Tag: North Korea

Kim Jong-un has finished getting his marching orders from Emperor President Xi and is on his way back home:

After holding meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has left Beijing and is now headed for Pyongyang aboard his special train. Kim is expected to have coordinated strategies with Xi ahead of his envisioned meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Kim Bum-soo has more. 

Report: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping for about an hour on Tuesday.

After their fourth summit, Xi hosted a banquet for Kim which lasted for more than four hours. Tuesday is believed to be Kim’s 35th birthday.

On Wednesday, Kim and Xi are believed to have met again for a luncheon at a hotel in Beijing.

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link.

The left wing South Korean newspaper, the Hankyoreh, has an editorial published saying that to move the peace process forward we all just need to learn to live with a North Korea with nuclear weapons:

During a seminar last year, an expert on the North Korean nuclear issue said the end point of denuclearization talks would be “a situation where a peace regime is so firmly in place that it wouldn’t even matter if North Korea were hiding a few nuclear weapons.” We might describe it as an approach of “killing the North Korean nuclear issue through a peace process.” Quite a few of the participants vehemently objected. “Are you suggesting we accept a nuclear North Korea?” they asked, insisting that the North should not be allowed to have even a single nuclear weapon.

(………) Even if Kim’s “complete denuclearization” is a different proposition from the one the North put forth at the time of the Agreed Framework, we have no way of knowing the timeline or conditions. The least we can say is that it doesn’t appear to be the “swift surrender” envisioned by the West. (……….)

A world where North Korea does not possess a single nuclear weapon does not appear to be on the horizon for now. We need to practice somehow living with a nuclear-equipped North Korea. We will soon be facing a moment of truth where we will need to confront the reality of North Korea’s nuclear program.

Hankyoreh

You can read the whole thing at the link, but I think this is clearly a trial balloon by the Korean left. They realize that the Kim regime is not going to give up its nuclear weapons and now want to start socializing the concept of letting them keep some of their nukes to keep the peace process moving forward.

This all plays into the Kim regime’s confederation strategy where they can end the US-ROK alliance, withdraw US troops, remove the US nuclear umbrella, and then dictate terms of the confederation because they have the military advantage with their nuclear weapons.

My guess would be is that North Korea is sending out the telemetry data not as a test of anything but rather as a warning to the Trump administration to hurry up and drop sanctions or testing will begin again:

North Korea has continued its development of intercontinental ballistic missiles despite declaring a halt to launches, having conducted a missile-linked radio wave experiment early this month, it has been learned.
Despite sanctions limiting the North’s petroleum supply, the North Korean military is continuing to train at its usual levels. In response, the Japanese and U.S. governments plan to increase their surveillance of smuggling and other activities on the high seas, according to military and diplomatic sources.
North Korea conducted a launch test of its radio telemetry, which is transmitted from equipment in a missile’s components such as a warhead. When a ballistic missile is launched, telemetry provides essential information about the missile’s angle, location, speed and other factors to observers on the ground.
In 2016 and 2017, North Korea launched about 40 missiles, including ICBMs. Ground-based telemetry tests are often conducted prior to an ICBM launch, and are considered an important sign of an impending missile launch.

Yomiuri Shimbun

You can read more at the link.

So I am to believe that the Kim regime is so poor that they need the international community to provide them humanitarian assistance, but some how they have enough funds to support this?:

The 105-story Ryugyong Hotel has long been a blot on the Pyongyang skyline. The world’s tallest unoccupied building has towered over North Korea’s capital since 1987, a grand but empty pyramid entirely dark except for the lone aircraft warning light at its top.
Outsiders saw the unfinished building as the epitome of failure, while people inside the country took care to rarely mention it at all.
That is, until light designer Kim Yong Il made the building once again the talk of the town.
In a brilliant flip of the script, the Ryugyong has been reborn as a symbol of pride and North Korean ingenuity.
For several hours each night, the building that doesn’t have electricity inside becomes the backdrop of a massive light show in which more than 100,000 LEDs flash images of famous statues and monuments, bursts of fireworks, party symbols and political slogans.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but someone should ask Bart Vermeiren from the Red Cross and the Blue House’s Moon Chung-in what they thinks of this.

Just more of the same from the Kim regime:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said Tuesday he is firmly committed to denuclearization and ready to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at any time, but warned he could seek an alternative course if the U.S. misjudges his patience and sticks to sanctions.
Kim made the remarks during his New Year’s speech broadcast by the country’s state television, also urging the U.S. to take corresponding measures in exchange for denuclearization steps the communist nation has taken so far.
Kim also said he is willing to reopen the now shuttered inter-Korean industrial park in the North’s border city of Kaesong and resume a suspended tour program to Mount Kumgang on the North’s east coast “without any preconditions.”
That could suggest Kim wants the resumption of the two projects as sanctions relief from the U.S.
“I am always ready to sit down again with the U.S. president at any time and will make efforts to produce an outcome that the international community would welcome,” Kim said. 
“(But) we could be left with no choice but to seek a new way if the U.S. does not make good on its promises, misjudges our patience, while seeking to force things unilaterally and clinging to sanctions and pressure,” he said. 

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime is hoping they can get the second meeting with President Trump where Kim Jong-un can convince him to drop the sanctions on the Kaesong Industrial Park and the Mt. Kumgang Resort for superficial and easily reversible concessions that we have seen before.

Dropping of sanctions would allow a surge of investment in North Korea that will line the pockets of the Kim regime that they can then use to further develop their nuclear and other weapons programs. The only real concessions from North Korea that I believe would warrant dropping of any sanctions is when they release a complete list of their nuclear sites, allow inspections, and begin shipping nuclear material out of the country. I have seen no indications the Kim regime is even considering this.

We will see what happens this year.

Just another example of the hypocrisy from North Korea. The only reason the Japanese are going all in on missile defense is because the threat from the Kim regime. Just last year the North Koreans fired a missile over Japan:

North Korea’s state media on Saturday criticized Japan for conducting a test of a new missile interceptor system, which is being co-funded by the United States and Japan, arguing that the move could chill the “peace atmosphere” on the Korean Peninsula. 
The U.S. and Japan have jointly developed the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor, and they successfully conducted a test of the new interceptor in Hawaii earlier this month.
In an English-language commentary, the North’s Korean Central News Agency said, “Japan’s incitement of the bellicose atmosphere is a serious act of harassing peace to chill the peace atmosphere on the Korean peninsula and the region and strain the situation.” 
“It is the revelation of the crafty trick of the Japanese reactionaries to further ratchet up the tension on the Korean peninsula and meet their own interests,” the commentary said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

NK didn’t pursue nukes to achieve deterrence; it used its deterrence to pursue nukes. Nukes as purely defensive is nonsense, as is the Libya canard NK throws out and the West holds tightly like a security blanket to rationalize NK’s nuclear ambition. NK’s intentions are coercive. https://t.co/6iwYbfZflR

— Edward Oh 🇺🇸 (@EdwardHBOh) December 22, 2018

For any North Korea apologist out there reading this, can you tell me why the Kim regime cannot afford Tamiflu, but they can afford a nuclear weapons program?:

South Korea will send the flu medicine Tamiflu to North Korea as part of an inter-Korean cooperation project on influenza prevention.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry unveiled this plan on Friday and said it will notify the North on related plans in the near future and begin working-level talks to dis​cuss details.

Speaking to reporters after working group discussions with the U.S. held in Seoul Friday, chief nuclear envoy Lee Do-hoon said the issue of providing Tamiflu to North Korean residents has been settled.

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link.