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Category: Diplomacy

April 16, 2008

The Death of an Alliance, Part 68

Here is a delicious pairing of cause and effect: The U.S. has notified the South Korean government it will withdraw one squadron of some 20 F-16 fighters by the end of this year. [….]   The Defense Ministry is reportedly busy working out a response. They take the view that the abrupt notice of the withdrawal has something to do with the U.S.’s demand that Korea bear more upkeep cost for the USFK. [Chosun Ilbo] If you happen to believe...
Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
April 15, 2008

The Six Two One Party Talks, or Masturbatory Diplomacy

[Update:   The White House accepts this stinker.  Remember what Chris Hill said last year?   “We cannot have a situation where (North Korea) pretends to abandon their nuclear program and we pretend to believe them.”  That sure sounds like that Hill wants us to do.]   So have you heard that  Kim Jong Il will celebrate his removal from the  list of state sponsors of terrorism … by firing off more missiles?  U.S. military authorities have been closely watching the...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
April 11, 2008

All Quid, No Quo: How Agreed Framework 2.0 may soon become immeasurably worse

I declined to do  a posting on Chris Hill’s latest meeting with the North Koreans — the latest in a long series of last chances — because it was pretty clear that North Korea wasn’t going to admit to having a uranium enrichment program or to having engaged in nuclear proliferation to Syria.  Here, I was right.  I had also concluded that lacking any political room to make further concessions to the North Koreans, State wouldn’t agree to water down...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks
April 3, 2008

What Should the Senate Ask Kathleen Stephens?

A reader tells me that the nomination hearing for Kathleen Stephens, State’s pick to be our next Ambassador to Seoul, will take place on April 16th, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. So if you sat on that panel, what would you ask? Naturally, I presume that every single answer to that kind of question will be thoughtful and intelligent, and the most intelligent and thoughtful questions have some unquantifiable chance to be seen by the people who will write...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
April 3, 2008

North Korea Violates UNSCR 1718 Again

The resolution, passed after North Korea’s diplomatically successful and technologically marginal nuclear test, prohibits the North from trading in major weapons systems. Reuters reports that for the last year, since North Korea restored diplomatic relations with Burma, North Korea has been selling its fellow tyrannical ChiCom satellite rocket launchers of “the same type as those deployed near the demilitarised zone.” It’s now fodder for popular satire that Kim Jong Il doesn’t really care what the U.N. prohibits, but still, for...
Categories "United" Nations/NK Military/Southeast Asia
April 2, 2008

Hill expects N. Korean declaration ‘in the next few days.’

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said Wednesday that Washington was waiting for a North Korean move “in the next few days” to end an impasse over Pyongyang’s promise to provide a complete declaration of its nuclear programs. Washington says the North so far failed to do so, missing a deadline that expired at the end of last year. Hill said the U.S. had hoped to resolve the issue by the end of March, which did not happen. “We...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
April 1, 2008

Oh, You Meant Those Nuclear Scientists in Syria ….

You have to wonder what Chris Hill thought this inspired move would accomplish, other than to put  intelligence sources and methods at risk:  The U.S. in recent bilateral talks reportedly gave Pyongyang a list of North Korean officials involved in the supply of nuclear technology to Syria, a suspicion the North denies. A high-level diplomatic source on Monday said that the U.S. obtained the list of officials including nuclear engineers, who were involved in the supply of nuclear technology to...
Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
March 31, 2008

Kathleen Stephens: The Wrong Person for the Job

A  few months ago, the Korean press reported that State had submitted the name of Kathleen Stephens to be the next U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, to replace the competent and affable  Alexander Vershbow.  At the time, I did not have strong opinions about Ms. Stephens’s fitness for that position.  Further research has convinced me that Ms. Stephens, though well qualified for the job and apparently a perfectly fine person, is the wrong person to be our next Ambassador to...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
March 28, 2008

South Korea Grows Up

First the Human Rights Commission, now this:      The South Korean government has decided to vote for a resolution on human rights in North Korea to be adopted by the UN Human Rights Council this week, it emerged on Tuesday. South Korea has so far boycotted or abstained from all UN votes on North Korea including the General Assembly, except for 2006, when the North conducted a nuclear test. [….] A government official, speaking on the customary condition of...
Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/Appeasement/NK Military/U.S. & Korea
March 25, 2008

S. Korean Human Rights Commission Will Investigate Atrocities in N. Korea

South Korea’s human rights agency said yesterday it would launch a probe into abuses in North Korea by interviewing defectors from the communist state.  The National Human Rights Commission has included investigating its neighbor ¡ ¯s record as one of its major tasks this year. “We will conduct a survey on the overall human rights conditions in North Korea this year by hearing from defectors, said commission spokesman Lee Myung-jae.  The number of defectors to be interviewed could be in...
Categories Appeasement/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees/The Camps
March 24, 2008

WaPo Columnist Reveals NK-Syria Nuclear Agreement

In yesterday’s Washington Post, David Ignatius wrote a column pining for  a “breakthrough” in Chris Hill’s failed Agreed Framework 2.0.  Ignatius defines that as getting our hands on 30-40 kilograms of North Korean plutonium, which happens to  coincide with  North Korea’s own  low-range estimate.  Hill has been eager to accept this lower figure in the interests of declaring victory, although some U.S. estimates have put the actual figure closer to 50 kilograms.  The discrepancy is enough for a couple of...
Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 23, 2008

I Know a Dead Parrot When I See One

This  parrot is no more.  It has ceased to be.  It has expired and gone to meet its maker.  This … is a late parrot.  It’s a stiff.  Bereft of life, it rests in peace.  If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies.  It’s  run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.  This … is an ex-parrot! — John Cleese, Monty Python’s “The Dead Parrot Sketch“ I confess to being less interested...
Categories Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
March 21, 2008

Changing Channels, Part 2

NORTH KOREA’S AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N. has been suddenly and unexpectedly replaced for the second time in just 18 months: North Korea’s Ambassador to the UN Pak Gil-yon will be replaced in April, it emerged on Wednesday. A South Korean government official said, “I understand that Ambassador Pak will return to North Korea soon. It doesn’t seem likely that he is leaving his post for health reasons.”  [Chosun Ilbo] Recall that the last North Korean Ambassor to the U.N., Han Song-Ryol,...
Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy
March 17, 2008

Bread, Peace, and Kalashnikovs for Tibet (Not Necessarily in that Order)

Those Tibet protests continue to spread, although more outside Tibet proper than inside. Lhasa looks like an armed camp: CNN reports on the spread of the protests to other regions: The Chinese are making the best traction they can by reporting on the excesses of Tibetan protestors, while effectively keeping their own excesses off the TV screens. One thing the Chicoms do with great efficiency is censorship. They’re blacking out CNN, too: And of course, the usual suspects — U.N.,...
Categories "United" Nations/China
March 16, 2008

Chinese Academic: Accept North Korea as a Nuclear Power

China has a habit of using academics and scholars to float foreign policy trial balloons. Dingli Shen, a Professor and Executive Dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, recently visited North Korea, something he would not have done unless he spoke for at least a part of the Chinese government. Shen, a physicist and a former Professor of “American Studies,” has also acted as a quasi-governmental mouthpiece on North Korea here and here. Here’s what now: The...
Categories China/China & Korea/Six-Party Talks
March 15, 2008

Chris Hill Resignation Watch

The Edsel has thrown a rod, so today, we inaugurate a new OFK feature, where I’ll be (I hope) regularly updating you on any hints that Christopher Hill will take responsibility for the increasingly undeniable failure of Agreed Framework 2.0. Now, I should note that this entire feature is pretty much baseless, grounded entirely on my own speculation, gossip that’s probably false, and the fact that it would make perfect sense. Hey, I can’t change history and I can’t predict...
Categories Six-Party Talks
March 14, 2008

Six Two-Party Talks Update: So Far, So Not Bad

Thus far, Chris Hill has failed to sell Hawaii to the North Koreans for a string of beads, though not for lack of effort. This should make you sad, of course, because it’s bad for peace, and because ancient Japanese maps prove that Hawaii is North Korean. Top U.S. and North Korean nuclear negotiators tried Thursday to resolve a snag holding up the six-way process for ending Pyongyang’s nuclear programs, and while the U.S. envoy reported progress, it fell short...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks
March 12, 2008

State Department’s Annual Human Rights Report Released

The State Department’s 2007 annual human rights country reports were released yesterday. Recall that a Washington Post columnist recently printed some leaked e-mails in which Glyn Davies of the State Department’s odious Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP) had tried to lean on the authors of the report to “sacrifice a few adjectives for the cause.” Words to have been eliminated are in brackets, those to have been added are in italics: “The [repressive] North Korean government[regime] continued...
Categories Appeasement/Human Rights