Posts Tagged ‘North Korea’

The Arctic Sea & the North Korea/Middle East connection

Sunday, October 18th, 2009
The ship's name may appear to be the North Korean cargo ship, Jin Jon 2, but don't be fooled: it's still the Arctic Sea.

The ship's name may appear to be the North Korean cargo ship, Jin Jon 2, but don't be fooled: it's still the Arctic Sea.

(Part Four, in an apparently never ending series.)

The last time we left off the saga of the Arctic Sea, the crew had been freed by the (once again mighty?) Russian navy–after a bizarre incidence of piracy in European water. But now, you’d think with the alleged pirates thrown into the slammer, the story would end. And yet …

What exactly befell the ship, called the Arctic Sea, is still largely unknown. In fact, nearly eight weeks after it was supposedly liberated by the Russian Navy, the ship is said to remain at sea under military control and has yet to make port for needed repairs. Four members of the ship’s crew have not been able to leave, despite repeated calls by their families for their release.

As if that wasn’t strange enough, one more bizarre tidbit has leaked out: the hijackers tried to change the name of the ship to “Jon Jin 2.” It just so happens that the name, as well as the corresponding identification number, belong to a North Korean general cargo ship. Which looks nothing like the Arctic Sea, and was docked in Angola at the time.

Photographs from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Investigative Committee document the new name, painted on the ship:

Jon Jin 2 -- nope, really, its the Arctic Sea.

The Arctic Sea's masquerade.

The second in in command insists there was nothing but lumber on the ship.

“There was only lumber on board,” Mr. Falin said. “I was personally in all areas and in the ballast tanks. There was nothing else in there. I can say this with 100 percent certainty.”

Perhaps. Hijackers, what do you have to say for yourselves?

The hijackers … continue to deny any wrongdoing, maintaining that they were ecologists conducting research in the Baltic Sea when they encountered inclement weather and sought refuge aboard the Arctic Sea.

Well, I bet those Russian government officials and investigators will give us the straight truth. The government, naturally, maintains that there was nothing but lumber aboard as well, but why would the wayward “ecologists” commandeer this ship in heavily trafficked/policed European waters? Why would Russia send warships on a frantic chase … three weeks after the hijacking? And why would they not let the crew go over a month later, nor let the ship dock? The Russian government line and Choose Your Own Ending to the Tale, after the jump.

(more…)

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North Korea, Nukes and Myanmar. Or was it Burma? (It was.)

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
The sun never sets on the Powerful and Prosperous Nation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

The sun never sets on the Powerful and Prosperous Nation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Addendum to yesterday’s post about North Korean proliferation: the nytimes has a short piece about the first North Korean ship searched for nuclear material, under the new U.N. sanctions:

The ship anchored without authorization in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a territory of India in the Bay of Bengal, last week, according to the Indian military.

Indian officials said it was carrying more than 16,000 tons of sugar bound for the Middle East. But the ship’s proximity to Myanmar, a North Korean ally, and the fact that it had no apparent reason to be in the area raised suspicions.

The coast guard intercepted the ship after chasing it for six hours, and detained 39 North Korean crew members.

After two days of searching and of questioning the crew, India’s Navy and Coast Guard handed the ship over to police and intelligence services, having found no evidence of illegal cargo, according to the Press Trust of India.

Ashok Chand, a senior police officer in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, told Reuters that further tests were being conducted.

But it remains a mystery why the ship was in Indian waters at all.

India has watched warily for signs that North Korea is helping Myanmar build a nuclear reactor.

Adm. Sureesh Mehta of the Indian Navy told reporters in Delhi over the weekend that “the ship had no business to be there.”

Only the Great Leader knows.

UPDATE: The Onion weighs in on the Great Leader’s prospects.

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The North Korean strategy gets all Cold War on us

Monday, August 10th, 2009

If a domino falls in East Asia and no one is around to hear it, does it matter?

Shhh… nobody say Domino Theory.

No, we’re suddenly caught up in containment:

Mr. Obama won a little-publicized victory in that effort a few weeks ago when the White House used newly granted authority from the United Nations to put a destroyer on the tail of the Kang Nam I, a rusting cargo ship believed to be taking weapons to Myanmar, formerly Burma. No one is sure what the cargo was, and the Navy avoided a direct confrontation. But the Kang Nam finally turned around and went home, its cargo undelivered.

Still, there are reasons to wonder whether containment of North Korea can work. The core idea is that wariness and time are the best instruments with which to let a corrupt, inept government rot from within, as when the Soviet Union collapsed. “I wish they’d conduct a nuclear test every week,” a member of Mr. Obama’s team joked recently, referring to estimates that North Korea has only enough fuel for 8 to 12 weapons.

I think this might be the best wonk-joke I’ve ever seen (which is not saying all that much).

So containment? Did that work for Russia? Or did Glasnost do in the old Soviet Union? And isn’t Putin just reconstituting the USSR anyway? These are questions for an international relations term paper.

Setting aside questions of historical analogies, why would containment not work?

The problem is that every American president since Harry Truman has underestimated how much rot the North Korean regime could withstand. Each thought the North could fall on his watch. After all, it has been the most sanctioned nation on earth since the early 1950’s, and it has recently cut the few deep economic ties that it made in the past decade with the South.

Ah, that. So what are the other options? Threaten invasion? I’d be interested in what my dear readers have to say.

I think one of the most fascinating aspects of the article comes in very late: “there are unconfirmed reports that the North is helping the Burmese build a reactor in their country.” Let’s just hope containment does better at stopping nuclear proliferation than, say, the efforts against A.Q. Khan in Pakistan/Iran.

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