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Category: Diplomacy

November 18, 2009

Human Rights Watch: Raise Human Rights in Bilateral Talks with North Korea

Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch is one of the few people doing laudable work in an industry so invested in defending terrorists of late that it’s often too distracted to address the worst atrocities since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. This time, however, HRW’s letter, addressed to Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth, is a useful contribution to the policy discussion about North Korea: For too long has the world sidelined human rights in North Korea while single-mindedly focusing on...
Categories Activism/Diplomacy/Human Rights
November 17, 2009

Lankov in the NYT, on Negotiating with North Korea

Andrei must really hate peace to say something like this: People in Washington have finally realized what should have been understood years ago: Under no circumstances is North Korea going to surrender its nuclear weapons. North Korean leaders believe that they need these weapons both as a deterrent and a diplomacy tool. Only through the existence of the nuclear program can North Korea, a destitute third-rate dictatorship, manipulate the outside world into providing generous aid. It is often suggested that...
Categories Diplomacy
November 9, 2009

North Korea Faces Review by U.N. Human Rights Council

And here’s a sample of what the council will hear: In the course of beatings, the guards broke all his teeth, leaving him toothless for four years. To deprive him of sleep, the guards at the underground prison at Hoeryong city near the Chinese border used “pigeon torture”. Jung was handcuffed and tied by his arms to an object behind him so he could not stand or sit. He felt as though his bones were breaking through his chest while...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 6, 2009

Michael Green on Bilateral Talks and Sanctions

Beyond Christine Ahn’s alternative universe, the insiders are unanimous for now, whether on or off the record:  for the foreseeable future, the Obama Administration intends to sustain — if not intensify — sanctions until North Korea disarms.  Like most of you, I suspect that eventually, we’ll lift them for another promise to disarm, but for now, the unanimous message I’m hearing is to the contrary: A major factor in Washington’s reluctance to rush into talks, Green says, is that “the...
Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions/Washington Views
November 3, 2009

Ban Ki Moon Is to Human Rights What Roman Polanski Is to Child Welfare

It was a horror that came from within, that consumed and devastated entire communities and families. It was a horror that left you as survivors of a trauma which to the world beyond your borders was unimaginable, even though we all now know it happened.We will not pretend to know how you must overcome the unimaginable. We can only offer, in humility, the hope and the prayer that you will overcome — and the pledge that we stand prepared to...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 2, 2009

Yongbyon Reprocessing Plant “Restored to Its Earlier Conditions”

Who remembers the heyday of Agreed Framework II, when the foreign policy establishment united to educate the hoi polloi about all of the great unfolding achievements of diplomacy with the North Koreans? They told us that North Korea was removing fuel rods and dismantling in earnest.  Siegfried Hecker went to Yongbyon and returned to report, with a few qualifications, that “the DPRK leadership has made the decision to permanently shut down plutonium production” and that “the disablement actions taken to...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/WMD
October 30, 2009

Did Bill Clinton Meet Kim Jong Il’s Double?

Even for North Korea, this would be the WTF story of the year: A number of analysts here are convinced that not all the photos being released of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, are really photos of Kim Jong-il. Instead, they say, a look-alike has been standing in for him on some of the 122 trips he’s reportedly made this year to the countryside, factories, cultural events, military units, and all sorts of other venues. Some observers say the North...
Categories Diplomacy/Kim Jong Il/Ling/Lee Incident/WTF?
October 26, 2009

If President Lee is Sincere About Protecting Refugees and POW’s, the South Korean Consul in Shenyang Must Go

[10/27: Here’s an update on that 80 year-old POW.] The latest reports coming from northeastern China emphasize China’s ongoing disregard for the lives of North Korean refugees, and for the pleas of the South Korean government. They also raise questions about President Lee’s sincerity about shifting to a more compassionate policy toward North Korean refugees. Last week, it was reported that two family members of an escaped South Korean prisoner of war found their way to the South Korean consulate...
Categories China & Korea/Diplomacy/Refugees
October 16, 2009

China: The John Edwards of Diplomacy

[Update: According to this story, Wen put off signing an economic development deal with Pyongyang worth “several billion dollars” dollars after Kim Jong Il failed to provide a “clear” statement about returning to six-party talks. I can’t say whether China’s offer came with the Obama Administration’s tacit approval or provoked quiet disapproval, but if we’re back in the business of paying North Korea to come back to talks to stall and lie, we’re right back at square one. The only...
Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions
October 5, 2009

State Dep’t: North Korea Will Return to Six-Party Talks

There is a catch:  North Korea’s willingness depends on the outcome of bilateral talks, meaning that North Korea will demand (and probably get) bilateral concessions before it returns to demand multilateral concessions … in exchange for a lot of dry air. A friendly reminder:  we’re no closer to actual North Korean disarmament than we were in December 2006, the last time this cycle began.  I’ll boldly predict that these talks won’t end any differently. Hat tip to a friend; link...
Categories Six-Party Talks
October 3, 2009

We Are All Neocons

Don Kirk, writing in the Asia Times, concludes that however North Korea behaves toward its neighbors at any given moment, it is determined to get our money and keep its nukes. That’s not an astonishing conclusion for any intelligent analyst of North Korean behavior, but Don’s writing is always worth a read. I try to refrain from predicting whether North Korea’s next move will be provocation or the North Korean equivalent of a “charm offensive,” since the options aren’t mutually...
Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions
September 29, 2009

Obama Administration Says First Words About Human Rights in North Korea

Eight months, a missile test, and a nuclear test after President Obama’s inauguration, he has finally gotten around to nominating Bob King to be Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, a move mandated by the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 and the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act of 2008. The United States said Friday it was “very concerned” about human rights violations in North Korea, as President Barack Obama named an envoy to focus on...
Categories Activism/Diplomacy/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
September 19, 2009

Sanctions Are Good for Diplomacy, But Diplomacy Won’t Disarm North Korea

Despite warnings from the foreign policy establishment (most notably, Selig Harrison and Ralph Cossa, among many others) that sanctioning North Korea would drive North Korea away from disarmament talks, the opposite seems to be happening — the election of a seemingly liberal administration brought only provocations from North Korea, while tough sanctions are forcing them to feign interest in disarming: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told a visiting Chinese envoy he will work to end his country’s nuclear arms programme...
Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions
September 19, 2009

Bill Clinton: “What I Was Trying to Do Was Not Smile and Not Scowl”

So he said on the Daily Show yesterday, on his photo op with Kim Jong Il. The Puffington Host has video here. Of greater interest to me personally is whether a medical professional will ever get around to diagnosing Bubba as a sociopath. I once had a lengthy discussion about this subject with a psychologist whom I was considering as an expert for my defense team. Similar musings on Kim Jong Il, here.
Categories Diplomacy/Useful Idiocy
September 16, 2009

What I Think of the Bilateral Talks Talk

I’ve let much of the sturm and drang over the announcement of a bilateral meeting with the North Koreans pass while I tried to acquire a sense of what this really means, and whether it necessarily suggests that Obama’s not-bad North Korea policy is going to revert to something weaker, something ironically like the policy George W. Bush ultimately adopted, and which failed so completely to achieve American interests. Conservatives have gotten into the habit of opposing bilateral talks with...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
September 8, 2009

A Nominee for the Unfortunate Photo Op Hall of Fame

Good for Stephen Bosworth, trying to stay relevant while Philip Goldberg shows us the kind of diplomacy North Korea really understands … but is this really the way he wanted to say, “Hey, remember me?” The good news is that the Obama people still appear to be sticking to their guns — demanding complete and verifiable denuclearization as a precondition to all of the goodies. Not that that will ever happen, but I’m happy to see the sanctions tightened until...
Categories Diplomacy