Category: North Korea

As expected the long awaited summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un will be held in Singapore:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will take place in Singapore June 12.

“The highly anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and myself will take place in Singapore on June 12th,” Trump tweeted. “We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!”

Trump’s tweet came just hours after three American citizens were brought home from imprisonment in the communist country.

Their release cleared a major obstacle for the upcoming meeting, which will be the first between sitting leaders of the two countries.

Trump and Kim are expected to discuss the dismantlement of the regime’s nuclear weapons program.

Trump’s aim is the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea. Kim has repeatedly expressed his commitment to denuclearization, but it’s unclear on what terms.  [Yonhap]

I wonder how many Americans had to look on a map after hearing this news to figure out where Singapore is?

It looks like Kim Jong-un has paid the price for admission to a summit with President Trump:

President Trump announced on Wednesday that three Americans who were being held by North Korea have been released.

“I am pleased to inform you that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the air and on his way back from North Korea with the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting,” Trump tweeted early Wednesday. “They seem to be in good health.”

Pompeo flew to Pyongyang on Tuesday to meet with Kim Jong Un ahead of Trump’s planned summit with the North Korean leader. Trump described it as a “good meeting” and said a date and time for his summit with Kim has been set.  [Yahoo News]

I am glad these guys are back and I am sure it is a relief for all the families involved, however I hope the media does not treat them as some kind of heroes.  I have said this repeatedly, but I have little sympathy for people stupid enough to travel to North Korea in the first place.  Anyone going to North Korea takes the chance of the regime detaining at anytime for the most arbitrary things in order to use them as political pawns.

Here are the three Americans that were detained and I would not be surprised if the real crimes all three of them committed was promoting Christianity in North Korea:

• Kim Dong-chul: Supposed Christian missionary that North Korea accused of spying for South Korea.
• Tony Kim: He worked at a university in China and was teaching a course at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) for a few months before being detained at the airport when he attempted to fly back to China.  He was accused of the crime of trying to overthrow the government.
• Kim Hak-song: He is an ordained as an evangelical Christian pastor affiliated with the Oriental Mission Church in Los Angeles. Like Tony Kim, he was working as a professor at PUST before being detained on unspecified charges.

There is a great guest posting over at One Free Korea that I recommend everyone read.  It is from Tara O an ex-US Air Force intelligence officer who now works for the CSIS.  In her posting she shares many of the same views I have about the current peace negotiations that are ongoing on the Korean peninsula.  Here is an excerpt from the posting:

First, who is actually saying these phrases? President Moon Jae-in, not Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-un certainly can speak for himself and as the monopolizer of communications and information in North Korea, he would have no problem expressing his positions. Even during the Moon-Kim meeting, Kim never uttered the word “denuclearization” and it was only Moon who said “denuclearization” but not of “North Korea,” but of the “Korean Peninsula.”

Second, the actual term used is “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” not “denuclearization of North Korea.” When we hear the word “denuclearization,” we mean North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons. However, “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” is what North Korea has long said, and the two ideas are very different. North Korea wants “denuclearization” of South Korea (South Korea is the part of the “Korean Peninsula” that it wants to focus on). South Korea does not have nuclear weapons, but it does have civilian nuclear energy, and more importantly, it has the U.S. nuclear umbrella through extended deterrence. What North Korea wants is the removal of the U.S. nuclear umbrella and the U.S. military capability away from not only South Korea but the region. That is hardly denuclearization of North Korea. It does imply removing the U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula and ending the alliance.

The “complete” could also mean the extension of denuclearization to the United States, in which case, what Kim really wants is a nuclear arms control negotiation with the U.S., which in turn means he wants to be recognized as a nuclear power. This is in line with what he has told people in North Korea—that North Korea will be recognized as a nuclear power. North Koreans believe that Kim’s meeting with Trump is about North Korea being recognized as a nuclear power.  [One Free Korea]

I highly recommend reading the whole thing at the link.

That is something the Chosun Ilbo was able to figure out due to last week’s Inter-Korean Summit:

Which brings us to the shoes. Historically, height is thought to be a bone of contention for the Kim dynasty. Some Western sources say that Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, was 5 feet 2 inches tall and wore lifts in his shoes to make himself appear taller. The younger Kim is commonly listed as being around 5 feet 7, though it is not clear where this figure comes from.

Chosun Ilbo, one of South Korea’s most popular newspapers, decided to investigate the mystery. The paper gave footage of Kim meeting Moon to seven experts, who spent hours poring over the footage to see what it could say about the North Korean leader’s physical features.

Perhaps the biggest revelation was in Kim’s footwear. In videos and photographs, they found that Kim appeared to be less than an inch shorter than Moon, who is recorded as being a little over 5 feet 6 inches tall. But they noticed something strange with his shoes: a high slope on the front of the shoe seemed to suggest that Kim was wearing insoles that were pushing his feet upward. One expert suggested that this meant the height difference between the Korean leaders was actually nearly 2 inches and possibly more, making Kim only 5-foot-4.  [Seattle Times]

You can read more at the link, but Kim’s true height means that his body mass index is around 45.  Someone is considered obese at BMI 30.

So why would North Korea care about removing a purely defensive weapon system that is of no threat to them?  The only reason they would want the THAAD battery gone is so they can more easily target South Korean cities with their ballistic missiles.  That seems contrary to supposedly seeking peace on the peninsula:

North Korea on Thursday urged South Korea and the U.S. to lift sanctions, withdraw the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery in southwestern Korea, and stop mentioning human rights abuses in the North.

The demands came after the recent inter-Korean summit and ahead of a summit with the U.S.

“The American plot against human rights practices is a provocative racket that poses an obstacle to the trend towards dialogue and peace,” the official Rodong Sinmun daily said. “We’re doubtful of America’s sincerity whether it really has the intention to have dialogue.”

The Uriminzokkiri propaganda website complained about remarks by U.S. officials in favor of keeping up maximum pressure on the North, calling them “an affront and insult to our sincere efforts towards peace.”

State media also said there is “no longer is any justification or excuse” for the presence of the THAAD battery. Propaganda outlet Meari said, “The THAAD battery is an ill-intentioned act running counter to the inter-Korean relations. The battery should be withdrawn immediately.”  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but here is where things are getting even more interesting; the White House and Beijing are supposedly negotiating a withdrawal of THAAD from Korea if North Korea denuclearizes:

The U.S. and China are discussing a possible withdrawal of a U.S. missile defense system from South Korea as part of a grand bargain over North Korea’s nuclear program, multiple sources familiar with the talks said.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, deployed in South Korea last year, has been a bone of contention with China. China has doubted U.S. claims that the system has the sole purpose of destroying missiles from North Korea, insisting its covert mission is to spy on Chinese airspace.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but the White House denies this report, but this could be another one of these trial balloons put out by the Trump administration to judge Chinese reactions.

This article below sounds like something right out of a South Korean action movie:

It has been reported that a man identified as Mr. Kang (Senior Colonel, late 50s), the head of the Foreign Counter-Espionage office in charge of North-Eastern China for the Ministry of State Security (MSS) fled overseas in February. He is also known for having a connection to Kim Il Sung’s Mother, Kang Pan Sok.

In a conversation with a source in China close to North Korean affairs, it was revealed that “Mr. Kang was residing at the Chilbosan Hotel (now Zhongpu International Hotel) in China, overseeing operations at the foreign counter-espionage office for Russia, China, and Southeast Asia, before he suddenly disappeared on February 25. He was reported to have taken a machine capable of printing American dollars and a lot of foreign currency with him.”

According to the source, Mr. Kang was a significantly important individual, often being called the “Troika” of the Foreign Counter-Espionage Office. He was in charge of directing intelligence and ground operations in Russia and China, and supervised the development of essential talent for North Korea’s nuclear program by covertly arranging exchanges between Russian and Chinese scientists.  (…….)

I feel really bad for the parents of Otto Warmbier who have been stuck watching all this adulation given to Kim Jong-un like he is some kind of beacon hope and statesman when the fact of the matter is he is simply a thug ruling a Soprano State.  What was done to Otto Warmbier is just a recent example of this:

Her voice cracking with emotion, the mother of college student Otto Warmbier who was sent home from North Korea in a coma and died soon after said Thursday her family will keep speaking out about the country’s human rights violations to “rub their noses” in what they did and embarrass Kim Jong Un’s government.

Cindy Warmbier told a U.N. symposium on the human rights situation in North Korea: “I can’t let Otto die in vain. … We’re not special, but we’re Americans and we know what freedom’s like, and we have to stand up for this. We have to.”

Her comments came at a sensitive time, as Kim and President Donald Trump are planning a historic meeting, and a day after the U.S. leader hinted at the imminent release of American prisoners being held in North Korea.

A week ago, Cindy and her husband Fred Warmbier filed a wrongful death lawsuit against North Korea, saying its government tortured and killed their son. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks compensation for the death of their 22-year-old son in June 2017.

Otto Warmbier, who was a student at University of Virginia, was arrested by North Korean authorities in January 2016 for stealing a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor.

His plight compounded tense U.S.-North Korean relations. His parents made clear Thursday that while they were silenced by fear of what North Korea might do to Otto after his arrest, they were not going to be quiet any longer.

“We woke up and we realized that North Korea wants us to lock ourselves in a room and do nothing, and we think that’s a bad idea,” Fred Warmbier said.

Fred said he and Cindy are now focusing on the events that occurred “while they had Otto hostage and they were using him as a pawn.”

“We are trying to build a pathway that leads directly to Kim and his regime to force them to be answerable for their actions,” he said.

Cindy Warmbier said Otto was brain dead at four months of captivity, and anyone who had a heart would have said, “Well, we screwed up, let’s get him some medical care.”

But instead, she said, the North Koreans left him in a horrible place with no care to vegetate, and then acted “like we’re doing the world a favor” and released him saying he had botulism — which U.S. doctors never confirmed.

“So we can’t be quiet can we?” Cindy said. “People say why are you doing this? How can I not? How can I not? How can anybody be quiet when this is going on?”

“The only thing we can do is rub their noses in this. It embarrasses them. They don’t like the world to think that they aren’t trying to be a member of the world, and they like to act like a victim, like they’ve been treated poorly,” she said.

Here is what former nuclear negotiator Robert Gallucci has to say about North Korean denuclearization:

He noted it would not be easy work to achieve complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID), unless North Korea makes a candid declaration of its nuclear stockpile.

Gallucci said the core of the nuclear bomb that devastated Japan’s Nagasaki in 1945 was small enough to be hidden in a small “speaker box,” explaining the difficulty of reaching complete denuclearization.

He said if it was unrealistic for inspectors to find and check all the containers ― small and big, and declared and undeclared ― existing in North Korea, the pursuit of complete denuclearization would be also “nonsense.”

So rather than pursuing CVID, he said, it would be more realistic to focus on reducing the North’s nuclear capability and how to achieve this.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but this is more of the same analysis that seems intended to persuade President Trump that he should not demand complete verifiable denuclearization by North Korea in his upcoming summit.

That is what this article in the Politico suggests that President Trump is planning to do:

Taking Trump at his word during the campaign—when he decried U.S. allies Japan and South Korea as ungrateful free-riders—it would be reasonable to conclude that Trump is willing to forsake U.S. allies in the region by getting Kim to agree to negotiate away his ICBMs but ultimately leave Kim with a regional nuclear strike capability. Nuclear scholars have worried that a North Korean ICBM capability would “decouple” the United States from South Korea—the question of whether America would trade Seattle for Seoul in a nuclear conflict is a rhetorical one. We know the answer. The irony of a nuclear deal between Kim and Trump may actually be that true decoupling will happen when North Korea retains only the ability to strike U.S. allies but not the United States. Kim can simultaneously give a nod in the direction of denuclearization, remove the imminent threat to the U.S. homeland posed by his ICBMs, and expand a wedge between the United States and its allies.  [Politico]

You can read more at the link, but considering that President Trump has stressed denuclearization repeatedly he would have a hard time agreeing to allowing North Korea to keep nuclear weapons that they can use to strike an ally like Japan and US bases in the region.

This is why North Korea likes to detain Americans, they make great bargaining chips when negotiations like the ones going on now happen:

The U.S. government is looking into reports that three Americans detained in North Korea have been relocated from a labor camp to a hotel near Pyongyang ahead of a planned summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no immediate confirmation of any change in the detainees’ status. Trump administration officials have pressed for their release as a show of goodwill by North Korea before the unprecedented U.S.-North Korea summit expected in late May or early June.

“As everybody is aware, the past Administration has long been asking for three hostages to be released from a North Korean Labor camp, but to no avail. Stay tuned!” Trump said in a Twitter post late on Wednesday.

CNN, in a report on Thursday, cited an unnamed source saying the release of the three men was imminent, adding that the groundwork for the move came two months ago when North Korea’s foreign minister traveled to Sweden and proposed the idea.

South Korean media reports on Wednesday quoted a South Korean activist as saying North Korea had relocated the three Americans from a labor camp to a hotel on the outskirts of Pyongyang. Choi Soung-yong, the activist, told Reuters that Kim Hak-song, Tony Kim and Kim Dong-chul were moved in early April following instructions from superior authorities, citing residents in Pyongyang.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link, but despite a clear risk of being a long term detainee for committing the smallest of offenses, we will probably continue to see Americans in future go over to North Korea and get detained.