When North Korean agitprop backfires: A film about a peasant uprising is sowing dangerous ideas

What passes for a feel-good story in one of the world’s bleakest corners? Evidence that the seeds of class warfare are sprouting within a state that has fooled so many gullible leftists into believing that it’s a paradise of socialism. The Daily NK reports that an old agitprop film is inspiring exactly the kind of revolutionary consciousness that Kim Jong-un sees in his cognac-sodden nightmares. The film, “Im Kkoek Jung,” reminds North Koreans that their society has become the very thing the state’s propaganda...

Dear Korea: Let’s talk about China’s plans for you in its new co-prosperity sphere

Ever since China embarked on its retaliatory campaign against South Korea, of state-orchestrated protests, business closures, and boycotts, I’ve often tweeted that China is opposed to unilateral sanctions, except when it isn’t. Recently, the Asan Institute released the results of a survey showing that this campaign has done the unthinkable — it has made China even more unpopular than Japan in the eyes of South Koreans. For anyone who has lived in South Korea, it’s hard to overstate the significance of...

Sens. Gardner & Markey call on Trump administration to enforce North Korea sanctions law

Here’s the kind of story you hear too seldom in Washington today: A conservative Republican (Cory Gardner of Colorado) has joined forces with a liberal Democrat (Ed Markey of Massachusetts) to write a letter to the new secretaries of State and Treasury, asking them to fully enforce the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act (NKSPEA), which passed Congress with the overwhelming support of both parties last year. (Even Bernie Sanders would have voted for it had he not been campaigning...

What the Trump administration’s first North Korea sanctions designations tell us

Last Friday’s designations of 11 individuals and one company by the Treasury Department are the first North Korea designations of the new Trump administration. So what do they tell us about the direction of the administration’s North Korea policy? On the positive side, the designation of a North Korean coal company affiliated with the military should, in theory, send a strong message to its Chinese clients, although they don’t seem to have taken the last hint. Also on the positive side,...

Congress is marking up North Korea bills faster than I can write about them

Congress’s sentiment about Pyongyang today equates roughly to Cato the Elder’s sentiment about Carthage. (I mean this figuratively, for now, although I increasingly fear that sanctions are our last plausible strategy to prevent war.) It’s now moving more North Korea legislation than it has in the entire decade leading up to the passage of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act just over one year ago. I can no longer keep up with all of the bills, amendments, markups, and resolutions...

The U.N. Human Rights Council needs reform (again)

Again, the idea of a U.S. withdrawal from the U.N. Human Rights Council is under consideration. Americans, especially American conservatives, tend to fixate on the Council’s fixation with Israel. For reasons I’ll make clear enough below, that fixation is not just silly, it’s cynical. Still, I think leaving the HRC just yet would be a big mistake. I might have answered that question differently ten years ago, before the U.N. Commission of Inquiry proved that the HRC is capable of doing...

Investigative journalists expose North Korean front companies in Malaysia

The coincidence of the Panel of Experts report’s release and the assassination of Kim Jong-nam continues to focus some of the finest investigative journalism I’ve seen in years on North Korea’s front companies in Malaysia. First up, the MKP Group, a Malaysian-North Korean joint venture that earned “tens of millions of dollars” through construction projects in Zambia, Angola, and elsewhere in Africa. To further reinforce Bill Newcomb’s comments about the links between slave labor, money laundering, and proliferation, MKP often uses...

Why human rights must be a part of the Trump administration’s North Korea policy

Yesterday, the State Department hailed the U.N. Human Rights Council’s adoption of a resolution condemning North Korea’s human rights abuses and recommending that member states help identify perpetrators for possible prosecution. The U.N.’s progress has been agonizingly slow, and I won’t argue against those who say that the HRC’s membership standards are Exhibit A in the case for reforming it. Still, for an administration that has not emphasized human rights, that’s an encouraging sign. By now, it’s fairly clear that...

UN report shows China, others are still havens for North Korean money laundering

Due to a convergence of other commitments, it took me longer than I’d hoped to digest the U.N. Panel of Experts‘s latest findings about North Korea and financial sanctions. If you only read the bottom line and stop there, you’ll either be discouraged or find support for an argument that sanctions are futile. 210. Despite expanded financial sanctions adopted by the Security Council in resolutions 2270 (2016) and 2321 (2016), the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has continued to access...

Only North Korea’s government can end hunger in North Korea

Although I have many, many unanswered questions about how the U.N. is able to fully assess exactly how many North Koreans are going hungry, let’s just stipulate that it’s a majority of those living outside Pyongyang: Nearly 70 percent of the North Korean population, roughly seven in 10 people, is undernourished, a U.S. broadcaster reported Wednesday, citing a U.N. report on the need for humanitarian aid to North Korea. According to the report released the previous day by the U.N....

WSJ: Feds may indict North Koreans in Bangladesh Bank fraud

This story just gets more interesting by the day: Federal prosecutors are building cases that would accuse North Korea of directing one of the biggest bank robberies of modern times, the theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last year, according to people familiar with the matter. The charges, if filed, would target alleged Chinese middlemen who prosecutors believe helped North Korea orchestrate the theft, the people said. The current cases being pursued...

Royce introduces bill to toughen sanctions on N. Korea; subcommittee holds hearing

The big news yesterday was that Ed Royce, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has introduced a sequel to the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, or NKSPEA. You can read the full text here, but briefly, the bill — Expands the mandatory and discretionary sanctions in NKSPEA 104 to match the sanctions added by UNSCR 2270 and UNSCR 2321. It also adds a few more, like authorizing Treasury to sanction anyone who imports food from North Korea — a...

Top NSA official attributes attempted $1B bank heist to North Korean hackers

The story of the Bangladesh Bank/SWIFT heist has gotten much more interesting of late. Now, not only do we have a senior U.S. intelligence official attributing it to a government, we learn that the North Koreans tried to steal nearly …. A senior National Security Agency official appeared to confirm that North Korean computer hackers were behind a multi-million dollar heist targeting Bangladesh’s central bank last year. Computer hackers attempted to steal $951 million, but only got away with $81 million, some of which...

North Korean security forces now asking politely for protection money

Yet more reports are validating that, since the recent ouster of State Security Minister Kim Won-hong for “human rights violations” and other reasons, something has changed (at least for now) in the way North Korea’s internal security forces are operating: Following orders from Kim Jong Un for the Ministry of State Security (MSS) to refrain from violating human rights, its personnel have begun to shy away from their characteristic extortionist behavior during their interactions with residents. This appears to be...

Ted Cruz introduces Senate bill to re-list N. Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism

Ted Cruz, who has emerged as a leading advocate for a harder line against North Korea, has introduced a Senate companion bill to Rep. Ted Poe’s bill, calling for North Korea’s re-listing as a state sponsor of terrorism. According to a press release from Senator Cruz’s office,* Cruz’s bill has six original co-sponsors: Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). Compared to the House bill, the Senate...

Will China cooperate on North Korea sanctions? That depends on which “China” you mean.

I often talk about the importance of pressuring China to pressure North Korea. When I do, people sometimes cock their heads like my dog would do when he heard a new sound, and ask me whether China would cooperate with that. I answer this question with a question of my own: “Which China?” China, for all its top-down authoritarianism, isn’t a monolith. Like most societies, it has different constituencies with different views that fear different risks and pursue different interests....

N. Korea, Lazarus & SWIFT: Are the white hats closing in? (Update: SWIFT cuts off remaining N. Korean banks)

In the last month, major news stories about North Korea have bombarded my batting cage faster than I’ve been able to swing at them. I’d wondered when I’d have a chance to cover Katy Burne’s detailed story in the Wall Street Journal about the empty half of the SWIFT glass ” that despite its recent decision to disconnect three U.N.-designated North Korean banks, it’s still messaging for banks that are sanctioned by the Treasury Department, but not by the U.N.:...

UN report finds extensive evidence that China hosts N. Korea’s proliferation networks

A new report from the Wall Street Journal, quoting “U.S. and Asian officials,” says that the Trump Administration is considering “increasing financial penalties on Chinese companies in response to growing evidence of their support for North Korea’s weapons programs.” Such as: In a case that particularly alarmed the Trump administration, a North Korean businessman attempted to use Pyongyang’s embassy in Beijing to export a lithium metal that is used to miniaturize nuclear warheads, according to the U.N. report. [Wall Street...