It is looking more and more like North Korea’s pressure campaign may be working to get the Trump administration to make concessions on sanctions:
The United States is ready to be flexible in negotiations with North Korea on dismantling the regime’s nuclear weapons program, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations said Wednesday, urging Pyongyang to refrain from provocations.
Ambassador Kelly Craft made the remarks at a U.N. Security Council session as Pyongyang’s year-end deadline for nuclear negotiations with Washington draws near.
Amid indications the North is preparing to launch a long-range missile, Craft warned that such activity will only complicate efforts to implement an agreement reached by U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at their first summit in Singapore in June 2018.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It looks like the Trump administration has not given up on diplomacy with North Korea:
U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun may visit the North Korean side of the Joint Security Area early next week, for a meeting with a high-level North Korean official, sources familiar with the issue told The Korea Times, Wednesday.
Korea Times
“Biegun plans to visit South Korea later this week or early next week, after attending a meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in New York. Talks are underway for Biegun to possibly meet with a high-level North Korean diplomat on the North’s side of the border village of Panmunjeom,” a senior lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) said.
You can read more at the link.
It only makes sense that with a left wing government in power these former convicted spies would seek to have their records purged:
Seven leaders of a now-disbanded left wing party filed for a retrial of a North Korea-affiliated treason case that rattled the nation six years ago, Wednesday, claiming the ruling was rigged by misleading evidence and corrupt ties between the judiciary and the former administration.
Korea Times via a reader tip
Lawyers for former lawmaker Lee Seok-ki and six other former members of the United Progressive Party (UPP) submitted the application for the retrial to the Seoul Central District Court.
The seven were arrested in 2013 on charges of plotting a pro-North Korean rebellion, and were sentenced to jail terms of two to nine years in August 2014 for “inciting” an armed rebellion during two gatherings with dozens of followers in May. Later that year, the Constitutional Court ruled to disband the UPP, saying the small leftist party with five parliamentary seats was a risk to national security due to its “violent” communist motives.
You can read much more at the link.
I always suspected that the claims the NIS made of the spy ring plotting to overthrow the government were exaggerated. However, this does not explain why Lee Seok-ki was requesting classified documents and then leaking them in an effort to harm the US-ROK alliance. Why was Lee also trying to get his hands on US-ROK war plans? As I said before Lee and the UPP are just a political extension of the North Korean stooges in the Korean left that inhabit organization such as the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Korea Teacher’s Union.
These organizations have long been pro-North Korean and anti-US. That is why I said this whole UPP spy scandal is just a continuation of the Ilshimhoe Spy Scandal and not some new organization trying to overthrow the government. These groups coordinate with North Korea in order to cause political and social unrest within South Korea. That is why I said at the time that the UPP should not be banned in South Korea. By having the UPP all the pro-North Korean politicians all in one party and you know who they are.
This is something ROK Heads have known for quite some time, but the media is catching up:
For Trump, keeping the status quo would be the best policy at this point because any future deal with North Korea will be criticized within the U.S. as a “bad deal,” according to Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies of Kyungnam University.
“After North Korea gave up Yongbyon, the U.S. still did not give up on sanctions. If the U.S. were to make concessions in any future deal, it will be criticized domestically. Trump considers it best to maintain the current state of tension without any additional agreement. This is the most conducive to keeping up Trump’s case that North Korea has not tested missiles or launched an ICBM,” the professor told The Korea Times, Monday. “If North Korea launches an ICBM, it could affect the U.S. election. But it will not be easy for North Korea to do this, although it has been testing engines and so forth.”Another analyst explained that Kim could be aiming to pressure Trump ahead of the U.S. election, but was negative about an ICBM test in the near future.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link.
It appears the North Koreans are being very open to make sure satellites capture what they are doing to drive media coverage prior to a provocation:
South Korea has been working closely with the United States to analyze a “very important test” that North Korea claimed to have conducted at its satellite launching site over the weekend, the defense ministry said Monday.
The communist country said Sunday that it carried out the test successfully at its Sohae Satellite Launching Ground, referring to its Dongchang-ri site in North Pyongyan Province, the previous day.
Pyongyang did not elaborate on what it tested but noted that results “will have an important effect on changing the strategic position of the DPRK once again in the near future.” The DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but this is apparently a new ICBM engine being tested. I have long speculated that the Kim regime could test an ICBM and then call it a “space launch”. They can claim they have the right to the peaceful use of space and never promised to suspend their space program. Plus this will give the Russians and the Chinese the ability to diplomatically cover for them if the U.S. tries to increase sanctions through the United Nations.
At least the North Koreans are being honest now and admitting they never had any plans to denuclearize:
Earlier Saturday, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kim Song, said that denuclearization has already been taken off the negotiating table with the U.S.
“We do not need to have lengthy talks with the U.S. now and denuclearization is already gone out of the negotiating table,” Kim said in a statement issued after Britain and five other European nations condemned the North’s “continued testing of ballistic missiles.”
Yonhap
North Korea wasn’t finished:
Satellite imagery indicated on Monday that North Korea had tested a rocket engine, and a senior Pyongyang official called Donald Trump a “heedless and erratic old man”, resuming insults of the U.S. president that had been set aside during a thaw.
The statement carried in state media KCNA by Kim Yong Chol, a ruling party vice chairman who was instrumental in arranging a failed second summit in February, was the strongest salvo yet in a war of words that has rekindled in recent days.
He described Trump as impatient, rebuked him over his own rhetoric and repeated a threat from last week that Pyongyang would dust off its previous insult “dotard” for the U.S. leader.
You can read more at the link.
I am sure President Trump understands this, but if a deal is not made the North Koreans will very likely launch provocations next year to pressure the Trump administration into a deal:
U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he doesn’t think North Korea will engage in hostile acts and interfere with the upcoming U.S. presidential election, an apparent warning that the communist nation shouldn’t undertake provocations that could hurt his reelection chances.
“I’d be surprised if North Korea acted hostilely,” Trump was quoted as telling reporters at the White House. “He knows I have an election coming up. I don’t think he wants to interfere with that. But we’ll have to see.”
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The Korean media has been making a big deal about surveillance flights around North Korea and the PACAF commander says these flights are nothing new:
The commander of U.S. Pacific Air Forces said Friday that recent surveillance flights around the Korean Peninsula were part of regular operations, refusing to confirm any connection to possible North Korean provocations.
In a telephone briefing from Hawaii, Gen. Charles Brown, Jr. said there has been an increasing number of North Korean missile tests and heightened rhetoric ahead of the end-of-year deadline Pyongyang has imposed for Washington to show flexibility in their denuclearization negotiations.
“I also believe as we get here towards the end of the year and the increase in rhetoric, it’s something we are actually really paying close attention to, not only for this month but into 2020 as well,” Brown told reporters.
“We’re pretty much flying the same way that we’ve been flying for the past year or so, so there’s no real change,” he said when asked if the surveillance flights implied there could be North Korean provocations.
“Our job is to provide some situational awareness and domain awareness to not only our military leadership, but also to our political leadership so they have an understanding of the dynamics of what’s going on within the region, whether it be around the peninsula or any other part of the region,” Brown added. “So, our tempo really hasn’t changed in the course of the past year.”
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
