Another week, another seven days of North Korea acting like complete knobs.
- Not a whole lot of luck in the third round of talks on the Kaesong complex. Said Unification Minister spokesman Chun Hae-sung, “[T]he root of the problems at Kaesong lies in the lack of legal and institutional structure and in the failure to honor existing rules and regulations.” In other words, the root of the problems at Kaesong is that it’s located in North Korea.
- The North Koreans also used the talks to tell the South that their participation in the UN sanctions regime means the South is ready to wage — you guessed it — Nuclear War ™.
- It wasn’t all bad, though — the North did offer to remove transport restrictions to Kaesong… as long as the South agrees to quadruple wages and pay a 31-fold increase in rents for the privilege of doing business in North Korea. Oh, and the two sides agreed to meet again next month.
- Don Kirk examines the death of the Sunshine Policy.
- Andrei Lankov, meanwhile, explains why China keeps propping up North Korea.
- AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt calls for a “paradigm shift” in dealing with Pyongyang, namely, that the goal if the United States should not be a negotiation breakthrough but rather threat reduction. Sounds better than paying the North Koreans just to talk with us and — if we’re lucky — pretend to take steps towards nuclear disarmament, but in the long term, I’d rather North Korea be handled at the regional level (by regional powers) with the option to punish Pyongyang if they act up outside their neighborhood (by transfering nuke technology to the Middle East, for instance).
- Unfortunately, Paul Eckert’s analysis here is probably right — for the first time in a while, the US and South Korea seem to be on the same page (I do have long-term doubts about the White House, though), but options are few.
- Oh, and if you live in Hawaii, you’ll be happy to know that US Defense Secretary Bob Gates has ordered the bolstering of the islands’ defenses against a possible North Korean missile launch. Or a Japanese air strike on Pearl Harbor, whichever one comes first.
- In Foreign Policy, Hui Zhang warns us not to play nuclear chicken with North Korea because them NoKos know no rules. Unsurprisingly, he calls for Washington to provide a large “carrot” while the UN and others prepare “sticks.” His big mistake is in identifying North Korea’s “foremost security concern” — it’s not US troops in South Korea, but rather the existence of South Korea itself. And that has real implications for how the endgame will play out.
- Hey, congrats for North Korea on qualifying for the World Cup.
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it amazes me that don kirk is still writing..
I have some slight sympathy for the suckers who invested in Kaesong, but not much. Any dealings with the North is a suckers game and it’s highly unlikely you will ever win against such amazing con artists. Investing in a country that regularly changes the rules and continually extorts money at every opportunity is nothing short of foolish. Investing because you believe in ‘brotherhood’ or some such nonsense is one thing, but is losing your shirt because of it worth it?
“I have some slight sympathy for the suckers who invested in Kaesong”
I remember Brendon Carr writing about how losses on investments in North Korea is guaranteed by the South Korean government, so there is very little incentive for these firms to turn a profit (especially if said firms are bordering on bankruptcy). We (the tax payers) are the suckers.
Also consider that during Roh’s tenure, South Korean business (Daewoo, Doosan) illegally gave armament technology to Burma (Myanmar), over a period of several years, undoubtedly with the blessing of the Roh administration. Though Roh is now dead (we wonder just what he *did* do), the North Koreans also are using Myanmar as a means of rerouting their military goods. Myanmar is also a client state whose despotic leadership is supported by China — just like North Korea — and they will doubtlessly not inspect any North Korean cargo that is off-loaded there.
Time passes and the same names keep being circulated. When will the noose tighten enough to catch one of these sneaks?
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