It is unfortunate, but you can't reason with a #Kim ruler. No country–not #China, #Russia, #SouthKorea–has ever been able to entice #NorthKorea into good behavior over the long term. The regime in Pyongyang is inherently belligerent. https://t.co/EvEskkoTpg
— Gordon G. Chang (@GordonGChang) July 2, 2019
North Korean media needs to be read, in Korean, for more than a decade, to be understood in their context. And one needs to read more than what the North knows to be closely observed by the outside world. https://t.co/58EUhwmHUa
— the oranckay (@oranckay) July 1, 2019
They have “boosted nuclear talks” in the past for NK, funneling into #DPRK coffers about $100M/year for NK’s WMD dev’t. NK’s 1st nuclear test was on Oct 9, 2006, during the Roh Moo Hyun admin, when Moon Jae-In was Roh’s right hand man in the Blue House. https://t.co/Lid0khrjlW
— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) June 27, 2019
This sucks for this man’s family, but like I have said every time someone gets detained in North Korea, I have little sympathy for them. No one should be traveling to North Korea and supporting the Kim regime:
The family of an Australian who vanished in North Korea in mysterious circumstances have broken their silence.
Alek Sigley, 29, who is a postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang and a self-employed tour company operator, has not been seen or heard from by friends and loved ones for more than 48 hours.
He was identified in South Korean media overnight as having been taken into custody by North Korean officials.
Australian officials have been trying to confirm whether he has in fact been arrested or if there is some other explanation for his disappearance.
On Thursday afternoon, Mr Sigley’s family issued a statement confirming they remained unsure of his fate.
“As of 1pm (AEST), it has not been confirmed that Alek has been detained in the DPRK,” it said.
“The situation is that Alek has not been in digital contact with friends and family since Tuesday morning Australian time, which is unusual for him.
“Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is therefore seeking to confirm his whereabouts and welfare.”
“Alek is an Australian-born Asian scholar and traveller who has visited, studied and lived in several countries in Asia. Alek can speak Mandarin and Korean fluently along with some Japanese.
“He is studying for a Masters in Korean literature at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang. Alek’s family hope to re-establish contact with him soon.”
News.com.au
You can read more at the link, but hopefully he is able to return home alive and not tortured unlike what other detainees experienced from the Kim regime.
Here we go again the with Moon administration pushing the Trump administration to reopen the Kaesong Industrial Complex an the Mt. Kumgang Tours before denuclearization takes place:
South Korea’s minister in charge of inter-Korean affairs said the government could consider resuming cross-border projects such as the Mount Geumgang tours and the Gaeseong industrial park before full-scale sanctions relief to facilitate the denuclearization process.
During an interview with Yonhap News Agency and six other global news agencies in Seoul on Wednesday, a reporter asked Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul whether the inter-Korean economic projects could restart before Pyongyang’s complete denuclearization.
Kim said the two projects could resume following sanctions relief or be considered in the early stages of sanctions relief as an exceptional step to faciliate denuclearization.
The remarks come after President Moon Jae-in, in a written interview with the seven news agencies, said he suggested that U.S. President Donald Trump fully utilize inter-Korean economic cooperation as corresponding measures to induce the North’s denuclearization.
KBS World Radio
You can read more at the link, but we have been down this road before. President Bush agreed to a deal with the North Koreans that left the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Mt. Kumgang Tours cash cows open and the North Koreans did not denuclearize. They blew up an old nuclear cooling tower for the cameras which I am sure Kim Jong-un is willing to do again for the same deal.
It can be argued that all the Bush deal did was increase funding for the regime to further develop their nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. Does the Trump administration want to be ones that allows the Kim regime to complete the development of their nuclear weapons program?
What the US negotiators have to be careful of is the Kim regime promising to dismantle their nuclear facilities in exchange for dropping sanctions. After sanctions are dropped they can slow roll the dismantlement and then blame the U.S. for some made up reason for why they suddenly have to keep their nuclear capacity. They of course will keep all the hard currency they accumulated after the dropping of sanctions:
President Moon Jae-in said Wednesday that if North Korea dismantled its Yongbyon nuclear complex, the country’s denuclearization would be in an “irreversible stage.”
“If all of the nuclear facilities in the complex, including the plutonium reprocessing facilities and the uranium enrichment facilities, are completely demolished and verified,” Moon said in a written interview with seven global news agencies including Yonhap, “it would be possible to say that the denuclearization of North Korea has entered an irreversible stage.”
During his second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Feb. 27 and 28, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un offered to dismantle at least some of the Yongbyon nuclear complex, which includes a 5-megawatt plutonium production reactor.
Trump said Pyongyang had to do more for sanctions relief. That summit collapsed without a deal and led to an impasse in denuclearization dialogue ever since.
Yet the United States is engaged in “behind-the-scenes talks” with North Korea for a possible third summit, Moon said in the interview, noting that “there will be substantive progress if the two sides continue negotiations based on what was discussed in Singapore and Hanoi.” Kim and Trump’s first summit was in Singapore on June 12 of last year.
Joong Ang Ilbo
You can read more at the link.
Considering that she is Kim Jong-un’s trusted sister, she has probably always been a national leader, but is now officially filling the role:
North Korean leader’s younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, has been elevated to the level of a national leader, an upgrade from her previous role as a protocol assistant to the leader, the main South Korean intelligence agency concluded Tuesday in its analysis of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s unprecedented state visit to the North last week.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) on Tuesday briefed Rep. Lee Hye-hoon of the Bareunmirae Party, chairwoman of the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee, about Xi’s visit to the North on Thursday and Friday. Following the briefing, Lee met with journalists and shared some of the NIS’s analysis, which dissected in detail Xi’s 27-hour stay in Pyongyang, including his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
According to Lee, Kim Yo-jong has been elevated to the level of a national leader.
“If you look at the photos [of last week’s summit], she was standing in the same level of Choe Ryong-hae, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, and Ri Su-yon, vice chairman of the Workers’ Party,” Lee quoted the NIS as saying. “The NIS believes that Kim’s role has been adjusted and her weight has been increased [within the North’s regime].”
Joong Ang Ilbo
You can read more at the link.
Legally going after the people and organizations that break sanctions and freezing their assets like what happened with this guy should be vigorously pursued:
Taiwan’s justice ministry has expressed regret after a businessman convicted over illegal oil sales to North Korea leapt to his death.
Authorities launched a probe into Chen Shih-hsien last year after Seoul said it had detained a Hong Kong-registered ship suspected of transferring oil to a North Korean vessel, flouting UN sanctions.
Chen, 54, was later indicted on forgery charges for making a false declaration that a ship he had chartered was bound for Hong Kong when it actually sailed to international waters to sell the oil.
A district court in southern Kaohsiung city last month sentenced him to 119 days in jail, suspended for two years.
Chen’s assets were frozen after Taiwan’s government imposed a ban on all financial dealings with him and locked up his companies’ bank accounts due to the probe, which he was appealing against.
The justice ministry said in a statement it deeply regretted the passing of Chen, who jumped from a building on Friday in a suspected suicide.
Local media said Chen left a “suicide note” while prosecutors were not immediately available for comment.
Chen’s case revolved around a ship called the Lighthouse Winmore, which was impounded in late 2017 by South Korean authorities after it allegedly transferred 600 tonnes of oil to the North’s Sam Jong 2.
The vessel was chartered by the Billions Bunker Group, which is incorporated in the Marshall Islands and run by Chen.
Reports said Chen sold oil products through “a Chinese middleman”.
AFP
You can read more at the link, but China is always going to be the weak link when it comes to sanctions and probably all the more reason why the Trump administration has been putting economic pressure on them.
This seemed unlikely considering that President Trump appears to only want to meet if Kim Jong-un commits to real denuclearization:
U.S. President Donald Trump has no plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during his trip to South Korea later this week, a senior U.S. administration official said Monday.
Trump will visit Seoul on Saturday and Sunday after attending a Group of 20 summit in Japan, prompting speculation that a Trump-Kim meeting could be arranged at the inter-Korean border.
“There are no plans for the meeting that you just mentioned,” the official told reporters on background in a phone call.
“The president’s there to see President Moon (Jae-in),” he said.
On a Trump visit to the Demilitarized Zone, the official said the details of the president’s schedule have yet to be finalized.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The so called experts are again weighing in and recommending that President Trump reopen the Kaesong Industrial Complex to create “momentum” in the denuclearization talks whatever that means:
North Korea raked in more than $120 million a year from a symbolic cross-border industrial zone that Pyongyang and Seoul are pushing to re-open as part of nuclear negotiations, a report said Monday.
The Kaesong Industrial Complex — where around 55,000 North Korean workers churned out products ranging from watches to clothes for some 125 South Korean companies — was one of the most visible signs of reconciliation that followed the first inter-Korean summit in 2000.
But it was shuttered by the South’s then-conservative government in 2016 in response to a nuclear test and missile launches by the North, saying profits from Kaesong were funding Pyongyang’s provocations.
The South’s current President Moon Jae-in has dangled re-opening the complex as an incentive for Pyongyang to engage in denuclearisation talks, but doing so is complicated by the web of international sanctions imposed on the North over its weapons programmes.
At their Pyongyang summit in September, Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to “normalise” operations at Kaesong when conditions were “ripe”, but negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington are now deadlocked and Northern media have pressed the South to implement joint economic projects.
The International Crisis Group called on Monday for the complex to be reopened with “a modest deal involving sanctions relief”.
Doing so would create “much needed momentum for stalled peace talks and serve as a reminder to both North and South Korea of the benefits of building a sustainable peace on the peninsula”, it added in a statement.
AFP
You can read more at the link, but this is just more “pretend denuclearization” and something that the expert class has been calling for now for decades. These concessions to the Kim regime never work and I believe it actually makes it harder to reach a denuclearization deal because they use the funding to further their weapons programs.
