North Korea's Shell Game 06/30/2010
 Dude is good How does North Korea, a small country sanctioned and surveilled by pretty much everyone in the West, continue to rake in billions from arms deals? The folks over at Arms Control Wonk recently got their hands on the Report to the Security Council from the Panel of Experts established Pursuant to Resolution 1874. It's long and reads like the UN document it is (i.e. impeccably soporific) but provides exceptional insight into how the DPRK continues to deal: On 11 December 2009, Government of Thailand authorities interdicted an aircraft, Ilyushin-76, carrying 35 tons of arms and related materiel. The interdicted cargo was discovered aboard a chartered aircraft operated by Air West Company, which departed from Sunan Airport in Pyongyang, DPRK, and landed at Don Mueang Airport in Bangkok to refuel.33 The airway bill covering the shipment had been issued by Air Koryo, national carrier of the DPRK. It indicated the cargo as 145 crates of “mechanical parts.” However, the Thai inspection of the cargo revealed that the content consisted of some 35 tons of conventional arms and munitions including 240mm rockets, RPG-7s, TBG-7s and MANPADS surface-to-air missiles. It was also established that the shipper was Korea Mechanical Industry Co.Ltd, a DPRK entity, and that the consignee was Top Energy Institute located in Iran. A puzzling factor in this case is the numerous flight plans filed for the outbound and projected return route of the aircraft. This has raised suspicions concerning the nature of the transaction and ultimate destination of the cargo and should entail further inquiry. The aircraft used in this illicit trade is owned by a company in the United Arab Emirates and registered in the Republic of Georgia as 4LAWA. It was leased to SP Trading Limited, a shell company registered in New Zealand, and then chartered to Union Top Management Ltd (UTM), another shell company registered in Hong Kong. Dizzying no? Read more after the jump ----> Attack of the Midget Subs! 05/31/2010
 Yes, submarines that weigh less than 150 tons are called “midgets.” It was a North Korean midget sub that sank South Korea’s Cheonan warship. These submarines are tricky, because they act in shallow water where sonar is unreliable. The Cheonan’s sonar, for instance, missed the North Korean sub. Guess who else operates midget subs? Iran, including some bought from North Korea. As Popular Mechanics explains, the US Navy is worried about America's vulnerability to midget submarine attacks and other forms of guerilla-style naval warfare: Two things heighten the risk of a similar ambush by midget submarines against U.S. ships: the complex sonar picture of shallow water where these small subs can operate, and a post–Cold War decrease in anti-submarine training. "Instead of a large number of Soviet nuclear-powered submarines on the open ocean, advanced conventional submarines operating in the littorals have emerged as the most serious threat to U.S. forwardly deployed forces, military sealift and merchant shipping," Milan Vego, professor of operations at the Joint Military Operations Department at the Naval War College, wrote in a recent piece for Armed Forces Journal. "The emerging threats ... are minisubmarines, swimmer-delivery vehicles, remotely operated vehicles and autonomous underwater vehicles." The Dinosaur Bears Its Teeth 05/29/2010
 Aidan Foster-Carter, a researcher at Leeds University, gives an interview to The Economist in which he makes several sage points regarding Korean relations and the sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean warship: First, he suggests that North Korea’s motive for the attack has a lot to do with its feeling that the new South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, has ignored and marginalized it. Second, he argues that younger South Koreans are in denial about the effects of a future change of power in the North, meaning that any eventual re-unification talks will be fraught with difficulty. Finally, he points out that one of the perverse effects of ending the 'sunshine' policy has been to push Pyongyang ever closer to China. When the hermit kingdom finally does crumble, this combination of over-reliance and denial could lead to the emergence of a Chinese client state. For anyone concerned with the balance of power in Asia, this is not very heartening. Click here to listen to the whole interview. Read This: April 26, 2010 04/26/2010
Forden Explains the Sinking of the Cheonan (ArmsControlWonk) One of the “mysteries” surrounding the sinking of the ROK’s warship, Cheonan, is that the explosion split the ship in half, a result our popular culture has trained us to forget. After all, World War II movies always show a torpedo strike in the same way: one or two white streaks quickly approaching the ship followed by a localized jet of water where the torpedo struck the hull. Sailors stream out of their bunks to jump over the side as the ship keels over, taking in water. [...] These movies have influenced our expectations for the damage caused by modern torpedoes even though there are much more efficient ways for a torpedo to destroy a surface ship. [...] Significantly more damage can be cause by the same, or even smaller, explosive detonated significantly below the keel of a warship. Should the US push for Turkey to Join the EU? (Larison) In the wake of the Greek debt crisis and the financial woes of many new EU members in central and eastern Europe, it is doubtful that the major EU member states would want to have anything to do with expanding to include Turkey. To the extent that European federalism is gaining strength politically, expansion will seem less desirable. It has been the goal of opponents of EU consolidation to dilute the Union through expansion, but there is not much Euroskeptic support for Turkish membership, either. This is because there is enough nationalist and anti-immigration sentiment across much of Europe to make Turkish accession unpopular for reasons that have nothing to do with the functioning of the EU. Even if it were prudent to apply pressure on behalf of Turkey, what leverage does Washington have that could overcome all of this? Diplomatic Calisthenics Watch 12/18/2009
 North Korea confirmed today that the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il received a personal letter from Barack Obama. The precise contents of the letter are unknown, but the goal is to bring the hermit kingdom back to the six-nation talks aimed at nuclear disarmament. I pity the diplomats who have to waste their time in farcical negotiations with the North Koreans. The Burmese Bomb? 08/06/2009
 The Sydney Morning Herald reports on two defectors who independently corroborated claims that the Burmese junta is working with North Korea on a bomb. It wouldn't be surprising- but as far as we are concerned, Burma is not a threat to anybody except for its own people. Traveling to North Korea 08/06/2009
 If Bill Clinton can travel to North Korea as a "private citizen," can you? According to Slate, North Korea will host you for 5 days if you're American, and 10 days if you're a non-American foreigner during their mass games (Arirang). The entire trip will be scripted, and you are forbidden to talk to any locals. If you want the unscripted tour, tell your handler that you are a journalist. North Korea and Burma 06/14/2009
Apparently North Korea has been teaching Burma how to be shady. Check out this report from Yale Global: | By Evan Tachovsky and Jon Friedman
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