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Category: Appeasement

June 16, 2009

Selig Harrison: Obama Shouldn’t Say Mean Things to North Korea

Sometimes, a news organization’s selection of guests tells you almost everything you need to know about its biases.  In one corner, we have Balbina Hwang, formerly of the Heritage Foundation before she sold out and went to work for Christopher “Kim Jong” Hill.  In the other, Selig Harrison presents that valuable “from beneath contempt” perspective.  This interview is a little old — from just after the toothless U.N. presidential statement that served as North Korea’s perfectly suitable excuse to walk...
Categories Appeasement/WMD
June 16, 2009

Poll: Obama Too Soft on North Korea

Admittedly, I’m ambivalent about this.  On the one hand, I’ve noted signs that Obama’s North Korea policy is headed in the right direction — a far better one than Bush’s, if carried out in a sustained and comprehensive way — although I think Obama will probably do a Chris Hill and buy the same horse all over again the minute North Korea offers to sign Agreed Framework III.  Still, my idea of “loyal opposition” extends an elected president and its...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
June 15, 2009

Biden, Lee: Won’t Get Fooled Again

He’s best known for saying things that make us cringe, but even Joe Biden is on message on North Korea: “It is important that we make sure those sanctions stick and those sanctions prohibit them from exporting or importing weapons,” Biden said. “This is a matter of us now keeping the pressure on.”  [AP] And since everyone else is, Joe, why not psychoanalyze the North Koreans’ motives?  Nope, he wouldn’t touch that one: “God only knows what he wants,” Biden...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
June 14, 2009

Hey DJ, What’s That Big Pink Animal With the Prehensile Trunk? (Updated)

Admittedly, I don’t have high expectations of NPR, but I would expect that even they would at least mention the circumstances surrounding the summit that bought Kim Dae Jung his Nobel Peace Prize.  Instead, NPR lets his grandiose claims go unchallenged: “The Sunshine Policy has been and still is supported by the majority of South Koreans and the whole world,” Kim says, sitting in his living room. “It’s the reason I won the Nobel Peace Prize. People are telling President...
Categories Appeasement/Censorship/Democracy/Media Criticism
June 12, 2009

Obama Muzzles Gore, Richardson

Apparently, Secretary of State Clinton thinks one Special Envoy is plenty: The New Mexico governor, who negotiated the return of Americans from North Korea in the 1990s, was a ubiquitous presence in the early days of the crisis, but on Monday, he abruptly went dark and is now refusing all media requests, Caitlin Kelleher, a spokeswoman, said. His silence, people following the situation closely said, is part of a broader administration strategy to handle the delicate situation with immense care...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics/Uncategorized
June 11, 2009

House Dems Block Bill Demanding Release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, Re-Listing N. Korea as a Terror-Sponsor

Almost everywhere in Washington, one can sense a seismic shift in the consensus about dealing with North Korea.  Gone are the gauzy fantasies that North Korea’s disarmament is just one more (American) concession away.  You can see this in the Obama Administration’s emerging policy, and you can see it in the think tanks that supply the media much of their analysis.  At an event yesterday, I heard Victor Cha and Jack Pritchard broadly agree on the need for tough sanctions...
Categories Appeasement/U.S. Politics
June 9, 2009

Kaesong Death Watch

For new readers, I am not a fan of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a zone in North Korea that uses South Korean management and capital, and North Korean laborers that aren’t actually paid wages, so to speak, as much as they’re given food rations as compensation.  The idea was that Kaesong would change North Korea’s society and economy — in the original German, that’s “arbeit macht frei” — but at the first hint of that, the North Korean government predictably...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics/North-South/Sunshine
June 1, 2009

SecDef Gates Not Pushing for Agreed Framework III

Michael Yon traveled with Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Singapore and passes along these observations: One matter that you will see in the press is that North Korea is the elephant in the room. Secretary Gates has made it clear that we have no intention of rewarding bad behavior, as we have done in the past with North Korea. Many readers seem to hold a special disdain for President Obama, and I actively campaigned for McCain, but I get the...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Military/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
May 23, 2009

Some Final Thoughts on Roh Moo-Hyun

Even though most indications were pointing to an unhappy ending to the former president’s legacy, I was still shocked to hear the news of Roh’s death. His presidency, beginning with the elections that got him inaugurated, served as a constant backdrop during my time in South Korea, which correlated with his term. I arrived in Korea just after the conclusion of the World Cup. Tensions were high in relation to the unfortunate tank incident involving the U.S. military and South...
Categories Appeasement/North-South
May 17, 2009

Kaesong: Dead or Just Pining?

[Updated below] The headline is pretty much what I’d predicted three years ago:  “North Korea announces nullification of all ‘Kaesong agreements,’” and that’s from the Hanky: North Korea’s military leadership has made statements hinting they would demand a withdrawal of businesses from Kaesong, but this is the first time the Bureau has brought up the possibility. In this notification, North Korea said, “We announce the nullification of all Kaesong Industrial Complex agreements made between the two Koreas which gave preference...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics/Sunshine
April 26, 2009

Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. Embassy in Seoul Calls Laura Ling and Euna Lee “Stupid”

I wonder how many years of studying international relations it would take a guy like me to become a suave, smooth-talking ambassador of American values like this guy: A US diplomat in Seoul has shocked a group of visiting Congressional staff members by allegedly making highly insensitive comments about two journalists — Taiwanese ­-American Laura Ling and Korean-American Euna Lee — now facing serious criminal charges in North Korea. William Stanton, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy
April 22, 2009

Chris Hill Slips Through; New Bills in Congress Would Roll Back His Unilateral Concessions

[Update:   I have the House bill, too.  Scroll down for the link.] The AP is reporting that Christopher Hill is now confirmed as Ambassador to Iraq.  Having managed to inflict a slight flesh wound on Hill, we can at least claim to have alerted potential critics to some of the less desirable aspects of his character, which (I fear) will reveal themselves again in due course when he opens secret talks with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.  Don’t say I...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
April 19, 2009

Joining the Great North Korea Debate

I’m gratified to see that my latest New Ledger article has picked up so much linkage and circulation, including at Instapundit, Real Clear World, the Memeorandum, Pajamas Media, Rantburg, Google News, and even the Puffington Host.  I doubt that I’ve done much harm to Chris Hill’s chances of being confirmed, but it’s gratifying to see my ideas debated by people not necessarily predisposed to agree (which must be nearly everyone, given that I’ve been highly critical of Presidents Clinton, Bush,...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Missiles/Six-Party Talks
April 17, 2009

Christopher Hill: Deep Kimchee for Iraq

Of the many things that will be written about North Korea this week, the least likely of these is, “Now there’s the kind of diplomacy we need more of.” Consider just the events of the last few days: the missile test itself, which may have hit closer to home than originally thought; the failure of the United Nations to enforce two of its violated resolutions; the broader failure of deterrence and counter-proliferation; and North Korea’s final repudiation of a February...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
April 14, 2009

Dozens Shocked by North Korea’s Repudiation of Disarmament Agreement

So much for George W. Bush, Condi Rice, and Chris Hill’s last-minute legacy grasp, the February 2007 deal with North Korea hereinafter referred to as Agreed Framework 2.0. Following a long rejection by the corpus of North Korean belligerence, Agreed Framework 2.0 has ceased to be: North Korea vowed Tuesday to restore the nuclear facilities that it had been disabling and boycott international talks on its nuclear weapons program to protest against the U.N. Security Council’s reaction to its recent...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
April 10, 2009

Don Kirk: We Can’t Trust North Korea

Long-time Korea and Asia correspondent Don Kirk, who broke the story that Kim Dae Jung used illegal payments to buy the summit that won him the Nobel Prize, comments on the self-evident pointlessness of negotiating with North Korea: North Korea’s latest missile test raises a critical question. Why should anyone consider giving aid to this regime that has already squandered hundreds of billions of dollars on firing off missiles and producing nuclear warheads? Here’s an impoverished country, the single biggest...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
April 5, 2009

What President Obama Should (But Won’t) Do About North Korea’s Missile Test

[Update: The nations are not united. The U.N. Security Council fails to agree on the text of a very angry letter. You don’t say.] [Afterthought: So can we conclude that the Obama Administration views even “soft power” as excessive force?] Our Words Mean Nothing Even for North Korea, today’s missile test was an especially flagrant, telegraphed, and premeditated provocation. Whether the missile carried a satellite or not, to launch it was a clear violation of two U.N. resolutions. That the...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Missiles
April 3, 2009

Hill’s Nomination Held, But Senate Could Override the Hold Today (Update: Hill Still Not Confirmed!)

[Update: The gods of the Senate calendar were not kind to Chris Hill today. Harry Reid and John Kerry tried to bully him into it, but Brownback stood his ground and did not lift his hold. Hill was not confirmed. It may be a short-lived moral victory. After the recess, it will be in the hands of the Senate leadership to get the nomination to the full Senate floor. In any event, North Korea’s missile test will have happened by...
Categories Appeasement/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics