Any guesses on who will pay for all the new Olympic infrastructure in North Korea if this plan gets advanced?:

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon wants his city to co-host the 2032 Summer Olympics with the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

At a press conference at City Hall Friday, just hours after his return from the third inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang, Park vowed to dedicate his efforts to making that dream come true.

A joint statement signed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during their summit on Wednesday included an agreement to launch a joint bid to co-host the 2032 Summer Olympic Games.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Moon has been deputized by Kim to extort Lee to give Kim. Confusing? Put differently: The tyrant has cajoled the president, an elected leader, to coerce his nation's richest man to pay up to the tyrant. https://t.co/Kx3MSYnCOi

— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) September 20, 2018

President Moon Jae-in (R) gives a letter of appointment to Yoo Nam-seok, new chief justice of the Constitutional Court, at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Sept. 21, 2018. (Yonhap)

President Moon is continuing to advocate for everyone to believe in Kim Jong-un:

President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday that the United States has nothing to lose from its denuclearization talks with North Korea, as it could resume sanctions or reverse a declaration ending the Korean War if Pyongyang reneges on its pledge to denuclearize.

Moon stressed that U.S. concessions to North Korea could be reversed if Pyongyang was caught cheating on its denuclearization pledge during an interview with Fox News during his five-day visit to New York for the UN General Assembly.

“One thing stands clear,” the president said. “South Korea and the U.S. have nothing to lose from denuclearization talks [with the North]. Measures that the North is required to take are abandon already-made nuclear stockpiles; dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility; and close down nuclear testing and missile testing sites.”

These steps were equivalent to “irreversible measures,” and the North’s demands of the United States could easily be reversed if Pyongyang doesn’t follow through with its denuclearization promises, Moon argued.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

Here is what he had to say about USFK:

Moon also dismissed concerns that an end to the war could change the status of U.S. troops in South Korea and the UN Command.
“An end-of-war declaration is a political statement en route to signing a peace treaty. Until the peace treaty is signed, an armistice will be maintained,” he stressed.

Moon stressed that the issue of U.S. troops in the South had to do with the U.S.-Korea alliance, not ending the war or signing a peace treaty.

“North Korean leader Kim also agrees with this concept [of the U.S. forces in South Korea],” he said.

For the status of USFK, of course both Moon and Kim are of course going to say there will be no change.  I believe that President Moon is too smart to advocate against keeping USFK in Korea post-peace treaty because that will mobilize the conservative opposition against him.  However, Moon can use his surrogates to make life difficult for USFK to where the Trump administration could decide to withdraw on its own.  This gets Moon and his left wing base in South Korea what they ultimately want, USFK withdrawal without getting blamed for it.

With the end of the US-ROK alliance Moon and Kim can move forward with their confederation idea which will essentially lead to unification on North Korean terms.

As far as denuclearization, I have been saying repeatedly, if the Kim regime wants people to see that it is serious about denuclearization then begin shipping nuclear material out of the country.  Instead the regime and President Moon want sanctions dropped for North Korea so far doing little to nothing in return.

Once sanctions are dropped it will be extremely difficult to get an international consensus to reimplement sanction if they are not denuclearizing, but at the same time behaving.  These countries will know that if they reimplement sanctions then missile and nuclear tests and other provocations will restart, so best just to leave North Korea alone.  This then allows the Kim regime to keep their nukes and have sanctions dropped.  We have been down this road before and it keeps ending at the same point and President Moon wants everyone to think the destination will be different this time.

President Moon wants everyone to believe that the Kim regime really means it this time to denuclearize:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in pushed back Tuesday against widespread skepticism about the sincerity of Kim Jong Un’s vows to give up his nuclear bombs, saying that the current round of diplomacy with North Korea is ”completely different” than the many failed deals that have frustrated past negotiators.

Moon, fresh off a dramatic summit in Pyongyang last week with Kim that saw more promises from the North Korean leader to dismantle his weapons programs, is at the U.N. General Assembly this week, meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders to explain and, to some extent, defend his efforts to bring peace to the famously hostile Korean Peninsula.

He told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York that it was ”only natural that we have plenty of suspicions regarding the true motivations” of Kim. It was, after all, only last year that a series of increasingly powerful North Korean weapons tests, including the nation’s sixth nuclear test explosion, and the tough reaction by Trump had many worrying about war. Some critics believe that tough sanctions and pressure, rather than engagement and concessions, stand a better chance of ridding the North of its nukes.

”It’s completely different this time around,” Moon said, speaking through an interpreter. What’s changed this time is that, unlike past efforts that collapsed when the countries tried to implement deals that had been made at the working level, this one has Trump and Kim making the decisions and then driving their lieutenants to follow through.

”This was a promise made in front of the whole world” by Trump and Kim, Moon said. ”For this reason, I believe the promise will be kept.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but if Kim Jong-un wants people to think he is serious about denuclearization he can start shipping out nuclear material from his country.  The concessions they have made so far are all easily reversible that he wants sanctions dropped and a peace treaty signed in return for.

Shipping nuclear material out of the country cannot be reversed and worthy of bigger concessions from the US.  Until the Kim regime starts doing that people are going to rightfully remain skeptical about his intentions.  As I have long been saying, the Kim regime wants “pretend denuclearization” which many people in the academic class, political class, and US adversaries want as well.

I would not be surprised that the price for South Korea to get President Trump on board with a possible 2nd Kim-Trump Summit was to agree to change the US-ROK FTA.  Usually when it comes to changes in the FTA there is a lot of pushback from the ROK where this went pretty smooth:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed the conclusion of negotiations to amend the countries’ bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) on Monday, vowing efforts to implement it swiftly.

“We, the Presidents of the Republic of Korea and the United States of America, hereby reaffirm our close alliance and the importance of maintaining strong, mutually beneficial trade and economic ties between our peoples,” the leaders said in a joint statement issued at the end of their bilateral summit in New York.

“We welcome the successful conclusion of negotiations between our governments that have resulted in amendments and modifications to improve the Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement,” they added.

Under the revised FTA, the U.S. will extend a 25 percent tariff on imports of South Korean pickup trucks by 20 years to 2041, while Seoul will double the number of U.S. cars not subject to its local industry regulations to 50,000.

“South Korea will double the number of American cars sold …(to) 50,000 per manufacturer of cars,” Trump said in a joint press conference.

The changes, which come at a U.S. request, were approved by the South Korean Cabinet last week. The revised FTA was signed Monday by the countries’ trade ministers. It still needs to be ratified by the countries’ legislatures.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

I suppose this was tweeted without intentional irony, but I could be wrong. https://t.co/jwg0SbH67u

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) September 23, 2018

Outgoing Defense Minister Song Young-moo (R) transfers the flag of the defense ministry to his replacement, Jeong Kyeong-doo, during a ceremony at the ministry in Seoul on Sept. 21, 2018, to mark his departure from the post and Jeong’s inauguration. (Yonhap)

One family has had the remains of their father who died in the Korean War identified:

On Friday, brothers Charles and Larry McDaniel ascended the Punchbowl Cemetery’s monument displaying the names of roughly 24,000 servicemembers who remain missing from the Korean War and the Pacific theater of World War II.

They climbed up scaffolding to reach the spot where their father’s name, Charles McDaniel, Sr., is inscribed in stone and placed a bronze rosette next to his name, indicating he is missing no more.

During an earlier ceremony at the cemetery observing the annual National POW/MIA Recognition Day, Charles McDaniel, Jr., told an audience of 300 how the remains of his father were suddenly and dramatically found.

When North Korea turned over 55 boxes possibly holding the remains of Americans who died in the Korean War in July, McDaniel greeted the news with caution.

He was three and a half when he last saw his father, who was declared missing in action on Nov. 2, 1950, during the Korean War.

The elder McDaniel, who was a medic, was one of more than 5,000 American servicemembers whose remains are believed to be in North Korea.

“So I figured, 55 sets of remains: 1 percent chance or less” his father’s remains would be among them, McDaniel said. “You kind of push it back, like you have to with grief.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link, but their father was one of the remains recently returned by North Korea.

It will be interesting to get feedback in a few months if the weekend safety brief has actually been ended:

Don’t shoot anyone on post, don’t sleep with your squad mate’s spouse, don’t snort unknown substances and don’t live in your car while collecting rent money from the Army.

The warnings given to soldiers at weekend and holiday safety briefings in recent decades are the stuff of Army lore. As those mandatory briefings become optional or end entirely – the Army has eliminated several administrative requirements recently in a streamlining measure – a few soldiers shared their memories of unusual briefings with Stars and Stripes.

Situational briefings remain at a commander’s discretion and soldiers said they can be useful when there’s a critical issue at hand or when a topic is discussed with depth and insight.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.