In the middle of South Korea, there is a woman raising two teenagers who calls herself an ordinary housewife. Except 30 years ago, she was an elite North Korean agent who bombed an airplane in an attempt to derail the '88 Seoul Olympics. My story — https://t.co/AKXhy0Z1ko
It took 50 years, but crew members of the USS Pueblo that were held hostage and tortured by North Korea back in 1968 have filed a lawsuit against the Kim regime:
The Pueblo crew are led away after being captured by North Korean forces in international waters on January 23, 1968.
More than 100 crew members and relatives have joined a lawsuit, filed this month in a federal court under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which allows victims to sue state sponsors of terrorism for torture, hostage-taking, personal injury or death.
North Korea will almost certainly not respond to the lawsuit, and plaintiffs are unlikely to be able to recover funds directly from Pyongyang, but if successful they will be eligible for relief from a US government fund set up to support victims of terrorism.
“Our clients are seeking to hold North Korea accountable for the unspeakable acts committed against the crew of the USS Pueblo more than 50 years ago and the impact it has had on them and their families since then,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers said in a statement. [CNN]
For me there is absolutely nothing surprising about this news:
North Korea violated United Nations sanctions to earn nearly $200 million in 2017 from banned commodity exports, according to a confidential report by independent U.N. monitors, which also accused Pyongyang of supplying weapons to Syria and Myanmar.
The report to a U.N. Security Council sanctions committee, seen by Reuters on Friday, said North Korea had shipped coal to ports, including in Russia, China, South Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam, mainly using false paperwork that showed countries such as Russia and China as the coal origin, instead of North Korea.
The 15-member council has unanimously boosted sanctions on North Korea since 2006 in a bid to choke funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, banning exports including coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, and capping imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products.
“The DPRK (North Korea) is already flouting the most recent resolutions by exploiting global oil supply chains, complicit foreign nationals, offshore company registries and the international banking system,” the U.N. monitors wrote in the 213-page report. [Reuters]
You can read more at the link, but announcing that North Korea is violating UN sanctions is like saying the sky is blue.
Every Olympic athlete will walk away with a spiffy new Samsung smartphone and some Nike gear—except for N. Korea's athletes, because sanctions. Sad.https://t.co/sYXbsVJhLh
The Korean left wing newspaper of choice, the Hankyoreh is extremely concerned about a US pre-emptive strike on North Korea:
According to Cha’s Washington Post piece, some ultra-hardliners have argued that the risk of endangering the lives of the 230,000 Americans living in South Korea if the bloody nose strategy escalates is worth taking in terms of “long-term interests” and the “safety of Americans living in the continental US.” The fates of 50 million South Koreans don’t even warrant a mention.The reason hardline voices have gotten so much louder in the White House lately has much to do with the discussions occurring between South and North Korea for the Pyeongchang Olympics. It appears to be an attempt to stop a climate of reconciliation from forming on the peninsula.
Given their lack of faith in denuclearization, they seem to believe the North Korean nuclear program will become irreversible if reconciliation occurs at a time of intensifying sanctions. Meanwhile, the Russia scandal is raising the possibility that Trump not only faces a difficult road to re-election but could end up impeached. Depending on how the mid-term elections in November turn out, he could find himself a lame duck.
This raises the troubling question of whether he might consider a strike against North Korea as a way out of his domestic political crisis. Indeed, White House National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs Matthew Pottinger reportedly said in a recent closed-door meeting with US experts on Korean Peninsula issues that a limited strike on the North might help in the midterm elections. [Hankoryeh]
It seems to me the logic of this article does not add up. If a pre-emptive strike leads to a bloody war with millions of people dead that will not help President Trump in the mid-term elections. However, if the pre-emptive strike is successful that will help in the mid-term elections. It almost seems like the Korean left is more concerned that the pre-emptive strategy could work thus boosting President Trump’s political chances, than doing anything to stop North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons.
Via a reader tip comes Henry Kissinger’s concerns about a preemptive strike against North Korea:
While he said he agrees with the aggressive statements President Trump has fired at North Korea, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned Congress last week against potential military intervention near Russian and Chinese borders without the world’s support.
The Trump administration has signaled that North Korea would be crossing a red line if it developed nuclear capability for its intercontinental ballistic missile program. Yet some policy officials and military experts claim that North Korea has already crossed that line, or is at least very close to attaching nuclear warheads to its missiles.
Kissinger offered his thoughts on the impending “fork in the road,” in which the administration may consider pre-emptive military action or increasingly tighter sanctions against the regime.
“We will hit that fork in the road, and the temptation to deal with it with a pre-emptive attack is strong, and the argument is rational, but I have seen no public statement by any leading official,” Nixon’s secretary of State told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “But in any event, my own thinking, I would be very concerned by any unilateral American war at the borders of China and Russia, in which we are not supported by a significant part of the world, or at least of the Asian world.” [PJ Media]
You can read more at the link, but Kissinger also is concerned that South Korea and Japan will develop their own nuclear weapons stockpiles.
Considering the tough rhetoric coming from President Trump I think the Kim regime is probably right to be concerned about a possible US military strike:
North Korea appears to have reached out to South Korea after being “spooked” by U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats of a military strike, a former CIA official said Monday.
North Korea’s willingness to hold talks with South Korea about its participation in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics was driven in part by Trump’s tough rhetoric, according to Jung Pak, former portfolio manager at the CIA’s East Asia and Pacific Mission Center.
“North Korea is spooked, or at least takes the Trump administration’s threats about military strikes seriously enough that it warranted some sort of outreach,” Pak said at a forum. “And this outreach on this Olympics is (at) no cost. They just show up, right? So I think there is an element, a sign of vulnerability that the North Koreans are feeling about what the Trump administration might do.”
Trump has said the U.S. may have no choice but to “totally destroy” North Korea over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Last year, the communist regime carried out numerous tests in pursuit of a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the mainland U.S.
Pak, currently the SK-Korea Foundation chair in Korea studies at the Brookings Institution, said both South and North Korea are concerned about the possibility of a military conflict on the peninsula. [Yonhap]
Here is yet another example of how the North Koreans are continuing to try and separate the ROK and the US:
North Korea strongly condemned the South Korea-U.S. alliance Saturday, accusing their joint defense efforts of being aimed at toppling its communist regime and saying such efforts may also lead to an end of ongoing dialogue between the two Koreas.
“The South Korean government must realize its foul military consultation with the U.S. may be a foolish act that will put out the hard-earned chance of improving the North-South relationship and ruin its own fate,” Rodong Sinmun, a daily newspaper published by the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, said in a signed commentary.
The commentary was largely aimed at criticizing the two-plus-two Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group talks held last week between Seoul and Washington, in which the allies agreed to continue maintaining U.S. defense assets around the Korean Peninsula.
However, it also came one day after the allies confirmed a resumption of their delayed joint military drills in South Korea immediately following the 2018 Winter Olympic Games to be held in South Korea’s PyeongChang from Feb. 9-25.
“The exact date and size of the planned joint exercises cannot be disclosed, but they will be carried out after the close of the Olympics,” Seoul’s defense ministry said Friday. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but what this all means that after the Winter Olympics expect more provocations which the Kim regime will use US-ROK military exercises as an excuse to execute.
South Korea celebrates the upcoming Olympics with torch relays while in comparison North Korea conducts a threatening military parade:
North Korea is gearing up for an “extremely large-scale” military parade that will likely fall on Feb. 8, its army founding day and the eve of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, South Korea’s Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said Friday.
Cho, speaking at a forum hosted by the Korea Peace Foundation in Jung District, central Seoul, confirmed local speculation that Pyongyang was preparing to show off its military even as both Koreas have been on convivial terms lately, saying there was a “high possibility” that the North would make it a “threatening” event by showcasing “nearly every troop and weapon” it has.
The parade, said Cho, is expected to be held at Mirim Airport on the outskirts of Pyongyang, as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un tries to solidify his leadership by using the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People’s Army and the regime. [Joong Ang Ilbo via reader tip]
Via a reader tip comes yet another example of how North Korea continues to violate sanctions:
Japan has told the United Nations about a North Korean tanker spotted in the East China Sea that it suspects was engaged in a transfer of goods with another tanker in defiance of U.N. sanctions, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and missiles capable of hitting the United States has spurred deepening U.N. Security Council sanctions and stoked fears of a military conflict.
According to a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry, the North Korean-flagged tanker “Rye Song Gang 1” – blacklisted by the United Nations last month for carrying banned cargo – was spotted by a Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force patrol plane with the Dominican-flagged tanker “Yuk Tung” tied up beside it in the East China Sea on Saturday.
The two boats were lit up and some kind of activity was taking place, the Foreign Ministry said, adding that the Japanese government strongly suspected them of transferring goods in violation of the U.N. sanctions. [Reuters]
You can read more at the link, but at some point it seems something has to be done to stop this activity instead of just watching it happen.
