The #MoonJaein administration wants to give rice aid to #NorthKorea. But "People have never seen rice from the South before, so they don’t care whether it comes or not."https://t.co/OVlNAFJkxu
— Tara O (@DrTaraO) May 17, 2019
Someone should ask Mr. Beasley why there is a food shortage in North Korea?:
e head of a U.N. food agency said Monday he is “very concerned” about food shortages in North Korea and called for donations to the impoverished communist nation, affirming that the agency will try to make sure aid will reach those intended.
Yonhap
World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley made the remarks to reporters after he met with South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul to discuss North Korea’s worsening food situation.
“We are very concerned about the situation there and we are hopeful that we can come up with some solutions,” Beasley said. “Whatever we do, we will assure the donors that the food or any assistance will meet their objectives. We’ll have monitoring systems in place.”
You can read more at the link, but any malnourishment in North Korea is sponsored by the regime. They have the money and resources to feed their people, but have made a conscious decision not to. Instead they have prioritized funding for nuclear weapons and missile programs.
I hope no one really thought a deal on this issue was going to be reached because I never did:
In a new sign of troubled relations with North Korea, the Pentagon said Wednesday it has suspended its efforts to arrange negotiations on recovering additional remains of U.S. servicemembers killed in the North during the Korean War.
Stars & Stripes
In a statement Wednesday, the Pentagon’s Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency said it has had no communication with North Korean authorities since the Hanoi summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February. That meeting focused on the North’s nuclear weapons and followed a June 2018 summit at which Kim committed to permitting a resumption the recovery of U.S. remains, which had been suspended by the U.S. in 2005.
“As a result, our effort to communicate with the Korean People’s Army regarding the possible resumption of joint recovery operation for 2019 has been suspended,” the agency said. “We have reached the point where we can no longer effectively plan, coordinate, and conduct field operations in the DPRK during this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, 2019.”
You can read more at the link, but the only way a deal was getting done was if the US paid North Korea an exorbitant amount of money to recover the remains as has been done in the past.
The North Koreans know exactly where the bulk of the remains are because the US military buried a large number of casualties in marked cemeteries before evacuating North Korea after the Chinese intervened in the war.
To be able to repatriate these remains to their family members the North Koreans have been demanding inflated prices which just shows how low the Kim regime is willing to go to make money. The work to recover the remains ended in 2005 and so far does not look like it will begin again any time soon.
I guessed that the North Koreans would next fire short range missiles and sure enough they did:
North Korea fired two apparent short-range missiles on Thursday, South Korea’s military said, less than a week after the communist state launched a missile into the sea off its east coast.
Stars & Stripes
The move threatened to raise tensions as the main U.S. envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, was visiting Seoul in an effort to get stalled nuclear talks with the North back on track.
South Korea’s presidential office expressed concern about the launches, saying they were “not helpful at all to to efforts to try to improve inter-Korean relations and ease military tension” on the divided peninsula.
“Noth Korea fired two unidentified projectiles estimated to be short-range missiles” in an eastern direction from the northwestern area of Kusong, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul.
You can read more at the link, but at least the ROK government is now calling these “missiles” instead of “projectiles”:
North Korea fired what were believed to be two short-range missiles on Thursday, South Korea’s military said, just five days after the communist nation launched a barrage of projectiles into the East Sea.
Yonhap
The projectiles were fired from the northwestern area of Kusong in an easterly direction, one of them at 4:29 p.m. and the other at 4:39 p.m., and flew about 420 kilometers and 270 km, respectively, with their altitude reaching around 50 km, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, adding they splashed into the East Sea.
You can read more at the link. I don’t expect the Kim regime to move up and fire an Intermediate Range Missile and especially and Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile until talks with the U.S. have basically collapsed. Testing those two weapons is clearly directed at the United States since IRBMs are used to target Guam and ICBMs the US mainland, Alaska, and Hawaii.
If the North Koreans want to increase tensions further look for them to start firing missiles closer to Japan’s territorial waters or even eventually into them.
This article makes me wonder if this is just more fake news or John Bolton signaling to North Korea that the US is serious enough about North Korea denuclearization to consider a military strike:
John Bolton, U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, still believes that a military strike on North Korea is a viable option as denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang are stalled, The New Yorker reported earlier this week.
Joong Ang Ilbo
Citing unnamed U.S. government officials, the magazine said in its profile of Bolton published on Monday that Bolton privately told White House aides that the second U.S.-North summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, was unlikely to succeed.
Despite months of engagement with the North and Trump’s bragging about falling in “love” with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Bolton, according to the article, still believes that a strike is possible because the United States knows where most of North Korea’s nuclear weapons are.
“We can still do it,” a U.S. administration official cited Bolton as saying. “We know where most, if not all, of their weapons are. We could destroy their nuclear capability. There are ways to deal with their artillery.”
When asked about potential casualties, Bolton said he “wishes we weren’t at this point. But the military option remains viable.”
Other White House officials, on the other hand, are realizing that military force is not a realistic option, the source added.
“I think we could have destroyed the North’s nuclear program in the 1990s. It was more concentrated and we knew where everything was,” the official said. “Not anymore. It’s too big and too dispersed.”
You can read more at the link.
President Trump is confirming that they did not pay North Korea any money for the release of Otto Warmbier:
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said the United States did not pay any money to North Korea as it sought the release of Otto Warmbier, a day after a report said Trump had approved a $2 million bill from Pyongyang for the American student’s care.
Yahoo News via a reader tip
“No money was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, not two Million Dollars, not anything else,” Trump wrote in a tweet.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Trump had approved payment of a $2 million bill from Pyongyang to cover its care of the comatose college student, who was held in a North Korean prison for 17 months until June 2017.
Warmbier, a University of Virginia student from Ohio visiting North Korea as a tourist, was imprisoned in January 2016. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly trying to steal an item with a propaganda slogan from his hotel, North Korean state media said.
Warmbier died six days after his release from North Korea. An Ohio coroner said Warmbier died from a lack of oxygen and blood to his brain. North Korea, which has dismissed claims that it tortured the student, blamed food poisoning and a sleeping pill.
The Treasury Department received the bill from North Korea and it remained unpaid through 2017, the Post reported. It was not clear whether the administration paid the invoice later.
You can read more at the link, but the real story is the media narrative being created by the Washington Post that originally published the article. Instead of getting a response from the Trump administration on if they paid for Warmbier’s release they write an article implicating that Trump paid “ransom” money for Warmbier’s release. Later after the news cycle has moved on and White House denies any payment, far fewer people see this news.
A #SouthKorean soldier lost his foot to mine. Senior military, trying to please #MoonJaein administration, created a "Foot for Peace" monument. And have the soldier there to celebrate the unveiling. Disgraceful, to say the least.https://t.co/wcVmlBNT3b
— Tara O (@DrTaraO) April 24, 2019
