March 15, 2007

North Korea’s Blood Gold

Question:  How can a banker and investor in overseas  gold mines  get sympathetic innocent-victim treatment from the International Herald Tribune?  Answer:  Go into business with this man. That’s the upshot of this IHT story on Colin McAskill, successor to Nigel Cowie as the new primary foreign stakeholder in the Pyongyang-based Daedong Credit Bank.  Reporter Donald Greenless writes that among McAskill’s other functions, he is  “helping to operate North Korea’s foreign gold sales.”  McAskill offers “dossiers” of proof to disprove any...
Categories Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/The Camps
March 15, 2007

Al-Qaeda Planned USFK Attacks

From the confession of the Ron Jeremy look-alike known as  Khalid Sheikh Mohammad: 23. I was responsible for planning and surveying to hit American targets in South Korea, such as American military bases and a few night clubs frequented by American soldiers. The thought occurred to me almost every post-9/11 day I was assigned to Korea.  The “Hooker Hill” district  of Itaewon mixes very uneasily with the nearby Korea Islam Mosque, a congregation that includes a  high percentage of conversative...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Military
March 15, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Yongbyon Edition

North Korea has told the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency that it will not shut down its 5-MW reactor at Yongbyon until the U.S. lifts its sanctions against the North: “The DPRK mentioned that they are waiting for the lifting of sanctions with regard to the Macau bank before they implement the part of the agreement allowing the agency to monitor and verify the shutdown of the Yongbyon facility,” ElBaradei told a news conference….  [Reuters, Chris Buckley] Kim...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 14, 2007

See Also: Links for March 14th

[Update:   Apparently, some of you want to see someone put the hurt on Lim Won Hyuk,  although I have  neither the time to do it nor the  inspiration to re-argue things I’ve already said here a thousand times.  Sperwer may come through, and I look forward to those efforts and promise to link them.  Meanwhile,  Prof. Sung Yoon-Lee e-mails obligingly with this link to his PBS News Hour debate with Lim.  Just between the headline and the top of...
Categories An Alliance?/China/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/U.S. & Korea
March 14, 2007

Wiesenthal Center’s Associate Dean to Speak on Anti-Semitic Korean Comic at Seoul Grand Hyatt Tomorrow

[Update:   The AP has more.  The end result may be to show just how much anti-Semitism there really is in Korea  (see this and this, with  its updated  “traditional European” inspiration).  I will concede that before this epsode, I perceived it to be relatively rare.  I don’t think so anymore.  I also think that for now, it’s pretty shallow, and mostly a biproduct of anti-Americanism, which is not shallow.  Racism in its broader sense  is pretty much on open...
Categories Korean Society/U.S. & Korea
March 14, 2007

State: No quick removal of N. Korea from the terror list

I can imagine that the pressure from Japan has been intense, particularly in light of North Korea’s increasingly  brazen claims  about just what  the U.S. had agreed to lift, and when.  The North Koreans forced us to correct the record: North Korea will not be easily removed from the U.S. list of states that sponskor terrorism. U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said that taking North Korea off the terrorism blacklist is a process that will require a lot of...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)
March 13, 2007

Breaking the Bank in Macau

[Updates: You can read Treasury’s final rule here. Start on page 14 to read just what Banco Delta failed to do to Treasury’s satisfaction. The message for North Korea’s other bankers out there is clear: ask obvious questions. Among BDA’s practices, according to the rule, was to provide a discount for a “high-risk North Korean-related bulk currency depositor” they either knew, or should have known, was laundering money. BDA obfuscated about reforms, failed to change its corrupt management, and didn’t...
Categories China/Counterfeiting/Democracy/Money Laundering
March 13, 2007

Just Doing My Part in Building the Super Race

My newest discovery, the Asia  Sentinel, wins “year’s best sentence” with this: “[A]  rising tide of mixed marriages, not only in Malaysia but across much of Asia, seems to be creating a new super race of beautiful women.” Well … I, for one, welcome our new fembot  overlords, and  I’d like to remind them that as a trusted blogger, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.  But of course, some people  have decided...
Categories Asia
March 13, 2007

The Worst Friend, The Best Enemy

[Update:   My worst fears are coming true.  Now the  opposition Grand National Party  is trying to soften up its North Korea policy as it braces for a summit visit from Kim Jong Il and a presidential election this year.  One possible effect is that the GNP’s own perpetual appeaser, Sohn Hak-Kyu, could become the new flavor of the month.] One of the disadvantages of appeasing North Korea is that the North Koreans are so despised and distrusted, you can...
Categories Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Geopolitics/Money Laundering
March 12, 2007

Kim Jong Nam’s Bachelor Pad Burgled, and How the Other Side Lives

The Zhuyuan Haoyuan villa complex is 15 minutes from downtown Macau and its 80 villas are among the territory’s most exclusive. The average price of each villa is estimated HK$15 million, roughly US$1.92 million. Yellow sunflower symbols adorning the doors of nos. 361 and 371 easily identify them as Kim Jong-nam’s.  [Chosun Ilbo] If Kim Jong Nam is really estranged from his father, you really have to wonder where this money came from.  Meanwhile, the Daily NK reports on the...
Categories China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
March 12, 2007

UN Official: ‘We were being used completely as an ATM machine for the regime.’

Since it looks like we’re about to unfreeze a few million  in North Korean funds from  Banco Delta Asia, it’s worth remembering that another easy source of cash, representing  about as many millions in annual income, has just been abruptly terminated.  The United Nations Development Programme office in Pyongyang, North Korea, sits in a Soviet-style compound. Like clockwork, a North Korean official wearing a standard-issue dark windbreaker and slacks would come to the door each business day. He would take...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
March 12, 2007

Marcus Noland Launches New Book on North Korean Famine

Until now, my main reference has been Andrew Natsios’s “The Great North Korean Famine,” because Natsios’s personal experience inside North Korea added so much to his observations, but Noland is almost in his own category  for sheer quality and rigor of research.  Noland is also the outlier for the low numbers he cites for the death toll from the famine — 600,000 to 1 million, as opposed to 2 to 2.5 million — and I’ve always wanted to know how...
Categories Books & Films/Famine & Food Aid
March 11, 2007

I Can Already Write The Rest of This Story. So I Did.

BEIJING, March 10 (UPI) — North Korea’s chief nuclear envoy Saturday said the United States has promised to lift its financial sanctions against his country. “The North is keeping a close eye on the promise,” Kim Kye-gwan told reporters at Beijing’s Shoudu Airport as he headed home to Pyongyang, the Korea Times reported. “If the U.S. fails to solve the issue completely, we will have to take partial actions against it,” Kim said. I wonder if this could be true. ...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 10, 2007

Eight Questions Our Shenyang Consul General Won’t Answer

About a week ago,  I published  this post,  relaying Adrian Hong’s assertion that the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang,  in direct contravention  U.S. law,  stood by and refused entry to six North Korean refugees who where just feet from the  Consulate’s front gate.   Shortly thereafter, the refugees, Hong and other LiNK activists were arrested by the Chinese authorities.    After I published that post, a reader supplied me with the e-mail addresses of the Stephen Wickman, the U.S. Consul General in...
Categories Appeasement/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Refugees
March 9, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Financial Edition

North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan said Thursday that Pyongyang’s decision to halt nuclear facilities, as outlined in initial steps included in the Feb. 13 six-way agreement, will depend on the U.S. lifting of financial sanctions against North Korea.  [Kyodo News; ht Richardson] The U.S. negotiator at the six-party talks, Chris Hill, once said that “[l]ife is too short to overreact to every statement coming out of Pyongyang.”  It’s true that the North Koreans do more than their...
Categories "United" Nations/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Google Earth/Money Laundering/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
March 8, 2007

The Death of An(other) Alliance?

Thank you, Vice Foreign Minister Obvious! North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan reportedly told North Korea specialists in the United States that China is “only trying to use” North Korea. Kim was in the U.S. for talks on normalizing bilateral ties.  [Chosun Ilbo] I take it His Porcine Majesty did not enjoy the buffet at the Chinese Embassy.  Or, more likely, this is just disinformation: China has no great influence on North Korea, he was quoted as saying, adding...
Categories China & Korea/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 8, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Abductions Edition

I forecast severe tire damage along the road to removing North Korea from the terrorism-sponsor list:  HANOI–Japan and North Korea opened talks here Wednesday morning on normalizing bilateral relations, but the North Korean side canceled the afternoon session apparently as a way of refusing the Japanese request to discuss the abduction issue further, the chief Japanese delegate said. However, the meeting is scheduled to resume Thursday morning at the North Korean Embassy to discuss the abduction and normalization issues, Koichi...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/WMD