Category: North Korea

It seems to me that until the Treasury Department sanctions financial institutions who are doing business with North Korea, these warnings mean little:

Voice of America (VOA) reported on Tuesday that the U.S. government has warned U.S. financial institutions not to get involved in North Korean illicit activities.

VOA said that an advisory from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network urged financial institutions to follow guidelines that limit their direct exposure to transactions related to the North’s proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The measure comes after the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reaffirmed its earlier decision to put North Korea on its watch list.

The U.S. issued similar advisories in March and November of last year and in March of this year.   [KBS World Radio]

When the Treasury Department sanctioned the Macao based Banco Delta Asia bank, this was the only time in recent years when the US got the Kim regime’s attention.   The then Bush administration of course squandered the leverage on a nuclear deal that saw the Treasury Department return all of North Korea’s frozen money.  Once the money was returned they proceeded to begin cheating on the nuclear deal.

The North Koreans have just confirmed what I have been saying they have no intention of giving up their nuclear weapons:

North Korea said Tuesday that it’s not interested in an Iran-type nuclear disarmament deal, saying it won’t abandon its atomic weapons as long as the United States maintains hostile policies toward the country.

The North’s nuclear deterrent is “not a plaything to be put on the negotiating table,” an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. It was the country’s first official response to the Iran nuclear accord reached earlier this month.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

In a interview in the Diplomat, writer Robert Kaplan seems pretty sure that it is only a matter of time before the collapse of the Kim Jong-un regime happens:

Right. That’s the opportunity, the moment of surprise. Another element and not even a surprise is the moment the North Korean regime collapses. When Kim Jong-un is assassinated by somebody in his inner circle or something. That would be like a wreck; like implosion and chaos. That’s not a surprise but a Chinese nightmare for years already. They have almost resigned to have in such moment two million or so refugees on the North Korean border. I think North Korea, ethnic unrest, continued unexpected turbulence in their own economy, and Japan or Vietnam actually starting a conflict which I don’t think they will do. Because when you start a conflict with China you have to know how you are going to finish it. Or you have to at least have a plan. If you start a conflict with China, it gets really messy how it’s going to end.  [The Diplomat]

Regime collapse is always possible with the North Koreans, but you have to figure that conditions in the country right now are no where near as bad as the famine years of the mid-90s and the then Kim Jong-il regime was able to survive that.  That is why I am not considering the collapse of the Kim Jong-un regime in the near term inevitable, but over the long term I don’t see it lasting.  I think if anything causes it to collapse would be an outside event not an internal event.  Possibly the economic collapse of China or internal conflict with in China years from now that spreads to North Korea.  Or North Korea gets caught in a war between China and the rest of Asia.  Considering Kim Jong-un’s young age I don’t see him living out his elderly years as the ruler of North Korea with all the change that could possibly happen in the coming decades in Asia that will undoubtedly affect North Korea as well.  .

Most expensive photo-op this year? North Korean ambassadors & diplomats in a calculated frenzy for Kim Jong-un. pic.twitter.com/qrzF5MOlrO

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) July 16, 2015

https://twitter.com/freekorea_us/status/622415624891932672

Memorandum of Understanding Signed between North Korean Armed Forces and Laos | @KCNAWatch http://t.co/S0tqnPakQu pic.twitter.com/i8H0jahdVl

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) July 14, 2015

The Russian photographer Aleksei Hermann is holding an exhibition of rare pictures of North Korea in the border city of Belgorod.

Taken between Sept. 21 and Oct. 5 last year, the photos on display show rare sights of the reclusive country.

The exhibition has moved on from Moscow.  [Chosun Ilbo]

This deal with Iran does not mean much for North Korea because they have already gone down this road two times before with two different US presidential administrations and cheated on the deals both times.

The South’s unification minister, Hong Yong-pyo, was blunt in comments Tuesday about what to expect. “Conclusion of Iranian negotiations will not lead to solution of the nuclear problem” in North Korea he told foreign correspondents here. But as the North now represents “the only country … to exercise nuclear power to intimidate the rest of the world…the agreement will at least give some pressure on North Korea.”

It is not known whether negotiators in Vienna discussed or agreed privately to address the broader issue of Tehran’s assistance or cooperation with Pyongyang.

WILL TEHRAN STOP AIDING PYONGYANG?

Analysts like Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations say that how North Korea now responds to the new deal “ultimately will depend on whether US negotiators also have a tacit understanding with Iran to curtail questionable relationships with North Korea in these areas.” If North Korea “loses another customer,” Mr. Snyder believes, “Pyongyang may take notice.”

So far Pyongyang has kept its silence. The North Korean media has yet to report on the historic accord with Iran, much less offer any commentary.

The Iran deal does give Pyongyang something new to worry about, says Mark Fitzpatrick at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “I bet their gut reaction will be along the lines of, ‘We are more isolated than ever, with even Iran making peace with Washington,’” he says.  [Christian Science Monitor]

You can read the rest, but if anything the Iranians took solace in the fact that the North Koreans were able to cheat on their deals for many years with the US turning a blind eye to their activities due to other pressing concerns in the world at the time.  If the North Koreans feel like they can cut yet another deal and get a lot free goodies for little or nothing in return they would probably do it.  However, I don’t think the Obama administration is going to be as eager to cut a deal with North Korea simply because of their history of cheating on past deals.  As always time will tell.

Kim Jong Un Gives Field Guidance to Rangnang Sanitary Goods Factory | @KCNAWatch http://t.co/pPD1WBLpxF pic.twitter.com/8wSCmKOGvo

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) July 14, 2015

This is actually pretty tame rhetoric compared to the racist and sexists remarks they have made before:

North Korea has challenged the entire US Congress to come and inspect a bio-tech institute in Pyongyang that US experts have suggested is a facility for mass-producing anthrax for the military.

A spokesman for the powerful National Defence Commission angrily stressed that the facility in Pyongyang was solely dedicated to the manufacture of pesticides, after a report published last week on the website of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University suggested otherwise.

“A thousand pairs of ears cannot match a pair of eyes,” the spokesman said, accusing the US government of spreading wild rumours about the North’s biological weapons programme.

“Come here right now, with all the 535 members of the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as the imbecile secretaries and deputy secretaries of the government who have made their voices hoarse screaming for new sanctions,” the spokesman said.

“Then they can behold the awe-inspiring sight of the Pyongyang Bio-technical Institute,” he added.  [AFP]

You can read the rest at the link.