Shin Jae-min, a former bureaucrat who blew the whistle against the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Blue House, is transferred to SMG-SNU Boramae Medical Center in Dongjak District, southern Seoul, on Thursday after claiming in an online post he was about to commit suicide. [COURTESY OF HANKOOK ILBO]
The former Finance Ministry official who accused the Blue House of fiddling with state coffers and intervening in private companies went missing for hours on Thursday after leaving a suicide note on the internet that read he was going to hang himself in a motel – until police found him alive.
Officers at Gwanak Police Precinct provided scant details to the local press about Shin Jae-min’s health condition but said he was hospitalized in Seoul in a “favorable state.”
Police refused to hold a press briefing detailing how they discovered Shin or what he was doing by the time they arrived at the motel in Gwanak District, southern Seoul, saying they didn’t want to “stimulate” someone who was already “mentally instable.”
Shin allegedly left a suicide note as a web posting on a forum hosted by his alma mater Korea University:
In his post, Shin wrote that he thought people would trust him and his whistle-blowing accusations if he died.
Shin added he hoped Korean society would adopt a culture that embraces whistle-blowers and reveal how government policies are made to the general public.
Shin lamented blowing the whistle on a left-leaning government, saying he could have received legal help from Minbyun – Lawyers for a Democratic Society, a non-governmental organization with special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, if he was whistle-blowing on a conservative Blue House.
Shin said he was “deeply disappointed” after hearing that every attorney in Minbyun refused to defend him if Shin revealed to the press he was being backed by the progressive group.
Minbyun of course are not going to do anything that would damage a North Korean friendly administration in South Korea. Shin best toughen up because the leftists in South Korea know how to defend their own and will do everything they can to destroy him. Just ask the conservative journalists sitting in jail for reporting accurate information about the Moon administration.
The former deputy North Korean ambassador to the United Kingdom who defected from the Kim regime had this to say about Kim Jong-un’s recent New Year’s speech:
Thae Yong-ho
Thae Yong-ho, one of the highest-ranking North Korean defectors in the South, told reporters in Seoul on Tuesday that Kim’s speech had two strategic purposes. These are to drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States in regards to economic cooperation with the North, and to complicate the verification process of North Korea’s denuclearization by initiating multilateral negotiations over a formal peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War.
“If summarized in a single sentence, Kim Jong-un’s address shows he wants to narrow down the scope of the nuclear negotiations between the United States and North Korea to arms reduction and push off international sanctions, while retaining the status of a nuclear-armed country,” Thae said.
According to Thae, who used to be North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, the “new path” Kim mentioned the North would take if the United States does not respond with corresponding measures to its denuclearization efforts would be a return to its old pattern of making nuclear provocations. In the speech, Kim said the North would not “make and test nuclear weapons any longer nor use and proliferate them.” Thae said “a new path” would mean reneging on this pledge.
You can read more views at the link, but the consensus seems to be building that Kim Jong-un does not plan to denuclearize and instead inspects the Trump administration to drop sanctions first.
This is all in line with the “pretend denuclearization” strategy that I believe the North Korean’s are hoping to achieve. Once sanctions are dropped the regime will be flushed with cash that it can then funnel back into its weapons programs. While doing this they can do superficial things to give the appearance of heading towards denuclearization without actually fully denuclearizing.
They will drag this out as long as possible and then by the time someone calls them out on their duplicity, they will make up reason to blame the US for the breakdown in the agreement. By the time this happens they hope to have an agreement to end the Korean War in place and US troops withdrawn from the peninsula.
The regime is betting that by this time the US and the international community will just want to treat them like Pakistan and let them keep their nukes because it isn’t worth the trouble to forcefully make them denuclearize. By keeping the nukes this then allows them over time to coerce the ROK into the confederation agreement they have been demanding to implement.
Late shot…spent some time Christmas Day visiting D-2 ADA THAAD at their remote site. Thankful for their dedicated service and dedication to their no-fail 24/7 mission. Mess Team was preparing a feast! Outdoor pics unauthorized. pic.twitter.com/yPDRt4wSzM
New N. Korean stamps for 2019A new North Korean stamp, released for the new year, is seen in this photo from the country’s Korean Central News Agency on Jan. 2, 2019. (Yonhap)
Here we go with yet another whistleblower, this time in the Finance Ministry, who is claiming that the Blue House pressured the ministry to raise the national debt. This happened back in 2017 after the Moon administration took power. The supposed goal was to immediately inflate the national debt and blame it on the prior Park administration and then create the appearance of decreasing it over time to make the Moon administration look good even though they were the ones that jacked up the national debt in the first place:
Former Finance Ministry employee Shin Jae-min holds a press conference on Wednesday. [YONHAP]
The controversy between an ex-bureaucrat whistle-blower and the government is entering a new phase.
The 32-year-old former employee of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Shin Jae-min, held a press conference Wednesday in which he disclosed the name of the former Blue House secretary who pressured the Finance Ministry to keep the national debt-to-GDP ratio high to make the previous Park Geun-hye administration look bad.
“It’s Blue House secretary [for economic policy] Cha Young-hwan,” Shin said.
Cha was appointed second vice minister in the Office for Government Policy Coordination last month.
Shin said he has heard it directly not only from then-Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister for the Economy Kim Dong-yeon but also from lower-level employees at the Finance Ministry as they talked on the phone with the Blue House.
“I heard the calls from the Blue House and the unreasonable orders,” Shin said. “I’ve experienced it all.”
He said it infuriated him that even when the finance minister decided not to issue deficit-financing bonds, the Blue House forced the ministry to.
Deficit-covering bonds are normally issued when the state’s spending exceeds tax revenues.
He said Finance Minister Kim gave the goal of raising the national debt-to-GDP ratio up to 39.4 percent.
According to Shin, the Finance Ministry was looking for ways of reducing an issuing of 8.7 trillion won ($7.8 billion) worth of deficit-financing bonds since tax collections had exceeded the government’s initial goal.
Printing the bonds would only raise the nation’s debt.
You can read much more at the link, but the Blue House’s response as usual when it comes to whistleblowers has said these are all lies and has threatened Shin with legal action for releasing state secrets.
Another big thing no one has talked about yet in regards to this issue is, what is the Moon administration planning to do with all the extra money they needlessly raised the national debt to obtain? Is this the money they plan to give to Kim Jong-un?
So I am to believe that the Kim regime is so poor that they need the international community to provide them humanitarian assistance, but some how they have enough funds to support this?:
The 105-story Ryugyong Hotel has long been a blot on the Pyongyang skyline. The world’s tallest unoccupied building has towered over North Korea’s capital since 1987, a grand but empty pyramid entirely dark except for the lone aircraft warning light at its top. Outsiders saw the unfinished building as the epitome of failure, while people inside the country took care to rarely mention it at all. That is, until light designer Kim Yong Il made the building once again the talk of the town. In a brilliant flip of the script, the Ryugyong has been reborn as a symbol of pride and North Korean ingenuity. For several hours each night, the building that doesn’t have electricity inside becomes the backdrop of a massive light show in which more than 100,000 LEDs flash images of famous statues and monuments, bursts of fireworks, party symbols and political slogans.
Sunrise at Haeundae in BusanPeople enjoy the sunrise on the first day of 2019 at Haeundae beach in Busan, the country’s southernmost port city on Jan. 1, where two giant balloon pigs have been installed. (Yonhap)
This photo, captured from North Korean state TV, shows leader Kim Jong-un delivering a New Year’s address on Jan. 1, 2019.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said Tuesday he is firmly committed to denuclearization and ready to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at any time, but warned he could seek an alternative course if the U.S. misjudges his patience and sticks to sanctions. Kim made the remarks during his New Year’s speech broadcast by the country’s state television, also urging the U.S. to take corresponding measures in exchange for denuclearization steps the communist nation has taken so far. Kim also said he is willing to reopen the now shuttered inter-Korean industrial park in the North’s border city of Kaesong and resume a suspended tour program to Mount Kumgang on the North’s east coast “without any preconditions.” That could suggest Kim wants the resumption of the two projects as sanctions relief from the U.S. “I am always ready to sit down again with the U.S. president at any time and will make efforts to produce an outcome that the international community would welcome,” Kim said. “(But) we could be left with no choice but to seek a new way if the U.S. does not make good on its promises, misjudges our patience, while seeking to force things unilaterally and clinging to sanctions and pressure,” he said.
You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime is hoping they can get the second meeting with President Trump where Kim Jong-un can convince him to drop the sanctions on the Kaesong Industrial Park and the Mt. Kumgang Resort for superficial and easily reversible concessions that we have seen before.
Dropping of sanctions would allow a surge of investment in North Korea that will line the pockets of the Kim regime that they can then use to further develop their nuclear and other weapons programs. The only real concessions from North Korea that I believe would warrant dropping of any sanctions is when they release a complete list of their nuclear sites, allow inspections, and begin shipping nuclear material out of the country. I have seen no indications the Kim regime is even considering this.
