UN Considering Maritime Interdiction Among UN Sanctions

Give the Obama administration a lot of credit, if China is not going to veto the UN Resolution in the works regarding North Korea, then this is clearly a step forward. Several experts have suggested now is a very good time to push North Korea, and this is a push.

The actions in a draft U.N. Security Council resolution presented Wednesday also could deal a serious blow to the North's weak economy by pinching its already limited ability to import goods on credit. Cutting off concessional loans would force the North to use more of its scant cash reserves to finance imports.

As worked out by the five veto-empowered U.N. Security Council members — the U.S., China, Russia, France and Britain — plus two of North Korea's most concerned neighbors, Japan and South Korea, the new sanctions would ban North Korea from exporting all weapons, including ballistic missiles.

So what exactly does this mean?

What could be different this time are provisions for inspection of vessels on the high seas or in seaports if the ships are reasonably suspected of carrying prohibited arms, including nuclear- and missile-related items.

The draft U.N. resolution does not authorize the use of military action to enforce any of its provisions, but William Tobey, a nuclear expert at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said the sanctions still could serve to deter some prospective buyers of North Korean arms.

"It does help" in that regard, Tobey said. "These are significant sources of revenue for North Korea. They tend also to sell fairly destabilizing weapons to areas of the world that are often in turmoil. So there are several constructive practical effects from an effective (U.N.) action in this area."

That sounds a lot like a naval blockade to me, and apparently it sounds like it to Japan too.

JAPAN may change its laws to allow its navy to inspect North Korean vessels on the high seas if the UN Security Council approves such a step, the government said on Thursday.

'Once the resolution is adopted, we have to clear the issue of enacting a domestic law,' to pave the way for naval intercepts by officially pacifist Japan, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura.

The question to be asked is, why is Barack Obama pushing North Korea when news reports suggest North Korea may fire yet another ballistic missile as soon as this weekend, and may be preparing to detonate yet another nuclear weapon according to some news reports? The answer is, the 6-party talks have changed the conditions.

No question the 6-party talks were unsuccessful in achieving their goals of dismantling the North Korean nuclear program, but there is a reason why the Democratic Party political elites in the US have been exactly right about the necessity to talk to our enemies, and George Bush of all people, by talking with North Korea has demonstrated this reason. Before the 6-party talks there was a real concern that the collapse of North Korea would lead to a regional conflict. The 6-party talks, by bringing together China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and the United States has served as a way to deconflict that possibility, and there is almost no chance now that any of the parties to the 6-party talks are going to go to war with each other over what is left of North Korea. In fact, China's biggest concern has become the flow of refugees, not the occupation of territory.

We, the rest of the world, are not prepared to see the reality of what is North Korea today. Should the regime fall anytime soon, the reality of the conditions inside North Korea in regards to the people is going to be stunning from the perspective of most Americans. I don't think people really get it. Over the last five years North Korea has suffered climate events that have caused enormous damage to crops, while at the same time the regime has clearly been heavily investing in military power. The provocative actions of launching missiles and detonating nuclear weapons has disrupted supply of food and aid into North Korea, and combined with economic sanctions the people are in dire need of assistance that most people are completely unaware even exists. Just how bad is it really in North Korea? This article from 2004 tells a story that when broadcast internationally on TV is going to shock many in the world. You can bet China wants to do everything possible to avoid being associated with any blame of this.

The World Food Program and UNICEF reported last year that chronic malnutrition had left 42 percent of North Korean children stunted — meaning their growth was seriously impaired, most likely permanently. An earlier report by the U.N. agencies warned that there was strong evidence that physical stunting could be accompanied by intellectual impairment.

South Korean anthropologists who measured North Korean refugees here in Yanji, a city 15 miles from the North Korean border, found that most of the teenage boys stood less than 5 feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds. In contrast, the average 17-year-old South Korean boy is 5-feet-8, slightly shorter than an American boy of the same age.

The height disparities are stunning because Koreans were more or less the same size — if anything, people in the North were slightly taller — until the abrupt partitioning of the country after World War II.

South Koreans, feasting on an increasingly Western-influenced diet, have been growing taller as their estranged countrymen have been shrinking through successive famines.

It is brutal proof of the old aphorism: You are what you eat.

The article goes on.

Foreigners who get the chance to visit North Korea — perhaps the most isolated country in the world — are often confused about the age of children. Nine-year-olds are mistaken for kindergartners and soldiers for Boy Scouts.

"They all looked like dwarfs," said Kim Dong Kyu, a South Korean academic who has made two trips to North Korea. "When I saw those soldiers, they looked like middle-school students. I thought if they had to sling an M-1 rifle over their shoulders, it would drag to the ground."

To the extent that they ever get to meet South Koreans, the North Koreans are likewise shocked. When two diminutive North Korean soldiers, ages 19 and 23, accidentally drifted into South Korea on a boat, one reportedly was overheard saying they would never be able to marry South Korean women because they were "too big for us," according to an account in the book "The Two Koreas," by Don Oberdorfer.

The soldiers were repatriated to the North at their own request.

The ramifications are not just physical.

The issue of IQ is sufficiently sensitive that the South Korean anthropologists studying refugee children in China have almost entirely avoided mentioning it in their published work. But they say it is a major unspoken worry for South Koreans, who fear that they could inherit the burden of a seriously impaired generation if Korea is reunified.

"This is our nightmare," anthropologist Chung said. "We don't want to get into racial stereotyping or stigmatize North Koreans in any way. But we also worry about what happens if we are living together and we have this generation that was not well-fed and well-educated."

About 500 North Korean children have come to South Korea, either alone or with their parents, and they are known to have difficulty keeping up in the school system, say people who work with defectors.

Although South Korea gives defectors priority in going to the best universities in a form of affirmative action, about 80 percent have ended up dropping out, Chung said.

...

From an anthropological standpoint, the North Korea situation has attracted considerable interest because it is, Pak said, the first documented case in which a homogeneous group of people have become so distinct because of nutrition and lifestyle.

In the meantime, the George Washington carrier strike group got underway in the Pacific Thursday, while the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group entered the 7th Fleet area of operations. I don't have any sense for how North Korea will react to the sanctions, nor if the intelligence is good to conduct any maritime interdiction operations against potential North Korean military exports, but the US Navy does have a lot of ships moving into that theater of operations right now, ready if necessary.