Category: Inter-Korean Issues

The faces in the Unification Ministry may change but the goal remains the same, find a way to avoid sanctions to send bulk cash transfers to North Korea:

“I’ll actively look for ways to restart the Mount Kumgang tour project,” he said while visiting Jejin Station in Goseong, northeast of Seoul, near the Demilitarized Zone that separates two Koreas. “The resumption of the tour program will send a message of peace on the Korean Peninsula and revive the economy of border regions.”

The minister also said he will go ahead with plans to reconnect the rail network to North Korea in a bid to create a new economic order on the Korean Peninsula.

During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Lee said he would look for a “creative solution” to restart the tour program to North Korea’s scenic mountains in the form of individual tours as a way to improve inter-Korean relations without violating international sanctions imposed on Pyongyang.

Started in 2003, the project was suspended after a South Korean tourist was shot dead near the mountain resort in 2008. The program’s formal resumption requires a sanctions waiver, as it involves bulk cash transfer to the North.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is what the Moon administration is claiming in response to the UFP providing a document showing that new National Security Advisor Park Jie-won signed a secret agreement before the 2000 Intra-Korean summit to offer the Kim regime a $3 billion payday:

Cheong Wa Dae said Wednesday the government has no document related to an alleged under-the-table agreement with North Korea in 2000 signed by Park Jie-won, newly appointed head of South Korea’s state spy agency.

It was countering political attacks made by the main opposition United Future Party (UFP) that Park had signed the accord, ahead of the inter-Korean summit talks, to offer US$3 billion in financial support to Pyongyang. Park was one of the closest aides to then President Kim Dae-jung, who had a historic meeting with the North’s leader Kim Jong-il.

The UFP made public a copy of what it claims to be a secret agreement. Park has flatly denied that he had signed such a document.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but notice how the Moon administration is not claiming the document is a forgery, just they can’t find a record of it.

South Korea’s Unification Minister nominee has essentially said that he plans to find ways to work around sanctions to pay off North Korea:

The government has hinted that it will seek to revamp the beleaguered South Korea-U.S. working group, a forum to coordinate North Korea-related issues, as part of its plan to push for more inter-Korean cooperation.

The organization, set up in November 2018, has taken flak for allegedly hindering progress in inter-Korean ties due to its excessively harsh standards adopted on Pyongyang, and there have been growing calls here for restructuring its operation or even dismantling it. 

Lee In-young, the unification minister nominee, said Monday that he plans to distinguish what the government can do on its own with the North from what it can do under the format of the working group. 

“If I take office, I will review what the working group has done so far and take additional measures (to promote inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation), based on my ideas regarding inter-Korean affairs,” Lee told reporters upon arriving at the Office of Inter-Korean Dialogue to prepare for his National Assembly confirmation hearing.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but as I have been saying this is why the Kim regime blew up the Inter-Korean Liaison Office; to force North Korea to separate from the U.S.’s North Korea policy and violate sanctions. If South Korea finds ways to violate sanctions that will be a green light to other nations to do so as well.

Dr. Tara O has another nugget on the appeasement of North Korea by the Moon administration:

At the 70th Anniversary of the Korean War commemoration event in South Korea, the North Korean anthem was played prior to the South Korean national anthem.  The annual event, which is usually held during the day, was held late at night for the first time on June 25, 2020, with Korean War veterans and foreign guests.  The U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accountability Agency (DPAA) sent the remains of 147 Republic of Korea (ROK) soldiers who died during the Korean War; the remains were initially returned from North Korea.  South Korean president Moon Jae-in, after skipping the event for the first three years of his presidency, attended the commemoration event for the first time.

East Asia Research Center

You can read much more at the link, but this is like playing verses from Horst-Wessel-Lied as part of the Star Spangled Banner during a Normandy Commemoration.

The Russians are alleging that the human rights activists sending of balloons with vulgar pictures of Kim Jong-un’s wife is what caused the recent uproar:

A Russian diplomat on Monday suggested that North Korea likely retaliated against defector-led anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaigns in South Korea after recent leaflets contained obscenely edited photos of first lady Ri Sol-ju.

Speaking to TASS Russian News Agency, Russian Ambassador to Pyongyang Alexandre Machegora said the North Korean leadership and citizens were furious over leaflets sent on May 31 containing content that was deemed vulgar and insulting.

Days before demolishing the Gaeseong liaison office, the North’s ruling party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun said plotting to harm the regime’s supreme dignity is more threatening than Seoul and Washington’s joint military drills.

Pyongyang’s retaliation is also believed to have been triggered by posts in the online communities of some defector groups in which individuals claimed to be buying ​items used by COVID-19 patients to send to North Korea to spark a pandemic that would cause Kim Jong-un’s regime to collapse.

KBS World Radio

I doubt this because the defector groups have been sending unflattering material of the Kim regime for a long time without this reaction. My theory is that the Kim regime was just looking for a convenient excuse to start a provocation cycle to pressure the Moon administration. The Kim regime behaved and did what it could to help the Korean left win April’s parliamentary elections and now wants to cash in by pressuring the Moon administration to unilaterally drop sanctions.

It seems the South Korean public understands the reality of the Kim regime better than many elites in South Korea and the U.S.:

Nine out of 10 South Koreans think North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons, but nearly half think the South should still seek dialogue with the North, according to a recent poll.

In an annual face-to-face survey of 1,003 adults conducted from May 20 through June 10 by the Korea Institute for National Unification, 89.5 percent said Pyongyang will not denuclearize, the highest since 2016.

Only 15.6 percent said they think dialogue and compromise are possible with the North’s Kim Jong-un administration.

Nevertheless, 45.7 percent think Seoul should keep trying — up from the previous survey in November 2019, when 38.1 percent thought so, but down from April 2019, when 51.4 percent did.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

Here is what President Moon had to say on the 70th anniversary of the Korean War:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in called on North Korea Thursday to join a bold move to formally end the Korean War in peace overtures, coupled with a clear warning message, commemorating the conflict that started seven decades ago, with the fragile Korea peace process at stake.

“We cannot commemorate the Korean War in a genuine manner yet. That is because the War has yet to come to an end,” he said during a speech at the war anniversary event held at Seoul Air Base, a military compound just southeast of Seoul. 

He was pointing out that the three-year war finished in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty, which has left the two Koreas technically at war and repeatedly facing sharp military tensions.

Moon expressed hope that the North will “boldly embark on an endeavor to end the most sorrowful war in world history.”

“If we are going to talk about unification, we have to achieve peace first, and only after peace has continued for a long time will we be able to finally see the door to unification,” he stressed, addressing the nighttime ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the war.

He reaffirmed that South Korea has no intention to force its system on the communist neighbor and emphasized the importance of building peace first.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but it doesn’t matter that President Moon does not want to impose the South’s system on the North. This is because the Kim regime still wants to impose their system on South Korea. This has always been their ultimate goal. Kim Jong-un has never come out and stated otherwise. This is because the democratic system in the South is a direct ideological threat to the Kim regime and must be opposed at all costs. This will never change as long as the Kim regime remains in power in North Korea.

Here is the latest on the recent North Korean manufactured “crisis”:

North Korea was seen removing multiple propaganda loudspeakers reinstalled recently along the border with South Korea, officials said Wednesday, after leader Kim Jong-un ordered the suspension of military action plans against the South.

The North recently set up around 20 to 30 loudspeakers in border areas after threatening to take military action against what it called “the enemy” in anger over Seoul’s failure to stop defectors from sending anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border.

“North Korea is taking down those newly installed loudspeakers from earlier today,” a military source said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the most obvious question likely no one in the media will ask, is what did the Moon administration promise the Kim regime in return for reducing tensions?

This could be the last balloon launch for the Fighters for A Free North Korea for a while considering how the ROK government has put the clamps on their activities:

A South Korean activist group released balloons containing anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border in the dead of night on Monday, in defiance of the South Korean government’s attempts to prevent such acts amid heightened tensions with North Korea.    
   
Park Sang-hak, head of the organization Fighters for a Free North Korea, said six members of his group launched 20 balloons containing half a million leaflets, 500 books advertising the success of South Korea’s capitalist system, 2,000 one dollar bills and 1,000 memory cards across the border towards the North from a secluded location in Paju, Gyeonggi, from 11 p.m. to midnight.    
   
One of those balloons was discovered stuck on trees on the banks of a stream in Hongcheon County, Gangwon, by police Tuesday afternoon.  
   
“In order to evade [South Korean] police surveillance, I trained members unaccustomed to dispatching leaflets to send the flyers,” Park announced, before delivering a tirade condemning the Moon Jae-in administration for attempting to silence defector groups from speaking out.   
   
The Ministry of Unification, South Korea’s top inter-Korean agency, on Tuesday expressed “deep regret” at the act, and announced it was taking “serious” measures to punish the group for violating the government’s ban on leaflet distributions.    
   
“The government once again stresses clearly that it will strongly respond to the dissemination of leaflets and items towards North Korea, which raise tensions between South and North and endanger the lives and safety of local residents,” the ministry stated in a press release.  
   
The ministry spokesman raised doubts, however, about Park’s claim that his group had released 500,000 leaflets Monday night, saying that based on investigations of the amount of leaflets the group prepared beforehand and the wind conditions that night, none of the released balloons appear to have entered North Korean territory.   
   
After police confiscated the group’s hydrogen gas supplies used to fuel balloon launches in the past, the group apparently obtained only enough helium to float a single balloon — likely the one found at Hongcheon, the ministry said. The balloon that was retrieved did not contain books, dollar bills or memory cards, it added.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

I remember the good old days of North Korean propaganda music on the DMZ and U.S. troops station at the JSA may get to experience it again:

North Korea is reinstalling propaganda loudspeakers in regions along the inter-Korean border after removing them under a 2018 summit agreement with South Korea, military officials said Monday.

After the summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on April 27, 2018, the two Koreas agreed to halt all hostile acts against each other and eliminate their means, including broadcasting through loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets.

According to the authorities, North Korea has been detected setting up loudspeakers again “in multiple places” inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) from around Sunday. It had dismantled dozens of loudspeakers in around 40 areas near the tense border in a first action to follow up on the Panmunjom Declaration.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.