Category: North Korea

This time the New York Times is piling on President Trump for not reaching a deal with Kim Jong-un during the Vietnam summit:

As President Trump settled into the dining room of a French-colonial hotel in Hanoi on Thursday morning, the conversation with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader with whom he had struck up the oddest of friendships, was already turning tense.
In a dinner at the Metropole Hotel the evening before, mere feet from the bomb shelter where guests took cover during the Vietnam War, Mr. Kim had resisted what Mr. Trump presented as a grand bargain: North Korea would trade all its nuclear weapons, material and facilities for an end to the American-led sanctions squeezing its economy.
An American official later described this as “a proposal to go big,” a bet by Mr. Trump that his force of personality, and view of himself as a consummate dealmaker, would succeed where three previous presidents had failed.
But Mr. Trump’s offer was essentially the same deal that the United States has pushed — and the North has rejected — for a quarter century. Intelligence agencies had warned him, publicly, Mr. Kim would not be willing to give up the arsenal completely. North Korea itself had said repeatedly that it would only move gradually.

Several of Mr. Trump’s own aides, led by national security adviser John R. Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, thought the chances of a grand bargain for total nuclear disarmament were virtually zero. Some questioned whether the summit meeting should go forward.

New York Times

You can read more at the link, but if President Trump had struck a deal to drop sanctions in return for dismantling Yongbyon these same critics would be saying it was a bad deal for the reasons listed in this article, which it would be. That is why the only option was to get them to agree to give up all their nuclear capabilities in return for dropping sanctions even if as Mr. Bolton believed the odds were close to zero of it happening.

I have not seen anyone in the media yet discuss how President Trump is setting up Kim Jong-un for stronger actions in the future if he restarts a provocation cycle strategy. If the US has a strong reaction to a North Korean provocation, the Trump administration would have a strong case that they have tried all diplomatic measures to include canceling military exercises, not putting out provocative statements, treating Kim Jong-un with respect, and even meeting with him, not once, but twice to hash out a deal. That is why I think the Vietnam summit went forward more than hoping an almost 0% chance of a deal would be struck.

The fact that President Trump kept expectations low before the summit, so readily offered up the grand bargain, and then left quickly afterwards shows this was the strategy going in to the summit. It has now been made very clear to Kim Jong-un what the price for dropping sanctions will be and now the ball is in his court on how he wants to respond.

The AP is taking the side of the North Koreans in regards to their sanctions demands:

President Donald Trump said he walked away from his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un because Kim demanded the U.S. lift all of its sanctions, a claim that North Korea’s delegation called a rare news conference in the middle of the night to deny.
So who’s telling the truth? In this case, it seems that the North Koreans are. And it’s a demand they have been pushing for weeks in lower-level talks. (…….)

The U.N. Security Council has imposed nearly a dozen resolutions targeting North Korea, making it one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world. So Kim was indeed seeking a lot of relief — including the lifting of bans on everything from trade in metals, raw materials, luxury goods, seafood, coal exports, refined petroleum imports, raw petroleum imports.
But Kim wasn’t looking for the lifting of sanctions on armaments. Those were imposed earlier, from 2006, when the North conducted its first nuclear test.
For Pyongyang, that’s a key difference.

Associated Press

I think it is more accurate to say that the North Koreans are trying to get a lifting of all the sanctions that matter. Lifting the sanctions they want would be a huge economic boon to the Kim regime without fully denuclearizing. That money would all the regime to further modernize their military and illicit weapons programs.

With someone as unhealthy looking as Kim Jong-un this probably a prudent thing to do:

Former South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun also said her holding the ashtray was “normal.”

“It is more natural for Kim’s sister to hold the ashtray than for others to do it. If it was another person, it could be interpreted as trying to flatter the leader,” Jeong said in a radio interview Wednesday. 

Pundits say it is very important for the North to limit access to anything that could possibly reveal information about Kim’s health, and that collecting the cigarette butts is an important task. According to sources, North Korea is making sure to collect everything that Kim has used, such as tissues and towels. Kim is also said to bring along his own toilet when he travels.

Korea Herald

It looks like there will be a vodka shortage for a little while for the Kim regime elite:

Dutch customs officials at the port of Rotterdam have seized 90,000 bottles of vodka believed to be destined for the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and his army chiefs.
The discovery, on the eve of Kim’s two-day summit with Donald Trump in Hanoi, was made after Dutch authorities flagged up the suspicious route and records of a Chinese-owned container ship, Nebula.

The Russian vodka, contained in 3,000 boxes, had been recorded as being due for unloading in China, via the ports of Hamburg and Rotterdam.
When officers sought to retrieve the container from the ship’s hull, it was found to be concealed and hemmed in by the fuselage of an aircraft also due to be exported to China.

The Guardian

You can read more at the link.

It will be interesting to see if whoever was responsible for this is caught by Spanish authorities:

The Spanish Ministry of the Interior is currently investigating an incident alleged to have occurred at the DPRK embassy in Madrid, an official confirmed to NK News on Wednesday. 
Spanish outlet El Confidencial first reported that the DPRK embassy had been the subject of an attack and break-in last Friday, with diplomatic staff said to have been tied up and gagged while computer equipment was stolen.
“We can confirm that this is under investigation, but that is the only thing we can say,” an official from the communications department of the Ministry of the Interior said. 
When pressed to confirm a robbery had in fact taken place, the official reiterated that they had nothing more to add.

NK News

You can read more at the link.

We promised Libya’s dictator Gaddafi that if he gave up his nuke program, we wouldn’t overthrow him. He gave them up, and we blew him away. NK’s Kim won’t make the same mistake. Just another negative consequence of short-sighted regime-change war policies

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) February 26, 2019

As long as these companies are allowed to operate without facing consequences, the Kim regime will continue to be able to break sanctions:

A Russian tanker violated international trade sanctions by transferring fuel to a North Korean vessel at sea at least four times between October 2017 and May 2018, two crew members who witnessed the transfers said.

Such transactions could have helped provide North Korea with an economic lifeline and eased the isolation of the secretive communist state, whose leader, Kim Jong Un, is due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Vietnam this week.
Primportbunker, the owner of the vessel the crew members said made the transfers, did not respond to requests for comment by telephone. No one answered the door when Reuters visited the building where Primportbunker has its headquarters in the port city of Vladivostok on Russia’s Pacific coast.

On the four voyages between Oct. 13, 2017, and May 7, 2018, the Tantal tanker gave its destination as the Chinese port of Ningbo when it set sail, according to port documents seen by Reuters and tracking data from financial data company Refinitiv.
It then met up in international waters with a North Korean vessel to which it transferred its cargo of fuel, the two crew members who witnessed the transfers said.
The two crew said the fuel transfers took place when the Tantal’s transponder, which allows the vessel to be tracked at sea, was not operating. Shipping industry experts said this indicates the transponder was deliberately turned off or the Tantal had entered a zone not covered by ship-tracking radar.
On each occasion, the transponder started operating again when the Tantal was close to port in Russia, the two crew said.

Reuters via a reader tip

You can read more at the link.

It looks like President Trump is not interested in the “pretend denuclearization” that the North Koreans want and instead is committed to pressuring them to really denuclearize by walking away from the summit:

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un failed to reach an agreement on denuclearization at their summit here in the Vietnamese capital, Thursday.

Ultimately, the breakdown of the summit “was about sanctions,” Trump said in a press conference after the meeting with Kim. 

“It wasn’t a thing to be signing anything today. He (Kim Jong-un) is quite a guy, quite a character. We had some options but at this time, we decided not to do any of the options,” Trump told reporters in a hurriedly arranged press conference after holding extended talks with the North Korean leader.

“Sometimes, you have to walk. This was just of those items. Basically, they (North Korea) wanted the sanctions lifted, and we couldn’t do that. We haven’t given up anything. He wants denuclearization. He just wants to do areas that are less important than what we want.”

Ahead of the conference, the White House said in a statement that dialogue on nuclear disarmament would continue. “Their respective teams look forward to meeting in the future.” But top U.S. officials went on to say that the negotiations will take time.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I have to wonder if the North Koreans misread the Trump administration based off of media coverage? Maybe they thought that with all the negative media and analysts saying Trump was desperate for a deal that they actually believed it; thus they kept pressuring him on sanctions thinking he would fold. If this what the North Koreans were thinking they obviously don’t know President Trump very well.

It seems the one good thing that came out of this summit is that Kim Jong-un has heard for himself from President Trump instead of from surrogates and the media that he is serious about sanctions remaining in place until they commit to real denuclearization.

Kim Jong Un had a cigarette break this morning at Nanning station in China.

Kim Yo Jong can be seen carrying an ashtray for him.

Hyon Song Wol also visible in one shot.

Pics from TBS Japanhttps://t.co/3imj1VnugQ pic.twitter.com/gu3cATjjiK

— Chad O'Carroll (@chadocl) February 26, 2019

I hope Ms. Shin understands that peace is not going to allow her to go home to North Korea with out repercussions. As long as the Kim regime remains in place, defectors will never be welcomed back with open arms:

A tearful North Korean defector shouted “Please, let me go back home!” as a black limousine carrying North Korean leader Kim Jong Un passed by her in Hanoi on Tuesday.
Shin Eun Ha is one of two North Korean defectors who flew to Vietnam to wish for progress during a second summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump this week. They joined a crowd gathered near a Hanoi hotel where Kim is staying.
Shin said she hopes the summit will help achieve peace so she can return to her hometown of Musan, which she fled in 2003.
“For defectors, North Korea isn’t a country of hatred but a place that we are desperate to go back to even in our dreams,” Shin told The Associated Press. “I hope to see a day when we can go back to North Korea by taking a train like Kim Jong Un used to come here.”
Later Tuesday, when Kim’s limousine left his hotel, escorted by motorcycle outriders, Shin cried and shouted repeatedly, “Please, let me go home.”
“I don’t understand why we should live while missing our hometown,” Shin said.
She and her fellow defector came as part of a popular South Korean TV program featuring North Korean defectors. Shin, a 30-year-old nurse in Seoul, has been a regular guest on the program, titled “Now On My Way to Meet You.”

Associated Press