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Category: Diplomacy

December 26, 2007

N. Korea will miss year-end deadline to declare nukes

No surprise there.  At this point, it would really only be news if North Korea actually met the deadline, or made a full disclosure at all during Kim Jong Il’s life span. A South Korean government official on Tuesday said, “There is no sign yet that North Korea has decided to make an accurate declaration. It’s improbable that the North will declare its nuclear programs by the end of the year, with only a week remaining before the New Year.”...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 21, 2007

U-Tubed! Enriched uranium found on N. Korean sample

Say it aint so. U.S. scientists have discovered traces of enriched uranium on smelted aluminum tubing provided by North Korea, apparently contradicting Pyongyang’s denial that it had a clandestine nuclear program, according to U.S. and diplomatic sources. [Washington Post, Glenn Kessler] But where and when did we find this incriminating sample? The United States has long pointed to North Korea’s acquisition of thousands of aluminum tubes as evidence of such a program, saying the tubes could be used as the...
Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
December 21, 2007

U-Tubed, Part 2

[Part 1] An honest appraisal of this new discovery means that those of us who are skeptical of AF 2.0 should grudgingly admit that it has produced at least one significant intelligence windfall, even if it was due to a North Korean oversight. Since that oversight will probably land a few people in front of firing squads, AF 2.0 proponents should at least draw the obvious conclusions to which this new intelligence leads. It seems difficult to deny that AF...
Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
December 20, 2007

Behind the scenes, a deepening crisis for Agreed Framework 2.0

Maybe the Dear Leader will save us all yet. From ourselves, that is. If he does, it will be because he’s overplayed his hand again. A reader forwards a scan of a letter sent by three Republican U.S. Senators — Brownback, Grassley, and Kyl, the new minority whip, to Chris Hill, the architect of Agreed Framework 2.0. The letter requests that State specifically respond to this Congressional Research Service report’s allegations that North Korea continued to materially support Hezbollah and...
Categories Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
December 13, 2007

Great moments in diplomacy

As the two sides started the second-day meeting, a North Korean navy official tried to show a slide displaying the North’s proposal on the fishing zone in front of pool reporters.  A South Korean naval officer rushed over and stopped the move, triggering a minor scuffle.  [Yonhap] This, kids, is why you don’t bring makkoli along to a negotiation.  By the way, this is what I consider a successful end to any inter-Korean negotiation involving the Roh Administration.
Categories Diplomacy
December 13, 2007

Condi: U.S. not ready to engage N. Korea broadly

A day after the New York Philharmonic announced it would play a concert in the North Korean capital and a week after word of a personal letter from Bush to leader of the communist nation, Kim Jong Il, Rice downplayed the significance of both. “This is not a regime that the United States is prepared to engage broadly,” she said. “If we are going to engage it broadly, it’s clear in the program that we have laid out how that...
Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
December 13, 2007

North Korea still refusing to admit HEU program

The chief nuclear negotiators of South Korea and China Thursday met in Beijing to hammer out a joint message to North Korea, urging Pyongyang to come clean on all its nuclear programs and activities. North Korea is reportedly refusing to acknowledge its long-suspected uranium enrichment program, creating what Foreign Minister Song Min-soon has called a new “bump” in six-way nuclear disarmament talks that involve the two Koreas, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia.  [Yonhap] Just watch us fold like lawn...
Categories Six-Party Talks
December 13, 2007

Congressional Research Service issues report on the implications of removing North Korea from the terror sponsor list

Yesterday, a reader and friend was kind enough to forward the entire report to me (thanks!), which I’ve uploaded onto this blog, and which you can access here: crs-north-korea-terrorism-list-removal.pdf   Since then,  this has  generated some press attention in South Korea.  The report’s authors are the highly regarded Larry  Niksch and Raphael Perl.  There’s too much valuable information in there for me to graf and do it justice; this one is a must-read.  I’ll limit my comments to a few...
Categories Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
December 12, 2007

Senate resolution would set conditions for de-listing North Korea as a terror sponsor

I knew this was coming but was asked not to  write about it.  But now, I see that Richardson has a link to a Yonhap story about it.  Now that it’s out, I’ll speak out of school for a moment and say that I suggested  a couple  of the provisions that made it into the resolution, although I’d rather not say which ones. The sponsor is Sam Brownback, who having dropped his presidential bid, is back to doing what earned...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
December 11, 2007

Desperately in need of a stranger’s hand

At the end of last month, I linked to a post at Powerline, quoting Noah Pollak on the subject of Annapolis, which I said then could just as well apply to  Condi Rice’s  eleventh-hour test of Kim Jong Il’s character.  Pollak said, If Condi’s pursuit of the peace process is due to a belief that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible and will unlock the forces of moderation and conviviality in the Middle East, then, well, she is simply a...
Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
December 8, 2007

North Korea hasn’t lost its talent for making enemies

[Update: This seems as good a place as any to tack on two more sets of comments from Chris Hill; plus, the Administration’s loyal soldier  Victor Cha weighs in at the Chosun Ilbo.  Scroll down.]   Let’s face it: American conservatives are more interested in and concerned by events in the Middle East than they are in North Korea, and a bad deal with North Korea might not have been enough to mobilize their opposition if it only affected Korea....
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation
December 8, 2007

Time to Shake Some Money-Makers

Recently, I articulated my suspicion that the Eugene Bell Foundation’s plan for family reunions between elderly Korean-Americans and their North Korean relatives would turn out to be just what Kaesong, Kumgang, and just about every other “grand opening” scheme also was: a cash pipeline to the North delivering dubious benefits and incalculable costs — incalculable because we have little or no idea of how Kim Jong Il spends the large sums he extracts from the South. In the case of...
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
December 7, 2007

How Far to the Right has South Korea Moved?

Although the polls suggest that South Koreans have made a modest shift to the right on how to deal with North Korea, issue polls don’t measure the intensity of opinion or how candidates’ North Korea policies affect their appeal to voters. Those matters are key, however, when you try to whom the voters will choose to set national policy. It was this article, which I’ll quote extensively below, that brought me to the realization that I may have underestimated just...
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
December 6, 2007

Chris Hill Returns from Pyongyang; Bush Writes to Kim Jong Il

After returning from a weekend in bucolic North Korea, Chris Hill stopped to talk to reporters in the lobby of his hotel in Beijing. As before, I’ll post the full State Department transcript of the Q&A, but here are some highlights: Hill visited Yongbyon and pronounced himself satisfied with the progress of “disablement” activities there. Although Yongbyon was already at the end of its useful life, the work there now involves removing the fuel, cutting valves, and using heavy equipment...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 4, 2007

KCNA Announces Hill’s Arrival

Pyongyang, December 3 (KCNA) — Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of State, and his party arrived here today.  [link] That’s the entire story, not an excerpt.  Why so terse?  Maybe their friends in Seoul sent them this (ht: GI Korea): The U.S. government decided to impose three new conditions for removing North Korea from Washington`s list of state sponsors of terrorism, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Saturday. The new conditions are in addition to the current U.S...
Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/U.S. Politics
December 3, 2007

North Korea Faces the End of the South Korean Gravy Train

[Update:   The field narrows further, but could Lee Hoi Chang be thinking of sticking it out through the election to lead an opposition group from the right?  It’s starting to look that way.  If Comrade Chung continues to remain way back in third place, that would allow Lee H.C. to continue to have a (from my perspective) positive influence on Lee Myung-Bak’s governance.  On the other hand,  by drawing conservatives out of the GNP, it could  solidify the GNP’s...
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
December 1, 2007

Hill the Hawk? Not This Year.

A friend was kind enough to pass along five transcripts of Christopher Hill’s remarks to the press during his current trip to Japan and the Koreas. There’s too much interesting information in there to graf and the remarks aren’t long, so I’m just going to upload them in full and let you read for yourself. These are State’s own transcripts; I’ve appended the  text to the bottom of this post. The key point is that North Korea is going to...
Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks