Category: North Korea

Courtesy the Wall Street Journal… pic.twitter.com/Diauhi7EV1

— Jodi (@jodi_katherine) July 8, 2017

Recent sat imagery shows #DPRK's Punggye-ri nuke test site is well-manicured, but little observable new activity https://t.co/2nQTm39iEh

— 38 North (@38NorthNK) July 7, 2017

Here is yet another example of the “expert class” advocating for a freeze deal with North Korea, this time it is coming from the New York Times:

William J. Perry, a former secretary of defense, said in January, “It is my strongly held view that we don’t have it in our power today to negotiate an end to the nuclear weapons program in North Korea.”

Rather, he said, the United States should aim to “lessen the danger” by seeking an end to missile tests.

Mark Fitzpatrick, a scholar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, this week advocated something known as “double suspension.” The United States would suspend its military exercises with the South while the North would suspend its nuclear and perhaps missile tests.

There has been a broader shift toward such thinking. The ambition is no longer to roll back North Korea’s programs, but to mitigate the risk they pose day to day.

This is a tacit acknowledgment that North Korea’s preferred negotiations model — in which the United States takes steps away from the Korean Peninsula in exchange for peace — is increasingly accepted.

Even if North Korea never achieves its vision of full victory, it has shifted the conversation to its terms.

Mr. Fitzpatrick and others say that the United States should pursue such steps only if they point toward North Korean disarmament, but some consider this optimistic.

Ankit Panda, a senior editor at The Diplomat, and Vipin Narang, a professor at M.I.T., wrote this week that there were “no good options” for the United States, “only bad ones and catastrophic ones.”

Any viable deal with the North Koreans, they suggested, “would require explicit acceptance of their nuclear state status and significant rollbacks to the U.S. conventional military presence in the Northeast Asian theater, both of which are nonstarters for the United States.”  [New York Times]

You can read more at the link.

Here is another example of the “expert class” advocating for more negotiations with North Korea in order to sign a freeze deal:

That leaves “the least of the bad options,” which means calling for negotiations, as Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in America, has said. Talks could be started to explore “a variation on China’s proposal, backed by Russia, that the United States and the Republic of Korea suspend joint military exercises in exchange for North Korean suspension of nuclear and missile tests,” he says. South Korea and Japan back this idea, as do many former officials including former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry. A Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Korea that included former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen and Senator Sam Nunn, recommended such an approach last year.

“Rather than halting joint exercises, they could be reduced in scale and length or moved, if military professionals judge that this can be done without undermining their readiness purpose or the affirmation of U.S. deterrence commitments that they represent,” says Fitzpatrick. “Drills practicing ‘decapitation’ might be omitted, for example, as well as overflights by nuclear-capable aircraft, which are only for show. Scaling back the exercises in other ways could be tied to military confidence-building measures that might also relieve North Korea of some of the expense of conducting large-scale exercises.”  [Defense One]

You can read more at the link, but if a freeze deal is struck the next thing you will here from the expert class is to have the US sign a peace treaty with North Korea.  This whole approach plays into the slow motion surrender of South Korea to North Korean hegemony and the end of the US-ROK alliance. Is it any wonder why China and Russia continue to enable the Kim regime?

North Korea is getting money and the parts to build their nuclear weapons and missiles from somewhere.  Going after the Kim regime’s money network and part suppliers is something that the US can unilaterally do, but has not aggressively pursued because many of the front companies assisting the Kim regime are based in China.  It appears the Trump administration has now lost patience with the Chinese government and may start aggressively targeting these Chinese companies and the banks assisting them:

U.S. authorities have tried to seize millions of dollars associated with several companies that deal with North Korea, including the country’s military, from eight large international banks, according to court filings made public on Thursday.

The effort was revealed two days after North Korea tested a long-range missile capable of reaching Alaska, ratcheting up tensions with the United States and adding to worries about North Korea leader Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons plans.

Thursday’s filings show that Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the federal court in Washington, D.C. on May 22 granted U.S. prosecutors’ applications for “damming” seizure warrants against Bank of America Corp, Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Citigroup Inc, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Standard Chartered Plc and Wells Fargo & Co.

Prosecutors believe the banks have processed more than $700 million of “prohibited” transactions on behalf of entities tied to North Korea since 2009, including the period after Donald Trump was elected U.S. president, the filings show.

Some of the transactions were processed for Dandong Zhicheng Metallic Material Co and four affiliated “front” companies that prosecutors said tried to evade sanctions through transactions that would benefit North Korean entities, “including the North Korea military and North Korea weapons programs,” according to the filings.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link, but for the Kim regime $700 million is a lot of money.  Long time ROK Heads may remember how much the Kim regime got worked up when $25 million was seized from the Macau Bank, Banco Delta Asia.  This seizure caused the Kim regime to actually come to the bargaining table and make some major concessions to get their money back.

Here is the latest on President Trump’s reaction to the recent North Korean nuclear test:

Like I said. https://t.co/DzLq8xFwTz https://t.co/cedFc4t1xR

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) July 5, 2017

Here is a video released by North Korea that shows Kim Jong-un inspecting the two-stage KN-17 ICBM as well as its test firing:

Talking smack to someone like President Trump may not be wisest thing for Kim Jong-un to be doing:

The show of force came as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed that North Korea had launched an ICBM on Tuesday, reversing an initial U.S. assessment that it was an intermediate-range missile.

He also said the U.S. would push for tougher sanctions by the U.N. Security Council, which planned an emergency meeting later Wednesday to discuss the latest provocation.

“Testing an ICBM represents a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region and the world,” Tillerson said in a statement. “Global action is required to stop a global threat.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, meanwhile, reportedly called the ICBM test an Independence Day “gift” for the Americans and promised to send more “big and small gift packages often in the future so they don’t get bored.”  [Stars & Stripes]

Kim Jong-un better hope that President Trump doesn’t send him some big and small gift packages in return.

Even though the US is calling this an ICBM test its maximum range of possibly 5,500 kilometers barely makes it an ICBM and analysis has not determined if the reentry technology worked or not:

South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense followed up on Tillerson’s statement hours later, announcing Wednesday that the missile was a “new type” of ICBM, apparently a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), also known as a KN-17, modified into a two-stage projectile.

An IRBM class missile has the capacity to fly between 3,000 and 5,500 kilometers (1,864 to 3,418 miles), shorter than an ICBM’s capacity of more than 5,500 kilometers.

But the ministry fell short of saying whether North Korea’s ICBM launch was successful, saying it was hard to confirm yet. Analysis of whether Pyongyang has perfected re-entry technology, a core part of a long-range missile that’s been considered the last hurdle for North Korea’s ICBM development, was still ongoing, according to Defense Minister Han Min-koo, who briefed lawmakers on the National Assembly’s National Defense Committee Wednesday. Han said the Hwasong-14, North Korea’s name for its ICBM, qualified to be an ICBM when considering its travel distance, but that the maximum speed was way below the threshold of Mach 20.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

At its maximum range the KN-17 puts Guam and parts of Alaska at risk.  This is clearly significant progress, but the Kim regime has not perfected ICBM technology that can reliably strike the US mainland, yet.  At this point it seems like it is only a matter of time if the US and the ROK allow the Kim regime to have that time.

I predicted that the North Koreans would commit a provocation in response to the Trump-Moon summit in Washington, DC and the Kim regime of course delivered:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday warned North Korea not to cross a “red line” after it claimed a successful test of its first intercontinental ballistic missile.

Moon urged the North to immediately halt its provocations, saying he is not sure what kind of consequence the communist state will have to face if it crosses the “red line.”

“I hope North Korea will not cross the point of no return,” the South Korean leader said in a meeting with former British Prime Minister David Cameron, according to his chief press secretary Yoon Young-chan.

His remarks came shortly after he ordered his top security officials to seek “UN Security Council measures” in close cooperation with the country’s allies, including the United States in an emergency meeting of the National Security Council.

North Korea launched what initially appeared to be an intermediate range missile at 9:40 a.m.

Later, the North’s official media said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed an order to test launch a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) the day before, also claiming the success of its launch.

Moon earlier noted the North may develop an ICBM in the “not too distant future.”

The North Korean reports said the new ICBM, Hwasong-14, reached an altitude of 2,802 kilometers, and flew 933 kilometers.

When launched at the right angle, the missile could reach up to 8,000 km, experts have noted.

Moon, even prior to the North Korean reports, told his security officials to handle the latest provocation as if it were an ICBM.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the Korea Times is reporting the missile could have up to a 10,000 kilometer range.  However, USFK reported in the same article that the missile was an intermediate range ballistic missile with a range of 5,000 kilometers.  US Pacific Command is reporting a range from 3,000 to 5,500 kilometers.

These ranges are important because if it is an 8,000 kilometer range than Hawaii and Alaska are within range.  If it is a 10,000 kilometer range than the US mainland is within range.  Not that Hawaii and Alaska are less important than the US mainland, but I think being able to credibly strike the US mainland does make a difference in regards to US response options.  If the range is 5,000 kilometers then strategically nothing has really changed.  It just means that Guam remains within range of North Korea’s missile threat which is why a THAAD battery is deployed to protect the island.

Google Earth image showing estimated distances from North Korea to US targets

In response to this latest test China and Russia are calling for North Korea to freeze their weapons program in exchange for the US and the ROK scaling down their bilateral military exercises:

Russia and China have proposed that North Korea declare a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests while the United States and South Korea refrain from large-scale military exercises.

The call was issued in a joint statement by the Russian and Chinese Foreign Ministries on Tuesday following talks between President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.  [Daily Mail]

This is something the Trump administration is going to hear more and more to do.  I hope President Trump does not get suckered into this without severe measures for non-compliance.  Like I have said before, a freeze deal may be something for the Trump administration to pursue if non-compliance by the Kim regime authorizes a pre-emptive strike against North Korea.  Language in the deal would also make it quite clear the pre-emptive strike is not for regime removal, but to target the Kim regime’s weapons programs.  The Kim regime cheated on all the past deals and will assuredly cheat on a freeze deal without the credible threat of force.