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Category: Appeasement

April 1, 2009

South Korean Man Still Held at Kaesong

That South Korean man arrested at Kaesong continues to be held incommunicado. It’s staggering that South Korea would invest so much economic and political capital on something as poorly thought through as Kaesong. I didn’t have time to find an estimated total cost for the entire Kaesong fiasco, but this UPI report puts the cost of Kaesong’s recent expansion alone at $2.5 billion, just a small portion of more than $11 billion committed by Roh Moo Hyun to upgrade North...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics
March 31, 2009

Is Hostage-Taking North Korea’s New Business Model?

This should do wonders for North Korea’s foreign direct investment: North Korea told South Korea on Monday it put a South Korean worker at the joint industrial zone of Kaesong under probe on suspicion of violating relevant regulations, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said. North Korea sent a notice to South Korea, saying the South Korean worker, detained at around 11:50 a.m., has criticized the North’s political system, ministry spokesperson Lee Jong Joo said at a press briefing. [Kyodo News] I...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics
March 18, 2009

Five senators write Obama, ask him to withdraw Christopher Hill’s nomination

Read the full text of the letter here. The senators signing include Brownback (R-KS), Ensign (R-NV), Inhofe (R-OK), Bond (R-MO), and Kyl (R-AZ), the Senate Republican whip. McCain and Graham are still opposed to Hill’s nomination but did not sign. No one on the Foreign Relations Committee signed or came out in opposition. The big question now: will any Senator hold the nomination? Not yet. A hold would shift the focus to the Senator instead of Hill. Those opposed to...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
March 16, 2009

Kaesong Managers Become Hostages, OFK Blogger Fails to Suppress Schadenfreude

[Update: North Korea lets them out. It’s not clear whether the border is fully reopened, but either way, no sane foreign business would invest in Kaesong now. And just in case all of this wasn’t strange enough, South Korean “academics” see North Korea cutting off one of its own main sources of hard cash and conclude that it’s South Korea that’s in a bind. Hey! I had just been thinking that what an economically strapped economy really needs most is...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics
March 13, 2009

This is not the Dennis Blair I knew

Dennis Blair, who tried to put diplomacy’s own Jeremiah Wright in charge of writing our national intelligence estimates, has just thrown the entire Obama Administration off message on North Korea’s upcoming missile test. (Mark your calendars for April 4th, though April 15th seems at least as likely). Blair, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee no less, mused that North Korea’s missile test is probably just what the North Koreans say it is: “I tend to believe that the North...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 7, 2009

Unifiction Ministry Reverts to Form

It’s official: the Unifiction Ministry should have been abolished after all: The Ministry of Unification announced Wednesday that it would ask police to investigate anti-Pyongyang activist leaders if they press ahead with their plan to launch propaganda leaflets and North Korean banknotes across the border to the North. A ministry official, along with a representative from police, met with organizers planning to launch the anti-North Korean leaflets, activists said. The two organizers who met the ministry official were Choi Sung-yong,...
Categories Activism/Appeasement/Deprogramming/Famine & Food Aid
February 5, 2009

Obama Policy Watch, Plus: Chris Hill Reminisces on Failure

With most of the major players in Obama’s cabinet selected, the question turns to what sort of policies we’ll see during this administration. The shape of those policies is already being tested by North Korea’s state terrorism against South Korea, its threat to test an ICBM — in flagrant violation of two U.N. resolutions — and its continuing repudiation of its 2007 disarmament commitments. So far, the preponderance of evidence suggests that the Obama Administration lacks a coherent plan for...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 4, 2009

Diplomacy, Hubris, and the ‘Management’ of Sociopaths

The United States warned North Korea Tuesday that any testing of its longest-range missile would be seen as “provocative,” amid signs the reclusive Stalinist state could be preparing a launch. “North Korea’s missile activities and, you know, missile programs are a concern to the region. There’s no secret there,” said State Department spokesman Robert Wood. “And a ballistic missile launch by North Korea would be unhelpful and, frankly, provocative.” [AFP] Who believes that a statement like this is anything other...
Categories Appeasement/China/Diplomacy/Uncategorized
February 2, 2009

Sun Rises, Geese Fly South, North Korea Reneges on Promises to Disarm

Ad nauseum. Any old excuse will do: North Korea said on Monday it would never unilaterally dismantle its nuclear weapons and demanded inspectors probe the South to make sure it is not harbouring U.S. atomic arms, further stepping up tensions with its neighbour. [….] A North Korean army spokesman said in comments carried by the state’s official KRT TV that the North and the South remained in a state of war and it was “a shameless act of imprudence” to...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 2, 2009

Hostile Policy Update: State Terrorism Meets Priceline Diplomacy

As used in this chapter – (1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that “¦ (B) appear to be intended – (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they...
Categories Appeasement/Terrorism (NK)
January 30, 2009

Hostile Policy Update: North Korea Kills Off Sunshine

[Scroll down for updates] I don’t know why it comes as a surprise to anyone when North Korea reneges on anything: North Korea said Friday it is ditching a nonaggression pact and all other peace agreements with South Korea, in an apparent attempt to use the threat of an armed clash to press Seoul to give up its “confrontational” stance. The communist nation also said it will no longer respect a disputed sea border with the South, raising the prospect...
Categories Appeasement/NK Military
January 29, 2009

Obama Cabinet Watch: Abandon All Hope Now

Governor “Kim Jong” Bill Richardson is reported to be in the running for appointment as Special Envoy to North Korea, a position the Democrats are talking about dual-hatting with the position of special envoy for human rights. As I noted previously, Richardson’s statements to or about North Korea are conspicuously devoid of any references to North Korea’s death camps, its malign neglect of millions of starving people, or public executions. Worse, Richardson actively sought out photo ops with officials of...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
January 28, 2009

Jimmy Carter Would Serve Mankind Best by Retiring

There is nothing so harmful to the interests of a nation as a politician desperate for a legacy: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says North Korea’s nuclear issue could be worked out “in half a day” given the right conditions. Carter told AP he believes North Korea would surrender its nuclear weapons in return for U.S. diplomatic recognition, a peace agreement with South Korea and the U.S., and new atomic power reactors and fuel oil. He said North Koreans “have...
Categories Appeasement
January 24, 2009

Jay Lefkowitz: Requiem for a Bantamweight

To the limited degree history remembers Jay Lefkowitz at all, it should remember him as a good and well-meaning man who was unequal to the great task laid before him. I have sometimes suspected that this was the very design of those who appointed him. With the change of administrations this week, Lefkowitz departed as Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, leaving behind a final report that still clings obediently to the myth of constructive engagement with sociopaths:...
Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Washington Views
January 19, 2009

AEI Scholars Predict Gloomy Future for N. Korea Policy

Dan Blumenthal, who was a senior foreign policy advisor to John McCain, has teamed up with Aaron Friedberg again to offer “An American Strategy for Asia,” one that might have gotten wider circulated had the economy not collapsed shortly before the election. Their ideas will probably experience continuous vindication as we near the mid-point of the third Clinton Administration, which by my count started around December 2006. Unfortunately, there is little reason to doubt at this point that the Kim...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
January 17, 2009

For the Thousandth Time, Secretary Rice ….

Ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad eternitum, ad apocalyptum, North Korea will never negotiate away its nuclear weapons, no matter what it promises our gullible diplomats in treaties or agreed frameworks: In an apparent message to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama who will take office next week, North Korea said Saturday it may not give up its nuclear weapons even if Washington normalizes relations with it. “Normalization of diplomatic relations and the nuclear issue are entirely different issues,” a spokesman for the...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD
January 15, 2009

John Bolton Abducts Hillary Clinton, Assumes Her Identity, Nears Easy Confirmation Wearing Drag and Mask

First George W. Bush became Jimmy Carter, now this, at “Hillary Clinton’s” confirmation hearing: “Our goal is to end the North Korean nuclear program – both the plutonium reprocessing program and the highly enriched uranium program, which there is reason to believe exists, although never quite verified,” she said. Her vision of North Korea policy was much stronger in her written statements provided to Senator Richard Lugar before the hearing. “The new Administration will pursue direct diplomacy bilaterally and within...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
January 14, 2009

Lee Myung Bak’s Nightmare Scenario

Yesterday, I noted that North Korea is now demanding the full normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States as its latest demand prerequisite to nuclear disarmament … notwithstanding the fact that as recently as February 2007, it had agreed to disarm in exchange for a completely different set of demands. Having achieved its first set of demands — the lifting of U.S. sanctions, the terror-sponsor designation, and probably enough fuel oil and food to take care of its inner...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan/U.S. & Korea