Here is what Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies says that President Trump must be prepared to do at his upcoming summit with Kim Jong-un:
Anthony Ruggiero
The Panmunjom Declaration, issued after the late April meeting between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae In, feels like a Hollywood movie remake with new actors but the same tired story. North Korea has pledged on multiple occasions to not to acquire nuclear weapons, beginning with the North’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985. In 1992, Kim’s grandfather committed to three no’s: no nuclear weapons, no nuclear reprocessing and no uranium enrichment. North Korea was caught red-handed cheating multiple times on all three nuclear no’s, but still received security assurances from the United States in 2005, when both sides pledged “to respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together” and normalize relations. All of these efforts ended in the same place, with a different Kim breaking his promises and enjoying tangible concessions from the United States and its allies.
To counter Kim’s smile diplomacy and avoid his trap, the Trump administration should take four lessons from prior negotiations with North Korea, Libya and Iran. [Politico]
You can read the rest at the link, but Ruggiero’s four lessons are:
Be prepared to walkaway from the table.
Nuclear only deal do not solve the strategic issues.
North Korea’s top leader Kim Jong-un looks at a photo of his grandfather and the North’s founder, Kim Il-sung, hung at a state guest house on Bangchuidao Island of China’s northern city of Dalian in this photo captured from the North’s Korean Central TV on May 9, 2018. Kim met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Dalian during his visit there from May 7-8, the second such meeting in just over 40 days. Bangchuidao Island is a seaside resort that was often used in the past for secret North Korea-China leaders’ meetings. (Yonhap)
Remember the 12 North Korean restaurant workers that defected to South Korea that infuriated the Kim regime? Well it appears the Moon administration may be laying the ground work to send them back:
North Korea runs dozens of restaurants in other countries as a valuable source of income
South Korea says it will look closer into the circumstances surrounding the arrival of a dozen North Korean restaurant workers in 2016 after a television report suggested some of the women might have been brought to the South against their will.
Unification Ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun on Friday did not provide a clear answer on whether the women could be sent back to the North if it’s confirmed they didn’t want to come to South Korea.
Seoul had previously said it sufficiently confirmed the women’s free will in escaping from the North and resettling in the South. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I am not sure what else there is to examine on this issue. The 12 defectors have been resettled in South Korea and nothing is stopping them from going to a local television station and claim they were kidnapped. The Kim regime has been using their leftist lawyer allies in South Korea, the group call Minbyun, to claim that the the 12 restaurant workers were kidnapped by the ROK National Intelligence Service (NIS). Since their defection Minbyun has been making life very hard for the refugees anyway they can.
Now it appears that the Moon administration may be putting pressure on these 12 restaurant workers to return to North Korea as well. I would not be surprised if the Moon administration is also putting pressure the other high profile defector Thae Yong-ho to keep silent during the Kim regime’s current charm offensive as well.
This is just another example of something that North Korea can do that makes it look like they are making a concession when in fact it is easily reversible at a time of their choosing:
This Reuters file photo shows an Air Koryo airplane arriving at Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport. (Yonhap)
North Korea has promised to not carry out unannounced missile tests and to abstain from other activities hazardous to commercial aviation in a recent meeting with officials of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), an American media report said Friday.
North Korean authorities recently delivered such promises to visiting officials of the international aviation body while disclosing they have completed their nuclear weapons program, Voice of America (VOA) reported, citing ICAO spokesman William Raillant-Clark.
The spokesman told VOA that high-ranking officials of ICAO visited Pyongyang from May 7-9 for a meeting with officials at the North’s General Administration of Civil Aviation.
The meeting came after the Pyongyang regime decided to halt additional nuclear and intercontinental missile experiments at a plenary session of the ruling Workers’ Party on April 20. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I guess we will see what the North Koreans get in return for doing something they can reverse at any time.
Here is the latest on the online opinion rigging scandal in South Korea:
In the latest development of Korea’s own “fake news” case, an influential blogger charged with manipulating comments on the country’s most popular portal site may have collected donations for a ruling party lawmaker, according to files obtained by the police on Tuesday, deepening suspicions that the blogger may have masterminded his campaign on behalf of the Democratic Party.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency obtained the files from a USB drive belonging to a close associate of Kim Dong-won, the blogger known online as Druking. The finding is the latest in a police investigation of Druking’s alleged campaign to rig online opinion in favor of President Moon Jae-in during last year’s election.
According to the police, Druking and his team used software to fiddle with the comments section on Naver by increasing the number of “likes” on certain comments and giving the appearance that one opinion dominated on the forum. Druking allegedly used the software to help Moon win the election, but when the president’s office refused to grant patronage positions to some of his acquaintances after the election, the blogger turned on Moon by having his team like comments critical of the president.
The police arrested Druking in March for his anti-Moon campaign, and at his first trial hearing last week, the blogger admitted to the charge. Central to Druking’s online activities was a community he ran called Kyungkongmo. According to files from the USB drive, members of the online community collected over 30 million won ($27,800) to deliver to Rep. Kim Kyoung-soo, a Democratic Party lawmaker with close ties to President Moon. The police are investigating allegations that Kim may have worked with Druking to manipulate online opinion during last year’s election and that Kyungkongmo may have supplied the manpower. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I find it interesting that the police only cracked down on Druking after he turned on President Moon. Why wasn’t he arrested before then? Was his activities okay as long as they were targeted against Korean conservatives?
Here is the statement put out after the trilateral summit in Tokyo:
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, left, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, center, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, right, pose for photographs prior to their summit in Tokyo Wednesday. [YONHAP]Leaders from South Korea, Japan and China on Wednesday adopted a special statement in support of the Panmunjom Declaration, which was signed at the inter-Korean summit last month and confirmed the shared goal of the two Koreas of complete denuclearization.
The special statement was made following a trilateral meeting in Tokyo of President Moon Jae-in, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and Premier Li Keqiang of China, the first of its kind in more than two years. The last such three-way summit was held in November 2015 in Seoul. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Here is what was agreed upon that really matters during the trilateral summit:
At the Moon-Abe talks, the latter made it clear that sanctions imposed on the North should not be lifted unless Pyongyang demonstrates concrete denuclearization measures, emphasizing that the closing down of a nuclear testing site and a halt in the firing of ballistic missiles were not sufficient for sanctions relief.
“It is the timing that matters when it comes to easing or withdrawing sanctions altogether on North Korea,” the prime minister was quoted as saying by the Blue House during the bilateral summit talk with Moon in the afternoon.
“We should not reward the North for just shutting down the Punggye-ri nuclear site or stopping the test-firing of intercontinental ballistic missiles. We need additional and substantive actions from the North,” said Abe.
On the matter of easing sanctions, Moon stressed Seoul could not move to ease sanctions unilaterally, noting that sanctions were international agreements in which Seoul took part.
“There could be worries that South Korea could make a unilateral move to ease sanctions independent of the international consensus. There is no need for such worries,” he said. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Basically Prime Minister Abe is making the case that North Korea was rewarded in past agreements for doing little to nothing in return. This time they should not be rewarded until they take real measures to denuclearize.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will take place in Singapore June 12.
“The highly anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and myself will take place in Singapore on June 12th,” Trump tweeted. “We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!”
Trump’s tweet came just hours after three American citizens were brought home from imprisonment in the communist country.
Their release cleared a major obstacle for the upcoming meeting, which will be the first between sitting leaders of the two countries.
Trump and Kim are expected to discuss the dismantlement of the regime’s nuclear weapons program.
Trump’s aim is the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea. Kim has repeatedly expressed his commitment to denuclearization, but it’s unclear on what terms. [Yonhap]
I wonder how many Americans had to look on a map after hearing this news to figure out where Singapore is?
