Kim Jong-un is a demi-god in North Korea so few would be willing to point out that the seat of his trousers has a big smudge of dirt across the bottom during his recent tour of a textile factory in Sinuiju on the border with China. Or was it intentional to show Kim has worked hard for the people? Kim reportedly upbraided factory workers for poor work performance. This footage is from the North Korean Central TV. Yonhap via Korea Times
It has taken 23 years, but the Japanese government has finally executed the Aum Shinrikyo cult leaders responsible for the 1995 sarin gas subway attack in Tokyo and other murders in Japan:
Shoko Asahara headed the Aum Shinrikyo cult
Seven members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult which carried out a deadly chemical attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995 have been executed, including cult leader Shoko Asahara.
The Sarin attack, Japan’s worst terror incident, killed 13 people and injured thousands more.
The executions took place at a Tokyo detention house on Friday morning.
Japan does not give prior notice of executions, but they were later confirmed by the justice ministry.
Shoko Asahara, 63, and his followers were also accused of several other murders and an earlier Sarin gas attack in 1994 which killed eight and left 600 injured. [BBC]
I hope no one is surprised by this because this has always been one of the long game end states:
Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to work toward the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea during their third summit in China, according to a Japanese press report.
The Asahi Shimbun reported Thursday the two leaders agreed to cooperate strategically on a shared objective of the removal of the 28,500 U.S. soldiers in the South, following the summit in Singapore where President Donald Trump described joint drills as “very provocative” and costly.
The Asahi’s source, described as well versed in China-North Korea affairs, said Beijing and Pyongyang also agreed to bide their time and not rush negotiations with Washington.
The report comes a day ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo‘s visit to Pyongyang, his third known trip to North Korea.
China and North Korea see an opportunity to ask U.S. troops to leave if and when a peace treaty is signed. [UPI]
You can read more at the link, but you can add the Russians and South Korean leftists to this list as well that want US troops off of the peninsula. Despite claims in the media that Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in want US troops to stay after any peace deal is reached, this is just all rhetoric to prevent energizing South Korean conservatives against Moon.
Remember Moon is a very skilled politician that needs to keep the Korean right at bay and public anxiety down. If he advocated openly for a USFK withdrawal that would give the South Korean right an issue to strongly attack him with and cause much public anxiety after decades of security guarantees provided by US forces. That is why I think the Moon administration will publicly say they support USFK staying, but will then have their surrogates do things to make life difficult for USFK.
Possibly the future of USFK after a peace treaty could look a lot like the current THAAD site in Seongju. President Moon will say all the right things that he supports USFK, just like he supposedly supports the THAAD site, but will set conditions to make it difficult for its continued existence and cause the US to withdraw troops on its own accord.
A former nuclear envoy from past six party talks believes things are different now and Kim Jong-un really does mean to denuclearize:
Joseph DeTrani, a former U.S. special envoy for the six-party talks with North Korea, speaks to The Korea Times during an interview at The Shilla in Seoul on June 29. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
DeTrani, currently a professor at Missouri State University’s Graduate Department of Defense and Strategic Studies in Fairfax, Virginia, believes that this time will be totally different from the past in three aspects.
3 reasons to be optimistic
The first thing that he thinks we should pay attention to is that the ongoing movement has been spearheaded by the top two leaders ― U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, not negotiators.
“The difference is that the two leaders are talking about these critical issues and coming up with the path to resolve it. It’s their words and commitment. That changed the equation,” he said in an interview with The Korea Times at The Shilla hotel in Seoul on June 28.
“In the past we were working through negotiators and looking for approval of leadership. It has been reversed productively. So it’s a different equation,” he added. “Literally, Kim, President Trump, Moon and Xi Jinping all are saying the same thing. We have never had this before.”
The second reason he cited for his optimism is that the North’s economy is in a dire situation.
According to DeTrani’s assessment, without sanctions relief, Kim won’t be able to push for economic developments he has promised to his people so he has made a strategic decision to denuclearize the isolated country.
“The key here is economic development. Kim has said that he had to do more for the people and we see elements of economic reform going on now. This is the path seemingly he wants to take,” he said.
“If he has crushing sanctions and intimidating joint military exercises, (it means) total isolation. So I think he has made strategic decision to change that equation.”
The third reason behind his optimism is his belief that Kim, who studied in Switzerland, is a different person from his father or grandfather.
“Recently, North Korea had worked with UNICEF. That’s significant. I think he is a different leader and he wants to do more for the people,” he said. [Korea Times]
North Korea’s top leader Kim Jong-un (2nd from R) talks with workers during his visit to the Sinuiju Chemical Fibre Mill in the town bordering China in this clip from the North’s Central TV on July 2, 2018. The country’s media outlets said Kim chastised workers during his visits to plants in the city for not working hard enough. In the case of the mill, Kim “seriously reproved officials for failing to take pains to finish as early as possible the upgrading of the paper manufacturing process,” the report said in English. (Yonhap)
Here is the latest from the State Department on North Korean denuclearization efforts:
The U.S. State Department on Tuesday declined to specify a deadline for North Korea’s denuclearization ahead of negotiations to be led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later this week.
Pompeo is slated to travel to Pyongyang Thursday to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and flesh out a denuclearization agreement signed by Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump at their historic summit last month.
U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said Sunday that he expects Pompeo to discuss with the North Koreans a plan to dismantle the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in a year.
“I know some individuals have given timelines. We’re not going to provide a timeline for that,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said at a regular press briefing.
“The secretary’s looking forward to having these meetings. A lot of work is left to be done, certainly. We go into this eyes wide open, with a very clear view of these conversations,” she added. [Korea Times]
I read this article and it left me wondering why is the Korean government subsidizing Chinese electric buses and not domestically made ones?:
BYD eBus-12 / Courtesy of Ezwelfare
Concerns have grown over electric buses made in China, which are set to hit the Korean roads within a few months, taking advantage of the handsome subsidy given by the Korean government.
Industry officials point out the government policy may allow Chinese companies to take the lead in the Korean electric vehicle and battery markets, given that the buses are equipped with batteries made in China, the country which has remained reluctant to subsidize batteries produced by Korean companies.
According to industry officials, Wednesday, the Ministry of Environment decided last month to subsidize the eBus-12 made by BYD, China’s largest electric vehicle maker.
The 11-meter-long low-floor bus is powered by a 324-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack also made by BYD.
The subsidized bus is attracting clients with a more competitive price.
Because the environment ministry, the land ministry and local governments are giving subsidies to the bus maker, the subsidized bus costs 200 million won ($179,000) less than it would without the subsidies. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the Chinese government is not subsidizing Korean made buses in China. So is the ROK government subsidizing these buses as part of some larger deal perhaps to get China to withdraw some of is economic sanctions caused by the phony THAAD controversy?
Even on the American Independence Day there are those in the American left that can’t spend at least one day without trashing the country:
This July 4, let’s not mince words: American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake. We should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it.
Of course, evaluating the wisdom of the American Revolution means dealing with counterfactuals. As any historian would tell you, this is a messy business. We obviously can’t be entirely sure how America would have fared if it had stayed in the British Empire longer, perhaps gaining independence a century or so later, along with Canada.
But I’m reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better than the one we live in now, for three main reasons: Slavery would’ve been abolished earlier, American Indians would’ve faced rampant persecution but not the outright ethnic cleansing Andrew Jackson and other American leaders perpetrated, and America would have a parliamentary system of government that makes policymaking easier and lessens the risk of democratic collapse. [Vox]
You can read the rest at the link, but be warned the article makes some major assumptions to support its thesis. For example if the British did try to end slavery sooner in the American colonies does anyone think the South would not have revolted?
