Category: North Korea

The recent tensions with North Korea has caused the US media to stop in and see what former US Army defector to North Korea, Charles Robert Jenkins is up to:

Now, Jenkins — 77 but looking much older, with a deep-lined face and distant expression — lives a quiet life on Sado, a small, pastoral island in the Sea of Japan. He speaks in the thick Southern accent of his North Carolina childhood, and the stories he tells, 13 years after the end of his North Korean adventure, recall decades of solitude, deprivation and torture.

“In North Korea, I lived a dog’s life,” he said in a rare interview, as he drove his boxy Subaru through Sado Island’s rice paddies and sleepy villages. “Ain’t nobody live good in North Korea. Nothing to eat. No running water. No electricity. In the wintertime you freeze — in my bedroom, the walls were covered in ice.”

Jenkins works now as a greeter in Mano Park, a placid tourist attraction on the Japanese island, selling senbei, a type of rice cracker. Tourists see him and squeal with delight — “Jenkins-san!” — as he passively poses for photos.  [LA Times]

Here is what he had to say about the death of Otto Warmbier and the safety of his family:

Jenkins was aghast that Americans would visit North Korea as tourists. “It’s crazy,” he said. “North Korea will do anything to keep a foreigner.” (The U.S. has banned tourism to the country, starting this month).

Yet he said North Korea’s medical system likely contributed to Warmbier’s death. Authorities there, he said, had forced Jenkins into several seemingly arbitrary medical procedures. “Had about five operations,” he recalled. In one day, they removed his appendix, followed by a testicle. “Because I was kicked when I was a school kid,” he said. “I didn’t have no problem, but they found out about it, and they said, ‘That’s gotta come out.’”

After his release, complications that developed from the two procedures could have killed him — and likely would have, if Japan didn’t immediately hospitalize him on his release.

Then there was the apparent assassination of Kim Jong Nam — Kim Jong Un’s half-brother — in a Malaysian airport in March. Two women ambushed Kim with VX nerve agent, one of the world’s most toxic substances. To Jenkins, it was a reminder that Pyongyang’s brutality knows no bounds — and no one is immune.

“I worry about my daughters more than anything,” he said as he drove his Subaru along the coast. He has forbidden them to comply if Japanese police should attempt to pull them over while driving. Anyone could be a North Korean agent.

“North Korea give them enough money, you don’t know what they’ll do,” he said. “North Korea wants me dead.”

You can read the rest at the link, but it seems that if the Kim regime wanted him dead they would have killed him by now.

This is the most original & important North Korea op-ed I've read in a very long time. You should read it, too. https://t.co/3yVCTAodca

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) August 13, 2017

It seems that further an American is away from the US mainland the better their perspective becomes on the recent rhetorical wars between President Trump and Kim Jong-un because I think Guam Governor Eddie Calvo is correct in his assessment:

Guam’s leader said Monday that “sometimes a bully can only be stopped with a punch in the nose”, in a spirited defence of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric against North Korea which has the island in its crosshairs.

While Trump’s critics accuse him of inflaming tensions with Pyongyang, Guam governor Eddie Calvo said he was grateful the US leader was taking a strong stance against North Korean threats to his Pacific homeland.

“Everyone who grew up in the schoolyard in elementary school, we understand a bully,” Calvo told AFP.

“(North Korean leader) Kim Jong-Un is a bully with some very strong weapons… a bully has to be countered very strongly.”

Calvo, a Republican, said Trump was being unfairly criticised over his handling of the North Korea crisis, which escalated when Pyongyang announced plans to launch missiles toward Guam in a “crucial warning”.

He said North Korea had threatened Guam — a US territory which hosts two large military bases and is home to more than 6,000 military personnel — at least three times since 2013.

Trump has responded by threatening “fire and fury”, warning last week that the US military was “locked and loaded” to respond to any aggression.

“President Trump is not your conventional elected leader, what he says and how he says it is a lot different from what was said by previous presidents,” Calvo said.

But he pointed out previous presidents had also used strong words to warn off Pyongyang, including Barack Obama who said last year that “we could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals”.

“One president (Obama) said it one way, cool and calmly with a period… the other said fire and fury with an exclamation point, but it still leads to the same message,” Calvo said.

He rejected suggestions that Trump and the North Korean dictator were as bad as each other when it came to the sabre-rattling playing out in the western Pacific.

“Well there’s only one guy that has vaporised into a red mist his uncle or a general because he fell asleep in a meeting with an anti-aircraft gun, that’s Kim Jong-Un,” he said.

“There’s only one guy that’s killed his brother with one of the most toxic nerve agents ever created, that’s Kim Jong-Un.”  [AFP]

You can read more at the link, but the statement that Governor Calvo is referring to is when President Obama threatened that the US could destroy North Korea in response to a submarine launched ballistic missile test just last year.  The media did not freak out and it did not lead to a global crisis where everyone thought war was imminent.

Amazingly a Washington Post writer is declaring the North Korean nuclear crisis as being former President Reagan’s fault:

Over the past few days, the United States and North Korea have become locked in nuclear brinkmanship. After North Korea declared that its ballistic missiles could hit anywhere in the United States, President Trump vowed that continued North Korean provocations would be “met with fire and fury and — frankly — power.” North Korea responded by threatening to attack the tiny island of Guam, a U.S. territory.

But it was another tiny island that set the United States and North Korea down this path. Few Americans will recall the 1983 invasion of a small Caribbean nation thousands of miles from North Korea. But in fact, this conflict set the stage for the nuclear standoff today. It intensified the animosity between the two countries, sending North Korea on a quest for nuclear weapons to combat what it saw as a looming U.S. threat.

In October 1983, the United States invaded Grenada. The Kim family regime that controls North Korea saw this invasion as an early warning sign: If the United States could perceive even a small spice island as a threat, so too could it eventually train its sights on North Korea. Without an effective deterrent, any regime perceived as a threat would be little match for American military might.  [Washington Post]

You can read the rest at the link, but comparing Grenada to North Korea is completely apples and oranges.  Does anyone think the US would have invaded Grenada if there was a massive artillery and WMD threat that could kill millions to include large numbers of US troops and American expats?  That has the been reality for decades with North Korea’s strategic military advantage with Seoul within convention artillery range.  This fact has kept American military action against North Korea in check despite numerous deadly provocations over the decades.

If anything is driving Kim Jong-un to develop his missile and nuclear programs it is what he saw happen to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi under the last two Presidents, not Reagan.  Kim Jong-un probably cannot even find Grenada on a map.

Here is President Trump’s response to North Korea’s recent threats made against Guam:

 

Military solutions are now fully in place,locked and loaded,should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 11, 2017

In his latest broadside at North Korea, President Trump bluntly warned dictator Kim Jong Un on Friday that the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” in case the country should “act unwisely.”

“Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!” Trump said on Twitter.

It was not clear exactly what sort of “military solutions” Trump was referring to or what precisely would constitute unwise action by the North Korean leader.

But North Korea said on Thursday it was putting together a plan to fire four missiles in the direction of the U.S. territory of Guam, a Pacific island that is home to large American military installations.

Trump’s warning came a day after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters in Silicon Valley that the U.S. effort to “get this under control” was “diplomatically led,” “gaining traction,” and “gaining diplomatic results.”

Mattis underlined that he wanted to “stay right there right now” and warned that the cost of conflict could be “catastrophic,” but also said that when it comes to the U.S. military, “we are ready.”  [Yahoo News]

You can read more at the link.

Guess which year the NYT printed the below about NK.
2017? Wrong!
2013? Wrong!
2019? That's in the future!
2006? Wrong!
1994? You got it! pic.twitter.com/opjzFK3IeZ

— Sokeel Park (@Sokeel) August 7, 2017

The annual August North Korean provocation cycle that happens just about every year around the Ulchi Freedom Guardian US-ROK military exercise continues to escalate.  The latest is that the Kim regime is no longer happy attacking fish in the Sea of Japan with their ballistic missiles and are instead drawing up plans to attack the fish off of Guam:

North Korea said Thursday an operational plan targeting waters near Guam will be completed by mid-August and reported to leader Kim Jong-un for his final order, threatening to send four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missiles over Japan to land 30 to 40 kilometers (19 to 25 miles) away from the American island in the Western Pacific.

The North didn’t mention when the operation would be carried out, but said it would “keep closely watching the speech and behavior of the U.S.” for cues. The statement was made in English by Kim Rak-gyom, commander of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) Strategic Force, and released via the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The more specific threat to Guam and its U.S. naval base came after U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday in New Jersey that North Korea will face “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it continues to threaten the United States. The North relayed its Guam threat for the first time Wednesday through KCNA without any timeline.

The KPA is “seriously examining the plan for an enveloping strike at Guam through simultaneous fire of four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic rockets,” the KCNA report read Thursday, adding that the operation was meant to send a “crucial warning” to the U.S. about its sanctions on the regime.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

I think Secretary of Defense Mattis has made the best statement for Kim Jong-un:

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Wednesday in Washington that Pyongyang should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the “end of its regime and the destruction of its people.”

I think that is the talking point the US government needs to repeat to North Korea as well as their ally China that any provocation on Guam will lead to the end of the Kim regime.

Amid the latest crisis with North Korea the Canadians were able to send in a special envoy and get a Canadian pastor released this week:

North Korea said Wednesday that it has released an imprisoned Canadian pastor for humanitarian reasons amid escalating tensions on the Korean peninsular stemming from the North’s continued provocations.

The Korea Central News Agency, the communist state’s official media outlet, reported that Lim Hyeon-su, a Canadian civilian, was released on sick bail in line with the decision of the Central Court of the North.

Lim, a Korean-Canadian pastor, has been held in captivity in the North since he entered the country via China on a humanitarian mission in January 2015.

In December, the North’s highest court sentenced Lim to life in prison with hard labor, citing his “subversive plots” against the North’s regime.

His release came one day after a special envoy of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrived in the North.

Daniel Jean, national security advisor to the prime minister of Canada, and his party arrived in Pyongyang, the KCNA reported on Tuesday.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

The media of course is going to try and hype this as if everyone on Guam is ready to evacuate the island not because of threats from Kim Jong-un, but because of President Trump:

Residents of the tiny Pacific island of Guam say they’re afraid of being caught in the middle of escalating tensions between the U.S. and North Korea after Pyongyang announced it was examining plans for attacking the strategically important U.S. territory.

Though local officials downplayed any threat, people who live and work on the island, which serves as a launching pad for the U.S. military, said Wednesday they could no longer shrug off the idea of being a potential target.

“I’m a little worried, a little panicked. Is this really going to happen?” said Cecil Chugrad, a 37-year-old bus driver for a tour bus company in Guam. “If it’s just me, I don’t mind, but I have to worry about my son. I feel like moving (out of Guam) now.”

Guam is used to the threats from North Korea but advances in the country’s nuclear program paired with fiery rhetoric from President Donald Trump has raised the already high animosity and heightened worries that a miscalculation might spark conflict between the nuclear-armed nations.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link, but North Korea has made threats to attack Guam before and that is why a THAAD missile defense battery was deployed to the island back in 2013.  The THAAD battery has a perfect test record and just recently conducted a flight test verifying it can intercept a North Korean Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile, the type they would use to attack Guam.

The people on Guam know they have the Army’s premier missile defense asset stationed there.  Additionally Kim Jong-un knows that an attack on Guam is an attack on America that will be met with regime change.  Bottom line is Kim Jong-un is not suicidal and the people of Guam are well protected regardless.

Like I have said before these sanctions are only as good as they are enforced:

The United Nations Security Council voted Saturday for the third time in two years to block countries from buying North Korean coal, the country’s primary export, in a move intended to choke off funding from Kim Jong Un’s weapons programs.

The new ban plugs a loophole that allowed North Korea to sell coal to China under the guise of “humanitarian” trade, even though much of North Korea’s coal trade has been devoted to weapons development, not humanitarian purposes, according to recent U.S. court filings.

The humanitarian loophole was large enough that after the first such U.N. ban in March 2016, Chinese companies actually imported more North Korean coal.  [Washington Post]

You can read more at the link.