It seemed like a perfect match.  The Korean army would make a few bucks to help cover some of the costs of modernizing its military by selling 850,000 Korean War era rifles in the USA while American hunters and collectors would have access to a trove of vintage weapons. It was a win-win situation that the Obama administration approved last year.

… at least until it disapproved of the sale this May.

The Korean government can not resell the American-made weapons to a third country without Washington’s approval. Yonhap reports that the American government may destroy the weapons, presumably after paying the Koreans for them. It does not indicate if the funds for such a purchase would come from the budget of the Pentagon or the State Department.

Here is a bit of cuteness which seems to indicate that there is either nobody in the Obama administration who can officially speak with reporters who knows enough about the issue to talk competently about it, or that the issue has caught them flat-footed:

Asked why the M1s pose a threat, the State Department spokesman referred questions to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF representatives said they would look into the question Monday afternoon, but on Wednesday they referred questions to the Justice Department. DOJ spokesman Dean Boyd referred questions back to the State Department.

My best guess is that a political appointee somewhere in the administration put a monkey wrench in the sale based on his or her personal views on the right to own firearms and nobody has figured out what they can give as the official reason for the reversal. Such things happen in governments all the time.

The cuteness continues:

The White House referred questions on the issue to the Pentagon, which referred questions to the U.S. Embassy in South Korea, which deferred back to the State Department.

It appears that it is not just American reporters who are getting the run-around from Washington. The Korean government is bewildered as well:

A Korean government official said, “It’s difficult to understand why the U.S. opposes the deal now, when we already shipped tens of thousands of these firearms to the U.S. in the early 1990s. We are trying to grasp the real underlying cause of this reversal through diplomatic channels.”

Good luck with that.