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Category: Diplomacy

February 22, 2010

In Case You Weren’t Listening for the Last 20 Years: North Korea Swears Never to Disarm

The North Korean regime seldom makes a promise, in my opinion, that it really intends to keep. For instance, I don’t think it has the slightest intention of spending all that confiscated cash on meat soup instead of yachts and other goodies of that sort for The Great Fishwife. But I think, for once, they’re sincere when they say this: North Korea vowed Friday (February 19) not to give up nuclear arms for “petty economic aid”, claiming it has only...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 16, 2010

China Will Give Kim Jong Il $10 Billion, Violating the Spirit and Letter of U.N. Security Council Resolutions It Voted For

[Update: More here, at the Daily NK] Consistent with reports I’d linked previously, China is now offering a financially beleaguered Kim Jong Il a massive bailout, in obvious retaliation for America’s assistance in helping Taiwan to defend itself against the Chicom missiles aimed at its cities, and likely also as a way to bail Kim Jong Il out after the self-inflicted catastrophe of The Great Confiscation. China’s decision factors in the assumption that America lacks the spine to respond by...
Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions
January 25, 2010

New Reports Highlight Failure of U.N., Ban Ki Moon to Address North Korean, Chinese Atrocities

A series of new reports on (the absence of) human rights in North Korea will not, by itself, change much, but they signify that for now, South Korea has stopped ignoring the issue. They may also complicate the State Department’s preferred course of doing the same. On the 20th, Human Rights Watch released its 2010 “World Report,” which brings together a review of all the most important issues in the field of international human rights during 2009. As usual, North...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/North-South
January 21, 2010

Bosworth, On “Colbert,” Shifts the Goal Posts

The appearance was distressing on two levels. First, how is it possible that Stephen Colbert could be so funny on the Daily Show and yet provide so little entertainment value on his own show? Stewart becomes unwatchable during election years, but even when John Yoo is wiping the smirk off his face, Stewart still operates at a high level of sophistication. Colbert, on the other hand, seems to be playing for an audience that reads at a fourth-grade level, not...
Categories Diplomacy/Humor/Satire/Six-Party Talks
January 13, 2010

State Department Spokesman on Human Rights Policy

Because of time constraints, all I can give you for now is some quotes from yesterday’s press briefing, below the fold. Thanks to a reader for forwarding. Money quote: “We’ve made clear, going back several months, we’re not going to pay North Korea for coming back to the Six-Party process.” On the role of human rights in the six-party talks, however, the answers were vague to the point of being non-responsive.
Categories Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
January 6, 2010

Yes, Selig Harrison, North Korea Cheated

The revelations about North Korea’s highly enriched uranium program had already been falling like the snow on Seoul this week, and then I saw this: North Korea appears to have started a uranium enrichment program soon after it agreed in a 1994 deal with the U.S. to dismantle its existing plutonium nuclear weapons program, South Korea’s foreign minister said Wednesday. Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan’s remark, if accurate, suggests North Korea had no intention of giving up its atomic ambitions when...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Useful Idiocy
December 30, 2009

North Korea Loots KEDO Site (Updated)

North Korea has been stealing trucks, cranes and other equipment from the site of a nuclear power plant where an American-led consortium stopped construction four years ago in a dispute over the North’s nuclear weapons development, the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reported Wednesday. [N.Y. Times] It gets better: “There is even suspicion that the North Koreans used the equipment when they conducted a nuclear test in October 2006 and in May,” the paper quoted a source as saying. North...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
December 21, 2009

Obama’s “Liaison Office” in Pyongyang Would Be Appeasement, Pure and Simple

The Obama Administration’s new proposal to set up a “liaison office” in Pyongyang may be the most disturbing development of his administration’s entire approach to North Korea. It would, in effect, elevate diplomatic relations between the two governments just seven months after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, and just nine months after it tested an ICBM, all in flagrant violation of multiple U.N. resolutions. Now, after North Korea has made no meaningful concessions on disarmament and even demands recognition...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
December 17, 2009

North Korean Arms Shipment Linked to Iran and China

Did I call it or what? Weapons seized in Thailand from an impounded plane traveling from North Korea were likely destined for Iran, a high-ranking Thai government security official was quoted by Reuters as saying regarding the findings of a team investigating the arms. “Some experts believe the weapons may be going to Iran, which has bought arms from North Korea in the past,” said the official. The official was quoted as saying the Thai investigating team considered Iran the...
Categories "United" Nations/Axis of Evil/China & Korea/Iran/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
December 12, 2009

You Didn’t See Me Raising My Hand

I confess that I may be one degree more interested than The Marmot in those “crucial” talks between Stephen Bosworth and the North Koreans, for reasons I explain in this Hegemon post. After all, it could have been worse. The State Department could have declared a “breakthrough.” Dreading this as I was, it wasn’t possible to maintain complete apathy. Every negotiation with North Korea is another chance for State to drive a Lexus to the car lot and limp home...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 10, 2009

Today’s the 61st Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

(Inspired by Indexed, with apologies for the hurried execution.) Sixty-one years ago today, on December 10th, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Just a few months before, on September 9th, the DPRK was officially founded.  (As Joshua might say, discuss amongst yourselves.) The North Korea Freedom Coalition, writing in a recent release, has a few ideas on changing the status quo: Because North Korea is among the most isolated countries in the world and its...
Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights
December 10, 2009

More on Australia’s Denial of Visas to N. Korean Propaganda Artists

In Australia, five artists from the Mansudae Art Studio were invited to the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Queensland state to talk about 15 pieces the organizers commissioned for the exhibition, which includes work from more than 100 artists from 25 countries. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith rejected the artists’ applications for an exception to a visa ban on North Korea, part of targeted sanctions imposed in 2006 in response to the country’s steps to develop atomic weapons. Organizers...
Categories "United" Nations/Censorship/Propaganda/Sanctions
December 8, 2009

In Geneva, North Korea Answers Atrocity Accusations with Bluster, Denials, and a Concession

For the most part, it’s what you’d have expected: Lies, all lies! A U.S. plot (with the EU) to overthrow us! The POW issue is resolved. There are no more Japanese abductees in North Korea, and there is no need for a U.N. Special Envoy to visit. Some of the denials almost must be seen to be believed. On the starvation of the North Korean people, particularly those in the lower political castes: According to The Independent, North Korean ambassador...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps
December 7, 2009

N. Korea Comes Up for Human Rights Review at the U.N.

North Korea’s “universal periodic review” before the U.N. Human Rights Council began today in Geneva. Nothing much will come of it, I suspect, but at least the human rights story will get a bit of media attention, and North Korea will be just a little more toxic to potential investors. “There is a difference between wanting to be isolated and not caring about the rest of the world. North Korea cares about the world and therefore it wants to be...
Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights
November 30, 2009

UNDP Returning to North Korea

The scandal-plagued U.N. Development Program, just shy of two years from a report that found massive irregularities in its finances and operations in North Korea, is planning to return to North Korea. You will recall that among other items, the U.N. found $3,500 in counterfeit currency in a safe in New York. The cash may have come from the North Korean state bank that the U.N.D.P. was required to use while operating out of Pyongyang.
Categories "United" Nations
November 24, 2009

What Obama Accomplished in China

I suppose China’s behavior immediately after the president’s departure is all the evidence you really need. An activist who was investigating the role shoddy school construction played in the deaths of more than 5,000 children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake was given a three-year prison sentence Monday on charges of possessing state secrets. Huang Qi, 46, a veteran activist and blogger, is the most prominent of more than a dozen people who were arrested for demanding investigations into construction standards...
Categories China/Diplomacy
November 23, 2009

U.N. General Assembly Condemns North Korea for “Systemic, Widespread, and Grave” of Human Rights Violations

South Korea voted for and was one of 53 co-sponsors. The vote was 96 for, 19 against, with 65 abstentions: The resolution goes on to list torture, the absence of due process in law, use of the death penalty, collective punishment, strict restrictions on freedom of movement, thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association, the right to privacy and equal access to information, the treatment of returned refugees, violations of economic, social and cultural rights, human rights...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights