February 24, 2016

Yonhap: Chinese company stops buying North Korean coal

In what could be the latest financial hit to Pyongyang, Yonhap reports that an important Chinese customer has stopped buying coal from North Korea: A Chinese company in the northeastern border city of Dandong has been ordered by China’s commerce ministry to halt its coal trade with North Korea starting next month, according to a state-run Chinese newspaper Wednesday. Citing an unnamed Chinese businessman who operates a coal business with North Korea, the state-run Global Times newspaper said the order...
Categories China/NK Economics
February 24, 2016

Hey, China, let’s make a deal about North Korea. You’re going to love it.

Good morning, Vice-Minister Chen. I hope you enjoyed sampling our great country’s authentic cuisine at lunch today. If not, I keep a bottle of Pepto in my desk. As you know, the new Trump Administration is all about cutting government spending, although we know how to invest, too.  The neon signage and gold-leaf bathroom fixtures have been a yuuge morale boost here at Foggy Bottom. And yes, those are real diamonds on my pinkie ring. That was my annual bonus...
Categories China/Diplomacy/Humor/Satire
February 24, 2016

North Korea threatens to nuke everyone

North Korea on Tuesday strongly denounced the upcoming joint military exercise between Seoul and Washington, warning a “pre-emptive strike” against any attempt to collapse the Kim Jong-un regime. South Korea and the United States plan to conduct their largest-ever military drill next month at a time of heightened tension on the Korean Peninsula following Pyongyang’s recent nuclear test and long-range missile launch. In response, the North Korean military said it will use all possible measures to counter any attempts to...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
February 23, 2016

Obama Administration’s “peace treaty” grasp explains its lax enforcement of N. Korea sanctions

For years, friends have asked me why the Obama Administration hasn’t made a serious effort to enforce sanctions against North Korea when we know they’ve worked before. I’ve resisted most temptations to psychoanalyze or speculate, but when pressed, I’ve supposed that the administration might have thought that a deal was still possible, however long the odds against it. With this revelation, however, everything suddenly makes sense.  Days before North Korea’s latest nuclear-bomb test, the Obama administration secretly agreed to talks to...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
February 21, 2016

China’s largest bank freezes North Korean accounts

Not even a week after President Obama signed the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act into law (full disclosure), a South Korean newspaper is reporting that a number of Chinese banks, including China’s largest bank (and the world’s largest, in terms of assets) have frozen the accounts of their North Korean customers. It has been confirmed that some Chinese banks in northeastern China, including the Dandong, Liaoning Province branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the country’s largest...
Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
February 19, 2016

Aid agencies struggle to feed hungry kids as N. Korea cuts food imports to 10-year low

Wasn’t it only Groundhog Day when the U.N. released $8 million in emergency aid to “enable life-saving assistance for more than 2.2 million people” in North Korea who are the “most vulnerable and at risk of malnutrition?” Wasn’t it just last month when UNICEF warned that “25,000 children in North Korea require immediate treatment for malnutrition after a drought cut food production by a fifth and the government reduced rations?” North Korea’s overall food imports from neighboring China fell by a quarter...
Categories Class Warfare/Famine & Food Aid
February 19, 2016

Will Seoul try to kick Pyongyang out of the U.N.?

South Korea’s U.N. ambassador, Oh Joon, raised the question during a meeting Monday of the U.N. Security Council, saying the North pledged to accept and to uphold the purposes and principles of the U.N. as laid out in its charter when it joined the U.N. in 1991, together with South Korea. “Twenty-five years ago, the DPRK solemnly pledged to comply with the obligations of the U.N. Charter as a new member, but during the past decade, the DPRK has persistently...
Categories "United" Nations
February 18, 2016

Arsenal of Terror, 2d Ed.: N. Korea reportedly orders assassination of prominent defector

I wondered what evidence the South Koreans had to back this up. Police have strengthened security for a North Korean defector who serves as a ranking official at a South Korean state-run think tank after the North ordered his assassination, a source said Friday. Since mid-January, police have beefed up the guard over Ko Young-hwan, vice president of the Institute for National Security Strategy, as North Korea is believed to have issued an order to kill him according to a...
Categories Terrorism (NK)
February 18, 2016

What the U.N.’s new North Korea sanctions resolution should (and should not) do.

Yonhap reports that the U.S. and China have made progress toward an agreement on a draft U.N. Security Council resolution. Although we’ve seen few hints about exactly what sanctions China is willing to sign up for — much less enforce — China is paying lip service to the notion that North Korea must pay a “necessary price” for its behavior. Has Xi Jinping relented in his unprecedented stubbornness, or was it always China’s plan to relent after stalling us, in the hope that...
Categories China & Korea/Class Warfare/Diplomacy/Sanctions
February 17, 2016

The end of the beginning: President Obama will sign North Korea sanctions into law

Update, 2/18: The President signed the bill. ~   ~   ~ This afternoon, the White House made it official — the President will sign the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act. The White House didn’t say when, but I’d expect it to happen within a week or so. The question now turns to implementing the bill to maximize its impact on the regime, while minimizing the impact on the North Korean people. For well over a month, the...
Categories Sanctions/U.S. Law
February 16, 2016

In The Weekly Standard: Kaesong, where life imitated Monty Python & the Holy Grail

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Knights of Camelot are on a quest for the Holy Grail, but find their way barred by a group of ornery French knights – never mind what they are doing in England – who have walled themselves inside an impregnable castle. After a pathetic attempt to breach the walls fails, Sir Bedivere the Wise devises a scheme to do through guile what could not be done through force. He persuades King Arthur...
Categories Appeasement/Engagement/Kaesong/Sunshine
February 15, 2016

The rebirth of an alliance: The U.S., South Korea & Japan are finally getting North Korea policy right

As you and I both know, I spend a lot of keystrokes here kvetching about the lax enforcement of sanctions against North Korea, but I’ve also written that diplomacy is essential to making sanctions work. Now, for the first time I can recall, the U.S., South Korea, and Japan are coordinating their policies as allies should. They’ve coordinated their defense responses to the North’s missile test, their calls for tougher U.N. sanctions, their strategies to strengthen sanctions enforcement, and their recruitment of new...
Categories Diplomacy/Kaesong/Sanctions/Sunshine
February 12, 2016

N. Korea sanctions bill headed for President’s desk later today; Hillary makes a funny about Bernie.

By now, most of you know that the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, the Senate’s version of H.R. 757, passed the Senate unanimously Wednesday night. The House is expected to pass the Senate’s version this morning and send it to the President’s desk. In an election year, when floor time is especially precious, it was remarkable and humbling that the Senate spent an entire day debating this bill. Senator after senator came to the floor to give supportive...
Categories Sanctions/U.S. Law
February 10, 2016

On North Korea policy, the opinion pages suddenly read like posts from this blog

Since January’s nuclear test, I have noted with satisfaction the signs that Washington’s consensus on North Korea policy has taken a decisive turn toward views I’ve advocated at this site for years. This week, OFK readers have been sending me a great deal of better-placed commentary about North Korea, asking me, “Did you write this?” I swear I didn’t write, for example, this Washington Post editorial, published yesterday: What is needed is a return to the only non-military strategy that brought...
Categories U.S. Law/Washington Views
February 10, 2016

The End of Sunshine: S. Korea suspends ops at Kaesong, “suspected” of funding N. Korea’s WMD programs

Year after year, and almost alone, I have argued that the Kaesong Industrial Park was incompatible with U.N. Security Council resolutions sanctioning Pyongyang. At Kaesong, “South Korea has 124 companies … employing 54,700 North Korean workers … whose wages are paid to a North Korean state agency.” All told, those fees, taxes, and “wages,” which the North Korean workers probably never saw after Kim Jong-un took his cut, totaled $110 million last year alone. Contrary to Kaesong’s founding purpose of promoting North-South engagement and people-to-people...
Categories Engagement/Kaesong/North-South/Sunshine
February 9, 2016

NYT: How China helped N. Korea buy ski lift cable cars, and break U.N. sanctions

Yesterday, I posted about hunger in North Korea, the fact that Kim Jong-un is spending the nation’s lunch money on missiles and ski resorts, and the importance of helping the North Korean people make that connection though a comprehensive information operations strategy. The New York Times has bolstered the evidence of North Korean and Chinese culpability for this tragedy with a detailed report on North Korea’s purchase of the equipment for its ski resort through China. Previously, NK News revealed that the...
Categories China & Korea/Class Warfare/Luxury Goods
February 8, 2016

Rice, peace & freedom: It’s time we told the N. Korean people the truth about why they’re hungry.

It is fitting that Groundhog Day was a busy day in North Korea. On the same day that Pyongyang announced that it would test a long-range missile, the U.N. released $8 million from its emergency aid fund “to assist [the] most vulnerable women and children” in North Korea. Bangkok, 2 February 2016) United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 29 January 2016 released US$ 8 million from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) for severely underfunded aid operations in the...
Categories Class Warfare/Famine & Food Aid/Missiles
February 7, 2016

Ed Royce’s North Korea sanctions bill is already giving President Obama leverage over China

Kim Jong-un’s Groundhog Day message to the world was the announcement of a long-range missile test, and as you’ve no doubt heard, he has since made good on that threat. Like the movie “Groundhog Day,” this provocation cycle has been a variation on an endless loop. In 2006, 2009, and 2013, the missile test came before the nuke test, but if reports that His Corpulency is preparing yet another nuclear test are true, that will still technically be the case. Otherwise, events have...
Categories China/Diplomacy/Sanctions