June 24, 2007

Vanishing Goalposts and a Fool’s Errand

The minute we have bilateral talks, the six-party talks will unwind. That’s exactly what Kim Jong Il wants. — George W. Bush  seemed to understand  the  stupidity of  holding both multilateral and bilateral talks with North Korea when John Kerry was proposing them  back in 2004.  To truly discredit that idea, however,  Bush had to flip-flop and try it on himself.  Now we know what the worst of both worlds looks like.  First, we got together with the representatives of...
Categories Anju Links/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
June 20, 2007

North Korean Money and the Fed

Kevin Hassett, Director of Economic Policy Studies at the  American Enterprise Institute, asks, “Why did the Fed help North Korea launder money?”  I’m no economist, so I’m interested in how the transaction  could affect the Federal Reserve system.  Hassett thinks  this transaction simultaneously  inseminated the Fed with dirty money and politics, and he doesn’t think we’re going to like what we see at the end of the gestation.  You ought to read the whole piece, but here’s a graf: It...
Categories Money Laundering/NK Economics/U.S. Politics
June 19, 2007

The End of Chongryon?

I’d previously mentioned that  Chongryon, North Korea’s fifth column organization in Japan,  was forced to “sell” its de facto embassy in Tokyo.  As it turns out, the sale was  a  fraudulent scheme assisted by Japanese sympathizers, without consideration, to evade seizure by the authorities.  Japanese authorities have since voided the transaction, and, according to Yonhap, approved the seizure of the building. We also know more about why Chongryon is dying.  I was aware that some adverse tax judgments by the...
Categories Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Education/The Fifth Column
June 18, 2007

Lee Myung-Bak Proposes ‘Kaesong Archipelago’

Would you trust this man?  If you were one of those hoping that the next South  Korean election would be the end of our long international nightmare, you were mistaken: Former Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak, the front-running opposition presidential aspirant in December’s election, proposed Monday creating a “Manhattan-like” island near the border with North Korea and building an inter-Korean industrial park there to ease military tension. Dubbed “Na-deul,” which means a narrow waterway in Korean, the manmade island would be...
Categories Human Rights/NK Economics/Proliferation/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/WMD
June 17, 2007

Anju Links for 17 June 2007

*   Seven years after the last “breakthrough” with North Korea, here’s a complete list of what has been accomplished in reforming North Korea and  reducing inter-Korean tensions:  .  Even symbolic achievements are getting hard to find lately.  South Korean politicians still can’t visit Pyongyang, if at all,  without being snubbed and shoveled out of the spotlight.  At times, I wonder why the North Koreans make much of a distinction between the two main South Korean political parties.  Here’s  the...
Categories Anju Links
June 16, 2007

Dude, Where’s My Spine? Agreed Framework 2.0 at Four Months

Yesterday, the press reported that after months of multilateral bungling,  we had  finally transferred either 20 or 25 million dollars of frozen assets to the disposal of Kim Jong Il for whatever purposes he chooses.  Those assets had  gathered in a shady Macau Bank known as Banco Delta Asia until September 2005, when the Treasury Department  published an  interim rule noting  that they were, in large part,  laundered proceeds of counterfeiting and drug dealing.  Does anyone think  Kim’s purposes  will...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/WMD
June 12, 2007

Win the Battle, Lose the War: How South Korea’s Brilliant Negotiation Skills May Have Killed the FTA

[Update:   The USTR will reportedly call for renegotiation of the entire deal, in part to make the draft FTA compliant with U.S. labor standards.  More at the bottom of this post.] Absolutely stomach-turning.  After all of the Bush Administration’s brave rhetoric about  “forced labor” and  “material support” for  “atrocities,” it ended up signing a free-trade  agreement that could very well have allowed slave-made, axis-of-evil  Kaesong imports into the United States.  Then, because there was no denying the staggering hypocrisy...
Categories Anju Links/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/U.S. Politics
June 12, 2007

Republicans Rebel on N. Korea Policy, Demand GAO Money Laundering Inquiry

You may recall that in this post and in this piece for Front Page Magazine, I suggested that our own State Deparment’s attempts to return $25 million to the North Korean regime — much or most of it proceeds of crime — could violate U.S. money laundering laws, as well as two U.N. resolutions the United States successfully lobbied for less than a year ago.  As it turns out, great minds think alike. Now, with Russia about to step up...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/U.S. Politics
June 12, 2007

S. Korean Election Update: Uri’s Support Falls to 9%, Below DLP’s

The most surprising news of this Korean political season was buried near the bottom of a news story about the contest between the candidates for the Grand National Party nomination.  Only the interesting news wasn’t about the GNP candidates:  The GNP had by far the most support among parties with 52.9 percent. Next was the radical Democratic Labor Party with 10.3 percent, and only then Uri with 9.1 percent. The Democratic Party garnered 5.1 percent, the New Party for Centrist...
Categories Korean Politics
June 10, 2007

Charles J. Hanley Hunts for New Atrocities

I couldn’t help but feel dismay when I say the byline on this story.  Remember  this guy?  I would not have even looked for the byline, asking myself who wrote this crap,  had I not seen this passage: In eastern Baghdad, a U.S. helicopter fired flares on a crowd on a square, hours after clashes between American troops and Shiite militia that left at least five people dead. The military said the flares were part of an automatic self-defense system....
Categories Media Criticism/Terrorism/Iraq
June 10, 2007

State: N. Korea Spent UN Funds to Buy Property in France, Britain, Canada

The UN has released the results of a preliminary audit report on the UN Development Program’s operations in North Korea.  Those operations were shut down  following revelations that the UN gave the  regime  cash with few conditions and little accountability, and essentially became its “ATM machine.”  Among the juicy revelations is that the UN  was keeping a large sum of counterfeit “supernotes” in a UN safe.  The UN now concedes that the UNDP violated UN rules: A statement by UN...
Categories Uncategorized
June 10, 2007

To Your Health, Part 2

[Update:   Mostly dead or slightly alive?  The Daily NK passes along an alleged eyewitness report of a  recent sighting in which Kim seemed relatively healthy.  Once again, I strongly suggest a fresh consignment of whiskey, bacon, and maybe some Italian sausage  as a gesture of, you know, friendship.  Heck, if we can get him to consume enough  of it, we might eventually be able to get some corn into the bellies of his poor  subjects.  If the report is...
Categories Kim Jong Il
June 8, 2007

Freedom House Panel on N. Korean Gulags

If you couldn’t make it to the Freedom House panel on the North Korean gulags, “Concentrations of Inhumanity,” Freedom House was kind enough to send of some of the remarks, the bios of the panelists, and even a few pictures.              One of the two  most salient points I take from the discussion is human rights scholar David Hawk’s explanation of why operating these camps is a “crime against humanity,” as defined by the Rome...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
June 7, 2007

True, But Would It Sell Papers?

At the Marmot’s Hole, R. Elgin notes that the Korean press is trying to  make foreigners the scapegoats for  South Korea’s drug problems.  I agree with R. Elgin.  The article notes a “huge increase” in drug smuggling into Korea, and then proceeds  to  indirectly blame Americans, Canadians, and Chinese for it.  Prosecutors believe the rising number of American drug offenders correlates to a rising number of English teachers coming to Korea, prompted by the recent trend for English education. The...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Korean Society/Media Criticism
June 6, 2007

Army Life in North Korea

My favorite e-mails are the ones I get from readers, and  among  even these, the best are those that send links or new information I hadn’t seen before.  One reader today sent  this Google Earth image (click to enlarge; coordinates along the bottom of the image):   He wondered whether the label on the placemark was accurate.  I opined that it  probably was not, because of the absence of a fence line or guard posts, the location just east of...
Categories Google Earth/NK Military
June 5, 2007

Anju Links for June 5th

*   Richardson has some interesting updates on the North Korean family that defected by sailing  hundreds of  miles to Japan in an open boat.  The possession of “personal use” amounts of methamphetamine by one family member suggests that what we’ve heard is true — that drugs are increasingly available to ordinary North Koreans.  What I don’t know is whether the son was a user, or whether the meth was part of their elaborate preparations, in this case,  to help...
Categories Anju Links/Uncategorized
June 3, 2007

How to Leave North Korea, and How Not To

*   There’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything.  See also related posts at DPRK Studies. *   As much as I’d like to see this Yonhap story as evidence of more cultural infiltration of North Korea by the South, it seems more like an example of the opposite.  In what must have been a very carefully guided and choreographed tour of a P’yang department store, a clerk is wearing earphones, is predictably asked why, and...
Categories Defectors/Media Criticism/Refugees