Wish him well and doesn't end up, years later, saying strangely inane things like "I've visited North Korea 25 times!" Must realize frequency of #northkorea visits, which #Kimjongun regards "privileged tributary mission," and one's degree of influence are inversely proportional. https://t.co/Wz1H1hGdCP
— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) February 5, 2019
Historian Robert Neff has an article and additional historical images of the Yalu River over at this Korea Times link.
It looks like the price for North Korea for the Trump-Kim II Summit will be closing their Yongbyon nuclear facility:
The second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump, scheduled for the end of February, is expected to primarily deal with shutting down North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facility and with corresponding measures by the US as part of fleshing out the joint statement signed by the two leaders in their Singapore summit on June 12, 2018, according to a high-ranking official at South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The question of building a peace regime is also expected to receive considerable attention.
Hankyoreh
“The US also places considerable significance” on North Korea’s conditional offer to shut down the Yongbyon reactor, a senior official at the Foreign Ministry who is familiar with the North Korea-US negotiations said during a meeting with reporters on Jan. 31. “Since this idea was brought up by North Korea, the discussion will focus on Yongbyon and then move on to other topics.”
During the inter-Korean Pyongyang Joint Statement in Sept. 2018, North Korea expressed its willingness to permanently close the Yongbyon nuclear facility presuming that the US takes corresponding measures, but some have argued that the Yongbyon facility is so old that closing it would have little value.
You can read more at the link, but closing Yongbyon is of more symbolic value for the US because the Kim regime can just reopen it whenever they decide to create another crisis. Even if they completely destroyed and dismantled Yongbyon such a deal does nothing to identify and shutdown any clandestine nuclear sites they may have.
It will be interesting to see what the US gives up in return for closing Yongbyon because the article claims that sanctions especially on the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Kumgang Tours will remain in place. That means that a peace treaty and/or humanitarian aid will likely be what is offered.
The long speculated on second Trump-Kim summit is set:
U.S. President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be held in Vietnam Feb. 27-28 with the talks to center on dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.
Yonhap
The date and venue had been shrouded in secrecy as the two countries negotiated the next steps following a vague denuclearization deal reached at their first summit in Singapore in June.
“Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong-un is a good one,” Trump said during his State of the Union address.
I wonder what the Chinese government thinks of the summit being in Vietnam considering their past brief military war and current territorial disputes in the South China Sea? This is a growing indication of how much the US-Vietnam relationship continues to positively develop which I would think the Chinese government would not be happy about.
This shouldn’t come as much of as surprise to people who follow North Korea:
North Korea stepped up restrictions on the use of Chinese mobile networks near the border last year in an apparent effort to control the flow of outside information, human rights organization Amnesty International has said.
Yonhap
In a recent report on North Korea’s human rights situation, the group said the reclusive regime has strengthened efforts to trace the activities of smuggled mobile phones using Chinese networks and block the signals in the border areas over the past few years.
“Individuals interviewed by Amnesty International in 2018 reported that the situation has not improved despite the recent dialogue between officials from the two Koreas,” it said. “Rather, communications through the Chinese mobile network have become even more difficult and risky in 2018.”
You can read more at the link, but as I have always believed the Kim regime is more concerned about subversive information than the threat of US military led regime change.
“taxi driver interrogations” ㅋㅋㅋ https://t.co/BpjzUV6UjF
— the oranckay (@oranckay) February 2, 2019
"The Moon administration…denying the legitimacy of its own nation & bringing down liberal democracy under the cloak of “inter-Korean collaboration” initiated by the unreliable Pyongyang regime."
— Tara O (@DrTaraO) February 3, 2019
"We should spend money…for the ROK-U.S. alliance rather than for the NK regime" https://t.co/1lZoV6bGsA
Why should anyone be surprised by this?:
North Korea has been working to protect its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities from military strikes, according to UN monitors.
KBS Global
Citing a confidential report drafted by UN sanction monitors, Reuters on Monday said the group “found evidence of a consistent trend on the part of North Korea to disperse its assembly, storage and testing locations.”
The North Korean mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the 300-page report, which was submitted to a 15-member UN Security Council sanctions committee on Friday.
What did the UN expect, Kim Jong-un to lay out his missile and nuclear facilities and equipment in a big open field with an X marks the spot for easy targeting by the US? Of course the North Koreans are going to disperse and then harden all their facilities, they would be fools not to.
If this report is accurate it appears the ROK government has once again gotten what they wanted from the US-ROK cost sharing negotiations with the caveat that it is only a one year deal:
South Korea and the United States are expected to strike a deal this week on splitting the cost for the stationing of American troops here as the allies consider the need to work closely together to denuclearize North Korea, a diplomatic source said Sunday.
Korea Times
The U.S. will likely accept South Korea’s request for a contribution of less than US$1 billion (1.1 trillion won) in 2019.
Seoul plans to sign a one-year contract as Washington demands, according to the source.
Last year, South Korea paid around 960 billion won for the 28,500-strong U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) under a five-year deal signed in 2014.
You can read more at the link, but since this is a one year deal I would expect the Trump administration to ratchet up the pressure again for the ROK to pay $1.2 billion when negotiations begin again later this year.
