The first part of the survey of North Korea’s railways has been completed:
This photo provided by the Joint Press Corps shows a group of South Korean officials and railway experts speaking to reporters after returning home on Dec. 5, 2018, following a six-day railway inspection in North Korea. (Yonhap)
A group of South Korean officials and railway experts returned home Wednesday after completing a joint inspection of the rail system in western North Korea.
The 28 South Koreans crossed into Dorasan Station, just south of the inter-Korean border, at around 5:11 p.m. following a six-day inspection that covered the rail line from Kaesong near the border with the South to Sinuiju near the border with China.
A train carrying six South Korean cars left for the North on Friday. It was taken over by a North Korean locomotive at Panmun Station, from which point five North Korean cars were connected to it for the joint work.
“The overall railway conditions have not been better or much worse compared with when we visited there before,” Lim Jong-il, a transportation ministry official who headed the team, told reporters. He was involved in a 2007 railway inspection in the North. [Yonhap]
Everyone needs to remember that Moon Chung-in is the trial balloon specialist for the Moon Jae-in administration. Because the US will not drop sanctions until North Korea denuclearizes it appears that the South Koreans are instead going to try and get around sanctions by throwing around the term “humanitarian assistance” and even more strangely “humanitarian businesses”:
In this file photo taken on Nov. 29, 2018, Moon Chung-in, a special presidential adviser for unification, foreign and security affairs, speaks during a seminar in Seoul. (Yonhap)
The United States can help break the impasse in denuclearization talks with North Korea without sanctions relief if it allows humanitarian businesses in the communist nation to go forward, a special adviser to President Moon Jae-in said Monday.
Moon Chung-in, a special presidential adviser for unification, foreign and security affairs, made the remark during a lecture in Seoul, reiterating President Moon’s earlier remark that rewards for the North’s denuclearization steps do not necessarily have to be a relaxation of sanctions.
“Many American citizens wish to conduct humanitarian businesses in North Korea, but cannot due to government restrictions,” the adviser said. “Relieving those restrictions could send a fairly positive message to North Korea.”
President Moon told reporters earlier that rewards for North Korea’s denuclearization steps could include a delay or reduction of a South Korea-U.S. military exercise, humanitarian assistance or even non-political exchanges, such as sports and cultural exchanges. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but of course Moon Chung-in did not specify what “humanitarian businesses” he was talking about. So is Samsung, who the Moon administration has been pressuring to invest in North Korea, suddenly going to become a “humanitarian business” to get around sanctions? Will the big railway improvement project in North Korea the Moon administration has been pushing become “humanitarian assistance” to avoid sanctions?
Hopefully the Trump administration squashes this latest sanctions busting trial balloon from the ROK government.
My guess would be is that the uncertainty is probably over the annual Key Resolve and UFG exercises held each spring and summer. It seems to me that keeping these exercises on schedule can be used to pressure the Kim regime to make progress on denuclearization. Why reward them with cancelling the exercises if they have not done nothing in return? The fate of these exercises I think will be closely tied to the much discussed Kim-Trump summit that is supposed to happen early next year.
South Korea and the United States have not yet made a decision on whether to continue suspending their joint military exercises next year despite an earlier pledge to finalize the schedules for the drills no later than Dec. 1.
The pledge was made on the sidelines of the annual Security Consultative Meeting in Washington in October. South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo said he would announce the 2019 joint exercise plans under close consultation with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, but no specific timelines or schedules have been confirmed.
“The announcement was expected to be made before the aforementioned deadline, but both defense leaders are still narrowing their differences on the agenda,” the South’s defense ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo said. “We will announce the details at the earliest possible date.”
This came at a time when the allies are scaling down their joint military drills in reflection of the ongoing peace momentum on the Korean Peninsula.
On Monday, South Korea started an independent air drill replacing the Vigilant Ace joint aerial exercise with the United States, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Monday. [Korea Times]
Helicopter in response to a fire at DMZ delayed due to new requirement for #SouthKorea to notify #NorthKorea first, per the 9/19 inter-Korea military agreement. Why did #MoonJaein give sovereignty to Kim Jong-un? Is it his to give?https://t.co/uUqqJgrbg7
After the ROK completes this railway inspection they will know how much cash they will need to handover to Kim Jong-un to upgrade his railway lines while he does little to nothing in return. The artillery along the DMZ is still there pointed at Seoul and the ballistic missiles and rockets are still there pointed at other cities in South Korea:
A South Korean train departed for North Korea on Friday for an 18-day joint railway inspection that the Koreas are conducting as part of efforts to modernize, and eventually reconnect, rail lines across their border.
The train, made up of six cars and carrying dozens of South Korean officials and experts, left Dorasan Station, just south of the inter-Korean border, around 9:05 a.m. for Panmun Station, near the North’s border city of Kaesong.
The train will be used to inspect 1,200 kilometers of rail track in the North through Dec. 17.
The inspection is part of a summit agreement between the leaders of the Koreas, signed in April, to modernize and eventually reconnect rail systems across their border in a bid to foster reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula.
“The inter-Korean railway connection project is intended to overcome division and open a new future of the Korean Peninsula,” Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told a ceremony at Dorasan Station to mark the launch of the inspection. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if the South Korean officials on this train will get to see the North Korean child slave labor in action maintaining the rails?
The ‘chain gang’ of children works along a stretch of railway (Image: Daily Mirror)
Received a postcard on my way to office that I'm asked to fill out to welcome Kim Jong Un when he visits Seoul possibly later this year. I guess this is what they call surreal. pic.twitter.com/IPqWPu4IQY
Considering this poll was done by the Blue House I would not give it much creditability until an outside agency does polling on this issue:
A majority of South Koreans think it is necessary to ease sanctions on North Korea to accelerate denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a survey showed Tuesday.
According to the survey of 1,000 adults here by the National Unification Advisory Council, a presidential consultative body mainly on long-term inter-Korean ties, 64 percent expressed support for easing sanctions on the North as denuclearization talks are underway.
Of the total, 20.4 percent said that they do not support sanctions relief much, while 11.6 percent said they do not support such a move at all, the survey showed. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but how would respondents have answered if asked if they support dropping sanctions for little to nothing in return from the Kim regime? That is essentially what is going on right now.
Here is an update on the North Korean soldier defector who was shot while fleeing across the JSA to defect to the South. His story is very similar to other defectors who are surprised how hard one has to work in South Korea to earn money:
North Korean defector Oh Chong-song, whose bold dash across the heavily armed border in November last year made global headlines, has been struggling in South Korea since he was released from hospital.
“I took a job as a construction worker to feed myself,” Oh (not his real name) told the Chosun Ilbo Wednesday. “I experienced how hard it is to make money in the South.” Oh left Hanawon, a halfway house that helps North Korean defectors adjust to life in South Korea, in June after a long hospital stay to treat his many gunshot wounds and clear him of a mass of parasites in his stomach.
He now lives in Seoul. “I couldn’t work too long on the construction site due to my bad back, and I now work part-time at a social enterprise,” he said.
Oh denied a media report that he bought two cars and ended up selling them after running out of money. “That’s not true,” he said. “What I was given when I left Hanawon was W4 million in settlement support money and am entitled to live in public rental housing,” he said. “I didn’t have much money left after I bought furniture and a refrigerator (US$1=W1,130).”
Oh now looks no different than many young South Korean men in their 20s. He is slender and around 177 cm tall. Dressed in a navy-blue suit and white shirt, he had also dyed his hair light brown. Because he was born and raised in Kaesong close to the inter-Korean border, he does not have a distinct North Korean accent.
Oh insisted he had been misquoted in an interview with Japan’s Sankei Shimbun last weekend. The right-wing Japanese newspaper stirred up controversy by quoting Oh as saying that the South Korean military is a joke.
“I was misquoted and what I said was lost in translation,” he claimed Wednesday. “I watched video footage of South Korean soldiers crawling to save me,” he added, raising his voice as his emotions ran high. “I served in the North Korean military and do not know much about South Korean military life. You serve 10 years in the North Korean military and two years in the South Korean military, and all I said was it must be easier in the South.”
“But what I was quoted as saying made it sound like I laughed at the South Korean military.” Oh claimed the Sankei sent him a message apologizing for mistakes by the interpreter. [Chosun Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but apparently there is a lot of disinformation being put out about him. I would not be surprised if the disinformation campaign against him is a coordinated effort by ROK leftists to discredit him as much as possible.
NK's military went across the border to SK waters to kidnap SK citizens. Isn't it more appropriate for the Defense Min/prez to say/do something, rather than the Unification Min? And also something a tad bit stronger than "regret?" How about stop breaking down SK's defenses? https://t.co/k4bGVS4oH0
I don’t think anyone will be surprised to find out that former President Jimmy Carter tried to hold a peace conference with the North Koreans back in 1979:
The United States pushed for high-level talks with South and North Korea on reducing military tensions in the late 1970s amid a controversy over a troop pullout or reduction plan, declassified diplomatic documents showed Sunday.
The rift between the presidents of the allies at that time — Park Chung-hee and Jimmy Carter — about the size of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) was highlighted in a transcript of their talks in Seoul on June 30, 1979.
“I can’t promise that we will freeze forces levels,” Carter told Park, according to a White House document on their hourlong conversation.
Carter questioned South Korea’s commitment to a hike in defense budgets to counter North Korea’s rapid military buildup.
Park stressed his military was making efforts to beef up combat power but needed more time.
Cater asked, “My understanding is that you are particularly concerned about the presence of the Second (Infantry) Division and the Combined Forces Command. Do you also want the U.S. to maintain its protective nuclear umbrella as well?”
Park said yes. And Carter asked again, “If we decide to modify or reduce other force levels, you would like adequate notification and consultations?”
Park also said yes.
In the summit, Carter confirmed South Korea’s clear opposition to either the withdrawal of the USFK or a scale-down, with the North’s military threats growing. The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Carter soon accelerated a drive for dialogue with North Korea on easing tensions. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but Carter tried to hold a summit with the ROK and North Korea in Jakarta, Indonesia. It never happened because the Kim Il-sung regime blew him off.
