I hope Ms. Shin understands that peace is not going to allow her to go home to North Korea with out repercussions. As long as the Kim regime remains in place, defectors will never be welcomed back with open arms:
North Korean defector Shin Eun Ha, center, cries after a limousine carrying North Korean leader Kim Jong Un passes by her near a Hanoi hotel where Kim is staying, Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019, in Hanoi, Vietnam. Nam Hee Seok, a South Korean TV talk show on North Korea, right, who is patting the back of Shin, who is a regular guest on the program. On left is another North Korean defector who appears on the program. Shin and another North Korean defector have flown to Hanoi to wish for progress during the second summit between their former leader Kim Jong Un and Trump. (AP Photo Kim Hyung-jin)
A tearful North Korean defector shouted “Please, let me go back home!” as a black limousine carrying North Korean leader Kim Jong Un passed by her in Hanoi on Tuesday. Shin Eun Ha is one of two North Korean defectors who flew to Vietnam to wish for progress during a second summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump this week. They joined a crowd gathered near a Hanoi hotel where Kim is staying. Shin said she hopes the summit will help achieve peace so she can return to her hometown of Musan, which she fled in 2003. “For defectors, North Korea isn’t a country of hatred but a place that we are desperate to go back to even in our dreams,” Shin told The Associated Press. “I hope to see a day when we can go back to North Korea by taking a train like Kim Jong Un used to come here.” Later Tuesday, when Kim’s limousine left his hotel, escorted by motorcycle outriders, Shin cried and shouted repeatedly, “Please, let me go home.” “I don’t understand why we should live while missing our hometown,” Shin said. She and her fellow defector came as part of a popular South Korean TV program featuring North Korean defectors. Shin, a 30-year-old nurse in Seoul, has been a regular guest on the program, titled “Now On My Way to Meet You.”
So far nothing surprising by the President’s comments to Kim Jong-un:
Donald Trump has met Kim Jong-un for the second time at a summit in Vietnam, shaking hands and praising North Korea’s “unlimited” economic potential. The American and North Korean leaders greeted each other before a backdrop of their countries’ interwoven flags at a luxury hotel in Hanoi, the Vietnam capital. The pair shook hands for around 10 seconds, with Mr Trump patting Kim on the back before the men shared a laugh as they posed for photographs. In opening remarks before a one-on-one conversation due to last for 20 minutes, Mr Trump talked up the possibilities for growth and development in North Korea. “I think that your country has tremendous economic potential, unbelievable, unlimited,” Mr Trump told Kim. “And I think that you will have a tremendous future with your country, a great leader.”
He added: “I look forward to watching it happen and helping it to happen. And we will help it to happen.” Asked by a reporter if the pair might formally end the Korean War during their two-day summit, Mr Trump responded: “We’ll see.”
You can read more at the link, but those who closely follow North Korea know that it will never reach its full economic potential if the Kim regime remains in charge. Vietnam style economic development would lead to a challenge of the Cult of Kim. So isolated and highly regime controlled economic projects within North Korea such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the East Coast Tourism scheme is the type of economic development North Korea wants.
It also appears that the negotiators were not able to lock in whether a peace treaty would happen during the summit prior to the two leaders meeting. I guess we will see if anything big comes out of this summit over the next 24 hours.
Okinawans have been complaining about helicopter noise and safety issues with Marine Corps Air Station Futenma for many years, but they don’t like the relocation plan either:
Construction equipment is visible at Camp Schwab, Okinawa, Dec. 4, 2018. CARLOS M. VAZQUEZ II/STARS AND STRIPES
Just over half of Okinawa’s 1.15 million registered voters turned out Sunday to deliver a resounding “no” vote in a referendum on the plan to relocate Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. Out of the 601,733 voters who turned out, 434,149 — or approximately 72 percent — voted against the reclamation of land in Oura Bay at Camp Schwab for a new military runway. The plan is to close Futenma and relocate Marine air operations to Henoko on Okinawa’s less populated northern coast. The vote is sure to further complicate matters for Japan’s central government, which has pushed forward with the project for decades despite a persistent local protest movement. Construction of the runway is already underway and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said the relocation project will continue regardless of the referendum’s result.
Im skeptical of any NK watcher who does not recognize the primacy of ideology and the Kim family cult in all affairs and decisions in the DPRK. Instead of arrogantly retrofitting Western presumptions about what motivates NK behavior, see NK as it sees itself. NK is immutable. https://t.co/azbTmb6ox3
Kindergarten operators’ protestMembers from the Korea Kindergarten Association, an organization of private kindergartens, stage a protest against the revision of kindergarten-related laws in front of the National Assembly in Seoul on Feb. 25, 2019. (Yonhap)
You would think that after the Nut Rage drama Cho Hyun-ah would be keeping an extremely low profile:
Injuries allegedly caused by Cho’s violence / Courtesy of Cho’s husband
Cho Hyun-ah, 44, the Korean Air heiress who made headlines around the world for the 2014 “nut rage” incident, is being investigated for allegedly attacking her husband during divorce proceedings.
The Suseo Police Station in Seoul said Saturday that investigators started analyzing evidence provided by her husband, surnamed Park, 45, who claims Cho’s abusive behavior against him and five-year-old twin sons destroyed their marriage.
In a recently released video, Cho shouts “Die! Die!” at Park, who told investigators his wife repeatedly “strangled him” and threw a tablet PC at him, which seriously injured his toe.
On Feb. 20, Park said he was preparing for a long legal battle.
“I thought it would be better to put up with it, but when my child asked me, ‘Dad, would you protect me?,’ I was able to get up the nerve (to fight),” he wrote on Facebook.
“I’m afraid of standing up to a chaebol family, but as a father, I will protect my children.”
It is looking like things are moving closer to women having to register for the draft:
A federal judge has ruled that a men-only draft is unconstitutional, but he stopped short of ordering the Selective Service System to register women for military service. The Houston judge sided with a San Diego men’s advocacy group that challenged the government’s practice of having only men sign up for the draft, citing sex discrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause. “This case balances on the tension between the constitutionally enshrined power of Congress to raise armies and the constitutional mandate that no person be denied the equal protection of the law,” wrote U.S. District Judge Gray Miller of the Southern District of Texas.
A senior lawmaker from Korea’s ruling Democratic Party is on the record saying that their support among people in their 20s is falling because those people were “poorly educated under conservative administrations.”
N.K. to not issue anti-U.S. stampsThis document, released by the Seoul-based Korea Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation on Feb. 25, 2019, shows a North Korean plan to issue stamps for this year. According to the plan, North Korea will not issue anti-American stamps, which it has published every year since 1952. (Yonhap)
