Tag: North Korea

I don’t think anyone will be surprised to find out that former President Jimmy Carter tried to hold a peace conference with the North Koreans back in 1979:

The rift between the presidents of the allies at that time — Park Chung-hee and Jimmy Carter — about the size of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) was highlighted in a transcript of their talks in Seoul on June 30, 1979.

“I can’t promise that we will freeze forces levels,” Carter told Park, according to a White House document on their hourlong conversation.

Another UN sanctions exemption for little to nothing in return from North Korea:

The United Nations Security Council has granted a sanctions exemption that will allow North and South Korea to move forward with a joint railway project, according to a report.

Seoul had requested an exemption for the delivery of fuel and other material needed to conduct a survey in North Korea focused on reconnecting cross-border railways.

The request was approved Friday by the security council’s North Korea sanctions committee, a foreign ministry official said according to the Yonhap News Agency.

The decision comes days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the South that it should not improve ties with the North without marked progress in nuclear talks.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

That + neutralizing SK as a threat to KJU's legitimacy by (1) extinguishing speech that criticizes NK & (2) ensuring that SK media smuggled into NK are either not anti-NK or affirmatively pro-NK.
Goal isn't occupation; it's political supremacy, which looks increasingly plausible. https://t.co/siDMRG7UVq

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) November 22, 2018

Has anyone asked President Moon what he thinks about his new best friend locking away whole families in prison camps?:

Former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s secretary Kim Ok, once rumored to be the late ruler’s secret fourth wife, appears to have been sent to a prison camp, a local government official exclusively told the JoongAng Ilbo on Wednesday.

South Korean intelligence authorities concluded that Kim Ok was imprisoned after Kim Jong-il died in December 2011, according to the source, who requested anonymity. Kim Ok appears to have been sent to a prison camp for political criminals in 2014 for her links to Jang Song-thaek, the uncle of current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Jang was once considered the second most powerful man in the regime.

Jang was executed on Dec. 12, 2013, nearly two years after Kim Jong-un took power following his father’s death. At the time, Jang served as vice chairman of the Workers’ Party’s Central Military Commission and chief of the Central Administrative Department. He was apprehended in November 2013 along with his close aides, kicked out of the party and tried in a special military tribunal. He was found guilty of “anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts in a bid to overthrow the leadership of the party and state and the socialist system,” in the words of North Korea’s official media.

Kim Ok is still alive, the South Korean government official said. Her close family members were all imprisoned as well, according to the source, but it is not known whether they’re still alive.

Kim Ok, who is 53, was seen shadowing Kim Jong-il inside and outside North Korea wherever he went. This caused local analysts to believe she was the late leader’s fourth wife, though North Korean media identified her as his secretary. She was so close to Kim Jong-il that when he visited China in May 2011, she sat next to him in his private vehicle.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

The demilitarization of the ironically named Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) continues:

Military construction crews from North and South Korea, building the first central inter-Korean road in 65 years, met today at Arrowhead Hill in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and shook hands.

Arrowhead Hill was the place of one of the bloodiest battle sites of the war is now the first.

In October South and North Korea troops began the task of removing land mines from the Joint Security Area (JSA) in Panmunjom as well as the Arrowhead Hill (Hwasalmeori) region in Cheorwon, Gangwon Province, where joint exhumation of the remains of Korean War MIA/POW are set to take place. (Hani.co.kr)

On Thursday troops from the North and South met and shook hands on Arrowhead Hill.  [Gateway Pundit via a reader tip]

UNSCR 2397, paragraph 7 allows Air Koryo to buy all the spare parts it needs to keep flying those missile parts to your friends in Damascus & Tehran. https://t.co/fFGcM3lL4G

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) November 21, 2018

You have to love the hypocrisy of this statement from North Korea in regards to their frustration with the Trump administration for not dropping sanctions for little to nothing in return:

“These acts by the U.S. apparently came from a medieval-era way of thinking that only threatening, coercive and barbarian tactics could enhance its negotiating leverage,” DPRK Today, a state-sponsored website, said Monday, also complaining about recent military exercises with Japan involving nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and bombers. Those “illogical” tactics won’t work, it said.  [Washington Post]

This statement is coming from the regime that has launched countless threats, provocations, and attacks over to the decades against South Korea and the US.  Here is what the ROK government has to say:

In Seoul, the government is wary of criticizing the United States directly. But behind the scenes there is a real sense that Washington needs to move the needle forward by building trust with the North.

So why is it always that the US need to build trust with North Korea?  The Kim regime are the ones that have broken multiple agreements.  The onus is on them to build trust with the United States not the other way around.  The easiest way to build trust is by disclosing their nuclear sites and allow inspectors to begin to dismantle them.  If this happens I have no doubt the Trump administration will drop sanctions.

The fact that they Kim regime are not doing this shows they have no desire to denuclearize.  They clearly believe that they can have it both ways by having sanctions dropped and then pretend to denuclearize.  By the time anyone catches on to the fact that they don’t plan to denuclearize, they will have had an influx of cash and moved so far forward on their confederation strategy with the Moon administration in South Korea that any reimplementing of sanctions will be too late.

The North Korean economy should be put into receivership, like the Teamster's Union was in the 70s. Freeze all state actors' assets & release them to buy food, medicine & EAR-99 consumer goods only. Appoint an honest & experienced auditor to manage it. Call it coal-for-food. https://t.co/3QJXImP5wZ

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) November 20, 2018