Category: Inter-Korean Issues

This is all an attempt by the North Koreans to separate the ROK from the U.S. by trying to get them to not enforce sanctions:

South Korea offered Monday to hold working-level talks with North Korea about a long-suspended tour program at the North’s Mount Kumgang, after Pyongyang demanded Seoul remove all of its resort facilities from the mountain in a threat to end the joint business.

The North made the demand Friday, following up on leader Kim Jong-un’s directive that all South Korean-built facilities should be removed from the mountain resort and the North should build an international tourist zone of its own there.

The order was seen as an ultimatum designed to test Seoul’s willingness to restart the project before he seeks development on his own as the South is unlikely to resume the program anytime soon due to international sanctions on Pyongyang.

Yonhap

North Korea even sent out their useful idiots in South Korea to help them in this effort:

Meanwhile, a coalition of pro-unification civic groups in Seoul urged the government to promptly resume talks with the North to restart not only the Mount Kumgang tour program but also the now-shuttered inter-Korean industrial park in the North’s border city of Kaesong, regardless of sanctions on Pyongyang.

“For the past year, the government said it would push the projects through close consultations with the United States, citing sanctions on North Korea. But it only ended up confirming the United States’ undisguised opposition” to the projects, the coalition said in a statement.

“We must swiftly put in all efforts to turn the crisis we face into a last opportunity,” it said. “We should not miss this significant opportunity for progress in inter-Korean relations.”

You can read more at the link.

President Moon must be feeling pretty confident that in the short term the Kaesong Industrial Complex will reopen:

President Moon Jae-in vowed Friday to invite foreign companies to set up affiliates at the Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC) in North Korea if operations there are resumed.

“If operations at the Gaeseong complex resume, I will try to make it a place that houses multinational companies,” President Moon said at the start of a luncheon with businesspeople at Cheong Wa Dae, according to press pool reports.

The President appeared to be responding to remarks by Kim Ki-mun, head of the Korea Federation of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), calling for the complex to be reopened to help small local businesses. Many of these are in a dire financial straits due to their investment in the complex, and a lack of new growth engines.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but Moon is probably betting that if large multinational companies set up shop in Kaesong that the Kim regime will be less likely to exhort South Korean businesses operating there like they have in the past.

For multinational corporations they will have to make a decision on whether they want their products built by near slave labor or not?

#KCNA: Moon's #PeaceEconomy declamations "make the boiled head of a cow provoke a side-splitting laughter."

Per SOP, gravest insult diluted in Eng: Moon gets "shocked into fright" (at sound of NK gunfire)

Original: "똥줄을 갈기는 주제에" ("shoots streaks of diarrhea w fright")

— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) August 16, 2019

Apparently the North Koreans are not fans of President Moon’s peaceful reunification strategy:

North Korea on Friday launched a pair of unidentified projectiles into the East Sea while deriding South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s call for inter-Korean cooperation in his Liberation Day address Thursday. 

According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the rockets were fired Friday morning at 8:01 a.m. and 8:16 a.m. from an area near Tongchon, Kangwon Province. Each of the projectiles flew a distance of approximately 230 kilometers (143 miles) with a peak altitude of 30 kilometers at Mach 6.1, the JCS said.

No determination has yet been made to what kind of weapon was tested, but the speed and distance covered suggested the same type of short-range tactical ballistic missiles believed to have been tested Aug. 10.

This marked the sixth time Pyongyang conducted such tests in just under a month and the eighth time this year. The tests are ostensibly protests of joint exercises between the United States and South Korea. 

In this round, the launches were accompanied by a statement released by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country (CPRC), one of the North’s agencies in charge of inter-Korean relations, that pilloried South Korea’s president without mentioning him by name. 

Calling his Thursday speech on the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule on “foolish” and a “citation of spiritual slogans,” the statement, attributed to a CPRC spokesperson, said Moon’s labeling of the North’s weapons tests as “worrisome acts” were “reckless remarks.”

“Even at this moment, there go on in South Korea joint military exercises against the DPRK,” the English-language statement continued, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name: the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea. “Does [Moon] have any face to talk about dialogue atmosphere, peaceful economy and peace-keeping mechanism?”

The release scoffed at the central idea in Moon’s address – the building of a “peace economy” through inter-Korean cooperation – saying the notion would “make the boiled head of a cow provoke a side-splitting laughter.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but what the Kim regime is essentially saying here is that if peaceful reunification is going to happen, it is going to happen on North Korean terms, not South Korean.

This is what reunification on North Korean terms looks like, it means a peace treaty that leads to the withdrawal of USFK, North Korea does not denuclearize, and South Korea carries the burden of rebuilding North Korea’s infrastructure, modernizing their military, and funding the Kim regime’s lavish lifestyle. 

There will be no political or social openness in North Korea in return, instead the ideological indoctrination will be strengthened by the “victory” over the Americans by getting them to withdraw and the tribute the South Korean “puppets” are paying to Kim Jong-un in preparation for North Korea’s final victory over the South. 

There will probably be more missiles being fired by North Korea next week as the joint exercise between the ROK and South Korea is scheduled to begin:

South Korea and the United States will stage joint military drills as scheduled despite warnings from North Korea, the South Korean military authority said Sunday.

The joint drills will begin Monday with a computer-simulated command post exercise (CPX) to cope with any emergency on the Korean Peninsula and last for half a month, according to the authority.

After the CPX, the allies will spend the remaining 10 days intensively verifying Seoul’s capabilities for its envisioned retaking of wartime operational control (OPCON) of its troops from Washington.

But many watchers say the joint military drills could prompt further provocation from the North.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

#MoonJaein admin to transfer $8M to #NorthKorea via WFP next week. Meanwhile, NK rejected SK rice aid, shot off more missiles, & warned SK, the day after Chinese & Russian military aircraft intruded KADIZ & a RU aircraft violated SK airspace. Priorities.https://t.co/6EN5QK1GCd

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) July 26, 2019

NYT revealed Mercedes imported to N.Korea via Busan to Vladivostok then to Pyongyang by the ships. Ships once reached Vladivostok, they bring Coal to S.Korea.S.Korea became the route for N.Korea sending Mecedes and take Coal. No wonder why JPN sanction us.https://t.co/W5hUNTKoxx

— Dong Yon Kim/김동연 기자 (@dongyonews) July 16, 2019

Notice the Kim regime is not making threats against President Trump, but continuously make attacks against the Moon administration:

North Korea slammed South Korea over its ongoing deployment of high-tech U.S. fighter jets, warning Thursday that it will respond by developing and testing unspecified special weapons of its own to “destroy” the aircraft.

The statement, which also urged South Korea to abandon its “preposterous illusions” for improved ties, comes as Seoul has expressed hopes that a recent summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will help revive dialogue between the Koreas.

Under its biggest-ever weapons purchase, South Korea is to buy 40 F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin by 2021. The first two arrived in March and two others are to be delivered in coming weeks, according to Seoul officials.

The project was announced in 2014 to cope with then rising military threats from North Korea, which was conducting an unusually large number of weapons tests. Animosities have gradually eased since last year when Pyongyang and Washington launched nuclear negotiations, but Seoul has been moving ahead with its already-approved F-35 procurement.

Associated Press

You can read more at the link, but it is arguable that the disrespect towards the Moon administration by the Kim regime is because they know they can get away with it. It is easy domestic propaganda for them with no risk of retaliation from the Moon administration.

It appears there is momentum moving towards reopening the Kaesong Industrial Park:

Nuclear negotiators of South Korea and the United States are set to discuss the possible reopening of now-shuttered Gaeseong Industrial Complex in North Korea through the upcoming working-level talks on North Korea’s denuclearization, officials at the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), said Sunday.

“South Korea unofficially sent a message about the normalization of the Gaeseong joint border industrial park to North Korea. The North has yet to respond. However, Seoul will be working on how to come to an agreement on conditions, terms and other differentiations with the United States about reopening the complex,” a DPK lawmaker who is involved with the matter said by telephone.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but this report comes on the heels of another recent report that the Trump administration is now looking at making a “Small Deal”. It appears the small deal could be reopening Kaesong for little to nothing in return which what has been tried before and failed to lead to any North Korean denuclearization.

If it reopens, the Kim regime will be able to use the estimated $110 million a year from the Kaesong Industrial Complex to help maintain the lifestyle of the regime elite and further develop their nuclear and missile capabilities. In return they may give the Trump administration a “cooling tower moment“. I guess we will see if this is what the Trump administration decides to sign up before.

It seems a bit premature from President Moon to declaring peace in our time:

 President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday that North Korea and the United States have effectively declared an end to their hostile relations with the symbolic weekend meeting between their leaders at the inter-Korean border.

Although they did not sign any document, their action was tantamount to a “de facto declaration of an end to hostile relations and the beginning of a full-fledged peace era,” Moon stressed, speaking at a Cabinet meeting.

He was referring to a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on Sunday.

Yonhap

President Moon might want to wait until next year to see if this is still the case because Kim Jong-un has previously said the regime is giving until next year for sanctions to be dropped. The Trump administration does not seem like it is going to drop sanctions without real denuclearization. I guess we will see what happens.