Like I have been maintaining, I don’t think anyone should panic unless sanctions are dropped for little to nothing in return from North Korea. This recent announcement suggests the sanctions will remain in place:
This photo, taken July 25, 2018, shows Deputy Minister for National Defense Policy, Yeo Suk-joo (R), shaking hands with Roberta Shea, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense at the 14th Korea-U.S. Integrated Defense Dialogue in Seoul. (Yonhap)
South Korea and the United States agreed Thursday to keep enforcing sanctions against North Korea until it takes “concrete, verifiable” steps toward denuclearization, during their biannual working-level defense talks.
During the 14th Korea-U.S. Integrated Defense Dialogue (KIDD) in Seoul, the two sides also shared the view that there is a need to continuously explore ways to build trust with Pyongyang as long as the communist state maintains a “good-will” dialogue.
Seoul’s defense ministry announced the outcome of the two-day talks. Deputy Minister for National Defense Policy, Yeo Suk-joo, represented the South Korean side, while Roberta Shea, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense, led the U.S. delegation.
During the talks, the two sides mentioned “meaningful progress” following two inter-Korean summits in April and May and last month’s U.S.-North Korea summit despite concerns over a perceived lack of progress in the North’s denuclearization process. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder what the Moon administration’s definition of “concrete, verifiable” steps is?
Fairly amazing how Trump has normalized widespread penny-ante corruption in his administration in just 18 months. Rather disturbing how quickly the norms folded when confronted by T’s brazenness. Another sign that there’s an anti-democratic potential in US we didn’t really expect https://t.co/pwxbSac0Nf
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (front) visits a sapling farm in the country’s eastern province of Kangwon in an apparent bid to highlight the importance of forests, in this undated photo released by the North’s ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun on July 24, 2018. (Yonhap)
The big question is will the North Koreans likewise remove an equal number of troops and equipment? If so how far away from the DMZ are they moving?:
South Korea’s defense ministry said Tuesday that it is pushing for a plan to withdraw forces and their equipment from border guard posts “on a trial basis” in line with the April inter-Korean summit agreement to halt all hostile acts and reduce tensions.
In a policy briefing to the National Assembly’s defense committee, the ministry also said that it would consider the “full-scale pullout” in sync with a cross-border survey of historical remains and ecological features within the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas.
After their summit at the truce village of Panmunjom on April 27, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed to transform the DMZ into a “peace zone in a genuine sense.”
“To realize the transformation of the DMZ into a peace zone, as stated in the Panmunjom Declaration, (the ministry) is seeking a plan to expand the (withdrawal) program in stages after pulling out troops and equipment from the guard posts within the DMZ,” the ministry said. [Korea Times]
I can’t help but think that there is more to this story:
Spc. Yea Ji Sea, has served four years in the U.S. Army. She filed a lawsuit Thursday, July 19, 2018, asking for a response to her American citizenship application after the military moved to discharge her.
A U.S. Army specialist born in South Korea has sued asking for a response to her American citizenship application after the military moved to discharge her.
Yea Ji Sea, a 29-year-old from Gardena, California, who has served four years and is assigned to the duty station at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court.
She came to the country as a child on a visitor visa and held other visas before enlisting in 2013 under a special government program for foreign citizens who want to serve in the U.S. military. Under the program, recruits agreed in their enlistment contracts to apply to naturalize as soon as their honorable service was certified. [Associated Press]
You can read more at the link, but the article states she had a forged document from a defunct language school that caused her first application to be revoked causing her to reapply in 2016. It is hard and time consuming to get citizenship without the drama of forged documents.
A Rocket has not been launched by North Korea in 9 months. Likewise, no Nuclear Tests. Japan is happy, all of Asia is happy. But the Fake News is saying, without ever asking me (always anonymous sources), that I am angry because it is not going fast enough. Wrong, very happy!
This photo released by the Korea Railroad Corp. (KORAIL) on July 20, 2018, promotes the Summer Santa Claus Village at the Buncheon Railway Station in Bonghwa, North Gyeongsang Province. (Yonhap)
A temperature map of Yeongcheon and surrounding areas. The red dot at the center of the dark red area is Yeongcheon, where the temperature reached 40.3C at 3:27 p.m., Tuesday, the hottest temperature on the Korean Peninsula since 1907. / Captured from KMA website
Remember July 24, 2018. The Korean Peninsula had its hottest day ever.
The midday high in a small town (Shinryoung-myeon) in Yeongcheon, North Gyeongsang Province, reached 40.3C (at 3:27 p.m.), melting down the previous record of 40C set in Daegu on Aug. 1, 1942, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA).
The KMA has been collecting weather data since 1907. [Korea Times]
Here is the latest so called progress on the North Korea denuclearization issue:
Shown is a file photo of North Korea test firing a rocket at its Sohae Satellite Launching Station, the country’s main such location since 2012, on Feb. 7, 2016. U.S. website 38 North said on July 24, 2018, that new satellite imagery from July 20 shows key facilities are being dismantled at the station in line with a promise made by the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, at his historic summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. (Yonhap) (END)
North Korea has started dismantling some facilities at its main satellite launch station, seen as the testing ground for its intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to expert analysis of recent satellite images.
If confirmed, the analysis by respected US-based website 38 North could signal a step forward after last month’s landmark summit between Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump, although some experts questioned the significance of the gesture.
After the summit, Trump had declared the North Korean nuclear threat was effectively over, and US media reports suggest he is privately furious at the lack of any subsequent progress on the denuclearisation issue. [AFP]
Before anyone gets excited by this news, it is important to note that the satellite launch site has nothing do with North Korea’s nuclear program. I have always believed that the Kim regime would be more willing to make concessions over their ICBM program and market it as being a step towards denuclearization in return for US concessions. That appears to be what they are doing.
Additionally this concession at their satellite launch site does not really effect their ICBM program anyway:
Melissa Hanham, senior research associate with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, said that while dismantling the engine test site was a “good move”, it amounted to “the bare minimum” that could be done at Sohae.
“Unless they dismantle the whole site, it will remain North Korea’s premier location for space launches,” Hanham said on Twitter.
“North Korea does not need the Sohae engine test stand anymore if it is confident in the engine design. As (Kim Jong Un) said himself, North Korea is moving from testing to mass production,” she said, adding that observers should look for signs of new sites where more missiles could be built.
So basically North Korea is dismantling something it doesn’t really need right now that they can then reconstruct when needed in a matter of days. Is this something I am supposed to be excited about?
It was only a matter of time before the resurgent leftists in South Korea went after another one of their boogeymen, Kim Hyun-hui:
The bereaved family members of the victims of the KAL 858 bombing hold a news conference on their filing of a lawsuit against its culprit Kim Hyun-hui in front of the Seoul Central District Court on July 23, 2018. (Yonhap)
The bereaved family members of the victims of the mysterious mid-air bombing of a South Korean passenger jet in 1987 on Monday sued the culprit, Kim Hyun-hui, a female North Korean former terrorist, for libel and obstruction of business, while calling for reinvestigation of the case.
Prior to filing the suit with the Seoul Central District Court, they claimed at a news conference, “There was no objective evidence to verify that Kim is a North Korean terrorist or that the plane in question was blown up.”
In particular, Kim Ho-soon, head of the group, insisted the group’s own probe has found that Kim was not a North Korean spy but an agent from the South Korean spy agency under the Chun Doo-hwan government.
According to the official findings of South Korean government probes into the disappearance of Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987, Kim and another North Korean agent planted timed bombs on the plane and exploded it near Myanmar, killing all 115 people on board. Kim made a failed attempt to commit suicide shortly before being arrested. She was sentenced to death at a Seoul court in 1990 and pardoned later that year. She is now living in South Korea as a housewife.
Then, North Korea strongly denied the charges that made the U.S. blacklist the North as a terror-sponsoring state in 1988.
But the family members have long raised suspicions that the incident was possibly arranged by the South Korean government two months ahead of the presidential elections, and the government of leftist President Roh Moo-hyun re-examined the case in 2004, with no reversible outcomes.
“The announcements made by the government on the incident at that time were dependent wholly on Kim’s confession,” they asserted in the suit, while demanding a reinvestigation. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the statement that the ROK government’s findings were also based on Kim’s confession is completely untrue. There was far more evidence of North Korea’s responsibility for the bombing than just Kim’s confession. I recommend readers read my prior posting on this topic at the below link:
I would not be surprised at all if left wing lawyers are the ones behind this libel lawsuit against Kim Hyun-hui. During the presidency of former leftwing President Roh Moo-hyun she was constantly being attacked by leftists with the same claims that she was not a terrorist, but instead a ROK government secret operative that intentionally bombed the plane.
It seems like total absurdity that someone would think the ROK government would bomb and murder 115 of their own citizens, but remember South Korean leftists still think the ROK government murdered their own sailors by intentionally sinking the ROK naval ship the Cheonan in 2010 instead of a North Korean torpedo. This is the lengths that South Korean leftists will go to defect blame on their political opposition instead of holding the real culprits, the Kim regime, responsible for the murder of these ROK citizens.
