Why?
One of the weekend surprises was the announcement that the North Koreans had shut down their Yongbon reactor. This is certainly good news. However, two things remain unclear. First, how much in concessions did it cost? The release of frozen assets and the initial shipment of fuel oil are earnest money, but the bulk of the payment is still in the mail.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Hill laid out an aggressive agenda of a steps Washington hopes can be made in the reconciliation process as Pyongyang lays aside its nuclear weapons program. ...
The U.S. will also discuss starting the process to remove the North from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, Hill said. The designation rankles Pyongyang, which has not been tied to a terrorist attack since it bombed a South Korean plane in 1987. ...
Hill said talks on replacing the 54-year-old Korean War cease-fire with a peace regime that would formally end the conflict could start next year "with understanding that we can't complete that until we complete denuclearization."
And complete denuclearization begins, but certainly doesn't end with the shutdown of the Yongbon reactor. North Korea has a number of "nuclear" cards in its vest, and has only laid down one of them. As Say Anything observes, the Yongbon reactor produced plutonium. However, the reason that North Korea reignited the nuclear arms question was that it was discovered to be secretly enriching uranium. And uranium is the component around around which the Iranian nuclear program is being built.
While North Korea's moves are a welcome development, no decisive "nuclear disarmament" has as yet occurred and there remains a long way to go.
Nothing follows.
posted by wretchardthecat at 7/16/2007 11:00:00 AM
6 Comments:
I read somewhere that the State Department gave the NoKos a taste of the kind of economic warfare that the Largest Economy in the History of the World is capable of. That little fight over the $25Mil in Macao apparently caused great discomfort in the peninsula. They cant sell their missiles to the mullahs without international settlements.
Too bad nobody in the MSM would bother pointing out that this $25 mil the Norks wanted so desperately were some of their proceeds from various criminal scams of some kind. Insurance fraud, gunrunning, narcotics, counterfeiting, etc--you name it--there isn't a scam running the Norks haven't tried or aren't somehow involved in.
The current 'nuclear disarmanent' supposedly going on is just another scam the Norks are running. Count on it. They aren't going to go through their assorted bogus 'shutdowns' of Programme X or Facility Y until they're sure they have obtained top dollar(won) for it from their southern cousins, the Japanese, or whomever first. After all, they've done it before.
In my view, what's more interesting up north (and I'm in Seoul) than yet another nuclearized "shakin' down the west" scam are some other recent developments. I posted about it a couple of days ago, reproduced below:
***
Lil’ Kim (Jong Il) seems to be a bit worried (more than usual) about losing his precious power nowadays. The usual DPRK rampant paranoia has led of late to some fascinating and utterly bizarre developments up north.
First of all the Norks have recently shut down karaoke joints:
"The lifestyle police are out and about in North Korea. Karaoke bars and video parlors (where you can watch DVDs on large TV screens) are being shut down. Along the Chinese border, police are searching homes and businesses looking for cell phones (which can get a signal from towers just across the border) and smuggled goods (particularly South Korean DVDs and music CDs)."
"…many North Korean leaders are not sure their people could handle the truth, about the decades of lies about how much better North Korea was doing economically, than the rest of the world. Too late for that. Most North Koreans now know, but are too busy just trying to survive to think about a revolution. But the government knows their history. Revolution comes as the economy improves. Thus a substantial improvement in the economy could bring the revolution North Korea's leaders have long feared. What to do? Close Karaoke bars."
And the Korean fascists went after internet cafes too:
"North Korea has ordered the shutdown of Internet cafes as part of a battle to stem a flood of South Korean pop culture, media reports said. A directive issued by the Ministry of People’s Security called for the closure of all unauthorized video-screening rooms, Internet cafes and online game rooms, wrote Philstar.com."
"The move is part of a campaign to curb South Korean pop culture, which has been spreading fast in the hard-line communist country, the newspaper said."
"Defectors say South Korean pop songs and movies are popular in the isolated country, despite a steady campaign to weed out what state media has termed “decadent foreign culture and ideals.”
Who would have guessed that vapid, consumer-driven Korean pop culture could itself be a weapon? Then again, the Kremlin worried about American Rock and Roll, and so it goes with Lil’ Kim and his henchmen, fearing pop music, game shows and soap operas.
Whether it’s the Norks’ “worker’s paradise”, Kelantan, the USSR, Iran or Saudi Barbaria, all are variants of the same dreary fascist/totalitarian mold. And all are destined to utterly fail.
The big question is will Bush be praised for going the diplomatic route and bribing the North Koreans by the Dems and MSM. Or will they now attack him for being too soft on the Norks, just like them calling for more troops in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 and they when he gave them what they wanted they did a 180 and denounced the surge.
Oh they'll criticize Bush, they've never been troubled by consistency.
Part of the rationale N Korea is slowly embracing is that China and S Korea are telling them that they and Japan are making money hand over fist destroying US industry, dominating the planet, Vietnam is picking up the charge - and N Korea can too. Best of all, they can be like S Korea & Japan dominated by insider Keiretsu "families" - or be like China and Vietnam, which have proved that prosperity does not have to come at the expense of solid Communist Party Control (despite stupid American beliefs to the contrary)..
Liberalize your economy, don't make stupid threats you can't back up, and maintain an iron grip on the masses and the capitalists and Elites will line up with wheelbarrows full of money to help destroy the jobs wage levels in their own countries in targeted industries. And help grease the skids so the NORKS like China, can be a full player in globalism and free trade...
By shooting off a few, the NORKs got their max political benefit. All the neocons that talked in their heady days of power of destabilizing and "liberating" N Korea have shut up. Bush II has shut up.
And getting them off the state sponsors of terrorism list is necessary given they have been "clean" for 20 years and we wish them to join the community of nations and not be backballed as "outlaws".
Just as Cuba is on the "state sponsors list" mainly due to American domestic politics and pandering. Cuba has been "clean" longer than America itself has with our sponsorship of "Holy Mujahadeed terrorists" or Central American, African ones..
Let’s see here, super stud George Bush steps up to the plate and bravely overturns the wimpy policies of Slick Willie Clinton by swaggering in and bitch slapping Kim Jong-il up and down the Korean peninsula while the right wing media noise machine cheer him on. Six years later North Korea is very likely armed with more than thirty nuclear weapons and continues producing enriched uranium potentially for an export market and George Bush should not be criticized when he has to go back to Clinton’s policies?
Well of course it’s not his fault, somewhere there has to be a Lefty to blame. Surely this is all Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi’s fault? Michael Moore? John Murtha? Noam Chomsky? Come on there must be a lefty conspiracy somewhere, George Bush, his neocon puppet masters, and the right wing media pundits who showered adoration on his North Korean policies could not be wrong?
Could they?
Naw, it must be all the fault of the Left. Just like Iraq.
Because the Right are never wrong, ever.
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