I think the critics are definitely right that the Kim regime has once again stolen the spotlight from South Korea:

 

An agreement between South and North Korea to march under a unity flag and field a joint ice hockey team at next month’s Olympics was met sharp criticism by many in the South on Thursday, highlighting changing attitudes toward the country’s northern neighbor.  (…..)

 

“North Korea was all about firing missiles last year, but suddenly they want to come to the South for the Olympics? Who gets to decide that?” Kim Joo-hee, a translator, told Reuters during a coffee break on a chilly Seoul afternoon. “Does North Korea have so much privilege to do whatever they want?”

Moon’s office declined to comment beyond saying the two countries would be coordinating logistics for the Olympics, which begin on Feb. 9.

Opinion polls released since the plans became public have shown limited support for some of Seoul’s proposals.

Only 4 out of 10 respondents said they favor the plan to march together under a flag symbolizing a unified Korea, according to a survey released on Thursday by the South Korean pollster Realmeter.

Tens of thousands of people took to social media to vent their disgust after plans for the joint activities were announced on Wednesday, with one commenter saying the Korean peninsula flag is “not my [expletive] flag.”

Others complained that “the Pyeongchang Olympics have already become the Pyongyang Olympics.”  [Christian Science Monitor]

This quote from a ROK Drop favorite Michael Breen is very true because once these Olympics are over and the Key Resolve exercise comes up we all know what will happen next:

“South Koreans feel sorry for the athletes who have trained so hard for the Olympics and are now being kicked out of the team to make way for North Koreans,” he said.

“They think there must be a better way, especially as a few months from now we all know we will be back to where we were with North Korea.”

Here is the stupidest dispute yet from North Korea with the United States:

North Korea demanded an apology from the United States on Wednesday for what it called “insolent outrageous behavior” in refusing to refer to the country by its official name — the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korean counsellor Ri Song Chol made the demand at a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly committee dealing with relations that the United States, calling the Trump administration’s action a serious political issue “related to sovereignty of an independent member state of the United Nations.”

He said the administration is driven by “dishonest and impure motivation to politicize every single protocol issue.”

Ri said his mission made a routine request to the U.S. Mission to renew a tax exemption card for one of its diplomats in early December and was very surprised when a week later the new card came back with the country’s name as “North Korea.” The cards allow U.N. diplomats to make purchases without paying tax.

The mission assumed it was a “technical mistake,” Ri said, but was shocked to hear from the U.S. Mission that the State Department in Washington refused to change the country’s name to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

He quoted a reply from the U.S. Mission saying “our DC office” said names on credentials for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea “indicate North Korea which is the conventional short abbreviation … so the tax card will remain the same.”  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

U.S. moves ships, bombers toward Korea ahead of Winter Olympics https://t.co/PNbRj1vJLj

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) January 15, 2018

This photo, provided by South Korea’s unification ministry on Jan. 15, 2018, shows Hyon Song-wol, the leader of the all-female Moranbong Band, attending inter-Korean talks on the North’s plan to send an art troupe to the South during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. (Yonhap)

Here is something I did not realize, Cuba has its own Korean diaspora:

When Joseph Juhn first traveled to Cuba in 2015, the driver who was waiting for him at the airport in Havana expected to pick up a Canadian national.

Juhn, a Korean American lawyer who was flying in from Montreal, was also taken by surprise by the woman in the driver’s seat: a fourth-generation Korean Cuban.

Patricia Lim was the descendant of Korean indentured laborers who first migrated to Mexico, then to Cuba in 1921.

Juhn, who is currently producing a documentary on the Korean diaspora in Cuba, said Thursday he learned the experiences of Korean Cubans have intertwined with the history of a divided peninsula.

Not only did Korean Cubans take to the streets of Havana to celebrate Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, they were deeply affected by the division of the peninsula.

“While we were still enjoying our emancipation, something happened that should have never happened,” wrote Patricia’s grandfather Lim Cheon-taek, in a letter he wrote to his children.

Juhn, who reads the letter in the film’s voice-over, interviewed dozens of Korean Cubans, including Lim’s many descendants, some of who recently visited South Korea where Lim is honored and buried at the Korean National Cemetery in Daejeon.  [UPI]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the Moon administration has found another way to evade UN sanctions on North Korea, paying to use North Korea’s ski resort and restarting Mt. Geumgang Tours:

While the Koreas will discuss further details through document exchanges at Panmunjeom, there are several aspects of the plans that may clash with the sanctions placed on Pyongyang.

U.N. Security Council sanctions ban the direct provision of cash to North Korea, but South Korean skiers may have to pay to use the ski resort for training.

Meanwhile, tours to Mount Geumgang, which began in 1998, have been suspended since 2008 when a South Korean tourist was shot dead by the North Korean military there due to a violation of tourist zone regulations.

Hosting a joint-cultural event may signal that the Koreas are open to the idea of resuming tours to the North’s scenic mountain, despite the sanctions.

Furthering the dispute is the fact that the South first proposed these plans to the North, which could send a message that Seoul is not complying with the international community’s hard-line stance toward Pyongyang over its nuclear program.

“We proposed these plans to the North in the high-level talks on Jan. 9,” Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung said in a briefing Wednesday.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but this was all very predictable considering President Moon is a big believer in the failed Sunshine Policy.  The original Sunshine Policy was bought and paid for initially with a huge $500 million bribe to the Kim regime.  Follow on bribes described as humanitarian and economic aid continued under the Sunshine Policy.  The aid would total to about a $1 billion a year.  To put this into context the South Koreans were paying more money to the Kim regime annually then what they were contributing to the US-ROK alliance.  The election of the conservative President Lee Myung-Bak changed this dynamic.

The current liberal Moon administration wants to go back to the days of paying off the Kim regime under the Sunshine Policy and the current talks over Winter Olympic participation is just the start.

In the least surprising news of the day the Russians are busy helping the North Koreans avoid sanctions:

U.S. President Donald Trump complained on Wednesday that Russia was helping North Korea to evade international sanctions, signaling frustration with a country he had hoped to forge friendly relations with after his 2016 election win.

“Russia is not helping us at all with North Korea,” Trump said during an Oval Office interview with Reuters. “What China is helping us with, Russia is denting. In other words, Russia is making up for some of what China is doing.”

China and Russia both signed onto the latest rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions against North Korea imposed last year. There was no immediate comment from the Russian embassy in Washington on Trump’s remarks.  [Reuters]

I would not be surprised at all if this is all coordinated between the Chinese and the Russians.  The Chinese can increase their sanctions efforts to relieve pressure the Trump administration is putting on them while fully knowing the Russians will pick up the slack of aiding the Kim regime.

Tragic is an understatement. https://t.co/6je2EM4u3i

— tomcoyner (@tomcoyner) January 17, 2018

Former President Lee Myung-bak speaks during a press conference at his office in Seoul on Jan. 17, 2018. Lee strongly protested prosecutors’ investigation of his former aides, denouncing it as “political retaliation” and urging prosecutors to take him on directly without harassing aides. (Yonhap)

As expected the Kim regime is continuing their efforts of trying to separate the ROK from the US in their strategy to seek a confederation on North Korean terms:

North Korea has reaffirmed its commitment to ultimately reunite with South Korea, but not before rejecting any involvement by the U.S. and any other foreign powers on their shared East Asian peninsula.

The phrase “By Our Nation Itself” has frequently appeared in North Korea’s official media, attributing it to various bodies of government or its supporters. It was first conceived during a 2000 joint declaration in which the leaders of the two rival states “agreed to solve the question of the country’s reunification independently by the concerted efforts of the Korean nation responsible for it,” as quoted by state-run website Uriminzokkiri, which was named after the phrase. Most recently, it popped up in an article published Wednesday by the official Korean Central News Agency, which included it in the context of current negotiations between the two Koreas.

In remarks attributed to pro-North Korea site Jaju Sibo, described by The Diplomat as the successor to an online outlet shut down by South Korea’s strict anti-communist laws, an individual titled the honorary chairman of the Association for Supporting Prisoners of Conscience of the Family Movement for Realizing Democracy in South Korea “urged the authorities to adhere to the principle of By Our Nation Itself in mending the north-south relations.”

He also said “the authorities should abolish institutional and legal barriers such as repeal of the ‘Security Law,'” or National Security Act, which forbade South Koreans from expressing support for North Korea or communism in general.  [Newsweek]