The pre-summit gamesmanship has already started by the North Koreans cancelling high level talks with the South Koreans yesterday and threatening to cancel the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore:
Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon enters his office building in Seoul, Wednesday, after North Korea cancelled high-level inter-Korean talks unilaterally. / Yonhap
Political analysts presume North Korea’s abrupt cancellation of high-level inter-Korean talks and threats to reconsider the Washington-Pyongyang summit are aimed at taking the lead ahead of talks over its denuclearization.
Most predict the North is unlikely to spoil the current mood for dialogue but is trying to strengthen its bargaining power before negotiations and send a warning ― to the U.S., rather than to South Korea ― not to underestimate the country.
About 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, Pyongyang notified Seoul that it had cancelled the high-level talks, which were to take place in less than 10 hours, citing the ongoing South Korea-U.S. joint military drills, which it sees as a rehearsal of war.
Later in the day, North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan also said in a statement the country would reconsider the summit between its leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump, slated for June 12, if the U.S. forces the North to unilaterally give up nuclear weapons.
Experts say the exercises may not be the true reason for the North canceling talks, considering that the drills started May 11 and the North suggested the meeting four days later. Kim Jong-un also earlier told South Korean envoys that he understood the allies’ joint military drills.
“With the drills as a pretext, Pyongyang is indirectly expressing discontent at the recent hard-line stances from Washington, such as moving the North’s nuclear weapons to the U.S., removing biochemical weapons and raising an issue of human rights abuse,” said Shin Beom-chul, senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “The North is making use of the high-level talks as a chance (to express its discomfort).”
Indeed, Kim Kye-gwan said American officials’ remarks, such as “denuclearization first and reward later” and “complete abandonment of nuclear, missile and biochemical weapons,” are “thoughtless words that provoke its counterpart.” [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but what I suspect is happening is that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Kim Jong-un what the US expects of the regime from the summit during his recent trip to North Korea, but in the US media other things are being said that were not discussed previously. People bringing up that human rights should be included in the summit is an especially sensitive topic in North Korea. Threatening to cancel the summit sends a message to the Trump administration that these topics will not be discussed at the summit.
Unless something drastic happens I would be highly surprised if this summit does not happen because the Kim regime has too much to lose. South Korea’s Moon administration at least needs the Kim regime to pretend to denuclearize to justify the massive aid package they have planned to give to Kim Jong-un. They can’t attempt a denuclearization facade if they don’t even show up to the summit.
The odds are that he will fly his Russian made Il-62M aircraft to Singapore despite his plane having never flown that far before:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gets on his official airplane Chammae-1 after his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Dalian in China’s Liaoning Province on May 7-8. (Korea Central News Agency
How will North Korean leader Kim Jong-un travel the 4,700km to Singapore, where the North Korea-US summit will be taking place on June 12? Since a train journey from North Korea to Singapore is out of the question, attention is focusing on Kim’s official airplane, Chammae-1 (meaning goshawk, North Korea’s national bird).On May 7, Kim flew Chammae-1 to Dalian in China’s Liaoning Province to hold his second summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Pyongyang and Dalian are about 360km apart in a direct line. Chammae-1, a souped-up IL-62M of Soviet manufacture, is equipped with four engines, which gives it a maximum flight distance of 9,000-10,000km. These specifications make it fully capable of reaching Singapore, which is about 4,700km away from Pyongyang.But safety concerns have also been raised since Kim’s jet is old and has never attempted a long flight before. The IL-62M, an upgraded version of the IL-62 model that was developed in 1967, entered production in 1975 and was discontinued in 1995.“[Chammae-1] is presumed to have been manufactured in 1985, and provided that it’s in good repair, it will have no problem flying to Singapore. But since it has no experience with long-distance flight and may not have been serviced properly, it probably presents a dilemma [for North Korea],” said a source in the South Korean government.
In Nov. 2014, Choe Ryong-hae, vice chairman of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP), was reportedly on a flight to Russia as a special envoy for Kim Jong-un when a problem with his aircraft forced him to return to Pyongyang and restart his journey. The aircraft that Choe and his party were on was apparently also an IL-62. This is leading to speculation that Kim may have a stopover in China or borrow a large charter plane from China. [Hankyoreh]
You can read more at the link, but I seriously doubt Kim Jong-un would take a charter plane from China to Singapore. It would be too embarrassing in my opinion for him to show up in Singapore not flying in a state sponsored aircraft.
.@USUN should block any Kaesong reopening before North Korea is fully disarmed. Any bank that handles its transactions should face the same fate as ZTE, Bank of Dandong & ABLV. Congress must make itself heard on this.https://t.co/4TPFH8M6q5
I believe that the Kim regime and the Moon administration had the timeline for the current Inter-Korean thaw planned out well in advance. The construction of these resort hotels in Wonsan are evidence of this because construction began well before the Winter Olympics when the current thaw began. The Kim regime knew that the Winter Olympics is when the Inter-Korean thaw would begin and have likely timed the completion of these resorts to when sanctions would be expected to be dropped to fill them with South Korean tourists:
This photo carried by North Korea’s daily Rodong Sinmun on its May 14, 2018, edition shows the Wonsan-Kalma tourist resort under construction. Mentioned by the country’s top leader Kim Jong-un in his New Year address, it sits on the North’s eastern coast and is described as an idea place to be linked with other tourist destinations. (Yonhap)
Kim Jong-un’s favorite lawyer group in South Korea continues its legal attack against the North Korean restaurant workers that defected back in 2016:
This image shows a North Korean group of defectors at the center of a controversy over their defection. (Yonhap)
A liberal lawyers’ group plans to lodge a complaint with prosecutors on Monday against former President Park Geun-hye and her top aides over allegations that Seoul’s intelligence agency engineered a 2016 mass defection by a dozen North Korean restaurant workers.
The Lawyers for a Democratic Society, or Minbyun, said it will lodge the complaint with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office seeking an investigation into Park, her chief of staff Lee Byung-kee, ex-spy chief Lee Byong-ho and the restaurant manager who allegedly took the workers to the South against the will of some of them.
In April 2016, the manager and 12 female North Korean restaurant workers defected to the South. Park’s government said they came of their own free will, while Pyongyang accused Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) of luring them for political purposes and demanded their repatriation.
Rumors have persisted that the defection, which occurred just before the parliamentary elections, may be the work of the NIS. Minbyun has demanded the government allow its lawyers a face-to-face meeting with the defectors to verify the allegation.
The story took a new turn last week when a cable TV network aired an interview with the restaurant manager. He said that he had planned to defect with his wife but threatened his employees to come with him at the instruction of NIS agents. [Yonhap]
Here is more from Newsweek:
But last night, on South Korean television, Heo himself admitted that the women were unaware they were being sent to South Korea and that the whole operation had been orchestrated by him and South Korea’s spy agency.
“It was luring and kidnapping, and I know because I took the lead,” Heo told TV channel JTBCon Thursday, as translated by The New York Times.
At least three of the women also appeared on the program with their names withheld and their faces blurred. One of the trio said “I want to go home because living like this is not the life I wanted,” adding, “I miss my parents.” [Newsweek]
If these restaurant workers in fact did not know they were going to South Korea this is a serious incident. However, what we don’t know is what pressure are these workers now under to make these allegations? Is the Moon administration putting them under intense pressure and allowing the North Koreans to contact them with threats against their families back in North Korea?
Remember these restaurant workers could have easily have made statements to the media that they were kidnapped before Moon became President or even over the past year that he was President, but did not. This is only coming out now after the charm offensive was launched by North Korea.
The closure of the nuclear test site is nothing, but a show that can be easily reversed; shipping nuclear materials out of the country is a real sign of denuclearization because this is cannot be reversed:
The United States has demanded that North Korea ship some of its nuclear weapons, fissile material and long-range missiles out of the country within months after next month’s summit between the two countries, sources said Sunday.
The U.S. made the demand during talks with the North to fine-tune the agenda of the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un set for June 12 summit in Singapore, saying sanctions won’t be relaxed unless the demand is met, the sources said.
The North’s response to the demand is not known, they said.
The demand suggests that the U.S. believes the North’s pledge to suspend nuclear and missile testing is not enough and the communist nation should do more to demonstrate its commitment to abandon its nuclear and missile programs. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but if the Kim regime agrees to begin shipping nuclear weapons and material out of their country than we know they are in fact serious about denuclearization.
Here is what Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies says that President Trump must be prepared to do at his upcoming summit with Kim Jong-un:
Anthony Ruggiero
The Panmunjom Declaration, issued after the late April meeting between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae In, feels like a Hollywood movie remake with new actors but the same tired story. North Korea has pledged on multiple occasions to not to acquire nuclear weapons, beginning with the North’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985. In 1992, Kim’s grandfather committed to three no’s: no nuclear weapons, no nuclear reprocessing and no uranium enrichment. North Korea was caught red-handed cheating multiple times on all three nuclear no’s, but still received security assurances from the United States in 2005, when both sides pledged “to respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together” and normalize relations. All of these efforts ended in the same place, with a different Kim breaking his promises and enjoying tangible concessions from the United States and its allies.
To counter Kim’s smile diplomacy and avoid his trap, the Trump administration should take four lessons from prior negotiations with North Korea, Libya and Iran. [Politico]
You can read the rest at the link, but Ruggiero’s four lessons are:
Be prepared to walkaway from the table.
Nuclear only deal do not solve the strategic issues.
This is just another example of something that North Korea can do that makes it look like they are making a concession when in fact it is easily reversible at a time of their choosing:
This Reuters file photo shows an Air Koryo airplane arriving at Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport. (Yonhap)
North Korea has promised to not carry out unannounced missile tests and to abstain from other activities hazardous to commercial aviation in a recent meeting with officials of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), an American media report said Friday.
North Korean authorities recently delivered such promises to visiting officials of the international aviation body while disclosing they have completed their nuclear weapons program, Voice of America (VOA) reported, citing ICAO spokesman William Raillant-Clark.
The spokesman told VOA that high-ranking officials of ICAO visited Pyongyang from May 7-9 for a meeting with officials at the North’s General Administration of Civil Aviation.
The meeting came after the Pyongyang regime decided to halt additional nuclear and intercontinental missile experiments at a plenary session of the ruling Workers’ Party on April 20. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I guess we will see what the North Koreans get in return for doing something they can reverse at any time.
