February 8, 2009

Christopher Hill, Obama’s Choice to Be Iraq Ambassador, Showed Poor Judgment and Dishonesty as N. Korea Negotiator

I guess we can add another name to the list of those who have little use for Christopher Hill, the front-runner to be President Obama’s next ambassador to Iraq: General Anthony Zinni, the former top U.S. commander in the Middle East, said the Obama administration offered him the Baghdad job late last month but withdrew the appointment without explanation, apparently in favor of a veteran diplomat, Christopher Hill. With Zinni fuming in undiplomatic fashion about the way he was treated,...
Categories Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
February 8, 2009

Life (in North Korea) Imitates ‘The Onion’

What motivates me to go on, day after day, you ask? NORTH Korea has declared it is actively pursuing a space program, amid reports from US and South Korean officials that Pyongyang is preparing to test fire a long-range missile. Rodong Sinmun, the official daily of the ruling communist party, said the North had every right to develop a space program, as a member of the international community. “The DPRK’s (North Korea) policy of advancing to space for peaceful purposes...
Categories Humor/Satire/Unintended Humor/WTF?
February 7, 2009

Unifiction Ministry Reverts to Form

It’s official: the Unifiction Ministry should have been abolished after all: The Ministry of Unification announced Wednesday that it would ask police to investigate anti-Pyongyang activist leaders if they press ahead with their plan to launch propaganda leaflets and North Korean banknotes across the border to the North. A ministry official, along with a representative from police, met with organizers planning to launch the anti-North Korean leaflets, activists said. The two organizers who met the ministry official were Choi Sung-yong,...
Categories Activism/Appeasement/Deprogramming/Famine & Food Aid
February 6, 2009

‘To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.’

Or so we were told not very long ago. And while I think Richard Holbrooke added some much-needed sac to the Clinton Administration’s approach to Bosnia — and could well do the same for this administration’s approach to, say, Iran — I have to question whether it’s effective public diplomacy to rip nominally allied foreign governments in the press, or to compare an American diplomat to a guy who gassed thousands of men, women, and kids.
Categories Diplomacy
February 6, 2009

‘Chosun Gripped With Boundless Emotion and Joy’

You have to wonder what goes through the minds of the people who write this stuff today. It’s so over the top as to suggest a subversive intent. KCNA’s words, my links: Pyongyang, February 4 (KCNA) — Upon hearing the news that General Secretary Kim Jong Il was nominated as a candidate for deputy to the 12th Supreme People’s Assembly at Constituency No. 333, the entire army and people are full of great happiness and pride of having the peerlessly...
Categories Kim Jong Il/Unintended Humor/WTF?
February 5, 2009

Hyperinflation in North Korea?

Exchange rates for North Korean currency are collapsing, according to Open Radio. True, a collapse in exchange rates means only so much when your currency isn’t convertible, but North Korea’s irresistable bottom-up transition to a market economy — despite the regime’s best efforts — means this will hurt both the privileged and the underprivileged who are trading with China to get food. One of the costs of doing cross-border business is the price of bribing North Korean border guards. That...
Categories China & Korea/NK Economics
February 5, 2009

Rising Traffic on the Underground Railroad

NOW THAT THE OLYMPICS ARE OVER, the flow of North Korean defectors into Thailand is on the rise once again. Thai police statistics quoted by the Japanese daily show a mere 140 North Koreans arrested there between January and August last year. But in the period from September to November after the Beijing Olympics, 250 North Koreans were arrested in 14 areas in northern and northeastern Thailand bordering Burma and Laos. The number of North Koreans arrested in December and...
Categories Refugees/Southeast Asia
February 5, 2009

S. Korea Finally Ends Subsidies to Violent ‘Civic’ Groups

Drink a toast to President Lee for this one: The government cut financial aid to non-profit organizations by half this year. Civic groups hosting or participating in illegal violent demonstrations will have their aid scrapped, and the government has asked the National Police Agency for background checks. [Chosun Ilbo] One of the most infuriating things the Roh government did was to subside extremist groups that engaged in violence, including violent demonstrations against U.S. installations. Why any government would subsidize violent...
Categories Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column
February 5, 2009

Obama Policy Watch, Plus: Chris Hill Reminisces on Failure

With most of the major players in Obama’s cabinet selected, the question turns to what sort of policies we’ll see during this administration. The shape of those policies is already being tested by North Korea’s state terrorism against South Korea, its threat to test an ICBM — in flagrant violation of two U.N. resolutions — and its continuing repudiation of its 2007 disarmament commitments. So far, the preponderance of evidence suggests that the Obama Administration lacks a coherent plan for...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 4, 2009

Diplomacy, Hubris, and the ‘Management’ of Sociopaths

The United States warned North Korea Tuesday that any testing of its longest-range missile would be seen as “provocative,” amid signs the reclusive Stalinist state could be preparing a launch. “North Korea’s missile activities and, you know, missile programs are a concern to the region. There’s no secret there,” said State Department spokesman Robert Wood. “And a ballistic missile launch by North Korea would be unhelpful and, frankly, provocative.” [AFP] Who believes that a statement like this is anything other...
Categories Appeasement/China/Diplomacy/Uncategorized
February 4, 2009

New Reports Accuse N. Korea of Starving and Exploiting Kids

Barring a few privileged exceptions, the lives of children are dirt cheap north of the DMZ. Last year, UNICEF and the World Food Program reported that 40% of North Korea’s children are chronically malnourished. The children in this video are mostly orphans; they’re homless kids known as “kotjaebi.” They began to appear on the streets of North Korean cities after the Great Famine killed or displaced many of their parents. They live by begging, stealing, foraging on trash, or getting...
Categories Uncategorized
February 4, 2009

North Korean Johns in Need of More Effective Consumer Protection

As a worker at a state enterprise, at Chongjin city, North Hamkyung Province, he came to Pyungsung City on a business trip. As a beautiful woman approached him and said the motel had a warm cozy room as well as a “high-class waiting room” (rooms where prostitutes wait for travelers who want sexual intercourse), he went to a one-story house in Yangji-dong. [Open Radio for N. Korea] What could possibly go wrong with a story that begins like that? For...
Categories Human Trafficking/Korean Society
February 3, 2009

Happy Birthday, Fat Boy

Activists who send leaflets to North Korea by balloon to denounce its totalitarian government said Monday they plan to include local currency as an incentive to pick up new propaganda to mark the birthday of leader Kim Jong Il. [….] Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon renewed a warning Monday that the activists could face jail or fines if they send North Korea money without government permission. But the activists said they were ready for any punishment, adding leaflets and currency...
Categories Activism/Deprogramming
February 2, 2009

North Korea Said to Be Preparing Long-Range Missile Launch

Happy Groundhog day. I don’t know if His Porcine Majesty emerged from his palace and saw his shadow today, but it certainly looks like we’re in for four more years of extortion: North Korea appears to be preparing to test-launch its longest range ballistic missile, media reported on Tuesday, just days after Pyongyang warned that the Korean peninsula was on the brink of war. North Korea, which typically launches missiles in periods of political tension, last week said it was...
Categories NK Military/Proliferation
February 2, 2009

Sun Rises, Geese Fly South, North Korea Reneges on Promises to Disarm

Ad nauseum. Any old excuse will do: North Korea said on Monday it would never unilaterally dismantle its nuclear weapons and demanded inspectors probe the South to make sure it is not harbouring U.S. atomic arms, further stepping up tensions with its neighbour. [….] A North Korean army spokesman said in comments carried by the state’s official KRT TV that the North and the South remained in a state of war and it was “a shameless act of imprudence” to...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 2, 2009

Hostile Policy Update: State Terrorism Meets Priceline Diplomacy

As used in this chapter – (1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that “¦ (B) appear to be intended – (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they...
Categories Appeasement/Terrorism (NK)