On July 11, 2008 Pak Wang-Ja, a 53 yr-old wife/mom/tourist from SK, while out on a walk, was shot in the back & killed by NK guards at Mt. Geumgang resort in #NorthKorea, funded by SK's Hyundai, allegedly for having walked into a no-entry zone. NK never apologized. #Engagement
— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) July 10, 2019
The question becomes what is the Trump administration going to give up in return for a freeze deal?:
The United States would hope to see a freeze in the North Korean nuclear program as the start of a process of denuclearization, the State Department said on Tuesday, ahead of fresh talks with Pyongyang supposed to take place this month.
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had a surprise meeting at the end of June in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas and agreed to resume a working-level dialogue, stalled since a failed summit in Vietnam in February.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the talks would likely happen “sometime in July … probably in the next two or three weeks.”
The Trump administration has dismissed a New York Times report that said an idea was taking shape among U.S. officials to seek to negotiate a nuclear freeze by North Korea, rather than its complete denuclearization, thereby tacitly accepting it as a nuclear state.
“(A) freeze, you know, that would never be the resolution of a process. That would never be the end of a process,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told a regular news briefing. “That would (be) something that we would certainly hope to see at the beginning. But I don’t think that the administration has ever characterized a freeze as being the end goal. That would be at the beginning of the process.”
Reuters
You can read more at the link, but if the Trump administration allows the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Kumgang Tours this would be a similar deal to what the Bush administration signed that the Kim regime later broke. However, that deal did cause North Korea to behave while the Bush administration was focused on the surge strategy in Iraq. The Trump administration could be thinking the same thing to get the Kim regime to behave during the upcoming reelection campaign and then get tough later on by pushing for real denuclearization.
As I have always said, people should not be visiting or investing in North Korea and helping to fund the Kim regime. Mr. Sigley has found this out the hard way:
Saying that he was “very sad” that he would be unable to complete his master’s degree at Kim Il Sung University, Sigley added on social media that he wants to continue academic work on North Korea, but that he wouldn’t be visiting the country any time soon. NK News, the outlet that KCNA accused Sigley of spying for, said in a statement that Sigley’s six articles between January and April 2019 were the extent of his relationship with the website and that “‘anti-state’ in nature is a misrepresentation which we reject.”
It is unknown what content in Sigley’s pieces irked officials in Pyongyang, given that he tried to dispel negative preconceptions about the country among foreigners in some of his articles. Sigley also ran a tour company he founded for foreigners in North Korea called Tongil Tours, which he said would be canceling all further trips until further notice.
“I may never again walk the streets of Pyongyang, a city that holds a very special place in my heart,” he wrote.
Joong Ang Ilbo
You can read more at the link, but fortunately he was not held very long, made to do forced labor, or tortured like what has happened to other detainees.
Today marks 25 years since founding leader Kim Il Sung died suddenly in North Korea.
— Chad O'Carroll (@chadocl) July 7, 2019
This is the front page of today’s July 8 memorial edition of the state newspaper, Rodong Sinmun. pic.twitter.com/q57LyQdss9
He will probably eventually regret this, but we will never hear about it:
A South Korean son of Ryu Mi-yong, the late chairwoman of a North Korean minor political party, has arrived in Pyongyang to live in the communist country for good, a North Korean propaganda media outlet said Sunday.
Ryu and her husband, Choe Tok-sin, who served as foreign minister in South Korea during the 1960s, emigrated to the United States in 1976 and defected to the North in 1986, leaving behind two sons and three daughters.
In the North, Ryu served as chairwoman of the central committee of the Chondoist Chongu Party.
On Saturday, Uriminzokkiri, one of the North’s propaganda websites, reported that Ryu’s second son, Choe In-guk, arrived in Pyongyang on Saturday for “permanent residence.”
If confirmed, it would be a rare case of a South Korean national entering North Korea and publicly announcing a decision for permanent residence there.
Upon arriving at a Pyongyang airport, Choe said he will devote his life to helping achieve the feat of national unification in accordance with the desire of his late parents.
“To live in and follow a country for which I feel thankful is a path to protect the will left by my parents. So I’ve decided to permanently live in North Korea, albeit belatedly,” the media outlet quoted Choe as saying.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
If the Trump administration goes with the “small deal” approach with North Korea, they are essentially doing what has already been tried before and did not work:
An editorial published by the Washington Post has put forward the argument that a step-by-step “small deal” is the only diplomatic way forward with North Korea.
Columnist Josh Rogin said in an op-ed Thursday that the United States and North Korea are resuming negotiations in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s impromptu meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last weekend, and that a fight over North Korea policy has rekindled within the Trump administration.
He said, “What we’re seeing now is a return to the idea of a step-by-step approach known as the ‘small deal,’” which he called the only diplomatic path with any chance of success.
He asserted that the Trump administration, led on this issue by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and special representative Stephen Biegun, is now returning to an incremental and phased approach to persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
KBS World Radio
You can read more at the link, but a small deal would politically get the Trump administration through the 2020 election cycle which is what I think the North Koreans are counting on. The longer they wait and the harder they negotiate up to the 2020 election cycle the better deal they will likely get. Their goal is to get sanctions relief and keep their nukes and the small deal allows them to do this.
If a small deal is signed it will likely be marketed as a “Big Deal” if it includes a path to full denuclearization of North Korea. This politically allows the Trump administration to claim they have achieved a deal to completely denuclearize North Korea as a foreign policy achievement during the 2020 election. However, as we have seen in the past it is likely that the Kim regime will tear up the agreement at a time of their choosing and blame the U.S. for the deal’s failure. By the time this happens their treasury will be flush with cash due to the easing of sanctions and maybe even get major political concessions such as a Korean War peace treaty and USFK troop reductions.
I guess we will see where this is headed to in the next few months.
Don’t swim with sharks. You *will* eventually get bitten. https://t.co/hDd2DjjKG0
— 🇰🇷Edward Oh🇺🇸 (@EdwardHBOh) July 5, 2019
Well now we know what Australian Alek Sigley got in trouble for in North Korea, because he was “spying” for NK News:
KCNA said Sigley, who was caught “red-handed” by a “relevant institution” of the North on June 25, had abused his status as a student by “combing” through Pyongyang and providing photos and other information to news sites such as NK News and other “anti-DPRK” media, a reference to the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The news agency said the North expelled Sigley out of “humanitarian leniency.”
“He honestly admitted his spying acts of systematically collecting and offering data about the domestic situation of the DPRK and repeatedly asked for pardon, apologizing for encroachment upon the sovereignty of the DPRK,” the agency said.
Associated Press
You can read more at the link, but what Mr. Sigley was publishing articles at NK News about life in Pyongyang that were very innocuous. I suspect he did not get proper clearance for posting the articles and thus why he was detained. However, since he was spoken positively about North Korea for so long he did not get the Otto Warmbier treatment and was instead released. Here is a statement from NK News about Sigley’s detention.
It will be interesting to see if he ever turns up in Pyongyang again.
This is really nothing new because North Korea regularly uses the term “denuclearization of the Korean peninsula” which to them means the removal of the US nuclear umbrella over South Korea.
North Korea has released a commemorative coin that emphasizes denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, an official from an inter-Korean cooperation body said Tuesday.
Lee Sang-hyun, a member of the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation (KCRC), said he has obtained a commemorative coin issued by the North’s central bank this year.
The coin obtained by Lee was engraved with text reading, “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” and “protection of the world’s peace and security.” The center of the coin shows three hands squeezing a nuclear missile-like object with the letter “N.”
The coin contrasts with North Korea’s commemorative coins issued in the past. Last year, Pyongyang’s central bank minted a coin with a picture of fist pressing a rocket printed with the letters “USA,” and the American flag.
Pundits here said the North’s commemorative coin appears to have been designed with an intention to demonstrate Pyongyang’s denuclearization efforts.
Yonhap
It will be interesting to see how eager this guy is going to be to go back to North Korea anytime soon:
A 29-year-old Australian student detained in North Korea surfaced in Beijing airport on Thursday, saying he was in “very good” spirits after being released.
Alek Sigley ― one of a handful of Westerners living and studying in North Korea ― disappeared without a trace around June 23, prompting a week of deep concern and frantic speculation about his fate.
For days Sigley’s family received no word about his whereabouts or wellbeing, stoking fears he may be the latest in a long line of foreigners to become entangled in North Korea’s police state.
Then, with little warning, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday told lawmakers that Sigley had “been released from detention in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” and that “he is safe and well”.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link, but there has been speculation that his detention may have been linked to the Trump-Kim summit at the DMZ. The North Koreans may not have wanted word of the meeting to leak and took extreme precautions to include detaining this Australian man until after the summit was complete.
