Tag: North Korea

Is anyone surprised that CNN is trying to sensationalize this nuclear football story to make the claim that President Trump doesn’t care about Puerto Ricans:

He was there to survey the path of destruction left by Hurricane Maria. But when President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico in October 2017, the island’s dire predicament was hardly the only topic on his mind.
People familiar with the visit said the President was distracted by other matters — including his then-devolving war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — as he toured devastated neighborhoods and took an aerial tour of the damage.
At one point, Trump pointed to the “nuclear football” — a briefcase always in the President’s vicinity that can be used to authorize a nuclear attack — and claimed he could use it on Kim whenever he felt.
“This is what I have for Kim,” he said, according to three people familiar who witnessed the remark.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the incident.
The episode came amid an increasingly acrimonious period that saw Trump boast of the size of his “nuclear button” and threaten to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea. Since then, he and Kim have developed a warm friendship and met for two summits.
But at the time, the casual reference to his nuclear capabilities was another sign of the spiraling rhetoric that marked his early interactions with Kim.
And, to some officials, it was an indication of Trump’s disinterest in the plight of Puerto Ricans, who suffered for months without power and limited resources as their island recovered from the walloping storm.
“There were other topics that were being discussed and my view is that the sole focus of that trip should have been on Puerto Rico,” said Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

CNN

You can read more at the link.

If I was this group I would keep a very low profile because I would not be surprised if the Kim regime is plotting to give their leadership the Kim Jong-nam treatment:

A political group that claimed responsibility for a raid on the North Korean embassy in Madrid last month announced on Thursday it will temporarily cease all activities, but said it will eventually shake the North’s Kim Jong-un regime “to its roots.”

Free Joseon, also known as Cheollima Civil Defense, defined itself in a statement released on its website as an international group composed of North Korean refugees around the world mobilized under the “conviction to break [North Korea’s] dynastic succession under the Kim family.” 

Adding that it had no links to North Korean defectors residing in the South, whose activities are monitored by Seoul, the group also asked international media to stop paying attention to its structure and members for security reasons, since “greater acts lie in store.”

A Spanish High Court investigation report released on Wednesday said 10 assailants from Free Joseon stormed the North’s embassy in Madrid on Feb. 22. Armed with knives and fake guns, the group allegedly stole computers and pen drives reportedly containing sensitive information before successfully escaping to the United States.

Court papers named the mastermind behind the attack as Mexican citizen Adrian Hong Chang, a longtime figure in North Korea-related activist circles in the United States. Upon returning to the United States after the successful raid, Hong apparently tried to offer the information he obtained to FBI officials. It remains unclear whether the FBI accepted the offer, but the State Department denied the U.S. government had any ties to the group on Wednesday. According to Reuters on Thursday, an FBI investigation into the raid is currently in the works.

Hong is said to be one of the co-founders of the North Korea refugee support group LiNK, or Liberty in North Korea, and the head of a strategic consulting firm called Pegasus Strategies LLC, which he described in a published article as a company that uses modern technology to “penetrate closed societies and empower people in those nations.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Here is what well known author and Korea expert Michael Breen has to say about the current efforts to denuclearize North Korea by the Trump administration:

What does North Korea want? North Korea’s leaders may be rational and consistent, but they are opaque, which leads to a lot of guessing about them. One certainty is that they want sanctions lifted. After that, it becomes unclear. Possibility number one is that they want to come in out of the cold, develop their economy and that for this they are prepared to destroy their known nuclear weapons and facilities, but retain the potential to re-arm.

Another possibility is that they plan no real change and are approaching Trump from a risk management perspective. If that is the case, they might serve up a missile launch when Trump announces his plan for re-election. A third possibility is that they still want to unify the peninsula on their own terms and see nuclear weapons as integral to this aim.

These possibilities are not mutually exclusive. But they have one thing in common ― there is a role for nuclear weapons. A fourth possibility ― that North Korea wants to give up being a nuclear power and return to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty with its tail between its legs ― would be nice, but appears to be the least favored by analysts.

It is precisely because it is this last scenario that the U.S. is pushing for that suggests the talks may well fail. I hope I am wrong, but the answer to our question of whether Trump is failing may well be, no, not yet.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I think it is pretty clear what North Korea wants. First of all they want to keep their nuclear weapons not as a deterrent, but instead to unify the Korean peninsula. Remember their artillery threat on Seoul has been enough of deterrent to prevent a US attack on North Korea for decades. Remember the Kim regime has killed many American troops over the decades with no US counterattack because of this artillery threat.

So clearly the expense and political capital they have put into their nuclear weapons program is intended to give them a military advantage over South Korea. This will all factor into the future confederation that the Kim regime wants to establish with South Korea that they can use their nuclear weapons to help extort the ROK to implement once the US-ROK alliance is ended.

This is why the Kim regime wants “Pretend Denuclearization” in return for dropping sanctions, followed by a peace treaty that would ultimately lead to a US troop withdrawal to make the Confederation under North Korea’s terms fall into place.

Via a reader tip comes this news which I am not sure I believe is actually true:

China and Russia have sent home more than half of their North Korean workers, likely tens of thousands of people, according to reports submitted to the UN North Korean Security Council sanctions committee.

Russia’s report said that the number of North Korean workers with valid work permits decreased from 30,023 to 11,490 persons.
In its report, China, the strongest ally of North Korea, said more of half of its income-earning North Korean nationals had been repatriated.

A UN diplomat confirmed to CNN that one-page reports from Beijing and Moscow were sent to the committee on sanctions, as required by a December 2017 Council resolution demanding repatriation of all North Korean workers by the end of this year. 
Reuters first reported this story. CNN could not immediately confirm the figures given and China has previously been accused of trying to find ways around North Korea sanctions.China’s report also noted that it does not wish for the submission to be made public.

CNN

You can read more at the link, but it appears that there is no corroboration of the claims made by Russia and China that they actually sent these near-slave labor workers home. If they did that would be another major cut in foreign revenue to the Kim regime.

This could also help explain why Kim Jong-Un is reportedly planning a trip to Russia to meeting with President Putin.

Fmr NK diplomat Thae Yong-ho specs NK may've lost encryption decoder(?) in CCD raid of NK embo in Spain. If this gets into US' hands, all source files would've to be changed; NK unable to use crypto comm w dip offices for while. (Forgive compy term botch!)https://t.co/yTDuYnl6JL

— Soo Kim (@mllesookim) March 25, 2019

It looks like President Trump’s decision to not implement new sanctions on North Korea has caused them to respond by sending back some of the Joint Liaison Office workers:

South Korea expressed hope that planned inter-Korean projects will proceed smoothly after some North Korean officials at the inter-Korean liaison office in the North’s Gaeseong went back to work Monday.

A meeting between the representatives of the liaison office from the two Koreas was held and the office will operate normally, according to the unification ministry.

North Korean officials were quoted by the ministry as saying they came to work “as usual.”

On March 22, North Korea withdrew its staff from the inter-Korean liaison office saying the measure reflected “instructions from a superior authority,” without giving further details.

While the North Korean side has yet to explain the withdrawal and partial return of officials at the liaison office, Seoul remained hopeful about keeping the momentum for talks. 

“We still have to watch the situation as the North’s officials have yet make a full return, but it could be that the North felt pressure after breaking the momentum of talks with the South,” said Oh Gyeong-seob, a researcher at the Sejong Institute.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It appears that either Kim Jong-un is planning a trip to Russia or that his de facto Chief of Staff, Kim Chang-son is just checking in on the sanctions busting schemes they have with the Russians. Russian President Putin has offered to hold an Inter-Korean Summit in Vladivostok before:

A senior North Korean official has left for Vladivostok in Russia’s far east after ending his trip to Moscow in what’s seen as part of preparations for a possible visit there by the North’s leader Kim Jong-un. 
Kim Chang-son, the official with the North’s State Affairs Commission, was spotted at Sheremetyevo International Airport in the Russian capital city at around 2:45 p.m. Saturday (Russia time). 
He was in Moscow for five days. 

Escorted by two guards, he quickly went into the VIP section, while four others who appeared to be accompanying Kim entered the boarding gate. 
The Russian Aeroflot SU 1700 flight carrying Kim took off at 4:10 p.m. and was expected to land in Vladivostok early Sunday. 
The visit by Kim, known as leader Kim Jong-un’s de facto chief of staff, raised speculation that Pyongyang could be making preparations for leader Kim’s first trip to Russia since taking office. 

A vehicle possibly carrying Kim Chang-son was seen coming into the Kremlin every day from Wednesday to Friday, suggesting the official held talks with Russian counterparts over logistics and protocol.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the Moon administration better come up with a Plan B because their effort for an “ethnic exemption” to sanctions appears to not be getting traction in the US:

The U.S. Congress may pass a bill calling for additional sanctions on North Korea as early as May, according to multiple diplomatic sources Tuesday, a move to pressure Pyongyang to take meaningful denuclearization measures. 

Despite analysis by Seoul officials that Washington was unlikely to implement new sanctions on North Korea in the near future, the sources indicated that preparations for new legislation are already finished. 

“Following the collapse of the second North-U.S. summit, the Republicans and Democrats are considering introducing legislation to strengthen sanctions on North Korea,” said one diplomatic source in Washington. “Because they have been preparing the bill for a year, there is plenty of possibility it may be introduced in May or June.”

The source said that the push to strengthen sanctions on the North is centered around the Senate’s committees on armed services, finance and foreign relations. 

Another overseas source said, “If North Korea doesn’t show steps toward meaningful denuclearization measures by next month, it will be a matter of time that sanctions will be strengthened, rather than eased.”

The source added, “I met with a key U.S. administration official in charge of sanctions following the Hanoi summit who clearly said that they are not considering sanctions relief to allow the resumption of Mount Kumgang tourism or the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.