Here is what President Moon’s trial balloon specialist had to say prior to next’s week summit between President Trump and President Moon:
Moon Chung-in
The United States should give South Korea more leverage that it can use in dealing with North Korea, such as leeway in inter-Korean exchanges, if it wants Seoul to play a greater role in facilitating the stalled nuclear talks, a special presidential adviser said Thursday.
Moon Chung-in, a special presidential adviser for unification, foreign and security affairs, made the remark during a conference in Seoul, a week before Moon holds talks with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington.
The adviser said it will be a “herculean task” for Moon to play such a facilitating role so long as the North sees South Korea and the U.S. as on the same side.
I am being facetious here, but shouldn’t the U.S. and the ROK be on the same side when it comes to the denuclearization talks so the North Koreans cannot play one off against the other?
Any reading this site for long knows that the Moon administration is not really on the same side as the US and Moon Chung-in is just publicly stating what President Moon can’t. The Moon administration has long advocated lifting sanctions on the Kaesong Industrial Park and the Kumgang Tourism Resort. Both projects were once huge cash cows for the Kim regime before they were shut down by prior conservative governments.
North Korea wants to reopen these sanction busing projects for little to nothing in return as part of their “pretend denuclearization” strategy that the Moon administration endorses.
The Moon administration is further pushing the confederation idea with no hint of North Korea denuclearizing:
The South Korean government is planning to fund research projects into a range of potential models for unification with North Korea, documents seen by NK News showed this week, with case-studies including federation and EU-style confederation among several under consideration. In plans for the two research projects, the South Korean Ministry of Unification (MOU) asked prospective participants in the project to examine cases of gradual unification. Previous research on unification, it said, has concentrated on comparing Korea’s case to that of the “radical unification” of Germany in 1990, asking researchers to assume the North and South would likely take a more gradual approach. Participants are also asked to look to the step-by-step process of unification suggested in the “Korean National Community Unification Formula” and pay attention to “implications that could be considered in the process of gradual change.” The formula has long been the South Korean government’s formal plan for unification and is composed of three stages: reconciliation and cooperation, inter-Korean confederation, and unification.
You can read more at the link, but if these so called researchers try to copy the EU model, then their analysis is already a failure. There were no countries in the EU that were international pariahs threatening world peace by threatening their neighbors with conventional or nuclear attack. There was no countries in the EU launching terrorist attacks and a non-stop propaganda campaign into a neighboring country to undermine it either.
I can save the Moon administration all the money they are paying for this research by stating that any confederation that happens will occur on North Korean terms. That 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.
It looks like President Trump’s decision to not implement new sanctions on North Korea has caused them to respond by sending back some of the Joint Liaison Office workers:
Kim Chang-su, center, deputy chief of the inter-Korean liaison office in Gaesong in North Korea, heads to Gaeseong along with other South Korean officials at the border transit office in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, Monday. Joint Press Corps
South Korea expressed hope that planned inter-Korean projects will proceed smoothly after some North Korean officials at the inter-Korean liaison office in the North’s Gaeseong went back to work Monday.
A meeting between the representatives of the liaison office from the two Koreas was held and the office will operate normally, according to the unification ministry.
North Korean officials were quoted by the ministry as saying they came to work “as usual.”
On March 22, North Korea withdrew its staff from the inter-Korean liaison office saying the measure reflected “instructions from a superior authority,” without giving further details.
While the North Korean side has yet to explain the withdrawal and partial return of officials at the liaison office, Seoul remained hopeful about keeping the momentum for talks.
“We still have to watch the situation as the North’s officials have yet make a full return, but it could be that the North felt pressure after breaking the momentum of talks with the South,” said Oh Gyeong-seob, a researcher at the Sejong Institute.
It looks like the Moon administration better come up with a Plan B because their effort for an “ethnic exemption” to sanctions appears to not be getting traction in the US:
The U.S. Congress may pass a bill calling for additional sanctions on North Korea as early as May, according to multiple diplomatic sources Tuesday, a move to pressure Pyongyang to take meaningful denuclearization measures.
Despite analysis by Seoul officials that Washington was unlikely to implement new sanctions on North Korea in the near future, the sources indicated that preparations for new legislation are already finished.
“Following the collapse of the second North-U.S. summit, the Republicans and Democrats are considering introducing legislation to strengthen sanctions on North Korea,” said one diplomatic source in Washington. “Because they have been preparing the bill for a year, there is plenty of possibility it may be introduced in May or June.”
The source said that the push to strengthen sanctions on the North is centered around the Senate’s committees on armed services, finance and foreign relations.
Another overseas source said, “If North Korea doesn’t show steps toward meaningful denuclearization measures by next month, it will be a matter of time that sanctions will be strengthened, rather than eased.”
The source added, “I met with a key U.S. administration official in charge of sanctions following the Hanoi summit who clearly said that they are not considering sanctions relief to allow the resumption of Mount Kumgang tourism or the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex.”
Predictably the North Koreans have stormed out of the joint liaison office at Kaesong:
North Korean officials withdrew from the inter-Korean liaison office in the border city of Gaeseong on Friday.
Seoul’s Unification Ministry said that North Korean officials held a meeting with their South Korean counterparts in the morning to announce the decision.
The North Koreans are said to have cited what they called an order from the upper levels of leadership.
The 15 or so North Korean officials left with only their documents, while leaving behind equipment, noting they didn’t care whether South Korea continues to maintain its office and that they would be in contact with the South to resolve working-level matters.
The responses on these surveys are dependent on what the question is. What do people think the response would have been if they respondents were asked if South Korea should restart the Kaesong Industrial Park and Gumgang Mountain tours if the money is used by North Korea to develop their nuclear and missile programs?:
More than 60 percent of South Koreans are supportive of the resumption of two suspended cross-border projects, saying they could contribute to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a survey of a presidential consultative body showed Tuesday. According to the survey conducted by the National Unification Advisory Council on 1,000 adults, 62.4 percent said that restarting an industrial park in the North’s border town of Kaesong and a tour program to Mount Kumgang on the North’s east coast will help achieve denuclearization and boost the local economy. South Korea closed the Kaesong park in 2016 in retaliation for the North’s nuclear and missile provocations. The tour program to Mount Kumgang was halted in 2008, when a South Korean tourist was killed by a North Korean soldier. Seoul is seeking to resume the two symbolic projects on the belief that more cross-border exchanges could create a peace mood and help move the stalled denuclearization talks forward following last month’s summit breakdown between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump. Their resumption, however, requires sanctions relief on North Korea and Washington has balked at it, worrying that the global sanctions regime could be undermined at a time when the denuclearization process remains stalemated. The survey showed 54 percent supported easing sanctions in association with progress in nuclear talks, with 41.6 percent saying that sanctions should remain in place until complete denuclearization.
You can read more at the link, but this is clearly just another attempt by the Moon administration to shape public opinion to support their efforts to restart the two cross border projects. They need the public support in order to pressure the US to allow their “ethnic exemption” to sanctions.
People who pretend the North cares about peace get excited at minor incremental things. (“OMG a US-NK summit! Historic! Historic!”). NK always wanted a US sunmit.
3 SK presidents have visited P’yang.
Wake me when an NK leader finally does that “reciprocal visit” to Seoul. https://t.co/F1iXGwkJ9f
