Navy recruits toss an assistant instructor into the air in a ceremony to mark the completion of their training at a boot camp in Jinhae on the south coast on July 7, 2017. (Photo courtesy of the Navy) (Yonhap)

I can’t understand why anyone is surprised by the synchronization of China and Russia’s North Korea strategy?  China and Russia have long had the common goal of weakening the United States’ commitment to alliances in Northeast Asia:

The proposal, and the strategic alignment between the two one-time rivals, raised some eyebrows amongst regional watchers. Russia has often backed China in U.N. Security Council negotiations, but during the Obama administration it was far less engaged on North Korea than China was. Xi’s government, meanwhile, had appeared prepared to begin taking a more assertive stance on the reclusive nation.

The recalibration serves a common goal that regional experts say is central to both Russian and Chinese foreign policy — loosening American alliances around the globe.

Former diplomats are split over the significance of the sudden chumminess. Robert Gallucci, the chief U.S. negotiator during the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1994, called it “unsettling” but “not catastrophic in any way.” He characterized the surprise sync as two nations seizing an opportunity to undercut the U.S.-Japan-South Korea alliance — not a herald of a new era of coordinated policy against the United States.

But some regional policy experts fear that a united Sino-Russian front on North Korea could make it more difficult for the U.S. to rein in Pyongyang’s burgeoning nuclear program.

“The fact that Moscow and Beijing are using virtually identical language and are very united at this time I think will provide great comfort to Kim Jong Un,” said David Pressman, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for political affairs who now works at the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm.  [The Hill]

You can read more at the link, but as I had previously mentioned this whole approach plays into the slow motion surrender of South Korea to North Korean hegemony and the end of the US-ROK alliance. Is it any wonder why China and Russia continue to enable the Kim regime?

Here is the typical response from the Pentagon to North Korean provocations:

Two U.S. long-range strategic bombers flew over the Korean Peninsula on Saturday in a stern warning to North Korea for its long-range missile launch last week.

The B-1B Lancers based in Guam practiced “attack capabilities,” accompanied by South Korea’s F-15K and the U.S. Air Force’s F-16 fighter jets, for several hours in the joint show of force, according to the allies.

In a rare move, they made public a photo and footage of the bombers dropping inert GBU-56 laser guided bombs onto a mock target at the Pilsung range in Gangwon Province.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but of interest is that the ROK Air Force escorted the B-1’s across the Korean peninsula and then handed off the escort to the Japanese Air Self Defense Force who escorted the bombers across the East China Sea back to Guam after the flight over the Korean peninsula.  That is actually great to see the cooperation between the ROK and Japan which I am sure the Kim regime took notice of.

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

Recent sat imagery shows #DPRK's Punggye-ri nuke test site is well-manicured, but little observable new activity https://t.co/2nQTm39iEh

— 38 North (@38NorthNK) July 7, 2017

Former U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrives to work at Seoul’s Yonsei University on July 6, 2017. Ban has been appointed by the university as a chair professor and head of the university’s body, which carries out missionary and volunteer work. (Yonhap)

Here is yet another example of the “expert class” advocating for a freeze deal with North Korea, this time it is coming from the New York Times:

William J. Perry, a former secretary of defense, said in January, “It is my strongly held view that we don’t have it in our power today to negotiate an end to the nuclear weapons program in North Korea.”

Rather, he said, the United States should aim to “lessen the danger” by seeking an end to missile tests.

Mark Fitzpatrick, a scholar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, this week advocated something known as “double suspension.” The United States would suspend its military exercises with the South while the North would suspend its nuclear and perhaps missile tests.

There has been a broader shift toward such thinking. The ambition is no longer to roll back North Korea’s programs, but to mitigate the risk they pose day to day.

This is a tacit acknowledgment that North Korea’s preferred negotiations model — in which the United States takes steps away from the Korean Peninsula in exchange for peace — is increasingly accepted.

Even if North Korea never achieves its vision of full victory, it has shifted the conversation to its terms.

Mr. Fitzpatrick and others say that the United States should pursue such steps only if they point toward North Korean disarmament, but some consider this optimistic.

Ankit Panda, a senior editor at The Diplomat, and Vipin Narang, a professor at M.I.T., wrote this week that there were “no good options” for the United States, “only bad ones and catastrophic ones.”

Any viable deal with the North Koreans, they suggested, “would require explicit acceptance of their nuclear state status and significant rollbacks to the U.S. conventional military presence in the Northeast Asian theater, both of which are nonstarters for the United States.”  [New York Times]

You can read more at the link.

I saw this the other day in the US media and now it has hit the Korean media as well:

Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park, two of the main actors in U.S. TV drama “Hawaii Five-O,” are quitting the show over unequal pay, according to Variety, a U.S. entertainment news outlet.

Park and Kim had been seeking pay equality with the show’s other main actors, Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan, but were unable to reach a satisfactory deal with the producer CBS Television Studios.

The final offer is known to have been 10 to 15 percent lower than the other two actors.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but for those that have not seen the show Alex O’laughlin is the lead character with Scott Caan playing his sidekick.  The characters played by Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park are supporting actors.  Is it normal for studios to pay supporting actors as much as lead actors?  If not why would CBS pay more money to actors who have less screen time then the lead actors?

Plus this show has about run its course any way, I will be surprised if it survives another season.

Here is another example of the “expert class” advocating for more negotiations with North Korea in order to sign a freeze deal:

That leaves “the least of the bad options,” which means calling for negotiations, as Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in America, has said. Talks could be started to explore “a variation on China’s proposal, backed by Russia, that the United States and the Republic of Korea suspend joint military exercises in exchange for North Korean suspension of nuclear and missile tests,” he says. South Korea and Japan back this idea, as do many former officials including former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry. A Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Korea that included former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen and Senator Sam Nunn, recommended such an approach last year.

“Rather than halting joint exercises, they could be reduced in scale and length or moved, if military professionals judge that this can be done without undermining their readiness purpose or the affirmation of U.S. deterrence commitments that they represent,” says Fitzpatrick. “Drills practicing ‘decapitation’ might be omitted, for example, as well as overflights by nuclear-capable aircraft, which are only for show. Scaling back the exercises in other ways could be tied to military confidence-building measures that might also relieve North Korea of some of the expense of conducting large-scale exercises.”  [Defense One]

You can read more at the link, but if a freeze deal is struck the next thing you will here from the expert class is to have the US sign a peace treaty with North Korea.  This whole approach plays into the slow motion surrender of South Korea to North Korean hegemony and the end of the US-ROK alliance. Is it any wonder why China and Russia continue to enable the Kim regime?

Korea ends HIV testing for English teachers https://t.co/5jWkGR7BBy pic.twitter.com/ISMgNSA9lG

— Expat Living (@expat_living) July 7, 2017