Category: Inter-Korean Issues

Via a reader tip come this article that explains how South Korean protesters tried to block the bridge taking the North Korean delegation back to North Korea:

Protesters attempted to block vehicles carrying a controversial North Korean delegation to the closing ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games as they crossed the Demilitarised Zone into South Korea on Sunday morning.

Around 100 conservative politicians and activists staged a sit-in demonstration at the Tongil Bridge, according to local broadcaster YTN, accusing the delegation’s leader of being behind a deadly 2010 attack on a South Korean warship.

South Korean authorities deployed more than 2.500 police officers to control the protests. To avoid a clash, the motorcade took an alternative route via Jeonjin bridge, which is a military crossing, according to the Chosun Ilbo.  [The Times]

You can read more at the link, but I hope General Brooks gets on the phone and asks President Moon that if he can open a road for the murderer of 46 ROK sailors, if he can also open the road to the THAAD site?

It is pretty clear that the Kim regime sent Kim Yong-chol as part of the South Korean delegation to rub the Cheonan attack in the face of South Korea’s conservatives:

Political parties collided Monday over a controversial visit to Seoul by a North Korean official who is accused of masterminding deadly military attacks in 2010.

The main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) staged a massive rally in central Seoul berating the liberal government for embracing Kim Yong-chol as the chief of the North’s delegation to the closing ceremony of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics despite his alleged role in the two attacks.

Kim, a vice chairman of the Central Committee of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, has been accused of leading the torpedo attack on the South Korean warship Cheonan and the bombardment of the border island of Yeonpyeong. The attacks killed a total of 50 South Koreans.

“We will fight until the end against the Moon Jae-in government that has pressed ahead with its decision to allow the visit by Kim Yong-chol despite public concerns and objections,” Kim Sung-tae, the LKP floor leader, said during the rally.

“The raison d’etre of our party is to protect the free democracy system here,” he added.

Describing Kim as a “murderer” and “war criminal,” conservatives here had called for the cancellation of Kim’s three-day visit to the South.

They argue that the visit by Kim — who is under a set of local and international sanctions — will help the North’s “deceptive peace offensive” to weaken the current sanctions regime, sow discord among South Koreans and drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but this would be like a US President giving the red carpet treatment to the mastermind of the USS Cole bombing.  Instead the US gave him Gitmo.  That is the treatment Kim Yong-chol deserves, not VIP treatment at the Walker Hill Hotel.

The North Koreans are likely offering to hold talks now to get what they can get out of negotiations and then set conditions for their next provocation cycle:

A senior North Korean official said Monday that the reclusive state is willing to hold talks with the United States, noting the door for dialogue between the two countries remains open, according to an official from Seoul’s presidential office Cheong Wa Dae.

The remarks from Kim Yong-chol, the North’s point man on South Korea, came in a meeting with Chung Eui-yong, chief of South Korea’s National Security Council and the top security advisor to President Moon Jae-in.

“Kim said the door remains open for dialogue with the United States. He said the North has also repeatedly expressed such a stance,” a ranking Cheong Wa Dae official told reporters, while speaking on condition of anonymity.

Kim’s remarks came one day after he told the South Korean president in a meeting that the North has enough willingness to hold bilateral talks with the United States.

He, however, attached no conditions for the talks, according to the presidential official.

The U.S. seemed to remain cautious, with White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders saying Washington will first see if Kim’s remarks represented the North’s first step toward denuclearization.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime has no intention of denuclearizing which means the talks will likely go no where.  However, before the talks go no where the Kim regime will try to get concessions out of the ROK.  The Moon administration is already floating the idea of suspending joint military exercises and economic aid for them suspending their nuclear and missile programs:

Moon has promoted a two-step roadmap to end the security crisis prompted by the North’s nuclear threats. According to his proposed first step, the North must place a moratorium on its nuclear and missile tests, freeze any further development of the technologies and join denuclearization negotiations. In return, the international community was to offer corresponding compensations. The second step would be actual nuclear dismantlement.

Moon, however, never made clear what Seoul and Washington would offer to Pyongyang in return for the first step, a freeze. Suspending or downsizing joint military exercises by South Korea and the United States has been discussed as a possible option, as well as an economic assistance package for the impoverished economy of the North.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

So basically the Kim regime gets significant concessions for doing nothing.  The economic assistance will likely include the reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the restarting of Mt. Kumgang tours, and the opening of the Masik Ski Resort to tourism.  This would essentially shred all the sanctions that the US has been trying to leverage against the ROK.  That is why we will likely see a renewed push for a “freeze deal” in the coming weeks and months.

After the Kim regime gets all they can out of talks they will then restart their nuclear and missile programs and blame “US hostility” or some other made up reason.  Their leftist supporters will of course all fall in line with the narrative.  We have seen this all play out before.  Any freeze deal they sign the Kim regime will find a way to cheat on it.  I fully expect they will continue with short and intermediate range ballistic missile testing claiming this is okay because they are not ICBMs.  I suspect they will use space launches to test their ICBM technology and claim it is for peaceful purposes.  They have done this before.

They will also likely continue efforts to miniaturize their nuclear technology to put on ICBM warheads.  Without inspections this will be easy for them to conceal.  Even if they get called out for cheating they will just deny it and their apologists will come out in force to support them.  Supporters of past nuclear deals kept claiming that North Korea was in compliance despite clear evidence they were not.

It will be interesting to see which direction the Trump administration wants to go.  If they want to kick this can down the road to deal with later, the freeze deal is a way to do it.

Unsurprisingly the Moon administration is claiming they can’t blame the North Koreans for sinking the Cheonan while the Kim regime rubs this sinking in their faces by sending the mastermind of the attack to the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics:

The South Korean government said Friday that it is difficult to pinpoint who led North Korea’s deadly sinking of the warship Cheonan in 2010, amid controversy surrounding a planned visit by a senior Pyongyang official widely suspected of masterminding the attack.

Kim Yong-chol, a top North Korean official, will come to the South for a three-day visit on Sunday as the head of the North’s high-level delegation to PyeongChang Winter Olympics closing ceremony later in the day. Conservatives and families of the 46 victims are strongly opposing his visit.

“It is clear that North Korea was blamed for the warship sinking and Kim was leading North Korea’s reconnaissance bureau at that time,” Baik Tae-hyun, spokesman at Seoul’s unification ministry, told a press briefing.

“But it is also the fact that there is a limitation in pinpointing who was responsible for the incident.”  [Yonhap]

The radical leftists in South Korea probably think that former Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye swam out and sunk the Cheonan before pinning the blame on North Korea.  This reminds me just like what happened in 2002 after the West Sea Naval Battle where six ROK sailors were killed by a North Korean attack.  The left wing Roh Moo-hyun administration deflected blame for the attack and actually blamed the sailors:

In commemoration of the second anniversary of the West Sea naval battle, memorial services were held at the headquarters of the Navy’s 2nd Fleet in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province on Tuesday. Hwang Eun-tae, father of the late Petty Officer First Class Hwang Do-hyun, weeps while reading a letter in front of his son’s portrait.

The father said, “My son is buried in the National Cemetery. But I’m going to take my son’s remains to my family burial site in my hometown.” Having watched the situation develop, he thought his son who was killed by North Korean soldiers was considered nothing more than a criminal.

Some parents said that they are more scared of people who consider the U.S. a bigger enemy than North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who killed their son. We lose courage to defend the country, when we hear that a wife whose husband fell in the battle is preparing to leave this country. Reading a condolence letter from the USFK commander to mark the second anniversary, the wife said, “The Americans remember my husband and his brothers-in-arms better than Koreans… Frankly, I hate Korea.”

I can only imagine the frustration the surviving family members of the 46 sailors who died on the Cheonan will experience when they see the red carpet laid out by the ROK government for a murderer like Kim Yong-chol.

As I expected Ivanka Trump continued to communicate the US’s position of maximum pressure on North Korea to President Moon:

Ivanka Trump, daughter and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, reiterated a maximum pressure campaign against North Korea, in a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Friday.

She said Washington and Seoul “reaffirmed commitment to a maximum pressure campaign to ensure that the Korean Peninsula is denuclearized,” ahead of a dinner hosted by Moon at Cheong Wa Dae.

“We continue to reaffirm our joint values and strategic cooperation as partners and allies,” she said.

Ivanka leads the U.S. delegation which arrived in Seoul earlier in the day, to attend the Games’ closing ceremony on Sunday. The delegation includes Senator James Risch, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Allison Hooker, a National Security Council (NSC) official specializing in Korean affairs.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but the article also says she is not expected to meet with the North Korean delegation either.  Outside of the North Korean delegation suddenly saying they are open to denuclearization and ending their ICBM program I don’t see why the US delegation should meet with them?

I guess we will see what happens, but I don’t expect Ivanka Trump will stray from the White House’s current maximum pressure position in regards to North Korea if they do meet:

The chances of Washington-Pyongyang talks over the latter’s nuclear program seem to be growing, with high-level officials from the two countries coming to South Korea for the closing ceremony of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

Attention to any possible contact is high, especially after it belatedly became known the two sides had planned a meeting when U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister Kim Yo-jong participated in the opening ceremony.

Cheong Wa Dae and the Ministry of Unification said Thursday Kim Yong-chol, head of the Workers’ Party of Korea’s United Front Department, would visit the South from Sunday to Tuesday, along with seven other delegates including Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland.

They will attend the closing ceremony that will take place on Sunday. Cheong Wa Dae said the rest of their itinerary has not been confirmed, although it is expected they will have a separate meeting with President Moon Jae-in at Cheong Wa Dae.

The high-profile North Korean delegation’s visit was announced hours after the White House and Cheong Wa Dae confirmed Ivanka Trump, daughter and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, would make a four-day visit here from Friday to Monday.

She is scheduled to have talks with Moon over dinner at the presidential office on the first day of her visit. Ivanka Trump will also have a separate event with first lady Kim Jung-sook, as well as attending the closing ceremony.

As the periods of the two delegations’ stays overlap, expectations are growing over a possible meeting.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I am willing to bet the Moon administration intentionally created this scheduling overlap in an effort to try and get a meeting to happen.

Former Financial Times journalist John Burton thinks the Trump administration is to paternalistic with South Korea and should let them settle their own differences with North Korea:

The U.S. has been doing itself no favors in its rather paternalistic response to the thawing relations between the two Koreas at the Winter Olympics.

The bottom line message emerging from Washington is that South Koreans cannot be trusted in handling Pyongyang. The U.S. is worried that North Korea is trying to drive a wedge in relations between Seoul and Washington. But the Trump administration’s own behavior is contributing to the possibility of any split.

And if the South Koreans can’t be trusted with their own security, then why should the U.S. be so concerned about defending them unless it is for some ulterior motive such as maintaining a military presence on the Asian mainland to counter China?

The fact is that the Koreans have reached out to each other because of fears that Trump might launch a “bloody nose” preventive attack that could result in appalling destruction across the Korean Peninsula. No wonder why Koreans want to give peace a chance.

But the U.S. has not reacted well to what is happening in PyeongChang. The American media has reported about South Koreans having been seduced by the wily charms of Kim Yo-jong, described as North Korea’s Ivanka Trump, and her accompanying “army of beauties.”

Many predict that her siren song is likely to result in President Moon Jae-in accepting her invitation to travel to Pyongyang and meet her brother, Kim Jong-un, who will trick the South Koreans into undermining the international sanctions regime against North Korea over its nuclear program.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but Mr. Burton is also upset with Vice President Pence not standing and showing respect to the North Korean delegation at the Winter Olympics.  I have to wonder if Mr. Burton thinks the then Apartheid South Africa should have been allowed in the Olympics and shown proper respect as well?

Mr. Burton then goes on to say the South and North should be allowed to resolve their issues themselves without US interference.  That boat has long ago sailed when North Korea decided to begin launching ICBMs and testing nuclear weapons capable of mass destruction in the United States.  If North Korea was not conducting such activities threats of “bloody nose” strikes and “maximum pressure” campaigns by the Trump administration would not be happening.

Until North Korea gives up on these programs the United States will continue to have a vested interest in any negotiations between North and South Korea.  Especially after the original Sunshine Policy that sent billions of dollars to North Korea is arguably the reason why the Kim regime now has nuclear and ICBM weapons to threaten the US with.  Because of this the Trump administration rightfully should be advocating against any give aways by the Moon administration to the Kim regime for little or nothing in return.

I have been saying for years that the ROK government should only agree to another Inter-Korean Summit if it is held in Seoul.  Mr. William Brown an adjunct professor at Georgetown University shares this assessment:

Will President Moon Jae-in accept North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s invitation to Pyongyang?

It must be a very tricky decision for Moon. If he raises the issue of denuclearization, North Korea might revert to its belligerent stance.

But if Moon opts to go to Pyongyang for talks for the sake of talks it could jeopardize the alliance between South Korea and the United States, or other allies.

William Brown, adjunct professor at Georgetown School of Foreign Service, suggests Moon make a counteroffer by inviting Kim to Seoul to avoid the same old mistakes his liberal predecessors have made.

“We have seen far too many VIP trips to Pyongyang over the past decades, and every time, Pyongyang has hoodwinked the visitors into giving it something, even billions of dollars,” Brown said in an interview, citing former President Kim Dae-jung.

“I’m sure Kim Jong-un is well aware of that and in need of big money. So, Kim wants an improvement in inter-Korean ties but only to help him pursue his new ‘unification’ dream.”

He pointed out the North has “engagement” down to a fine art, knowing how to cater to foreign and South Korean egos.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but after the first Inter-Korean Summit in Pyongyang with ROK President Kim Dae-jung, the then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il promised to visit Seoul at the next Inter-Korean Summit.  During the administration of ROK President Roh Moo-hyun a second Inter-Korean Summit was held in Pyongyang.  Kim Jong-il said that he could not hold the summit in Seoul due to “security concerns”.

This is of course nonsense, the real reason he did not want to come to Seoul is because of the propaganda value it gives to the ROK government.  The Kim regime has long held that the ROK government is an illegitimate puppet regime of the evil American Imperialists™.  Kim Jong-un traveling to Seoul for talks gives legitimacy to the ROK government and eliminates the propaganda value to North Korea of ROK government leaders making kowtowing tribute visits to Pyongyang.

Considering the North Korean sympathizers within the Moon administration it is unlikely they would demand that the next Inter-Korean Summit be held in Seoul.  Instead if the Trump administration says they would participate in a Inter-Korean Summit if it is held in Seoul this may force the ROK government’s hand to ask that the summit be held in Seoul.  This would then put the onus on the Kim regime to see how serious they are about peace.  If Kim Jong-un refuses to attend an Inter-Korean Summit in Seoul it shows he is not serious about peace and instead just looking for another payday.

It truly is amazing how South Korean politicians want to reward the Kim regime’s crimes against humanity and threat to world peace by letting them co-host a major sporting event:

A South Korean province is considering a proposal to co-host the 2021 Asian Winter Games with North Korea in a bid to strengthen inter-Korean ties, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency said on Saturday, quoting provincial governor Choi Moon-soon.

Gangwon province, host for the current 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, is considering the idea also as a way of making further use of Olympics venues, Choi was quoted as saying.

North Korea is participating in the Pyeongchang Games at the invitation of the South, which is using them to help ease tensions between the two countries, still technically at war.

The host city for the 2021 event has not been decided yet.

A spokesman for South Korea’s sports ministry said it “hopes to continue sports exchanges with North Korea after the Winter Games” but it had not yet discussed any bid for the 2021 Games.  [Reuters]

I hope Gangwon is not chosen for the host site for the 2021 Asian Winter Games simply because of this idea.  Plus how many missile and nuclear tests will there be between now and 2021?

Also, how can anyone describe an admirer of Kim Il-sung as a "democracy activist?" https://t.co/YWy2IWpUKS
It would be accurate to say he sought to replace an authoritarian system with a totalitarian one. Left unsaid is whether he still supports the totalitarian system.

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) February 16, 2018