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Category: Proliferation

April 11, 2012

A New Approach to North Korea: Contain, Constrict & Collapse

Sometime in the next few hours, North Korea will launch a prototype for an intercontinental ballistic missile, in flagrant violation of three U.N. Security Council resolutions. The North Koreans announced the launch two weeks after agreeing to a deal to freeze their missile and nuclear programs in exchange for U.S. food aid. It now seems they will follow their missile test with a nuclear test. Traditionally, Chinese obstructionism delays U.N. Security Council action by about three weeks after a North...
Categories Diplomacy/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/Subversion/WMD
March 26, 2012

Obama Intercepts North Korean Missile with Experimental Laser-Guided Words

So President Obama’s visit to Seoul, the nuclear terrorism summit, and the DMZ has concluded without anything especially newsworthy taking place. Obama challenged North Korea to change its behavior and China to help coerce North Korea to change its behavior, but with relatively mild language that won’t deter North Korea from launching the thing. I had wondered whether the dynamic of this being an election year might tempt the President to show a little more spine than he or his...
Categories China/Japan/Missiles
March 16, 2012

And now, the painful burning sensation: N. Korea announces long-range missile launch

I have to admit it — even I’m surprised by how quickly the North Koreans reneged on this one: North Korea announced plans Friday to blast a satellite into space on the back of a long-range rocket, a provocative move that could jeopardize a weeks-old agreement with the U.S. exchanging food aid for nuclear concessions. The North agreed to a moratorium on long-range launches as part of the deal with Washington, but it argues that its satellite launches are part...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Missiles
March 9, 2012

Did Iran test a nuke in North Korea?

It would be a very serious matter if Iran had tested a nuclear weapon in North Korea in 2010, as this German language report in Die Welt claims. The claim has received much less attention in the U.S. press than it would seem to merit, and most bloggers who have picked up the story have merely wondered aloud whether it could be true (the notable exception being Stephan Haggard). I’ll add my summation of the evidence to Stephan’s, but I’ll...
Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Proliferation
January 30, 2012

North Korea shipped chemical reagents to Syria, possibly via China

This is a little old now, but I haven’t seen anyone else talking about it, so I will. The U.N. has launched an investigation into an attempted shipment of chemical weapons reagents and protective suits to Syria, a close ally of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and whose government gave safe passage to recruits on their way to Iraq to join Al Qaeda forces there. In November 2009, Greek authorities seized a container from a Liberia-registered freighter as it headed toward...
Categories Axis of Evil/China/Proliferation/Taiwan/WMD
September 25, 2011

Al-Kibar Redux

There’s nothing more I really care to say about what we should have done about the North Korean-built nuclear reactor at Al-Kibar in Syria, which Israel destroyed in a September 2009 air strike. This was a matter of some temporary inconvenience to Chris Hill’s efforts (abetted by the President and Secretary of State) to sell us a shiny, pre-owned agreed framework, complete with rust-proofing and warranty. Recently, however, Dick Cheney’s memoir has revived that debate. Michael Anton, writing in The...
Categories Axis of Evil/Diplomacy/Missiles/Proliferation/U.S. Politics/WMD
June 11, 2011

IAEA report concludes that North Korea aided Syria in nuclear proliferation

Recently, a friend provided me a bootleg copy (thanks) of an International Atomic Energy Agency report implicating North Korea and its Syrian client in violating IAEA safeguards by developing a clandestine nuclear weapons capability. The IAEA doesn’t appear to have released the report publicly; it appears to have been leaked. With that said, it’s really nothing we haven’t known since the spring of 2008, when congressional pressure finally forced Chris Hill to lift his embargo on all information related to...
Categories "United" Nations/Axis of Evil/Proliferation/WMD
May 16, 2011

U.N. Report Implicates China in N. Korea-Iran Missile Transfers; China Tries to Block Said Report

If Iran, Iraq, and North Korea are an Axis of Evil, then China must be the Limited-Slip Differential of the Axis of Evil: North Korea and Iran appear to have been regularly exchanging ballistic missile technology in violation of U.N. sanctions, according to a confidential U.N. report obtained by Reuters on Saturday. The report said the illicit technology transfers had “trans-shipment through a neighboring third country.” That country was China, several diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity. [Reuters] China...
Categories "United" Nations/Axis of Evil/China/Missiles/Proliferation/WMD
April 29, 2011

North Koreans Hard at Work on New Uranium Reactor

Images published yesterday by ISIS show fresh construction adjacent to North Korea’s old 5-megawatt reactor, the one that eventually became the exclusive focus of two failed agreed frameworks. For comparison, here’s an image of the same reactor from February 17, 2007, coincidentally just days after the second agreed framework was signed. The cooling tower in the image was blown up in ceremonial spectacle for the media, and some of the equipment inside the main reactor building (on the right) was...
Categories Anju Links/Proliferation/WMD
December 21, 2010

Must Read: Gordon Flake on Uranium and Agreed Framework 3.0

In the endless loop of our nuclear diplomacy with North Korea, new facts, novel arguments, and original thoughts are scarce things for which we scour a hundred news stories and blog posts. Here, in this excellent two–part interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Ramstad, Gordon Flake of the Mansfield Institute explains why North Korea’s coming-out with an advanced uranium enrichment capability means that an enduring nuclear disarmament agreement is now next to impossible. With the public display of, and...
Categories Proliferation/WMD
November 28, 2010

Funny how that works: China doesn’t want to restrain North Korea from attacking South Korea, but hates it when the U.S. Navy shows up on its front door. The Wall Street Journal passes along a sampling of Chinese reactions to the shelling of Yeonpyeong. Well-connected people I’ve spoken to seem convinced that there’s a segment within Chinese academia and government that really has had it with North Korea, but I doubt China will ever restrain North Korea without being subjected...
Categories Anju Links/WMD/Yeonpyeong Attack
November 27, 2010

“Some people imagine there is a building somewhere with a secret door they can open and find a group of scantily clad women enriching uranium.”

This delectable quote, attributed to Christopher “Kim Jong” Hill, is passed along by U.S. Representative and blogger Ed Royce. It seems that every North Korea wonk in Washington is laughing at Hill’s quote this week. Admittedly, I’ve certainly imagined everything Hill described, but not all at the same time. Alas, only my imaginings about the building, the door, and the uranium ever came completely true. As for the remainder, the prospects seem rather bleak. At Hill’s urging, North Korea was...
Categories WMD
November 25, 2010

Mike Chinoy Responds

You know, if I’d realized that Mike Chinoy, former CNN correspondent and author of “Meltdown,” was reading all those things I was writing about him, I might not have been so mean. Why was I not informed? Dear Joshua, I am a regular reader of OneFreeKorea, which I have always found interesting and thought-provoking, despite the darts you regularly send my way. I have not responded to your frequent criticisms, but under the current circumstances, and given your derogatory comments...
Categories WMD
November 22, 2010

What? North Korea had a secret uranium enrichment program all along? Why was Mike Chinoy not informed?

Siegfried Hecker seems significantly more astonished than I am that North Korea has 2,000 centrifuges spinning out enriched uranium. [W]hatever the reason for the revelation, which a seasoned American nuclear scientist called “stunning,” it provides a new set of worries for the Obama administration, which is sending its special envoy on North Korea for talks with officials in South Korea, Japan and China this week. The scientist, Siegfried Hecker, said in a report posted Saturday that he was taken during...
Categories WMD
August 5, 2010

Plan B Watch: Einhorn Goes to Tokyo, Pressure Builds on China

The latest reports in the Korean press tell us that the President will soon sign an over-arching executive order that will subsume the authorities of Executive Order 13,382 (see sidebars), and will also allow the blocking of assets used for proliferation, drug trafficking, and currency counterfeiting: In a press briefing on Monday, Department spokesman Philip Crowley said, “We have no doubt that North Korea has engaged directly in counterfeit operations as a means of bringing currency into the country. This...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Crime/NK Economics/Proliferation/Sanctions
June 21, 2010

South Korea Detects Radioactive Xenon Gas After N. Korea Fusion Boast

“Oh, you all laughed at me then!” he hissed, diabolically: Abnormal radiation was detected near the inter-Korean border days after North Korea claimed last month to have achieved a nuclear technology breakthrough, South Korea’s Science Ministry said Monday. [AP, Hyung-Jin Kim] The radiation detected was in the form of xenon gas, in levels eight times higher than normal. Given that none of North Korea’s known nuclear sites is near the DMZ, you have to assume that the plume dissipated considerably...
Categories Proliferation/WMD
June 8, 2010

Brazil: The New Venezuela?

Is Brazil Joining the Axis of Evil? I’d be skeptical if anyone less than Bertil Lintner had written this, but Lintner has a well established history of finding out some rather amazing things that no one else can: Recent indications are that Pyongyang has sought willing trade partners outside of Asia and its new closest commercial ally appears to be Brazil. Relations between the two countries have warmed considerably since leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva became president in January...
Categories Axis of Evil/Proliferation
June 7, 2010

China’s Support for Kim Jong Il Undermines the U.N., Nonproliferation, and Regional Peace

Some of us, of course, have never really believed that the United Nations could play much of a useful role in restraining North Korea anyway, other than helping us enlist the support of Old Europe, which is almost alone in paying any heed to the U.N. After all, the institution is led by Ban Ki-Moon, who rose from local obscurity to international obscurity by appeasing Kim Jong Il, and who, by all outward appearances, suffers from a genetic testosterone deficiency....
Categories "United" Nations/Cheonan Incident/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Sanctions