Moral Surrender to Pyongyang
By Michael Gerson (THE WASHINGTON POST, 19/12/08):
It is not unprecedented for a diplomat to have starkly different views from the president he serves. After George Washington’s administration negotiated Jay’s Treaty with Britain, the Thomas Jefferson faction in the government went into disloyal revolt. James Monroe — Jefferson’s protege and the American minister to France — urged French officials to disregard all messages from the president and assured them that they were free to retaliate against American shipping.
The most recent example of such vigorous, diplomatic independence would be Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the architect of America’s North Korea policy. It…
Las dificultades de la desnuclearización de Corea del Norte y la evolución de la aproximación estadounidense
Por Gracia Abad Quintanal, investigadora invitada, Royal Holloway, Universidad de Londres (REAL INSTITUTO ELCANO, 20/10/08):
Tema: Este ARI trata de la interrupción del desmantelamiento del reactor de Yongbyon por Corea del Norte, los desacuerdos en relación con la verificación y la evolución de la política estadounidense hacia la República Popular Democrática de Corea.
Resumen: A mediados de agosto, Corea del Norte tomó la decisión de interrumpir el desmantelamiento del reactor de Yongbyon en respuesta a la decisión estadounidense de no retirar al país asiático de la lista de Estados que promueven el terrorismo hasta que este último consintiera en un sistema de verificación…
In Korea, Rituals of Absurdity
By Anne Applebaum (THE WASHINGTON POST, 14/10/08):
Step out of the bus, walk across the courtyard, stop in front of the low-built, blue buildings: Here, in the Joint Security Area — a neutral space between North and South Korea, under U.N. jurisdiction since the 1953 armistice — is one of the world’s weirdest scenes. About a hundred yards ahead, North Korean soldiers are watching from a balcony, expressionless: Walk toward them and you’ve defected. Directly behind, equally expressionless South Korean soldiers in sunglasses stand with their arms at their sides, fists curled: If someone walks toward us, they may shoot.
No less odd a…
Delisting North Korea
By Victor Cha, director of Asian studies at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Pacific Council. He was deputy head of the U.S. delegation for the six-party talks and director of Asian affairs on the National Security Council from 2004 to 2007 (THE WASHINGTON POST, 13/10/08):
Many will criticize the Bush administration’s decision to remove North Korea from the terrorism blacklist last weekend, over the objections of close U.S. ally Japan, as a Hail Mary pass by an administration desperate for good news. Did President Bush, reeling from the U.S. financial meltdown and still struggling to achieve success in…
North Korea’s Stacked Deck
By Art Brown, a 25-year veteran of the C.I.A. and the head of the Asia division of the agency’s clandestine service from 2003 to 2005 (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 15/07/08):
China’s announcement on Saturday that negotiators have agreed on a blueprint for verifying North Korea’s nuclear disarmament is being seen as the latest in a string of hopeful signs. For a while, the drumbeat in Washington has been that the so-called six-party talks are going well and the North Korean nuclear program is well on its way to being contained. If only that were true.
In fact, the Kim Jong-il regime is…
Pay heed to Pyongyang
By Lawrence Korb, assistant secretary of defence under Reagan and a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress and Sean Duggan, a research associate at the Centre for American Progress (THE GUARDIAN, 09/07/08):
The Bush administration is to be commended for completing a deal with North Korea that persuaded the reclusive regime to disclose details of its nuclear power and nuclear weapons capabilities. But, had George Bush been willing to negotiate six years earlier, the US and its partners would have got a better deal and the world would be more secure.
In the summer of 2002, long before Pyongyang had…
The Right Path With N. Korea
By Siegfried S. Hecker and William J. Perry. Both are with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Hecker was director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986 through 1997. Perry was secretary of defense from 1994 through 1997 (THE WASHINGTON POST, 13/05/08):
The Bush administration’s North Korea strategy is being criticized from the right and the left for letting Pyongyang off the hook. Some advocate scuttling the six-party talks. Others suggest slowing our own compliance with the agreement to get North Korea to make a full declaration of its nuclear program first. We disagree with both positions.…
Yielding To N. Korea Too Often
By Winston Lord and Leslie H. Gelb. Winstoln Lord was ambassador to China under President Ronald Reagan and assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific under President Bill Clinton. Leslie H. Gelb was assistant secretary of state for politico-military affairs under President Jimmy Carter and is a board senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (THE WASHINGTON POST, 26/04/08):
The Bush administration gives plausible reasons for a bad nuclear deal with North Korea.
The proposed deal would lift key U.S. legal sanctions against the North while Pyongyang shelves many of the commitments it made in a prior agreement.
The United…
Libertad y música
Por Ian Buruma, profesor de Derechos Humanos en el Bard College. Su último libro es Asesinato en Amsterdam. La muerte de Theo van Gogh © Project Syndicate, 2008. Traducción: Carlos Manzano (LA VANGUARDIA, 22/03/08):
Corea del Norte es una de las dictaduras más opresivas, cerradas y brutales del mundo. Tal vez sea el último ejemplo vivo de totalitarismo puro: control por el Estado de todos los aspectos de la vida humana. ¿Es semejante país el lugar idóneo para que actúe una orquesta occidental? ¿Puede alguien imaginar a la Filarmónica de Nueva York, que actuó con gran aclamación en Pyongyang, haciéndolo para Stalin…
The music of liberation
By Ian Buruma, professor of human rights at Bard College, New York (THE GUARDIAN, 08/03/04):
North Korea is one of the world’s most oppressive and closed dictatorships. It is perhaps the last living example of pure totalitarianism - control of the state over every aspect of human life. Is such a place the right venue for a western orchestra? Can one imagine the New York Philharmonic, which performed to great acclaim in Pyongyang, entertaining Stalin or Hitler?
All totalitarian systems have one thing in common: by crushing all forms of political expression except adulation of the regime, they make everything political. There…
Eric Clapton is a musical diplomat
By Ben Macintyre (THE TIMES, 07/03/08):
For the past six decades, North Korean music lovers have had little to sing about. Like everything else in that dark and shuttered country, music is part of the system of communist oppression presided over by Kim Jong Il: “Dear Leader”, tyrant and, inevitably, musical expert.
Mr Kim is said to compose his own music, of a spectacularly dreary and self-idolising sort. Back in 1968 he set down the inviolable principles of North Korean music: there should be no “uproarious Western music”, but only “lively and militant marches” celebrating his father, Kim Il Sung.
The last concert that…
How Famine Changed N. Korea
By Kay Seok, the North Korea researcher for Human Rights Watch (THE WASHINGTON POST, 26/02/08):
Today in Pyongyang, the New York Philharmonic, the most prominent U.S. cultural institution ever to visit North Korea, performs live on state TV and radio. Many observers have cautiously dubbed this a prelude to a thaw between Washington and Pyongyang. But for North Koreans, a very real thaw, unseen by the musicians, has been transforming life for years.
A famine that killed a million people in the 1990s has driven fundamental societal changes in North Korea. As people struggled to survive, they were forced to defy many…
In North Korea, Process Over Progress
By Michael Gerson (THE WASHINGTON POST, 01/02/08):
By my count, at least five former high-level Bush administration officials are deeply disillusioned with the current policy on North Korea.
This brewing discontent broke into open revolt two weeks ago when Jay Lefkowitz, the special envoy on North Korean human rights, committed the gaffe of stating the obvious: North Korea is not serious about nuclear disarmament. The current six-party talks will do little to change that fact. And the price we are paying to pursue those talks is silence about the suffering of a brutalized, friendless people.
Afterward, even some of Lefkowitz’s supporters complained that he…
What A.Q. Khan Knows
By Selig S. Harrison, director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy. He has visited North Korea 10 times and is the author of Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement. He has covered Pakistan since 1951, including for The Post (THE WASHINGTON POST, 31/01/08):
Either Kim Jong Il or Pervez Musharraf is lying about whether Pakistan’s Dr. Strangelove, Abdul Qadeer Khan, gave centrifuges to North Korea for uranium enrichment. Unless the truth can be established, the hitherto-promising denuclearization negotiations with Pyongyang are likely to collapse.
Khan has been shielded from foreign interrogators since his arrest three years ago for running…
Slowly, but Surely, Pyongyang Is Moving
By David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security and Jacqueline Shire, a senior analyst at ISIS and a former State Department foreign affairs officer (THE WASHINGTON POST, 24/01/08):
The optimism with which the October agreement with North Korea was welcomed has faded amid accusations that the North again is not keeping its commitments. First came word that “disablement” of nuclear facilities was slowing. Then there was the missed Dec. 31 deadline for North Korea to declare the full scope of its nuclear program, including its plutonium stockpile and uranium enrichment activities.…
Beyond the shock value
By Mark Seddon, diplomatic correspondent for al-Jazeera English (THE GUARDIAN, 17/01/08):
Deep inside Mount Myohyansan in North Korea, down marble corridors lit by flickering lights and galleries holding bizarre gifts, is a baseball. Next to it is a photograph of the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, and next to her is Kim Il Sung, eternal president (deceased) of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Baseball and photograph are held in North Korea’s International Friendship Exhibition, and mark the last occasion when relations between North Korea and the US began to thaw.
Back in the mid-90s, Albright and President Bill Clinton…
Nuclear Credulity
By Carolyn Leddy. She covered North Korea’s nuclear program as director for counterproliferation strategy on the National Security Council staff from July 2006 to November 2007 (THE WASHINGTON POST, 06/01/08):
Paying off terrorists doesn’t work; it only encourages more terrorism. The same is true with nuclear proliferators. They tend to take the bribe and hide the program, and the next thing you know, they’re testing nuclear weapons. That was why so many nonproliferation experts welcomed the Bush administration’s repudiation of the 1994 “agreed framework” with North Korea. It is also why, after nearly five years of working on nonproliferation issues in…
A Chance to Rein In North Korea
By Nicholas Everstadt, the Henry Wendt chair in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (THE WASHINGTON POST, 26/12/07):
Last week’s presidential election in South Korea presages a sea change in that key U.S. ally’s policies toward North Korea. The resounding defeat of the candidates who favored more of Seoul’s all-carrot, no-stick approach to Kim Jong Il presents Washington with a horizon of new possibilities for reining in Asia’s most troublesome dictator. The question now is whether the Bush foreign policy team will be adept enough to seize…
Kim Jong-il’s Last Card
By Jason T. Shaplen, a policy adviser at the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization from 1995 to 1999 and James Laney, the ambassador to South Korea from 1993 to 1997 (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 08/10/07):
One year ago tomorrow, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, a small explosion that established it as the newest member of the world’s nuclear club. Strangely, since then, the prospects for peace and stability in northeastern Asia have never been better. North Korea’s agreement, last week, to disable all its nuclear facilities by year’s end is the biggest step so far in the right direction.
The…
North Korean Mystery
By Jim Hoagland (THE WASHINGTON POST, 07/10/07):
Two big questions hang over the new agreement to contain North Korea’s nuclear weapons program at its current level — whatever that level is.
Why has a secretive government addicted to power politics and flexing its military muscles abruptly turned to negotiations and peaceful compromise?
And why is North Korea doing the same?
The Bush administration, of course, cannot match Kim Jong Il’s regime in paranoia, bellicosity and information control, although this White House seems at times to have been tempted to try. Other countries know next to nothing about Pyongyang’s motivations, intentions or even its ability to carry out any…
