Author: GIKorea

I think President Trump is signaling to the Kim regime it will not be business as usual if they restart a provocation cycle:

President Donald Trump said he’d be very disappointed in Kim Jong Un if reports are accurate that North Korea has begun rebuilding a missile test site it dismantled last year.
“I would be very disappointed if that were happening,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “It is a very early report — we are the ones who put it out — but I would be very, very disappointed in Chairman Kim.” (……)

In a separate report, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service spotted “special activities” with transport vehicles at a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) research and production site called Sanumdong located in the Pyongyang area, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper of South Korea reported, citing an unidentified member of parliament’s intelligence committee.
U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton warned North Korea that it must be willing to completely give up its nuclear weapons program or it may face even tougher sanctions.
“If they’re not willing to do it, President Trump has been very clear they’re not getting relief from the crushing economic sanctions that have been imposed on them,” Bolton told the Fox Business Network on Tuesday evening. “And we’ll look at ramping those sanctions up, in fact.”

Bloomberg

You can read more at the link.

This wants again has the appearance of the Korean government trying “to do something”:

President Moon Jae-in will seek measures with the Chinese government to tackle fine dust pollution here, a Cheong Wa Dae spokesman said Wednesday.

Moon ordered the government to “discuss with the Chinese government to come up with contingencies to minimize the impact of the fine dust,” according to presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom, Wednesday. 

Moon said the two countries need to discuss joint dust-reducing measures, creating artificial rain over waters between the two countries and launching a fine dust forecast system. 

Citing China’s claim that fine dust from Korea drifts into Shanghai, Moon said, “making artificial rain over the Yellow Sea would help the Chinese side as well.”

Noh Young-min, presidential chief of staff who served as ambassador to China until recently, said “Beijing is bigger than the combined size of Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, but creates a massive artificial rain from dawn to night in the city.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I am confident that most ROK Heads realize that the Chinese government is not going to do anything to help pollution over Seoul. In fact if you read the article carefully the Chinese government is blaming the ROK for pollution over China!

The artificial rain idea the ROK government has been trying for years with no success. Yet the ROK Presidential chief of staff claims that the Chinese are doing this from dawn to night in Beijing. A quick look at a 14 day weather report for Beijing shows no to little chance of forecasted rain despite all the fine dust pollution.

North Korea’s Hidden Cobra operatives have been robbing banks through cyber attacks for years. One of their biggest heists was stealing $81 million from a bank in Bangladesh and even tried to steal $1 billion from the US Federal Reserve. According to the below report the Kim regime has stepped up their cyber attacks against global financial institutions due to sanctions:

US officials said last week that Washington believes the North Korean government has stepped up cyberattacks targeting financial institutions in a desperate bid to acquire cash, as international sanctions levied against Pyongyang have squeezed its economy. 
Kim and Trump’s meeting in Hanoi ended abruptly without a deal, as the two sides could not agree to a detailed plan exchanging sanctions relief for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
Trump said in a news conference after the meeting that North Korea insisted that Washington lift all sanctions. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho disputed that assessment in a early morning impromptu press conference just hours after Trump spoke. He said that Pyongyang only asked the Trump administration to remove the sanctions “that hamper the economy and the livelihood of our people.” 
Demers, the Justice Department official, said much of the hacking is motivated by North Korea’s desire for cash. 
“They just need money,” Demers said. “They need hard currency. That’s a good way to get it.”

CNN

You can read more at the link, but regardless of any future lifting of sanctions, I believe the cyber crime by North Korea will continue because of the plausible deniability the Internet provides their operatives.

Watch your money folks because Kim Jong-un wants to pick your pocket.

Ideally, the US & ROK would be on the same side of the table and negotiating with coordinated positions & interests—the proposal here👇 isn’t that.

Rather, these 3-way talks are meant for the Moon admin to take a direct role as mediator/facilitator in US-#DPRK talks. https://t.co/JRHe7HvLNg

— Michael Bosack (@MikeBosack) March 4, 2019

Remember when people were making a big deal about the concession from North Korea of disassembling a rocket test stand? At the time I said this was largely meaningless because they did not need the test stand and was something that could be easily reconstructed when needed again. Sure enough he we go again:

Satellite imagery suggests that North Korea may be taking steps to reactivate a partially decommissioned long-range rocket test site on the country’s west coast.
Experts say they see evidence that workers are rebuilding at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station. In a matter of days, a rocket-engine test stand and a large transfer structure have been reassembled, according to Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., a senior fellow for imagery analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The structures were taken down over the course of last summer, Bermudez says, and reassembled in a matter of days.

NPR via a reader tip

You can read more at the link, but the rebuilding of the test stand is the least provocative response that Kim Jong-un can take after President Trump walked away from the Hanoi Summit because Kim would not denuclearize.

I expect that in the future if the Kim regime feels they are not getting any progress on lifting sanctions that they will begin a launch cycle at Sohae and claim it is for a friendly space launch. This will increase tensions while give them plausible deniability of continuing ICBM development.

The fact that former President Lee Myung-bak has been released on bail after being in jail for a year makes me wonder if judges are now more willing to go against the Moon administration dues its increasing unpopularity with the Korean public?:

Former President Lee Myung-bak was released on bail Wednesday after almost one year of detention on corruption charges.
Lee, president from 2008-2013, was sentenced by a lower court in October to 15 years in prison on conviction of bribery and embezzlement. He appealed the decision. 
The Seoul High Court approved the bail request that Lee made on Jan. 29 on the grounds of deteriorating health and other reasons. 
For the 1 billion won (US$886,130) bail, the court ordered him to stay in his registered residence and meet or communicate only with his immediate family members and legal representatives. Lee accepted the conditions.
Lee also requires court approval for hospital visits and must report his return to the court. Submission of logs on daily activities is also part of the requirements.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but it is going to be interesting to see what happens with Lee Myung-bak’s appeal case.

As Professor B.R. Myers predicted, the Moon administration is quickly pushing the Kaesong Industrial Park and Mt. Kumgang tours on the Trump administration as some kind of “ethnic exemption” to sanctions:

South Korea will talk to the United States about preparatory work for the future resumption of two key inter-Korean economic projects and about waiving sanctions on North Korea if necessary, Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said Tuesday.
Cho made the remarks a day after he reported to President Moon Jae-in that the government will discuss with the U.S. ways to resume a long-suspended tour program to the North’s Mount Kumgang and reopen an industrial complex in the North’s border city of Kaesong.
South Korea is considering these measures as part of efforts to keep the dialogue momentum alive and create better conditions for negotiations after last week’s breakdown of the second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

North Korea has enacted sanctions on family reunions for decades. These families could be reunited, forever, tomorrow. Their continued separation is North Korea’s conscious choice. https://t.co/YGf2iJtCYr

— the oranckay (@oranckay) March 5, 2019