June 3, 2015

Markets, food, and trade: steps forward, leaps backward (Pts. 1, 2 & 3)

~   Part 1   ~ Do you still remember March, when the “May 30 measures” were the next wave of “drastic” perestroika that would change North Korea? Those measures were supposed to “give[] autonomy management of all institutions, companies, and stores,” including “control over production distribution and trade from the state to factories and businesses,” and thus awaken “the inner potential of the country.” But today, Andrei Lankov, who has been one of the most forward-leaning predictors of economic reform...
Categories Capitalism/Famine & Food Aid
June 1, 2015

North Korea tightens surveillance following purge of Hyon Yong Chol

Last year, following the purge of Jang Song Thaek, The Daily NK reported that mass arrests and increased surveillance had terrorized the elites in Pyongyang. Now, The Daily NK reports that Pyongyang residents, and especially those with family or organizational links to purged Defense Minister Hyon Yong Chol, have been under “a tighter net of surveillance” following the latest purge: “Military and Party cadres in Pyongyang affiliated with Hyon are living in fear, not knowing whether they will fall victims as...
Categories Kremlinology
May 28, 2015

U.S., allies talk sanctions and human rights (emphasis on talk)

We’d hardly had time to digest all those rumors of “exploratory talks” with North Korea just two weeks ago, before John Kerry was in Seoul, sounding like his speechwriters had slipped him some cut-and-pasted OFK text. There, Kerry denounced Pyongyang’s “recent provocations,” said it wasn’t “even close to” ready for serious about talks, and accused it of “flagrant disregard for international law while denying its people fundamental freedom and rights.” “The world is hearing increasingly more and more stories of grotesque, grisly,...
Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions/Six-Party Talks
May 27, 2015

Gloria Steinem was right about isolation (of South Africa)

Gloria Steinem can look back on a life of activism that has built deep reserves of good will among many people. Steinem must have spent heavily from those reserves last week, when Women Cross DMZ attracted largely critical media coverage (and I suspect, an even more critical public reaction). As NK News informs us, its events were stamped from the same propaganda assembly line as those put on for the clown-shod Quisling Alejandro Cao de Benos. To what end would...
Categories Sanctions/Useful Idiocy
May 25, 2015

Women Cross DMZ: A Q&A, and closing thoughts (updated)

In the end, nothing illustrated the absurdity of Women Cross DMZ, the march to end the Korean War, better than the fact that it began with homages to Kim Il-Sung, the man who started the Korean War. Its emotional apex was reduced to a bus ride and a wait in an immigration line. It ended with organizer Christine Ahn ducking reporters to avoid questions about her reported comments praising Kim Il Sung (here’s the original Korean article from Pyongyang’s Rodong Sinmun). It was left to Gloria Steinem and...
Categories Useful Idiocy
May 22, 2015

“Arsenal of Terror,” 2d ed.: N. Korea paid dope dealers $40K to kill Hwang Jang Yop

South Korean prosecutors have indicted three South Korean nationals, identified only by the surnames “Bang,” “Kim,” and “Hwang,” for “bringing in methamphetamine from North Korea and attempting to assassinate” Hwang Jang-Yop, North Korea’s highest-ranking defector until his death in 2010. Let’s unpack these two criminal conspiracies one at a time, starting with the meth: The 69-year-old, identified only by his family name Bang, and two others have been detained for producing 70 kilograms of methamphetamine at a North Korean factory...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Terrorism (NK)
May 21, 2015

Sen. Gardner introduces resolution calling for tougher sanctions against N. Korea

It would seem that his speech the other day had a purpose — this. I couldn’t have written it any better myself. Yes, it’s only a resolution, but its clear intent is to gain wider support for policies that a Senate version of the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act would enact into law. It’s also the latest sign that Congress wants North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and that in the battle to change North Korea policy, a...
Categories U.S. Law
May 19, 2015

N. Korea calls S. Korea’s president a skirt-lifting, crotch-licking whore, just as Gloria Steinem arrives in Pyongyang

Gloria Steinem must have had her first reservations about “Women Cross DMZ” when the march’s organizer was outed as a North Korean apologist, and reporters began to ask her uncomfortable questions about North Korea’s war on women. Since then, Steinem has had to duck questions about the regime’s rape and murder of female prisoners, the endemic and unpunished rapes of North Korean women by its soldiers, and the infanticides and forced abortions this regime inflicts on North Korean refugee women and...
Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/North-South/Useful Idiocy
May 19, 2015

Need a round-trip ticket to Korea? Want to donate to a good cause? Look no further. (updated)

I’m posting this at the request of a friend in the North Korea Freedom Coalition: As you recall, Ambassador Jung-Hoon Lee, ROK Ambassador for Human Rights, offered contribute the following item to the silent auction on May 1: $1500 for the purchase of a voucher for a roundtrip fare from Washington, DC to Seoul. We did not find a buyer for this item on the night of the auction but Ambassador Lee has generously extended his offer. After speaking with...
Categories Activism
May 19, 2015

2016 Defense Authorization Act would define N. Korea as state sponsor of terrorism

On Sunday, I spotted this interesting Yonhap headline: “U.S. defense bill calls N. Korea terror sponsor.” Given my own recent work on this subject, I was curious about the effect of this provision, so I pulled up the text of the bill, H.R. 1735, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016. The versions on Thomas and Congress.gov don’t yet reflect the amendment, but clues from the Yonhap piece led me to the amendment in question, offered by Rep....
Categories Foreigners in N. Korea/Terrorism (NK)
May 18, 2015

GAO: State Dep’t must step up diplomacy to enforce N. Korea sanctions

The General Accountability Office has released a new report on the enforcement of sanctions against North Korea. The report, requested by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, will probably influence the contours of the Senate’s version of the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act. You can read the full report here and a summary here, and listen to a podcast here. The report correctly points to a key flaw in the enforcement of the sanctions that exist now — a lack of financial intelligence....
Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions/U.S. Law
May 15, 2015

Sen. Cory Gardner just gave as good a speech about North Korea policy as I’ve ever seen

Senator Cory Gardner* of Colorado is the new Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy. When I first heard that a freshman Senator had been picked to lead such an important subcommittee, it concerned me. Delving into Gardner’s background, however, it became clear that he’s highly intelligent — he graduated from college summa cum laude, and (at least according to his Wikipedia page) speaks fluent German. He has graduated from law school (never a bad thing for a lawmaker) and served...
Categories U.S. Politics/Washington Views
May 14, 2015

N. Korea’s expatriate labor needs ethical and financial limits

N. Korea increasingly relies on expat labor for hard currency A series of new reports suggests that the export of labor has become a major source of income for Pyongyang. The Financial Times cites an NGO estimate that the regime earns $1.5 to $2.3 billion a year from contract labor, in line with educated estimates of its annual revenue from missile sales ($1.5 billion) or arms deals with Iran ($1.5 billion to $2 billion). (Update: Marcus Noland questions that estimate,...
Categories Engagement/Human Rights/Kaesong/Russian Far East/Sanctions
May 12, 2015

NIS: N. Korea executes No. 2 military officer

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) is reporting that North Korean Army General Hyon Yong Chol, whose title was Minister of the People’s Armed Forces, has been executed for treason: Hyon Yong-chol, the chief of North Korea’s People’s Armed Forces, was executed by firing squad using an anti-aircraft gun at a military school in Pyongyang around April 30, the National Intelligence Service said. [Yonhap] An anti-aircraft gun? Hold that thought. (Update: CNN adds that the execution was carried out at...
Categories Kremlinology/Russia & Korea
May 12, 2015

Kaesong promised us peace and reform. It delivered conflict, tension, and exploitation.

In April 2013, Kim Jong Un pulled 50,000 North Korean workers out of Kaesong, in retaliation for South Korea’s support for U.N. Security Council Resolution 2094. The shutdown lasted for five months and cost investors (and ultimately, the South Korean government that still subsidizes them) millions of dollars. Kaesong eventually recovered to pre-shutdown levels of operation, but the shutdown probably scared away potential foreign investors for years. A few months after the shutdown ended, a new dispute arose when North Korea told Kaesong investors to pay back...
Categories Kaesong/North-South/Sunshine
May 11, 2015

Why a freeze deal with North Korea is a lose-lose proposition

Two weeks ago, almost no one thought we’d see Agreed Framework 3.0 before January 2017. The Obama Administration is politically weakened and out of time, its foreign policy is even less popular than its domestic policy, and it will need all of its energy to finalize an Iran deal acceptable to this Congress. Top administration officials were publicly skeptical about comparisons between North Korea and Iran, and saying that North Korea wasn’t serious about denuclearization. Last week, however, clear signs emerged that the administration is grasping...
Categories Anju Links
May 11, 2015

On progressive diplomacy: Friends first, frenemies second, enemies last

Aside from the vanishingly small chance of Agreed Framework III, the foundation of our North Korea policy, as set forth in a series of U.N. Security Council resolutions, is multilateral economic pressure. That means that all hope of success rests on building multilateral unity before we negotiate with Pyongyang. Every time Seoul, Tokyo, or Washington is taken in by Pyongyang’s divide-and-rule tactics, there is a piecemeal relaxation of pressure by one or two of them, at the expense of one or two others....
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
May 7, 2015

Lesson One: Pyongyang always reneges. Lesson Two: Repeat Lesson One.

If it’s now cliché to write that North Korea might have modeled its domestic policies on Orwell’s 1984, I would like to be the first to coin the cliché that it might have modeled its foreign policy on P.T. Barnum.* North Korea has an acute sense of its interlocutors’ weakness and desperation, and an extraordinary talent for exploiting these moments of desperation to break coalitions, weaken sanctions, and bring in aid by offering its opponents “openings,” concessions, and disarmament deals. None...
Categories Abductions/Japan/Six-Party Talks