October 23, 2004
Powell refuses to pay tribute to nK
Secretary Powell bluntly rejected nK's demand for tribute by the US, which it insists must be paid before multilateral talks recommence. The AP reports: In a statement apparently timed for Powell's visit, a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman indicated the North would agree to a new round of nuclear discussions only if the United States dropped its "hostile policy" and consented to a "reward" for a nuclear freeze the North is proposing. Secretary Powells response to the typical nK blackmail was firm and entirely lacking in nuance. Powell said any proposals from North Korea should be discussed as part of the negotiating process established more than a year ago that involves both Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia. "This is a six-party discussion, not a U.S.-North Korea discussion or an exchange of U.S. and North Korean talking points," Powell told reporters during his flight to Tokyo,...
November 16, 2004
An Unclear Picture In Pyongyang
The BBC reports this morning that pictures of North Korea's personality-cult leader seem to be disappearing from their prominent displays around Pyongyang: Some portraits of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il have reportedly been taken down in Pyongyang, news agencies quoted diplomats as saying on Tuesday. The portraits were removed from some public buildings, the diplomats said. ... An unnamed diplomat told the Russian news agency Itar-Tass that at receptions hosted by the North Korean foreign ministry, guests had recently only seen pictures of Kim Jong-il's father, Kim Il-sung, and a mark on the wall where a portrait of the North Korean leader used to hang. "Only a light rectangular spot on the yellow whitewashed wall and a nail have remained in the place where the second portrait used to be," the diplomat said. The French news agency AFP quoted a diplomat as saying that one place where pictures of Mr...
November 23, 2004
A Problematic Proposal
Korea scholar Nicholas Eberstadt has a new Weekly Standard column on the nK problem, and its a must read. He opens with the following evisceration of the current non-strategy: The current U.S. approach to the North Korea problem is demonstrably flawed; arguably, even dangerously flawed. Just what is wrong? After nearly four years in office, the curious fact remains that the Bush administration plainly lacks a strategy for dealing with the North Korean regime. Instead, it merely confronts Pyongyang with an attitude. President Bush and his inner circle regard Kim Jong Il and his system with an admixture of loathing, contempt, and distrust--as well they might. Unfortunately, a mechanism for translating that point of view into effective action was manifestly absent from the statecraft of Bush's first-term administration. Long on attitude ("axis of evil") but short on strategy, the administration on North Korea was at times akin to a rudderless...
November 24, 2004
North Korea Sending Signals That Something Big Has Changed
Two wire service reports indicate that North Korea has made major changes in its normally fanatical approach to its sovereignty and security. Reuters informs its readers that the hermit nation has suddenly developed a sense of urgency about restarting the six-nation talks that Kim Jong-Il previously joined with great reluctance: North Korea wants urgently to restart six-party talks on its nuclear programs but is still demanding of its certain conditions be met, a top U.N. official told South Korea's Yonhap news agency on Thursday. North Korea still agreed with the format of the talks, it quoted Jean Ping, president of the U.N. General Assembly, as saying. Officials told him during a visit that Pyongyang was committed to denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, it said. "North Korea not only agreed to the format of the talks but also believes that the talks should restart urgently," Ping was quoted as saying. North Korea...
December 15, 2004
Making No Bones About It
The North Korean regime of Kim Jong-Il resumed its sabre-rattling today, threatening to go to war with Japan if the latter imposed economic sanctions against the DPRK. Earlier, Japan protested that the bones released by the DPRK that supposedly belonged to Japanese citizens kidnapped by the DPRK turned out to be a hoax, enraging Japanese citizens and inspiring suggestions of retaliatory sanctions: Calls are growing from the Japanese public and politicians for the government to impose sanctions on North Korea after Tokyo said bones Pyongyang had identified as those of Japanese it had kidnapped were from other people. "If sanctions are applied against the DPRK (North Korea) due to the moves of the ultra-right forces (in Japan), we will regard it as a declaration of war against our country and promptly react to the action by an effective physical method," a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a...
January 3, 2005
South Korea Sells Out
The New York Times reports today on the sudden distaste for asylum-seekers from North Korea with the Russians, but James Brooke's report talks more about South Korea than the Russian Federation. Defections from Kim Jong-Il's workers paradise has always neen an issue for the Russians (as well as the Chinese), but one that the Russians had tolerated until now. The change appears driven by North Korea and, surprisingly, South Korea as well: In a new twist, diplomats from South Korea now work to discourage defectors from North Korea. Under new rules, South Korea is reducing resettlement payments to North Koreans by two-thirds. Defectors are to be scrupulously investigated. South Korea says that will help weed out criminals, spies and ethnic Koreans from China. Human rights advocates say South Korea's stricter policy is intended to curry favor with China and North Korea, and to slow a rising influx of refugees, which...
January 5, 2005
North Korean Civil Defense Plans: Protect The Portraits!
North Korea issued civil-defense guidelines to its people in anticipation of attack by the United States, with preparations ranging from the mundane to the ridiculous: North Korea has ordered its people to be ready for a protracted war against the United States, issuing guidelines on evacuating to underground bunkers with weapons, food and portraits of leader Kim Jong Il. ... The manual urged the military to build restaurants, wells, restrooms and air purifiers in underground bunkers where government offices and military units will move in if war breaks out. When North Koreans evacuate to underground facilities, they should make sure that they take the portraits, plaster busts and bronze statues of Kim and his parents so that they can "protect" them in a special room. Kim signed the order himself as the chairman of the Central Military Committee, a position that had not been publicly associated with anyone after the...
January 17, 2005
Dissent In North Korea: AP
The AP reports that they have video of unprecedented demonstrations against the Kim regime in North Korea, one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world. The demonstration calls for the removal of Kim Jong-Il and follows several signs over the past few months that Kim's grip may be slipping: A human rights group claimed Tuesday that it has obtained video footage showing dissident activities in North Korea, with demands for freedom and democracy written over a poster of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il. If authentic, it would be the first time images of dissent in the highly secretive North have come to light. But there was no way to independently confirm the validity of the footage. The 35-minute videotape, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, shows written statements posted on a wall, urging North Koreans to fight to retrieve freedom and democracy. A man...
February 10, 2005
North Koreans Admit Having Nukes
In an announcement that surprises no one, the North Koreans told the world that they have built nuclear weapons and plan on keeping them, on order to keep the "freedom and democracy" that their subject have "chosen" alive from the dangers of the Bush administration: "We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's ever more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North)," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. ... North Korea's "nuclear weapons will remain (a) nuclear deterrent for self-defense under any circumstances," the ministry said. It said Washington's alleged attempt to topple the North's regime "compels us to take a measure to bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal in order to protect the ideology, system, freedom and democracy chosen by its people." The AP reports that the Kim regime had admitted in private...
February 18, 2005
North Korea Backing Down Again?
North Korea has a history of making provocative and disruptive statements and then retreating when their opponents refuse to back down. After declaring itself a nuclear power earlier, despite never having conducted an N-weapon test, North Korea outright rejected any notion of returning to the six-nation talks that the US demands. However, faced with US adamance on multination diplomacy and a diplomatic shrug on its nuclear declaration, North Korea tonight suddenly retreated on diplomacy: North Korea will return to six-party talks on its nuclear program if the United States pledges to stay out of Pyongyang's "domestic affairs" -- a prospect that could lead to the two nations becoming "friends," North Korea's envoy to the United Nations told a South Korean newspaper for Saturday's editions. Last week, North Korea said it had no intention of returning to the negotiating table and declared that the nation already has nuclear weapons and is...
February 27, 2005
North Korea To Return To The Bargaining Table
North Korea has apparently ended its tantrum, noticed that no one got very unnerved by their antics, and has decided to return to the six-party talks. Not only that, but Pyongyang apparently has committed to reaching an accord with the US by October: North Korea has told officials in South Korea it is willing to take part in six-party talks on its nuclear arms program in June, a Japanese newspaper reported. Pyongyang also said in its message, which was conveyed to South Korea by unofficial routes and then to Japan by Seoul, that it was willing to sign a treaty with the United States by October, the conservative Sankei Shimbun said on Monday. North Korea declared on Feb. 10 that it had nuclear weapons and that it was pulling out of the talks, which include Japan, Russia, China and the United States as well as the two Koreas. The Kim...
March 16, 2005
We're Rubber And You're Glue
The North Korean government issued one of its silly contradictions today, backing away from multilateral talks after agreeing to them earlier because Condoleezza Rice won't take back her description of the Kim regime as an "outpost of tyranny": "It is quite illogical for the U.S. to intend to negotiate with the DPRK without retracting its remarks listing its dialogue partner as an outpost of tyranny," the spokesman said in comments published by the North's official KCNA news agency. ... "This is, in the final analysis, little short of indicating it will not to hold the six-party talks. She can make nothing but such outcries as she is no more than an official of the most tyrannical dictatorial state in the world," he added. Yes, when we have multiparty elections, the Dictatorial Party always ensures the same outcome. This schizophrenic break from reality typifies the response one gets from tyrannies once...
April 18, 2005
North Korean Brinksmanship Redux
The DPRK has ominously shut down or scaled back its power production from a nuclear reactor at its main weapons complex, raising the possibility that the NoKos will harvest more plutonium to make more weapons. It also could be nothing more than a bluff intended to make the US back down and engage in the same kind of bilateral talks that wound up going nowhere during the Clinton administration: The suspected shutdown of a reactor at North Korea's main nuclear weapons complex has raised concern at the White House that the country could be preparing to make good on its recent threat to harvest a new load of nuclear fuel, potentially increasing the size of its nuclear arsenal. The White House's concern over the past week arises from two developments. An American scholar with unusual access to North Korea's leaders, Selig S. Harrison, a longtime specialist on North Korea at...
May 9, 2005
NoKos Try Orwell As They Return To Bargaining Table
The North Koreans have sent a "conciliatory" message asking for a resumption of the multilateral negotiations the US insists on using as a framework for non-proliferation talks with the Kim regime. In fact, the message was so conciliatory that the North Koreans now claim that they never wanted any other kind of framework than the six-nation approach: Capping a week of rising tension with a conciliatory note, a foreign ministry statement issued late Sunday said Pyongyang was ready to sit down and resolve the standoff through six-party talks. "Our will to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and seek a negotiated solution to (the nuclear standoff) still remains unchanged," the statement said Monday, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. It also dropped a precondition to a resumption of the six-way talks by denying it had ever asked for separate, one-on-one talks with Washington, a demand the United States has rejected....
May 19, 2005
US Reached Out To NoKo At UN
In an attempt to jump-start multilateral negotiations with North Korea, the US used low-level direct contacts with the Kim regime through the United Nations, according to an anonymous US embassy official. According to the Boston Globe and an AP report in USA Today, nothing substantial about nonproliferation was discussed, but assurances were given to the Kim regime on sovereignty and security: U.S. officials met with North Korean officials in New York last week to discuss American policy toward the Stalinist state, a U.S. Embassy official in Tokyo said Thursday. "We can confirm that we had working-level contact with North Korean officials on Friday, May 13, in New York," an embassy official said. "This channel is used to convey messages about U.S. policy, not to negotiate." ... A report in Japan's Asahi newspaper on Thursday said senior U.S. State Department officials told North Korean officials on Friday that Washington recognizes the...
June 2, 2005
Will Famine Destabilize The Korean Peninsula?
Nicole Winfield reports in the Associated Press that the Kim regime has begun a mass relocation effort, driving millions of citydwellers to the countryside in what looks to be a desperate effort to fend off a catastrophic famine. Food-distribution NGOs report that despite the lack of significant weather or agricultural incidents, what little production Pyongyang gets out of its farms may drop so precipitously that millions may face starvation: North Korea is sending millions of people from its cities to work on farms each weekend -- another indication that the risk of famine is particularly high this year, a U.N. official said yesterday. The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) is the only aid organization that has a presence outside the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and its officials have reported the movements of the North's people from cities to farms, said Anthea Webb, spokeswoman for the Rome-based agency. ... The WFP...
July 2, 2005
CU Escapes The Peter Principle
After generating months of controversy from his remarks about 9/11 victims being "little Eichmanns" to disputes over his alleged Native American heritage and claims that he falsified key parts of his curriculum vitae, Ward Churchill has embarrassed University of Colorado innumerable times. However, it hasn't kept CU from giving Churchill a merit increase for his performance (via LGF): University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill was awarded a 2.28 percent merit pay increase this week for work performed in 2004, a little less than his department's average recommended salary increase for professors. A statement released by CU said pay increases for Boulder campus faculty are approved by interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano and based on reviews and recommendations by committees at the department, school or college, and administrative levels. Churchill's increase was finalized Thursday. The average recommended increase for ethnic studies department faculty was 3.21 percent, according to the CU statement. "In...
July 10, 2005
North Korea Returns To The Table
North Korea has agreed to return to the six-nation negotiations that George Bush insists on using to address the nuclear expansion of the Kim regime. After a year of alternately threatening and flirting with the West, Kim Jong-Il has apparently decided that his economic situation has degraded to the point where he needs to engage the US on its terms, rather than his: The agreement to restart the talks was reached at a rare dinner meeting here between a senior U.S. envoy and his North Korean counterpart, held shortly before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived Saturday night for talks with Chinese officials on the North Korean issue. During the meal, Kim Gye Gwan, the North Korean deputy foreign minister, told Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill that North Korea was willing to attend talks in Beijing the week of July 25, according to a senior U.S. official traveling...
July 24, 2005
The Left Ignores North Korean Tyranny
Nicholas Kristof discovers today that the Right actually gets it right regarding North Korean tyranny and says so in the New York Times. Unfortunately, the advice he gives the Left to address the problem gets it all wrong. Kristof starts out by scolding the Left for ignoring the problem altogether: Liberals took the lead in championing human rights abroad in the 1970's, while conservatives mocked the idea. But these days liberals should be embarrassed that it's the Christian Right that is taking the lead in spotlighting repression in North Korea. ... "The biggest scandal in progressive politics," Tony Blair told The New Yorker this year, "is that you do not have people with placards out in the street on North Korea. I mean, that is a disgusting regime. The people are kept in a form of slavery, 23 million of them, and no one protests!" Actually, some people do protest....
August 24, 2005
Musharraf: Khan Supplied NoKos With Centrifuges, Designs
Confirming the suspicions of many in the West, Pakistan's leader Pervez Musharraf stated for the record that Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan gave centrifuges and their designs to the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-Il, according to the Japanese news agency Kyodo: Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf has confirmed that disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan provided North Korea with centrifuge machines and their designs, Kyodo news agency said on Wednesday. Khan, revered in Pakistan as the man who gave his country the weapons capability to balance that of nuclear-armed neighbour and rival India, admitted last year to leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. ... Asked about reports that Pakistan told Japanese government officials that Khan had given North Korea about 20 centrifuges, Musharraf was quoted as saying: "Yes, he passed centrifuges -- parts and complete. I do not exactly remember the number." The leap in...
September 18, 2005
North Korea Gives Up Its Nuclear Program
In a stunning foreign-policy victory for the Bush administration, North Korea has publicly agreed to forego its nuclear weapons program entirely without getting a nuclear reactor from the West in return. The six-nation talks just released its first-ever joint statement announcing the agreement: North Korea pledged to drop its nuclear weapons development and rejoin international arms treaties in a unanimous agreement Monday at six-party arms talks. The agreement was the first-ever joint statement after more than two years of negotiations. The North "promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programs and to get back to the (Nuclear) Nonproliferation Treaty as soon as possible and to accept inspections" by the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to the agreement by the six countries at the talks. "All six parties emphasized that to realize the inspectable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the target of the six-party talks," the statement said....
September 20, 2005
North Korea Tosses In Late Demand
The path will never go easy with the Kim regime in Pyongyang. The US already knows this, but now the Chinese have had a taste of it after making the official announcement of an agreement on disarmament with the North Koreans, only to have Kim Jong-Il publicly add a demand for a nuclear reactor afterwards: North Korea insisted Tuesday it won't dismantle its nuclear weapons program until the U.S. gives it civilian nuclear reactors, casting doubt on a disarmament agreement reached a day earlier during international talks. Washington reiterated its rejection of the reactor demand and joined China in urging North Korea to stick to the agreement announced Monday in which it pledged to abandon all its nuclear programs in exchange for economic aid and security assurances. North Korea's new demands underlined its unpredictable nature and deflated some optimism from the Beijing agreement, the first since negotiations began in August...
Gray Lady Gives Grudging Credit On North Korea
On the week where the Paper of Record hid its editorial columnists behind the $50 firewall that virtually ensures they will go unread, its editorial board also admits to victory for the Bush administration for its insistence on their policy for North Korea: For years now, foreign policy insiders have pointed to North Korea as the ultimate nightmare, the ongoing worst-case scenario for an international crisis: a closed, hostile and paranoid dictatorship with an aggressive nuclear weapons program. Very few people could envision a successful outcome. And yet North Korea agreed this week to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, abide by the treaty's safeguards and admit international inspectors. Diplomacy, it seems, does work after all. The agreement signed yesterday, if faithfully carried out, is a huge win for the United States as well as a fair deal for North Korea. Its achievement became possible...
November 9, 2005
NoKos Restarting Construction On New Reactor
The North Koreans appear to have started working on their once-abandoned reactor site, and have said that they could complete the 50-megawatt reactor within two years. This new development belies the agreement reached two months ago, when Pyongyang announced its intention to stop all pursuit of plutonium development: North Korea has said it plans to finish building a 50-megawatt nuclear reactor in as little as two years, allowing it to produce enough weapons-grade plutonium for 10 weapons annually, according to the first public report of an unofficial U.S. delegation that visited Pyongyang in August. The new reactor would represent a tenfold leap in North Korea's ability to produce fuel for nuclear weapons, which could give it significant leverage in talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear programs. North Korea tentatively agreed in September to "abandon" its programs, but the talks -- which resume today in Beijing -- must still resolve how...
March 8, 2006
North Korea Wants Attention
With all of the attention that the Iranian nuclear crisis has drawn, its fellow member of the Axis of Evil has apparently gotten jealous. North Korea reminded the world that it has claims on the title of Most Insane Regime by firing a couple of short-range missiles in Japan's general direction: North Korea launched a pair of short-range missiles Wednesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. Japan's Kyodo News Agency, which quoted "sources knowledgeable about the matter," said the surface-to-air missiles were launched near North Korea's border with China. "Indications are that North Korea launched two short-range missiles," McClellan said. "The regime has conducted similar tests in the past." According to Kyodo, there was some confusion over whether the missiles were test-fired or launched by mistake. The agency quoted a Western military source as saying they were short-range missiles fired to the east from the eastern coast. At least one...
April 13, 2006
Don't You Forget About Me
North Korea reacted predictably to the attention Iran has received over the past few days by issuing threats of its own, apparently somewhat jealous of losing the world's focus: North Korea said on Thursday it might boost its nuclear deterrent if six-country talks on ending its atomic programs remained deadlocked, but said it would return if Washington met a demand to unfreeze it assets. Pyongyang's top envoy to the stalled negotiations told a news conference in Tokyo the United States must lift what the North considers to be financial sanctions against it. ... In an official media report on Thursday, North Korea reiterated it has been building a nuclear deterrent to counter what it views as Washington's hostile policy toward it. Washington has clamped down on a Macau-based bank it suspects of assisting Pyongyang in illicit financial activities, including money laundering. "Hey, look at me! Over here!" That's the message...
June 19, 2006
More Sanctions Threatened For NoKo Missile Launch
North Korea's impending missile test has captured the attention of the United States and Japan, with both countries threatening new sanctions in response to any missile launch: North Korea has finished loading fuel into a long-range ballistic missile, a Bush administration official said Monday as signs continued that the reclusive communist state will soon test a weapon that could reach the United States. U.S. intelligence indicates that the long-range missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2, is assembled and fully fueled, said the official, who requested anonymity because the information comes from sensitive intelligence methods. That reportedly gives the North a launch window of about a month. ... The United States, Japan, Australia and News Zealand all cautioned the impoverished country that a test would bring serious consequences and further isolate the regime. The White House has warned of an appropriate response and Japan has threatened a "fierce" protest to the...
June 20, 2006
Missile Defense: Shall We Play A Game?
Earlier today, North Korea stepped up the rhetoric surrounding their impending missile launch by declaring themselves free of the moratorium on missile launches it established with Japan four years ago. In response, the US has activated its missile defense systems while trying to keep our moves from being unnecessarily provocative: The United States has moved its ground-based interceptor missile defense system from test mode to operational amid concerns over an expected North Korean missile launch, a U.S. defense official said on Tuesday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a Washington Times report that the Pentagon has activated the system, which has been in the developmental stage for years. "It's good to be ready," the official said. U.S. officials say evidence such as satellite pictures suggests Pyongyang may have finished fueling a Taepodong-2 missile, which some experts said could reach as far as Alaska. The Taepodong-2 missile has Alaska...
June 22, 2006
Then What?
Clinton-era Defense Secretary William Perry offered an interesting option for the North Korea missile standoff -- commit an act of war: Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil? We believe not. The Bush administration has unwisely ballyhooed the doctrine of "preemption," which all previous presidents have sustained as an option rather than a dogma. It has applied the doctrine to Iraq, where the intelligence pointed to a threat from weapons of mass destruction that was much smaller than the risk North Korea poses. (The actual threat from Saddam Hussein was, we now know, even smaller than believed at the time of the invasion.) But intervening before mortal threats to U.S. security can develop is surely a prudent policy. Therefore, if North Korea persists in its launch preparations,...
June 27, 2006
Japan To Get Missile Defenses
The US will supply Japan with anti-missile systems in response to North Korea's recent escalation in staging a Taepodong-2 missile for launch. The Post reports that both nations have expedited the process in order to have some response ready for any subsequent missile tests from Pyongyang: The Pentagon is reportedly speeding up plans to deploy advanced Patriot interceptor missiles on U.S. bases in Japan for the first time, a countermeasure seen as a response to the increasing threat of North Korean missiles. ... The planned PAC-3 deployment underscores concern that Japan is emerging as the nation most threatened by North Korean missiles. Reports of a possible test-firing of a Taepodong-2 have spurred Japan and the United States to take further steps in a joint effort to construct an effective missile-defense shield. The U.S. Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles are designed to intercept ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or aircraft. But experts said...
July 1, 2006
Janes: North Korea To Launch Taepodong-2
In the wake of the escalation from Hamas in Gaza this week, the North Korean standoff has received less attention of late. However, Jane's Defense Weeky reports that the Kim Jong-Il regime still intends to launch its Taepodong-2 missile. At least JDW thinks it's a TD2, because according to Joseph Bermudez, no one's still quite sure what they have on the launch pad: For the past six weeks, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) has been preparing to launch what appears to be a prototype Taepo Dong 2 ballistic missile. ... As of the last week in June, it appeared that the Taepo Dong 2 was fuelled and prepared for launch on the command of leader Kim Jong-il, but three questions remain: Is it a ballistic missile or an SLV carrying a second North Korean satellite? Why has it not been launched? Will it ultimately be...
July 4, 2006
North Korea Launches Missiles, Fails Miserably
North Korea attempted to launch three missiles this afternoon after sitting on the one Taepodong-2 ICBM for the last few weeks. Unfortunately for Kim Jong-Il, the arrows he shot into the air fell to ground -- and we know where: North Korea launched a long-range missile Wednesday that may be capable of reaching the United States but it failed after 35 or 40 seconds, two State Department officials said. The missile was one of at least three that were fired. The two others were short-range missiles. All landed in the Sea of Japan, said the Japanese government, which was unable to confirm that they included a long-range missile. The officials in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the long-range missile was the Taepodong-2, North Korea's most advanced missile with a range of up to 9,320 miles. The launch came after weeks of speculation that the North was preparing...
July 5, 2006
North Korea Tests Seventh Missile
As Monty Python once said, here comes another one: North Korea test-fired another missile Wednesday, intensifying the furor ignited when the reclusive regime launched at least six missiles, including a long-range Taepodong, earlier in the day. CNN reports that this missile landed in the Sea of Japan like the first six did. The tests have all come on the same day for Japan and North Korea, and that day is just about over now. That may be the last of them, or we may see another grouping like we did last night. The UN Security Council meets this morning to discuss the situation based on a request from Japan. The UNSC may be forced to take some action as the provocation here is too overt to ignore. Japan and the US would like to see even tougher economic sanctions on the Kim regime, but up to now Russia and China...
More Dishonesty At The Gray Lady
Today's editorial on the North Korean crisis at the New York Times sounds eminently reasonable, at least at first. The editors manage to place blame for the missile standoff where it belongs -- on Pyongyang and the Kim regime. However, the Times manages to blame the current cessation of talks on the Bush administration for what it sees as a technicality: Everyone's long-term interest lies in reanimating the diplomacy that has sputtered to a halt over an unrelated banking dispute. The Bush administration should have moved many months ago to overcome that obstacle. But now it is North Korea that has clearly put itself in the wrong. Washington should obviously not reward that bad faith by abruptly rushing back to the bargaining table. But reviving those talks in a more considered way would serve America's own best interests. Notice that the Times doesn't bother to explain this "unrelated banking dispute"....
July 6, 2006
North Korea Continue Provocation Despite Incompetence
Sometimes one has to admire tenacity in the face of ongoing embarrassment. North Korea continue to threaten more missile launches despite the spectacular failure of the one Taepodong-2 missile two days ago. The Bush administration responded by noting that the missiles have shown themselves as no threat to the US and refuses to give in to extortion: The Bush administration on Thursday dismissed North Korea’s threat to test-fire more missiles and pressed for international efforts to get the secretive communist regime to “cease and desist” such actions. “We’re certainly not going to overreact ... to these wild statements out of Pyongyang and North Korea,” said Undersecretary R. Nicholas Burns. “We’ve seen them before.” The North Korean Foreign Ministry, in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, insisted that the communist state had the right to missile tests and argued the weapons were needed for defense. ... The...
North Korea Continue Provocation Despite Incompetence
Sometimes one has to admire tenacity in the face of ongoing embarrassment. North Korea continue to threaten more missile launches despite the spectacular failure of the one Taepodong-2 missile two days ago. The Bush administration responded by noting that the missiles have shown themselves as no threat to the US and refuses to give in to extortion: The Bush administration on Thursday dismissed North Korea’s threat to test-fire more missiles and pressed for international efforts to get the secretive communist regime to “cease and desist” such actions. “We’re certainly not going to overreact ... to these wild statements out of Pyongyang and North Korea,” said Undersecretary R. Nicholas Burns. “We’ve seen them before.” The North Korean Foreign Ministry, in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, insisted that the communist state had the right to missile tests and argued the weapons were needed for defense. ... The...
AP: North Korea Targeted Hawaiian Waters
According to an AP report, North Korea wanted to use its Taepodong-2 missile to hit the waters around Hawaii, apparently to send a message to the US. The Japanese newspaper Sankei reported that Kim Jong-Il wanted to protest economic sanctions: North Korea targeted waters near Hawaii when it fired a long-range missile this week, a Japanese newspaper reported Friday. The long-range Taepodong-2 was part of a barrage of seven missiles test-fired by North Korea on Wednesday. They all fell harmlessly into the Sea of Japan, but South Korean officials said the long-range missile had malfunctioned, suggesting it was intended for a more remote target. Japan's conservative mainstream daily Sankei said that Japanese and US defense officials have concluded that the Taepodong-2 had targeted US state of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, after analyzing data collected from their intelligence equipment. The newspaper quoted unidentified Japanese and US government officials. The officials...
July 7, 2006
Japan Insists On Sanctions
Despite earlier reports that Japan would back away from demanding sanctions against North Korea for its missile launches this week, the new draft circulated by Japan retains its demands for economic sanctions in defiance of Russian and Chinese opposition: Japan circulated a new draft Security Council resolution Friday that retains the threat of sanctions against North Korea, ignoring Chinese and Russian concerns of inflaming tensions with the isolated communist nation. No other details have yet come out about this development, but apparently Japan has not backed down from its demand for tangible consequences for Kim's fireworks display. UPDATE: The AP has updated the story with more details. The draft declares that the UNSC will "take those steps necessary" to keep Pyongyang from acquiring material that could be used in their missile program. Given that the North Koreans just launched seven of them and plan to launch a few more, the...
July 9, 2006
Can The US Get Sanctions On Pyongyang?
Nicholas Burns, the Undersecretary of State, told Meet The Press that the US has enough support on the Security Council to get sanctions applied to North Korea as long as China doesn't issue a veto. However, Lindsay Graham warned that the US would start consider modifying its relationship to Beijing if the Chinese don't start applying its leverage to rein in Kim Jong-Il: The Bush administration on Sunday said it had the votes in the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions against North Korea's nuclear missile program and urged China to use its influence to get Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. "We think we've got the votes to pass that," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said on NBC's "Meet the Press" television program. ... Burns said the United States did not have any assurances from China it would not use its veto of U.N. sanctions. "I don't think we've...
July 10, 2006
Japan Considers Pre-Emption
North Korea may have awoken the Japanese military impulse, this time in self-defense, with its missile launches. The Chief Cabinet Secretary announced that Tokyo would rethink the common interpretation of its constitution that restricts Japanese military action to self-defense in terms of a pre-emptive strike on any missiles Pyongyang stages in the future: Japan said Monday it was considering whether a pre-emptive strike on the North's missile bases would violate its constitution, signaling a hardening stance ahead of a possible U.N. Security Council vote on Tokyo's proposal for sanctions against the regime. Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests last week, and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites. "If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an...
July 12, 2006
NYT: China "Honest Broker"
Tomorrow's New York Times reports that China and Russia will offer a proposal for a Security Council resolution that stops short of making economic sanctions a requirement for UN member states. Warren Hoge and Joseph Kahn also manage to squeeze in a little bias at the end of their report that paints China as an "honest broker" for peace. First, though, the resolution comes with a Chinese pledge to veto Japan's proposal if this new effort fails to win support: China and Russia introduced a draft resolution on North Korea in the Security Council on Wednesday and asked the Council’s members to consider it in place of a Japanese-sponsored resolution, to which they both have objected, that would have allowed for military enforcement and sanctions. In offering the new measure, Wang Guangya, the Chinese ambassador, said he had instructions from his government to veto the Japanese resolution if it were...
July 15, 2006
Sanctions For North Korea
The UN Security Council voted unanimously to impose sanctions on North Korea in response to its missile tests, forbidding the sale of any material with use for its rocket program. The Russians and Chinese agreed to the sanctions if references to Chapter VII were removed, preventing escalation to military action: The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution Saturday condemning North Korea's recent missile tests and demanding that the reclusive communist nation suspend its ballistic missile program. The agreement was reached after a last-minute compromise between Japan, the United States and Britain, who wanted a tough statement, and Russia and China, who favored weaker language. North Korea vowed to continue missile launches "as part of its effort to bolster deterrent for self-defense in the future," said Pak Gil Yon, North Korea's U.N. ambassador. Does this have teeth? If followed by all UN member states as required, it means that North...
July 22, 2006
He's Not Ronery
That hot North Korean studmonkey, Kim Jong-Il, tied the knot with his secretary, according to a South Korean wire service. Kim's previous wife died two years ago, and Kim Ok has apparently filled the gap in the dictator's private life: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has taken his former secretary as his new wife, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday, citing sources familiar with the country. His wife Ko Yong-hi, the mother of two of Kim's three sons, died of breast cancer in August 2004, the agency said. "I heard Kim has been living together with a woman named Kim Ok, who was his secretary, since Ko Yong-hi died two years ago," Yonhap quoted a South Korean government source as saying. I have to believe it's all an American plot to calm the tensions on the Korean peninsula. The DoD probably thought Kim's fascination with missiles had some...
September 2, 2006
North Korea Understands The Significance
The US successfully tested its missile-defense system again this week, and this time it specifically used North Korean missile technology in its test. The North Koreans did not miss the significance of the results: The U.S. missile defense system yesterday shot down an incoming dummy warhead simulating the last-stage trajectory of a North Korean Taepodong-2 missile, a milestone that U.S. officials expect to counter critics of earlier tests. It was the first time a dummy North Korean missile was intercepted, and the sixth successful intercept since 1999, said officials from the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency. "What we did today is a huge step in terms of our systematic approach to continuing to field, continuing to deploy and continuing to develop a missile defense system for the United States, for our allies, our friends, our deployed forces around the world," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the Missile...
October 4, 2006
North Korea Threatens Nuclear Tests
Kim Jong-Il apparently figured the spotlight of world attention had strayed too far from the Korean Peninsula for too long. Yesterday, Kim threatened to conduct a test of his nuclear weapons, an act that received immediate worldwide condemnation -- but little else: World leaders lashed out at North Korea's vow Tuesday to test a nuclear bomb sometime "in the future," but offered no clear plan for dealing with aggravated tensions over the dictatorship's nuclear weapons ambitions. U.S. intelligence officials said they had been monitoring recent movement of people and vehicles around at least one suspected test site. But because North Korea has never conducted a nuclear test, it is difficult for intelligence agencies to determine how close the regime may be to setting off a bomb. The North Koreans did not elaborate on when a test would occur or whether it would be conducted below ground, which experts say is...
October 6, 2006
North Korea: War Is Coming To American Soil
A rambling, disjointed editorial by a man known as Kim Jong-Il's "unofficial spokesman" tells Asia Times readers that North Korea does not intend to build its nuclear weapons to use as bargaining chips. Kim will build them to turn American cities into "towering infernos": The first message is that Kim Jong-il is the greatest of the peerless national heroes Korea has ever produced. Kim is unique in that he is the first to equip Korea with sufficient military capability to take the war all the way to the continental US. Under his leadership the DPRK has become a nuclear-weapons state with intercontinental means of delivery. Kim is certainly in the process of achieving the long-elusive goal of neutralizing the American intervention in Korean affairs and bringing together North and South Korea under the umbrella of a confederated state. Unlike all the previous wars Korea fought, a next war will be...
October 7, 2006
DMZ Tensions Escalate
With Kim Jong-Il threatening a nuclear test and his neighbors demanding that he stop the preparations for it, tensions have mounted at the DMZ separating North and South Korea. This morning, an incursion by a handful of DPRK soldiers resulted in warning shots by South Korean troops: On the frontier between North and South Korea, South Korean soldiers fired warning shots after five North Korean soldiers crossed a boundary in the Demilitarized Zone separating the countries' forces, South Korean military officials said. It was unclear whether the North Korean advance, which happened shortly before noon local time, was intended as a provocation, an official at South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said on condition of anonymity, citing official policy. No one was hurt, and the North Koreans retreated. "It's not clear whether it was intentional or whether it was to catch fish," he said, adding four North Koreans were unarmed...
October 9, 2006
North Korea Conducts Nuclear Test
North Korea conducted a nuclear test today that has set the world on edge, according to Pyongyang's announcement and confirmation through seismic monitors. The yield, however, looks almost impossibly small: North Korea said Monday it performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test, claiming it set off a successful underground blast in a "great leap forward" that defied international warnings against the communist regime. The reported nuclear test sparked condemnation from regional powers who said that, if confirmed, it would be a serious threat to regional stability. The U.S. called for immediate U.N. Security Council action. ... South Korea's seismic monitoring center said a magnitude 3.6 tremor felt at the time of alleged North Korea nuclear test wasn't a natural occurrence. The size of the tremor could indicate an explosive equivalent to 550 tons of TNT, said Park Chang-soo, spokesman at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources — which would...
Fizzlemas In North Korea
Bill Gertz writes in tomorrow's Washington Times that the nuclear test performed by North Korea may not have been nuclear at all. American intelligence has begun reviewing the seismic data and are increasingly convinced that the test was either a failure or a hoax: U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday. U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast's readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation. "We're still evaluating the data, and as more data comes in, we hope to develop a clearer picture," said one official familiar with intelligence reports. "There was a seismic event that registered about 4 on the Richter scale, but it still isn't clear if it...
October 10, 2006
China Rethinks Its Alliances
The nuclear test by North Korea yesterday may have produced results which Kim Jong-Il did not anticipate. China issued an unusually harsh response to their client state, and the London Times reports that Beijing may reconsider its relationship with the impulsive Stalinist: CHINA responded with rare fury to neighbouring North Korea’s nuclear test, resorting to language generally reserved for imperialist opponents rather than communist friends. Beijing’s response was unusually swift. “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has ignored the widespread opposition of the international community and brazenly carried out a nuclear test,” it said. Long gone are the days when China and North Korea described their relationship as being “as close as lips and teeth”. Indeed, North Korea’s test has delivered China to a diplomatic crossroads: it can choose to act tough with a troublesome neighbour or to stick with the cajoling and persuasion that have now been seen to...
North Korea Threatens Nuclear Launch
Kim Jong-Il either needs a hug or a straitjacket. North Korea followed its rogue nuclear test by issuing an explicit threat to attack the US with a nuclear missile unless we allowed Pyongyang to operate its counterfeiting business without interference: A North Korean official threatened that communist nation could fire a nuclear-tipped missile unless the U.S. acts to resolve its standoff with Pyongyang, Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday. "We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes," the unnamed official said on Monday, according to a Yonhap report from Beijing. "That depends on how the U.S. will act." Yonhap didn't say how or where it contacted the official, why no name was given or why it delayed reporting until Tuesday. ... "We have lost enough. Sanctions can never be a solution," the official said. "We still have a willingness to give...
Kim: Just Another Shrimp On The Barbie
The Australians have stepped up to the plate, as they always do when tyrants threaten global security, in the wake of the North Korean nuclear test. They didn't bother to wait for the UN Security Council to slap sanctions on the Kim Jong-Il regime, and told the UN that they had better snap to it themselves: Australia will impose a range of measures on North Korea, including curtailing visas and supporting any U.N. sanctions, in response to the country's nuclear test, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Tuesday. ... "We were urging our friends and allies in the United Nations to pass a resolution imposing sanctions," Downer told reporters. Downer said the nuclear test had made the region less secure, and that North Korea had "humiliated" its biggest ally, China. Australia has diplomatic relations with North Korea, restoring them six years ago after Pyongyang insisted that it would behave itself and...
Guest Post: Senator John McCain On North Korea
Please welcome Senator John McCain as a guest poster at Captain's Quarters. He delivers a tough, no-nonsense reponse to the latest provocation from North Korea. Time for Decisive Action on North Korea Korea doubts the world’s resolve. It is testing South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the United States. They launched seven missiles in July, and were criticized by the Security Council, but suffered no serious sanction. We have talked and talked about punishing their bad behavior. They don’t believe we have the resolve to do it. We must prove them wrong. I am encouraged by the Security Council’s swift and strong condemnation of the act on Monday, but the permanent members must now follow up our words with action. We must impose Chapter 7 sanctions with teeth, as President Bush has proposed. China has staked its prestige as an emerging great power on its ability to reason with North...
Oops -- He Did It Again? (Updated: False Alarm)
Japan has announced that they suspect North Korea conducted another nuclear test in the last couple of hours. Details are sketchy and contradictory, but Japan said they detected a tremor from North Korea: The Japanese government detected tremors on Wednesday that led it to suspect North Korea had conducted a second nuclear test, officials and news reports said. Shortly after Japan said it suspected another test had been conducted, the country's meteorological agency reported a magnitude-6.0 earthquake shook northern Japan. U.S. and South Korean monitors said they had not detected any new seismic activity in North Korea on Wednesday. It may have sensed a pre-quake tremor from its own territory which confused their sensors. A nuclear test that caused a 6.0 earthquake in Japan could never have been missed by South Korea. Still, Japan's quake may have been coincidental to a nuclear test. More as this develops ... UPDATE: It...
October 11, 2006
Kim: Sanctions An Act Of War
Kim Jong-Il seems determined to have himself a little war, whether anyone else wants it or not. This morning, the North Korean Foreign Ministry warned that any applications of sanctions against them would result in "physical" responses: North Korea said Wednesday it would respond with "physical" measures to counter U.S. pressure against the communist regime after its claimed nuclear test. "If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures," the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. The North didn't specify what the measures would be. "We were compelled to prove that we have nuclear weapons to prevent the increasing threat of war by the U.S. and protect our sovereignty and survival," the North said, criticizing an alleged nuclear threat from Washington and sanctions....
South Korea Shrugs
South Korea has decided to continue its policy of appeasement despite the obvious results shown with North Korea's nuclear test. President Roh Moo Hyun eschewed urgent action and instead called for a period of extended "coordination" between the nations trying to convince Kim Jong-Il to return to the bargaining table: THE prospects for tough, swift action against North Korea were scuppered yesterday when it became clear that South Korea will not abandon its policy of engagement with its totalitarian neighbour, in spite of North Korea’s claimed nuclear test. As the US and Japan called for tough punishment for Monday’s test and experts predicted that a second may be imminent, leaders in Seoul appeared to have accepted that they will have to live with a nuclear North Korea — at least until Washington can be persuaded to engage in direct talks with the isolated Stalinist state. ... Diplomats said last night...
A Brookings Review Of The Clinton Effort On North Korea
My earlier posts on North Korea has created a debate about when the Kim regime began its cheating on the 1994 Agreed Framework. This has taken up a large part of the comments thread on John McCain's guest post from yesterday. The Brookings Institution, hardly a apologist for conservatives, makes the timeline pretty clear in a review that has plenty of sympathy for the Clinton administration (emphases mine): When entering office, President Bush understandably wanted to revise the Clinton administration's approach to North Korea. The latter had a number of important accomplishments over roughly a five-year stretch from 1994 to 1999, but it had stalled by 2000. The Clinton administration helped produce the important 1994 Agreed Framework, under which North Korea effectively froze its major nuclear programs and promised effectively to undo whatever nuclear weapons progress it had earlier made at its small research reactor (the same one now at...
October 12, 2006
Japan Imposes Sanctions, North Korea Threatens
Japan unilaterally imposed severe sanctions on North Korea in response to its nuclear test earlier this week, and the Kim regime responded by promising "strong countermeasures". Pyongyang warned Japan to keep its eyes open for the specifics, saying that North Korea does not issue empty threats: The Japanese government decided on a package of additional economic sanctions against North Korea on Wednesday in response to the regime's claim of a nuclear test, including a ban on all imports from the country and the docking of North Korean ships in Japanese ports. The sanctions are expected to go into effect after they are approved by Japan's Cabinet Friday. "We will take strong countermeasures," Kyodo quoted Song Il Ho, North Korea's ambassador in charge of diplomatic normalization talks with Japan, as saying in an interview on Wednesday when asked about fresh sanctions by Japan. "The specific contents will become clear if you...
October 13, 2006
Standing On Chapter VII
The usual suspects of appeasement took center stage again last night at the UN after the US circulated a draft resolution imposing sanctions on North Korea. Russia and China objected to the use of Chapter VII language in the proposed sanctions, which could later support military action against Kim Jong-Il, but John Bolton said he would not back away from the reference this time: The American push to win Security Council backing for tough, swift sanctions against North Korea appeared to be set back by China and Russia on Thursday, in an echo of the obstacles the United States faces in a similar push to punish Iran. The United States circulated a softened draft resolution to the Security Council in response to North Korea’s assertion that it conducted a nuclear test on Monday. The United States pressed for a vote by Friday, but China and Russia immediately signaled their opposition...
Is Kim Bluffing?
Kim Jong-Il has made a career lately of issuing threats and rattling sabers, but Westerners who do business in North Korea report that the populace has little inkling of war on the horizon. In fact, recent reforms have allowed capitalism to gain some momentum after the massive famine nearly leveled the nation: Western businessmen who work inside North Korea, including several from Britain, provide a very different view of the country from the goose-stepping parades and patriotic dance festivals that are its most celebrated public face. Many say that behind the military rhetoric of its relations with the United States is a country that is keen to reform itself economically and many of whose residents seem increasingly "normal" to outsiders. ... Visitors to Pyongyang report that private markets, once banned, now sell a variety of consumer items such as television sets and a wider range of food, albeit expensive, than...
October 14, 2006
UN Security Council Agrees On Sanctions
The US says that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have reached agreement on the final language for the resolution that will impose sanctions on North Korea. The agreement comes just before the scheduled UNSC vote: The United States, Britain and France overcame last-minute differences with Russia and China on a U.N. resolution imposing punishing sanctions on North Korea, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said Saturday. "We are very pleased at this outcome and look forward to the council's imminent adoption of the resolution, co-sponsored by all 15 council members," U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told reporters after a brief closed council meeting. The Security Council was expected to approve the resolution unanimously Saturday afternoon. The language will have an explicit disavowal of military action, but Kim Jong-Il has said he will consider any such resolution an act of war. China's support for the sanctions might convince him otherwise....
I Think We Got Their Attention
Guess who wants to come back to the table? North Korea wants six-party talks on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula to continue, Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev said Sunday following talks with his North Korean counterpart, Russia's Interfax news agency reported. "The North Korean side repeatedly insisted that the six-sided process should continue, that it is not rejecting six-sided negotiations, and that the aim of the full denuclearization of the Korean peninsula remains," Alexeyev said. He made the comments in Beijing en route to Seoul from Pyongyang, where he held talks with his North Korean counterpart Kim Ky-kwan, the news agency said. "My North Korean colleagues said several times that Pyongyang would not under any circumstances pass on its nuclear capabilities to another country, or use them against anyone," Alexeyev said. Is Kim running short on that French brandy already?...
October 15, 2006
South Koreans Have Had Enough Engagement
The South Koreans have pressed for engagement with North Korea and the Kim Jong-Il regime for decades. They have protested against the American military presence in their nation and tried to appease their northern neighbor into playing nice on the peninsula. Kim's latest nuclear test appears to have finally demonstrated the folly of that approach. In less than a week, public opinion has shifted profoundly towards a hard-line policy and even arming the South with nuclear weapons: In less than a week since North Korea claimed to have tested a nuclear weapon, public opinion in the South has turned sharply against a South Korean policy of engaging the enemy in the belief it will eventually bring peace on the divided peninsula. A JoongAng newspaper poll, several days after the reported nuclear test Monday, found 78 percent of respondents thought South Korea should revise its policy, and 65 percent said South...
October 16, 2006
US Keeping Pressure On China
The US, fresh from its Security Council victory, has now begun to ensure it maintains its success in isolating North Korea. John Bolton told the UN that China had a "heavy responsibility" to police their joint border and inspect all shipments crossing it, while Beijing complained that those expectations are too high: In an unusual show of regional unity, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia lined up to back the US-drafted measures, which aim to punish Pyongyang for its claimed nuclear bomb test last Monday. ... China called for calm and emphasised that the UN resolution did not permit military force. Academics said Beijing is reluctant to check all cargo crossing its long land border with North Korea or to take any step that might lead to a collapse of its neighbour and an exodus of refugees. "China will carry out the decision of the security council," said Zhou Yongsheng,...
The Taboo Has Lifted
For decades after the end of World War II, no one dared mention the acquisition of nuclear weapons in Japan. This taboo came from having suffered the only use of nuclear weapons in wartime as well as a revulsion to any offensive military capability after the atrocities Japan perpetrated in the first half of the 20th century. However, with Kim Jong-Il rattling his own nuclear saber, the taboo has begun to lift for the Japanese: Shoichi Nakagawa, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party's policy research council, said he believed Japan would adhere to its policy of not arming itself with nuclear weapons but added that debate over whether to go nuclear was necessary. "We need to find a way to prevent Japan from coming under attack," Nakagawa told a television program, referring to what Tokyo should do following North Korea's reported nuclear test. "There is argument that nuclear weapons are...
October 17, 2006
How Unhappy Are The Chinese?
Apparently, Kim Jong-Il's nuclear surprise last week didn't just upset the various democracies in the Pacific. The Australian reported yesterday that Beijing has begun to consider a move that would have outraged the world fifteen years ago, but which might get tacit support now that North Korea has gone nuclear: THE Chinese are openly debating "regime change" in Pyongyang after last week's nuclear test by their confrontational neighbour. Diplomats in Beijing said at the weekend that China and all the major US allies believed North Korea's claim that it had detonated a nuclear device. US director of national intelligence John Negroponte circulated a report that radiation had been detected at a site not far from the Chinese border. ... The balance of risk between reform and chaos dominated arguments within China's ruling elite. The Chinese have also permitted an astonishing range of vituperative internet comment about an ally with which...
What's At Stake In North Korea
Some people have begun to claim that further opposition to North Korea's nuclear weapons programs is pointless and advise acceptance and containment as an ongoing policy. That might make some sense in a vacuum, especially if no one wants to perform the tough tasks ahead in enforcing sanctions on the Kim regime. However, the AP reminds us of the stakes involved in this question, and that North Korea's defiance hasn't taken place in a vacuum at all: The head of the U.N. nuclear agency warned Monday that as many as about 30 additional countries could soon have technology that would let them produce atomic weapons "in a very short time," joining the nine states known or suspected to have such arms. Speaking at a conference on tightening controls against nuclear proliferation, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said more nations were "hedging their bets" by developing technology that is...
October 18, 2006
The Non-Confrontational Approach To Sanctions
Condoleezza Rice wants to make sure that the application of sanctions do not create an opportunity for unnecessary confrontation, hoping to avoid provoking North Korea into a military response. In what might be a sop to China, Rice has asked nations to inspect North Korean goods on their own territory rather than stopping shipping or attempting to bar material at a border: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will urge the countries of northeast Asia to create a strict system of radiation monitoring and inspections to prevent North Korea from smuggling nuclear materials into or out of the country, a senior State Department official said Tuesday. But in what appears to be an effort to cajole China to enforce the new United Nations sanctions against North Korea aggressively, the United States will ask the countries to focus their efforts on conducting inspections in their own territories, including ports, and on suspicious...
October 20, 2006
China To Cut Off Kim's Oil
China has begun to consider an energy embargo on North Korea, a step that almost certainly would cause the Kim regime to face serious domestic pushback in Pyongyang. If Kim does not return to the six-party talks, North Korea will start getting darker than that satellite picture making the rounds: China is prepared to step up pressure on North Korea in coming weeks by reducing oil shipments, among other measures, if the country refuses to return to negotiations or conducts more nuclear tests, Chinese government advisers and scholars who have discussed the matter with the leadership say. If Beijing does take a tougher line on its neighbor and longtime ally, the action is likely to bolster its relationship with the United States. Washington has urged Chinese leaders to use all the tools at their disposal to put additional pressure on Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader. Among the most potent...
October 24, 2006
Famine Returns To North Korea
In a real sense, Kim Jong-Il may have nuked his food supply heading into winter on the Korean peninsula. The sanctions that Pyongyang provoked have cut deeply into the crucial aid that would have kept his subjects from starvation: North Korean food shortages have grown worse after its recent nuclear test led donors to withdraw aid, the UN says. The UN official monitoring human rights in North Korea, Vitit Muntarbhorn, said the food shortage was critical. North Korea is already short of food and this year floods have damaged the harvest, making matters even worse. President Kim Jong-Il's nuclear test has led to international condemnation of the secretive regime and sanctions against its nuclear programme. Put simply, Western nations don't plan on bailing Kim out of another famine, especially when everyone knows that any food aid will first go to the military. Had Kim not tested his nukes and his...
October 25, 2006
China: North Korea Won't Test Again
China announced last night that Kim Jong-Il has no plans to conduct a second nuclear test, attempting to assuage fears in the global community of further provocations by the unpredictable dictator. The foreign ministry also clarified earlier reports of an apology from Kim, saying that Pyongyang had not apologized but wants to return to the six-party talks: China gave its first full public account Tuesday of its recent diplomatic mission to North Korea. An official said leader Kim Jong Il did not apologize for the atomic explosion, but he did say there were no plans for a second nuclear test. North Korea's reclusive leader expressed willingness to return to six-nation talks over his government's nuclear program if financial restrictions levied by the United States are first resolved, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said. Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan met with Kim last week during a trip to Pyongyang with...
October 26, 2006
South Koreans Start Enforcing Sanctions
The South Koreans have begun to block entry to North Korean officials whose travel has been restricted by the UN sanctions, the first concrete steps of implementation seen by Seoul since the UNSC passed the resolution. They also committed to some efforts to implement the economic sanctions in coming days: South Korea said Thursday it will ban the entry of North Korean officials who fall under a U.N. travel restriction — Seoul's first concrete move to enforce sanctions imposed after the North's nuclear test. Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok also said Seoul will control transactions and remittances relating to inter-Korean trade and investment with the North Korean officials, Yonhap news agency reported. ... Seoul's Thursday decision begin enforcing a part of the sanctions came a day after North Korea warned its neighbor against imposing the punishment and a day after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gently prodded South Korea to...
October 28, 2006
Notify Beijing
The South Koreans have noticed unusual activity at a suspected North Korean nuclear site, and speculation has started that Pyongyang may be preparing another test. If so, it may push Beijing to action that they have only recently considered: South Korean and U.S. officials are monitoring the construction of a new building and other activities at a suspected North Korean nuclear site, trying to determine if the communist country is planning a second test detonation, news reports said Saturday. South Korea is keeping a close watch on the movement of trucks and soldiers at the Punggye-ri site in the North Korea's remote northeast, Yonhap news agency reported, citing several unidentified military officials. One official, however, said a second test was "not believed to be imminent." "We are closely monitoring to see if these are preparations for a second nuclear test," another official was quoted as saying. South Korea has also...
November 1, 2006
Bush Gets A Win On North Korea
The Bush administration found vindication yesterday when North Korea agreed to return to six-party talks without any concessions from the US. The news of Kim Jong-Il's capitulation came through China, whose influence undoubtedly led to the breakthrough: North Korea agreed Tuesday to resume nuclear disarmament talks, a first sign of easing tensions since the country’s nuclear test this month. But the talks have dragged on inconclusively for three years, and the chances for rolling back the country’s now-proven nuclear capability remained uncertain. China announced that six-nation talks would reconvene shortly after a hiatus of more than a year, and an American envoy in Beijing said they could take place in November or December. The agreement was a procedural victory for Beijing, which scrambled to reopen a diplomatic channel even as it joined the United States and other international powers in supporting United Nations sanctions on North Korea after the Oct....
Bush Gets A Win On North Korea
The Bush administration found vindication yesterday when North Korea agreed to return to six-party talks without any concessions from the US. The news of Kim Jong-Il's capitulation came through China, whose influence undoubtedly led to the breakthrough: North Korea agreed Tuesday to resume nuclear disarmament talks, a first sign of easing tensions since the country’s nuclear test this month. But the talks have dragged on inconclusively for three years, and the chances for rolling back the country’s now-proven nuclear capability remained uncertain. China announced that six-nation talks would reconvene shortly after a hiatus of more than a year, and an American envoy in Beijing said they could take place in November or December. The agreement was a procedural victory for Beijing, which scrambled to reopen a diplomatic channel even as it joined the United States and other international powers in supporting United Nations sanctions on North Korea after the Oct....
November 4, 2006
Why We Got The 'Soprano State' Back To The Table
Josh Meyer reports that the US forced North Korea back to the six-party talks through a three-year effort to cut Kim Jong-Il off from the monetary supply he needs to maintain power, a long and consistent effort that succeeded because the Bush administration refused to take the advice of its critics. The White House kept shutting more and more doors until Kim had only one left to open (via QandO): For three years, the Bush administration has waged a campaign to choke off North Korea's access to the world's financial system, where U.S. officials say the nation launders money from criminal enterprises to fuel its trade in missile technology and its efforts to build a nuclear arsenal. That effort has started to pay off. U.S. pressure forced Macao this year to freeze North Korean assets in one of its banks, then foiled North Korea's panicky attempts to find friendly bankers...
November 30, 2006
And We Can Make It Smaller, Cheaper, And More Efficient
Japan rattled a significant saber yesterday in its parliamentary session. In a debate clearly intended for the Chinese rather than the Japanese audience, Foreign Minister Taro Aso told a security committee that Japan could easily and quickly begin production of nuclear weapons: Japan has the technological know-how to produce a nuclear weapon but has no immediate plans to do so, the foreign minister said Thursday, several weeks after communist North Korea carried out a nuclear test. Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who has called for discussion of Japan's non-nuclear policy, also asserted that the pacifist constitution does not forbid possession of the bomb. "Japan is capable of producing nuclear weapons," Aso told a parliamentary committee on security issues. "But we are not saying we have plans to possess nuclear weapons." Thus far, the Japanese Prime Minister has refused to consider adding nuclear weapons to the country's defense. However, Aso and several...
December 5, 2006
Kim's New Racket: Insurance
Kim Jong-Il has expressed indignation, fury, and even tested a nuclear device in his attempt to get the US to back down from banking sanctions that has put a damper on his counterfeiting ring, one of the few sources of hard currency North Korea had. Now Kim has a new racket to generate some badly-needed cash, and this time he's targeted the insurance industry: The cash-strapped regime of North Korea, which has a worldwide reputation for its criminal dealings in weapons sales, drugs and near-perfect counterfeit U.S. $100 bills, may have found a new illicit source of hard foreign currency: international reinsurance fraud. A growing number of major underwriters around the world strongly suspect that communist dictator Kim Jong-Il's regime is running an elaborate major insurance and reinsurance scam on them, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars or more. The alleged fraud involves a wide variety of...
December 6, 2006
Carrots For Dear Leader
The US has made an explicit offer of aid and trade to North Korea in an attempt to get them to verifiably abandon their nuclear weapons program, an effort made outside the stalled six-party talks. The plan calls for assistance in energy and food while Kim Jong-Il dismantles his nuclear infrastructure: The United States has offered a detailed package of economic and energy assistance in exchange for North Korea’s giving up nuclear weapons and technology, American officials said Tuesday. But the offer, made last week during two days of intense talks in Beijing, would hinge on North Korea’s agreeing to begin dismantling some of the equipment it is using to expand its nuclear arsenal, even before returning to negotiations. ... The combination of incentives and demands was the focal point of three-way meetings on Nov. 28 and 29 involving Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill; North Korea’s vice foreign...
December 11, 2006
Cat's Out Of The Bag In North Korea
After years of regime propaganda, North Koreans have started discovering just how poor they are in comparison to their cousins in the South. The London Telegraph reports that refugees now understand their economic position in the world before they flee Kim Jong-Il and his worker's paradise: Many North Koreans are now aware of the poverty of their country and are voicing discontent after years of near-starvation, according to the fullest study yet conducted of refugees from the Stalinist dictatorship. While the popular image of North Koreans is of a nation living in blissful ignorance of the outside world and unquestioning loyalty to the leadership of Kim Jong-il, refugees interviewed while in hiding in China reported that there were increasing signs of dissent. Eighty per cent of those questioned said North Koreans no longer believed official propaganda that living standards were better than in capitalist South Korea. In reality, income per...
December 18, 2006
You First
Kim Jong-Il has rejoined the six-party talks aimed at ending his nuclear-weapons program and opening North Korea for foreign aid and trade. The other parties have promised an end to sanctions and economic assistance if Pyongyang ends its development of nukes, but the Kim regime has challenged them to act first: North Korea has said it would only consider scrapping its nuclear weapons when all international sanctions against it are lifted, as disarmament talks resumed here after a 13-month break. Declaring itself "satisfied" with becoming a nuclear power following its first-ever atomic test on October 9, North Korea offered no signs of compromise at the six-nation talks Monday, according to officials who were at the forum. Instead North Korean chief envoy Kim Kye-Gwan called, in his opening remarks to the talks, for United Nations and US sanctions to be lifted, as well as repeating long-held demands for help in developing...
December 22, 2006
No Agreement On North Korea
The six-party talks have adjourned without any agreement, the BBC reports: Despite five days of negotiations in Beijing, the talks broke up and no date for a resumption has been announced. The talks involved the US, North Korea, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. They had resumed after a 13-month break, and two months after North Korea sparked international condemnation by carrying out a nuclear test. Chinese envoy Wu Dawei released a statement that simply reaffirmed an agreement from September 2005 that the North would agree to disarm in return for aid and guarantees of security. The US accused the Kim regime of failing to take the talks seriously, which in this case is akin to noting the sunrise in the East. Kim Jong-Il wants his nukes, and diplomatic niceties will not shake him from his pursuit of WMDs. Only China can put enough pressure on him to achieve that...
January 4, 2007
Kim Testing Again?
ABC News is reporting tonight that Kim Jong-Il has prepared for a new nuclear test. According to their sources, North Korea has "everything in place": North Korea appears to have made preparations for another nuclear test, according to U.S. defense officials. "We think they've put everything in place to conduct a test without any notice or warning," a senior U.S. defense official told ABC News. The official cautions that the intelligence is inconclusive as to whether North Korea will actually go ahead with another test but said the preparations are similar to the steps taken by Pyongyang before it shocked the world by conducting its first nuclear test last Oct. 9. Two other senior defense officials confirmed that recent intelligence suggested that the North Koreans appear to be ready to test a nuclear weapon again, but the intelligence community divides over whether another test is likely. The equipment apparently has...
January 18, 2007
Bilateral Talks With North Korea?
The US and North Korea have quietly conducted one-on-one talks in advance of the next six-nation meeting on Kim Jong-Il's nuclear-weapons program. The pre-meeting seems to reverse the Bush administration's position against bilateral negotiations on the issue, but the White House insists that the meetings are intended to just lay the groundwork for the wider forum: Seeking to revive stalled negotiations to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the United States held “substantive” talks with North Korean diplomats here on Tuesday and Wednesday, said the chief American envoy, Christopher R. Hill. The unusual one-on-one sessions, the first to be held outside Beijing during the Bush administration, were signs of progress since negotiations broke off in December after North Korea demanded that Washington lift financial sanctions against it. “It was a substantive discussion,” Mr. Hill said in an interview on Wednesday, though he refused to give details. “The proof of the...
January 19, 2007
Bilateral Talks Produce 'A Certain Agreement'
North Korea announced that they and the US had reached "a certain agreement" in the lower-level talks between American negotiator Christopher Hill and their envoy, Kim Kye-gwan in Berlin. During the talks, the Kim Jong-Il regime asked what they would get in return for verifiably shutting down their nuclear reactor, and although the answer did not get made public, it apparently pleased the North Koreans: North Korea has expressed interest in a U.S.-backed proposal that it suspend its nuclear program and allow U.N. inspectors to verify the suspension as an initial step toward dismantling its nuclear capabilities, diplomats said yesterday. During three days of talks in Berlin that ended yesterday, North Korea's chief negotiator, Kim Gye-gwan, asked his U.S. counterpart, Christopher R. Hill, what the United States would be willing to do if the North turned off its nuclear reactor. A U.S. response, if any, was not made public. North...
January 26, 2007
You Knew Darned Well I Was A Snake Before You Took Me In
I often think about the wisdom contained in the classic, "The Snake", about the fatal naiveté of a woman who succoured a snake back to health, only to receive a fatal bite in the end. That parable struck me when I read this story about Lloyds of London balking at paying a £30 million reinsurance judgment to North Korea after agreeing to underwrite under the terms of North Korean law: North Korea, the last Stalinist dictatorship, is fighting a £30 million legal battle with insurance syndicates at Lloyd’s of London, which accuse it of making fraudulent claims in an attempt to prop up its collapsing economy. Supporters of North Korea’s claim say that the insurers are trying to renege on a risky contract. It is also suggested that they failed to differentiate between North Korea, one of the most repressive and isolated countries, and South Korea, its rich democratic neighbour,...
February 2, 2007
Kim's Son: Not Ronery
The producers of South Park hilariously depicted North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il in their movie Team America: World Police in a musical sequence titled I'm So Ronery. Apparently, that song wouldn't apply to Kim's jet-setting son, whom the London Telegraph noted has the kind of latitude denied the subjects of his father's regime: The son of Kim Jong-il, North Korea's reclusive dictator, has been living in five-star luxury in the gambling haven of Macau even as his people starve, according to reports in Hong Kong yesterday. Kim Jong-nam, 35, was tracked to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where he has been staying on and off for three years. While the international community alternates sanctions on his father for his nuclear weapons programme with economic aid for his starving subjects, the younger Kim has been spotted gambling in Macau's numerous casinos and eating in local restaurants, according to the South China Morning...
February 7, 2007
North Korea Agrees To De-Nuclearization?
American nuclear expert David Albright, a former UN inspector on the North Korean impasse, has told the AP that he believes North Korea is ready to shut down its nuclear program for an end to the Korean War and "massive" energy shipments. Pyongyang will also insist on an end to the sanctions that shut down the Macau money-laundering operation connected to its counterfeiting ring: Chief North Korean disarmament negotiator Kim Kye Gwan told Albright and Joel Wit, a former State Department official, that nothing would happen until the U.S. agreed to the construction of light-water reactors that Washington promised North Korea under a 1994 deal to freeze Pyongyang's nuclear program. That deal, which also included an annual supply of half a million tons of heavy fuel oil until the reactors were built, was scrapped in 2002 when North Korea admitted it had restarted its atomic program. Albright said the North...
February 12, 2007
Splitting The Difference
The six-party talks on North Korean nuclear disarmament have apparently reached a breakthrough. The Chinese offered a new agreement that appears to have won over all six nations, and a fresh resolution could be signed as early as tomorrow: There is new hope that North Korea may be nearing a nuclear disarmament agreement. A compromise was reached that would give North Korea one million tons of fuel oil and electricity, ABC News' Martha Raddatz has learned. The major sticking point in the six-party-talks in Beijing had been North Korea's demand for an energy package. The country had requested two million tons of fuel oil and two million kilowatts of power before it would agree to begin shutting down its nuclear program. While the deal gives North Korea half of what it initially demanded, it's twice as much fuel oil as was offered to Kim Jong Il during the Clinton adminstration's...
February 14, 2007
North Korea Pact Has Its Critics
... and they come from across the political spectrum. From conservative hard-liners such as John Bolton to Bush critic and Presidential wanna-be Joe Biden, the White House has come under heavy criticism for different aspects of the deal: The deal that could lead North Korea to shut its main nuclear reactor came under criticism from both ends of the political spectrum immediately after it was announced on Tuesday. From the right, hardliners argued that the United States should have held out until North Korea agreed to fully declare and dismantle its entire nuclear program. From the left, Democrats argued that the deal was no better than one they said the United States could have gotten four years ago, before North Korea tested a nuclear bomb. If the agreement holds — pacts with North Korea have a history of falling through — it could put the United States and Japan on...
March 1, 2007
Monday-Morning Quarterbacking on North Korean HEU
In 2002, the US discovered evidence that North Korea bought at least 20 uranium centrifuges from Pakistan, through the AQ Khan network, even though Pyonyang had agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons. The US accused North Korea of reneging on the Agreed Framework, as it determined that the Kim regime would use the purchases to develop their own program for highly-enriched uranium (HEU). Kim's government rejected the charges, and the US suspended oil shipments to the energy-poor North. Less than a year later, Pyongyang admitted that they have been working on plutonium-based weapons for years and refused to negotiate an end to that program, a decision that resulted in last year's nuclear test and an arsenal estimated at between six to fifteen nuclear weapons. Now, new intelligence shows that the Kim regime may not have done much with the centrifuges they bought from Pakistan, and the New York Times and...
March 7, 2007
Super Mario Diplomacy
Talks with North Korea have begun on a positive note, chief negotiator Christopher Hill told the Los Angeles Times. During the 60-day preliminary period, Hill expects the Kim Jong-Il regime to make honest attempts to meet its obligations and to attempt to bridge the diplomatic divide. However, the tasks get increasingly more difficult as both sides progress through various stages, Hill warned, likening the process to a video game: American negotiator Christopher Hill said Tuesday that two days of talks with his counterpart from North Korea had been "very good" and that the plan to dismantle the country's nuclear program and normalize ties with the United States was "on the right track." Hill met with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan on Monday and Tuesday in New York to discuss the legal and political hurdles to establishing relations between their two countries, which have never made peace since...
March 22, 2007
North Korea Pulls Out Of Talks
The envoy for North Korea abruptly broke off talks today over the slowness of the transfer of $25 million locked up in an investigation into a North Korea counterfeiting operation. Kim Jong-Il's representative flew home from Beijing rather than complete the final two days of the scheduled negotiations, leading to angry denunciations from the other participants: Six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear programme have ended without progress after its chief negotiator flew home amid a row over money. The Beijing talks stalled after Pyongyang refused to discuss a deal to disable its nuclear facilities until it recovers $25m held in a Macau bank. ... A statement from the hosts, China, said the talks had been suspended with no date set for a resumption. "The parties agreed to recess and will resume the talks at the earliest opportunity," a Chinese government statement said. North Korea's chief negotiator Kim Kye-gwan made no...
April 8, 2007
US Approved North Korean Arms Sale To Ethopia
After demanding sanctions for months and years on North Korea -- and finally getting the UN to acquiesce, in some fashion -- the US allowed North Korea to sell exactly the kind of war materials we wanted sanctioned. The customer makes the difference, the New York Times reports, as the US needed to ensure that the Ethiopian military had enough materiel to assist in the war against radical Islamists: Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country’s nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials. The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside...
April 14, 2007
North Korea And The Big Mo
North Korea missed its deadline to shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, as widely expected after Pyongyang refused to act until its funds in Macau were unfrozen. The failure led the chief US negotiator to explain that momentum has dropped from the efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff: The deadline for North Korea to shut down it main nuclear reactor passed Saturday with no action taken by the communist country, leaving the top U.S. nuclear negotiator to surmise that the momentum had escaped disarmament talks. Saturday's missed deadline marked the latest setback for an agreement that when reached in February offered the prospect of disarming the world's newest declared nuclear power. North Korea successfully exploded a nuclear bomb in October. "We don't have a lot of momentum right now. That is for sure," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters before meeting his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei. The...
June 9, 2007
Is Kim Jong Ill?
Reports coming from diplomats in Pyongyang have Kim Jong-Il so debilitated that he can no longer walk 30 feet without assistance. He apparently needs heart surgery, which has kept him from making public appearances on his normal schedule: Kim Jong Il, North Korea's reclusive leader, has been so unwell that he could not walk more than 30 yards without a rest, western governments have been told. Diplomats in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, are increasingly convinced that the 65-year-old dictator needs heart surgery to restore his apparently flagging health. He has had to be accompanied by an assistant carrying a chair so that, wherever he goes, he can sit and catch his breath. ... Kim's public appearances have been curtailed this year and he has appeared in public only 23 times, compared with 42 times at the same point last year - an indication, observers say, of his declining health....
June 16, 2007
North Korea Invites Inspectors To Yongbyon
North Korea has invited inspectors to Pyongyang to start talks on the shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear breeder plant that fuels their nuclear-weapons efforts. The move indicates that the Kim Jong-Il regime has been satisfied that their sequestered $25 million will soon be returned, and it could mark the start of a denuclearization program that will leave Iran more isolated than ever: North Korea announced Saturday that it has invited U.N. inspectors to return for discussions on closing down its main nuclear reactor, suggesting the end of a long stalemate. The announcement, on the official Korean Central News Agency, indicated that the tangle over $25 million in frozen North Korean funds is nearing an end and held out promise that international efforts to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons program may be revived in the weeks ahead. The chief U.S. nuclear negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, expressed hope...
June 26, 2007
North Korea Says It Will Shut Down Reactor
Now that the US has released the $25 million in frozen funds sought by North Korea, the Kim Jong-Il regime will start shutting down its Yongbyon reactor in accordance with the six-party agreement. That process starts next week, when a hastily-arranged conference with the IAEA begins next Tuesday, assuming that the North Koreans throw up no further roadblocks to the process: North Korea said Monday that its dispute with the United States over $25 million frozen in a bank in Macao had been resolved, and that it would begin to carry out its much-delayed promise to shut down its main nuclear plant. The first test of the North Korean commitment to stop and seal its main nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, south of Pyongyang, the capital, and an adjacent fuel-reprocessing plant, will come when officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency begin five days of negotiations on Tuesday in North Korea....
July 15, 2007
Kim Shuts Down Yongbyon
North Korea announced that it has closed their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, an essential step in their nuclear disarmament that many had despaired of Kim Jong-Il ever taking. The closure follows the delivery of over 6,000 tons of fuel oil and the transfer of $25 million in previously frozen funds. The IAEA has sent its inspectors to the plant to verify its closure and to monitor its status: After four years of off-and-on negotiations, North Korea said it began closing down its main nuclear reactor Saturday, shortly after receiving a first boatload of fuel oil aid. The closure, if confirmed by U.N. inspectors, would mark the first concrete step in a carefully orchestrated denuclearization schedule that was agreed on in February, with the ultimate goal of dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons program in exchange for fuel and other economic aid, and increased diplomatic recognition. More broadly, it constituted the first...
July 24, 2007
No SmoKim
Rumors have Kim Jong-Il suffering from serious heart disease and complications of diabetes, and recent pictures indicate some significant weight loss. Patients coping with these illnesses usually get advised to avoid cigarette smoke. And when you're the Dear Leader of the DPRK, you can clear a lot of air: In most cities, smoking bans are intended to protect the non-smoking majority from the minority who insist on lighting up. In Pyongyang, the latest and most unlikely international capital to be subject to a ban, it is the other way round. The ban is to protect one man from the effects of his puffing compatriots, but since that man is the reclusive North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, it is still likely to be vigorously implemented. ... Sang Jong-min, a former South Korean MP and academic who has visited Pyongyang and monitors developments there, says he was told about the ban by...
August 6, 2007
Shots Across The DMZ
Seoul confirms that the two Korean armies exchanged short bursts of gunshots across the DMZ, one day before disarmament talks expected to set the procedure for permanently disabling the Yongbyon nuclear plant. The exchange could mean that Kim Jong-Il wants a way out of his agreement, or it could have more implications for the role of the DPRK military in the disarmament: North and South Korea briefly exchanged gunshots on Monday in the first such skirmish on their heavily armed border in just over a year, a military official said. There were no reports of any casualties. "A few shots were fired from the North, and a few warning shots were fired (back) from this side," the official with the office of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff told Reuters. The shooting came a day before the start of working level talks among regional powers, including the two Koreas,...
September 2, 2007
North Korea Agrees To End Nuclear Programs
Talks in Geneva between North Korea and the US have produced a breakthrough on nuclear disarmament. Pyongyang has declared that it will end all nuclear-weapons efforts by the end of 2007, agreeing for the first time to account for its complete list of programs: North Korea agreed in weekend talks with the United States to fully account for and disable its nuclear programs by the end of this year, negotiators said on Sunday. "We had very good, very substantive talks," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill told reporters. "One thing that we agreed on is that (North Korea) will provide a full declaration of all of their nuclear programs and will disable their nuclear programs by the end of this year, 2007." North Korea's top nuclear envoy said separately his delegation was pleased with the outcome of the talks, held to hasten the end of Pyongyang's nuclear programme, a...
September 13, 2007
That Glow In Pyongyang-Damascus Relations
The Washington Post reports that evidence of a nuclear partnership between North Korea and Syria has received top-level attention in the Bush administration. In what appears to be a reverse of the problems of 9/11, the data has bypassed much of the intelligence bureaucracy and gone straight to the top: North Korea may be cooperating with Syria on some sort of nuclear facility in Syria, according to new intelligence the United States has gathered over the past six months, sources said. The evidence, said to come primarily from Israel, includes dramatic satellite imagery that led some U.S. officials to believe that the facility could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons. The new information, particularly images received in the past 30 days, has been restricted to a few senior officials under the instructions of national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, leaving many in the intelligence community unaware of it...
October 2, 2007
The Pyongyang Summit
The leaders of the two Korean states shook hands to the cheers of thousands in Pyongyang today. The historic summit, only the second in a half-century of hostility, hopes to bridge the gulf between Koreans separated by a DMZ, and to staunch the bleeding from the catastrophic economic collapse in the North. Whether it leads to any real progress may have more to do with disarmament talks taking place elsewhere: As hundreds of thousands of North Koreans cheered and waved pink paper flowers, leaders of the two Koreas shook hands at the start of a summit that is expected to inject large amounts of money from the booming capitalist South into the struggling Stalinist North. The reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jung Il, dressed in the gray military-style jumpsuit he wears to meet the world's television cameras, looked dour as he walked with the smiling South Korean President Roh Moo...
October 3, 2007
North Korea Agrees To US Lead On Nuke Program
Kim Jong-Il has agreed to give a "complete and correct" declaration of all its nuclear programs and will allow the US to take the lead on disabling its Yongbyon reactor. The announcement, announced by representatives of North Korea and China, comes within the six-party framework and adheres to the February 13th agreement. It takes the process much closer to completion, but another issue remains open: North Korea agreed to provide a "complete and correct declaration" of its nuclear programs and will disable its facilities at its main reactor complex by Dec. 31 under an agreement reached by North Korea and five other countries released Wednesday. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei said as part of the agreement, the U.S. will take the lead in seeing that the facilities are disabled and will fund those initial activities. ... North Korea is required to disable its sole functioning reactor at Yongbyon in...
November 6, 2007
North Korea Progresses On Disablement
The process of disabling North Korea's nuclear program has gone well thus far, according to the lead American representative on the team. Sung Kim believes that they will completely disable the closed Yongbyon facility by the end of the year, as scheduled: US experts have made a "good start" to the process of dismantling North Korea's main nuclear facility, the leader of the US team has said. Sung Kim praised North Korean officials at the Yongbyon reactor, which produced weapons-grade plutonium, as being "very co-operative". Pyongyang agreed to end its nuclear programme in return for diplomatic concessions and economic aid. US officials say they hope to disable the reactor by the end of the year. The Yongbyon plant closed when the DPRK agreed to the settlement at the six-nation talks. The disablement process involves the removal and disposal of the fuel rods, of which Yongbyon had 8,000, thus necessitating some...
December 6, 2007
Dear Dear Leader?
How does one address a letter to the dictator-for-life of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Jong-Il? Would it be a "Dear Jong" letter? Maybe if one comes from Texas, a fine "Howdy, partner" would suffice. Unfortunately, we may not ever know the answer -- because George Bush wrote the letter, but has not revealed its contents: In a rare move, President Bush has sent a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the North's official news agency said Thursday without giving further details about the message. U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill delivered the letter to North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun during his recent trip to Pyongyang, the Korean Central News Agency said. North Korea has just about met its opening obligations in the agreement to end its nuclear-weapons program. Hill predicted that the Yongbyon shutdown would meet its scheduled target, which will allow the DPRK...
About
Ed Morrissey has blogged at Captain's Quarters since 2003, and has a daily radio show at BlogTalkRadio, where he serves as Political Director. Called "Captain Ed" by his readers, Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather.
My Other Blog
The Crows Nest
Dear Dear Leader?
How does one address a letter to the dictator-for-life of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Jong-Il? Would it be a "Dear Jong" letter? Maybe if one comes from Texas, a fine "Howdy, partner" would suffice. Unfortunately, we may not ever know the answer -- because George Bush wrote the letter, but has not revealed its contents:
In a rare move, President Bush has sent a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the North's official news agency said Thursday without giving further details about the message.U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill delivered the letter to North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun during his recent trip to Pyongyang, the Korean Central News Agency said.
North Korea has just about met its opening obligations in the agreement to end its nuclear-weapons program. Hill predicted that the Yongbyon shutdown would meet its scheduled target, which will allow the DPRK to start receiving the oil it desperately needs. While questions remain about Pyongyang's involvement in proliferation -- notably Syria, where it seems to have come to a screeching end -- the shutdown of the reactor complex marks a success for the diplomatic efforts over the last few years.
A personal communication at this point might help build confidence in the process for Kim. He has demanded normalization of relations between the US and the DPRK for denuclearization, but the US has played coy with that particular carrot. Bush can dangle it again by using personal connections to soften the "axis of evil" label he applied to North Korea. After all, even Ronald Reagan greeted Soviet leaders with warmth, and Nixon shook hands with Mao. A note on White House stationery seems reasonable at this point of the process.
North Korea Progresses On Disablement
The process of disabling North Korea's nuclear program has gone well thus far, according to the lead American representative on the team. Sung Kim believes that they will completely disable the closed Yongbyon facility by the end of the year, as scheduled:
US experts have made a "good start" to the process of dismantling North Korea's main nuclear facility, the leader of the US team has said.Sung Kim praised North Korean officials at the Yongbyon reactor, which produced weapons-grade plutonium, as being "very co-operative".
Pyongyang agreed to end its nuclear programme in return for diplomatic concessions and economic aid.
US officials say they hope to disable the reactor by the end of the year.
The Yongbyon plant closed when the DPRK agreed to the settlement at the six-nation talks. The disablement process involves the removal and disposal of the fuel rods, of which Yongbyon had 8,000, thus necessitating some time in completion. That will keep the facility off-line for at least a year even if the diplomatic accord reverses itself, but no indications have arisen of any such difficulty.
Of course, recent evidence in Syria indicates that Pyongyang has found another manner in which to profit from its nuclear engineering. The sudden strike by Israel against what appears to be a DPRK-built nuclear facility -- and Syria's curious lack of protest over its destruction -- show that the six-nation talks need to go farther to find out where else Kim Jong-Il marketed his wares.
There is the slim possibility that Kim divulged the location of the Syrian facility as a condition of the agreement. The juxtaposition of the six-party agreement and the strike on the facility is intriguing, if not coincidental. The US could have allowed Israel to take the heat publicly while we clucked our tongues from the sideline but knowing exactly what they would do, and why. That could explain Syria's reluctance to press its case publicly as well, if they knew that Pyongyang had given up all of the information on the site.
Even if the entire incident was coincidental, it certainly underscores the fact that any dealings with North Korea on nuclear proliferation will be temporary at best. That benefit comes directly from the agreement on the denuclearization of North Korea, which if done properly can serve as an example for multilateral pressure on other rogue nations.
North Korea Agrees To US Lead On Nuke Program
Kim Jong-Il has agreed to give a "complete and correct" declaration of all its nuclear programs and will allow the US to take the lead on disabling its Yongbyon reactor. The announcement, announced by representatives of North Korea and China, comes within the six-party framework and adheres to the February 13th agreement. It takes the process much closer to completion, but another issue remains open:
North Korea agreed to provide a "complete and correct declaration" of its nuclear programs and will disable its facilities at its main reactor complex by Dec. 31 under an agreement reached by North Korea and five other countries released Wednesday.Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei said as part of the agreement, the U.S. will take the lead in seeing that the facilities are disabled and will fund those initial activities. ...
North Korea is required to disable its sole functioning reactor at Yongbyon in exchange for economic aid and political concessions under a February deal reached through the six-party talks. In July, the North closed Yongbyon, as well as other facilities, ahead of their disablement.
Once there is a six-party agreement, Hill said on Tuesday in New York, the U.S. expects the process of disabling the reactor to get under way "in a matter of weeks." The U.S. wants the dismantling process so thorough that a nuclear facility could not be made operational for at least 12 months.
The deal represents a breakthrough in talks, which have picked up speed in recent weeks. Last month, a meeting between US and DPRK officials resulted in a verbal agreement that Pyongyang would allow Yongbyon to be scuttled in exchange for badly-needed energy and economic aid. The US insisted in working out the details in the six party framework, and the multilateral team hammered out the agreement in detail last week.
American funding for the shutdown presents little problem for the Bush administration. They would gladly pay to shut down Yongbyon and other facilities, unnamed in this report. Had the talks not succeeded, the US might have spent much more money attempting to shut them down clandestinely. A few million dollars to ensure security is a small price to pay, and besides, we can then ensure that the facilities really cannot be reused for a very long time.
One issue remains. The US wants to get the fissile material back from the DPRK, and negotiators expect a tougher time on this point. Analysts estimate that Kim has at least 110 pounds of nuclear material, as well as some nuclear weapons. It's critical for our security that we ensure no one else gets their hands on any of it -- a point driven home by the reported DPRK-Syrian facility that Israel bombed last month. Most critically, they want to make sure none of it is missing, and if it is, who wound up with it.
The DPRK Army may not be forthcoming on this issue. The US and other four nations plan on moving forward with the scuttling of Yonbgyon and other facilities, but they're holding off on the majority of economic assistance and diplomatic improvement until 2008, when the talks will address this in earnest. If Kim won't cough up the goods, we may still have a standoff.
The Pyongyang Summit
The leaders of the two Korean states shook hands to the cheers of thousands in Pyongyang today. The historic summit, only the second in a half-century of hostility, hopes to bridge the gulf between Koreans separated by a DMZ, and to staunch the bleeding from the catastrophic economic collapse in the North. Whether it leads to any real progress may have more to do with disarmament talks taking place elsewhere:
As hundreds of thousands of North Koreans cheered and waved pink paper flowers, leaders of the two Koreas shook hands at the start of a summit that is expected to inject large amounts of money from the booming capitalist South into the struggling Stalinist North.The reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jung Il, dressed in the gray military-style jumpsuit he wears to meet the world's television cameras, looked dour as he walked with the smiling South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun.
They met on a red carpet in front of a performing arts hall in the North Korean capital Pyongyang, where substantive talks in the three-day summit are expected to start on Wednesday.
The atmospherics of this summit, only the second such meeting in the more than half a century since the North and South fought an all-out war, seemed rather cooler than in the first summit in 2000.
Kim Jong-Il seemed happier at the previous summit, Blaine Harden reports, but there may be a reason for that beyond diplomatic tensions. The South Koreans paid Kim $186 million for that 2000 summit meeting, which caused a political scandal when it came to light in Seoul. This time, the government had to pledge that it would not pay for the summit, which undoubtedly explains Dear Leader's sour expression, at least in part.
Seoul expects to make some economic deals on this trip that will benefit both countries. They want to create a free-trade zone with Pyongyang, a move that would only benefit the DPRK financially. However, Kim has to worry about the liberating effects of free trade, which relies on at least some capitalist structure. The South will want to compete on an equal basis, which will mean less slave labor. The increased contacts between the two nations will also create a much larger sense of injustice among Kim's restive population -- and it could lead to a huge exodus if the DMZ gets dismantled.
Kim wants a reunification, but on his terms. Roh, weak at home and his party almost certain to lose big in the next elections, wants normalized relations. Both men seek Holy Grails that are not only completely unrealistic but mutually incompatible. The best either can hope to do is exchange some money and have an impact on public opinion in their opponents' back yards. The real action is taking place in the six-party disarmament talks, where Kim hopes to get the US off of his back for good. Until the nuclear issue gets resolved, this amounts to a side show, and both leaders know it.
That Glow In Pyongyang-Damascus Relations
The Washington Post reports that evidence of a nuclear partnership between North Korea and Syria has received top-level attention in the Bush administration. In what appears to be a reverse of the problems of 9/11, the data has bypassed much of the intelligence bureaucracy and gone straight to the top:
North Korea may be cooperating with Syria on some sort of nuclear facility in Syria, according to new intelligence the United States has gathered over the past six months, sources said. The evidence, said to come primarily from Israel, includes dramatic satellite imagery that led some U.S. officials to believe that the facility could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons.The new information, particularly images received in the past 30 days, has been restricted to a few senior officials under the instructions of national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, leaving many in the intelligence community unaware of it or uncertain of its significance, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Some cautioned that initial reports of suspicious activity are frequently reevaluated over time and were skeptical that North Korea and Syria, which have cooperated on missile technology, would have a joint venture in the nuclear arena. ...
In talks in Beijing in March 2003, a North Korean official pulled aside his American counterpart and threatened to "transfer" nuclear material to other countries. President Bush has said that passing North Korean nuclear technology to other parties would cross the line.
The story began when Syria complained of an Israeli overflight in the north end of their country, later adding that the Israeli jets had "dropped ordnance" on Syrian territory. The Israelis refused to confirm or deny the allegation, a rather significant silence considering the nature of Syria's claims. Yesterday, word started getting around about a potential "unconventional weapons" site -- and oddly, North Korea protested the attack in general terms.
Up to now, Syria has been seen as a low risk for nuclear proliferation. They don't have a lot of cash for nuclear research, although they do have a small reactor system for that purpose. They also know that the US would find Syria a much easier target than Iran if Bashar Assad decided to indulge in the same kind of brinksmanship as Teheran. The rewards haven't outweighed the costs, at least not until now.
Kim Jong-Il needs cash badly, and it's not unthinkable that he would sell his nation's low-rent experience for some hard currency. Even though the DPRK couldn't successfully test its own nuclear weapons, the research would still be valuable to another nation looking for a nuclear starter kit. With Israel pressuring Syria from the south and the US to the east in Iraq, Assad may have scrounged up enough money to get Kim to start transferring his program, which is about to come to a close on the Korean peninsula.
An Israeli strike would have ended all of that. The US may be breathing a little easier after what looks like a second Osirak strike by the Israeli military.
North Korea Agrees To End Nuclear Programs
Talks in Geneva between North Korea and the US have produced a breakthrough on nuclear disarmament. Pyongyang has declared that it will end all nuclear-weapons efforts by the end of 2007, agreeing for the first time to account for its complete list of programs:
North Korea agreed in weekend talks with the United States to fully account for and disable its nuclear programs by the end of this year, negotiators said on Sunday."We had very good, very substantive talks," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill told reporters. "One thing that we agreed on is that (North Korea) will provide a full declaration of all of their nuclear programs and will disable their nuclear programs by the end of this year, 2007."
North Korea's top nuclear envoy said separately his delegation was pleased with the outcome of the talks, held to hasten the end of Pyongyang's nuclear programme, a target agreed to in principle in 2005 in exchange for diplomatic and economic benefits.
"We agreed about many things," Kim Kye-gwan, speaking in Korean, told reporters. "We made it clear, we showed clear willingness to declare and dismantle all nuclear facilities."
Neither side revealed what the DPRK received in return for its capitulation, but some carrots have been long proferred by the other five parties in the talks. Kim Jong-Il has demanded economic assistance and normalization of relations with the US for decades, and certainly would expect to receive both in exchange for shutting down his nukes. That would likely end the war between the two Koreas, which has been ongoing for almost sixty years and only quieted by a truce.
The US and the other nations should ensure that verification is a big part of the agreement. The Bush administration has insisted on better verification regimes than the previous Agreed Framework that allowed Pyongyang to build its nuclear program in secret. That is especially necessary now that the US has apparently agreed to take North Korea off its list of terror sponsoring nations, which will allow the DPRK to start selling its arms openly, and buying even more for themselves.
The DPRK will meet with Japan in a couple of weeks in Mongolia to reach agreement on side issues, especially on the abductions of Japanese nationals over several decades. If that proceeds well, the six-party negotiators will meet once more immediately afterwards to ratify all agreements. If this succeeds, it will increase pressure on the other major known nuclear dabbler, Iran, which just announced an increase of operational centrifuges to 3,000. That can't be good news for the mullahcracy, who had tried coordination with the DRPK as a means to keep the international pressure split.
A success with North Korea would give Bush some momentum in foreign policy, and a real accomplishment for the last months of his term. Hopefully it will represent a real and peaceful victory for the US and pave the way towards freedom for the people starving on the Korean peninsula.
Shots Across The DMZ
Seoul confirms that the two Korean armies exchanged short bursts of gunshots across the DMZ, one day before disarmament talks expected to set the procedure for permanently disabling the Yongbyon nuclear plant. The exchange could mean that Kim Jong-Il wants a way out of his agreement, or it could have more implications for the role of the DPRK military in the disarmament:
North and South Korea briefly exchanged gunshots on Monday in the first such skirmish on their heavily armed border in just over a year, a military official said.There were no reports of any casualties.
"A few shots were fired from the North, and a few warning shots were fired (back) from this side," the official with the office of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff told Reuters.
The shooting came a day before the start of working level talks among regional powers, including the two Koreas, in the South Korean side of the buffer zone that has divided the peninsula for more than half a century.
The talks are part of a wider international effort to persuade North Korea to end its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for aid.
South Korea says it has detected no changes in the readiness posture of the North after the shooting, which means that Kim wasn't looking to pick a fight. After all, it could have been an accident, or a case of one soldier losing control of himself. This could just be a bad coincidence.
If not, Reuters suggests that the exchange could have been intended to keep the DPRK's troops focused and disciplined. The agreement to disarm comes as a blow to the North, which had celebrated its nuclear test as a major achievement for the nation. Now that the Kim regime has agreed in principle to abandon the program, morale in the military rank and file could be dangerously low. A non-lethal exchange across the DMZ may give them something on which to focus.
Like everything else involving Kim Jong-Il, it's mystifying. Will it portend a reversal on the agreement? We should find out tomorrow, but it wouldn't be the first time Kim staged something like this to give himself an excuse to walk out of the talks.
No SmoKim
Rumors have Kim Jong-Il suffering from serious heart disease and complications of diabetes, and recent pictures indicate some significant weight loss. Patients coping with these illnesses usually get advised to avoid cigarette smoke. And when you're the Dear Leader of the DPRK, you can clear a lot of air:
In most cities, smoking bans are intended to protect the non-smoking majority from the minority who insist on lighting up.In Pyongyang, the latest and most unlikely international capital to be subject to a ban, it is the other way round.
The ban is to protect one man from the effects of his puffing compatriots, but since that man is the reclusive North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, it is still likely to be vigorously implemented. ...
Sang Jong-min, a former South Korean MP and academic who has visited Pyongyang and monitors developments there, says he was told about the ban by a Chinese diplomat. "Kim's home, office and all other places he goes to have been designated as non-smoking areas. Even the highest-ranking officials are going outdoors to smoke,” he said.
Even though Kim may run the world's biggest nanny state, smoking has been one of the few vices allowed by leadership to the people. Estimates of smokers in the DPRK run as high as 40%. Servicing those 9 million smokers is one of the only Western companies to invest in Kim's dictatorship, British American Tobacco, which produces the cigarettes in the DPRK.
Kim himself used to smoke until his health began to fail. Now that he has ended his own habit, he apparently wants everyone else to smoke outside. Will the new push towards respiratory health kill one of the few industries to actually work inside the DPRK? It's hard to tell, but if Kim presses the ban, at least the starving millions in his country won't have to endure the horrors of second-hand smoke.
Kim Shuts Down Yongbyon
North Korea announced that it has closed their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, an essential step in their nuclear disarmament that many had despaired of Kim Jong-Il ever taking. The closure follows the delivery of over 6,000 tons of fuel oil and the transfer of $25 million in previously frozen funds. The IAEA has sent its inspectors to the plant to verify its closure and to monitor its status:
After four years of off-and-on negotiations, North Korea said it began closing down its main nuclear reactor Saturday, shortly after receiving a first boatload of fuel oil aid.The closure, if confirmed by U.N. inspectors, would mark the first concrete step in a carefully orchestrated denuclearization schedule that was agreed on in February, with the ultimate goal of dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons program in exchange for fuel and other economic aid, and increased diplomatic recognition.
More broadly, it constituted the first on-the-ground accomplishment of six-nation negotiations that have been grinding away with little progress since 2003 under Chinese sponsorship. The talks -- including North and South Korea, Russia, Japan, the United States and China -- are likely to resume next week in Beijing to emphasize the parties' resolve to carry out the rest of the February agreement and eventually create a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.
If the IAEA confirms the shutdown, it will be the most significant step taken by the DPRK since they admitted to cheating on nuclear-weapons development in 2002. That caused the Bush administration to declare the 1994 Agreed Framework a dead letter and ended direct negotiations between the US and the Kim regime.
Instead, George Bush insisted on multilateral talks, a process which has come under heavy criticism over the last few years, even while the same critics attacked the adminstration for its supposed unilateralism in Iraq and the Middle East. This approach appears to have paid off, however. Bush's engagement of China, with all of its economic and diplomatic leverage in Pyongyang, forced Kim to take the talks seriously. An angry China would create a disaster for Kim, as his nation already starves and can hardly afford to become even more economically isolated. After testing one nuclear device, apparently to save a little face -- it turned out to be mostly a dud -- Kim wound up capitulating his nuclear program in the talks.
Still, we've been down this road before with Kim. No one expected him to just walk away from his nukes in the same manner Moammar Ghaddafi did in Libya in the wake of Saddam Hussein's capture. The closure of Yongbyon is very significant in this regard. If Kim wanted to continue manufacturing nukes, he'd need Yongbyon to produce the fissile material. Once that closure becomes permanent, which the IAEA will confirm through the destruction of the plant's internal facilities, Kim will be out of the nuke manufacturing business -- at least for plutonium-based weapons.
In other words, this is a good start, and a rather significant win for the US and the Bush administration. The highly-flawed Agreed Framework has been replaced by a system that requires verification and uses the pressure of China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia to enforce the agreement. If the rest of the process runs as smoothly, we may have defanged the DPRK and might even be on our way to opening up the last of the Stalinist regimes.
North Korea Says It Will Shut Down Reactor
Now that the US has released the $25 million in frozen funds sought by North Korea, the Kim Jong-Il regime will start shutting down its Yongbyon reactor in accordance with the six-party agreement. That process starts next week, when a hastily-arranged conference with the IAEA begins next Tuesday, assuming that the North Koreans throw up no further roadblocks to the process:
North Korea said Monday that its dispute with the United States over $25 million frozen in a bank in Macao had been resolved, and that it would begin to carry out its much-delayed promise to shut down its main nuclear plant.The first test of the North Korean commitment to stop and seal its main nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, south of Pyongyang, the capital, and an adjacent fuel-reprocessing plant, will come when officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency begin five days of negotiations on Tuesday in North Korea.
The agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring arm, and North Korean officials will discuss a timetable for shutting down the reactor and technical details of monitoring and verification. Ever since the first suspicion of a North Korean nuclear weapons program surfaced in the early 1990s, the agency and North Korea have bickered over how much access the agency should have to nuclear facilities and data in the isolated country.
This could represent a major foreign-policy victory for the Bush administration, if it goes according to plan. Certainly the White House could use some good news, and if it can verifiably end operations at Yongbyon and close out Pyongyang's plutonium program, it will deserve the credit. They stuck to a multilateral formula that appears to have produced real results with verification, an improvement over previous efforts.
This agreement still leaves questions about North Korea's reported highly-enriched uranium program, questions which US negotiator Christopher Hill left open last week:
If Hill raised the ticklish issue of North Korea's highly enriched uranium (HEU) program in any detail, he was not letting on. And if he came up with a proposal for the US simply to buy up North Korea's nuclear inventory, as widely reported in South Korea, he was not about to confirm or deny anything to that effect.Hill did, however, appear anxious to convey the impression of having talked about highly enriched uranium without actually using the term. It was, after all, the HEU issue that torpedoed the Geneva agreement of 1994 when his predecessor, James Kelly, alleged after visiting Pyongyang nearly five years ago that a top North Korean had indeed acknowledged the existence of a secret HEU program.
"We did discuss the need to have a comprehensive list of all nuclear programs," said Hill. For good measure, he added, "And, of course, all means all."
Did we buy up Kim's nuclear inventory as part of the deal? That wouldn't have been a bad idea, as long as we could verify that he didn't produce any more nuclear material to use in a later extortion scheme. It would have provided Pyongyang with some needed hard currency and perhaps a little face-saving dodge to soothe the humiliation of giving up his nuclear program under pressure from the entire Pacific Rim.
The US sweetened the deal in two subtle ways. First, we sent Hill to North Korea for some direct negotiations, which Kim wanted to establish the DPRK as a significant entity, at least in his own mind. Hill apparently allowed the North Koreans to set the timing and the agenda to show even more deference. Secondly, when we did release the frozen funds, we did so through North Korean bank accounts to establish their bona fides in the international banking system. Both efforts appealed to what seems like the biggest case of an inferiority complex outside of radical Islam.
If these efforts pay off in a denuclearized North Korea, they amount to a cheap price to pay indeed. If they do not, we have not lost much in the transaction, and we can continue to pressure Kim to change, or the DPRK to change leaders.
North Korea Invites Inspectors To Yongbyon
North Korea has invited inspectors to Pyongyang to start talks on the shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear breeder plant that fuels their nuclear-weapons efforts. The move indicates that the Kim Jong-Il regime has been satisfied that their sequestered $25 million will soon be returned, and it could mark the start of a denuclearization program that will leave Iran more isolated than ever:
North Korea announced Saturday that it has invited U.N. inspectors to return for discussions on closing down its main nuclear reactor, suggesting the end of a long stalemate.The announcement, on the official Korean Central News Agency, indicated that the tangle over $25 million in frozen North Korean funds is nearing an end and held out promise that international efforts to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons program may be revived in the weeks ahead.
The chief U.S. nuclear negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, expressed hope the Chinese-sponsored denuclearization talks could start up again in July. He told reporters in Ulan Bator, where he attended a conference, that he will be visiting Beijing and other Asian capitals next week to discuss a new round of negotiations.
Transfer of the blocked funds to North Korea "has reached its final phase," the North Korean agency said, and this opens the way for arrival of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to supervise "suspension of the operation of nuclear facilities" at Yongbyon. In a letter to its director, Mohamed El Baradei, the IAEA was invited to send in a working-level team to make the arrangements, the agency added. It did not specify when they would be expected to travel to North Korea.
This announcement comes on the heels of another snag involving the money. The release of the funds turned into a complicated process in order to avoid money-laundering charges. Macau transferred the funds to Russia instead of directly to North Korea, with the blessing of the US. Russia, however, held the funds pending explicit guarantees that the US would not retaliate against Russia for transferring the funds to North Korea. At least so far, they have not transferred the money to the Russian commercial bank that services the Kim regime.
Apparently, though, the move from Macau to Russia has given Kim enough assurance to proceed with the agreement reached in February. Once the money hits the account and the other five parties to the talks give North Korea 50,000 tons of fuel oil, Kim will start shutting down Yongbyon. This may start as soon as next month, when the nations involved start final negotiations on the inspection team and the scuttling process for Yongbyon.
Granted, events could overtake this step -- that's been the entire experience of the North Korean engagement. However, this is as close as we have come to a verifiable shutdown of Kim's main nuclear resource. If it succeeds, we will have only Iran left as a rogue nation pursuing nuclear weapons, and the Iranians will have one less resource to use for their progress.
Is Kim Jong Ill?
Reports coming from diplomats in Pyongyang have Kim Jong-Il so debilitated that he can no longer walk 30 feet without assistance. He apparently needs heart surgery, which has kept him from making public appearances on his normal schedule:
Kim Jong Il, North Korea's reclusive leader, has been so unwell that he could not walk more than 30 yards without a rest, western governments have been told.Diplomats in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, are increasingly convinced that the 65-year-old dictator needs heart surgery to restore his apparently flagging health. He has had to be accompanied by an assistant carrying a chair so that, wherever he goes, he can sit and catch his breath. ...
Kim's public appearances have been curtailed this year and he has appeared in public only 23 times, compared with 42 times at the same point last year - an indication, observers say, of his declining health. The suggestion that he underwent an operation offered an apparent explanation for his recent month-long disappearance from public view.
Last month, German cardiac specialists flew into Pyongyang, which heightened speculation about Kim's health. They later claimed that they treated a scientist, a nurse, and three laborers, but a German team of cardiac specialists doesn't come cheap. It would have been easier for Kim to send the five to Germany if those North Koreans needed the help -- and it stretches the imagination that Kim would have that much concern over a nurse and three workers.
Diplomats also report that Kim has begun to rely on his two sons more than usual. They speculate that Kim may want to test them now for the succession, while he's around to see how they perform. Undoubtedly he wants to ensure a smooth transfer of power to someone in his own family, although the military has made moves towards coups in the past. They will likely resist a furtherance of Kim's dynasty, especially while their nation starves.
Kim will also probably want to get more medical assistance for himself, but he will have to do that within North Korea. The UN sanctions on the DPRK restricts the international movement of Dear Leader while he pursues nuclear weapons. On the bright side, Cuba probably won't honor the sanctions, and Kim can take advantage of the superior medical system Castro offers, except when Castro needs life-saving attention himself.
North Korea And The Big Mo
North Korea missed its deadline to shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, as widely expected after Pyongyang refused to act until its funds in Macau were unfrozen. The failure led the chief US negotiator to explain that momentum has dropped from the efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff:
The deadline for North Korea to shut down it main nuclear reactor passed Saturday with no action taken by the communist country, leaving the top U.S. nuclear negotiator to surmise that the momentum had escaped disarmament talks.Saturday's missed deadline marked the latest setback for an agreement that when reached in February offered the prospect of disarming the world's newest declared nuclear power. North Korea successfully exploded a nuclear bomb in October.
"We don't have a lot of momentum right now. That is for sure," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters before meeting his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei.
The disarmament plan, reached after nearly four years of arduous negotiations, laid out a timetable for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs. The plan was unexpectedly disrupted by a dispute over frozen North Korean funds in a Macau bank that Washington said this past week was finally resolved.
The US did unfreeze the funds during the week after a long and complicated process finally ended. The Bush administration's investigation had taken a life of its own and proved highly effective at pressuring Kim Jong-Il's regime, but it also proved tougher to end than to begun. The North Koreans still say they have not confirmed the release, but they also say that they will meet their obligations under the agreement when they do.
Those involved knew all week that the DPRK could not possibly meet the deadline. It takes several days to safely scuttle a nuclear reactor. The process could take as long as a couple of weeks to verify its closure, which means we will have to push this out until the end of April. If the DPRK does not have Yongbyon shut down by that time, it means that Kim has pulled a $25 million three-card Monty on the US, Japan, and the other six-nation partners.
Hill makes clear that he has no patience beyond that. "Another month is not in my constitution," he told reporters. Right now, though, the North Koreans have little incentive to move fast. It took the US longer than the 30 days it pledged to resolve the banking issue, and they can point to that slipped milestone as an excuse for their own. We can hold up the delivery of fuel oil, and probably will, but other than that we have as much leverage as momentum at this point.
US Approved North Korean Arms Sale To Ethopia
After demanding sanctions for months and years on North Korea -- and finally getting the UN to acquiesce, in some fashion -- the US allowed North Korea to sell exactly the kind of war materials we wanted sanctioned. The customer makes the difference, the New York Times reports, as the US needed to ensure that the Ethiopian military had enough materiel to assist in the war against radical Islamists:
Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country’s nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.
American officials said that they were still encouraging Ethiopia to wean itself from its longstanding reliance on North Korea for cheap Soviet-era military equipment to supply its armed forces and that Ethiopian officials appeared receptive. But the arms deal is an example of the compromises that result from the clash of two foreign policy absolutes: the Bush administration’s commitment to fighting Islamic radicalism and its effort to starve the North Korean government of money it could use to build up its nuclear weapons program. ...
It is also not the first time that the Bush administration has made an exception for allies in their dealings with North Korea. In 2002, Spain intercepted a ship carrying Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen. At the time, Yemen was working with the United States to hunt members of Al Qaeda operating within its borders, and after its government protested, the United States asked that the freighter be released. Yemen said at the time that it was the last shipment from an earlier missile purchase and would not be repeated.
Rock, meet hard place. The US could not sell the necessary arms to Ethiopia, either because of trade restrictions or because of the higher cost. The North Koreans specialize in cheap knock-offs of Soviet-era equipment, which fits the budget of Ethiopia at the moment. Until they can either afford to pay more or find another source for their systems, the Ethiopians claimed they had little choice but to buy from North Korea.
Assuming this report is the complete truth -- an assumption one makes with the Times at one's peril -- the Bush administration will have some explaining to do to its partners in the Korean crisis. The issue appears to have started at the State Department, which apparently pushed for the sale on behalf of its Ethiopian contacts. John Bolton scolded State for allowing this shipment, and warned against "clientitis" at Foggy Bottom, the tendency to sympathize too much with the clients in other nations at the expense of American policy.
Other nations will rightly ask where to draw the lines on these sanctions. If the trade had come as part of an overall solution to the Korean crisis, then that might have made it tolerable. In January, though, Kim Jong-Il was still dragging his heels about coming to the table. Even now, the North Koreans refuse to budge until we unfreeze the $25 million in funds that relate to North Korea's counterfeiting operation. It does not appear that the sale to Ethiopia pushed Pyongyang in any appreciable direction towards resolving the nuclear standoff.
If we break the sanctions we ourselves demanded for our own strategic purposes, then we leave the door open to other nations to do the same for their own purposes. It's hard to complain about other nations breaking the rather weak sanctions when we arrange for violations ourselves. The Ethiopian sale is a mistake, as John Bolton said, that should not be repeated, and should be repudiated.
North Korea Pulls Out Of Talks
The envoy for North Korea abruptly broke off talks today over the slowness of the transfer of $25 million locked up in an investigation into a North Korea counterfeiting operation. Kim Jong-Il's representative flew home from Beijing rather than complete the final two days of the scheduled negotiations, leading to angry denunciations from the other participants:
Six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear programme have ended without progress after its chief negotiator flew home amid a row over money.The Beijing talks stalled after Pyongyang refused to discuss a deal to disable its nuclear facilities until it recovers $25m held in a Macau bank. ...
A statement from the hosts, China, said the talks had been suspended with no date set for a resumption.
"The parties agreed to recess and will resume the talks at the earliest opportunity," a Chinese government statement said.
North Korea's chief negotiator Kim Kye-gwan made no comment as he arrived at Beijing's airport. An Air Koryo flight bound for the North Korean capital Pyongyang left soon afterwards.
The money has sat in the Macau bank ever since the US froze it out of the international network for money laundering in connection with Kim's counterfeiting operation. North Korea has produced high-quality fakes of American $100 notes, and may have dumped as much as a billion dollars' worth of them into the global markets. It provided hard currency for a regime on the brink of starvation, and the Macau bank was the only outlet for the ring. The US agreed to free the money and transfer it to China, but Pyongyang got impatient with the process and quit over it.
That has not set well with the other nations at the table. China has not made any statements about it, probably hoping to keep Pyongyang involved. The Japanese, who have had to allow their issues to get back-burnered by this process, called Kim's withdrawal a "shame" and a "waste", considering the fact that everyone had gathered to resolve their issues. Christopher Hill, who brokered the deal mainly through back-channel negotiations, spoke more bluntly. "The day I'm able to explain to you North Korean thinking is probably the day I've been in this process too long," he told reporters.
Who gets hurt by this? One has to think that the big loser is North Korea. Not only do they not get their money -- the US will surely not transfer the funds nor lift the sanctions on Kim's bank now -- but they don't get their oil, either. Their nuclear program is already a bust, and they face increased sanctions from this process, especially given the anger they left at the table.
The big winner of a North Korean bug-out could be George Bush, depending on how the US handles this. No one here had much confidence in the agreement reached with the Kim regime, considering it another version of the Agreed Framework with only incremental improvements in verification. It left wide gaps on the nuclear issue, including the disposition of extant nuclear weapons and any highly-enriched-uranium work the regime had done. Now, with North Korea reneging on their initial agreement, the Bush administration can say that they tried to reach a peaceful settlement with Kim, bending over backwards to meet his concerns -- but that Kim will not negotiate in good faith under any conditions.
Unless Kim returns quickly to the table, expect Japan and the US to start putting even more economic and military pressure on Pyongyang in the coming weeks.
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