chief role in enforcing them: (1) that they should get beyond the whack-a-mole designation of trading companies and go after shipping companies instead, and (2) designate and sanction more third-country companies that help Pyongyang facilitate its violations. I’m happy to report that Section 104(a) of H.R. 1771 would make both of those policies mandatory.

The post you really have to read, on the other hand, is . Here’s a taste:

One reason is that the sanctions have targeted North Korean companies and state institutions that are impervious to sanctions because they are not embedded in the global economy. However, fundamental changes in the nature and modus operandi of the traffickers, and the location of many of the key actors and activities outside North Korea’s borders have in fact opened up new possibilities for the effective targeting of sanctions. 

Read the rest on your own.

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Dear South Korea: Please stop lying about Kaesong by saying you’re raising “wages” for the workers there. As far as you know, the workers only see a fraction of them, and the lion’s share goes directly to Kim Jong Un’s nuke fund. The only person getting a raise is Kim Jong Un, whom U.S. taxpayers are spending billions of dollars to protect you from.

Dear journalists: You know it’s bullshit, too. It’s your duty to question the bullshit that governments feed you. Ask the Unification Ministry where the money goes and why they call it “wages” when they know in all likelihood that the workers never see jon one. Then ask them how they square that with the financial due diligence requirements of the latest Security Council resolution South Korea voted for.

In other Kaesong news, a German company, Groz-Beckert, claims to be the first foreign company to begin operations at Kaesong. It makes perfect sense to me. They already have a large supply of leftover work uniforms:

[Another great moment in German business ethics]

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The regime tries to make Jang Song-Thaek the scapegoat for the apartment collapse.

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North Korea continues its crackdown against those suspected of Christian associations, among its subjects in China.

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Jang Jin-Sung of New Focus International has written a new book about his life as a member of the North Korean elite, and about his escape and disillusionment. I was poring through in it the bookstore last weekend, and opened the book to the part with Jang tells of returning home to Sariwon, and seeing men poke the supine bodies in the square in front of the train station to tell which ones were still alive, and to cart away those who weren’t. You can read more about Jang’s book here and here, but if you only read one review, then read this one by Blaine Harden, in The Washington Post.

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The Foreign Policy Initiative has published this summary of Iran’s human rights violations. I don’t deny that these are terrible things to do to people, but by what measure do they compare to those in North Korea, and why is it that we have human rights sanctions against Iran but not against North Korea?

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The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea has published another update of satellite imagery of Camp 25.

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North Korea, which was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, says Seoul-based U.N. human rights investigators will be “ruthlessly punished” for challenging the dignity of its socialist system, and that President Park will “pay the price” for allowing them to open an office in Seoul. Seoul, to its credit, advises the North Koreans to make like the Man from Nantucket.

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Thirteen North Korean refugees, including two children, have been arrested in Thailand. So far, there are no indications that they’re in danger of repatriation, although the political turmoil in Thailand is cause to worry. From the sound of this Joongang Ilbo piece, the South Korean government is engaged and thinks it can get them to Seoul. Interestingly, the thirteen passed through Laos, which repatriated nine refugees, most of them children, last year.

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Panama is seeking eight-year prison terms for the three remaining North Korean crew members of the Chong Chong Gang. The remaining 32 crew members were released after North Korea paid a fine in February. If I were any of those three, I’d plea bargain for the longest possible sentence.

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North Korea cuts food rations again: “North Korea doled out 410 grams of food for each person per day in May, compared with 420 grams on average in February, the Washington-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) said, citing the U.N. World Food Programme.”

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PENTAGON: INSTABILITY in Korea could draw in the Chinese military. Yes, but that’s far less likely if our information operations in North Korea do more to fan the flames of anti-Chinese nationalism. It’s not as if the Chinese would hesitate to do the same to us, after all, and there’s more than enough legitimate basis for us to make the case that North Koreans should oppose a Chinese occupation.

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Marcus Noland has written some good blog posts on the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, here and here.

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Republicans are missing the real issue on Benghazi. Botched as the non-rescue of Ambassador Stevens may have been, the greater scandal is that the President was willing to sacrifice freedom of speech to appease mobs of whooping loonies who represent the most intolerant strains of their own societies, and of the world as a whole. If we allow these people to govern our global discourse – and for a while, it looked like they were governing it – our global discourse won’t be around for long.