In N. Korea, we had 3 cards to play:
— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) December 19, 2018
– "maximum pressure" (then Trump dialed it back to "medium")
– deterrence (then Trump canceled US-ROK exercises)
– KJU's pariah status because of crimes against humanity (then Trump "fell in love" with him)
He gave it all away for nothing. https://t.co/GJGiPTw4b2
#MoonJaein, just because he was elected #SouthKorea's president, obviously thinks he has a mandate to end the existence of the South Korean state. I suspect most voters don't want to surrender their freedoms to him or his buddy, #KimJongUn. https://t.co/ywVEVJuxl6
— Gordon G. Chang (@GordonGChang) December 15, 2018
The Korea Times has a compilation of opinions from North Korean defectors on what they think about the current North Korean peace initiative:
Mikyung, female, escaped from North Korea in 2016 and arrived in 2016
I am amazed that South Koreans have high expectations that Kim Jung-un is seeking peace. It should be clear to anyone who understands the regime that it is seeking survival on its own terms, not to compromise. At last, more people are recognizing that he will not give up his nuclear weapons. The next realization needs to be that he won’t give up control of North Korea, that he will continue trying to exert complete control over everyone within North Korean territory and maybe even the entire Korean Peninsula.
Korea Times
We can see that even though he seems to be opening up, he still isn’t allowing North Koreans to talk with the outside world, to visit South Korea, or to even Skype with their elderly relatives in the South. It is a human tragedy, not just a North Korean tragedy.
South Koreans will be disappointed later when it is clear that he won’t change, and hopefully they will start to recognize that soon.
Here is my favorite opinion:
Eunji, female, escaped from North Korea in 2015, arrived in 2015
Korea Times
After I escaped to South Korea, I was shocked to learn that it was North Korea that had attacked South Korea in 1950. When I was in North Korea, I had learned the opposite, and so many other things that clearly were not true. There are some things that only North Korea believes. Sometimes it seems that South Koreans have been learning the North Korean version of history. I won’t be surprised if some South Koreans start insisting that it was South Korea that attacked North Korea.
And the people who are welcoming Kim Jung-un? They are crazy people. Some of my South Korean friends and colleagues have asked me about this, some of them even believe that I should welcome Kim Jung-un. I tell them, “Kim Jung-un’s supporters need to go to a mental hospital to have their brains checked. They need to live in North Korea, then they can learn what a real dictator is like.”
South Koreans hated Park Geun-hye, she was removed through the constitutional process and even jailed, so she was not a real dictator. But now the people who held candle-light vigils against President Park are now welcoming a real dictator? When I was in North Korea, I had an excuse for being ignorant about the outside world because I was taught only the truth according to the Kim family. If you live in South Korea, with so much information available everywhere, then you have no excuse.
You can read articles, books and even see videos showing both sides of an issue, instead of the situation of North Korea where only one side is presented. If Kim Jung-un truly changes and North Koreans can become free, then even I would welcome him. Before we can welcome Kim Jung-un, there needs to be truth about North Korea, there needs to be freedom for North Koreans. A murderer and dictator should not be welcomed as a hero.
She is absolutely right, anyone championing Kim Jong-un is not only crazy but should be considered treasonous considering how many South Koreans the Kim regime has murdered, injured, and kidnapped over the years that they have never been held responsible for.
You can read more opinions from North Korean defectors at the link.
Of course North Korea is going to use child and slave labor, they will just be smart enough to not use it front of the cameras to give them plausible deniability. The more slave labor they use, the more money that will be pocketed by the Kim regime to fund their nuclear program and extravagant lifestyle:
North Korea’s economy – and construction industry, in particular – is built on slave labor. For decades, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are dragooned into dolgyeokdae, literally “stormtrooper,” work crews for little or no pay, barely fed enough to survive and often forced to sleep in makeshift housing they built themselves, according to rights groups and reports by the State Departmentand others.
Washington Post
Today, South Korean President Moon Jae-in is talking boldly of building road and railway links inside North Korea as a first step toward European Union-style regional economic integration.
In September, Moon took his country’s business elite, including the head of the national railway company, to Pyongyang to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that the South was ready to invest as soon as U.N. sanctions are lifted.
But human rights activists are asking: Could Moon’s ambitious plans help undermine North Korea’s entrenched system of forced labor? Or will they inadvertently fuel and encourage that system?
“The South Korean government and companies chomping at the bit to get into North Korea need to consider the kind of reputational damage they will suffer if it’s found their investments are being supported by forced labor,” wrote Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division. “South Korea has so far been shamefully negligent in doing real due diligence on labor rights grounds for proposed projects in North Korea.”
You can read more at the link.
This probably should be considered a good thing that the Trump administration is not in a hurry to cut a deal with North Korea for little to nothing in return:
U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. is “in no hurry” to negotiate with North Korea.
KBS World Radio
On Twitter, Trump wrote that “many people have asked how we are doing in our negotiations with North Korea” and that he “always reply by saying we are in no hurry.”
Trump added there is “wonderful potential for great economic success” for North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un “sees it better than anyone and will fully take advantage of it for his people.”
He maintained an optimistic outlook, saying “we are doing just fine.”
You can read more at the link.
Found on my doorstep this morning, this flier calls for creating a new unified flag to greet Kim Jong Un when the "noble guest of unification" comes to Seoul. The zeal of nationalism is indeed palpable, and pervasive these days. pic.twitter.com/eYTE0MaTEH
— Sam Kim (@samkimasia) December 1, 2018
As I guessed would happen, the fate of upcoming exercises will be tied to any upcoming summit between Kim Jong-un and President Trump. It makes too much sense to use these exercises as bartering chips if needed:
Seoul and Washington will make a decision on whether to conduct its annual Foal Eagle joint military exercise scheduled for next spring taking into consideration a potential second North Korea-U.S. summit, according to multiple military sources Thursday.
“The United States is paying great attention to advancing North-U.S. relations,” a South Korean government source said. “Our military and government is also responding to the U.S. stance and having discussions taking into consideration the security situation on the Korean Peninsula.”
U.S. President Donald Trump recently said that he is planning to hold his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in January or February, making the suspension of the South-U.S. drill more likely.
Another government source here said, “What it means to make a decision to hold the drills linking it to the North-U.S. summit is that, in the case that North Korea does not come to the negotiating table, the Foal Eagle may be conducted.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link.
Yes, their own people. https://t.co/YawX9VorHi
— Edward Oh 🇺🇸 (@EdwardHBOh) December 5, 2018
It is starting to become pretty clear that sanctions will ultimately be dropped before North Korea denuclearizes based on the new rhetoric coming from the White House:
ohn Bolton, the U.S. national security adviser, said Thursday that Washington will remove sanctions when it sees “performance” from North Korea and advocated a second summit between the two countries’ leaders.
In an interview with Washington-based National Public Radio (NPR), Bolton discussed a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and said it will be possible “sometime after the first of the year.”
Through a second North-U.S. summit, Bolton said Trump “is trying to give the North Koreans a chance to live up to the commitments they made at the Singapore summit” and has “held the door open for them.
“They need to walk through it,” Bolton continued. “This is one more chance for Kim Jong-un, who is the only decision maker that matters in the North Korean system, to deliver on what he said in Singapore.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link.
I am sure that this is something that enough cash sent up North can make happen. His dad needed $500 million to host a summit in Pyongyang, so I am sure Kim Jong-un’s price to go to Seoul will be much higher:
Anchor: North Korea continues to remain silent about a prospective visit to South Korea by leader Kim Jong-un. If the visit is to take place before the end of the year, as the South Korean government hopes, there may only be a matter of days left to confirm a date and make arrangements. Kim Bum-soo has more.
Report: It was at September’s inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang about three months ago when leaders of the two Koreas first held out the possibility of meeting again in Seoul.
[Sound bite: N. Korean leader Kim Jong-un (Korean)]
“I promised to President Moon Jae-in that I will visit Seoul in the near future. We will put an end to the tragedy of division as soon as possible and hold our hands together to embark on a sacred journey to peace and prosperity.”[Sound bite: President Moon Jae-in (Korean)]
“I requested Chairman Kim Jong-un to visit Seoul and he decided to come to Seoul in the near future. ‘Near future’ means ‘within this year’ unless there is a special circumstances. Chairman Kim’s visit to Seoul would be the first by a North Korean leader and it will provide a breakthrough to the inter-Korean relations.”Now, in December, with just a few weeks remaining in the year, the South still hasn’t heard any confirmation date from the North. That’s according to Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, who told lawmakers Friday the South and North have been in talks to try to make the visit happen. [KBS World Radio]
You can read more at the link, but it is not surprising at all to me the hypocrisy of how the Moon administration wants to champion someone with a visit to Seoul who has killed many Koreans in recent years, launched a nerve agent attack in an international airport just two years ago, has active gulags, still has kidnapped South Koreans, among a host of other provocations while at the same time regularly bashing the Japanese for things that happened 75-100 years ago.
Is anyone in the Moon administration going to demand apologies from Kim Jong-un for his regime’s transgressions against South Korea like they regularly demand from Japan? Better yet what about demands for compensation for the victims of the Kim regime’s attacks?
