Wasn’t that nice of North Korea to provide some fireworks prior to the Trump-Xi summit? In all seriousness, the Kim regime does these launches to keep themselves relevant on the world stage. Every time there is an important summit involving the ROK, Japan, China, or the U.S., they fire missiles, and the international media dutifully reports on it, justifying why the Kim regime conducts them in the first place, and the cycle continues:

North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea within hours of each other Sunday, ahead of a high-stakes summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping set for later this week.

The missile were detected about three hours apart — the first at around 3:00 p.m. and the second at roughly 5:50 p.m., both launched from the Wonsan area, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

The first missile flew about 450 kilometers, while the second flew more than 600 km, the JCS said, adding that further analysis was under way to determine the exact specifications.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Say what you want about the CCP, but they aren’t wrong here. If you are taking government handouts it seems luxuries like traveling to Hong Kong to a concert should not be allowed:

A woman from a low-income family in China crossed over into Hong Kong to get to a concert she had spent months saving up for.

It was a trip that Beijing’s vast surveillance apparatus didn’t miss. Now her family face the prospect of losing their government benefits for splurging on “high-end consumption.”

The incident has sparked massive debate across Chinese social media over whether those receiving benefits are also entitled to small luxuries. It’s also a reminder of the staggering extent of the Chinese government’s surveillance system, one turbocharged by advances in AI and the embrace of digital payments. (…..)

For many of the legions of K-Pop fans in mainland China, Hong Kong is the most accessible place to see a K-Pop concert. For the past decade, Beijing has placed an unofficial ban on performances by Korean artists on the mainland as it feuds with Seoul over trade and the presence of US weapons in South Korea.

In late August in Hong Kong there was a two-day international music awards festival featuring performances from different K-Pop bands, including some famous ones such as ALLDAY PROJECT, aespa, BABYMONSTER, RIIZE, Super Junior and TOMORROW X TOGETHER.

CNN

You can read more at the link.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

Here is another clever use of North Korea by Putin, importing a slave labor force:

 North Korea has sent around 100,000 workers abroad, mostly to China and Russia, with some involved in manufacturing military drones at Russian factories in violation of U.N. sanctions, an international monitoring report showed Wednesday.

The latest report by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) showed that North Korea continues to deploy workers overseas despite a U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolution requiring U.N. member countries to repatriate North Korean nationals earning income within their jurisdictions by the end of 2019.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I would think the only diplomacy that China would be supportive of between the U.S. and North Korea would be one that leads to the reduction or removal of U.S. troops in South Korea. If China is signaling little to no support for Trump’s diplomatic efforts with North Korea that likely means discussions about U.S. troop reductions is not being considered:

China may not block the resumption of diplomacy between the United States and North Korea but is unlikely to play a “central” role in their reengagement, a former senior U.S. diplomat said Thursday, ahead of the upcoming summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Daniel Kritenbrink, who served as assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs from 2021-25, made the comment in response to written questions from Yonhap News Agency, noting that Beijing will be “suspicious” of any significant thaw in the Washington-Pyongyang relations.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.