Category: North Korea

It looks like the cover up of companies shipping North Korean coal into South Korea in violations of UN sanctions is in full effect:

A South Korean coal importing company is being investigated by the customs authority on suspicions of importing what is believed to be North Korean coal and disguising it as being from Russia, government officials have disclosed. Reportedly, this is only one of nine suspicious cases being investigated by the authorities.Misrepresenting the origin of coal counts as illegitimate importing under the Customs Act and the forgery of private documents under the criminal code.

And since importing North Korean coal is banned by UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea (Resolution No. 2371), this could also represent a violation of sanctions, if the coal does turn out to be from North Korea.On Aug. 6, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Korea Customs Service (KCS) met reporters at the Foreign Ministry office in Seoul’s Jongno District and explained the current status of their investigation into the import of coal suspected of being from North Korea.“We were provided with intelligence related to allegations of importing North Korean coal from the relevant government agency in Oct. 2017.

We have been investigating the importer implicated in the intelligence in question and are currently wrapping up that investigation,” said a KCS official. The KCS is planning to announce the details of its investigation when it hands over the case to the prosecutors, after completing the investigation.  [Hankyoreh]

So the investigation has been going on for nearly a year which causes me to believe this is being slow rolled.    Here is what the ROK government is trying to get people to believe:

But until upcoming investigations have run their course, it’s too soon to say whether the coal these companies imported is actually from North Korea. There are a number of possibilities that will have to be determined by investigators. The companies may have actually imported Russian coal; they may have known it was North Korean coal and passed it off as Russian; or they may have been fooled by Russian companies and imported coal without realizing it was from North Korea.

“We’re getting this intelligence from an ally, and the intelligence itself does not constitute definitive proof that the coal is from North Korea,” said an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

I get the feeling this investigation will lead no where, but I guess we will see.

There is no reason why this travel ban should be allowed to expire.  The North Koreans have never come clean about what happened to Otto Warmbier and allowing Americans to travel to North Korea gives the Kim regime a fresh pool of hostages to grab when the current negotiations inevitably collapse:

A U.S. ban on its citizens traveling to North Korea is expected to expire at the end of this month.

The U.S. government announced on Aug. 2 last year that U.S. passport holders were banned from traveling to North Korea for a year. The ban took effect on Sept. 1.

There has been no announcement from the U.S. government of an extension.

The travel ban followed the death of U.S. college student Otto Wombier, who suffered brain damage after he was detained by North Korea.  [Korea Times]

Prominent North Korean defector Thae Yong-ho who is also a candidate for the most hated person by South Korean leftists who they haven’t put in jail yet, has started his own English language blog.  In his recent posting he discusses how Kim Jong-un has no intention to denuclearize and is strengthening the Anti-Imperialist Education within North Korea against South Korea:

The reality is that when North Korea’s Kim Jong-un came out to the inter-Korean Summit and US-North Korean Summit, he had no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons. It was simply a way to earn time to hold onto his survival by putting on a ‘show’ of pretending to be interested in denuclearization.

While Kim Jong-un thinks that as long as he is in possession of nuclear weapons he will be able to continue the hereditary rule of the Kim family, in actuality,  as long as North Korea has nuclear weapons it will not be treated as a ‘normal state.’ In fact the nuclear weapons will be the malignant tumour that leads to the collapse of the North Korean system.

At this moment in time, South Korean citizens are delighted at the start to an era of forgiveness and cooperation between the two Koreas and think that through these inter-Korean exchanges, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un will change.

However, while Kim Jong-un is pretending to be interested in inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation on the outside; internally, he is intensifying the ‘Anti-Imperialist Education’ and warning his people about getting swept away with the exchange and cooperations with South Korea.  [Thae Yong-ho]

You can read more at the link.

Here is another example of a forum being used to pressure the US to drop sanctions against North Korea:

The top diplomats of the two Koreas and regional powers engaged in a flurry of diplomatic talks over the past few days in Singapore, although no breakthroughs were made toward Pyongyang’s denuclearization and the proclamation to formally end the Korean War.

This year’s ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) followed two inter-Korean summits at the Panmunjom truce village in spring and the unprecedented North Korea-U.S. summit in this city-state in June.

It was a sort of prelude to the U.N. General Assembly to be held in New York next month.

The gathering was widely expected to help maintain the momentum for constructive dialogue amid some signs of an impasse in the Korea peace process.

The U.S. is pressing the North to take concrete denuclearization steps, beyond a show of dismantling nuclear and missile testing sites in the absence of international experts.

The North says it has done a lot, and the Trump administration should reciprocate.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but wouldn’t it be great if President Trump responded to criticisms of reciprocating Pyongyang’s so called “good-will” gestures by saying that the US is showing good-will by not bombing them?

Funny thing about sanctions — the year we start to enforce them just happens to be the year Kim Jong-un shows up for summits w/ 3 foreign heads of state. You can argue whether sanctions helped diplomacy, but events refute any argument that they've hampered it. https://t.co/roKbGUdxn2

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) August 4, 2018

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un boards a domestically built bus in Pyongyang after touring a trolley car and bus plant in the capital city, the North’s main Rodong Shinmun newspaper reported Aug. 4, 2018.  (Yonhap)

This is all so predictable:

North Korea on Saturday said the US was acting with “alarming” impatience on the issue of denuclearisation, after Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, stressed the need to maintain full sanctions pressure on Pyongyang.

The contrasting comments at a security forum in Singapore came after a UN report showed Pyongyang was continuing with its nuclear and missile programmes and evading sanctions through ship-to-ship oil transfers.

At historic talks with Donald Trump, the US President, in June, Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, signed up to a vague commitment to “denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula” – a far cry from long-standing US demands for complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.

While US officials have publicly been optimistic about the agreement, Pyongyang appears to have made little substantial progress and Washington has become concerned that some UN member states are easing sanctions.

At the ASEAN Regional Forum, Ri Yong Ho, North Korea’s Foreign Minister, criticised US impatience on denuclearisation.

“What is alarming, however, is the insistent moves manifested within the US to go back to the old, far from its leader’s intention,” he said, according to a statement.

Hidden trillions: What if North Korea’s economy opened up?

If there is no agreement, no doubt you'll agree that Pyongyang has no basis to complain if we enforce sanctions aggressively, talk about human rights, hold defensive exercises, or install missile defenses. https://t.co/tPghepmVYF

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) August 2, 2018

How cute, President Trump has a new pen pal  😉

U.S. President Donald Trump received a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as the two continue to discuss Pyongyang’s commitment at a recent Singapore summit to rid itself of nuclear weapons, but no second meeting is currently planned, the White House said on Thursday.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump had received a letter from Kim on Wednesday and had responded with a note that should be delivered shortly. Trump also posted a note on Twitter on Thursday thanking Kim for returning the remains of U.S. soldiers and saying he looked forward to seeing Kim again.

“He did receive a letter,” Sanders told a White House briefing. “There is not a second meeting that is currently locked in or finalized. (We’re) certainly open to that discussion, but there isn’t a meeting planned.”  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes news that the US media is trying to make big news out of the fact that the North Koreans are continuing to develop missiles:

U.S. spy agencies are seeing signs that North Korea is constructing new missiles at a factory that produced the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States, according to officials familiar with the intelligence.

Newly obtained evidence, including satellite photos taken in recent weeks, indicates that work is underway on at least one and possibly two liquid-fueled ICBMs at a large research facility in Sanumdong, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe classified intelligence. [MSN]

I don’t know why anyone would consider this big news? The North Koreans never agreed to stop missile development. The only thing agreed to was to work towards denuclearization. The definition of what denuclearization means is still be negotiated.

Not everyone is surprised by this news though:

Several U.S. officials and private analysts said the continued activity inside North Korea’s weapons complex is not surprising, given that Kim made no public promise at the summit to halt work at the scores of nuclear and missiles facilities scattered around the country.

The North Koreans “never agreed to give up their nuclear program,” said Ken Gause, a North Korea expert at the Center for Naval Analysis. And it is foolish to expect that they would do so — at the outset of talks, he said.

Mr. Gausse may be right about this not be surprising, but here is where I believe he makes an incorrect assessment:

“Regime survival and perpetuation of Kim family rule” are Kim’s guiding principles, he said. “The nuclear program provides them with a deterrent in their mind against regime change by the United States. Giving up the nuclear capability will violate the two fundamental centers of gravity in the North Korean regime.”

The nuclear program’s main purpose in my opinion was not to prevent regime change. The North’s conventional threat, mainly the artillery batteries located along the DMZ has prevented any regime threatening attacks for decades despite deadly provocations by the Kim regime over many decades.

Not everyone is fooled by the Kim regime’s intentions:

“We have this backward. North Korea is not negotiating to give up their nuclear weapons,” Lewis said. “They are negotiating for recognition of their nuclear weapons. They’re willing to put up with certain limits, like no nuclear testing and no ICBM testing. What they’re offering is: They keep the bomb, but they stop talking about it.”

The further analysis to this is that the Kim regime needs the nuclear weapons and a delivery system to threaten the United States to begin the negotiations that will lead to a peace treaty and eventual withdrawal of US troops. The removal of USFK is needed in order to realize the Kim regime’s ultimate goal of a confederation.  They needed a left wing administration in charge of the ROK and nuclear weapons to accomplish this goal, and they now have both.