Over at McClatchy, Kevin Hall provides what promises to be the final word on the allegations of North Korean counterfeiting promoted by hardliners within the Bush administration. Hall delves into the interesting and, for me, new issue of the administration’s cooperation with friendly and perhaps overly obliging elements inside the South Korean intelligence and/or policy... Read More

With the shutdown of the reactor at Yongbyon, the Six Party agreement to denuclearize North Korea has lumbered into its next stage. That means it’s time for all the hardliners who eagerly predicted the collapse of the agreement (and, indeed, may have worked actively to sabotage it by hindering the unfreezing of the North Korean... Read More

Reader DJ sets the cat among the pigeons, e-mailing the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp. asking if HSBC, Banco Delta Asia’s main correspondent partner until September 2005, was part of the web of collusive bankers that David Asher alleged is knowingly passing Supernotes instead of confiscating them, thereby keeping the magnitude of the North... Read More

In my previous post about alleged North Korean counterfeiting, I wrote that the U.S. Secret Service had reported that only $50 million in Supernotes had been seized over the last 15 years. This meager haul provides little evidentiary or logical support for the idea that North Korea was funding its current account deficit through counterfeiting.... Read More

"Presumed guilty until proven guilty" makes for a quick and easy North Korea policy...but it's no substitute for global diplomacy David Asher’s testimony before a joint House subcommittee on April 18 provided considerable entertainment—inadvertent as well as intentional. It also revealed some things about North Korea, a lot about the Bush administration and David Asher--and... Read More