April 29, 2008

You Mean Like in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2007, and 2008?

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says the Bush administration should have sought direct dialogue with North Korea earlier. The Illinois senator said Sunday he felt disturbed to hear the North is likely to have helped Syria pursue a covert nuclear program. He said such suspected activities took place while the U.S. suspended direct talks with Pyongyang.  [KBS] Which would distinguish those suspected activities  from these suspected activities, which took place during  The Gilded Age of Peace in Our Time,...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
April 29, 2008

David Albright, Call Your Office

CIA Director Michael Hayden said Monday that the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in September would have produced enough plutonium for one or two bombs within a year of becoming operational.  [AP, Pamela Hess]   And according to this report, the Syrian reactor was “nearing completion.” What Bruce Cumings is to North Korean history, David Albright is  to  North Korean proliferation. 
Categories Proliferation
April 28, 2008

North Korean Officer Defects Across the DMZ; Separate Report Suggests Rations for Field-Grade Officers, Security Forces Cut

The North Korean officer approached a South Korean guard post Sunday on the western part of the frontier, an official at the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The 28-year-old second lieutenant, identified only by his surname Ri, told South Korean guards he was seeking asylum in the South, Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unidentified South Korean military official. The Joint Chiefs of Staff official declined to confirm the news report, and spoke on condition of anonymity because the...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Military
April 27, 2008

Seoul Invaded by “The Ugly Chinese”

The most disastrous Olympic torch run in history  has ended with a new low: On Sunday, clashes broke out in Seoul near the relay start between a group of 500 Chinese supporters and about 50 demonstrators criticizing Beijing‘s policies, carrying a banner reading, “Free North Korean refugees in China.” The students threw stones and water bottles as some 2,500 police tried to keep the two sides apart.  [AP] And so we add another excellent reason, if any more were needed...
Categories Activism/China/China & Korea/Refugees
April 27, 2008

Chris Hill Resignation Watch: National Review on Agreed Framework 2.0

Our long national  slumber is  ending with a very cranky awakening, and  editorialists are starting  to  transform  Chris Hill into a political liability for the Bush Administration:  We still have no idea whether North Korea engaged in or is engaging in surreptitious uranium enrichment to complement the plutonium processed at Yongbyon. And we have not even asked Kim to dismantle his existing nuclear arsenal. Exactly what is it about this picture that has convinced Christopher Hill, the State Department’s top...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
April 26, 2008

Chris Hill Resignation Watch: Lord and Gelb in the Washington Post

Winston Lord and Lawrence Gelb are two senior members of Washington’s foreign policy establishment,  a constituency that has  been pushing, conditionally, for  Agreed Framework 2.0 ever since the death of Agreed Framework 1.0.  The establishment has supported, in principle, the idea of  making a deal  and sacrificing adjectives to get one, but  they’ve always kept  one eye on the exits in case the North Koreans just wouldn’t play along.  Maybe the flaw for which they can be most faulted is...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
April 25, 2008

Sen. Sam Brownback Puts Hold on Kathleen Stephens Nomination

Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.  — The Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:8 (37a) Let me be first nice Jewish boy to say it:   “G-d bless Sam Brownback.”  One of the Senate’s oldest traditions  is the nomination  “hold.”  For judicial appointments,  holds are the exclusive prerogrative of home-state senators.  For ambassadors, senate custom allows  any senator  to place a...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
April 24, 2008

Chris Hill Resignation Watch: Nuke Disclosure Starts a Category 3 Sh*tstorm

[Update: Watch the CIA’s video on the al-Kibar reactor: I’d love to know how they got those photographs of the reactor’s interior, and I can only guess that some trusted person who is now in a much safer place took them.] How stupid and how evil does Kim Jong Il have to be to get the attention of Congress in an election year?  This stupid and this evil: The United States on Thursday released an intelligence document with photographs of...
Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
April 24, 2008

Anju Links for 24 April 08

THAT’S MORE LIKE IT: South Korean human rights groups said Thursday they will block the Olympic torch relay in protest at China’s alleged human rights violations against Tibetans and North Korean defectors. The torch for the 2008 Beijing Olympics is scheduled to reach South Korea on April 27 and be passed on to North Korea on the following day. It will arrive in Beijing in early May. “We urge China, as a host of the Olympic Games, to abide by...
Categories Anju Links
April 23, 2008

More Senate Republicans Rebel Against Bush’s North Korea Policy

Fourteen Republican  senators have signed  a letter to President Bush opposing his agreement to let the North Koreans off the hook on full disclosure, disarmament, money laundering, terror sponsorship, concentration camps, abductions — you  name it —  before we lift sanctions.  An excerpt: We are … concerned  about the present course of action on North Korea’s nuclear program being pursued by representatives of your Administration.  It cannot be said that North Korea has complied with its commitments.  From all appearances,...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
April 23, 2008

State Will Tell Congress that N. Korea Was Helping Syria Build a Reactor

Reuters and the Wall Street Journal are both reporting that State is about to give Congress that briefing that it’s long been demanding about what exactly the Israelis bombed in Syria last September.  A senior congressional aide and a former Bush administration North Korea specialist said they believed the briefings were designed to persuade members of Congress that removing those sanctions was justified. Latest word, by the way, is that when State publishes its new list of state sponsors of...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
April 23, 2008

Yes, This Should Be Interesting

PAGING DON KIRK: Former South Korean spymaster Kim Ki-Sam, who must know where a lot of the bodies from the 2000 North Korea summit scandal are buried, has just been granted asylum in the United States, reports Yonhap. From the article, you have to infer that Kim was able to convince an immigration judge that he has something to be afraid of in South Korea, notwithstanding the recent changes in the presidency and the National Assembly. Kim is promising to...
Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
April 22, 2008

Anju Links for 22 April 2008

ANOTHER GOOGLE EARTH MYSTERY: In the two days following my publication of this post on North Korea’s construction of a suspected underground runway, the same site has also been discovered by the Voice of America and Yonhap. Thanks a million for reading, guys. I’d thank you two million for a little attribution or a link…. IS KOREA’S LEFT MOVING TOWARD THE CENTER? Well, there’s a lot less room under the tent these days. By the way, the picture accompanying the...
Categories Anju Links
April 22, 2008

House Foreign Affairs Committee Leaders Co-Sponsor Bi-Partisan N.K. Human Rights Bill

[Updated and bumped  4/22:   The GPO has published the full text; it’s here:  hr-5834.pdf It mainly reauthorizes the existing Act, tightens State’s reporting requirements, and adds more power and prestige to the post of Special Envoy.  It also demands quick action from State on increasing radio broadcasting and “facilitating the submission of applications” for asylum at our consular facilities in Asia.]   I don’t have a link to the bill or this press release yet, but it’s from a...
Categories Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. Politics
April 18, 2008

Anju Links for 18 April 2008

THE LIFE IMPRISONMENT ZONE of Camp 14 is described in vivid detail by Shin Dong-Hyuk, who claims to be a survivor (by the way, hat tip to usinkorea for sending this).  Shin’s story of how  another prisoner helped him  survive interrogation in an underground dungeon is particularly touching.  The concern you always have with reports like this is that they come from a single source and can’t be independently confirmed.  Oddly enough, this  report comes by way of the Pattaya...
Categories Anju Links
April 18, 2008

Rice: Lift Sanctions Now, Disarm and Verify Someday

[Scroll down for a highly significant update.]   U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday that verifying any North Korean nuclear declaration would take time and suggested Washington may drop some sanctions on Pyongyang before this is complete. Separately, a senior U.S. official said an American team would visit North Korea next week to discuss how to verify the “complete and correct” accounting of its nuclear programs that Pyongyang was due to deliver by Dec. 31.  [Reuters, Arshad...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks
April 17, 2008

Must Read: Sung-Yoon Lee on the Bush-Lee Summit

If anyone ever asks what we should do about North Korea from this day forward, I think I’ll just refer them to this: Empower the office of the US special envoy for human rights in North Korea so that the special envoy can fulfill his mandate as per Section 107 of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 unfettered by Washington politics. Make full use of the $20 million appropriated for 2008 to provide assistance to North Koreans outside...
Categories An Alliance?/Money Laundering/U.S. & Korea