Category: North Korea

As I have been saying the North Koreans want the lifting of sanctions to occur for little to nothing in return.  Clearly Emperor President Xi and Czar President Putin are onboard with this position.  The only thing standing in their way right now is President Trump:

North Korea appears to be seeking a lifting of international sanctions imposed on the country by using its longtime ally, China, as leverage.

North Korea is shifting its focus toward economic development, and for that goal, sanctions relief and economic cooperation with other countries will be essential. While it is creating the atmosphere by offering peace through the inter-Korean and the Washington-Pyongyang summits, it seems the North believes China can speed up the process.

Last week, the Japanese media reported China and Russia submitted a statement to the U.N. Security Council seeking the lifting of sanctions on North Korea.

It was reportedly dismissed due to U.S. opposition, which stated North Korea’s denuclearization would have to make progress first.

“China does not regard lifting the sanctions as an end in itself ― the Security Council should support and cooperate in the current mood of dialogue and efforts toward denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu Kang said in a press briefing, Friday.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but does anyone think President Trump will eventually fold and allow sanctions relief without any real denuclearization efforts by the Kim regime?

If anyone thought were going to stop all their nuclear programs because of a summit then they have no knowledge of past negotiations with the Kim regime.  Additionally here we go again with intelligence officials leaking classified information to the media:

As President Donald Trump touted a new era of diplomacy with the North Korean regime, a classified intelligence assessment appeared to tell a different story, according to several US intelligence officials.

The assessment revealed that, in recent months, North Korea had upped its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at several secret sites, according to over a dozen intelligence officials cited in an NBC News report published Friday. The officials said they believe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may be trying to conceal the secret facilities from the US.

“Work is ongoing to deceive us on the number of facilities, the number of weapons, the number of missiles,” one senior US intelligence official said to NBC News. “We are watching closely.”

According to five US officials cited by NBC News, the North Korean regime was increasing production of enriched uranium, even as relations with the US improved following the 2018 Winter Olympics. And since the leaders of both countries held a summit in Singapore in mid-June, the Trump administration has already delivered some concessions to the North.  [Business Insider]

You can read more at the link, but it only makes sense that the North Koreans are going to rush to increase the amount of fuel and weapons they have to maximize their bargaining position.  Like I have always said I seriously doubt the regime will completely denuclearize.

On a side note, I do find it interesting how the media now is highly critical of North Korean double dealing when during past negotiations many in the media made excuses for North Korean double dealing.

This is why South Korea dreads a collapse of the Kim regime:

When Chang Ho Kim was living in North Korea, information trickled in from China about the world outside the closed country. Through the lens of pirated movies, he says, America had looked to Kim like “a very rich and luxurious place”.

In 1997, at the height of a famine that killed around one million people, Kim escaped with his wife into China, then Mongolia, then to South Korea.

Defectors from the North automatically become South Korean citizens after a mandatory three-month transition that is part debriefing, part re-education. Most North Korean defectors in the South stand out, and the Kims were no exception. They have distinct accents, and are often shorter and slighter with darker, sallow skin from years of malnutrition. It’s hard to avoid South Koreans’ prejudice and suspicions that North Koreans are spies.

Remembering the Hollywood images of the US, the Kims decided to make their way to the US illegally through a broker.

But for the Kims, and others like them, life in the US is not necessarily easier.

The American celluloid dream comes with skyrocketing price tags. North Koreans arrive with little or no experience of bills, rent, and no means to cope with the lack of social services and health insurance that illegal immigrants must navigate.

“American life is so hard. Money, money, money,” said Pastor Young Gu Kim, an evangelical South Korean immigrant who helps defectors. “Some defectors told me, ‘Oh pastor, sometimes I miss it over there.’”

Like Chang Ho Kim, many North Koreans enter illegally and settle in Los Angeles, amid the large population of ethnic Koreans. Nearly 200 former North Koreans live in Los Angeles, advocacy groups say, but exact numbers are unknown.  [The Guardian]

You can read more at the link, but North Koreans are not socialized to live in a western society that largely demands individual initiative to work hard and make money to support ones self.  Imagine if millions of North Koreans showed up in South Korea instead of the small trickle that currently exists if the regime was to collapse.  The social problems this would cause would be enormous and thus why the ROK government is pushing a policy of gradual reunification instead of regime collapse.

My usual caveats apply when it comes to anonymous sources providing stories like this out of North Korea:

A senior North Korean military officer who told colleagues they no longer needed to “suffer and tighten our belts to make rockets and nuclear weapons” has been executed by firing squad, according to reports in dissident media.

The officer was named by the Seoul-based Daily NK news website as Hyon Ju-song, a 56-year-old lieutenant general who was serving as director of the services inspection division of the People’s Armed Forces.

Lt. Gen. Hyon appears to have become excited at the possibility that the detente that has taken place on the Korean Peninsula this year will develop into full-blown peace and got ahead of official party policy.

Quoting one of the organisation’s “citizen reporters” in the North, Daily NK said Lt. Gen. Hyon had been “on the fast track to success” within the military, but was arrested after making unguarded comments during a visit to one of the regime’s most important facilities.

“While checking the oil supplies for the Sohae Satellite Launching Station during the comprehensive inspections of wartime supplies on April 10, Hyon stated, ‘We no longer have to suffer and tighten our belts to make rockets or nuclear weapons’. This was seen as an abuse of authority and a treasonous statement that opposed the Party’s military-first policy”, the site reported.   [The Telegraph]

You can read more at the link.

Here is some more interesting imagery analysis from the folks at 38 North:

Commercial satellite imagery from June 21 indicates that improvements to the infrastructure at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center are continuing at a rapid pace. Modifications to the 5 MWe plutonium production reactor’s cooling system appear complete, but a less-than-normal cooling water discharge from the outfall pipe makes a determination of the reactor’s operational status difficult. The status of the Radiochemical Laboratory—used to separate plutonium from spent fuel rods—remains uncertain, although the associated Thermal Plant has likely continued operations, and a small non-industrial building of an unknown purpose has been newly erected near the cooling tower. Construction continues on support facilities throughout other operational areas of Yongbyon, especially at the Experimental Light Water Reactor (ELWR), where the new engineering office building appears externally complete and a small building similar to the one observed at the Radiochemical Laboratory has been erected.

Continued work at the Yongbyon facility should not be seen as having any relationship to North Korea’s pledge to denuclearize. The North’s nuclear cadre can be expected to proceed with business as usual until specific orders are issued from Pyongyang.  [38 North]

You can read much more and see the imagery analysis at the link.

I would not be surprised if the Kim regime is trying to rush completion of these projects and then try and declare that these facilities are for peaceful nuclear energy use.  The North Koreans could argue that South Korea has nuclear power plants, why can’t they?  This would allow the regime to maintain the ability to quickly process material for nuclear weapons again if they were to agree to give up the nuclear weapons they already have.

By the way, ROK Heads may remember that 38 North was part of the US-Korea Institute that the Moon administration tried to get certain employees of the think tank removed from because of their conservative leanings.  Since USKI would not remove the employees the Korean government cut funding and USKI was shutdown.  The shutdown of the USKI was part of a larger effort by the Moon administration to take control of media in South Korea.  Articles like this one showing continued nuclear upgrades by North Korea despite pledges to denuclearize are the types of articles the Moon administration may have wanted to suppress if they still controlled USKI.  It is good to see that 38 North has continued to publish despite the shutdown of the USKI.

Part II of the third summit between Xi and KJU. Here's the same NK general who created controversy, defense minister Roh Gwang-chol, doing the same military salute at another summit. This is a big entourage: about twice the hangers-on that accompanied KJU to the 1st & 2nd summits pic.twitter.com/3O67f0f8jo

— Noon in Korea (@NoonInKorea) June 23, 2018

Legitimizing and praising a dictator does not give us a real and permanent peace. It’s a delusional and fake peace that Trump wants us to believe. We must hold North Korea’s murderous Kim dictator accountable. We must fight for a world where justice… https://t.co/S44Xcp3Jvq

— Yeonmi Park (박연미) (@YeonmiParkNK) June 21, 2018

[NEWS ANALYSIS] Kim Jong-un's third visit to China marks landmark shift in style of North Korean diplomacy https://t.co/OjAVVVocUX

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) June 20, 2018

We must not forget the people of North Korea whom has no voice and not allowed to speak because the dictator kills them and punishes three generations of their family members at this very moment.

— Yeonmi Park (박연미) (@YeonmiParkNK) June 13, 2018

Holy crap. https://t.co/XpxaELVerJ

— Victor Cha (@VictorDCha) June 12, 2018