By now you've probably seen all the people in North Korea crying over the death of Kim Jong-il. But amidst all the sobbing and somber reminiscences, there's something you might have missed. To see what it is, skip ahead to to 5:04 and 6:47 marks of the video shown above.
That's right: A little boy attended the funeral procession in a Yankees hat. That's even crazier than when a guy wearing a Yankees cap captured Moammar Gadhafi two months ago.
by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.Com
The U.S. administration has just invited a senior North Korean official, Kim Kye Gwan, to come to New York to talk about ending Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Or, as these things tend to play out in the meta-world of North Korean nuclear shakedowns, to talk about holding further talks to talk about ending North Korea’s nuclear program.
As it happens, we’ve been here before — with the same North Korean senior official, Kim Kye Gwan. In 2007, it was the Bush administration that invited Kim Kye-gwan to come talk nukes in New York. Kim spent a lively four hours dining and drinking at the Waldorf with the U.S. envoy of the hour, Chris Hill. That was followed by U.S. concessions and gifts to North Korea which included free food and fuel, arrangements to return to Kim Jong Il some $25 million in allegedly tainted North Korean funds frozen in Macau, and the removal of North Korea from the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring states. North Korea’s regime responded by stalling, stonewalling, cheating and ultimately walking away from the denuclearization deal; then conducted a second nuclear test in 2009 and in 2010 unveiled a uranium enrichment facility which it had previously denied.
The Obama administration, to its credit, has so far refrained from being suckered into another of these North Korean shakedown routines. But that could all be about to change, with Kim Kye Gwan preparing to enjoy another round of American hospitality in the Big Apple.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said, “We are open to talks with North Korea, but we do not intend to reward the North just for returning to the table.” Too late. For North Korea, a United Nations-sanctioned erstwhile pariah of the so-called international community, it is already a reward to have America dignify Vice Foreign Minister and former nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan by inviting him for an encore in New York. And with the State Department saying America is looking for signs that North Korea is serious about returning to the negotiating table, a negotiation of sorts has already begun — in which America is already at a disadvantage. North Korea’s negotiators are masters at taking whatever they can get, and then welshing on whatever they have promised.
But if the State Department is determined to entertain Kim yet again in New York, there might be a way to redeem the situation. Upon Kim Kye Gwan’s arrival, U.S. officials ought to offer him five little words, and nothing more. Quite simply: “Would you like to defect?” It’s unlikely Kim would say yes. But if he does, that would be a lovely diplomatic coup, and an excellent start to the next round of “talks” with North Korea. And if he doesn’t, it’s still the kind of message that might provoke some useful cogitation among his colleagues back in the gloomy confines of Pyongyang. Haggling with the North Korean regime is a routine that by now fits the definition of insanity. Inviting Pyongyang’s envoys to come to New York, as long as they then stay there for good, might sound crazy. But something in this routine needs to change. Why not give it a try?
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(Reuters) - North Korea and Iran appear to have been regularly exchanging ballistic missile technology in violation of U.N. sanctions, according to a confidential U.N. report obtained by Reuters on Saturday.
The report said the illicit technology transfers had "trans-shipment through a neighboring third country." That country was China, several diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The report was submitted to the Security Council by a U.N. Panel of Experts, a group that monitors compliance with U.N. sanctions imposed on Pyongyang after it conducted two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.
The U.N. sanctions included a ban on trade in nuclear and missile technology with North Korea, as well as an arms embargo. They also banned trade with a number of North Korean firms and called for asset freezes and travel bans on some North Korean individuals.
"Prohibited ballistic missile-related items are suspected to have been transferred between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Islamic Republic of Iran on regular scheduled flights of Air Koryo and Iran Air," the report said.
"For the shipment of cargo, like arms and related materiel, whose illicit nature would become apparent on any cursory physical inspection, (North) Korea seems to prefer chartered cargo flights," it said.
It added that the aircraft tended to fly "from or to air cargo hubs which lack the kind of monitoring and security to which passenger terminals and flights are now subject."
Several Security Council diplomats said China was unhappy about the report and might not agree to release it to the public. At the moment, only the 15 council members have official access to the document.
One of the independent experts on the panel is from China and diplomats said he never endorsed the report.
Beijing has prevented the publication of expert panel reports on North Korea and Sudan in the past. Earlier this week, Russia took similar steps to suppress an equally damning U.N. expert panel report on Iran.
The spokesman for China's U.N. mission was not available for comment.
SIMILAR WARHEADS
Further evidence of Iran's cooperation with North Korea on missile technology came during a military parade in October 2010, the report said, when North Korea displayed a new warhead for its Nodong missile.
The warhead had "a strong design similarity with the Iranian Shahab-3 triconic warhead."
The expert panel said there appeared to be no compelling evidence that Myanmar had been developing a secret nuclear program with the help of North Korea, an allegation that had been raised previously by the group.
But it did not dismiss the allegations and suggested "extreme caution" might be needed to prevent North Korean-Myanmar cooperation from becoming proliferation.
The allegations are due partly to attempts by the former Burma to acquire items that can be used in a nuclear program.
"While acknowledging the possibility that Myanmar was the end user of this dual-use equipment, several experts also raised the possibility that it was serving as a trans-shipment point for delivery to (North Korea)," the report said.
The report said the possibility of exports of weapons-grade nuclear material from North Korea or nuclear technology to other countries remained a concern and presented "new challenges to international non-proliferation efforts."
U.S., Israeli and European governments have said that North Korea was helping Syria build a nuclear reactor that Israel destroyed in 2007. Damascus denies the charge, which is being investigated by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
In its report, the panel said North Korea's uranium enrichment problem, which Pyongyang says is for civilian purposes, was "primarily for military purposes."
It added that North Korea "should be compelled to abandon its uranium enrichment program and that all aspects of the program should be placed under international monitoring."
The report also said there were concerns about safety at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex. It said "safety issues should be discussed an integral part of the denuclearization of (North Korea)."
It added that "reckless decommissioning or dismantlement at Yongbyon could cause an environmental disaster."
(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Laura MacInnis and Peter Cooney)
SEOUL—A North Korean arms chief and Pyongyang's former ambassador to the United Nation's nuclear agency have emerged as key figures in an intensifying international effort to curb North Korea's weapons-trading activities.
The global dealings of the two men, Chun Byung-ho and Yun Ho-jin, whom North Korea analysts believe to be related through marriage, date back to the 1980s. They have played leading roles in North Korea's development and testing of atomic weapons, according to current and former U.S. officials, Asian intelligence analysts and U.N. nonproliferation staffers.
More troubling to officials, Messrs. Chun and Yun also oversee Pyongyang's vast arms-trading network, which appears to be spreading. They have shipped components for long-range missiles, nuclear reactors and conventional arms to countries including Iran,
John Bussey has details on the Obama administration's expanded sanctions against North Korea, which target the assets of individuals, companies and organizations allegedly linked to support for that country's nuclear program.
Syria and Myanmar.
On Monday, the Obama administration announced economic sanctions against various individuals and entities involved in Pyongyang's nuclear work and in alleged illicit trading activities. The Treasury Department named Mr. Yun and the North Korean body headed by Mr. Chun—the Second Economic Committee of Pyongyang's ruling Korean Workers' Party. The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets of those named and bar Americans from conducting business with them. Treasury also warned that foreign firms doing business with them risked sanctions.
The Second Economic Committee oversees a little-known foreign trade office with the Orwellian name of Office 99. The proceeds from the Office's arms sales go directly to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and Pyongyang's senior leadership, according to these officials and recent North Korean defectors.
"It is broadly believed that the Second Economic Committee...plays the largest and most prominent role in nuclear, other WMD and missile-related development programs, as well as arranging and conducting arms-related exports" for North Korea, says a report issued in May by the U.N. committee tasked with enforcing international sanctions on Pyongyang.
The U.S. and U.N. recently have intensified efforts to combat the Second Economic Committee and Office 99, alarmed by Pyongyang's two nuclear-weapons tests and its alleged role in sinking a South Korean naval vessel in March. Last year, the U.N. formally sanctioned Mr. Yun and his arms company, Namchongang Trading Co.
North Korean arms shipments moving through Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa and the South China Sea have been seized or turned back by the U.S. and its allies over the past few years. A Japanese court convicted a Tokyo-based trading company in November of procuring military technologies for Pyongyang with the intent of shipping them to Myanmar.
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Yun Ho-Jin appeared in video footage of then-IAEA Director-General Hans Blix's 1992 visit to North Korean nuclear sites. Mr. Yun walks alongside Mr. Blix at the start of the video.
Still, Messrs. Chun and Yun's decades of experience in the weapons trade pose a challenge to an international community keen to disrupt Pyongyang's proliferation activities, say U.S. and Asian officials. "There is no reason to assume that Chun and Yun won't sell nuclear weapons," says David Asher, a former Bush administration official who has tracked Pyongyang's arms trade for a decade. "There needs to be an active effort to disrupt their WMD networks and drive them out of business now, before it's too late."
The two men have established a network of front companies in Asia, Europe and the Middle East and have partnered with Southeast Asian, Japanese and Taiwanese criminal syndicates to move cash and contraband, say U.S. officials. And Mr. Yun has used the political cover provided by Pyongyang's closest ally, China, to openly conduct business in cities such as Beijing and Shenyang, drawing official rebukes from Washington.
North Korean diplomats at Pyongyang's U.N. mission in New York did not respond to requests for comment. Messrs. Chun and Yun couldn't be reached.
Chinese President Hu Jintao meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in northeastern China on Friday.
Current and former U.S. officials say North Korea's operations resemble in both scale and tactics those of Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan—one of the most notorious arms dealers in recent years. U.S. officials fear that isolated North Korea, desperate for hard currency, could accelerate its arms exports in a bid to prop up Kim Jong Il's finances.
Mr. Chun, now 84 years old, and his Second Economic Committee emerged as major global arms exporters in the 1980s, as North Korea shipped as much as $3 billion worth of rockets, pistols and submarines to Tehran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, say recent defectors and North Korea analysts.
Pyongyang assisted some communist and socialist countries militarily during the 1960s and 1970s, and provided fighter pilots to aid Egypt and Syria in their wars against Israel. But North Korea found a largely captive market in Iran, which faced a U.S.-led weapons embargo as the West threw its support behind Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.
Chun Byung-ho
One senior North Korean defector who worked in Pyongyang's munitions industries says he was dispatched to Iran by the Second Economic Committee in 1987 with the task of constructing missile batteries on the Iranian island of Kish to help Tehran better control the movement of ships through the Straits of Hormuz.
His main interlocutor was Iran's elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The former hydro-mechanic says camaraderie developed between his 100-man team and the Guard, despite their different backgrounds.
Mr. Chun's control over the Second Economic Committee was tied to his close relationship with Pyongyang's ruling Kim family, say defectors and North Korea experts. The Russian-trained bureaucrat served as a member of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung's bodyguard unit. He rose up the ranks of the Korean Workers' Party with the political support of Kim Jong Il, eventually securing a position on Pyongyang's most powerful political body, the National Defense Commission.
North Korea's high-level defector, Hwang Jang-yop, has identified Mr. Chun as the broker of a key barter trade in the 1990s with Pakistan that significantly advanced Pyongyang's nuclear infrastructure. The agreement resulted in North Korea shipping parts for long-range missiles to Islamabad in exchange for A.Q. Khan sending centrifuge equipment used in producing nuclear fuel.
As Mr. Chun pushed forward North Korea's nuclear program from Pyongyang, Mr. Yun, believed to be the husband of Mr. Chun's second daughter, emerged as a key player in procuring technologies for the Second Economic Committee from Europe, according to U.S., U.N. and European officials.
Mr. Yun, 66, arrived in Vienna in 1985 as Pyongyang's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The English and German speaker led negotiations with the U.N. agency aimed at forging a nuclear-inspection agreement with North Korea, and he helped oversee a 1992 tour of his nation's Yongbyon nuclear facility for Hans Blix, the IAEA's then-managing director.
"Yun was dedicated to turning things around. I truly believe that," says Willi Theis, who worked closely with Mr. Yun as the head of the IAEA's safeguards unit overseeing North Korea. Mr. Theis is now retired.
Still, concerns grew inside the IAEA about Mr. Yun's activities, as relations between Pyongyang and the international community deteriorated, according to IAEA officials.
In 1993, North Korea broke off talks with the IAEA over the agency's demands for an inspection of the country's nuclear operations, and the U.S. charged Pyongyang with secretly stockpiling plutonium for atomic weapons. The next year, the Clinton administration threatened to bomb the Yongbyon facility if North Korea didn't explain where the plutonium had gone. Mr. Yun grew embittered with the diplomatic process and mistrustful of the U.S. and its allies, according to IAEA staff and journalists who met with him.
Mr. Theis says he spent hours discussing the process with Mr. Yun and pressed the Agency to remain engaged with Pyongyang. The West German-born nuclear inspector says he grew suspicious of Mr. Yun's many trips to other European cities and his contacts with local companies. Mr. Yun even hinted to Mr. Theis that he might have no choice but to directly support North Korea's nuclear-weapons programs if relations with the IAEA collapsed.
"He came to the conclusion that dealing with the international community was totally disappointing," said Mr. Theis in a phone interview from Austria. "Mr. Yun had definitely learned how to establish contacts with all types of people [while in Vienna]—not just from the IAEA, but managers of companies."
Mr. Theis's concerns about Mr. Yun would be borne out in 2003, when a German businessman, Hans Werner Truppel, was arrested and eventually convicted by a Stuttgart court of selling 22 metric tons of aluminum tubes to Mr. Yun.
The North Korean and his company, Namchongang Trading, used offices in Beijing and Shenyang, China, to place orders for the equipment, which is critical to building centrifuges needed to enrich uranium, according to a German Customs Bureau report. U.S. officials briefed on the case were alarmed that Mr. Yun conducted some of his business through the offices of Shenyang Aircraft Industry Co., a Chinese state-owned firm.
In the ensuing months, the State Department aired its concerns about Mr. Yun's activities to China's government, according to former U.S. officials. But Beijing took no action.
China's ministries of foreign affairs and commerce didn't respond to requests for comment. Shenyang Aircraft says it had no recollection of any dealings with Mr. Yun.
Messrs. Chun and Yun have sought to accelerate North Korea's weapons sales and procurement in recent years and allegedly have played important roles in strengthening Pyongyang's military ties to countries such as Syria and Myanmar, say current and former U.S. officials.
North Korea analysts believe most of these transactions have been conducted through Office 99, which they describe as an international sales office and slush fund for Kim Jong Il.
"Anything that has to do with the imports and exports of weapons flows through Office 99," says Oh Kongdan, a North Korea expert at Virginia's Institute of Defense Analyses, a Pentagon-funded think tank. "It's a royal patronage system."
U.S. officials say that since the late 1990s they detected through intelligence channels intensifying military cooperation between North Korea and Syria, focused on everything from the development of chemical weapons to missiles.
In September 2007, Israeli jets bombed a facility in eastern Syria that U.S. officials say was a nearly operational replica of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear reactor. As many as 10 North Koreans died in the Israeli attack, according to U.S. officials. Mr. Yun and Namchongang Trading are believed to have played a central role in brokering development of the facility.
"That particular company was all over the nuclear trade. There's no question about it," says John Bolton, who served as the Bush administration's top non-proliferation official. Both Syria and North Korea have denied cooperating on developing nuclear technologies.
Over the past two years, U.S. and U.N. officials have also voiced concerns about North Korea's deepening military ties with Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma.
North Korea engineers have helped Myanmar build a maze of fortified bunkers to house senior government officials and military installations, according to Burmese defectors and commercial satellite photos. Current and former U.S. officials say Washington has intervened to block the transfer of Scud missiles to Myanmar from Pyongyang.
In June, Japan's Ministry of Economy and Trade banned Tokyo-based Toko Boeki Trading Co. and device maker Riken Denshi from conducting international trade after three of their affiliated executives, one of them an ethnic Korean, were arrested trying to send machine tools on an export-control list to Myanmar using a dummy company in Malaysia. The equipment could be used to develop either ballistic missiles or centrifuges for a uranium-enrichment program, according to weapons experts. And the U.N. in its May report said it was examining "suspicious" ties between Mr. Yun's Namchongang Trading and Myanmar, possibly linked to these activities in Japan.
The Obama administration, in response, has announced a stepped-up campaign to block North Korea's ability to raise funds through the arms trade. In addition to the new sanctions, the Pentagon has said it will intensify the interdiction of ships and planes believed to be carrying North Korean arms.
Still, Mr. Theis and other North Korea experts believe that it is only through dialogue that the West will be able to curb the North's proliferation threat. Mr. Theis says he is recently lobbied the IAEA to allow him to return to Pyongyang to hold meetings with Mr. Yun. So far, he says, the IAEA hasn't agreed.
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