North Korea

NKorea 'regrets' causing deadly flood in SKorea

KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:01:00 PDT

North Korea offered a rare apology Wednesday for unleashing dam water causing floods downstream blamed for six South Korean deaths and promised to alert Seoul to such measures in the future, an official said.

Clinton derangement syndrome, North Korean strain

Joe Conason — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:19:00 PDT

Like a seasonal flu, the verbal virus that is sometimes called Clinton derangement syndrome has struck again, beginning only moments after the 42nd president of the United States appeared on television screens around the world with the two journalists he had helped to rescue from prison in North Korea. And like certain viruses, the syndrome tends to hit hardest among a very specific segment of the population. Most Americans appear to be immune most of the time, as do the majority of human beings on the planet, so this pathology will probably never become a global pandemic.

More disappointment for John Bolton

Alex Koppelman — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:45:00 PDT

As noted earlier, one-time U.N. Ambassador John Bolton wasn't exactly wild about former President Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea, even if it did get two American journalists released from detention and 12 years of hard labor.

North Korea to free detained journalists

Alex Koppelman — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:20:00 PDT

Former President Bill Clinton has apparently succeeded in his quest to get North Korea to free two American journalists. According to the Associated Press, North Korean state media reports that Kim Jong Il has pardoned the reporters and ordered their release.

Mystery bond conspiracy theory letdown

Andrew Leonard — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:04:00 PDT

The case of the smuggled $134 billion Treasury bonds?

Billion-dollar bond smuggling saga blows up

Andrew Leonard — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:10:00 PDT

North Korean counterfeiters, Filipino scamsters, religious cultists, and Ben Bernanke: the cast of characters rumored to be involved in the mystery of the $134 billion worth of Treasury bonds that two "Japanese citizens" attempted to smuggle from Italy into Switzerland a little over a week ago is growing at the speed of conspiracy theory light.

One more reason to worry about North Korea

Joseph Cirincione — Thu, 28 May 2009 10:28:00 PDT

Here is one more thing about North Korea that you haven't worried about yet. Then, two more things that might make you feel better.

"The world has ignored our warnings"

Dieter Bednarz and Erich Follath — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:20:00 PDT

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), discusses the record of his term in office, his bitter struggle with the Bush administration and the dangers that new nuclear powers pose.

A taste of North Korean beer propaganda

Andrew Leonard — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:30:00 PDT

Gusts Of Popular Feeling tells us that North Korea's Taidonggang Beer is the only explicitly "anti-American" beer in the world. The proof of this assertion is on the bottle-cap -- a stylized rendition of the General Sherman, a merchant marine schooner that "visited" Korea in 1866.

The fate of the Earth, the Bush years

Tom Engelhardt — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 04:07:00 PST

Enter Jonathan Schell's small office at the Nation Institute only if you don't mind experiencing a slightly vertiginous feeling. Books are everywhere -- in boxes on the floor, on every surface, in, along and perilously stacked above shelves. If you took a wrong step, you could at least imagine disappearing in a tsunami of tumbling books. "That's my Hannah Arendt pile up there," he says, gesturing toward a shelf I'm examining. He's sitting at his desk, his legs up and an iMac perched on his knees. Even here, he wears a jacket -- black corduroy in this case -- a blue button-down shirt, grey slacks, and on his feet the leather shoes of a man who has yet to enter the all-comfort Age of Nike. Glasses are perched on his nose, and his face, when he looks up, is welcoming and well lived in.

Three questions for Mike Powell

Fri, 18 May 2007 10:29:00 PDT

How does pop music exist in a country where the public has no say in what's popular? Stylus magazine writer and editor Mike Powell tried to answer that and other related questions in an incredibly fascinating and thoroughly researched paper on the official popular music of North Korea, which he delivered at April's EMP (Experience Music Project) conference. Titled "The Pyongyang Hit Parade," Powell's work offers a fascinating look into the Orwellian world of North Korean popular culture. Using information gleaned from interviews with people who had visited the country as well as from scouring the Internet for North Korean music videos, downloads and CDs (which can be ordered from the official state Web site), Powell pieced together a grim portrait of a world where pop music functions only as propaganda, Western music is illegal and, so far as he or anyone else can tell, there are no signs of cultural dissent.

Wagging the "Big Dog"

Joe Conason — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 03:51:00 PDT

North Korea's apparent nuclear blast exposed the incoherence not only of Bush administration foreign policy but of the Republican midterm political strategy as well. While White House underboss Karl Rove has long planned to win this November's elections on a "national security" platform questioning the strength and patriotism of the Democrats, the developments of the past several days have showed that the Republicans are in a reactive mode, unable to master the policy agenda, and reduced to flailing against their perennial target: They've reverted to blaming Bill Clinton.

Bush on his North Korea plan: Clinton's "didn't work"

Tim Grieve — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 08:48:00 PDT

White House press secretary Tony Snow said Tuesday that it was "silly" to ask whether the Bush administration has made any mistakes in dealing with North Korea. George W. Bush didn't go quite that far this morning, but he didn't exactly answer the question, either.

White House: It's "silly" to ask whether Bush was right on North Korea

Tim Grieve — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 12:08:00 PDT

When a foreign power claims to have detonated a nuclear weapon -- when that foreign power is one that the president of the United States singled out as a member of the "axis of evil" four years ago -- it might strike you as not entirely unreasonable to wonder whether the president's strategy for dealing with that foreign power has been the right one.

North Korea fallout

Joseph Cirincione — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 05:24:00 PDT

We have suspected for more than 15 years that North Korea has separated plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel for use as the core of a nuclear bomb. If the test there on Monday of a nuclear device proves to be authentic, North Korean scientists will have demonstrated that they have designed an explosive casing that can compress plutonium to critical mass, triggering an explosion. North Korea will have become the world's ninth nuclear-armed state.

The axis of evil

Tim Grieve — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 08:29:00 PDT

Four and a half years ago, George W. Bush used his State of the Union address to warn that North Korea, Iran and Iraq constituted an "axis of evil" that threatened the "peace of the world." The president said then that the United States would "do what is necessary" to ensure global security. "I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer," he said. "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

Destination: North and South Korea

James Card — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 05:00:00 PDT

The DMZ runs across the Korean peninsula like a barbed wire belt, hiding an estimated 3 million land mines. Loosely formed during the waning days of the Korean War, the dividing line was made official during the 1953 armistice. The wire sprung up like kudzu vines and rifles haven't been put down since. Over time, the democratic capitalistic South has prospered, while the North limps along as a pariah nation led by a dictator's son who runs his fiefdom like an open-air prison.

Swaggering to nowhere

Sidney Blumenthal — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 04:15:00 PDT

President Bush was against diplomacy before he was for it. But with the collapse of U.S. foreign policy across the board, he has discarded talk of preemptive strikes and reluctantly claimed to have become a born-again realist. "And it's, kind of -- you know, it's kind of painful in a way for some to watch, because it takes a while to get people on the same page," he said at his July 7 press conference, adding, in an astonished tone, "Not everybody thinks the exact same way we think. Different words mean different things to different people."

Tastes great, less filling

Tim Grieve — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 12:32:00 PDT

Remember preemption?

The Iraq report

Tim Grieve — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:37:00 PDT

Tell us again how leaving would make things worse.