It appears there may be more work going on in regards to North Korea submarine launched ballistic missile program:

As concerns over North Korea’s missile threats continue, 38 North wrote in a recent analysis that Pyongyang was continuing work on its second known submersible ballistic missile testing facility at the Nampo navy shipyard on the country’s west coast.

Analyzing commercial satellite imagery from Sept. 1, 38 North, which is run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, wrote last Thursday that construction seemed to have taken place during the past five months on four support superstructures of the stand, located on a barge, and possibly in the area of the forward hull.

Imagery from Sept. 21 showed a portal crane on the east side had been rotated, and work was being done on the barge, though the nature of the work could not be determined from the imagery.

“Clearly visible in all images is the central ring that is used to support a missile launch tube during testing,” wrote 38 North. “During a test, support cables are connected from the center and top of the launch tube to the four support towers.”

Among several possibilities, North Korea might be trying to expand its submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) development program to the west coast, or salvage the second barge, which was first identified last April, for parts to maintain the originally acquired barge based at the Sinpo south shipyard, which has been used since 2014.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

I don’t know who is worse, the people making pills from aborted babies or those willing to purchase them?:

More than 8,500 pills made from baby flesh have been found over the past three years, a main opposition party lawmaker said Tuesday.

The pills, allegedly made from the flesh of aborted or stillborn babies, were mostly smuggled from China in the false belief they are good for health.

According to data obtained by Rep. Park Myung-jae of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, 8,511 capsules were found from 2014 to June this year.

In 2014, 6,694 pills were found, 251 in 2015 and 476 last year.

Rep. Park said most of the pills were smuggled by international mail.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

A war in the Korean peninsula could cost thousands of US and Korean lives daily, we only stand to gain from talks https://t.co/H3G8btCXlZ

— William J. Perry (@SecDef19) October 1, 2017

Statues symbolizing comfort women are temporarily set up in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Oct. 2, 2017, prior to their transportation to regional towns to signify their homecoming for the Chuseok holiday. Donga, a bus company, has been operating five buses since mid-August that carry the statues symbolizing Korean women who were sexually enslaved by Japanese soldiers during World War II. The statues will be taken to different towns, including Suwon, Daejeon and Jeonju, on the occasion of World Comfort Women’s Day. (Yonhap)

The Russians are at it again:

A major Russian telecommunications company appears to have begun providing an Internet connection to North Korea. The new link supplements one from China and will provide back-up to Pyongyang at a time the US government is reportedly attacking its Internet infrastructure and pressuring China to end all business with North Korea.

The connection, from TransTeleCom, began appearing in Internet routing databases at 09:08 UTC on Sunday, or around 17:38 Pyongyang time on Sunday evening. Internet routing databases map the thousands of connections between telecom providers and enable computers to figure out the best route to a destination.  (…….)

On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that US Cyber Command has been carrying out denial of service attacks against North Korean hackers affiliated with the Reconnaissance General Bureau. The attacks attempt to overwhelm their computers and the Internet connection with traffic making them slow or impossible to use.

The US cyber attack was due to end on Saturday, reported the Post. That means the new Russian connection went online just after the US Cyber Command attack ended.  [38 North]

You can read more at the link.

I will give economist Mr. Harry Broadman the author of the below article credit for being creative.  However, for his idea to work the US would have to be willing to accept goods made by near slave labor and the enrichment of a regime that will continue military preparations to conquer South Korea:

At the risk of being cast as a dreamer, for the sake of argument I’ll posit an objective that has concrete, recognizable features for which in the long run one might dare to aim: a U.S.-North-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (USNSK-FTA).  Since the current U.S. administration has called the existing U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS-FTA) a ‘bad deal’ and has already signaled to Seoul that Washington will re-negotiate the agreement, maybe President Trump should completely catch Kim Jong-un off-guard and invite him to the negotiating FTA table?

This will sound very far-fetched to most. But compared to the current dangerous stalemate with the threatened use of nuclear weapons, maybe it’s not so nutty.  [Forbes]

You can read more at the link.

Here is a media leak if true that provides some insight into the US negotiating strategy in regards to the modifications the US wants in the US-ROK Free Trade Agreement:

In an Oval Office meeting earlier this month, President Trump gave his top trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, an Art of the Deal-style coaching session on how to negotiate with the South Koreans.

Trump’s impromptu coaching came in the middle of a pivotal conversation with top officials about whether or not to withdraw from the U.S.-Korean trade deal. Sources familiar with the conversation recounted the exchange for Axios, and the White House did not dispute this account.

A number of senior officials and cabinet secretaries were present for the conversation, including Defense Secretary Mattis, Agriculture Secretary Perdue, and Secretary of State Tillerson. At issue was whether the U.S. would withdraw from the Korean trade deal — an action Trump threatened but still hasn’t done.

“You’ve got 30 days, and if you don’t get concessions then I’m pulling out,” Trump told Lighthizer.

“Ok, well I’ll tell the Koreans they’ve got 30 days,” Lighthizer replied.

“No, no, no,” Trump interjected. “That’s not how you negotiate. You don’t tell them they’ve got 30 days. You tell them, ‘This guy’s so crazy he could pull out any minute.'”

“That’s what you tell them: Any minute,” Trump continued. “And by the way, I might. You guys all need to know I might. You don’t tell them 30 days. If they take 30 days they’ll stretch this out.”  [Axios]

First of all conversations like this should not be leaked out of the White House.  These leaks have to stop. Secondly as the article states the crazy approach only works if people think you will actually follow through with the threat.  That is why Kim Jong-un’s rhetoric is taken so seriously.

field of dreams, starring Kim Jong Un pic.twitter.com/290IPADuMI

— Oliver Hotham (@OliverHotham) October 2, 2017

Gen. Jeong Kyeong-doo (front, R), chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), visits a front-line outpost near the Korean border on Sept. 30, 2017, in this photo from the JCS. Jeong made the visit as South Koreans go on their 10-day Chuseok (harvest moon) holiday. (Yonhap)

It is pretty amazing that the Egyptians had the nerve to accept $300 million in military aid from the United States and then turn around purchase $23 million in contraband arms from the North Koreans:

Last August, a secret message was passed from Washington to Cairo warning about a mysterious vessel steaming toward the Suez Canal. The bulk freighter named Jie Shun was flying Cambodian colors but had sailed from North Korea, the warning said, with a North Korean crew and an unknown cargo shrouded by heavy tarps.

Armed with this tip, customs agents were waiting when the ship entered Egyptian waters. They swarmed the vessel and discovered, concealed under bins of iron ore, a cache of more than 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades. It was, as a United Nations report later concluded, the “largest seizure of ammunition in the history of sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

But who were the rockets for? The Jie Shun’s final secret would take months to resolve and would yield perhaps the biggest surprise of all: The buyers were the Egyptians themselves.

A U.N. investigation uncovered a complex arrangement in which Egyptian business executives ordered millions of dollars worth of North Korean rockets for the country’s military while also taking pains to keep the transaction hidden, according to U.S. officials and Western diplomats familiar with the findings. The incident, many details of which were never publicly revealed, prompted the latest in a series of intense, if private, U.S. complaints over Egyptian efforts to obtain banned military hardware from Pyongyang, the officials said.  [Washington Post]

I recommend reading the whole thing at the link since it is a long, but interesting read about North Korea’s history of selling illicit weapons.