February 15, 2008

Are They Losing Their Fear?

When I spoke of the many recent signs that the erosion of state control is accelerating in North Korea, I said that the erosion of fear would be the decisive factor. So I watch things like his carefully: Discontent with the top leadership is growing in North Korea writes Lee Ki Dong, a Researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy. Lee published a paper entitled “An Analysis of Changes in the North Korean Political System Based on the Testimonies...
Categories Regime Change
February 14, 2008

An Anniversary, But Nothing to Celebrate

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of Agreed Framework 2.0. So, how is that working out? North Korea threatened Friday to block progress in the six-party talks over its nuclear programs, claiming efforts by U.S. hardliners to disrupt dialogue with Pyongyang could aggravate the current standoff. The North also said it will have no choice but to take a certain measure “provided the U.S. warmongers keep taking a tough stance” against the communist state. The six-party talks hit a snag as...
Categories Six-Party Talks
February 14, 2008

The Blue House Lied, People Died: How Appeasement Kills in North Korea

Today, the Chosun Ilbo helps us to peel away the myth of unmonitored “humanitarian” aid to North Korea. The aid wasn’t going to the people who needed it the most, and Roh’s government knew it all along. South Korean military authorities have known since 2003, when the Roh Moo-hyun administration was inaugurated, that North Korea has transported rice supplied by the South for humanitarian purposes to frontline units of the North Korean Army. The South Korean military has admitted it...
Categories Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid
February 13, 2008

Anju Links for 13 Feb 08

STALL ALERT: More dispatches from the hopelessly deadlocked Agreed Framework 2.0: – South Korea’s nuclear negotiator says North Korea still needs more time to give us its nuclear declaration. – “I suspect that North Korea will attempt to strike a deal with the new U.S. administration that will be inaugurated next year. In that case, it seems likely that there will be no progress in the North Korean nuclear issue until summer next year.” So says Roh’s former Foreign Minister,...
Categories Anju Links
February 13, 2008

Six months later, deafening silence about North Korea and Syria

Last Sunday, a friend invited me to attend an event at Bethel Israel Synagogue in Alexandria. The subject was “The North Korea-Syria Connection,” although the event seems not to have caught the notice of many Korea watchers or journalists. I was invited by a friend who happens to attend the synagogue. The host was NPR’s Robert Siegel, and the guests were Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post and Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times. Kessler consistently toes the State...
Categories Proliferation/Washington Views
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 12, 2008

Stage Four Watch: The Great Purge of 2008?

The Korean edition of the Chosun Ilbo is reporting on the impending execution of a beautiful 35 year-old North Korean woman, “Miss Kim,” who grew wealthy as a defection and reunion broker in Moosan, North Hamgyeong Province. To put this delicately, Miss Kim shared both her substantial wealth and (rumor has it) her substantial physical blessings with a number of senior North Korean officers and officials, so as to ensure that each passage through the border would be, erm, well...
Categories Inside NK
February 12, 2008

The Candidates on North Korea, Part 3

I haven’t had time to dig up the various statements of Mike Huckabee and Hillary Clinton, but here are some perfectly fine efforts by Jack at DPRK Forum and Don Kirk in the Asia Times. I don’t agree with Kirk’s inference that McCain would support of keeping a large ground force in South Korea; I tend to think he’d be the most likely (except for Paul) to give the whole arrangement a fresh look. I also found this page at...
Categories U.S. Politics
February 11, 2008

Goodbye, Old Friend

  What words?  My wife and I both feel as if an old friend we’d meant to visit again had been murdered, stolen from us by a deranged killer, a thief of beauty and history.     Anyone who has lived in Seoul recently knows that it can and will be rebuit with faithful perfection.  But like the Golden Pavillion of Kyoto, which I would not call Namdaemun’s equal, it will be never be the same, either. As many have already...
Categories History/Korean Society/WTF?
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 10, 2008

Yonhap: N. Korea Using Heavy Fuel Oil for Military Exercises

[Update: I have to say that my doubts about this one, as expressed by my question below about refining, are considerable. Heavy fuel oil is nearly as thick as asphalt, not something I’d think could be refined into lighter, higher octane products cheaply. Bruce Klingner’s comment below adds to those doubts, and I offer a more plausible explanation. As with every other question about the diversion of aid to North Korea — and here is yet another such question —...
Categories "United" Nations/Six-Party Talks
February 8, 2008

The Morally Retarded Lorin Maazel

I’ve  already said that I’m  ambivalent about the visit of the New York Philharmonic to North Korea.  They will play some  good music,  which will probably do little harm and little good.   If we would just accept the music on its face value without injecting politics into it, this visit wouldn’t be taking on  such a  pernicious odor.  Is that too much to ask?  Apparently. Spurred on by the mendacious appeaser  Christopher Hill, the Philharmonic  now imagines itself as an...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Human Rights/WTF?
February 8, 2008

Christopher Hitchens on the Rice-Lefkowitz Flap

Since Hitchens may have had something to do with goading Lefkowitz into making his original comments, I’ve been wondering how he would react to what resulted. I like to imagine that my little essay stung Lefkowitz a bit. At any event, he got up on his hind legs at the American Enterprise Institute in the third week of January and made an explicit criticism of the Bush administration that he serves. The State Department’s insistence on “diplomacy,” he argued, had...
Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
February 7, 2008

U-Tubed, Part 4

Commenter ChosunHapa was kind enough to  drop  some links to Chris Hill’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on  Wednesday (transcript / video).  Hill says that the “disablement” of (some of) North Korea’s nuclear facilities is proceeding well, contrary to what other reports tell us.   He also assures us of his grave concern about Japanese abductees and human rights … which we’ll pursue on a separate track of course, after  Kim Jong Il has what he wants from us....
Categories Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
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

Seymour Hersh on North Korea, Syria, and Proliferation

Speaking of Syria and what the hell actually happened there, there’s a detailed  new piece of investigative journalism that prints out to eight pages, and which will do virtually nothing to answer that question but does pick at the scabs of the various theories articulated in this factual vacuum (Here’s a run-down of those theories; here’s one more).  I will tell you up front that I have some major problems with this piece: 1.  Seymour Hersh wrote it. 2.  Its...
Categories Proliferation