North Korea’s top leader Kim Jong-un (2nd from L) and his wife Ri Sol-ju (far L) pose for a photo with Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd from R) and his wife Peng Liyuan at the state guest house Diaoyutai in Beijing on March 27, 2018, in Beijing, in this photo released by the Rodong Sinmun, the North’s ruling party newspaper, on March 28. After days of secrecy amid signs of such a meeting, the two countries confirmed that Kim traveled to Beijing from March 25-28 at Xi’s invitation. This is Kim’s first known overseas trip since taking power in late 2011. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

The whole “7-Hour Mystery” talking point involving former President Park Geun-hye and the sinking of the Sewol has never made any sense to me and the revealing of the actual timeline by investigators only further confirms this:

On the day of the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014, then-President Park Geun-hye spent crucial early hours when people could have been saved in her bedroom. As the hours passed, Park met with confidante Choi Soon-sil and got her hair done before starting to deal with the unfolding tragedy, according to a prosecution announcement on Wednesday.

The prosecution concluded that the entire timeline offered by the Park administration about her activities the day of the accident, which killed 304 people, was a fabrication aimed at covering up her slow responses.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office announced the outcome of its investigation into the Park government’s handling of the ferry disaster. Park’s absence in the critical early hours of a lackluster rescue operation generated enough controversy to be branded the “seven-hour mystery.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

Here is how the timeline played out:

According to the prosecution, the Sewol sent its first distress signal at 8:58 a.m. on April 16, 2014, and the Blue House’s crisis management center noticed the situation around 9:19 a.m. through a media report. The situation was shared among presidential aides at 9:24 a.m. using a text message system and the crisis management center completed its first situation report at 9:57 a.m. by contacting the Coast Guard.

That report was sent to Park’s residence around 10:12 a.m., but did not reach her. She was in her bedroom and the report was left on a table outside the room.

Around 10 a.m., Kim Jang-soo, who was head of the National Security Office, tried to telephone Park but she didn’t answer. He contacted An Bong-geun, a presidential secretary, and An drove to the residence and called to the president from outside her bedroom, the prosecution said. Park then came out from the bedroom and telephoned Kim around 10:22 a.m.

The prosecution said the first telephone briefing of Park, therefore, took place at 10:22 a.m., although the Park Blue House had earlier said the call took place at 10:15 a.m. Although Park ordered Kim to make sure there were no casualties in the accident, the most crucial hours of rescue operation had already passed, the prosecution said.

So the first report was sent to her at 10:12 AM, but was left outside her door.  The supposed Golden Time for rescue operations ended at 10:17.  Even if the first report to her was immediately received at 10:12, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton, what difference would it have made?

If a rescue was going to happen it was going to have to be by first responders from the ROK Coast Guard. The Coast Guard office in Mokpo immediately sent a vessel to the accident site after receiving emergency phone calls from passengers.  The vessel arrived at the scene before the sinking, but did not order the passengers to evacuate:

West Sea Coast Guard station ship 123 was tasked with patrolling the waters in Coastal Zone 3 near Jindo, South Jeolla Province the morning of the accident on Apr. 16. After the first 119 emergency call on the sinking from high school student Choi Deok-ha (who was later found dead), the Mokpo Coast Guard station situation room issued an order at around 8:57 to send ship 123 to the scene. At roughly 9:14, the vessel’s captain, surnamed Kim, was appointed commander for the accident scene. The boat was tasked with surveying the accident and performing a swift rescue effort according to the Coast Guard search and rescue manual.But after arriving at the scene at 9:30, Kim issued no evacuation order for the Sewol, despite ship 123 having a microphone system rigged up.

The manual’s instruction for capsizes is to “confirm the response from remaining personnel on the vessel and send a signal via loudspeaker.” Instead, the 47 minutes of “golden time” until the Sewol’s deck was fully submerged at 10:17 were wasted.The revelations about Kim‘s lack of urgency while in charge of rescue efforts at the accident scene were seen by many as especially disturbing. At the Gwangju District Court trial of Sewol crew members, Park Hyeong-ju of the Gachon University Interdisciplinary Skyscraper Disaster Prevention Center presented simulation findings showing all passengers could have been evacuated in six minutes and 17 seconds if ship 123 had given the order when Sewol captain Lee Jun-seok, 69, was rescued at 9:45.  [Hankyoreh]

This was incompetence by the ROK Coast Guard that was clearly unprepared to deal with such an accident and not something Park Geun-hye was going to be able to resolve in 5 minutes from the Blue House.  If people want to criticize her for lax government regulations that allowed the overweight ferry to operate and the poor disaster response by the Coast Guard I think that is fair.  However, to claim she could have personally did something to save those people that morning, but instead hung out in her bedroom is completely unfair in my opinion.

Here is the latest on Kim Jong-un’s trip to China this week:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made an unannounced visit to China from Monday to Tuesday on the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korea and China’s state news media confirmed Wednesday, an international diplomatic debut for a young leader who’s only weeks away from holding summits with Seoul and Washington.

It was Kim’s first known trip outside North Korea since he took power in December 2011 following his father’s death, and his first meeting with another government leader.

Rumors spread quickly Tuesday that either he or another high-level official from Pyongyang was in Beijing for talks with Xi, though neither the North Korean, Chinese or South Korean government gave any confirmation.

Photos uploaded online showed a vintage dark green North Korean train similar to the armored vehicle used by former North Korean leaders arriving in the Chinese capital.

Confirmation that Kim was in Beijing came only after he crossed back into North Korea on Wednesday morning. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim, 34, departed the North on Sunday and arrived in Beijing on Monday.

Upon his arrival, Kim met with Xi in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where they “exchanged views on important matters including the development of DPRK-China friendly relations and the issue of handling the situation on the Korean Peninsula,” according to an English report from KCNA, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

On denuclearization, Kim was quoted by China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency as saying it was his “consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula, in accordance with the will” of his father, Kim Jong-il, and grandfather, Kim Il Sung, who founded North Korea.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

Here is what will be the key to denuclearization talks, what will North Korea demand in return for giving up their nukes:

Neither KCNA nor Xinhua specified Kim’s definition of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, but North Korea watchers have long argued that Pyongyang’s meaning of the term would require Washington’s nuclear umbrella over South Korea and Japan to be removed and American soldiers stationed in the South withdrawn before it could consider giving up its nuclear arsenal.

This goes back to what I have long been saying, both the DPRK and China want to separate the US from the ROK and then eventually Japan.  If the North Korean nuclear issue can do this, then this is in China’s interests as they seek region hegemony over Northeast Asia.  That is likely why Chinese Premier Xi Jinping wanted to meet with Kim Jong-un to ensure Chinese interests are met during the upcoming negotiations with the ROK and the US and what rewards China would give to North Korea in return for advancing their interests.

It is definitely yellow dust season again in South Korea:

Korea was blanketed with the worst toxic smog so far this year over the weekend, forcing many people to cancel outdoor activities.

“Without rain or winds, accumulated pollutants from outside and inside the country caused a high density of fine dust,” the Environment Ministry said.

As of 1 p.m. on Sunday, the concentration of ultrafine or PM2.5 dust particles was “very bad” at 101 ㎍/㎥ and higher in Seoul, Gyeonggi Province, and North Chungcheong Province. The fine dust density went even higher in most regions on Sunday.

The ministry decided to implement emergency measures for the Seoul metropolitan area for the fourth time this year as the fine dust density exceeded 50 ㎍/㎥ in Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi as of 5 p.m. Sunday and is expected to surpass the level again on Monday.

Some 27,000 civil servants in the Seoul area are only allowed to drive cars with even number plates on Monday.  [Chosun Ilbo]

I doubt the car restriction on the civil servants would do much of anything to the fine dust level.  I am willing to bet that President Moon could declare a national holiday and keep everyone at home and it would do nothing to the yellow dust level since the source of the problem largely lies across the border in China.  The ROK government can’t do anything about that, so restricting a few cars at least allows the government to look like it is “doing something”.

South Korean delegation visiting Pyongyang grows to 190 participants from the previously announced 160 https://t.co/g6JbWOJMBA

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) March 27, 2018

Japan wants conditions attached to the summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un: make North Korea promise to resolve the abduction issue and abandon medium-range ballistic missiles having Japan within range https://t.co/GFQUq4fJrQ

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) March 26, 2018

Despite the “bad” level of fine dust, hikers cross a suspension bridge in Wonju, east of Seoul, on March 25, 2018, amid mild temperatures. The 200-meter-long bridge, which opened in early January, is the longest of its kind in South Korea. (Yonhap)

It looks like President Trump’s steel tariff may force the South Koreans to agree to ultimately pay more for the upkeep of the US-ROK alliance:

South Korea may agree to shoulder a larger burden of the cost of stationing U.S. troops on its soil as part of the two nations’ deal on trade, a former White House official said Monday.

Victor Cha, who served as Asian affairs director on the National Security Council of George W. Bush, raised the possibility shortly after Seoul announced a tentative deal with Washington on amending their free trade agreement and exempting the Asian nation from new U.S. steel tariffs.

“If there is any tacit issue linkage with this agreement, we might expect to see South Korea agreeing to a higher burden sharing obligation in ongoing negotiations on a new Special Measures Agreement where the U.S. is pushing for South Korea to pay larger share of costs for stationing U.S. forces on the Korean peninsula,” he wrote in a commentary for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is currently senior adviser and Korea chair.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

According to the Korea Times’ intelligence sources, the North Korean train that traveled to China this week did in fact carry Kim Jong-un:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during a two-day visit to Beijing that started Monday, according to intelligence sources Tuesday.

This is the first time that Kim has taken an overseas trip and held a summit with a leader from another country since assuming power in 2011.

Kim took a train for his Beijing visit, but no detailed travel arrangements have been confirmed so far. The sources said that Kim met with the Chinese president and high-ranking officials from the Communist Party of China on the Beijing visit. The South Korean and Chinese governments have not released any official statements on the rare trip by the North Korean leader.

The visit comes at a critical time when the reclusive regime remains under growing diplomatic pressure amid heightened international sanctions imposed for the regime’s continuous nuclear and missile threats. With China also joining the global drive, relations between Beijing and Pyongyang had reached a low ebb.

The unexpected meeting between the two leaders also came a month before a planned inter-Korean summit. The North Korean leader has in recent months showed a strong willingness to improve ties with the South. On the back of the rare peace momentum on the Korean Peninsula, Kim also expanded the dialogue signal by offering to hold a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but it makes sense that Kim Jong-un would meet with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping before the upcoming summits.  China was one of the combatants of the Korean War and has significant interests on the Korean peninsula.  China will want to have these interests addressed by North Korea prior to upcoming negotiations between the DPRK, ROK, and the US.  China in turn could be influential in getting United Nations sanctions reduced since they are a member of the UN Security Council.  The next few months are shaping up to be quite interesting for the Korean peninsula.

Mr. Bolton just needs to make sure that no one brings up what happened to Libya after the nuclear deal:

Washington’s newly appointed national security advisor John Bolton may seek a comprehensive denuclearization deal with North Korea as the U.S. used to disarm Libya in the early 2000s.

Bolton has referred to the Libya case as a means to denuclearize Pyongyang. The remark was made as leaders of North Korea and the U.S. are set to meet in May to discuss the North’s denuclearization.

In 2003, Libya agreed to destroy all of its chemical, nuclear and biological weapons stockpiles, and its nuclear weapons program equipment was shipped to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the U.S. the following year.

The dismantlement was made in exchange for the normalization of Libya’s relations with the U.S. and Europe and the easing of economic sanctions it had been under.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, however unlike Libya, if North Korea does give up its nuclear weapons they have a large enough conventional military capability to threaten Seoul that any future regime change attack is unlikely.