Whenever noted North Korean scholar Dr. Andrei Lankov writes something I take notice. In his latest op-ed published in Bloomberg he is advocating that the incoming Trump administration negotiate a deal for a nuclear and missile freeze with North Korea:
Finally, some observers seem to hold out hope that Trump, a self-described “great” dealmaker, might be able to talk Kim out of his nukes in direct negotiations. This, too, is a futile idea. U.S. and North Korean interests are fundamentally incompatible. North Korean leaders fear that giving up their nukes would leave them dangerously vulnerable; they only too well remember what happened to Moammar Qaddafi after he negotiated away his nuclear program.
The truth is that for more than a decade, there’s been no real chance of fully eliminating the North’s nuclear program. Even now, though, the U.S. could negotiate something better than the current situation: a verifiable freeze on nuclear and missile testing, before North Korea develops an ICBM.
Of course, Kim isn’t going to restrain himself for free. In return, he will demand many things — a hefty aid package, above all, but also political concessions, including a formal peace treaty. No doubt his regime will probably try to cheat.
The opponents of such a compromise will describe it as a terrible precedent, even blackmail — and they may be right. Unlike Iran, North Korea will remain a nuclear power even after signing such a deal. But the alternatives — either a major war that drags in the U.S. and China, or a fully armed North with the proven capacity to attack the U.S. mainland — are worse. As long as there’s still a chance of striking such a compromise, the new U.S. President should be doing everything he can to seize it. [Bloomberg]
I do not see the point of a nuclear freeze in return for a bunch of free goodies to the Kim regime in return for something that even Dr. Lankov admits they will try and cheat on. Plus by agreeing to sign a peace treaty with North Korea that puts into question the entire existence of the US-ROK alliance which is why the Kim regime has been pressing so hard for it. The Kim regime knows they have no chance of reunifying the peninsula on their terms as long as the US-ROK alliance is in place.
It seems to me a peace treaty should not be part of a freeze deal and whatever deal that is signed should include robust inspections and the risk of a retaliatory bombing strike if it is not complied with. The risk of war on the peninsula by noncompliance by the Kim regime would give motivation to the Chinese to make sure the Kim regime is complying with the deal.
Yonhap has a good interview published with an aerospace engineer that outlines what North Korea’s testing of the ICBM capability would likely look like:
John Schilling, an aerospace engineer with expertise in the North’s missile programs, said that the North’s ICBM test could involve a missile variant of the space launch vehicle Unha or the road-mobile KN-08 missile or its upgraded version KN-14.
A test of the Unha rocket fitted with a reentry vehicle large enough for a nuclear warhead would likely work, but it would put “an end to any pretense or hope of a peaceful space program,” the expert said. (……..)
Schilling also noted the first American ICBM, the SM-65 Atlas, failed 26 seconds into its maiden flight and eight tests were conducted over the course of a year, with only two fully successful. The first all-up test of the competing SM-68 Titan was even shorter, exploding on the launch pad, he said.
“We should expect North Korean ICBMs to follow a similar path — a series of early failures leading to an operational capability even with a spotty testing record,” the expert said.
The North is unlikely to conduct an ICBM test as frequently as it did with the intermediate-range Musudan missile that was tested eight times between April and October last year, he said.
“Pyongyang can afford to keep up that pace in a full-scale ICBM development program. Its aerospace industry hasn’t demonstrated the production capacity needed to test an ICBM every month,” he said. ” One test every three to six months would be more realistic, at least in the long run, so this is not a process that will be completed in 2017.”
Should the North decide to test the KN-08 or KN-14, it is expected to use existing launch sites, rather than a mobile launcher, in order to reduce chances of failure and to learn as much as possible from the failures, he said. [Yonhap]
CNN has a good article published where various pictures recently taken in North Korea are commented on by North Korean defectors. Here is my favorite comment:
“This is an Arc of Triumph, erected to commemorate Kim Il Sung allegedly liberating Korea from the Japanese,” explains Russian North Korean studies researcher, Fyodor Tertitskiy. “It may be the biggest building in honor of an event which never happened.” “Allegedly, the people of Pyongyang were expecting to see a veteran general with gray hair,” says Kang Jimin about the dedication ceremony. “But the crowd was rather disappointed to see Kim Il Sung emerge, who was only in his thirties at the time and looked like a Chinese food delivery guy.” [CNN]You can read the rest at the link.
It may not be legal to purchase or smoke marijuana in North Korea, but the North Koreans are well known for smuggling drugs into other countries to raise foreign currency.
North Korea has been getting some pretty high praise lately from the stoner world.
Marijuana news outlets including High Times, Merry Jane and Green Rush — along with British tabloids, which always love a good yarn — are hailing the North as a pothead paradise and maybe even the next Amsterdam of pot tourism. They’ve reported North Korean marijuana to be legal, abundant and mind-blowingly cheap, sold openly to Chinese and Russian tourists at a major market on the North’s border for about $3 a pound.
But seriously, North Korea? Baked?
The claim that marijuana is legal in North Korea is not true: The penal code lists it as a controlled substance in the same category as cocaine and heroin. And the person who would likely help any American charged with a crime in North Korea emphatically rejects the idea that the ban is not enforced.
“There should be no doubt that drugs, including marijuana, are illegal here,” said Torkel Stiernlof, the Swedish ambassador. The United States has no diplomatic relations with the North, so Sweden’s embassy acts as a middleman when U.S. citizens run afoul of North Korean laws.
“One can’t buy it legally and it would be a criminal offense to smoke it,” Stiernlof said. He said that if a foreigner caught violating drug laws in North Korea happened to be an American citizen, he or she could “expect no leniency whatsoever.” [ABC News]
Here is another example of how North Korea is really a “Soprano State” and why every country should be hesitant to have a DPRK embassy in their country:
Bangladesh authorities have seized a luxury Rolls-Royce Ghost car illegally brought into the country for a former North Korean diplomat expelled for smuggling.
Customs intelligence chief Moinul Khan said Han Son Ik intended to bring in the car without paying duty due to his diplomatic status and sell it on to a local buyer. Officials said the luxury car would have been liable for import duties of more than 800 percent had it been brought in legally.
Han was first secretary of the North Korean embassy in Dhaka until he was expelled in August after being accused of smuggling more than a million cigarettes as well as electronics worth half a million dollars.
“We had intelligence that Han made a deal with a local buyer to bring the person a Rolls-Royce with Han’s diplomatic immunity, therefore he attempted to evade customs tax,” Khan told AFP. “Han has been marked as a frequent offender.” AFP was unable to contact the North Korean embassy for comment.
In March 2015 a North Korean diplomat was forced to apologise after he was caught at Dhaka airport trying to smuggle nearly 27 kilograms (60 pounds) of gold worth $1.7 million into the country. A North Korean restaurant in Dhaka was shut down the same year after officials found it was selling wine and drugs such as Viagra without permission. [The Indian Express]
One Free Korea makes a great recommendation in this Tweet:
It seems like this same question has to be answered every time North Korea threatens to fire a long range missile. According to the article the US military will not shoot down the missile unless it threatens an area protected by US missile defenses. North Korea has historically fired their long range missiles on test trajectories out into the ocean. These tests allow intelligence agencies to collect information on the Kim regime’s progress in developing their missiles:
South Korean Defense Ministry retrieved an object believed to be a part of North Korean rocket, which was launched on February 7, 2016.
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Tuesday that if launches do not pose a risk to the US or an ally, “it may be more to our advantage… to gather intelligence from the flight.”
The US and other observers “can learn a lot” from any missile test, said Tal Inbar, a North Korea expert at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies.
“We can analyze the trajectory and conclude some insight about the power of the engines and the amount of fuel, and estimate the potential range of the missile.”
If it is possible to retrieve the missile or rocket from the sea, as South Korea did in February last year, Inbar said there “is a wealth of intelligence in such debris.”
He added that it was generally unwise to shoot down any missile that does not pose a threat as not only would you lose the ability to examine the missile and its flight, “if you try and shoot it down and miss, that’s a huge PR embarrassment.” [CNN]
Considering how President-Elect Trump tweeted that he would stop a North Korean rocket launch, I would be totally surprised if the Kim regime does not launch something in the near term just to call his bluff. The challenge for the North Koreans will be ensuring that the missile doesn’t blow up after launch which is what their track record for long range missiles has been lately:
North Korea on Sunday said it may launch its long-range missile at any time and anywhere its leaders choose, possibly hinting at its mobile capabilities while also asserting its right to do so.
In an interview carried by the North’s official Korean Central Television, a spokesman from the North’s foreign ministry also claimed his country has already developed standardized nuclear warheads.
“The United States continues to denounce our just preparations to launch rockets as a provocation and talk about sanctions as if a thief wields a stick,” the unidentified spokesman said.
In his New Year speech, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his country was in the final stage of preparing to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). [Yonhap]
This is what the North Korea experts are saying about President-Elect Trump’s emphasis on pressuring China to do something about the North Korean nuclear and missile programs:
“Trump will soon learn that he can’t just tweet away North Korea’s ICBM and nuclear programs,” said Robert Manning, a senior analyst at the Atlantic Council. “He is flat out wrong about North Korea not developing a nuclear weapon that can reach the U.S. The only question is when. But it is likely to acquire that capability during his first term.”
Since the election, Trump has repeatedly criticized China for not helping with the North, even raising questions why the U.S. should stick to the “one-China” policy of diplomatically recognizing only Beijing, not Taiwan, when China is uncooperative over the North.
That’s in line with Trump’s campaign remarks that the North is China’s problem to fix.
Experts, however, were skeptical about the idea of pressuring China to resolve the problem.
“He has unrealistic expectations about China’s ability and/or willingness to achieve outcomes in regard to North Korea. He has equally wrong and outdated assumptions about U.S. leverage with China and will learn that through making really dumb mistakes in his first year,” Manning said.
“Trump has already shown his profound ignorance by threatening to discard the One-China policy that is the foundation of US-China relations, threatening to impose 45% tariffs on Chines goods — and then asking Beijing to solve his North Korea problem. That is complete incoherence — and he hasn’t even taken office yet,” he said.
The expert noted that there is little the U.S. can do about the problem in the near term that does not risk a war, “other than strengthening deterrence, imposing tough sanctions that remove North Korea from the international financial system.”
Scott Snyder, a senior expert on Korea at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Trump’s tweets show he thinks North Korea is a priority issue that is closely linked to China.
“For Trump, the issue is strongly connected to relations with China. However, at present there are few, if any, formal diplomatic channels by which Trump can communicate with the Chinese leadership, and the Chinese foreign ministry appears to have rejected diplomacy by tweet,” Snyder said.
“In addition, Trump appears to have rejected the idea that North Korea’s development of a preemptive strike capability will happen or that it provides Pyongyang with a basis for making demands such as an end annual US-ROK military exercises,” he said.
Joel Wit, a former State Department negotiator with North Korea and currently editor of the website 38 North specializing in North Korean affairs, expressed strong skepticism about Trump’s idea of resolving the problem by pressuring China.
“If he pursues the avenue of trying to get China to solve this problem for the U.S., then he is going to fail just like the Obama administration,” he said. [Yonhap]
