August 20, 2009

Goldberg in Singapore, Thailand

Singapore – The US coordinator for North Korea sanctions on Thursday praised an unprecedented agreement and intensity in the international community to enforce the UN measures against the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang after its nuclear tests in May. ‘That’s something new about this, that there is an intensity and agreement internationally, regionally, … that this is an essential part of our overall effort,’ Ambassador Philip Goldberg said in Singapore, his first stop on a tour through Asia. [….] ‘But it’s...
Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions/Uncategorized
August 19, 2009

Color Footage of Seoul, 1938

According to the YouTube caption, this video was taken by Swedish diplomat Thor Wiestlandt in 1938. The caption also diagnoses Wiestlandt with “orientalism,” whatever the f**k that means … probably some hippie sociologist’s P.C. tag for what others might more sensibly explain as interest and curiosity in a foreign culture that your average 1938-model Swede wouldn’t have experienced. Enjoy: And if you wonder why I moderate my comments, just have a gawk at the comments on any YouTube thread for...
Categories Korean History
August 19, 2009

What’s Going on with North Korea’s “Conciliatory Moves”?

At times, reading about the life of Kim Dae-jung made me think I was reading the brief for a blockbuster movie in the making. His struggles and accomplishments read like the stuff films are made of and it’s true, no matter what you thought of him, DJ leaves behind a legacy in South Korea full of successes and failures. But during my readings, a statement about his death’s impact on the future of North-South relations caught my eye (see page...
Categories Media Criticism/North-South/U.S. Politics
August 19, 2009

Is This Really The Time or the Place to Launch Rockets?

For a variety of reasons, apparently not. Look, I’m the last person on Earth to subscribe to the morally equivalent view of the Koreas as a north-going zax and a south-going zax. South Korean leaders don’t profit politically from international extortion and provocations — well, OK, there is this — but objectively, the world isn’t threatened by South Korea launching satellites or making advances in the nuclear fuel cycle, something President Lee’s people have personally told me they’re keen to...
Categories Missiles/Proliferation/South Korea/WMD
August 18, 2009

Kim Dae Jung, Fallen Liberator (1925-2009)

A few days ago, a well-informed reader and commenter on this site informed me that former President Kim Dae Jung would soon pass on, yet the time proved inadequate for me to work out my own internal conflicts about Kim, or “DJ” as many called him. Maybe Kim’s contradictory legacy just isn’t amenable to mutual reconciliation. Much will be said in the coming days — deservedly so — of DJ’s role in democratizing the South. Less will be said of...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/North-South/South Korea/Sunshine
August 16, 2009

Camps 14 & 18 Google Earth Page Published

It took months to do it, but I’ve finally published a Google Earth page for Camps 14 and 18. This page accumulates all of the newly available witness accounts, scholarly research, and satellite imagery of the camps, which share very little except geographical proximity. I owe my deepest thanks to a reader who forwarded me a copy of the Korean Bar Association’s 2008 human rights report, which proved to be an invaluable resource for this project, and for others to...
Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/The Camps
August 14, 2009

How Kim Jong Il Got Away With Counterfeiting Our Money

Having finally found time to read all of David Rose’s excellent Vanity Fair piece on North Korea’s supernote counterfeiting operation, I agree absolutely with Richardson and Curtis; it’s an excellent piece of journalism. For a fuller understanding, it should be read in the context of two others. Stephen Mihm’s New York Times report explained how North Korea assembled Intaglio printing presses and optically variable ink from the same Swiss manufacturer that supplies them to the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions
August 13, 2009

China Finally Enforcing N. Korea Sanctions, Kinda?

To say the very least, I remain deeply skeptical that China’s effort will be sustained, complete, or in good faith, but here are two stories that suggest to some degree, China is restricting trade with North Korea.  The first (as the reader who sent the link notes) comes directly from the ChiCom state media, so take it with a tablespoon of salt. Shan, who has run the corporation for 16 years, said he has forged close relations with officials in...
Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Kremlinology/Sanctions
August 13, 2009

The Winding Road to Redemption

It may be the ultimate case of paving someone else’s road to hell with good intentions. You may have heard it reported that on a lark, Laura Ling and Euna Lee crossed into North Korea and were captured while carrying video showing the faces of refugees and rescuers, whom Chinese police duly rounded up to send back to a firing squad or worse in North Korea.  Intentional?  Of course not.  Reckless?  Yes, perhaps fatally; yet it’s damage that can’t be...
Categories Human Trafficking/Ling/Lee Incident/Refugees
August 12, 2009

The Palaces of Pyongyang on Google Earth

Congratulations to our friend Curtis Melvin, whose Google Earth imagery of a Kim Jong Il palace in north Pyongyang is currently the Chosun Ilbo’s top story. This palace, I should point out, is one of no less than six very large palaces I know of in the Pyongyang area alone, though I can’t confirm who lives in all of them: This is the one I posted pictures of previously. A Daily NK piece previously confirmed that it’s one of Kim...
Categories Google Earth/Kim Jong Il
August 12, 2009

Mary Robinson Is Not Worthy

President Obama, for God-knows-what reason, has decided to award former U.N. bureaucrat Mary Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor.  Years ago, I expressed my intense distaste for Mary Robinson: Mary Robinson was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2001, during the height of the Great North Korean Famine, while China flagrantly violated the U.N. Convention on Refugees to keep the starving millions outside its borders. While millions more died in a...
Categories "United" Nations/Europe/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights
August 11, 2009

Treasury Knocks Over Another North Korean Bank

The Korea Kwangson Banking Corporation (KKBC) was been sanctioned under Executive 13382 today, for facilitating WMD proliferation: “North Korea’s use of a little-known bank, KKBC, to mask the international financial business of sanctioned proliferators demonstrates the lengths to which the regime will go to continue its proliferation activities and the high risk that any business with North Korea may well be illicit,” said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey. Since 2008, Tanchon has been utilizing KKBC to...
Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
August 11, 2009

Claudia Rosett’s Modest Proposal

Over at Pajamas Media, investigative reporting legend Claudia Rosett — she broke the oil-for-food scandal — has a proposal for Laura Ling and Euna Lee’s book/movie rights, which I heartily endorse: Though in light of the talk now circulating about a payola of book and movie deals, I have another suggestion. It would be entirely fitting for Laura Ling and Euna Lee to donate whatever money they make from their  story to some of the private charitable organizations whose staff...
Categories Ling/Lee Incident
August 11, 2009

North Korean Ship Boarded in Indian Waters Not Carrying Banned Cargo

That North Korean ship that was boarded, searched, and investigated after being caught lurking suspiciously in Indian waters turns out to have been carrying “genuine” cargo after all.  As we all eagerly anticipate John Feffer and Christine Ahn’s outcry that the ship’s captain was unfairly profiled for “boating while North Korean,” the rest of us can only shake our heads and wonder why the ship was behaving so suspiciously: A day after a North Korean ship was detained at Port...
Categories Proliferation/Sanctions