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Category: Diplomacy

May 21, 2009

Smart, Tough Diplomacy: Hillary Clinton Asks Bloggers to Free U.S. Journalists from North Korea

Because if there’s one thing Kim Jong Il simply cannot withstand, it’s that lethal instrument of soft power known as “snark:” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday urged women students to use the Internet to campaign for the release of two American women journalists held in North Korea. Clinton urged graduates of Barnard College, a women’s university in New York City, to show their opposition to Pyongyang’s detention of the two journalists who are due to go on...
Categories Abductions/Activism/Diplomacy/Unintended Humor/WTF?
May 19, 2009

North Korea Shoots a Messenger

Surely there is some sensible middle ground between these two extremes of personnel management — in America, diplomats who push for policies that fail get promoted.  We learn today that pressing for bold diplomatic initiatives turns out to be less career-enhancing in the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea: North Korea executed its pointman on South Korea last year, holding him responsible for wrong predictions about Seoul’s new conservative government that has ditched a decade of engagement...
Categories Diplomacy/Inside NK/Kremlinology/NK Economics
May 17, 2009

Kaesong: Dead or Just Pining?

[Updated below] The headline is pretty much what I’d predicted three years ago:  “North Korea announces nullification of all ‘Kaesong agreements,’” and that’s from the Hanky: North Korea’s military leadership has made statements hinting they would demand a withdrawal of businesses from Kaesong, but this is the first time the Bureau has brought up the possibility. In this notification, North Korea said, “We announce the nullification of all Kaesong Industrial Complex agreements made between the two Koreas which gave preference...
Categories Appeasement/NK Economics/Sunshine
May 17, 2009

Victor Cha: Let’s Reward Terrorism!

If Victor Cha has ever persuaded me of anything, it’s  of the  paradox that some of the most  highly educated and  academically intelligent people  never learn.  Cha,  one of the  architects  of  the Bush Administration’s magnificently  unsuccessful opening to Kim Jong Il’s North Korea, draws on that disqualification to advise us who should bring Laura Ling and Euna Lee home, and how. Having participated in a mission to bring home the remains of American servicemen killed in the Korean War,...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Terrorism (NK)
May 15, 2009

Clinton Welcomes North Korean “Trial” of U.S. Journalists

So North Korea is about to subject two American journalists to one of the world’s most opaque, arbitrary, and harsh judicial systems.  This would mark the first North Korean trial of an American in recent years, if ever.  And although our Secretary of State calls the charges “baseless,” she sounds just thrilled to pieces at the prospect of two of her country’s citizens facing a revolutionary tribunal: At a press appearance with Malaysia’s foreign minister, Clinton cast the announcement as,...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy
May 14, 2009

North Korea Sets a Trial Date for Laura Ling and Euna Lee; NK Won’t Talk to Us

Why now?  All I can do is guess, but it’s probably a combination of diplomatic convenience and the likelihood that they finally gave their interrogators what they wanted. In announcing the trial date, the North’s state-run news agency, KCNA, gave no further details, such as what charges they faced. But Pyongyang had earlier said that it found evidence of illegal entry and unspecified hostile acts. Under North Korea’s criminal code, a person convicted of hostile acts against the state can...
Categories Diplomacy/Terrorism (NK)
May 14, 2009

Obama Cabinet Watch: Still No Hint of a Coherent NK Policy

Perhaps “ready on day one” was setting the bar a bit too high.  I dare anyone to find coherence within the dizzying crossfire of U.S. policy statements on North Korea this week. Special Envoy Stephen “Bud” Bosworth just returned from a trip to China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia to “convince the North to come back to the negotiating table” and “take the pulse” of the other four nations that supply the aid that sustains Kim’s misrule. Our diplomats never...
Categories Diplomacy
May 11, 2009

John Kerry: Clueless About North Korea

History will deservedly remember John Kerry as a failed poseur, a man too self-important and detestable to unseat George W. Bush in 2004, and one of my least favorite American politicians of all time.  We are still burdened with Kerry as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which capacity he spirited the incompetent and congenital liar Christopher Hill to confirmation as the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq.  In that capacity, Kerry seems to have learned much from the nominee’s...
Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
May 6, 2009

Silent vs. Vocal Diplomacy: More Thoughts on How the State Department is Approaching the Saberi and Lee-Ling Hostage Cases

[OFK:  It’s my great honor to present this first guest post from Jodi, formerly the author one of my very favorite K-blogs, The Asia Pages.  The end of the Asia Pages left many of us missing the warmth, compassion, honesty, and elegance of Jodi’s writing. I hope this will be just the first of many posts, and I hope you’ll join me in welcoming her.] The United States is in an uncomfortable position: Three of its reporters have been detained...
Categories Diplomacy
May 4, 2009

N. Korea: Obama Just Like Bush!

Someone still isn’t feeling the hope and change: North Korea blasted U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday as no different from his predecessor in trying to “stifle” countries that are uncooperative with the U.S., referring to Washington’s move to punish Pyongyang’s rocket launch.  [….] “With nothing can the U.S. justify such illegal provocation as forcing the UNSC to table the issue of the DPRK’s (North Korea) launch of a satellite for peaceful purposes and issue ‘a presidential statement,’” the North’s...
Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Japan/Missiles/Proliferation/U.S. Politics
April 30, 2009

Korean Word of the Day: 막무가내

This word, pronounced mak-mu-ga-nae, roughly translates to that most untranslatable of Yiddish words:  chutzpah. On Tuesday, North Korea had the chutzpah to demand (막무가내로 우기다) that the U.N. Security Council apologize for the flaccid non-binding presidential statement it offered in lieu of any meaningful enforcement of the two Security Council resolutions North Korea’s recent missile test violated: The UNSC should promptly make an apology for having infringed the sovereignty of the DPRK and withdraw all its unreasonable and discriminative “resolutions”...
Categories "United" Nations/Unintended Humor/WTF?
April 26, 2009

Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. Embassy in Seoul Calls Laura Ling and Euna Lee “Stupid”

I wonder how many years of studying international relations it would take a guy like me to become a suave, smooth-talking ambassador of American values like this guy: A US diplomat in Seoul has shocked a group of visiting Congressional staff members by allegedly making highly insensitive comments about two journalists — Taiwanese ­-American Laura Ling and Korean-American Euna Lee — now facing serious criminal charges in North Korea. William Stanton, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy
April 22, 2009

Chris Hill Slips Through; New Bills in Congress Would Roll Back His Unilateral Concessions

[Update:   I have the House bill, too.  Scroll down for the link.] The AP is reporting that Christopher Hill is now confirmed as Ambassador to Iraq.  Having managed to inflict a slight flesh wound on Hill, we can at least claim to have alerted potential critics to some of the less desirable aspects of his character, which (I fear) will reveal themselves again in due course when he opens secret talks with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.  Don’t say I...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
April 19, 2009

Joining the Great North Korea Debate

I’m gratified to see that my latest New Ledger article has picked up so much linkage and circulation, including at Instapundit, Real Clear World, the Memeorandum, Pajamas Media, Rantburg, Google News, and even the Puffington Host.  I doubt that I’ve done much harm to Chris Hill’s chances of being confirmed, but it’s gratifying to see my ideas debated by people not necessarily predisposed to agree (which must be nearly everyone, given that I’ve been highly critical of Presidents Clinton, Bush,...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Missiles/Six-Party Talks
April 17, 2009

Christopher Hill: Deep Kimchee for Iraq

Of the many things that will be written about North Korea this week, the least likely of these is, “Now there’s the kind of diplomacy we need more of.” Consider just the events of the last few days: the missile test itself, which may have hit closer to home than originally thought; the failure of the United Nations to enforce two of its violated resolutions; the broader failure of deterrence and counter-proliferation; and North Korea’s final repudiation of a February...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
April 14, 2009

Dozens Shocked by North Korea’s Repudiation of Disarmament Agreement

So much for George W. Bush, Condi Rice, and Chris Hill’s last-minute legacy grasp, the February 2007 deal with North Korea hereinafter referred to as Agreed Framework 2.0. Following a long rejection by the corpus of North Korean belligerence, Agreed Framework 2.0 has ceased to be: North Korea vowed Tuesday to restore the nuclear facilities that it had been disabling and boycott international talks on its nuclear weapons program to protest against the U.N. Security Council’s reaction to its recent...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
April 13, 2009

“United Nations,” “International Community,” and other oxymorons

“This provocation underscores the need for action–not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons,” Mr. Obama said. “Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. [Barack Obama, April 6, 2009] It will soon be official: the rules are not binding, violations will not be punished, and our words mean nothing. It seems incredible that any American statesman still needs one more object lesson in...
Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Missiles
April 10, 2009

Don Kirk: We Can’t Trust North Korea

Long-time Korea and Asia correspondent Don Kirk, who broke the story that Kim Dae Jung used illegal payments to buy the summit that won him the Nobel Prize, comments on the self-evident pointlessness of negotiating with North Korea: North Korea’s latest missile test raises a critical question. Why should anyone consider giving aid to this regime that has already squandered hundreds of billions of dollars on firing off missiles and producing nuclear warheads? Here’s an impoverished country, the single biggest...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy