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Category: Terrorism (NK)

April 30, 2008

State Dep’t Releases Annual Terrorism Report

And North Korea clings to it by a hair: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987. The DPRK continued to harbor four Japanese Red Army members who participated in a jet hijacking in 1970. The Japanese government continued to seek a full accounting of the fate of the 12 Japanese nationals believed to have been abducted by DPRK state entities; five...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)
March 26, 2008

Radio and Reciprocity

SOMEONE IN CHINA IS RECORDING NORTH KOREAN RADIO broadcasts in English and posting the audio online. If you’re interested in keeping up with  who’s being idolized or purged, or whether songun is in or out, this should be interesting listening.  I listened long enough to hear the North Koreans call on all South Koreans to bow down before the Great General and Lodestar of the Nation, which is funny until you realize that 23 million people have to bear this...
Categories Deprogramming/Terrorism (NK)
March 4, 2008

North Korea: You’re Terrorists, Too!

The Daily NK reports that the United States isn’t going to remove North Korea from this year’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.  Personally, I’ve been burned  pretty much every  time I believed what the  State Department said directly, much less indirectly, so I’m agnostic on this one.  In related news, North Korea has listed the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism: North Korea Tuesday called the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq typical examples of “state-sponsored terrorism”...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
February 12, 2008

I Wonder How Much $4 Million Can Buy in Gitmo

There’s yet more news on our South Korea-Taliban ransom story. Last September, I told you that Mullah Abdallah Jan, one of the leaders in the kidnapping and murder of South Korean hostages, had an unexpected meeting with an American J-Dam and shortly thereafter, 72 virgin prepubescent boys. This week, when I heard that Mansoor Dadullah had been captured, it occurred to me that the name was familiar, but the Chosun Ilbo makes the connection: Pakistani authorities said that Mansoor Dadullah...
Categories An Alliance?/Terrorism (NK)
February 11, 2008

S. Korea Still Denies Paying Ransom to Taliban; Larry Craig Still Not Gay

After months of wildly inconsistent estimates ($2 million? $20 million?) of just how much ransom the South Koreans paid for their two dozen-odd hostages in Afghanistan, the Taliban is saying the actual amount was “at least” $4 million. This final, authoritative answer is brought to you by an unidentified “senior Taliban commander,” so we need not ever speak of this again. Until the next time it happens: If we were going to free them without any payment, [the hostage taking]...
Categories An Alliance?/Appeasement/Terrorism (NK)
February 6, 2008

Diplomacy as Terrorism: North Korea Threatens America With Indirect Nuclear Attack

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Tuesday, J. Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, delivered his annual threat assessment.  Here are some highlights; all emphasis is mine: Despite halting progress towards denuclearization, North Korea continues to maintain nuclear weapons; Here’s the section that describes the North Korean threat in greater detail:
Categories Proliferation/Terrorism (NK)
February 5, 2008

Senators Urge Bush Not to De-List N. Korea as Terror Sponsor

Six senators, all Republicans, have signed a letter to President Bush asking him not to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism yet.  The senators are Sam Brownback of Kansas, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, John Kyl of Arizona (the minority whip), Charles Grassley of Iowa, … and Larry Craig. You can see a pdf of the letter — full text, signatures, and all, here: senate-letter.pdf Many thanks to the person who sent me...
Categories Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics
February 4, 2008

N. Korea Demands Japan Drop Abductions Issue

Does this sound like a nation that has renounced terrorism? North Korea-Japan relations will never improve if Japan continues to link their improvement with a bilateral dispute over North Korea’s past abductions of Japanese nationals, North Korea’s state-run media said Thursday. In a lengthy commentary, the Korean Central News Agency said that North Korea has not forgiven Japan for forcing many Korean women into sexual slavery and taking many Korean men to Japan during World War II, and that it...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Terrorism (NK)
January 23, 2008

Just What We Needed: Our Very Own Ministry of Unification.

From a White House press briefing today:  Q       Is the administration about to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism?      MS. PERINO:  No.  Right now where we are is waiting on the North Koreans to provide a complete and accurate declaration of their nuclear activities.  So we’re continuing to wait for that.  We still have people on the ground helping with the disablement of the Yongbyon nuclear facility.  So at this...
Categories Diplomacy/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
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
November 27, 2007

Terrorism, Plain and Simple

If you stick with me for a modest amount of law, I promise you that this post will end with a nice little adventure in participatory democracy.  But to get there, we must begin with how the United States Code defines “international terrorism,” at section 2331 of Title 18: As used in this chapter –       (1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that –                 (A) involve violent acts or...
Categories Appeasement/Terrorism (NK)
April 26, 2007

Anju Links for 26 April: Who’s Afraid of Victor Cha, and the Sexual Psychology of Military Parades

*   It has now been 13 days since April 13th, the day North Korea was supposed to have shut down the Yongbyon reactor, begun discussions on the full extent of its nuclear weapons and programs, invited in U.N. inspectors, and rejoined six-party talks (to include actually talking).  North Korea has (surprise!) broken every one of those agreements.  Victor Cha has since reportedly warned them that our patience is limited.  So in Pyongyang they ask …. *   Or Else,...
Categories Abductions/America/Japan & Korea/Refugees/Six-Party Talks/Southeast Asia/Terrorism (NK)/Terrorism/Iraq/WMD
April 25, 2007

North Korea’s Sponsorship of Terrorist Acts, 1996-2007

As I noted here, at the end of  Update  4/24 to my North Korea Freedom Week post, the State Department is now  rumored to be seriously considering removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.  This conflicts with signals  State had sent earlier, and as I noted here,  would probably trigger a rebellion by  conservatives  in Congress. With Japan’s Prime Minister set to visit Washington next week, unverified gossip holds that the Bush Administration will put pressure...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/WMD
April 8, 2007

N. Korea gets a U.S. green light to sell arms, and six months after its unanimous passage, UNSCR 1718 is a dead letter

That resolution may have been the only potentially effective U.N. action in my living memory, and the hand that held the dagger belonged to none other than our own State Department.  The United States ignored an apparent violation of the international sanctions against North Korea by turning a blind eye to an arms shipment that Pyongyang sent to Ethiopia earlier this year, according to a story in Sunday’s edition of The New York Times. North Korea has been subject to...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Terrorism (NK)/Washington Views/WMD
March 17, 2007

‘Abduction’ Film Updates

This beautifully produced film, created by two National Geographic alumni, will air on BBC 4’s “Storyville” series  on March 22nd at 10:30 p.m.  I’d add that since absolutely nothing is open at that time in Britain, there’s no excuse not to watch. The film is also coming to DVD in May, with digitally remastered sound and subtitles in eight languages.  More at AbductionFilm.com.
Categories Abductions/Activism/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/Japan & Korea/Terrorism (NK)
March 15, 2007

Al-Qaeda Planned USFK Attacks

From the confession of the Ron Jeremy look-alike known as  Khalid Sheikh Mohammad: 23. I was responsible for planning and surveying to hit American targets in South Korea, such as American military bases and a few night clubs frequented by American soldiers. The thought occurred to me almost every post-9/11 day I was assigned to Korea.  The “Hooker Hill” district  of Itaewon mixes very uneasily with the nearby Korea Islam Mosque, a congregation that includes a  high percentage of conversative...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Military
March 14, 2007

State: No quick removal of N. Korea from the terror list

I can imagine that the pressure from Japan has been intense, particularly in light of North Korea’s increasingly  brazen claims  about just what  the U.S. had agreed to lift, and when.  The North Koreans forced us to correct the record: North Korea will not be easily removed from the U.S. list of states that sponskor terrorism. U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said that taking North Korea off the terrorism blacklist is a process that will require a lot of...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)
March 9, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Financial Edition

North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan said Thursday that Pyongyang’s decision to halt nuclear facilities, as outlined in initial steps included in the Feb. 13 six-way agreement, will depend on the U.S. lifting of financial sanctions against North Korea.  [Kyodo News; ht Richardson] The U.S. negotiator at the six-party talks, Chris Hill, once said that “[l]ife is too short to overreact to every statement coming out of Pyongyang.”  It’s true that the North Koreans do more than their...
Categories "United" Nations/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Google Earth/Money Laundering/Terrorism (NK)/WMD