April 30th, 2013 at 8:31 am » Comments (4)

It doesn’t appear that the North Koreans are playing the hostage card yet with these remaining Kaesong Industrial Complex workers: North Korea on Monday allowed all but seven South Koreans to return home from a suspended joint industrial park in the communist country that faces closure amid high tensions on the volatile Korean Peninsula, officials said. The last batch of 50 South Koreans had originally been scheduled to return home earlier in the day but seven had to stay behind to settle accounting and other unresolved matters, said the Unification
Read the Rest…

April 30th, 2013 at 3:04 am » Comments (4)

Why is it that whenever the media decides to run their puff pieces on authoritarian supposed socialist countries they always have to point out that they have free health care?: The heart of this city, once famous for its Dickensian darkness, now pulsates with neon. Glossy new construction downtown has altered the Pyongyang skyline. Inside supermarkets where shopgirls wear faux French designer labels, people with money can buy Italian wine, Swiss chocolates, kiwifruit imported from New Zealand and fresh-baked croissants. They can get facials, lie in tanning booths, play a
Read the Rest…

April 29th, 2013 at 6:51 pm » Comments (6)

I have to say that I do like how President Park Geun-hye called the North Korean’s bluff in regards to the Kaesong Industrial Complex: South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Monday lashed out at North Korea, calling it “too unpredictable” over its unilateral suspension of a jointly run factory complex, saying there is nothing Pyongyang can achieve unless it becomes responsible about its promises. Park made the remark during a meeting with two U.S. lawmakers — Rep. Steve Chabot, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia and the
Read the Rest…

April 29th, 2013 at 8:38 am » Comments (3)

Here is an update on the efforts to track North Korea’s cash supply: A huge network of secret slush funds owned by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have been discovered during a joint U.S.-South Korea investigation, Seoul-based newspaper Chosun Ilbo reports. As much as $5 billion linked to Kim was found in foreign bank accounts in other people’s names, the paper reported. Intelligence agencies reportedly believe that North Korean accounts exist in Austria, China, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Russia, Singapore and Switzerland. “Since the launch of the Lee Myung-bak administration in February
Read the Rest…

April 26th, 2013 at 7:46 am » Comments (9)

It amazes me the length the North Korean engagement crowd will go to push their viewpoint that if we just talk and give more to the North Koreans they will behave.  History has shown them wrong time and again and yet here is Joel Witt in Foreign Policy pushing this same failed engagement strategy: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Asia is an important opportunity to start fashioning an off-ramp from the crisis on the Korean peninsula. “We are seeking a partner to deal with in a rational
Read the Rest…

April 26th, 2013 at 3:39 am » Comments (3)

I can only hope that this is the end of the near slave labor operation known as the Kaesong Industrial Complex, but I would be surprised if the North Koreans allow $2 billion in annual trade at the complex that nets the Kim regime $90 million in hard currency every year to completely go under: South Korea will pull out all remaining workers from a jointly run industrial zone in North Korea, it said on Friday, after Pyongyang rejected a call for formal talks to end a standoff that led
Read the Rest…

April 24th, 2013 at 6:05 pm » Comments (6)

Good luck with this: WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will press China over its forcible repatriation of refugees to North Korea, a U.S. human rights envoy said Monday. He likened the North’s vast gulag to that operated by the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Robert King is among U.S. officials meeting in Washington this week with China’s envoy on Korean affairs, Wu Dawei. The Obama administration is looking for Beijing to use its leverage over its North Korean ally to tamp down its provocative behavior and move toward abandoning
Read the Rest…

April 20th, 2013 at 4:08 am » Comments (6)

The North Koreans are once again getting closer to setting the conditions for deescalation since they are now saying they are willing to negotiate disarmament and not denuclearization: North Korea reiterated on Saturday that it would not give up its nuclear weapons, rejecting a U.S. condition for talks although it said it was willing to discuss disarmament. North Korea, in a sign of a possible end to weeks of heightened hostility on the Korean peninsula, offered the United States and South Korea a list of conditions on Thursday for talks,
Read the Rest…

April 19th, 2013 at 8:56 am » Comments (13)

That is what Tom Coyner who publish the Korea Economic Reader thinks in this Joong Ang Ilbo article: Image of Little John Tactical Nuke from Wikipedia. All of which argues that the United States and its allies need to come up with a substantial departure from past diplomatic strategies. Once more we witness a U.S. secretary of state swinging through the region, conferring with heads of state and assuring that substantial discussions have been made. So far, there is no news whether there is a new strategy more responsive to
Read the Rest…

April 18th, 2013 at 7:52 am » Comments (7)

It looks like this is all going to play out like I and other that follow North Korea closely thought it would: North Korea offered the United States and South Korea a list of conditions on Thursday for talks, including the lifting of U.N. sanctions, signalling a possible end to weeks of warlike hostility on the Korean peninsula. The North Korea’s top military body also said in a statement the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula would begin when the United States removed nuclear weapons that the isolated state says Washington
Read the Rest…