Category: North Korea

Obama’s North Korean dilemma

November 24, 2010 12:25 am by Daniel Dombey

By Daniel Dombey, US Diplomatic Correspondent

You can understand why the latest flare-up of tension in the Korean peninsula has left Barack Obama none too happy.

Obama has had a pretty poor November so far, what with historic reverses in the midterm elections and a wretched G20 in Seoul where, rather than rallying the rest of the world against China’s currency policy, he found himself at the receiving end of several countries’ strictures about the Fed’s attempts to reflate the stumbling US economy.

Continue reading: “Obama’s North Korean dilemma”

Posted in China, Foreign affairs, North Korea, Obama |
From FT.com November 23, 2010

North Korea has launched an artillery barrage against a South Korean island, killing two servicemen and seriously injuring more than a dozen troops and civilians, in a dangerous escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula.

South Korea returned artillery fire after North Korea on Tuesday unleashed a hail of 200 shells on Yeonpyeong island in the Yellow Sea.

Posted in North Korea |

FT podcast: World Weekly with Gideon Rachman

October 1, 2010 12:16 am by Financial Times

The Irish fiscal crisis; the power struggle in Moscow; and the succession path in North Korea

In this week’s podcast: How can Ireland escape its fiscal crisis? The mayor of Moscow is ousted in a show of strength by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev – but is the power struggle over? And in North Korea a succession plan is emerging as Kim Jong-Il’s third son is promoted to general – but what role will his aunt play? Gideon Rachman hosts the world podcast, with guests David Gardener in the studio, Catherine Belton in Moscow and Christian Oliver in Seoul. Produced by Rob Minto

Posted in North Korea, Russia, World affairs |

What is North Korea up to?

May 25, 2010 11:07 pm by Gideon Rachman

When a regime as brutal, unpredictable and desperate as North Korea puts itself on a war footing and severs all ties with its bitter enemy to the South, then the world has every reason to be worried. Under the circumstances, a fall of just over 3% in the South Korean stock market sounds like a fairly moderate response.

The markets obviously think the risk of war is still fairly small. And I think – and hope – that the markets are right. The fact is that neither side has a real reason for wanting conflict. The North Korean government would risk a humiliating defeat and a loss of power. Unlike in the Korean War, it has no external backer to come to its rescue. South Korea is a rich, sophistictated society with a rising international profile – why should it risk all that, by being sucked into a conflict with its crazy neighbour to the North? Most South Koreans also have zero desire to shed the blood of their unfortunate compatriots.

Continue reading: “What is North Korea up to?”

Posted in North Korea |

Obama plays trump cards in Beijing

November 17, 2009 3:40 pm by Demetri Sevastopulo

By Geoff Dyer, FT China bureau chief

Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to ordinary Chinese on his Asia tour may have fallen a little flat, but there is one trump card he can play to score points with his hosts – the three members of Obama’s Cabinet who can get by in Chinese.

Two are Chinese-Americans, commerce secretary Gary Locke and energy secretary Steven Chu, both of whom are with the president in Beijing.

Locke did not learn English until he went to kindergarten, although he admits that he has lost some of his Chinese language skills since he was a kid.

Nobel-prize winner Chu did not really learn Chinese as a child, but has tried to study as an adult. And then there is Tim Geithner at Treasury who spent a couple of summers studying Chinese at universities in Beijing.

In Chinese financial circles, there are any number of people with immaculate English, but the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist party are not quite such a cosmopolitan bunch – the Cultural Revolution cut off educational opportunities for many of them.

Only one member of the current Politburo finished a university course abroad, vice premier Zhang Dejiang.

And Zhang did not exactly spend lazy days at the Sorbonne – he has an economics degree from the Kim Il Sung university in North Korea. I wonder if his course covered ‘global imbalances’?

Posted in Asia, China, Financial crisis, Foreign affairs, North Korea, Obama, US foreign policy |

Bill Clinton as special envoy to North Korea?

August 5, 2009 12:38 pm by Gideon Rachman

So Bill Clinton returns in triumph from North Korea, with two grateful female journalists for company on the flight home.

Naturally, there is lots of speculation about what lay behind the trip. Was the release of the imprisoned journalists really pre-arranged? Was Clinton’s mission purely humanitarian, or did he discuss other matters in his long meeting with Kim Jong-Il?

I certainly hope that Clinton did stray onto other issues. There is obviously an urgent need to explore whatever scope there is for diplomacy, with an erratic and dangerous nuclear-armed government, headed by the sick-looking “dear leader”.

In fact, I think it would be a good idea to make Clinton the Obama administration’s special representative to North Korea. He knows the dossier well from his time in the White House. He has a reasonably close, if complicated, relationship with the US Secretary of State.  Obama has appointed special envoys for the Middle East and for AfPak – why not for North Korea as well?

Posted in North Korea |

Further reading

August 3, 2009 12:12 pm by Financial Times

Dispatch from Iran: Some Police Soften on Neda’s Day: Steve Clemons posts an email from an anonymous observer in The Washington Note. A protester describes trying to access the grave of the young woman who was killed during Iranian elections and the trouble that ensued.

Pressing Pyongyang On Rights: Roberta Cohen wonders whether a preoccupation with North Korean nukes is leading us to neglect human rights

Posted in Iran, North Korea |

Listening to Obama’s nukes guy

July 10, 2009 11:32 am by Gideon Rachman

Gary Samore is the kind of sane, well-informed and low-key professional who makes me glad that Obama is now in control of US foreign policy. He works on the National Security Council and has a long and complicated title to do with arms control and nuclear non-proliferation, but he says the president refers to him as “my nukes guy”, which about sums it up. That means that Samore spends his days grappling with some of the most sensitive dossiers in US foreign policy – in particular Iran, Russia and North Korea.

Yesterday he was in London on his way back from the Moscow summit and he gave an on-the-record briefing at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Naturally there are limits to how frank you can be in such a setting, but I still thought he had several interesting things to say:

First, the nuclear-arms reduction deal agreed in principle in Moscow is essentially a modest first step. The START (strategic arms reduction) treaty runs out at the end of the year, and it is important to have an interim agreement on further reduction – if only to keep the mechanisms for mutual inspections and co-operation going. If they can nail down all the details on this initial relatively modest reduction in nuclear weapons, Samore hopes that Russia and the US will then be able to negotiate a deal for much deeper cuts in nuclear-weapons stock-piles. He says that at that point Russian concerns about missile defence will become more valid. The Americans argue that the system they are working on is so modest that it could only be effective against a country with a very small number of nuclear missiles – such as, potentially, an Iran that went nuclear.

Continue reading: “Listening to Obama’s nukes guy”

Posted in Iran, North Korea, Russia |

Another Korean war?

July 8, 2009 4:09 pm by Gideon Rachman

I have taken to more or less discounting sabre-rattling from North Korea – such as the latest batch of missile tests. But maybe that is wrong.

One of China’s leading experts on North Korea, Zhang Lianggui, professor of international strategy at the Communist Party school in Beijing, believes that “the likeliehood of a military confrontation on the Korean peninsula is very high.” The North, he writes, believes “it has overwhelming military superiority” and so would inevitably win a conflict. Prof Zhang seems to think that conflict is most likely to break out initially at sea, perhaps as a result to search ships heading for North Korea. The fight would then spread to the mainland.

So far I have only seen press reports of Prof Zhang’s views. His original article appeared in a Chinese magazine called “World Affairs”, so if anyone can direct me to the full version, I would be very grateful. Tomorrow I am going to a discussion meeting with Gray Samore, the White House’s non-proliferation man, so perhaps there will be more to report then.

Posted in Foreign affairs, North Korea |

North Korea: relative power

June 3, 2009 12:14 pm by Gideon Rachman
North Korea

North Korea

A great graphic from the FT on the key members of Kim Jong-il’s mystery-shrouded family.

Posted in North Korea |
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Gideon Rachman and his FT colleagues debate international affairs.

Gideon became chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times in July 2006. He joined the FT after a 15-year career at The Economist, which included spells as a foreign correspondent in Brussels, Washington and Bangkok. He also edited The Economist’s business and Asia sections.

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