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Category: Appeasement

December 20, 2012

Park, Lee, and Obama all had big plans to “engage” North Korea. North Korea had other plans.

Robert links to some polling data suggesting the pleasantly surprising fact that not only did North Korea’s missile test fail to swing votes toward Moon Jae-in, the ideological successor and former Chief of Staff to arch-appeaser Roh Moo-Hyun, it may have caused more conservative voters to flock to the polls to vote for Park (or against Moon).  If those voters expected Park to govern as a hard-liner, however, they’re projecting. Park didn’t run as a hard-liner in this election; in fact,...
Categories Appeasement/North-South/Sunshine
December 1, 2012

Did Obama Buy North Korea’s Pre-Election Silence?

I’m not fond of conspiracy theories, and I’ve credited President Obama with a “not bad” North Korea policy so far, but when the evidence right before your lying eyes begs for an inference … well, I’ll stop short of answering my own question and say that Congress ought to inquire further.  Exhibit 1: SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Yonhap) — A White House delegation made a secret trip to North Korea in August in what might be an attempt to discourage it from taking...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
May 25, 2012

Nuke Test Watch: One Disease, Many Symptoms

OK, I admit it — I’m disappointed in the North Koreans for wimping out: North Korea on Tuesday ruled out an imminent nuclear weapon test, but vowed to expand and bolster its nuclear deterrence as well as its sovereign right to launch satellites, while slamming the Group of Eight nations’ condemnation of its failed long-range rocket launch in April. In a remark given to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency, a spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that the North...
Categories Appeasement/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Missiles/Proliferation/WMD
May 8, 2012

Nobel Prize Winning President Ignores World’s Worst Human Rights Violations

Most of the people reading this blog probably have no idea who Robert King is, and that is a sad comment in itself.  King’s title is Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, a position that was created back in 2004, under a mostly forgotten and disregarded law called the North Korean Human Rights Act. In the Bush Administration, the office was initially filled by Jay Lefkowitz, a well-meaning man who initially came to Bush’s attention for his opposition...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights
March 16, 2012

And now, the painful burning sensation: N. Korea announces long-range missile launch

I have to admit it — even I’m surprised by how quickly the North Koreans reneged on this one: North Korea announced plans Friday to blast a satellite into space on the back of a long-range rocket, a provocative move that could jeopardize a weeks-old agreement with the U.S. exchanging food aid for nuclear concessions. The North agreed to a moratorium on long-range launches as part of the deal with Washington, but it argues that its satellite launches are part...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Missiles
March 2, 2012

For some of us it’s already March; at Foggy Bottom, it’s forever Groundhog Day

Let’s drill down into the Post-Groundhog Day Agreement, starting with the text of the nearest thing we have to a written agreement, a State Department press release, which I produce here in its entirety: A U.S. delegation has just returned from Beijing following a third exploratory round of U.S.-DPRK bilateral talks. To improve the atmosphere for dialogue and demonstrate its commitment to denuclearization, the DPRK has agreed to implement a moratorium on long-range missile launches, nuclear tests and nuclear activities...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
February 29, 2012

It’s still Day One. Have they reneged yet?

The Obama Administration, pretty much as I’d guessed, has struck a deal that’s transparently aimed at keeping the North Koreans quiet until mid-November. Wish them luck with that if you wish. Below the jump, you can read a press “availability” event (thanks to a friend) at which the Administration’s mouthpieces, no doubt mindful that we’re in an election year, try very hard to depress expectations that this is leading up to Agreed Framework III. From what little we know about...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
February 18, 2012

Agreed Framework III Watch

Whenever I mention Glyn Davies, I like to remind readers of the time he tried to pressure a State Department colleague into airbrushing a report on North Korea’s human rights atrocities for “the cause” of Agreed Framework II. Davies is about to fly to Beijing for talks with North Korean negotiator Kim Kye Gwan next week, and Kim wouldn’t have booked his ticket if he didn’t see a payday at the end of the journey. There isn’t a doubt in...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
June 6, 2011

Sung Kim Through the Retrospectoscope

The announcement that Sung Kim will be our new U.S. Ambassador to South Korea suggests continuity if a comparison of his background to Kathleen Stephens’s tells us anything. Like Stephens, Kim is a protege of Chris Hill* and comes from the State Department’s Korea Desk, which has long favored appeasement, agreed frameworks, and a peace treaty with North Korea, and had previously been caught trying to water down language in the State Department’s annual human rights report. My own fears...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
December 20, 2010

It’s Still “Business as Usual” Until Kaesong Closes

Hmmm: The government on Monday banned citizens from going to the Gaeseong Industrial Complex in North Korea, site of an inter-Korean reconciliation project, as tension on the peninsula remains taut. The Ministry of Unification, citing “security concerns” for South Koreans working there, said it would monitor the situation and decide on a day-to-day basis whether to recommence travel to the complex or other parts of the North. “If the situation gets any worse, the ban could be extended,” an official...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics
December 18, 2010

So, how exactly has Bill Richardson’s visit reduced tensions again? (Bumped)

North Korea has welcomed the has-been politician by reaffirming that it will never give up its nukes, preparing to test one, threatening to use others, and inspecting a military unit. Who feels safer already? Update: “North Korea Threatens More Attacks.” Huzzah for Kim Jong Bill! Update 2: It may be the worst photoshop ever, but I couldn’t help re-using it. Update 3, Dec 18: So, if Richardson is merely a private citizen who isn’t there to negotiate anything, and if...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
December 1, 2010

It’s (long past) time to close Kaesong.

So a week after the shelling of Yeonpyeong, the Washington Post leads me to believe that a lot of South Koreans who had been inclined to overlook previous North Korean outrages are really outraged this time. The Post’s correspondent thinks that the South’s infamous generation gap as to perceptions about North Korea has closed significantly in the last week. That’s good if it lasts, and if it translates into a policy that puts us on the path to strangling and...
Categories Appeasement/Yeonpyeong Attack
November 12, 2010

Obama: Bush Wimped Out on Kim Jong Il

Just how weak does your diplomacy have to be for Barack Obama, recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, to call you out for it? I do not mean to imply that the answer to this question is an obvious one. I ask it because of this statement by President Obama, at a joint news conference with President Lee Myung Bak, after this Veterans’ Day speech at my former duty station: After delivering his remarks, Obama met with South Korean...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
November 7, 2010

The Reaper Comes for Cho Myong Rok

Top North Korean military official Jo Myong Rok, a longtime confidant of leader Kim Jong Il who traveled to Washington in 2000 on a then-unprecedented goodwill mission, has died. He was 82. Jo, who was vice marshal of the Korean People’s Army and held the No. 2 post on the powerful National Defense Commission behind Kim, died Saturday of heart disease, the official Korean Central News Agency reported from Pyongyang. [AP, Hyun Jin Kim] Other experienced Asia hands will tell...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks
August 19, 2010

Good Riddance, Chris Hill

Regular readers already know that Christopher Hill is one of the few career civil servants I write about here whom I loathe almost unreservedly. The first job of an American diplomat is to represent American interests and values. Hill did neither. In his parting remarks before heading off into obscurity — if history is kind to him — Hill encapsulates in one statement what made him the best diplomat North Korea ever had: “We know the Iraqis don’t have nuclear...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks
June 7, 2010

The Kaesong Syndrome

It is much like that other psychological syndrome we sometimes observe in hostages who paradoxically express feelings of sympathy and adulation for their captors. The particular phenomenon I call the Kaesong Syndrome occurs when businesses become economic hostages of a despotic regime, and later begin to mimic its despotic exploitation of their workers, and finally, to parrot its demands in both substance and manner. The South Korean companies operating at the Kaesong Industrial Complex yesterday demanded that the South Korean...
Categories Appeasement/North-South/Sunshine
May 26, 2010

Mike Chinoy: Kim Jong Il Sank a South Korean Warship, Ergo We Should Negotiate With Him Now

Mike Chinoy was an absolutely, positively objective CNN reporter until he wrote a book accusing the Bush Administration of sexing up evidence of North Korean uranium enrichment to wriggle out of the first Agreed Framework. Poor Chinoy. Before his book even went to print, samples submitted by North Korea to the State Department began to test positive for highly enriched uranium, and in due course, Meltdown wasn’t just Chinoy’s title, it became . But because people like Chinoy are even...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
May 26, 2010

North Korea Saves Lee Myung Bak the Trouble of Closing Kaesong

[Update: So did they mean it or not? Damn Kim Jong Il never keeps a promise ….] President Lee can heave a mighty sigh of relief. Not only will the Kaesong Industrial Park be closed after all, but also, Chung Dong-Young, the Hankyoreh, and the usual suspects among Korea’s nationalist left can’t possibly criticize him for it without abandoning all pretense of logic. Oh, wait …. In any event, this is all proceeding very much like I’ve been predicting for...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics