How many people over the years have claimed that sanctions against North Korea won’t work?  Sanctions against North Korea work if everyone enforces them.  Now that the North Koreans are back to negotiate what we will see next is whether the ROK and the US will relieve the Kim regime of the economic pressure they are facing with some kind of nuclear agreement:

The economic pinch is almost certainly why Kim Jong Un is suddenly so eager to talk to the outside world, traveling to Beijing in March and then crossing the demilitarized zone to meet Moon.

“Why would he be doing this unless he was being constrained by sanctions,” said Stephan Haggard, professor of Korea-Pacific studies at the University of California at San Diego and a close monitor of sanctions. “I think he’s sweating.”  (….)

But analysts generally agree that the sanctions must be inflicting serious pain on North Korea, a desperately poor country with a highly inefficient economy.  (….)

The sanctions are probably putting a chill through both these economies. That has to be a huge concern for Kim, who once declared that North Korean people “would never have to tighten their belts again.”

“If I were Kim, I’d be much more worried about textile workers out of work, milling around doing nothing, than I would be about an American attack,” said William Brown, a former intelligence analyst focused on North Korea who now teaches at Georgetown University. Citing the kind of discontent that brought down communist regimes in Eastern Europe, he said, “The real dangers to the regime are internal.”

But Moon could pursue very little economic engagement without sanctions relief.

Not only has the U.N. Security Council imposed waves of sanctions on North Korea, but South Korea imposed its own direct punishment following two deadly North Korean attacks on South Korea in 2010.

Those measures are still in place, and conservative politicians are urging Moon to leave them there. Even if Moon overturned his predecessor’s order to close the Kaesong industrial park, an inter-Korean factory complex on the northern side of the border, transferring money or equipment to it would be almost impossible in the current sanctions environment.  [Washington Post]

This all goes back to why the Moon administration is buttering up Trump with promises of a Nobel Peace Prize by getting on the peace train and believing that North Korea is really going to denuclearize this time.

When Japanese PM Abe came for dinner, Israeli PM Netanyahu's private chef Segev Moshe put his foot in it with the dessert: chocolates served in a metal shoe, "which is considered highly offensive in Japanese culture." https://t.co/o0aVnOGgew pic.twitter.com/Yx4f6BQp7s

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) May 7, 2018

The national flags of South Korea (R) and North Korea (2nd from R) are raised next to each other at the medal ceremony of the World Team Table Tennis Championships in Halmstad, Sweden, on May 5, 2018, in this photo from the Korea Table Tennis Association. The two Koreas formed a unified team during the championships and won a bronze medal. It was the second time that they played as a single squad after the championships in Chiba, Japan, in 1991. (Yonhap)

A mysterious North Korean aircraft caused speculation that Kim Jong-un was visiting China:

Japanese and South Korean media are speculating that a high-ranking North Korean official, possibly even leader Kim Jong Un, is visiting China after an airliner from the North landed in the Chinese port city of Dalian.

The South’s official Yonhap News Agency said the plane arrived Monday amid tight security. Japanese broadcaster NHK ran a picture of the Air Koryo plane that it said had been taken Tuesday afternoon at Dalian airport.

There are no regularly scheduled flights between North Korea and Dalian, although North Koreans are frequent visitors and its port has been instrumental in two-way trade.  [Fox News]

It turned out that Kim Jong-un was in fact in China getting his marching orders from Emperor President Xi before Kim’s summit with President Trump:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Chinese President Xi Jinping held their second summit in about 40 days in northeast China, the two nations’ state media reported Tuesday, ahead of an anticipated summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump.

In a dispatch from the Chinese city of Dalian, China’s Xinhua news agency reported that Kim and Xi held talks on Monday and Tuesday. The second summit between Kim and Xi appears to highlight efforts by the allies to restore ties that have been chilled by the North’s nuclear and missile development.

Kim and Xi “had an all-round and in-depth exchange of views on China-DPRK relations and major issues of common concern,” Xinhua said. DPRK is an acronym for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  [Yonhap]

I have to wonder if the Moon administration is going to try and tie how much the ROK is willing to pay for the upkeep of USFK to the outcome of the Kim-Trump Summit?:

South Korea and the United States are expected to hold a new round of talks next week in their ongoing negotiations over the costs for U.S. troops stationed here, a source close to the matter said Monday.

According to the source, both countries are currently discussing details about schedules and location after they decided to hold the talks next week. The source added that Washington D.C. could be the venue for the meeting.

The talks are led by Chang Won-sam, a career diplomat who was appointed in mid-November to head the negotiation team, and Timothy Betts, deputy assistant secretary for plans, programs and operations at the U.S. State Department.

It will be the third round of negotiations. The two sides previously met in Honolulu, Hawaii, in March and in Seogwipo on Jeju Island last month.

The latest meeting comes after the New York Times reported that U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to consider reducing American troops in South Korea. Although the U.S. government denied the report, some speculated that it could be a move to put more pressure on South Korea to shoulder more of the costs.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

I wonder if President Moon has cleverly decided to let authorities make their arrests for this online opinion rigging scandal involving his administration at a time when news coverage of it would be drowned out by the Inter-Korean and US-DPRK Summits?:

South Korean police said Monday they’ve found additional comment manipulation by a power blogger and his accomplices, who have been indicted for tempering with Internet comments on politically sensitive news articles.

Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said the blogger, who goes by the nickname “Druking,” and his followers manipulated some 20,000 comments on 675 news articles using 2,290 different IDs from Jan. 17 to 18.

A ruling party lawmaker and former aide to President Moon Jae-in is also probed over his alleged ties with the blogger.  (…….)

The police said it has booked 21 additional members of the online community founded by Druking for their involvement in the online opinion rigging scheme. The police said so far 30 people have been booked for the case.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

North Korea using PR offensive to divide U.S. and South Korea: Top Republican https://t.co/pROdovXgzI

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) May 7, 2018

Kim Sung-tae, floor leader of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, is attacked in the face in front of the National Assembly in Seoul on May 5, 2018, in this photo captured from cable channel MBN. The attacker hit Kim in the chin as he was walking up the stairs and later told the police he was angry at the opposition party for causing a parliamentary stalemate. Kim has been on a hunger strike from May 3, demanding an independent counsel probe into an online opinion rigging scandal implicating a ruling party legislator. (Yonhap)

If this report is true this is an interesting location for a summit considering that Singapore is a friendly US ally.  I would have thought Beijing would have been a better third nation location from the North Korean perspective:

Singapore has emerged as the most likely venue for the planned summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, according to multiple diplomatic sources, Monday.

The sources said the historic summit will likely take place between June 9 and 15, after Trump attends the G-7 Summit slated for June 8 to 9 in Quebec, Canada.

This suggests the White House is losing interest in the truce village of Panmunjeom, although Trump proposed both the Peace House and Freedom House as possible venues for the summit.  (……)

The sources said the White House is leaning toward Singapore over Panmunjeom for “practical reasons.”

A source pointed out that officials of the U.S. and North Korea have held talks several times in Singapore and it is an excellent neutral location for both sides.

A different source said Singapore has a history of hosting summits for leaders of third countries, including that of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou in 2015.

Both the U.S. and North Korea have embassies in Singapore, making it easier for their officials to prepare for the summit.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

I do find it interesting that the Moon administration is willing to send police to chase down these human rights activists, but they won’t send police to keep the road to the THAAD site in Seongju open:

A local civic group led by a North Korean defector attempted to send leaflets criticizing the Kim Jong-un regime across the border last weekend but was blocked by police, after both Koreas agreed at their latest summit not to disseminate propaganda material into each other’s country.

But Park Sang-hak, leader of Fighters for Free North Korea, claimed he already flew 150,000 leaflets into the North last Thursday from an undisclosed venue in Gimpo, Gyeonggi, accusing Pyongyang’s recent olive branch to Seoul of being a “disguised peace offensive.”

Park’s attempt to send more leaflets on Saturday noon from Paju, Gyeonggi, just south of the inter-Korean border, fell on the last day of the so-called North Korea Freedom Week, the last week of every April during which nongovernmental organizations promoting human rights in North Korea shed light on the regime’s atrocities.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

For those that don’t know Mr. Park Sang-hak the leader of Fighters for a Free North Korea, he is the person that the South Korean leftists have sent thugs to assault and the Kim regime has sent assassins to kill.  Despite all of this Mr. Park continues to fearlessly launch balloons into North Korea.   I think it is only a matter of time before the leftist thugs are sent after Park again.

For Suzanne Scholte pictured above I don’t know what visa she is on, but the Moon administration could try and silence her by claiming she is violating her visa by conducting political activity.  It is pretty clear that for the next few years operations for these North Korean human rights organizations is going to be very difficult.