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Category: Diplomacy

November 16, 2006

No Abstention This Year!

Seoul, in a surprise reversal, will reluctantly support this year’s U.N. resolution on human rights in North Korea: South Korea decided Thursday to vote in favor of a United Nations resolution condemning North Korea’s human rights abuses, citing a change in the geopolitical situation after Pyongyang’s nuclear weapon test in October.  The U.N. General Assembly is expected to vote on the nonbinding resolution drafted by the European Union, the United States, and Japan early Friday (Seoul time). Thursday’s decision, which...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Human Rights
November 15, 2006

Two Cheers for Tom Lantos

He’d get three if he’d said  it three years ago, and four if he offered a few more specifics, but Tom Lantos (D, Cal.) sounds at least as  tough here  as Jim Leach (R, Ia.) might have: The Bush administration’s policy toward North Korea has failed and a new approach must be tried, including punishing the North’s leaders and sending a U.S. envoy to Pyongyang for talks, a key Democrat said on Wednesday. Rep. Tom Lantos of California, who is...
Categories America/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
November 14, 2006

The Reinvention of Ban Ki-Moon

He seems to have concluded that he needs to put some distance between himself and his comrades in the ruling party.  The first of two stories is this remarkable statement, timed just before Seoul is expected to abstain from yet another UN resolution on human rights in the North. UN secretary-general-designate Ban Ki-moon on Sunday called for a “more proactive position” from Seoul on North Korea’s human rights issues. Ban said the international community “has great expectations in that regard,...
Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/Korean War
November 13, 2006

Shame on South Korea

They’re going to abstain again.  This year, there will be  another U.N. resolution condemning North Korea’s mass murder of its own people — 2.4 million and counting, and South Korea will remain silent.  LiNK was there to make sure the world remembers this cowardly, selfish, and  reprehensible act.  One day, the North Korean people will demand an explanation.  These abstentions will add  the bitterness of betrayal to the great difficulties that are sure to come with reunification.  (Picture credits:  1,...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Human Rights
November 11, 2006

North Korea’s Food Crisis and the Theory of Comparative Advantage

Donor fatigue has hit the World Food Program’s much-reduced North Korea operations: James Morris, the agency’s outgoing chief, told the WFP executive board session in Rome earlier this week that the operation in North Korea “is dramatically underfunded.” “If we are to continue, and you overwhelmingly have said you want us to stay there and want us to be helpful in addressing the humanitarian agenda, we are going to need some help,” he said. “Otherwise, come February, we will be...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
November 10, 2006

The Next Food Crisis, Part 1: DLA Piper Report: N. Korean Famine A ‘Crime Against Humanity’

I’ve finally finished reading the DLA Piper report, which calls on the U.N. Security Council to invoke Chapter VI, and then Chapter VII, against North Korea for the crime of failing to protect its population.  As regular readers know, I’ve long placed the North Korean famine at the top of the list of its crimes against humanity, and now, for the first time, a published scholarly report is making that same accusation and tying it to specific provisions of international...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights
November 10, 2006

The Next Food Crisis, Part 2: Will Josette Sheeran Stop the Next Great Famine?

As the reports on North Korea’s food situation continue to grow more dire, I’m no longer alone in warning that the country is again on the brink of famine (see, e.g., this, this, or this, at pages 26-28).  That’s why food policy — not nukes,  missiles, or even other human rights issues —  could soon become the most urgent issue in  how the world approaches North  Korea.  It would also be a real opportunity for the U.N. to redeem itself...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights
November 9, 2006

The Czech Republic’s ‘Peculiar Institution’

“If someone calls it slavery …, I’m not the person responsible for that.” The IHT looks at the conditions in which North Korean women labor in the Czech Republic.  Some will  say  — and I will agree —  that the women certainly look better fed and clothed than their counterparts at home.  One could say the same for workers at Kaesong, to  a lesser extent,  who probably also eat better than their peers.  Like those meeting the classical definition of...
Categories Appeasement/Europe/Human Rights
November 8, 2006

The Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Heard

“Our interest is a stable North Korea.” — Bill Richardson They sell uranium to Libya, sell  missiles to Iran and Syria, renounce or violate every agreement they make, kill “impure” babies, gas kids, put the handicapped in concentration camps, and intentionally starve millions of their people.  And we want  them to be able  to go on doing that?  My idea of our interests obviously differs from Bill Richardson’s.  The North Koreans have fooled him so many times, he’s obviously beyond...
Categories Diplomacy/Washington Views/WTF?
November 8, 2006

Wobble Watch: Robert Gates on North Korea

A few links that may interest (or depress) you.  In 2004, Gates teamed up with Zbigniew Brzezinski to call for direct bilateral talks with Iran.  Procedurally, you can’t say that we gain much by letting the Europeans do it for us, since we certainly don’t share a common set of interests or base beliefs with Europe.  Substantively, I don’t see what you can gain by talking to a man as hell-bent as Ahmedinejad.  Especially if we show weakness in Iraq,...
Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 7, 2006

S. Korean Defense of Kaesong Raises More Questions Than Answers

Last spring, the U.S. Special Envoy on Human Rights in North Korea and some  NGO’s first raised concerns about the rights of workers at North Korea’s Kaesong Industrial Park, which  hosts just  over a dozen South  Korean factories.   The  Unification Ministry initially tried to allay those concerns by bringing journalists and some foreign dignitaries up to Kaesong for guided tours.  This did not work  as planned.  The U.S. Ambassador wandered around and snapped pictures of all the U.S.-made machine tools that...
Categories Appeasement/Money Laundering/WMD
November 6, 2006

A (Blue) House Divided Against Itself

Kim Jong Il can count dividing the U.S.-Korea alliance as one of his recent  successes, but in the process, he’s also divided his friends in South Korea.  The left finds itself  split among  accomodators, appeasers, and  outright agents, and those factions  are going into an election year  at  war with each other.  One of the most divisive of the internecine struggles is Seoul’s to-join-or-not-to-join agony over the Proliferation Security Initiative.  Today, Yonhap has a long story on the subject. President...
Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/U.S. & Korea/WMD
November 6, 2006

What’s Joe Di Trani doing these days?

You may recall that  before he resigned from the six-party  negotiations  team,  Di Trani was one half of the New York Channel, along with Han Song Ryol (Han, who is a real bastard, has also moved  on).  Those were the bilateral talks that the State Department was pretending not to have while the Democrats and some Republicans were demanding we have them.  Di Trani, who was at the CIA previously, went to the Directorate of National Intelligence.  Now (via Richardson)...
Categories Diplomacy/North Korea/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
November 6, 2006

Why Talk?

Some people are wondering just what we expect to get from talking to the North Koreans.  But Ms. Rice is coming under increased fire inside and outside the administration from officials and experts who are skeptical about what diplomacy can achieve in this case, and who argue that there is no chance a new round of nuclear talks with North Korea will succeed. “What’s a good description? Fantasy? Dreamworld?” said Nicholas Eberstadt [OFK interview here], a North Korea expert with...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
November 6, 2006

Got Meth?

Recently,  Robert Koehler  blogged about the North Korean drug ship that was repeatedly caught in Busan, only to be left to go and make the same haul again.  It’s only the latest example of the South Korean government putting the interests of Bureau 39 ahead of the interests of ordinary Korean citizens in either the North or the South.  Now, however, media exposure has embarrassed Roh’s government into the most limp-wristed  action  they could get away with — actually inspecting...
Categories Appeasement/Drugs & N Korea
November 5, 2006

Wobble Watch: Treasury Won’t Lift Sanctions on Kim Jong Il’s Macau Accounts

New press reports link the bank accounts that mean so much to Kim Jong Il with  his nuclear and other  WMD programs.  North Korea used its accounts at a Macau-based bank, suspected of having served as a base for the North’s alleged illicit activities, to pay for devices that could be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons, a Japanese daily reported Saturday. Quoting unidentified sources, Yomiuri Shimbun said China froze North Korean accounts worth US$24 million...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD