Appeasement – Page 18

March 8, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Abductions Edition

I forecast severe tire damage along the road to removing North Korea from the terrorism-sponsor list: HANOI–Japan and North Korea opened talks here Wednesday morning on normalizing bilateral relations, but the North Korean side canceled the afternoon session apparently as a way of refusing the Japanese request to discuss the abduction issue further, the chief Japanese delegate said. However, the meeting is scheduled to resume Thursday morning at the North Korean Embassy to discuss the abduction and normalization issues, Koichi...

Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/WMD

March 7, 2007

Hill: N. Korea Must Give Up Uranium Program

[Update: This doesn’t sound very “newly murky:” “I have no doubt that North Korea has had a highly enriched uranium program,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said during a visit to Seoul. …. “We would expect that when North Korea makes its declaration of nuclear facilities that that would be one of the issues addressed in North Korea’s declaration,” he told a news conference. Good, if we really have no doubts. Straightforward interpretation is all that can...

Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan/Japan & Korea/WMD

March 6, 2007

Peace Is at Hand!

* Accountability Is So Last Month: For those who are thirsty for some rare news of someone holding Kim Jong Il accountable for anything lately, Opinion Journal has more on the end of the U.N. Development Program’s highly questionable North Korea operations, and some unsolicited advice for Chris Hill. * ‘There’s Nothing to Wait for Here:’ Those words, from the North Korean delegate who passed reporters on his way into “normalization” talks, could be the truest...

Appeasement/Deprogramming/Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK

February 28, 2007

Welcome to the Hen House

[Update: The Daily NK has more on the working groups.] Those “working groups,” to which most of the difficult unresolved issues with North Korea have been delegated, are scheduled to meet next month, and get a load of who is chairing them: South Korea will chair a working group on providing economic and energy incentives for North Korea, while China will be responsible for a group on the North’s denuclearization. Russia will head a group concerned with peace and...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD

February 26, 2007

Chronology of a Capitulation: Why Nothing Will Be Solved in 60 Days

Kyodo News has a very distressing report about just what the United States came to Beijing prepared to give up, and give up almost immediately: North Korea’s abandonment of nuclear weapons was stated in a first draft of an agreement document for the six-party talks held earlier this month, but was dropped in a second draft drawn up by the United States after the North Korean side rejected it, negotiation sources said Sunday. Given that North Korea giving up nuclear...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD

February 22, 2007

Richardson on David Albright: Put Me Down for “C”

Update: Albright has published his views here in slightly more detail, and I’m even less persuaded than I was before. Albright completely mischaracterizes the HEU evidence by ingoring evidence he can’t refute (North Korea’s admissions, Musharraf’s admissions, Libya) and arguing as if all of our evidence consisted of a receipt for aluminum tubes we’d found in A.Q. Khan’s lint filter. The key point about aluminum tubes is that they’re used to make gas centrifuges to enrich uranium. I’ve never...

Appeasement/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/WMD

February 21, 2007

‘Paying the Clown’

[Corrected, Updated] Harvard Professor Sung Yoon Lee dissects the North Korea sellout in the Daily NK and manages to say in one paragraph, with crisp eloquence, what it’s taken me about four posts to say less clearly. Energy, food, economic aid, and legitimacy are a necessary condition to the North Korean regime’s long-term survival, for the quintessential criminal regime of Kim Jong Il–despite its claims of juche (self-sufficiency)–is unable to function over the long-term without aid from abroad. At...

Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/WMD

February 17, 2007

Except for the Checks Being Written Out to ‘Herr A. Hitler,’ and The Dachau Industrial Park, Yes

Paying off Kim Jong Il is just like the Marshall Plan, says Roh. “There is frequent criticism that we are pouring out aid to the North,” Mr. Roh told South Korean residents in Italy. “After the war, the United States had several plans and investments, and among those the most efficient was the Marshall Plan. He noted the great benefits Washington had reaped from its investments: “Inter-Korean relations are being worked out, and we have the Kaesong Industrial Complex, but...

"United" Nations/Appeasement

February 15, 2007

Escape from Munich

[Update: The Washington Post declares a conservative revolt against the Not-Quite-Agreed Framework. E-mailing another activist today, I noted the irony that after years of being on President Bush’s side and getting no media traction, we’re far more likely to attract media attention now that we oppose his new policy. Just watch. This will be a fascinating experiment in media behavior.] [Update 2: More at MSNBC. The Administration is now furiously “clarifying” that it will interpret the terms strictly, which...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Uncategorized

February 5, 2007

Wobble Watch: Kaesong

In a one-hour meeting with Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said that while it is unrealistic to recognize the goods made in the border city of Kaesong as South Korean, there is room left to negotiate within the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries, Unification Ministry officials said. “Lee stressed that U.S. recognition of the goods produced in Kaesong as South Korean will contribute to bringing about a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula....

Appeasement/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics

January 22, 2007

Phoney War (I)

It is a natural tendency of people to accomodate themselves emotionally to conditions they cannot change. At its most extreme, accomodation can explain an abused child’s seeming acceptance of an abuser’s predations. At its most benign, it can be a mostly beneficial tendency to compromise with opposing views. But there is a difference between being open-minded and fooling one’s self. I’m still leaning against belief that a Democratic Congress with a narrow margin is going into an election year with...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD

January 22, 2007

It’s All a Matter of Perspective

Does it sometimes seem to you like we are two ships that pass in the night? The South Korean government should not disgrace itself by obeying foreign powers and imposing sanctions on its brethren…. South Korea’s political parties, groups and the public in all walks of life should be aware of the maneuvers of conservatives to take power …. South Koreans should form a broad anti-conservative alliance to destroy pro-American and anti-unification politicians and their conspiracies. You say that like...

Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/WTF?

January 21, 2007

North Korea Seeks Those Who Aided Abductee’s Escape

It’s been a bad week for North Korea’s P.R. machine, with the embarassments of abducted South Korean fisherman Choi Uk-Il’s escape and the repatriation of nine family members of South Korean POW’s (one of whom is already dead). Both incidents — and the small matter of North Korea’s latest threat to nuke Seoul — proved embarassing to North Korea’s friends in South Korea, who have problems enough already. But good neighbors take care of their friends, so North Korea is...

Abductions/Appeasement

January 21, 2007

Opposition Legislator Responds to Shenyang-Gate with Refugee-Protection Bill

SEOUL, Jan. 21 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s main opposition party plans to introduce a law revision aimed at helping North Koreans and South Korean abductees fleeing the communist country, a senior party official said Sunday. Rep. Hwang Woo-yea, secretary-general of the Grand National Party (GNP), said the bill will help prevent the forced repatriation of defectors from North Korea and expedite Seoul’s diplomatic efforts to bring them to South Korea. “The National Assembly passed a similar GNP-initiated bill in 2004...

Appeasement/China & Korea/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Refugees

January 19, 2007

One POW’s Repatriated Wife Already Reported Dead

She apparently was in ill health and froze to death in police custody, according to Yonhap. I’ll have a link and more details later. [Update: here:] One of the nine, who was the wife of a South Korean prisoner of war, apparently froze to death one month ago while she was being questioned by North Korean security authorities after they were deported to the North, a source familiar with North Korean affairs said. The woman, the source said he...

Abductions/Appeasement/China & Korea/Human Rights/Korean War

January 18, 2007

I’m Kim Jong Il, and I Approve This Message!

The message is, “if you elect the Grand National Party, I’ll nuke you!” “South Koreans are well aware that if the GNP takes power, it will destroy North-South relations and leave them only with the calamity of nuclear war,” wrote the Rodong Shinmun, the North Korean Workers’ Party daily. “The GNP and their puppets stand to be destroyed.” The daily again denied the GNP’s charge that the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, in similar remarks on Jan....

Appeasement/Korean Politics/WMD/WTF?

January 17, 2007

Sorry ‘Bout That: How a South Korean Consulate Helped Doom Nine Family Members of Its POWs

[Scroll down for updates.] Thirty-one years after the North Koreans kidnapped him from his fishing boat, 67 year-old Choi Uk Il is back in South Korea with the wife who never lost faith in him, and after his own government’s Shenyang consulate nearly turned him away. You can’t help but admire the ferocious loyalty of his wife, who raised their children on a cleaning lady’s salary, kept faith with her husband, and then cowed the faithless Ministry of Foreign...

"United" Nations/Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees