Tag: North Korea

If Kim Jong-un needs a consultant to help him build better resorts in North Korea he could always call President Trump:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un criticized his late father’s policy of depending on South Korea for the development of the Mount Kumgang resort on the east coast, ordering the removal of “all the unpleasant-looking facilities” built by the South.

During a “field guidance” visit to the mountain resort, Kim also ordered the construction of the country’s own “modern service facilities” and said the North “will always welcome our compatriots from the South” to the resort, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“The mountain was left uncared for more than ten years to leave a flaw and the land is worthy of better cause. He made a sharp criticism of the very wrong, dependent policy of the predecessors who were going to rely on others when the country was not strong enough,” the Korean Central News Agency said in English.

“He instructed to remove all the unpleasant-looking facilities of the south side with an agreement with the relevant unit of the south side and to build new modern service facilities our own way that go well with the natural scenery of Mt. Kumgang,” it added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The North Koreans will be very unhappy with this news:

A New York court has formally handed the US ownership of a North Korean cargo ship seized for violating international sanctions, the Justice Department said.

The 17,061 ton bulk carrier Wise Honest — the first North Korean vessel seized by Washington for sanctions violations — was caught carrying a $3 million shipment of coal in Indonesian waters last year and later handed over to US authorities.

The court in the Southern District of New York ordered the vessel to be forfeited to Washington and for the Treasury Department to “dispose of” it, an order released by the Justice Department showed.

The sale process has already taken place, according to the US Coast Guard, which earlier this month said the ship had been auctioned in a court-ordered process.

AFP

You can read more at the link, but seizing the Kim’s regime ships caught smuggling and then selling them off is an idea I have long advocated for.

It may be unviable now, but if they keep testing it will eventually become viable like their current ICBM capability:

 A U.S. defense analyst on Tuesday dismissed North Korea’s possible pursuit of a nuclear retaliatory strike capability using a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) as unviable for now, noting vulnerabilities of its easily traceable underwater platform.

Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at RAND Corp., made the case amid concerns that Pyongyang’s recent test of a new SLBM could mark a fresh threat to Seoul and Washington, as its submarine could be capable of launching unpredictable, retaliatory strikes.

“The North Korean submarine, which was apparently developed from a Romeo-class submarine, remodeled and refit, is not extremely quiet. So, if they put nuclear weapons on that kind of submarine, it is going to be tracked from the time it leaves port,” he said during a lecture on nuclear forces hosted by a local think tank, the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

“If conflict develops, it is going to be sitting at the bottom of the ocean and just destroyed. So, that is not a viable strategy to get to a second-strike capability,” he added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Kim Jong-un is apparently sending a strategic message with his supposed horse trip to the summit of Mt. Paekdu:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un rode a white horse to visit Mount Paekdu, the highest peak on the Korean Peninsula considered the birthplace of his late father, slamming U.S. sanctions and calling for greater “self-reliance” efforts to frustrate them, state media reported Wednesday.

Kim has visited the mountain, considered one of the peninsula’s most sacred places, ahead of big political or diplomatic decisions and events, and the latest trip has spawned speculation about whether another big decision might be forthcoming.

The leader “climbed up Mount Paekdu, riding a white horse through the first snow,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported, releasing a series of photos of him riding a horse running up the snow-covered mountain.

Kim also visited a special tourist zone under construction in Samjiyon County at the foot of the mountain, and lashed out at the United States for sanctions and pressure against the communist nation. 

“The situation of the country is difficult owing to the ceaseless sanctions and pressure by the hostile forces, and there are many hardships and trials facing us,” Kim said, according to KCNA. “The pain the U.S.-led anti-DPRK hostile forces inflicted upon the Korean people is no longer pain, but it turned into their anger.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I have to wonder if he really rode the horse to the summit or not? I think it is more likely he took a few staged shots at the bottom of the mountain and then had a helicopter take him to the summit for more staged shots.

Anyway the reason the photos were taken was to signal to the U.S. that they are running out of time to drop sanctions against the regime. Kim Jong-un has given the Trump administration until the end of this year to reach a denuclearization deal before another likely provocation cycle starts.

This is like the North Korean version of a maximum pressure strategy and we will see in the coming months if it works:

U.S. negotiators tried to cast the impasse in the best light, stating that they’d raised “new initiatives” and describing the discussions as “good.” They noted that the United States and North Korea “will not overcome a legacy of 70 years of war and hostility on the Korean peninsula through the course of a single Saturday,” and that they sought “more intensive engagement” and another meeting in the optimistic Pompeoian time frame of a couple of weeks.

The North Korean delegation, however, appeared unwilling to enter into a substantive and structured diplomatic process, let alone technical conversations about dismantling the country’s nuclear program. Instead of presenting themselves as the empowered negotiators U.S. officials had hopedto finally confront after previous rounds of abortive working-level nuclear talks, the North Koreans seemed to once again be primarily in listening mode.

“Rather than the breakdown of talks, what we are seeing resembles classic North Korean negotiating tactics: demand more concessions, minimize denuclearization commitments, and figure out how to cheat,” Easley told me by email. “Kim Myong Gil does not have authority to compromise on anything until approved by Kim Jong Un. He probably went to Stockholm with talking points and instructions to receive the updated U.S. position before walking out to buy time and apply pressure.” (…..)

Now that the Democrats have launched an impeachment inquiry into the president’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government into investigating the Bidens ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, North Korean officials (who are known to closely follow U.S. politics) may be calculating that they are in a stronger negotiating position, and that Trump, a “self-advertised dealmaker” without many actual deals in foreign affairs, will be interested in “a distraction” from his domestic troubles in the form of a nuclear accord, Yun noted.

The Atlantic

You can read more at the link.

Here is more from the standard North Korean negotiating playbook:

North Korea threatened again Thursday to resume nuclear and long-range missile tests, accusing the U.S. of having instigated some members of the U.N. Security Council to condemn its recent weapons tests.

The warning by Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry followed the weekend breakdown of North Korea-U.S. nuclear negotiations in Sweden, the first such talks between the countries in more than seven months. North Korea said the talks collapsed because the U.S. didn’t have any new proposals, and whether it maintains a self-imposed moratorium on major weapons tests was up to Washington.

Some observers say North Korea’s threat may be a tactic to pressure the U.S. into making concessions as a restart of nuclear and long-range missile tests would likely derail negotiations, deepen its international isolation and further dim prospects for rebuilding its moribund economy.

Associated Press

You can read more at the link.

It will be interesting to see if the Poles return to the DMZ, this time on the Southern side:

Poland, once a member of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC), could re-establish its presence in the demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula if asked to do so by its counterparts, said Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz during his recent visit to Seoul. 

“At this moment the Polish mission is unable to implement its mandate in its initial location north of the 38th parallel, because after the political transformation established in Europe in 1989, the DPRK expelled Poland from the DMZ,” Minister Czaputowicz told the Korea JoongAng Daily on Monday, during his visit to meet with his counterpart South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, using the acronyms for North Korea’s official name, which is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and DMZ for the demilitarized zone, located between the two Koreas. 

As Poland already has an embassy in Pyongyang, established in 1950, the minister was speaking of the presence the Polish government had in the demilitarized zone as a member of the NNSC, from 1953 to 1995. North Korea expelled the Polish presence in 1995 following the collapse of communism in Poland and its joining of NATO in 1989.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

It appears the North Koreans are up to their usual negotiating tricks:

North Korea will return to nuclear disarmament talks with the United States despite last week’s breakdown in Sweden, as it intentionally made the decision to leave the first negotiations early to increase its political leverage, experts said Monday.

Ending a months-long hiatus in their denuclearization dialogue, officials from Washington and Pyongyang met in Stockholm amid expectations of a possible breakthrough in the suspended talks.

But Pyongyang declared a breakdown just a few hours after the meeting started in the Swedish capital. It stepped up criticism of Washington for sticking to an “old-fashioned” attitude, even after the fiasco of the failed Hanoi summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in February.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the U.S. negotiators were not about to drop even limited sanctions for little to nothing in return:

North Korea’s top nuclear envoy on Monday said it was up to the United States to decide whether the two sides will hold further denuclearization talks, pending sufficient change from Washington on its position. 

En route home to Pyongyang after much anticipated working-level discussions with the United States fell apart on Saturday, North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator Kim Myong-gil told reporters at Beijing’s Capital International Airport that his recent exchange with the U.S. delegation was “sickening,” making clear his dissatisfaction with the United States’ unchanged position on denuclearization.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but I continue to believe that the North Koreans if they don’t get the limited sanctions dropped before the New Year, will create a “crisis” in order to get the deal they want.