[Updated Jan. 17 & Jan. 20, 2015--CH] A couple days ago I was interviewed by The Real News on the current round of sanctions against North Korea. Link here. I talked about a few things that I’ve covered in China Matters and on my twitter feed, not all of which made it into the report:... Read More

The Washington Post reports that Wachovia Bank is willing to handle the North Korean funds at Banco Delta Asia... ...if it gets the necessary blessing from its regulators a.k.a. the Treasury Department. Wachovia, by the way, is on the long list of US banks (two; the other was HSBC, according to the Financial Times) that... Read More

...after this morning’s post, here’s confirmation that Seoul is impatient to cut the Gordian knot and resolve the BDA funds issue so it can get on with the business of rapprochement. Yes, it looks like South Korean expressions of frustration with the US strategy of ostracizing North Korea are becoming ever more explicit. First, the... Read More

Thanks to Asad in the comments for bringing up the issue of parallel U.S. efforts to cut Iran off from the international financial system, using the same laws, arguments, and tactics as it has employed to confront North Korea. It's an important reminder that US North Korea policy has to be viewed through an Iranian... Read More

Update: The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler weighs in with what I regard, in my dyspeptic mood, as an inevitable piece of behind-covering by Treasury officials trying to explain how they couldn’t move $25 million dollars in 12 days. Not much clarity here beyond an attempt to ascribe the inability to move $25 million to North... Read More

$25 million in accounts related to North Korean entities on deposit at Banco Delta Asia that were frozen by Macau’s monetary authority after the United States Treasury Department announced that BDA was a bank of “primary money laundering concern” looks like it’s finally headed to a North Korean account at Bank of China. Maybe. On... Read More

From the April 3 Ministry of Foreign Affairs press briefing in Beijing: Glaser arrived Beijing on March 25 to "implement" the transfer of funds from 50 frozen accounts at BDA into a North Korean account at Bank of China--the first key trustbuilding exercise that was supposed to be resolved by March 14. He's been there... Read More

What’s Daniel Glaser up to? Eating crow, it looks like: For “negatively affected” read “fanatically pursued by the U.S. Treasury Department as part of its vendetta against North Korea, the Six-Party Agreement, and the State Department”. Daniel Glaser, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, is the money laundering guy under Stuart Levey... Read More