The new format/setting of KJU's NYD address is trying to show he/NK is a modern, normal country and no longer the backward, hermit kingdom. I knew it wasn't live. Then saw evidence: the clock behind him keeps jumping time and its face gets covered too 👀😅 https://t.co/WVfLDUgCgT
— Duyeon Kim (@duyeonkim) January 1, 2019
The most interesting fact about this alleged defection is that he chose to not defect to South Korea. That should be an indication to everyone of how little trust potential defectors have in the Moon administration:
South Korea’s spy agency says it has yet to make contact with North Korea’s top diplomat in Italy, who has vanished from the public for months in a reported bid to seek asylum.
KBS World Radio
According to Representative Kim Min-ki of the ruling Democratic Party, the National Intelligence Service(NIS) told him that Acting North Korean Ambassador to Italy Jo Song-gil has gone into hiding with his wife since leaving the North Korean diplomatic mission in Rome early November.
The NIS said Jo began his stint in the North Korean mission in Italy in May of 2015 as third secretary, and was later promoted to first secretary, adding his term in Italy was set to expire at the end of November.
Asked whether he thinks Jo will seek asylum in a third country rather than in the South, the South Korean lawmaker said it is easy to guess, citing the NIS’ comment that it had no contact with him since he disappeared.
It will be interesting to see where Jo Song-gil ultimately ends up. If he comes to America will this be something the Trump administration will make known or keep quiet to not upset North Korea? I guess we will eventually find out.
The President’s newest pen pal has sent him another letter:
U.S. President Donald Trump said that he is ready to help North Korea reach its “tremendous economic potential” after revealing Wednesday at the White House that he received a letter from the North’s leader Kim Jong-un.
Joong Ang Ilbo
“I just got a great letter from Kim Jong-un,” Trump told reporters at his first Cabinet meeting of the new year. He displayed what appeared to be a three-page letter without elaborating its content, which he said he has shown to only a “few people.”
In his New Year’s address Tuesday, Kim said he is ready to meet with Trump again “anytime.” Kim reiterated his commitment to “complete denuclearization” and pledged that North Korea will not make, test, use or proliferate nuclear weapons.
“We had our meeting six months [ago] in Singapore,” said Trump, recalling his first summit with Kim on June 12. “We’ll probably now have another meeting. He’d like to meet, I’d like to meet.”
“I look forward to our meeting with Chairman Kim,” said Trump. “We’ll be setting it up in the not-too-distant future.”
The contents of the letter were not released, but I am willing to bet it is just more of the same empty promises that are part of the Kim regime’s “pretend denuclearization” strategy.
The former Finance Ministry employee who accused the Moon administration of intentionally raising the national debt has now been taken in custody for supposedly trying to commit suicide:
The former Finance Ministry official who accused the Blue House of fiddling with state coffers and intervening in private companies went missing for hours on Thursday after leaving a suicide note on the internet that read he was going to hang himself in a motel – until police found him alive.
Joong Ang Ilbo
Officers at Gwanak Police Precinct provided scant details to the local press about Shin Jae-min’s health condition but said he was hospitalized in Seoul in a “favorable state.”
Police refused to hold a press briefing detailing how they discovered Shin or what he was doing by the time they arrived at the motel in Gwanak District, southern Seoul, saying they didn’t want to “stimulate” someone who was already “mentally instable.”
Shin allegedly left a suicide note as a web posting on a forum hosted by his alma mater Korea University:
In his post, Shin wrote that he thought people would trust him and his whistle-blowing accusations if he died.
Shin added he hoped Korean society would adopt a culture that embraces whistle-blowers and reveal how government policies are made to the general public.
Shin lamented blowing the whistle on a left-leaning government, saying he could have received legal help from Minbyun – Lawyers for a Democratic Society, a non-governmental organization with special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, if he was whistle-blowing on a conservative Blue House.
Shin said he was “deeply disappointed” after hearing that every attorney in Minbyun refused to defend him if Shin revealed to the press he was being backed by the progressive group.
I don’t know why he was surprised the Minbyun group would not help him because they are notorious for basically being Kim Jong-un’s lawyers in South Korea. They have been used to legally attack North Korean defectors, one of the groups behind the US beef riots, and have long attacked the USFK relocation plan. They have recently been calling for the signing of a peace treaty to end the Korean War so US troops can be withdrawn.
Minbyun of course are not going to do anything that would damage a North Korean friendly administration in South Korea. Shin best toughen up because the leftists in South Korea know how to defend their own and will do everything they can to destroy him. Just ask the conservative journalists sitting in jail for reporting accurate information about the Moon administration.
The former deputy North Korean ambassador to the United Kingdom who defected from the Kim regime had this to say about Kim Jong-un’s recent New Year’s speech:
Thae Yong-ho, one of the highest-ranking North Korean defectors in the South, told reporters in Seoul on Tuesday that Kim’s speech had two strategic purposes. These are to drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States in regards to economic cooperation with the North, and to complicate the verification process of North Korea’s denuclearization by initiating multilateral negotiations over a formal peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War.
Joong Ang Ilbo
“If summarized in a single sentence, Kim Jong-un’s address shows he wants to narrow down the scope of the nuclear negotiations between the United States and North Korea to arms reduction and push off international sanctions, while retaining the status of a nuclear-armed country,” Thae said.
According to Thae, who used to be North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, the “new path” Kim mentioned the North would take if the United States does not respond with corresponding measures to its denuclearization efforts would be a return to its old pattern of making nuclear provocations. In the speech, Kim said the North would not “make and test nuclear weapons any longer nor use and proliferate them.” Thae said “a new path” would mean reneging on this pledge.
You can read more views at the link, but the consensus seems to be building that Kim Jong-un does not plan to denuclearize and instead inspects the Trump administration to drop sanctions first.
This is all in line with the “pretend denuclearization” strategy that I believe the North Korean’s are hoping to achieve. Once sanctions are dropped the regime will be flushed with cash that it can then funnel back into its weapons programs. While doing this they can do superficial things to give the appearance of heading towards denuclearization without actually fully denuclearizing.
They will drag this out as long as possible and then by the time someone calls them out on their duplicity, they will make up reason to blame the US for the breakdown in the agreement. By the time this happens they hope to have an agreement to end the Korean War in place and US troops withdrawn from the peninsula.
The regime is betting that by this time the US and the international community will just want to treat them like Pakistan and let them keep their nukes because it isn’t worth the trouble to forcefully make them denuclearize. By keeping the nukes this then allows them over time to coerce the ROK into the confederation agreement they have been demanding to implement.
Late shot…spent some time Christmas Day visiting D-2 ADA THAAD at their remote site. Thankful for their dedicated service and dedication to their no-fail 24/7 mission. Mess Team was preparing a feast! Outdoor pics unauthorized. pic.twitter.com/yPDRt4wSzM
— Robert Abrams (@DogFaceSoldier) December 26, 2018
Here we go with yet another whistleblower, this time in the Finance Ministry, who is claiming that the Blue House pressured the ministry to raise the national debt. This happened back in 2017 after the Moon administration took power. The supposed goal was to immediately inflate the national debt and blame it on the prior Park administration and then create the appearance of decreasing it over time to make the Moon administration look good even though they were the ones that jacked up the national debt in the first place:
The controversy between an ex-bureaucrat whistle-blower and the government is entering a new phase.
Joong Ang Ilbo
The 32-year-old former employee of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Shin Jae-min, held a press conference Wednesday in which he disclosed the name of the former Blue House secretary who pressured the Finance Ministry to keep the national debt-to-GDP ratio high to make the previous Park Geun-hye administration look bad.
“It’s Blue House secretary [for economic policy] Cha Young-hwan,” Shin said.
Cha was appointed second vice minister in the Office for Government Policy Coordination last month.
Shin said he has heard it directly not only from then-Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister for the Economy Kim Dong-yeon but also from lower-level employees at the Finance Ministry as they talked on the phone with the Blue House.
“I heard the calls from the Blue House and the unreasonable orders,” Shin said. “I’ve experienced it all.”
He said it infuriated him that even when the finance minister decided not to issue deficit-financing bonds, the Blue House forced the ministry to.
Deficit-covering bonds are normally issued when the state’s spending exceeds tax revenues.
He said Finance Minister Kim gave the goal of raising the national debt-to-GDP ratio up to 39.4 percent.
According to Shin, the Finance Ministry was looking for ways of reducing an issuing of 8.7 trillion won ($7.8 billion) worth of deficit-financing bonds since tax collections had exceeded the government’s initial goal.
Printing the bonds would only raise the nation’s debt.
You can read much more at the link, but the Blue House’s response as usual when it comes to whistleblowers has said these are all lies and has threatened Shin with legal action for releasing state secrets.
Another big thing no one has talked about yet in regards to this issue is, what is the Moon administration planning to do with all the extra money they needlessly raised the national debt to obtain? Is this the money they plan to give to Kim Jong-un?
So I am to believe that the Kim regime is so poor that they need the international community to provide them humanitarian assistance, but some how they have enough funds to support this?:
The 105-story Ryugyong Hotel has long been a blot on the Pyongyang skyline. The world’s tallest unoccupied building has towered over North Korea’s capital since 1987, a grand but empty pyramid entirely dark except for the lone aircraft warning light at its top.
Stars & Stripes
Outsiders saw the unfinished building as the epitome of failure, while people inside the country took care to rarely mention it at all.
That is, until light designer Kim Yong Il made the building once again the talk of the town.
In a brilliant flip of the script, the Ryugyong has been reborn as a symbol of pride and North Korean ingenuity.
For several hours each night, the building that doesn’t have electricity inside becomes the backdrop of a massive light show in which more than 100,000 LEDs flash images of famous statues and monuments, bursts of fireworks, party symbols and political slogans.
You can read more at the link, but someone should ask Bart Vermeiren from the Red Cross and the Blue House’s Moon Chung-in what they thinks of this.
