Tag: North Korea

Historian Robert Neff has an article and additional historical images of the Yalu River over at this Korea Times link.

It looks like the price for North Korea for the Trump-Kim II Summit will be closing their Yongbyon nuclear facility:

The second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump, scheduled for the end of February, is expected to primarily deal with shutting down North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facility and with corresponding measures by the US as part of fleshing out the joint statement signed by the two leaders in their Singapore summit on June 12, 2018, according to a high-ranking official at South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The question of building a peace regime is also expected to receive considerable attention.

“The US also places considerable significance” on North Korea’s conditional offer to shut down the Yongbyon reactor, a senior official at the Foreign Ministry who is familiar with the North Korea-US negotiations said during a meeting with reporters on Jan. 31. “Since this idea was brought up by North Korea, the discussion will focus on Yongbyon and then move on to other topics.”

During the inter-Korean Pyongyang Joint Statement in Sept. 2018, North Korea expressed its willingness to permanently close the Yongbyon nuclear facility presuming that the US takes corresponding measures, but some have argued that the Yongbyon facility is so old that closing it would have little value.

Hankyoreh

You can read more at the link, but closing Yongbyon is of more symbolic value for the US because the Kim regime can just reopen it whenever they decide to create another crisis. Even if they completely destroyed and dismantled Yongbyon such a deal does nothing to identify and shutdown any clandestine nuclear sites they may have.

It will be interesting to see what the US gives up in return for closing Yongbyon because the article claims that sanctions especially on the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Kumgang Tours will remain in place. That means that a peace treaty and/or humanitarian aid will likely be what is offered.

The long speculated on second Trump-Kim summit is set:

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be held in Vietnam Feb. 27-28 with the talks to center on dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.
The date and venue had been shrouded in secrecy as the two countries negotiated the next steps following a vague denuclearization deal reached at their first summit in Singapore in June.
“Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong-un is a good one,” Trump said during his State of the Union address.

Yonhap

I wonder what the Chinese government thinks of the summit being in Vietnam considering their past brief military war and current territorial disputes in the South China Sea? This is a growing indication of how much the US-Vietnam relationship continues to positively develop which I would think the Chinese government would not be happy about.

This shouldn’t come as much of as surprise to people who follow North Korea:

North Korea stepped up restrictions on the use of Chinese mobile networks near the border last year in an apparent effort to control the flow of outside information, human rights organization Amnesty International has said.
In a recent report on North Korea’s human rights situation, the group said the reclusive regime has strengthened efforts to trace the activities of smuggled mobile phones using Chinese networks and block the signals in the border areas over the past few years. 
“Individuals interviewed by Amnesty International in 2018 reported that the situation has not improved despite the recent dialogue between officials from the two Koreas,” it said. “Rather, communications through the Chinese mobile network have become even more difficult and risky in 2018.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but as I have always believed the Kim regime is more concerned about subversive information than the threat of US military led regime change.

Will Pyongyang also stop its assassinations, threats & subversion of South Korea's democracy? No more coded numbers broadcasts? No more United Front Dep't recruiting teachers, union leaders & students? And won't Pyongyang see VOA & RFA broadcasts as "toppling"? https://t.co/zwrahxstRw

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) February 1, 2019

I am not sure there is any size of a “pot of gold” that will make Kim Jong-un completely denuclearize:

The Trump administration is quietly preparing a special “economic package” designed to entice North Korean leader Kim Jong-un into taking specific steps toward dismantling his nuclear weapons program when he and President Trump meet for their highly anticipated second summit.
The initiative, spearheaded by Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun, has already been touted in private working-level talks with the North Koreans and involves creating a kind of escrow account to prove to Mr. Kim that the U.S. and its allies are truly committed to rewarding Pyongyang economically if it comes through on denuclearization, The Washington Times has learned.
While the State Department has not commented publicly, sources familiar with the plan say it centers on securing guarantees for billions of dollars worth of cash contributions from Japan, South Korea, the European Union and others that would go toward North Korean infrastructure and development projects.
“These are guarantees that can be waved under Kim’s nose to assure him of the pot of gold waiting for him on the other side of the rainbow,” said one of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Washington Times

You can read more at the link, but this “pot of gold” will likely be big enough for Kim Jong-un to “pretend denuclearize” if that is what the Trump administration is interested in.

I think this could be interpreted by the North Koreans that the Trump administration is comfortable with a “cooling tower” like spectacle to justify dropping sanctions:

North Korea needs to take a “significant” step toward abandoning its nuclear weapons in order to get sanctions relief from the United States, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton has said.
In an interview with The Washington Times published Friday, Bolton indicated that U.S. President Donald Trump is ready to lift the sanctions on Pyongyang if the regime will signal its sincerity about giving up its nuclear arsenal.
“What we need from North Korea is a significant sign of a strategic decision to give up nuclear weapons and it is when we get that denuclearization that the president can begin to take the sanctions off,” he said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The threat of regime removal has long been less of a concern for the Kim regime compared to the threat to the regime’s legitimacy from subversive media. The fact they are willing to execute people for watching subversive media is proof of this:

The North Korean government is threatening residents along the border with South Korea with possible execution for being caught watching South Korean media, RFA sources say.
The regime has reportedly held lectures in South Hwanghae province, in the western part of the country, describing severe penalties for the possession of items from wealthy, democratic South Korea.
“In the new year, police officials began hosting lectures all over the province,” said a source from South Hwanghae in an interview with RFA’s Korean Service on Monday.
“The lectures consisted of threats that strictly demand that residents abstain from watching decadent video materials of capitalism and the possessing things like fliers and USB sticks that have found their way in from the South,” said the source.
Activists in South Korea have been known to release balloons laden with money, food, fliers and USB flash drives containing media files, hoping they will land in the North and be found and distributed.  But access to South Korean TV doesn’t always require the discovery of a downed balloon.
“In a recent lecture, they told us they are aware that a growing number of people are able to manipulate the frequencies [of their televisions] to watch South Korean TV programs,” the source said.
“They said that regardless of any individual’s status, those caught in violation could be executed by firing squad. [They want to] instill fear,” the source added.

Radio Free Asia

You can read more at the link.

The doughnut hole in the argument that a nuclear North Korea can be contained, managed, and melded into some facsimile of India or Pakistan is a denial of the ideological basis for Pyongyang’s pursuit of nukes. It is not merely for deterrence, but to engineer its final victory. https://t.co/8JbRt5YdKV

— Edward Oh 🇺🇸 (@EdwardHBOh) January 22, 2019

I have been saying that the Trump administration must be offering something the Kim regime wants in order to agree to a second summit, sanctions relief or a Korean War peace treaty would do it:

U.S. President Donald Trump will most likely offer North Korea some kind of relief from international sanctions or a peace treaty in the near future, a prominent DPRK watcher and legal scholar told NK News last week.
Speaking in Washington DC ahead of a conference hosted by NK News’s parent organization the Korea Risk Group, Tufts University’s Sung-Yoon Lee said the international community’s  growing lack of political will to enforce sanctions will likely allow the U.S. to reward Pyongyang for what he described as its “fake concessions” on the nuclear issue.
“Trump will be willing to lift sanctions formally, I believe, not all sanctions, but he might say, ‘okay the poor starving North Korean people, they are suffering, so let’s lift sanctions on the ban of export of seafood and textiles,’” Lee, Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor in Korean Studies and Assistant Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said.
“If the U.S. takes the lead in bending the rules – U.S. rules as well as UN Security Council resolutions – who will object? China? No. South Korea? No. Russia? No. Britain and France which really don’t have a bone in this fight? No,” he added. “So it’s all up to Trump and I think Trump is more than willing to offer premature sanctions relaxation.”
In a wide-ranging interview, Lee also discussed why he believes it’s “too late” to bridge the gap between the U.S. and North Korea on denuclearization definitions, ROK President Moon Jae-in’s role in promoting dialogue with the DPRK, and what he sees as Pyongyang’s long-term goal: forcing U.S. withdrawal from the peninsula and the region.

NK News

You can read the whole interview at the link, but Professor Lee believes that sanctions relief and a peace treaty will in the near future be offered by the US.

However, squabbles over the definition of denuclearization could cause North Korea in the next few years to detonate a hydrogen bomb in the atmosphere over the Pacific to make the point their nuclear program is now complete. I don’t see them doing that due to the affect such a detonation would have on satellites. Taking out satellites with an EMP blast I think would lead to a call for regime removal; just imagine the global financial and economic impacts of losing satellites in low Earth orbit. The outrage I believe would be huge.

I don’t think the Kim regime would risk the blowback which would leave them with an above ground test option. If they were going to do an above ground test they would have to do it over the surface of a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. Seems pretty challenging logistically for the North Koreans to pull off such a test, but if they get billions of dollars in cash from the South Koreans and sanctions relief may be they can pull it off.