NJ bizman Bob Egan fondly recalls his friendship w Dep FM Han in memoir, "Eating with the Enemy: Peace w NK from My BBQ Shack in Hackensack" pic.twitter.com/APKjQbDSno
Here is the latest on what the expert class think of President Trump’s latest statements about negotiating with North Korea:
President Donald Trump said North Korea has been making “fools of U.S. negotiators” and “only one thing will work,” the latest hint of possible military action against the communist state.
The comments came amid fears that the North may test-fire another missile in connection with the anniversary Tuesday of the foundation of its ruling party. (……)
“Trying to ‘out Kim Jong Un’ Kim Jong Un in the threat department is not a winning strategy,” said Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the U.S.-based Arms Control Association.
“It’s only making the problem worse and reinforces North Korea’s desire to advance its nuclear and missile development as rapidly as possible in order to strengthen deterrence against a possible U.S. attack,” he added. (……)
Past efforts at negotiating an end to North Korea’s missile and nuclear development have had limited success in exchange for concessions from the West.
Washington and Pyongyang signed a deal known as the “agreed framework” in 1994 in which the North committed to freezing its plutonium weapons program in exchange for aid. But that agreement collapsed in 2002.
Subsequent six-party talks involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, the United States and Japan fell apart in 2009 after the North launched a rocket shortly after President Barack Obama’s inauguration.
Reif pointed out talks have been effective in the past.
“A more effective strategy would be to marry continued pressure, deterrence and containment with pursuit of diplomatic off ramps,” he said. “There is no military solution to this growing problem.” [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but first of all President Trump’s makes comments are irrelevant to North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. They were rapidly pursuing them during the Obama administration and they are rapidly pursuing them now. It doesn’t matter who is in the White House the Kim regime has made this a national goal to become a nuclear weapons state regardless of who is in the White House. The US could re-elect Jimmy Carter and Kim Jong-un would still be pursuing nuclear weapons.
As far as President Trump’s comments, it is clearly a negotiating strategy for those that pay attention. Based off of Trump’s Art of the Deal style negotiations he wants the North Koreans to think he is about to launch a massive military strike on them. This actually strengthens the State Departments negotiations attempts to find an off ramp.
Plus anyone that thinks there has been any success with negotiations with Kim Jong-un is fooling themselves. Prior negotiations brought delays in the North Koreans nuclear program when Kim Jong-il was in power, but did not end it. Can anyone name one success negotiations has brought the United States during Kim Jong-un’s time in power? The Kim Jong-un regime has made it quite clear that they plan to become a fully developed nuclear weapons state.
However, as I stated before the off ramp is not going to be North Korea giving up their nuclear weapons program. At best some sort of freeze deal could be worked out which is what the Russians, the Chinese and the academic class has been advocating for in recent months.
Choe Ryong-hae, vice chairman of North Korea’s ruling party and known to be one of the closest aides to leader Kim Jong-un, has been picked as a member of the party’s powerful military commission, the North’s state-run media reported Sunday.
Choe, 67, was elected to the Central Military Commission of the North’s Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) during the second plenum of its seventh central committee Saturday in Pyongyang, according to the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Choe is currently one of five standing committee members of WPK’s politburo — which also includes Kim Jong-un, President of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly Kim Yong-nam and Hwang Pyong-so, director of the general political bureau of North Korea’s armed forces.
He was once believed to have fallen out of Kim’s favor and punished for mishandling a hydro power plant project in November 2015 but has apparently returned to the party leadership.
The KCNA added that Choe was also appointed a director at the party’s central committee without specifying which division or branch he would head. Saturday’s reshuffle raised the number of Choe’s official roles in the party to eight in total. [Yonhap]
When Choe fell out of favor he was sent for reeducation at the Kim Il Sung Higher Party School. South Korean intelligence predicted this was just a minor setback and he would make a political comeback which ended up being accurate. So why is Choe Ryong-hae so important to Kim Jong-un? There have been reports that his son is married to Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong. If so having Choe as a regime inner circle figure makes sense because the inner circle is traditionally limited mostly to the Kim family.
Speaking of Kim Jong-un’s sister, she received a promotion as well:
Kim Yo-jong
In the reshuffle, conducted ahead of the founding anniversary of the party which falls on Oct. 10, Kim’s younger sister, Yo-jong, has also been elected as an alternate member of the WPK central committee’s Political Bureau, according to the report.
Yo-jong, 30, was first elected a member of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, in March 2014 and then a member of WPK’s central committee in May last year. She is believed to have been educated in Switzerland along with her brother Kim Jong-un.
All these promotions are showing is that Kim Jong-un is continuing to solidify has political power base with family members he trusts that will stay loyal to him.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (C) attends a central committee meeting of the North’s Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) in Pyongyang on Oct. 7, 2017, ahead of the founding anniversary of the party which falls on Oct. 10. (Yonhap)
I found it interesting in the below article how the North Koreans have pretty much told the Russians they plan to conduct a ICBM test in the near term. If so it will be additionally interesting to see what trajectory they use to test its full capability because if it lands too close to Hawaii or Alaska it could give the Trump administration the excuse it needs to conduct an attack to destroy their nuclear and missile programs:
The next rocket launch by North Korea could be another Hwasong-12 (HS-12), which is a mobile, solid-fueled, nuclear-capable medium-range ballistic missile, or the Hwasong-14 (HS-14), first tested in July, which is believed to be a two-staged version of the HS-12, giving it a longer and intercontinental range.
“I think they are not done with testing the HS-12 into the Pacific. They also have yet to start testing the HS-14 at anything like its full range,” said Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
“Once they have done that a couple of times, I would be concerned about the potential for an atmospheric nuclear test over the Pacific,” Pollack, also editor of the Nonproliferation Review, told VOA.
Russian media on Friday quoted a lawmaker in Moscow as saying North Korea is preparing to test a long-range missile able to reach the West Coast of the United States.
The comment was made by Anton Morozov, a member of the Russian Duma’s international affairs committee, who was among lawmakers who returned home Friday after a four-day visit to Pyongyang for “high-level meetings.”
“They are preparing for new tests of a long-range missile. They even gave us mathematical calculations that they believe prove that their missile can hit the West Coast of the United States,” Russian media quoted Morozov, a member of a right-wing populist party, as saying.
“As far as we understand, they intend to launch one more long-range missile in the near future,” Morozov explained. “And in general, their mood is rather belligerent.” [VOA News]
Here is the latest in the war of words between the Kim regime and President Trump:
The latest threat from Kim Jong-un’s rogue state was delivered through state media Rodong Sinmum.
In an extraordinary attack, North Korea branded the US President “the boss of hooligans and gangsters.”
And Kim’s mouthpiece warned Mr Trump is “driving the destiny of the U.S. doomed to ruin into bottomless abyss of total destruction.”
It said: “Recently the US and the South Korean puppet forces staged a combined drill for infiltrating into enemy camp for preemptive attack at strategic objects in the north and introduced a field artillery brigade to South Korea from the US mainland to fire artillery shells.
“Meanwhile, a formation of B-1B nuclear strategic bombers flew over international waters of the East Sea of Korea in a show of force”.
“What matters is the US saber-rattling coincides with the reckless remarks made by Trump, the boss of hooligans and gangsters, at the UN arena that he would totally destroy the DPRK.” [UK Express]
Over at the PBS Frontline website their latest program “North Korea’s Deadly Dictator” can be watched. The program focuses on the assassination of Kim Jong-nam and has a number of interviews with his friends that he went to school with in Europe. Former North Korean diplomat turned defector Thae Yong-ho and ex-CIA analyst Su Mi Terry also features heavily in the program.
It appears the reason for the assassination was Kim Jong-nam’s criticism of Kim Jong-un combined with the fact that based on his friends’ testimony he planned to move to Switzerland and defect to the West. For those that regularly read this site there is really nothing new in the program, however for those not familiar with the issue it is a great run down on who Kim Jong-nam was and why his half brother Kim Jong-un is doing the things he has done.
In my opinion proclamation like this to the media are unhelpful because it is almost creating an expectation of Kim Jong-un to do something or appear weak for not conducting a provocation:
North Korea is likely planning something very provocative around Columbus Day next week, which happens to fall the day before the anniversary of the founding of the North Korean communist party, a top CIA official warned on Wednesday.
“We are concerned…that risk exists at any time on the Korean Peninsula,” said Yong Suk Lee, deputy assistant director of the CIA’s Korea Mission Center, while speaking at a conference at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. “I told my own staff, October 10 is the Korean Workers Party founding day. That’s Tuesday in North Korea, but that’s Monday — Columbus Day holiday in the U.S. — so stand by your phones.”
“North Korea is a political organism that thrives on confrontation,” Lee added. [Newsweek]
You can read more at the link, but it has been quiet recently and it seems like we should not be encouraging the Kim regime to break the quiet to conduct more provocations.
The CIA concurs with what I have been saying for a long time, that everything Kim Jong-un has been doing from his perspective make rational sense. He has been playing a delicate balancing act of consolidating power internally while conducting provocations and developing his ICBM and nuclear weapons programs to deter external foes:
President Donald Trump has depicted the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a “madman”—but U.S. intelligence officials do not agree.
According to Yong Suk Lee, the deputy assistant director of the CIA’s Korea Mission Center, the young North Korean ruler is actually a lot less erratic than he is often portrayed.
“Beyond the bluster, Kim Jong Un is a rational actor,” he said at a conference on the CIA at George Washington University on Wednesday, quoted by AFP.
Trump and Kim have reguarly traded insults but despite the latter’s threat to the American president last month, the North Korean ruler does not seek a military confrontation because he is more interested in ensuring his regime’s survival and stability.
“We have a tendency in this country and elsewhere to underestimate his conservatism” Lee said, adding “He wants to rule for a long time and die in his own bed.” [Newsweek]
It appears there may be more work going on in regards to North Korea submarine launched ballistic missile program:
As concerns over North Korea’s missile threats continue, 38 North wrote in a recent analysis that Pyongyang was continuing work on its second known submersible ballistic missile testing facility at the Nampo navy shipyard on the country’s west coast.
Analyzing commercial satellite imagery from Sept. 1, 38 North, which is run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, wrote last Thursday that construction seemed to have taken place during the past five months on four support superstructures of the stand, located on a barge, and possibly in the area of the forward hull.
Imagery from Sept. 21 showed a portal crane on the east side had been rotated, and work was being done on the barge, though the nature of the work could not be determined from the imagery.
“Clearly visible in all images is the central ring that is used to support a missile launch tube during testing,” wrote 38 North. “During a test, support cables are connected from the center and top of the launch tube to the four support towers.”
Among several possibilities, North Korea might be trying to expand its submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) development program to the west coast, or salvage the second barge, which was first identified last April, for parts to maintain the originally acquired barge based at the Sinpo south shipyard, which has been used since 2014. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
