Tag: North Korea

Considering how capitalist Vietnam is sometimes people forget they are still ruled by a Communist regime:

Vietnam’s top leader, To Lam, will visit North Korea to mark the 80th founding anniversary of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, state media reported Monday.

The Vietnamese leader will pay a state visit to the North at the invitation of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on the occasion of the party anniversary set for Friday, the Korean Central News Agency reported in a short dispatch.

Vietnam’s foreign ministry also announced that Lam will visit North Korea for three days starting Thursday.

It would mark the first trip to North Korea by a Vietnamese leader in 18 years.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The article doesn’t say, but I wonder how many countries Pyongyang got to show up to their defense expo?:

This image published by the Korean Central News Agency on Oct. 5, 2025, shows North Korea’s Defence Development-2025, which kicked off in Pyongyang on Oct. 4. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

North Korea has launched its annual defense exhibition for the third consecutive year, with leader Kim Jong-un describing it as “the results” of the country’s projects to modernize and advance its military capabilities, state media reported Sunday.

The Defence Development-2025 kicked off in Pyongyang the previous day, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

n a speech at the event, Kim touted it as the “recent results of the important projects … to put the structure of the DPRK’s military capabilities, with its nuclear deterrent as the backbone, on an increasingly modern, advanced footing.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Chung actually seems giddy to be declaring that North Korea can strike the U.S. mainland with their ICBMs:

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young has said North Korea is capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, apparently referring to the North’s recent development of its intercontinental ballistic missiles, in rare public remarks about Pyongyang’s weapons capability. 

Chung made the remarks at a press conference in Berlin on Monday (local time) during his ongoing visit to Germany as South Korea’s representative to attend a ceremony marking German unification.

“North Korea has become one of the three countries capable of attacking the U.S. mainland,” Chung told reporters. “What needs to be acknowledged should be acknowledged rationally.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but North Korea’s ICBMs are not fully tested yet with many questions about their reentry systems. Additionally even if they do work they would have to overcome U.S. missile defenses as well.

Right now with the Kim regime having all their needs met through their partnership with the Russians, there is really no urgency to pursue peace talks with the ROK or the US:

South Korea’s president has asked President Donald Trump to become “a peacemaker” and use his leadership to get North Korea to talks to reduce military tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the South’s top diplomat said Friday. Trump “welcomed” the request from President Lee Jae Myung and “he expressed his willingness to be engaged with North Korea again,” Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said in an interview with the Associated Press. There was no immediate word from the White House. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met three times as North Korea was building a nuclear weapons stockpile, which Kim views as key to the country’s security and his continued rule of the northeast Asian nation.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

I have been saying this for years that North Korea has no intention of denuclearizing and now the so called smart people are not getting on board with this concept:

North Korea has no intention of surrendering its nuclear weapons, which leaves the United States to either neutralize a nuclear threat or develop something like a normal relationship with Pyongyang, an expert in international affairs said Friday. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared his communist regime a nuclear state “whether the world likes it or not,” Jenny Town, senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, D.C., told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo.

North Korea in 2022 also declared a right to use a pre-emptive nuclear strike to protect itself. Rather than court the U.S. and its allies to alleviate sanctions designed to force North Korea to denuclearize, Kim is pursuing economic and strategic partnerships with China and Russia, Town said. “There’s no more of this constant need to try and justify why they need nuclear weapons,” she told reporters. “Instead, really, the rhetoric has changed to simply accept the idea that they have nuclear weapons; they are a nuclear-armed state.”

Town, the director of Stimson’s Korea program and 38 North, a website focused on peace and security on the Korean Peninsula, said the U.S. is left with only two options. “I think the bottom line here is that what North Korea is doing is essentially forcing the U.S. and its allies to decide whether they want a relationship with North Korea or whether they just want to neutralize the nuclear threat that North Korea poses,” she said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but the only option the US and the ROK has is to pursue a freeze deal that in return for sanctions relief North Korea stops ICBM development and accepts a cap on their nuclear weapons. The US needs to admit that the Kim regime has won with their nuclear brinkmanship and settle for a deal that at least puts a cap on their weapons to avoid proliferation.

Maybe policy makers should start believing what the Kim regime has been telling them for years that they will never give up their nuclear weapons:

A senior North Korean diplomat reiterated Monday that Pyongyang will never renounce its nuclear program “under any circumstances,” stressing that it has stipulated its nuclear arsenal as a “sacred” and “absolute” asset that can “never be tampered with.”

Speaking at a general debate of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Son-gyong also expressed the North’s openness to engaging with countries that “respect” and take a “friendly” approach toward his country.

It marked the first speech at the Assembly podium by a high-level North Korean official since 2018 when then Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho attended the gathering.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

President Lee is just speaking reality here:

Speaking to global investors at the New York Stock Exchange, Lee sought to reassure them, vowing to reduce security risks on the Korean Peninsula and reinforce investor confidence, as he noted that South Korea’s stock market has been “undervalued” despite its elevated economic and military stature.

“North Korea seems to have secured sufficient nuclear weapons needed to maintain its regime, with only atmospheric reentry technology remaining (for Pyongyang to complete) the development of nuclear-tipped ICBMs capable of reaching the continental U.S.,” Lee said at the event, called the “Korea Investment Summit.”

Yonhap

Here is where he becomes delusional:

If unchecked, Pyongyang would add 15-20 nuclear bombs to its nuclear arsenal each year, he warned.

“What’s worrisome is that there is a high possibility that North Korea would export (weapons) to other countries. Wouldn’t there be considerable security benefits if we could just halt the production of nuclear warheads or the development and export of ICBMs?,” he said.

“That is why I have proposed stopping them in the short term, reducing them in the midterm and pursuing (the North’s) denuclearization in the long term,” he added, referring to the three-stage plan to foster lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.

I can support a deal to stop production of nukes and ICBMs to prevent proliferation, but North Korea will never reduce or give up their nuclear weapons. Lee could offer to surrender the ROK to Keep m in exchange for his nukes and I don’t think he would take that deal. Nukes mean regime survival, without them Kim is vulnerable.

South Korea can pretend there is a peaceful two state framework, but North Korea can’t. The need to free South Korea from American imperialism is part of the Kim regime’s ideology to justify their rule. Giving that up without taking over South Korea could question the legitimacy of the Kim family’s rule:

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said Thursday that South Korea will seek to transform North Korea’s “hostile two-state” framework into a “peaceful two-state” arrangement, describing it as a transitional stage on the path toward eventual unification.

Speaking at the Global Korea Forum hosted by the ministry in Seoul, Chung said South Korea will continue pursuing rapprochement with Pyongyang despite the North’s frosty response, calling dialogue the most effective means of reducing hostilities.

“Even if North Korea continues to uphold the two-state theory, there is no justification for maintaining hostility,” he said in an opening speech. “The main focus should first be on ending this hostility. The alternative is to transform the hostile two-state framework into a de facto peaceful two-state framework. This is the core of our policy toward North Korea.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

First of all, North Korea has no reason to begin talks with the South when their financial and military needs are currently being fullfiled by the Russians. Secondly the ROK is asking the Chinese to participate in a fantasy. There is no deal the ROK could make that would convince the Kim regime to give up their nuclear weapons. This is all just political theater:

 Foreign Minister Cho Hyun on Wednesday asked China to play its part to bring North Korea back to dialogue, stressing that South Korea seeks progress toward the North’s denuclearization and peace on the Korean Peninsula. 

Cho made the remarks during his first one-on-one talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, as South Korea seeks to restore inter-Korean relations and resume dialogue with Pyongyang, despite the North’s repeated rejection of Seoul’s overtures amid its close alignment with Russia.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.