Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.
Hong Young-pyo, Deobureo Minjoo Party floor leader, said #NorthKorea's missile test "is not a serious matter for existing SK-NK or SK-US relns" & "now is the time to positively consider giving food aid to North Korea." What?https://t.co/i3TUPBZKSk
— Tara O (@DrTaraO) May 9, 2019
I hope no one really thought a deal on this issue was going to be reached because I never did:
In a new sign of troubled relations with North Korea, the Pentagon said Wednesday it has suspended its efforts to arrange negotiations on recovering additional remains of U.S. servicemembers killed in the North during the Korean War.
Stars & Stripes
In a statement Wednesday, the Pentagon’s Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency said it has had no communication with North Korean authorities since the Hanoi summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February. That meeting focused on the North’s nuclear weapons and followed a June 2018 summit at which Kim committed to permitting a resumption the recovery of U.S. remains, which had been suspended by the U.S. in 2005.
“As a result, our effort to communicate with the Korean People’s Army regarding the possible resumption of joint recovery operation for 2019 has been suspended,” the agency said. “We have reached the point where we can no longer effectively plan, coordinate, and conduct field operations in the DPRK during this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, 2019.”
You can read more at the link, but the only way a deal was getting done was if the US paid North Korea an exorbitant amount of money to recover the remains as has been done in the past.
The North Koreans know exactly where the bulk of the remains are because the US military buried a large number of casualties in marked cemeteries before evacuating North Korea after the Chinese intervened in the war.
To be able to repatriate these remains to their family members the North Koreans have been demanding inflated prices which just shows how low the Kim regime is willing to go to make money. The work to recover the remains ended in 2005 and so far does not look like it will begin again any time soon.
Something I have been saying for a long time is these sanctions busting ships should be seized and then auctioned off with the money going to the victims of their terrorism attacks over the years. It appears at the least the seizure of North Korean ships may finally be happening:
The United States has seized a North Korean shipping vessel that was violating American law and international sanctions, the Justice Department announced Thursday, a move certain to escalate tensions already on the rise because of recent North Korean weapons tests.
Prosecutors said the carrier ship, the Wise Honest, was being used to export North Korean coal, a critical sector of the North’s economy that the United States and the United Nations have aggressively imposed sanctions on in an effort to force Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons program. The ship was also being used to import heavy machinery.
It was the first time the United States has seized a North Korean cargo vessel for international sanctions violations, the Justice Department said. Officials said the seizure is part of a broad plan to enforce the international sanctions and ultimately pressure North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program.
“This sanctions-busting ship is now out of service,” said John C. Demers, the head of the Justice Department’s national security division. The complaint was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Thursday by the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. (…….)Though the Justice Department obtained a sealed seizure warrant for the ship in July, officials said the timing of the complaint seeking the vessel’s forfeiture had nothing to do with the tensions between the two countries. On Thursday, the Wise Honest was in United States custody on its way to American Samoa, the Justice Department said.
The ship was used in a North Korean scheme to export tons of coal to foreign countries and to import heavy machinery in violation of international sanctions, prosecutors said.
New York Times
Indonesian authorities detained the ship in April 2018 after it was photographed at a North Korean port, loading what prosecutors said appeared to be coal. When the ship traveled to Indonesia, it tried to conceal details about its location by disabling its Automatic Identification System. The ship’s signal had been turned off since August 2017.
You can read more at the link.
Does anyone think these missile provocations from North Korea are just a coincidence that they occurred after Kim Jong-un’s summit with Vladimir Putin?:
North Korea has conducted long-range strike drills, state media reported Friday, a day after the communist state launched what were presumed to be two short-range missiles into the East Sea.
Yonhap
“At the command post, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un learned about a plan of the strike drill of various long-range strike means and gave an order of start of the drill,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in English.
“The successful drill of deployment and strike designed to inspect the ability of rapid reaction of the defense units… showed the might of the units which were fully prepared to proficiently carry out any operation and combat,” it added.
He also set forth “important tasks for further increasing the strike ability of the defense units,” the KCNA said. It said the drills were conducted at “defence units of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) in the forefront area and on the western front.”
The KCNA did not elaborate on the “long-range strike means.” But South Korea’s military said the North is believed to have launched two short-range missiles from its northwestern region into the East Sea, which flew 420 kilometers and 270 km, respectively.
You can read more at the link, but clearly the North Koreans are messaging that they are unhappy about not getting a “pretend denuclearization” deal agreed upon.
However, I would not be surprised if Putin is encouraging this as well. The US has put tremendous pressure on the Maduro administration in Venezuela and I would not be surprised if Putin is using North Korean provocations to distract US efforts there.
Pretty soon every piece of flat land around Seoul is going to have an apartment unit sitting on it:
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on Tuesday laid out plans to build an additional 110,000 residential units in 28 locations including the two new towns, which are in addition to three new town projects announced by the Moon Jae-in government last December.
Joong Ang Ilbo
That completes the Moon government’s grand scheme of building 300,000 housing units around the greater Seoul area to cool the real estate market.
According to the Land Ministry, 38,000 residential units will be built on a 8.13 million-square-meter (2,009-acre) area in Changneung-dong in the city of Goyang. Some 20,000 residential units will be built on a 3.43 million-square-meter area in Daejang-dong in Bucheon. Both are in Gyeonggi.
The remaining 52,000 housing units will be in smaller projects in 26 locations around Seoul and Gyeonggi.
For example, 12,000 residential units will be built around Sadang Station in southern Seoul while 300 units will be built on a former railroad property near Wangsimni Station in central Seoul. As was the case with the new towns announced in December, both of the two newly-added towns are close to Seoul.
You can read more at the link.
Back to hermitage?
— Aidan Foster-Carter (@fcaidan) May 8, 2019
Yes I know, #HermitKingdom is a cliche; indeed I have engaged in self-criticism for misusing it. But as this shows, hermitude always remains a policy option – & arguably a default gut reaction: batten down the hatches, it's us against the world. https://t.co/76TRq2er4j
I wonder if the ROK will get auto tariff relief when they decide to pay the amount President Trump has asked them to pay for the upkeep of the US-ROK alliance?
South Korea’s Trade Minister will visit the U.S. next week to call for the country’s exemption from potential U.S. tariffs on auto imports.
KBS World Radio
Minister Yoo Myung-hee announced the plan in a meeting with reporters on Tuesday, emphasizing that South Korea cannot be complacent or sit idle on the issue.
She plans to leave for the U.S. on Monday and meet with officials from the White House, Commerce Department, US Trade Representative as well as members of Congress.
U.S. President Donald Trump has until Friday of next week to decide whether auto import tariffs are necessary for national security under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. If a conclusion is made that such a measure is needed, the U.S. can impose tariffs of 25 percent on imported cars.
