Diplomacy – Page 11

January 18, 2013

Xi Jinping Outsources Meeting With Park Geun-Hye to His Food Taster

China’s unhelpful behavior in the Security Council would have been reason enough for Park Geun Hye to follow the example of Shinzo Abe,* who deferred meeting with Chinese officials and instead met with the leaders of “countries sharing the same values, such as democracy and the rule of law.” In retrospect, that might have been best: In her meeting with China’s Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun yesterday, President-elect Park Geun-hye said North Korea’s nuclear weapons development cannot be tolerated and that Seoul...

"United" Nations/China & Korea/Diplomacy

January 16, 2013

Ya Think? U.N. human rights chief suspects “crimes against humanity” in prison camp called “North Korea”

Nearly seven years after Jared Genser’s Failure to Protect and nearly nine years after David Hawk’s The Hidden Gulag, a senior U.N. official has gotten around to calling for “an in depth investigation” of what “may amount to crimes against humanity” in North Korea’s prison camps, and elsewhere in the larger prison sometimes called “The Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea:” U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay called on Monday for an international investigation into what she said may be crimes against humanity in North Korea, including torture...

"United" Nations/Anju Links/Human Rights/The Camps

January 11, 2013

Breaking: North Korea Still Poor, Ignorant, and Run by Narcissistic Assholes

I’ve never expected anything good to come from a Bill Richardson visit to Pyongyang, and this visit fulfilled my expectations. A lot of journalists, bloggers, and academics in Washington and New York made a big deal out of this. (It was good for our traffic.) But in the places that really count — in Chongjin and Hamhung and Uijongbu and even in Pyongyang — it didn’t change a thing. It will not reduce the black market price of corn, it...

Appeasement/Useful Idiocy

January 3, 2013

State Department Disses Kim Jong Bill, and There Is Much Rejoicing

So, to answer those of you who asked, I don’t know why Google’s Eric Schmidt is flying to Pyongyang with Kim Jong Bill, but whoever is in charge of the State Department these days doesn’t sound very happy about the visit, or by the timing of our least favorite camera-hog has-been ex-governor. Says State’s mouthpiece — As you know, they are private citizens. They are traveling in an unofficial capacity. They are not going to be accompanied by any U.S. officials. They are...

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,...

Appeasement/North-South/Sunshine

December 15, 2012

Obama Administration’s N. Korea policy evolves from the 90s to the 60s.

Not surprisingly, North Korea’s missile test is bringing out a lot of criticism of President Obama’s North Korea policy, but sometimes, that criticism writes itself. Writing at The Cable, Josh Rogin tells us that just as Kim Jong Un was counting down the launch sequence between drags on a smuggled Marlboro, Wendy Sherman and the State Department’s crack team of Asia experts were relaxing at a cocktail party in honor of — smack your forehead now — the Emperor of...

"United" Nations/An Alliance?/Diplomacy/U.S. Military

December 6, 2012

North Korea’s missile test will be Susan Rice’s big chance to be effective (for a change). Update: They did it.

As North Korea completes preparations for its latest ICBM test, the United States, Japan, and South Korea are trying to deter it with state-of-the art, laser-guided words. Success, while unlikely, isn’t completely out of the question; after all, Kim Jong Un seemed to be preparing to conduct a nuke test several months ago, but never went through with it. If Kim Jong Un really did defer a nuke test, I have no idea why, but it probably wasn’t because he wants...

"United" Nations/Missiles/Sanctions

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...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics

July 16, 2012

Reminder: Condi Rice’s North Korea Fiasco

A week ago, I really didn’t care who Romney chose as his a running mate — then came the rumor that Condoleezza Rice was the leading candidate. Having now established the limits of my apathy, I wonder what explains the excitement among certain Republicans about the idea that Rice would be the perfect Vice-Presidential candidate (for anything other than spending the next 100 days re-litigating Bush’s foreign policy). One answer may be the dullness of the other alternatives, but another...

Diplomacy/U.S. Politics

June 18, 2012

Talking the Talk on Human Rights

After nearly four years of near-complete silence about North Korea’s human rights atrocities, Hillary Clinton is speaking truth to power: Clinton called on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and related programs and put the welfare of its people first. “Only under these circumstances will North Korea be able to end its isolation from the international community and alleviate the suffering of its people,” she said. A coalition of 40 human rights organizations and activists in April submitted a...

Diplomacy/Human Rights

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...

Appeasement/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Missiles/Proliferation/WMD

May 20, 2012

Kim Jong Un Buys up Luxuries; Christine Ahn Attributes Famine, Cannibalism Reports to “Political Bias”

When North Korea tried and failed to launch its Unha-3 rocket this year, it not only chose that launch instead of a big shipment of American food aid as the price of keeping quiet until November, it also lost the six-month supply of grain it could have bought with the money it cost to build the damn thing to begin with. But it’s good to see that those choices haven’t cramped the lifestyles of any North Koreans fortunate enough to...

"United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Sanctions/Useful Idiocy

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...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights

April 15, 2012

Who Else Flubbed N. Korea’s Rocket Launch? The Press, the U.N., and the Obama Administration

By now, everyone knows that the North’s missile test was a fiasco, but North Koreans don’t have this fiasco all to themselves. For example, until the day of the launch, the North had never done a better of job handling of the foreign press. It had successfully co-opted the largest wire service in the United States into a megaphone for its propaganda, and it had so effectively focused much of the rest of the U.S. media on its stage-managed rocket...

"United" Nations/AP Watch/Media Criticism/Missiles

April 11, 2012

A New Approach to North Korea: Contain, Constrict & Collapse

Sometime in the next few hours, North Korea will launch a prototype for an intercontinental ballistic missile, in flagrant violation of three U.N. Security Council resolutions. The North Koreans announced the launch two weeks after agreeing to a deal to freeze their missile and nuclear programs in exchange for U.S. food aid. It now seems they will follow their missile test with a nuclear test. Traditionally, Chinese obstructionism delays U.N. Security Council action by about three weeks after a North...

Diplomacy/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/Subversion/WMD

April 8, 2012

Kang Chol Hwan and Shin Dong-Hyok Petition the U.N. for the Release of Their Family Members

While researching an unrelated post, I stumbled on this brief (opens in .pdf), filed just this week on behalf of Kang Cho-Hwan and Shin Dong-Hyok, and authored by international human rights lawyer Jared Genser. Kang, for those not familiar with him, is a survivor of Camp 15, author of “The Aquariums of Pyongyang,” and now a correspondent for the widely circulated South Korean daily, the Chosun Ilbo. According to the brief, Kang’s sister and her 11-year old son disappeared last...

"United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps

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...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Missiles

March 15, 2012

WaPo Editors, Andrew Natsios on the Post-Groundhog Day Agreement

I’d say it’s more than slightly significant to see the editorial page of the Washington Post accusing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of (as Robert Gates put it) buying the same horse all over again: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was careful not to oversell the agreement, calling it “a modest first step in the right direction. Officials said it would allow inspectors to get a first look at the uranium enrichment facility constructed at Yongbyon while letting the...

Diplomacy/Famine & Food Aid

Category: Diplomacy