The Committee for Human Rights In North Korea has published an open letter to President Trump asking him to use his Twitter account to promote human rights in North Korea:

To be sure, the national security of the American people and that of our allies is incredibly important and certainly your number one responsibility. However, human rights for the North Korean people are important as well.

In the Art of the Deal, your closing words include, “In my life, there are two things I’ve found I’m very good at: overcoming obstacles and motivating good people to do their best work.” You have also demonstrated a mastery of highly effective and spontaneous communications. Your unconventional communication and problem-solving talents are sorely needed, now.

Much like you have reduced the influence of the conventional news media by communicating with the American people directly through your Twitter account, an approach to North Korea’s problem sets is needed to blast through the traditional conventions that have not worked.

So beyond thumbing through the playbook of failed engagement and negotiation strategies, or placing over-reliance on an unreliable China, do what you do best—communicate directly to the people through Twitter. Use this venue to talk directly to the 25 million North Koreans who suffer under a brutal, multi-layered system of repression. Yes, North Koreans do not have access to your Tweets, but nearly everybody else does and numerous human rights groups have ways of sending those tweets into North Korea through surreptitious means.  [HRNK]

You can read the full letter at the link.

I wonder how the North Koreans could even find the USS Michigan much less sink it?  Sounds like another empty threat from the Kim regime:

After the United States deployed a nuclear-powered submarine and an aircraft carrier to South Korean waters amid high inter-Korean tensions, North Korea on Sunday threatened to sink the underwater vessel, accusing America of stepping up military intimidation.

“The moment the USS Michigan tries to budge even a little, it will be doomed to face the miserable fate of becoming a underwater ghost without being able to come to the surface,” the North’s propaganda website Uriminzokkiri said in a posting.

“The urgent fielding of the nuclear submarine in the waters off the Korean Peninsula, timed to coincide with the deployment of the super aircraft carrier strike group, is intended to further intensify military threats toward our republic,” the website claimed.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on what is going on with the USS Carl Vinson otherwise known in the media as “Trump’s Armada”:

The USS Carl Vinson, a U.S. aircraft carrier, on Saturday started a joint naval drill with the South Korean Navy in the East Sea amid heightened tensions from North Korea’s failed ballistic missile launch earlier in the morning, defense officials here said.

“South Korea and U.S. strike forces began a drill in the East Sea from 6 p.m. today against the backdrop of the current security situation,” the South Korean Navy said.

No specific schedule for the rendezvous was released to the media yet, but the exercise is expected to continue until sometime next week.

At the core of the naval exercise lies the missile warning informational link exercise (LINKEX) that monitors, traces and intercepts any intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) from North Korea.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Possibly the best ever anecdote of a conversation with a North Korean, from @lgflake https://t.co/CWFK1pfuAk via pic.twitter.com/F0BTdK6JRj

— Alastair Gale (@AlastairGale) April 28, 2017

This photo, taken on April 29, 2017, shows South Korea’s capital Seoul obscured by fine dust. (Yonhap)

It is pretty clear that over the next month enormous pressure is going to be put on North Korea to give up their nuclear and ICBM programs as even the European powers are now deploying military assets into the region:

France’s Mistral amphibious assault carrier docked in Nagasaki, Japan on April 29 in advance of military exercises to be conducted with the U.K., U.S., and Japan. Nagasaki is the closest major Japanese port to South Korea, and coming at a time of tension on the peninsula, the French and U.K. naval presence sends a strong message to both China and North Korea. Japan’s increased naval activity is also welcome support for South Korea, and will decrease diplomatic tension between the two natural allies. The U.K. and French presence shows that NATO, including the U.S., is strongly behind South Korea.  [Forbes]

You can read more at the link.

As I figured the statement made by President Trump in regards to South Korea paying for THAAD is related to upcoming US-ROK cost sharing negotiations:

National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster said Sunday that the U.S. will indeed pay for the roughly $1 billion THAAD missile defense system in South Korea, amid neighboring North Korea’s repeated ballistic test launches.

“What I told our South Korean counterpart is until any renegotiation, that the deals in place, we’ll adhere to our word,” McMaster told “Fox News Sunday.”

He spoke days after President Trump said South Korea should pay for the anti-missile system and hours after Seoul said that McMaster had assured its chief national security officer, Kim Kwan-jin, about the deal.

“The last thing I would ever do is contradict the president of the United States,” McMaster also told Fox News. “And that’s not what it was. What the president has asked us to do, is to look across all of our alliances and to have appropriate burden sharing-responsibility sharing. We’re looking at that with our great ally South Korea, we’re looking at that with NATO.”  [Fox News]

You can read more at the link.

With the US military ready to respond to any nuclear or ICBM provocations from North Korea, I wonder if the Kim regime is setting conditions for justifying a provocation in the Yellow Sea instead with this recent announcement:

North Korea argued Saturday that South Korean navy warships have increasingly violated their disputed western sea border, heightening tension on the Korean Peninsula.

“The South Korean puppet navy warships’ intrusion into the territorial waters of the DPRK side in the West Sea of Korea has recently been on explosive increase,” the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in an English-language report monitored in Seoul. DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.

The KCNA argued that 101 navy warships infiltrated the inter-Korean maritime border on 81 occasions in April, which is almost twofold tallied in March.  [Korea Herald]

The Kim regime has never agreed to the Northern Limit Line established after the Korean War in the Yellow Sea.  They have a different definition of the border which means from their point of view the ROK ships are intruding in their territory.

North Korea may calculate that launching a provocation in the Yellow Sea may not trigger a US military response and at the same time allow the Kim regime to show power and save face despite the massive pressure the regime is facing.

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

The comment by President Trump that he wants South Korea to pay for the THAAD deployment is not going over very well in South Korea as one would expect.  Here is how many citizens feel about paying for a system intended to protect them:

“We’re already upset about THAAD being deployed in our town, and now they want us to pay for it, too? South Korea can’t pay, so just send it back to the US,” said Lim Soon-boon, 61, on Apr. 28. “At first, the US said it would be paying for the deployment, so it’s ridiculous for them to start asking us to pay for it now.” Lim is head of the women’s association in Soseong Village, Chojeon Township, Seongju County, North Gyeongsang Province, where the THAAD missile defense system is being deployed. “I’m grateful to Trump for bringing us to the realization that the US’s ultimate goal was to sell THAAD to South Korea,” said Bae Mi-yeong, 39, a Seongju resident.

On the day that US President Donald Trump asked South Korea to pay US$1 billion to deploy THAAD and South Korea’s Defense Ministry rejected the request, a group chatroom on KakaoTalk that is used by more than 800 residents of Seongju was filled with comments about “bastards selling out the country” and “morons in the Defense Ministry.”

“It seems as if not a single thing has gone right with the THAAD deployment. It doesn’t make sense for the Defense Ministry to deny that when the US president is openly asking for US$1 billion,” said Kim Chung-hwan, 57, co-chair of the Seongju Committee Fighting for the Cancellation of the THAAD Deployment. “Is South Korea a colony that has to cough up cash whenever the US wants it to?” asked Park Hee-ju, 48, who is a member of the Gimcheon city council as well as co-chair of the Gimcheon Civic Action Committee Against the THAAD Deployment.  [Hankyoreh]

Here is what the Presidential candidates had to say about paying for THAAD with most of them as expected taking the populist we are not paying for THAAD stance:

Presidential candidates on Friday argued over Washington’s pressure on Seoul to pay for a US missile defense system to be stationed on the peninsula.

The top five candidates sat in a televised debated hosted by the National Election Broadcasting Debate Commission, the last debate to be held prior to the election on May 9.

The session started off with liberal candidates raising objections to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and its deployment process.

“We have to tell (the US) to take THAAD back as we will not pay for it, for the sake of our nation’s dignity,” said Sim Sang-jeung of the progressive minority Justice Party.  (…….)  Front-runner Moon Jae-in of the main liberal Democratic Party of Korea, partly agreed with Sim’s argument.

“We have lost bargaining power over the issue because several parties and candidates unconditionally consented (to THAAD),” Moon said.

But he took a more moderate stance, claiming that the detailed discussions should be handed over to the incoming government.

“More diplomatic discussion and public consultation is required,” he said.

“Also, the billion-dollar amount is a huge financial burden upon the South Korean government, so a parliamentary ratification is necessary (to decide on the payment).”  Korea Herald]

There was at least one candidate that actually analyzed Trump’s remarks instead of taking a populist stance:

“I believe that President Trump has other purposes in mentioning (the THAAD expenses),” said Yoo.

“It has already been agreed that (Seoul) would not pay (for the deployment), so when I become president, I will talk (with the US) so that we won’t have to pay.”  [Korea Herald]

Mr. Yoo is likely right that President Trump has other purposes with the THAAD comment which I think may have been intended to set conditions for USFK cost sharing negotiations.  Korea will likely not end up paying for the THAAD deployment, but I would be surprised if they don’t end up paying more for USFK cost sharing once the current agreement ends next year.