Tag: Moon Jae-in

There has to be something to the current scandals that the Blue House has been denying considering that President Moon has replaced Im Jong-seok:

President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday replaced his chief of staff and two other senior secretaries in what was widely seen as a move to put behind a scandal that is apparently hurting his approval rating.
The president named Noh Young-min, currently the ambassador to China, as his new chief of staff.
Noh is a three-term lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Party who also served as a co-chair of Moon’s election camp in the 2017 presidential race.
The new chief of staff said he will work to make up for his shortcomings by listening to what others have to say.
“The fact is I am a person who falls short in many ways. That is why I am also afraid (of taking the job). I plan to make up for my shortcomings by listening. I promise to listen to anyone, about any subject and any policy,” he told reporters.
The 61-year-old will replace Im Jong-seok, also a former lawmaker of the ruling party.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember Im Jong-seok has a prolific communist and pro-North Korean past.  You can read a detailed background about how immersed Im is in communist ideology was at this link.  Im was also less than a decade ago collecting royalties for the Kim regime.

The fact that Moon removed someone highly trusted by North Korea shows that there must be something to the accusations of domestic spying, meddling in private business affairs, and manipulating the national debt.

Kim Jong Un wrote a two-page new years letter to Moon Jae-in today. In it he:

– Expressed regret for not visiting Seoul in 2018
– Said wanted to meet Moon 'frequently' in 2019
– Would work w/ Moon for "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula together"https://t.co/QJqMKnMg5e pic.twitter.com/8cJahPQar5

— Chad O'Carroll (@chadocl) December 30, 2018

It seems like every week President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating continues to fall to a new low, however I don’t think it is low enough to really effect any change in his current North Korea policies yet:

President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating dropped to a record low last week, a poll showed Monday.

According to a survey by pollster Realmeter, 47.1 percent of the public said they approved of Moon’s performance, down 1.4 percentage points from last week. 

Amid an ongoing controversy over the alleged surveillance of civilians by Cheong Wa Dae, the approval rating fell to the lowest in three weeks, according to Realmeter. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but his approval rating continues to fall despite controlling most of the news media in South Korea and imprisoning and launching lawsuits against journalists that oppose him.

Via a reader tip comes news that President Moon’s official aircraft was blacklisted by the US for traveling to North Korea: 

President Moon Jae-in’s official airplane has been blacklisted by the U.S. because it had flown him to North Korea, it emerged Wednesday. The official plane even had to be cleared for a visit to the U.S. in September after it was slapped with a 180-day ban. 
One diplomatic source said, “A blacklisted plane can only travel to the U.S. by special permission.” 
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in September 2017 that bans all aircraft that traveled to North Korea from entering the U.S. for 180 days. But exceptions can be made. 
A U.S. government official confirmed that Moon’s plane had to receive authorization even when Moon went to New York on Sept. 24 to attend the UN General Assembly and meet Trump.

Chosun Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but by getting the rail and roads connected with North Korea like President Moon has been pushing hard to do, he can avoid the aircraft blacklisting problem.  

I am sure that this is something that enough cash sent up North can make happen.  His dad needed $500 million to host a summit in Pyongyang, so I am sure Kim Jong-un’s price to go to Seoul will be much higher:

Anchor:  North Korea continues to remain silent about a prospective visit to South Korea by leader Kim Jong-un.  If the visit is to take place before the end of the year, as the South Korean government hopes, there may only be a matter of days left to confirm a date and make arrangements.  Kim Bum-soo has more.

Report: It was at September’s inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang about three months ago when leaders of the two Koreas first held out the possibility of meeting again in Seoul.

[Sound bite: N. Korean leader Kim Jong-un (Korean)]
“I promised to President Moon Jae-in that I will visit Seoul in the near future. We will put an end to the tragedy of division as soon as possible and hold our hands together to embark on a sacred journey to peace and prosperity.”

[Sound bite: President Moon Jae-in (Korean)]
“I requested Chairman Kim Jong-un to visit Seoul and he decided to come to Seoul in the near future. ‘Near future’ means ‘within this year’ unless there is a special circumstances. Chairman Kim’s visit to Seoul would be the first by a North Korean leader and it will provide a breakthrough to the inter-Korean relations.”

Now, in December, with just a few weeks remaining in the year, the South still hasn’t heard any confirmation date from the North.  That’s according to Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, who told lawmakers Friday the South and North have been in talks to try to make the visit happen.  [KBS World Radio]

You can read more at the link, but it is not surprising at all to me the hypocrisy of how the Moon administration wants to champion someone with a visit to Seoul who has killed many Koreans in recent years, launched a nerve agent attack in an international airport just two years ago, has active gulags, still has kidnapped South Koreans, among a host of other provocations while at the same time regularly bashing the Japanese for things that happened 75-100 years ago.

Is anyone in the Moon administration going to demand apologies from Kim Jong-un for his regime’s transgressions against South Korea like they regularly demand from Japan?  Better yet what about demands for compensation for the victims of the Kim regime’s attacks?

The only problem with this is that Kim Jong-un’s wish is to keep his nukes and have sanctions dropped:

US President Donald Trump will grant North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un his wishes if he delivers on denuclearisation, the South Korean president said Sunday, following talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

As officials work to arrange a second meeting between Trump and Kim, South Korea’s Moon Jae-in relayed a message to reporters given to him by the US president to pass on to the North’s leader.

“And the message was that President Trump has a very friendly view of Chairman Kim and that he likes him, and so he wishes Chairman Kim would implement the rest of their agreement and that he would make what Chairman Kim wants come true,” Moon told the Yonhap news agency while en route to New Zealand.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link.