Tag: Moon Jae-in

I think this is a sign of just how off balance President Trump has the Kim regime right now, that Kim Jong-un had to have an emergency summit with Moon Jae-in just to figure out how to move forward:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met for the second time in a month on Saturday, holding a surprise summit at a border truce village to discuss Kim’s potential meeting with President Donald Trump, Moon’s office said.

Kim and Moon met hours after South Korea expressed relief over revived talks for a summit between Trump and Kim following a whirlwind 24 hours that saw Trump cancel the highly anticipated meeting before saying it’s potentially back on.

Moon, who brokered the summit between Washington and Pyongyang, likely used Saturday’s meeting to confirm Kim’s willingness to enter nuclear negotiations with Trump and clarify what steps Kim has in mind in the process of denuclearization, said Hong Min, a senior analyst at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification.  [Associated Press]

I can only imagine what they talked about, but I would not be surprised if the conversation included the fact that the usual playbook is not working on President Trump.  The past strategy of the North Koreans giving little to nothing in return for massive aid and lifting of sanctions is clearly not going to happen this time.  The Trump administration has made it pretty clear that real denuclearization is what will happen if a deal is to be done.

By the way does anyone want to provide their own caption of the below picture?:

This is a bit of a slap in the face of Moon Jae-in that the Trump administration did not trust telling him of the upcoming summit cancellation:

Washington did not inform Seoul of its decision to call off its planned summit with North Korea until it was reported by media.

A high-ranking official of South Korea’s presidential office said the U.S. government notified Seoul of its move almost at the same time when it was announced to the public.

The White House was known to have first informed South Korean Ambassador to the U.S. Cho Yoon-je, who then delivered the news to the presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae.

According to American media outlets, the U.S. government began discussing the possibility of canceling the U.S.-North Korea summit Wednesday night local time.

The South Korean official said there were no advance discussions on the matter between Seoul and Washington.  [KBS World News]

Korean residents in the United States wait for South Korean President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook outside the former Korean legation building in Washington on May 22, 2018. The presidential couple visited the building on its reopening day as an exhibition hall and a museum. The legation, opened in February 1889, was Korea’s first diplomatic mission in a Western country. (Yonhap)

It looks like President Trump is making it very clear that there will be no long drawn out denuclearization process with North Korea like we have seen with past failed deals:

U.S. President Donald Trump mentioned the possibility of delaying his planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in a meeting with President Moon Jae-in at the White House, Wednesday.

Trump said “all-in-one” denuclearization would be better than an incremental process with incentives, and it should be done over a very short period of time.

“There are certain conditions that we want. And I think we’ll get those conditions. And if we don’t, we won’t have the meeting,” Trump said. “Frankly, there’s a chance to be a great, great meeting for North Korea and a great meeting for the world. If it doesn’t happen, maybe it will happen later.”

He added, “It may not work out for June 12.”

But the U.S. president assured Kim of the safety of his regime, adding South Korea, China and Japan would invest in the North to help make the country “great” if it follows through on denuclearization.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I agree with President Trump that this should be an all or nothing deal for Kim Jong-un.  The North Koreans this time should not receive massive amounts of aid and other incentives for little to nothing in return.  Instead they should demonstrate irreversible intent to denuclearize which the dog and pony show for the closure of the nuclear test site is not.  For example if nuclear material begins to get shipped out of the country and their nuclear plant is dismantled that is evidence of irreversible intent to denuclearize.

President Moon Jae-in (3rd from L) walks to an airplane at Seoul Airport in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, on May 21, 2018, to depart to Washington D.C. for a summit meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump the following day. The summit will focus on ways to denuclearize North Korea ahead of a summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12. (Yonhap)

Here is the latest on the online opinion rigging scandal in South Korea that has largely been buried by the headlines out of North Korea:

A power blogger known online as Druking and his associates face allegations that they engaged in a systematic campaign during last year’s presidential election to sway public opinion in favor of President Moon Jae-in by manipulating the comments section on news articles.Text messages obtained exclusively by the JoongAng Ilbo on Tuesday offer a glimpse into how the group worked and the extent of their ties with the Democratic Party.

The blogger, Kim Dong-won, and his associates used an encrypted messaging app called Telegram to exchange links to articles where they would apparently leave comments and use software to “like” ones that were favorable toward Moon, then a presidential candidate.

In a series of messages dated April 17, 2017, an associate of Kim who allegedly developed the rigging software posted a link to an article about each candidate’s platform. The comment that ended up receiving the most likes on that article was one that criticized the Liberty Korea Party, Moon’s opposition.

“Those LKP people like Lee Myung-bak, Park Geun-hye and Hong Joon-pyo, they always talk about representing ordinary citizens. As if they would.” That comment received 837 likes.

On the same day, another member uploaded a link to an article about Moon’s platform. Comments such as “Young and old alike support Moon Jae-in” and “Go Moon” received the most likes, ranging from 100 to 200. The consistency between the comments of news articles posted to the Telegram chat room suggests the group had a hand in manipulating those comments.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but of interest is that Druking’s group was not only targeting conservatives, but coordinating with Moon Jae-in friends to target liberal rivals such as Ahn Cheol-soo:

In an earlier message dated April 6, 2017, Kim sent out a link to an article about Moon starting his campaign from Gwangju and wrote, “I ask for your support.” In the comments section, Kim had left a post criticizing Ahn Cheol-soo, one of Moon’s rivals.

“At the time, Ahn was rising in ranks and it looked like the election might be Ahn versus Moon,” said a member of the group who requested anonymity, “so we focused on criticizing Ahn in the comments.”

The messages also indicate ties between the group and Kim Kyoung-soo, then a lawmaker and close friend of Moon. “This link to the article was sent by Rep. Kim Kyoung-soo, so we better work on it once more in the morning,” the blogger, Kim Dong-won, wrote in the chat room in July 2017.

The revelation is the latest implicating the Democratic Party in the online manipulation scandal.

I have to wonder if Druking’s group was also used by the Moon campaign to target former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon?  Ban withdrew from seeking the ROK presidency due to what he called all the “fake news” allegations brought against him.

Overall though it is pretty clear that outside of conservative media in South Korea, this story is largely going under the radar.

Here is the latest on the online opinion rigging scandal in South Korea:

In the latest development of Korea’s own “fake news” case, an influential blogger charged with manipulating comments on the country’s most popular portal site may have collected donations for a ruling party lawmaker, according to files obtained by the police on Tuesday, deepening suspicions that the blogger may have masterminded his campaign on behalf of the Democratic Party.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency obtained the files from a USB drive belonging to a close associate of Kim Dong-won, the blogger known online as Druking. The finding is the latest in a police investigation of Druking’s alleged campaign to rig online opinion in favor of President Moon Jae-in during last year’s election.

According to the police, Druking and his team used software to fiddle with the comments section on Naver by increasing the number of “likes” on certain comments and giving the appearance that one opinion dominated on the forum. Druking allegedly used the software to help Moon win the election, but when the president’s office refused to grant patronage positions to some of his acquaintances after the election, the blogger turned on Moon by having his team like comments critical of the president.

The police arrested Druking in March for his anti-Moon campaign, and at his first trial hearing last week, the blogger admitted to the charge. Central to Druking’s online activities was a community he ran called Kyungkongmo. According to files from the USB drive, members of the online community collected over 30 million won ($27,800) to deliver to Rep. Kim Kyoung-soo, a Democratic Party lawmaker with close ties to President Moon. The police are investigating allegations that Kim may have worked with Druking to manipulate online opinion during last year’s election and that Kyungkongmo may have supplied the manpower.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but I find it interesting that the police only cracked down on Druking after he turned on President Moon.  Why wasn’t he arrested before then?  Was his activities okay as long as they were targeted against Korean conservatives?

President Moon Jae-in (L) attends an event to plant a tree at the South Korean embassy in Tokyo on May 9, 2018. (Yonhap)

Here is the statement put out after the trilateral summit in Tokyo:

Leaders from South Korea, Japan and China on Wednesday adopted a special statement in support of the Panmunjom Declaration, which was signed at the inter-Korean summit last month and confirmed the shared goal of the two Koreas of complete denuclearization.

The special statement was made following a trilateral meeting in Tokyo of President Moon Jae-in, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and Premier Li Keqiang of China, the first of its kind in more than two years. The last such three-way summit was held in November 2015 in Seoul.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

Here is what was agreed upon that really matters during the trilateral summit:

At the Moon-Abe talks, the latter made it clear that sanctions imposed on the North should not be lifted unless Pyongyang demonstrates concrete denuclearization measures, emphasizing that the closing down of a nuclear testing site and a halt in the firing of ballistic missiles were not sufficient for sanctions relief.

“It is the timing that matters when it comes to easing or withdrawing sanctions altogether on North Korea,” the prime minister was quoted as saying by the Blue House during the bilateral summit talk with Moon in the afternoon.

“We should not reward the North for just shutting down the Punggye-ri nuclear site or stopping the test-firing of intercontinental ballistic missiles. We need additional and substantive actions from the North,” said Abe.

On the matter of easing sanctions, Moon stressed Seoul could not move to ease sanctions unilaterally, noting that sanctions were international agreements in which Seoul took part.

“There could be worries that South Korea could make a unilateral move to ease sanctions independent of the international consensus. There is no need for such worries,” he said. [Joong Ang Ilbo]

Basically Prime Minister Abe is making the case that North Korea was rewarded in past agreements for doing little to nothing in return.  This time they should not be rewarded until they take real measures to denuclearize.

I wonder if President Moon has cleverly decided to let authorities make their arrests for this online opinion rigging scandal involving his administration at a time when news coverage of it would be drowned out by the Inter-Korean and US-DPRK Summits?:

South Korean police said Monday they’ve found additional comment manipulation by a power blogger and his accomplices, who have been indicted for tempering with Internet comments on politically sensitive news articles.

Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said the blogger, who goes by the nickname “Druking,” and his followers manipulated some 20,000 comments on 675 news articles using 2,290 different IDs from Jan. 17 to 18.

A ruling party lawmaker and former aide to President Moon Jae-in is also probed over his alleged ties with the blogger.  (…….)

The police said it has booked 21 additional members of the online community founded by Druking for their involvement in the online opinion rigging scheme. The police said so far 30 people have been booked for the case.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.