#MoonJaein admin sends ~$100 million to #KimJongUn regime. How? By sending 1.3 M sacks (40 kg each, total 50,000 tons) of #SouthKorean rice to NK via WFP. Its on top of $8 million already given to nK via WFP recently.
— Tara O (@DrTaraO) June 20, 2019
Moon is persistent.https://t.co/nINGdccBXb
What the US negotiators have to be careful of is the Kim regime promising to dismantle their nuclear facilities in exchange for dropping sanctions. After sanctions are dropped they can slow roll the dismantlement and then blame the U.S. for some made up reason for why they suddenly have to keep their nuclear capacity. They of course will keep all the hard currency they accumulated after the dropping of sanctions:
President Moon Jae-in said Wednesday that if North Korea dismantled its Yongbyon nuclear complex, the country’s denuclearization would be in an “irreversible stage.”
“If all of the nuclear facilities in the complex, including the plutonium reprocessing facilities and the uranium enrichment facilities, are completely demolished and verified,” Moon said in a written interview with seven global news agencies including Yonhap, “it would be possible to say that the denuclearization of North Korea has entered an irreversible stage.”
During his second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Feb. 27 and 28, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un offered to dismantle at least some of the Yongbyon nuclear complex, which includes a 5-megawatt plutonium production reactor.
Trump said Pyongyang had to do more for sanctions relief. That summit collapsed without a deal and led to an impasse in denuclearization dialogue ever since.
Yet the United States is engaged in “behind-the-scenes talks” with North Korea for a possible third summit, Moon said in the interview, noting that “there will be substantive progress if the two sides continue negotiations based on what was discussed in Singapore and Hanoi.” Kim and Trump’s first summit was in Singapore on June 12 of last year.
Joong Ang Ilbo
You can read more at the link.
Considering that she is Kim Jong-un’s trusted sister, she has probably always been a national leader, but is now officially filling the role:
North Korean leader’s younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, has been elevated to the level of a national leader, an upgrade from her previous role as a protocol assistant to the leader, the main South Korean intelligence agency concluded Tuesday in its analysis of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s unprecedented state visit to the North last week.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) on Tuesday briefed Rep. Lee Hye-hoon of the Bareunmirae Party, chairwoman of the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee, about Xi’s visit to the North on Thursday and Friday. Following the briefing, Lee met with journalists and shared some of the NIS’s analysis, which dissected in detail Xi’s 27-hour stay in Pyongyang, including his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
According to Lee, Kim Yo-jong has been elevated to the level of a national leader.
“If you look at the photos [of last week’s summit], she was standing in the same level of Choe Ryong-hae, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, and Ri Su-yon, vice chairman of the Workers’ Party,” Lee quoted the NIS as saying. “The NIS believes that Kim’s role has been adjusted and her weight has been increased [within the North’s regime].”
Joong Ang Ilbo
You can read more at the link.
Legally going after the people and organizations that break sanctions and freezing their assets like what happened with this guy should be vigorously pursued:
Taiwan’s justice ministry has expressed regret after a businessman convicted over illegal oil sales to North Korea leapt to his death.
Authorities launched a probe into Chen Shih-hsien last year after Seoul said it had detained a Hong Kong-registered ship suspected of transferring oil to a North Korean vessel, flouting UN sanctions.
Chen, 54, was later indicted on forgery charges for making a false declaration that a ship he had chartered was bound for Hong Kong when it actually sailed to international waters to sell the oil.
A district court in southern Kaohsiung city last month sentenced him to 119 days in jail, suspended for two years.
Chen’s assets were frozen after Taiwan’s government imposed a ban on all financial dealings with him and locked up his companies’ bank accounts due to the probe, which he was appealing against.
The justice ministry said in a statement it deeply regretted the passing of Chen, who jumped from a building on Friday in a suspected suicide.
Local media said Chen left a “suicide note” while prosecutors were not immediately available for comment.
Chen’s case revolved around a ship called the Lighthouse Winmore, which was impounded in late 2017 by South Korean authorities after it allegedly transferred 600 tonnes of oil to the North’s Sam Jong 2.
The vessel was chartered by the Billions Bunker Group, which is incorporated in the Marshall Islands and run by Chen.
Reports said Chen sold oil products through “a Chinese middleman”.
AFP
You can read more at the link, but China is always going to be the weak link when it comes to sanctions and probably all the more reason why the Trump administration has been putting economic pressure on them.
This seemed unlikely considering that President Trump appears to only want to meet if Kim Jong-un commits to real denuclearization:
U.S. President Donald Trump has no plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during his trip to South Korea later this week, a senior U.S. administration official said Monday.
Trump will visit Seoul on Saturday and Sunday after attending a Group of 20 summit in Japan, prompting speculation that a Trump-Kim meeting could be arranged at the inter-Korean border.
“There are no plans for the meeting that you just mentioned,” the official told reporters on background in a phone call.
“The president’s there to see President Moon (Jae-in),” he said.
On a Trump visit to the Demilitarized Zone, the official said the details of the president’s schedule have yet to be finalized.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The so called experts are again weighing in and recommending that President Trump reopen the Kaesong Industrial Complex to create “momentum” in the denuclearization talks whatever that means:
North Korea raked in more than $120 million a year from a symbolic cross-border industrial zone that Pyongyang and Seoul are pushing to re-open as part of nuclear negotiations, a report said Monday.
The Kaesong Industrial Complex — where around 55,000 North Korean workers churned out products ranging from watches to clothes for some 125 South Korean companies — was one of the most visible signs of reconciliation that followed the first inter-Korean summit in 2000.
But it was shuttered by the South’s then-conservative government in 2016 in response to a nuclear test and missile launches by the North, saying profits from Kaesong were funding Pyongyang’s provocations.
The South’s current President Moon Jae-in has dangled re-opening the complex as an incentive for Pyongyang to engage in denuclearisation talks, but doing so is complicated by the web of international sanctions imposed on the North over its weapons programmes.
At their Pyongyang summit in September, Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to “normalise” operations at Kaesong when conditions were “ripe”, but negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington are now deadlocked and Northern media have pressed the South to implement joint economic projects.
The International Crisis Group called on Monday for the complex to be reopened with “a modest deal involving sanctions relief”.
Doing so would create “much needed momentum for stalled peace talks and serve as a reminder to both North and South Korea of the benefits of building a sustainable peace on the peninsula”, it added in a statement.
AFP
You can read more at the link, but this is just more “pretend denuclearization” and something that the expert class has been calling for now for decades. These concessions to the Kim regime never work and I believe it actually makes it harder to reach a denuclearization deal because they use the funding to further their weapons programs.
It looks like President Trump is continuing the messaging that he is open to talks on North Korea’s denuclearization while simultaneously increasing sanctions to further pressure the Kim regime:
President Donald Trump will make a two-day visit to South Korea this weekend, officials said Monday, as the U.S. administration said it’s ready to resume nuclear talks with the North “at a moment’s notice.”
Trump’s visit, which will be his second trip to the divided peninsula as president, comes amid new optimism for the stalled diplomatic push to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear weapons.
The president sent a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that was welcomed by the communist state, raising hopes for efforts to break the deadlock that followed the February summit between the two men, which ended without agreement in Vietnam.
“I can confirm that that letter was, in fact, sent,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday. “And I am hopeful that this will provide a good foundation for us to begin to continue the important discussions with the North Koreans to denuclearize the peninsula.”
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
A country that can afford nuclear weapons, ICBMs, and a space program cannot afford to buy rice?:
South Korea will send 50,000 tons of domestically produced rice as humanitarian aid to North Korea through the World Food Programme (WFP), according to the Unification Ministry on Wednesday.
The food aid package, which is believed to be worth around 27 billion won ($22.9 million), follows Seoul’s donation of $8 million won to the WFP and Unicef earlier this month, which is to be used for emergency nutritional and medical assistance for children and pregnant women in the North.
This will be the first time in nine years for South Korea to send rice to the North and the first time rice harvested from South Korean paddies will be provided to Pyongyang through the WFP. On earlier occasions when Seoul went through the WFP, its aid packages largely consisted of corn, mixed grains or flour.
“The government hopes that the food it provides through the WFP rapidly makes it into the hands of the North Korean people,” read a Unification Ministry press release. “The timing and amount of any further food aid to North Korea will be decided after the results of this assistance package are monitored.”
Joong Ang Ilbo
You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to see if this rice ends up on the North Korean blackmarket or not.
It looks like Emperor President Xi has decided to crack down on North Korean defectors before his trip to North Korea this week:
A decade after leaving her family behind to flee North Korea, the defector was overwhelmed with excitement when she spoke to her 22-year-old son on the phone for the first time in May after he too escaped into China.
While speaking to him again on the phone days later, however, she listened in horror as the safe house where her son and four other North Korean escapees were hiding was raided by Chinese authorities.
“I heard voices, someone saying ‘shut up’ in Chinese,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her son’s safety. “Then the line was cut off, and I heard later he was caught.”
The woman, now living in South Korea, said she heard rumours her son is being held in a Chinese prison near the North Korean border, but has had no official news of his whereabouts.
At least 30 North Korean escapees have been rounded up in a string of raids across China since mid-April, according to family members and activist groups.
It is not clear whether this is part of a larger crackdown by China, but activists say the raids have disrupted parts of the informal network of brokers, charities, and middlemen who have been dubbed the North Korean “Underground Railroad”.
“The crackdown is severe,” said Y. H. Kim, chairman of the North Korea Refugees Human Rights Association of Korea.
Reuters
You can read more at the link.
Alternative headline: 6150 South Korean citizens want to give their money to an enemy regime that enslaves millions of their fellow kinsmen because they want to take selfies at a mountain. https://t.co/dBk6hsUvmg
— John Lee (The Korean Foreigner) (@koreanforeigner) June 14, 2019
