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Category: Diplomacy

March 23, 2014

Event tomorrow on the COI report

I apologize for the short notice, but tomorrow at 2:45 p.m., the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the Foreign Policy Initiative will co-sponsor an event: “North Korea’s Human Rights Violations – What Next After the U.N. Commission of Inquiry Report?,” at Room 106 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Melanie Kirkpatrick and Christopher Griffin will moderate, and panelists will include Hyeonsoo Lee, Roberta Cohen, and Greg Scarlatoiu.
Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights
March 19, 2014

The U.N. Panel of Experts is starting to follow Kim Jong Un’s money.

The main headlines that will come of the U.N. Panel of Experts’ new report on the enforcement of North Korea sanctions will mostly cover the Chong Chon Gang incident — the large amount of weapons seized, the brazenness of its deception, and the complexity of its corporate and financial links to entities operating from Russia, Singapore, and China. There has been relatively little attention paid to the newly revealed evidence that North Korea has helped Syria and Iran arm terrorists....
Categories "United" Nations/Money Laundering/Sanctions
March 17, 2014

POE Part 2: Terrorist rockets that landed in Israel may have had N. Korean fuses

When the Syria collapsed into civil war in 2011, Hamas and other Sunni Palestinians broke with their sponsors in Damascus for sectarian reasons, while Hezbollah sent troops to defend the Assad regime. But in 2009, before the civil war, Assad and his own backers in Iran armed both Hamas and Hezbollah. The year 2009 was a big one for interceptions of North Korean weapons bound for Iran and its terrorist clients. The UAE found rocket propelled grenades and explosives inside...
Categories "United" Nations/Terrorism (NK)
March 11, 2014

U.N. Panel of Experts releases new report on N. Korea sanctions enforcement

The report, which you can find here, publishes photographs and a detailed description of the weapons seized from the Chong Chon Gang. I had not realized how big the shipment was: 72. The Panel found that the hidden cargo (see figure XI, a complete list at annex VII and detailed analysis at annex VIII) amounted to six trailers associated with surface-to-air missile systems and 25 shipping containers loaded with two disassembled MiG-21 aircraft, 15 engines for MiG-21 aircraft, components for...
Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
February 17, 2014

U.N. Commission finds North Korea committed crimes against humanity, will recommend referral to the International Criminal Court

After years of apathy that not even accomplished appeaser Ban Ki-Moon could enforce, a U.N. Commission of Inquiry has released a devastating report accusing Kim Jong Un and his late father, Kim Jong Il, of crimes against humanity. You can download a summary report, or the long version, here. I will probably have more to say about the report in the coming days as I read it, but it’s clearly having an immediate and profound impact on the public discourse....
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 4, 2013

Witnesses: North Korea culpable for famine deaths

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry for North Korea has done excellent and necessary work collecting testimony about the regime’s political prison camps. Michael Kirby, the Commission’s Chairman, has earned the eternal gratitude of the Korean people for his forthrightness, and friends of mine who met him during the COI’s session in Washington last week tell me they were deeply impressed with both Kirby and Sonja Biserko (the third commissioner, Marzuki Darusman, who performed admirably as the U.N. Special Rapporteur, fell ill...
Categories "United" Nations/Anju Links/Famine & Food Aid
October 29, 2013

Bosworth and Gallucci: Let’s pay Kim Jong Un to pretend to disarm, and we can pretend to believe him.

Writing with Robert Gallucci in The New York Times, Stephen Bosworth writes that the North Koreans, contrary to countless public and private statements that its nukes are non-negotiable, are ready to enter disarmament negotiations in good faith, and that we should give them shiny objects for doing that: The North Koreans — who are longtime participants in government-to-government talks and well plugged-in to their country’s leadership — stated that if dialogue were to resume, their nuclear weapons program would be on the negotiating table. They...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
September 3, 2013

Camp 22 Update

In an update to its previous imagery analysis, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea seems to be migrating to the view that Camp 22 was closed in 2012, but if that’s the answer, the next question it raises is what happened to the prisoners there, once estimated to number as high as 30,000. The Washington Post asks that question in an editorial today: In a way, the camp was a city in its own right, albeit a locus of inhumanity rather...
Categories "United" Nations/The Camps
August 27, 2013

European NGOs protest enforcement of U.N. sanctions, but not the millions Kim Jong Un wastes on European luxuries

Last week, the Swiss government announced that it had blocked an attempt by North Korea to buy $7.24 million worth of ski lifts, plus “golf, horseback riding and water sports” gear. That this transaction was beneath even the Swiss is saying something. Switzerland is near the top of any list of countries suspected of hosting North Korean slush funds that are variously estimated to be worth between $1 billion and $4 billion. Throughout the duration of a famine that, according for former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, killed...
Categories "United" Nations/Europe/Famine & Food Aid/Sanctions
March 30, 2013

Joel Wit: Agreed Frameworks “Worked Very Well”

Fortunately, Sung Yoon Lee is there to remind us of the reality of Mr. Wit’s sterling record. Depending on your perspective, you may wish to avert your eyes: Watch Kim Jong-un Orders Rockets Ready to Strike United States on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour. Some viewers may judge Wit a bit too boastful about the length of his experience dealing with the North Koreans, but on closer examination, he understates his experience almost as much as he overstates his...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
March 15, 2013

North Korea’s cash-for-summit demands put 2010 attacks in a new light

WERE THE 2010 ATTACKS North Korea’s way of making good on extortion?  Stephan Haggard, not widely know for his hard-line views, cites an article in the Chosun Ilbo revealing that Kim Jong Il wanted a summit with Lee Myung Bak, but at a price. The sticking point was money. How much? According to the Chosun Ilbo, $500-600 million in rice and fertilizer aid, which had effectively been cut from the first of the year, and perhaps some cash too; that was...
Categories Appeasement/Cheonan Incident/North-South/Sunshine/Terrorism (NK)/Yeonpyeong Attack
March 14, 2013

What will a U.N. inquiry on N. Korean human rights actually mean?

The U.N. Human Rights Council is set to approve an inquiry into human rights conditions in North Korea, conditions that a U.N. investigator says “may” be crimes against humanity: Marzuki Darusman, an investigator for the United Nations, is expected to present a report to the council urging the creation of an international commission of inquiry to follow up on the abuses recorded in the eight years that a United Nations official has monitored human rights in the North.  [N.Y. Times] So,...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
March 11, 2013

Chinese banks host massive slush funds for Kim Jong Un despite “tough” new U.N. resolution

So over the weekend, I read U.N. Security Council Resolution 2094, and I didn’t see much that deviated from the low expectations I expressed based on the press reports.  (Since then, Marcus Noland has expressed a similarly pessimistic view). For those nations that are interested in strict enforcement, there is useful material in this; for example, the reference to the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force, which you can find on Page 13 of this document, will cause some nations to be more circumspect about...
Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea
March 7, 2013

Plan B Watch: China’s U.N. Bait-and-Switch

We’ve seen enough of China’s past conduct when it comes to U.N. resolutions aimed at North Korean proliferation that we ought to recognize duplicity when we see it.  We should also know by now that our hapless U.N. Ambassador isn’t very good at recognizing that duplicity.  That’s why the news that China is expected to vote for another U.N. Security Council resolution this morning underwhelms me.  I even think I have a pretty good  idea what China’s game is here. Like I said before — China...
Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions
March 5, 2013

Park Geun Hye will back human rights probe of North Korea

You don’t need a Ph.D. to see that North Korea is gearing up to test Park Geun-Hye. The nice people at the quasi-official, Japan-based Chosun Sinbo reacted to Park’s inauguration speech, in which she called on North Korea to disarm, by saying they were “unable to hide our rage.”  Domestically, the North has launched another series of exhausting war exercises, with soldiers forced to live days on end in tunnels, or standing guard and catching frostbite outdoors. All of this is a...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
February 27, 2013

This Just In: North Korea fails to absorb any of Dennis Rodman’s tact, class, gentility, or gravitas.

So yet again, we learn that visitors do not change North Korea. The tricky part is getting out before North Korea changes the visitor. Since I broach the engagement-versus-isolation debate, it’s been argued enough times that I seldom hear any new arguments, but this one by Michael Totten, in response to the reliably trite Nick Kristof, is a terrific deconstruction of mirror-imaging by both the North Koreans and the Americans who don’t understand how they think. The answer to the debated question,...
Categories Appeasement/Humor/Satire/Useful Idiocy
February 9, 2013

U.N. may investigate N. Korean officials for crimes against humanity

I don’t know what’s gotten into the U.N. lately, but this would be a pretty big deal: North Korea’s leaders are likely to be the target of a U.N. investigation into their personal responsibility for rapes, torture, executions, arbitrary arrests and abductions, following an expert report published on Tuesday. The report by Marzuki Darusman, an Indonesian lawyer who is the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said North Korea’s “grave, systematic and widespread” human rights violations ought to...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
January 27, 2013

Why Susan Rice’s new Security Council resolution is a great victory … for China and North Korea

The Obama Administration spin on the long-stalled U.N. Security Council Resolution 2087 is that it “tightened” U.N. sanctions against North Korea, and that securing China’s vote for that resolution represents some sort of diplomatic accomplishment for the U.S. and Susan Rice. Despite China’s rejection of proposals by the United States to add new sanctions, the Obama administration sought to characterize the vote as a tough response. “This resolution demonstrates to North Korea that there are unanimous and significant consequences for its...
Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions