The Biden administration is currently helping the Iranians cash in on hostage taking:
The Biden administration is working to free billions of dollars in Iranian assets currently frozen in South Korea, the country’s Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday.
There is currently about $7 billion in Iranian assets frozen in two banks based in Seoul, blocked by U.S. economic sanctions. Korea’s foreign ministry confirmed on Tuesday that a deal had been reached to free those assets.
“Our government has been in talks with Iran about ways to use the frozen assets, and the Iran side has expressed its consent to the proposals we have made,” the ministry said in a statement. “The actual unfreezing of the assets will be carried out through consultations with related countries, including the United States.”
Tensions rose between the two countries after Iran seized a South Korean oil tanker in early January. South Korea’s foreign ministry has denied the seizure is linked to the frozen assets.
Eight foreigners and one South Korean have tested positive for the new coronavirus after attending a party at a U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) service member’s home, officials said Monday.
The party was held Feb. 13 near Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometers south of Seoul, and attended by 19 foreigners and two South Koreans, according to officials at the Pyeongtaek city government. The service member works on the base.
Police have been asked to locate two of the attendees, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, the officials said. The other 10 tested negative.
The group met on Instagram and gathered from across the country, including North Gyeongsang, South Chungcheong and Gyeonggi provinces.
Ahead of anniv. of popular uprising against Japanese rule South Korea’s Taegeukgi flags are attached to trees in Seoul on Feb. 23, 2021, six days ahead of the 102nd anniversary of the 1919 popular movement that protested for independence from Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. (Yonhap)
More details are coming out about the man who defected by swimming in a wet suit and then working his way across the DMZ after landing on the beach:
A North Korean man was caught on military surveillance cameras along the east coast 10 times after he swam ashore in the South last week, but soldiers failed to notice eight of them even after alarm bells rang, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Tuesday.
The announcement was a key point of the results of the JCS’ weeklong probe into the Feb. 16 incident. The North Korean man was ultimately captured more than six hours later inside a restricted area north of the Civilian Control Line in the eastern border town of Goseong.
You can read much more at the link, but the man defected overnight which leads me to believe the ROK Army soldiers manning the cameras were probably sleeping on duty. The man wasn’t detected by the guards manning the camera until the next morning.
The lockdown didn’t last long and instead was shifted to focus on people potentially exposed to the coronavirus:
Osan Air Base, about 40 miles south of Seoul, returned to its pandemic normal Saturday, a day after its commander declared a lockdown to trace the contacts of a service member who tested positive.
Osan allowed most of its personnel to get back to their weekend routines, save those who had visited a list of hot spots associated with its first service member infected with the coronavirus.
Bonnie Kristian writing in Business Insider makes this one claim I can agree with in her article, that the Kim regime will not denuclearize:
Kim at what was said to be a missile test site at an undisclosed location in North Korea, May 15, 2017.
If Biden and his team are serious about making headway on their first two strategic goals – threat reduction and humanitarian gains on the Korean Peninsula – they must drop the third. For progress with North Korea, forget denuclearization.
I have been saying this for many years that North Korea will never completely denuclearize. The Kim regime has seen what happened to Saddam and Gaddafi after they gave up their WMD programs, plus nukes is one military advantage they have over the South Koreans to level the military playing field with them. Nuclear weapons are clearly extremely important to regime security.
With that all said the rest of Kristian’s article I do not agree with:
Working-level diplomacy by the Biden administration could accomplish a nuclear freeze, regular inspections of Kim’s arsenal, or even some reduction of his nuclear stockpile or missile systems. It could produce, seven decades late, a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War. It could bargain for concessions from Pyongyang by offering cessation of US sanctions that harm ordinary North Koreans. It could permit expanded, Korean-directed engagement between North and South Korea, including trade and reconnection of divided families.
A nuclear freeze does not cost the Kim regime anything and in return they get sanctions dropped, all the free money from South Korean engagement, and a Korean War peace treaty to advance their confederation strategy. This is Kim Jong-un’s dream deal!
This is where Kristian is totally wrong:
Working-level diplomacy by the Biden administration could accomplish a nuclear freeze, regular inspections of Kim’s arsenal, or even some reduction of his nuclear stockpile or missile systems. It could produce, seven decades late, a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War. It could bargain for concessions from Pyongyang by offering cessation of US sanctions that harm ordinary North Koreans. It could permit expanded, Korean-directed engagement between North and South Korea, including trade and reconnection of divided families.
A nuclear freeze costs the Kim regime nothing and they can end it at a time of their choosing. In return for essentially doing nothing they would get sanctions dropped, free money from South Korean engagement, and a Korean War peace treaty to advanced their Confederation Strategy; this is Kim Jong-un’s dream deal!
Kristian is willing to give Kim Jong-un his dream deal because she thinks this will happen:
It could take steps toward making North Korea a far more normal country, opening the “hermit kingdom” to the global culture and economy and giving its people a shot at deprograming themselves from their government’s sadistic brainwashing. And it could ultimately lay the groundwork for a new era in North Korean foreign relations, one which might mature someday, probably long after this administration is over, into a denuclearized and even democratic Pyongyang.
As long as the Kim regime is in power North Korea is never going to be normal no matter what deal is cut with them. The Kim regime is never going to be democratic either. The engagement crowd has for decades been making these claims.
They continue to make these claims even when dropping sanctions and engagement deals with South Korea have been done before and all the Kim regime did was use the money to modernize their military and advance their nuclear & ballistic missile programs. The regime is not interested in greatly increasing the living standards of the North Korean people other than the regime elite in Pyongyang. They want to keep the general population poor and reliant on the regime and indoctrinated with their propaganda.
I believe any deal with North Korea should focus on the removal of their frontline artillery systems and troop deployment along the DMZ. This should be followed by scrapping their intermediate and intercontinental ballistic missile programs. There are many other concessions I think the regime should make, but these two are both real concessions by the regime that improves both ROK and American security.
N. Korea’s quarantine efforts against pandemic Officials disinfect a bus in Pyongyang amid the coronavirus pandemic, in this undated photo released by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Feb. 19, 2021. North Korea has claimed to be coronavirus-free, but it has implemented relatively swift and extensive antivirus efforts since early last year, including border controls restricting movement of people and goods between the North and China. (Yonhap)
Sitting on an airplane for over two hours to nowhere in particular during a pandemic is not high on my list of things to do. Apparently there are enough people willing to do these flights to make it profitable:
Korean Air Lines Co., South Korea’s biggest carrier, has joined other airlines to offer “flights to nowhere” as a way to ride out the coronavirus crisis, the transport ministry said Sunday.
Korean Air plans to use the A380 passenger jet on the route from Incheon to the East Sea, Busan, Jeju Island, the Straits of Korea and back to Incheon on Feb. 27, a ministry official said.
The entertainment-packed flight to nowhere will take two hours and 20 minutes. It is priced at 219,000 won-700,000 won (US$200-$630) depending on cabin classes, he said.
The company has yet to decide whether to continue to sell the flights to nowhere in March.
Local airlines such as Asiana Airlines Inc. and Jeju Air Co. began selling such flights late last year. Asiana still offers the product, but Jeju Air’s is no longer in service.
This shows how little President Trump understands the Kim regime. Having an American President taking him home makes Kim look weak and goes against the carefully crafted image that Kim projects in North Korea. There is just no way he could have accepted that offer:
The three-part series, titled “Trump Takes on the World,” discloses new details about Trump and Kim’s ultimately unsuccessful negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program.
