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Category: Appeasement

August 5, 2008

The End of Sunshine

North Korea is now threatening to expel South Korean  staff from Kumgang.  A spokesman for the North Korean military unit in charge of the region around Kumgang said it would kick out all South Koreans “we deemed unnecessary” from the resort. Although South Korea suspended tourism after the shooting, more than 260 South Korean businesspeople remain there, most of them affiliated with Hyundai-Asan, a Seoul-based company that operates the resort together with the North Korean  government. The unidentified spokesman said...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics
August 3, 2008

State Dep’t: De-Listing N. Korea as a Terror Sponsor Depends on Verification

I take some comfort in the fact that while I can’t believe a damned thing they say, neither can the North Koreans: Nuclear-armed North Korea cannot be removed from a list of state sponsors of terrorism unless it agrees to a comprehensive protocol verifying its atomic program, US officials say. There appeared to be a perception that Pyongyang would be automatically de-listed on August 11 after President George W. Bush announced on June 26 that he had notified Congress of...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics
August 2, 2008

Senate Confirms Kathleen Stephens as Ambassador to Korea

[Updates below and in the text.] A couple of days ago, while traveling on business, I was informed that Sen. Brownback would lift his hold on the nomination of Kathleen Stephens to become Ambassador to the Republic of Korea. She was confirmed in a voice vote later that day. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to post about it. The Senate confirmed a new American ambassador to South Korea on Friday, after a senator dropped his objections...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
July 31, 2008

For the 1,002nd Time, Secretary Rice, We Are Not Giving Up Our Nukes.

At what point will we admit that the North Koreans have repeatedly repudiated any intention of disarming? North Korea threatened Tuesday to bolster its “nuclear armed force,” saying the United States was not yet ready to drop its “hostile policy” towards the communist country.  Washington and Pyongyang face “a grave political challenge” on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula and end their decades-long hostility, the North’s state newspaper Minju Joson said in a commentary. “What is crucial here is that the U.S....
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
July 30, 2008

Must-Read: Dan Blumenthal and Aaron Friedberg on Agreed Framework 2.0

What is interesting, though not stated in the article, is that Blumenthal is one of John McCain’s senior advisors on Asia policy.  The article certainly doesn’t purport to speak for McCain, though it doesn’t seem far afield of his views.  If McCain were elected, it suggests that both he and his advisors would want The piece begins with plenty of substantive criticism of where the Bush Administration has brought us, all of which is on the mark, but which you’ve...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
July 28, 2008

For the Thousand and First Time, Secretary Rice, We Are Not Giving Up Our Nukes.

The North Koreans must have concluded that our Secretary of State’s failure to register their renunciations of any intent to denuclearize originates in some  lapse of clarity on their part.  North Korea cannot unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons when it is technically at war with the United States, a pro-North Korean newspaper published in Japan said Saturday. The Chosun Sinbo said Pyongyang cannot easily surrender its nuclear deterrent because it would be tantamount to lowering its guard while facing...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
July 25, 2008

Is State Backing Away from N. Korea’s Terror De-Listing?

If you want to know what I think, no.  I think it’s posturing.  But Yonhap catches some significance in these remarks that I had missed: “It’s a 45-day minimum notification, but we certainly expect, and we’re watching very carefully, to see20whether or not North Korea is going to come through on the essential issue, which is verification, and to act accordingly,” Rice said. “I just wanted to clarify it’s a 45-day minimum notification, not maximum.” Rice reiterated her skepticism about...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
July 24, 2008

For the Thousandth Time, Secretary Rice, We Are Not Giving Up Our Nukes.

Somehow, I don’t think Condi Rice’s “‘very strong message’ about  [North Korea’s] nuclear disarmament obligations” quite got through: North Korea reportedly asked to be recognized as a nuclear state at a meeting of foreign ministers from countries in six-party talks on Wednesday. North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun urged the U.S. to stop its hostile policy toward the North, saying verification of the nuclear facilities and stockpiles it has declared is not a duty but cooperation.  [Chosun Ilbo] Somewhere, Jack...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
July 21, 2008

Agreed Framework 2.0 Update

Updates:   According to this AP report, we’ve now presented  the North Koreans with a proposed verification protocol and invited North Korea to stall for two more months and gut it  offer comments.   South Korean negotiator Kim Sook  says, “The ball is actually in the North Korean court ….”  True to form, State is withholding all details about what the protocol would consist of.  And as if in response for my rant below  about the lack of media skepticism, Reuters’s...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
July 20, 2008

The End of Sunshine

Don Kirk has some straightforward observations about scholars in Washington, who, remarkably enough, are  still  debating how North might reform its economy, as though the  decade-long Sunshine experiment had never happened.  Kirk saves his most acerbic observation for one of the participants in a recent seminar: Probably no Washington think-tanker has been quite so divorced from reality of late, at least in public utterances, as Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. In a recent commentary he held up Vietnam as...
Categories Appeasement/Deprogramming/NK Economics
July 11, 2008

North Korean Soldier Kills South Korean Tourist [U/D: And Demands a South Korean Apology]

[Update 2:   Her name was  Park Wang-Ja.   As her body was returned to a grieving husband and son, North Korea  reminded us that  the Korean  word for “chutzpah” is “juche”: North Korea expressed regret Saturday that one of its soldiers shot dead a South Korean tourist at a resort area of the North, but blamed the tourist for trespassing into an off-limits military zone and demanded South Korea apologize for the incident.   Pyongyang also rejected Seoul’s request to send a...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics/NK Military
July 9, 2008

Obama ‘Pivots’ Positions on N. Korea Terror De-Listing

The New York Sun picks up the story of Kim Dong Shik and Barack Obama’s first broken promise: In an interview yesterday, the executive director of the Korean Church Coalition for North Korean Freedom, Sam Kim, said he traveled to Congress in early June to remind Illinois legislators of a 2005 letter signed by Senator Obama, among others, that called on the North Korean regime to provide details about the case of the Reverend Kim Dong-Shik. Rev. Kim, who helped...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
July 5, 2008

Absolute Must Read: Chris Hill Explodes at Reporter Over Leaked Plan to Accept Incomplete, Incorrect N. Korean Declaration

James Rosen of Fox News has written the single most detailed and  best-written criticism of  Chris Hill’s  Disagreed Framework I have yet read, and that certainly includes anything I’ve written.   Rosen’s narration of Hill’s many public reassurances that  he would accept  nothing less than a “complete and correct” North Korean declaration is devastating.  I had wished for the time to write something like it myself, and that is now done for me.  And yet that is not even the best...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
July 2, 2008

Mission Accomplished!

There are more bad reviews for the Bush Administration’s decision to pay full price not for North Korea’s nuclear disarmament, but for  a “declaration” that omits its nuclear weapons, its nuclear proliferation, and a good share of its nuclear programs. *   National Review thinks Kim Jong Il must be smiling:  “The deal that emerged from the six-party talks is indeed making for dramatic headlines and good television. What cannot be said is that it is making us safe.”  *...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
July 1, 2008

Oops, We Changed the Wrong Regime

People can differ about the merits of  overthrowing noxious regimes  and the  various ways  that can be pursued, but I’m guessing this is one item  Condoleezza Rice wasn’t  pursuing for her legacy showcase:  Rice’s  sudden  turnabout on  de-listing North  Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism may soon plunge  the Japanese government into crisis.  Japan must now  decide whether to join the United States in providing aid to a country that kidnaps and refuses to account for unknown numbers of...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks
June 30, 2008

The New York Times: Now 33% as Coherent as Dick Cheney!

Dick Cheney  and the New York Times have one thing in common:  both have  opinions about  the latest version of  Bush’s  North Korea policy: Cheney froze, according to four of the participants at the Old Executive Office Building meeting. For more than 30 minutes he had been talking and answering questions, without missing a beat. But now, for several long seconds, he stared, unsmilingly, at his questioner, Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation, a public policy institution. Finally, he...
Categories Appeasement/Media Criticism/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD
June 28, 2008

Chris Hill Busted Again

[Update 1 Jul 08:   According to a reader tip,  the day after I published this post and the photos below, a State Department desk officer contacted Mrs. Kim through supporters to talk about her letter.  So Chris Hill can’t tell this particular lie again, but  he’s still going to do what  he wants to do.  The next lie, I suspect, will be delivered directly to Mrs. Kim.  It will consist of unenforceable promises to account, eventually,  for the fate...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
June 27, 2008

George W. Bush: A Uniter at Last!

For all the failings  of his accord with Kim Jong Il, Bush has made remarkable progress in unwittingly brokering an accord between a liberal Democratic presidential nominee, the House’s most conservative Republicans, and the Republican presidential nominee.  To various degrees, all have noted the inadequacy of Kim’s declaration and declared their opposition to de-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terror unless it permits verfication.  (Which it won’t, of course): This is a step forward, and there will be...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics