Author: GIKorea

This seemed unlikely considering that President Trump appears to only want to meet if Kim Jong-un commits to real denuclearization:

 U.S. President Donald Trump has no plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during his trip to South Korea later this week, a senior U.S. administration official said Monday.

Trump will visit Seoul on Saturday and Sunday after attending a Group of 20 summit in Japan, prompting speculation that a Trump-Kim meeting could be arranged at the inter-Korean border.

“There are no plans for the meeting that you just mentioned,” the official told reporters on background in a phone call.

“The president’s there to see President Moon (Jae-in),” he said.

On a Trump visit to the Demilitarized Zone, the official said the details of the president’s schedule have yet to be finalized.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The so called experts are again weighing in and recommending that President Trump reopen the Kaesong Industrial Complex to create “momentum” in the denuclearization talks whatever that means:

North Korea raked in more than $120 million a year from a symbolic cross-border industrial zone that Pyongyang and Seoul are pushing to re-open as part of nuclear negotiations, a report said Monday.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex — where around 55,000 North Korean workers churned out products ranging from watches to clothes for some 125 South Korean companies — was one of the most visible signs of reconciliation that followed the first inter-Korean summit in 2000.

But it was shuttered by the South’s then-conservative government in 2016 in response to a nuclear test and missile launches by the North, saying profits from Kaesong were funding Pyongyang’s provocations.

The South’s current President Moon Jae-in has dangled re-opening the complex as an incentive for Pyongyang to engage in denuclearisation talks, but doing so is complicated by the web of international sanctions imposed on the North over its weapons programmes.

At their Pyongyang summit in September, Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to “normalise” operations at Kaesong when conditions were “ripe”, but negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington are now deadlocked and Northern media have pressed the South to implement joint economic projects.

The International Crisis Group called on Monday for the complex to be reopened with “a modest deal involving sanctions relief”.

Doing so would create “much needed momentum for stalled peace talks and serve as a reminder to both North and South Korea of the benefits of building a sustainable peace on the peninsula”, it added in a statement.

AFP

You can read more at the link, but this is just more “pretend denuclearization” and something that the expert class has been calling for now for decades. These concessions to the Kim regime never work and I believe it actually makes it harder to reach a denuclearization deal because they use the funding to further their weapons programs.

Very cool introducing Gen. Abrams to Doran Clark Abrams, the granddaughter of Gen. Mark Clark, and her husband this week at the Korean War Veterans Appreciation Event. Gen. Abrams gave an inspiring speech and reaffirmed the US-ROK “ironclad alliance.” #Katchikapshida pic.twitter.com/tKxLrbWAsI

— Ned Forney (@NedForney) June 21, 2019

If this bill is approved does anyone think the VA will be flooded with new sexual assault claims?:

The Department of Veterans Affairs is opposing a new bill that would expand access to disability benefits for survivors of military sexual trauma.

Department officials characterized the legislation at a congressional hearing Thursday as too broad, saying it would require the VA to approve claims based on a veteran’s word alone without any corroborating evidence.

But after a recent inspector general report found the VA may have wrongly refused benefits to thousands of military sexual assault victims in recent years, supporters of the Servicemembers and Veterans Empowerment and Support Act of 2019 say changes are necessary to keep the department from retraumatizing victims who deserve to be compensated for what they went through — even if there’s no paper trail.

“It is just unthinkable that in this day, we ask people to serve in the military, they have these horrendous experiences … but then people present themselves for claims — and many of them going back an incredibly long period of time — and then hit these brick walls,” said Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, who introduced the legislation.

Among other things, the bill would lessen the burden of proof for military sexual assault survivors applying for disability benefits, requiring the VA to resolve every reasonable doubt in favor of the veteran, as is already standard VA practice for claims of combat-related PTSD.

Army Times

You can read more at the link, but how come the burden of proof is not lowered for other claims to the VA such as for muscular-skeletal injuries or even agent orange exposure?

It looks like President Trump is continuing the messaging that he is open to talks on North Korea’s denuclearization while simultaneously increasing sanctions to further pressure the Kim regime:

President Donald Trump will make a two-day visit to South Korea this weekend, officials said Monday, as the U.S. administration said it’s ready to resume nuclear talks with the North “at a moment’s notice.”

Trump’s visit, which will be his second trip to the divided peninsula as president, comes amid new optimism for the stalled diplomatic push to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear weapons.

The president sent a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that was welcomed by the communist state, raising hopes for efforts to break the deadlock that followed the February summit between the two men, which ended without agreement in Vietnam.

“I can confirm that that letter was, in fact, sent,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday. “And I am hopeful that this will provide a good foundation for us to begin to continue the important discussions with the North Koreans to denuclearize the peninsula.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Welcome to modern day U.S. Air Force training:

A safety brief analyzing security concerns at one military installation offered up an eccentric example of a potential hazard when instructors warned airmen in attendance of the growing threat of incels, or involuntary celibates.

The online-based community of introverted, sexless individuals that may have started decades ago as an innocuous attempt at achieving a sense of belonging has, in recent years, become a label for a more aggressive sect of repugnant men who cast the entirety of the blame for their coitus-free existence onto women.

This scorn has manifested in the form of heinous misogyny shared over online message boards, and in a handful of cases, escalated into deadly violence.

In the wake of learning Army veteran and Dallas courthouse shooter, Brian Isaack Clyde, was an active participant in the incel subculture, at least one base — Maryland’s Joint Base Andrews — is now taking measures to educate service members on the warning signs — including the use of a popular meme Clyde shared on his social media — of potential violence carried out by the incel community.

In the time leading up to the shooting, Clyde shared a version of the incel meme known as “Virgin vs. Chad,” in which the characteristics of an incel man are stacked up against his antithesis. In Clyde’s case, the meme contrasted the ways in which the Virgin and Chad would carry out a mass shooting, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Air Force Times

You can read more at the link, but I believe this less about being a so called “incel” then people suffering from mental disorders that use not getting a date as an excuse for violence.

I am surprised that Prime Minister Abe thought a deal over the Kuril Islands would ever be possible with Russia:

Kimio Waki remembers the day in 1945 when Soviet soldiers burst into his home, “machine guns in their hands, and with their shoes on.” He was just 4 years old. “They ransacked the house,” he said. “I’m left with my memory of fear.”

Waki and his family were among of 17,000 Japanese living on the southernmost Kurile islands – known in Russia as the Kurils – when Soviet troops invaded after Japan had announced its surrender in World War II. Over the next four years, all of them either fled or were forcibly evicted.

More than seven decades later, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has embarked on a quixotic dream to persuade Moscow to return at least some of the islands, with President Vladimir Putin first dangling – then seemingly withdrawing – the prospect of a deal.

There had been hopes the two leaders might have signed a framework agreement on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit, which begins June 28 in Osaka. But that dream has died, experts say.

“A deal to settle the territorial dispute – that’s really not on the table anymore,” said James Brown, an associate professor at Temple University’s campus in Japan.

Instead, Russia is now proposing to deepen economic cooperation by introducing visa-free travel for residents of the Russian island of Sakhalin and Japan’s island of Hokkaido, which lie west of the disputed smaller islands.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but Putin pulled the old okey-doke on Japan by appearing to be open to something Abe really wanted to pursue, but then twist it to try and get something else.

Putin is never going to willingly give back the Kuril Islands because it ensures that the Sea of Okhotsk remains a giant Russian lake by denying undetected submarine access. It also allows easy entry and exit for the Russian Pacific fleet anchored at Vladivostok.

“I watched both my uncle and my father starve to death. Fearful that I too would die, I fled – only to find myself sold into slavery in China. The horrors faced by N. Korean women like me when we cross the border into what we imagine will be safety is ignored by Western gov’ts.” https://t.co/yxtD8cNbpK

— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) June 21, 2019