Song Young-gil, Moon's party, said after #NorthKorea dev'd #nuclear weapons, its econ improved. He couldn't tell apart streets of Pyongyang from Hong Kong/Singapore. He said #KimJongUn wants a country with no shame, one that is world's happiest–a Confucius socialism, familism.
It seems it will be hard to get the international community to take sanctions on North Korea seriously when South Korea has announced it is connecting a railroad with North Korea:
The United States on Monday called for the full enforcement of United Nations sanctions on North Korea as the two Koreas moved to establish rail and road links across their border.
The two Koreas will hold a ground-breaking ceremony in late November or early December to start the modernization and connection of railways and roads along the eastern and western regions, the sides announced after high-level talks earlier in the day.
The agreement is a follow-up to last month’s third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
“As President Moon has stated: ‘The improvement of relations between North and South Korea cannot advance separately from resolving North Korea’s nuclear program,'” a spokesperson for the State Department said in response to a Yonhap query. [Yonhap]
According to President Moon the Kim regime is supposed to be trusted so why the cyber attacks?:
South Korea is considering drawing up rules of engagement in cyberspace to effectively deal with growing threats from North Korea and other unidentified players, military authorities said Sunday.
“Since 2004, discussions have been under way at the U.N. meetings to enact international laws related to cyber war,” a source told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity. “We will closely watch the relevant situations and cautiously review and push for drawing up the rules of engagement.”
The envisioned rules of engagement are expected to provide a detailed guideline on how to respond to cyberattacks as soon as threats are detected. The military is also said to be developing its own cyber countermeasures, though details about what kinds of tools that can be employed have not been known.
The move comes as the number of cyberattacks against the country’s military has been on a steady rise in recent years.
According to the data, there were 3,587 hacking attempts against the defense ministry and the military from January to August this year. This compares with 1,434 cases detected during all of 2013. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but it is just the North Koreans and other bad actors up to their normal tricks with little fear of repercussions.
By declaring the NLL a maritime peace zone the Moon administration has given in to North Korean demands that dispute the ROK’s sovereignty of the NLL, of course the Kim regime is going to agree with this:
This map shows the West Sea peace-cooperation special zones proposed by South Korea at the 2007 inter-Korean summit. (Yonhap)
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Friday that the leaders of the two Koreas have recognized the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a de facto sea border, as the term was included in this year’s key inter-Korean agreements.
The remarks came amid a dispute over whether the communist state now acknowledges the maritime boundary that it has long disputed on the grounds that it was drawn unilaterally by the U.S.-led U.N. Command after the 1950-53 Korean War.
In the April inter-Korean summit declaration, the two Koreas jointly used the NLL term, while pledging to transform areas surrounding the tense boundary in the West Sea into a “maritime peace zone.” That term also appears in last month’s military agreement aimed at reducing tensions and preventing accidental clashes.
Seoul has used the two agreements to argue that the North has recognized the NLL.
“The two leaders agreed to turn the areas around the NLL into a maritime peace zone and also reaffirmed that in the September military agreement,” the JCS said in a text message sent to reporters.
“This means that the two leaders have recognized the NLL,” it added. [Yonhap]
So what is a maritime peace zone that the Kim regime is so happy to recognize? President Moon’s plan has been to surrender sovereignty of the NLL to the North Koreans by allowing joint fishing along the maritime border. This plan actually dates back an entire decade to the Roh Moo-hyun administration when Moon Jae-in was President Roh’s Chief of Staff. This map shows why the North Koreans are happy with the is arrangement:
The current NLL is depicted with the Blue line and North Korea’s claimed NLL is depicted with the Red line.
Compare the two maps and the proposed joint fishing zones nearly mirror North Korea’s NLL claims. The giving up of sovereignty of this maritime territory will make it harder to defend the South Korean islands along the NLL. Such an agreement would also set a precedent that the Kim regime’s claim against the legitimacy of the NLL is valid. The last time a South Korean leftist government tried to give away the NLL the ROK Defense Ministry was furious. That is likely why the Moon administration cleaned house at the Ministry of Defense before moving forward with this plan.
Think tanks' influence has ebbed b/c policymakers think they're *already* too beholden to foreign (& specifically, S. Korean) influence. No amount of money can sell tired ideas that don't work or obscure that fact that Moon's policies prioritize Pyongyang's interests over ours. https://t.co/9Jd1kXIAsW
Notice the caveat that President Moon is using in the below quote:
South Korean President Moon Jae-in (L) is interviewed by Britain’s BBC news at his office Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Oct. 12, 2018, in this photo released by Cheong Wa Dae. (Yonhap)
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Friday North Korea understands the need to give up its existing nuclear weapons to achieve complete denuclearization and says it will do so. The only remaining questions are when and how, he added.
“North Korea promised complete denuclearization. It said it will give up nukes for economic development. (It) promised that it has no reason whatsoever to possess nukes while facing difficulties, such as sanctions, as long as the safety of their regime is guaranteed,” Moon said in an interview with Britain’s BBC news. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the North Koreans even if US troops withdraw from South Korea can say that the US or even the Japanese are still a threat to the regime and thus need their nukes. That is a convenient caveat the Kim regime can always claim to justify keeping nuclear weapons.
This is just more of President Moon going around trying to convince western leaders that Kim Jong-un is a really a nice guy ready to reform in order to get international sanctions dropped. I guess we will see if world leaders fall for it again.
Per 11 UN resolutions, NK required to abandon nuke, missile, and BCW programs in “complete, verifiable, irreversible manner.” KJU doles our morsels at his pace and demands reciprocal actions. Like a criminal asking the cop, “what will you give me for not robbing a bank today?” https://t.co/QAzKBa0c53
This was a pretty blunt reaction by President Trump to South Korea’s proposal to drop sanctions on North Korea:
South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon speaks at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018.
South Korea on Thursday walked back on a proposal to lift some of its unilateral sanctions against North Korea following U.S. President Donald Trump’s blunt retort that Seoul could “do nothing” without Washington’s approval.
Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha had said on Wednesday that Seoul was considering lifting measures applied after a deadly attack in 2010 that killed 46 South Korean sailors. She cited the intent to create more diplomatic momentum for talks over North Korea’s nuclear program.
South Korean conservatives reacted with anger as well, and Kang’s ministry downplayed her comments later, saying in a statement that the government has yet to start a “full-fledged” review of sanctions, meaning no decision was imminent.
Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told a parliamentary audit on Thursday there has been no serious consideration given to lifting the sanctions and that doing so would be hard unless North Korea acknowledges responsibility for the 2010 attack. North Korea has fiercely denied it sank the Cheonan warship. (………..)
“They won’t do that without our approval,” Trump said of the comments. “They do nothing without our approval.” [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but it appears there may be some friction coming out of the White House over President Moon’s willingness to push for dropping sanctions for little to nothing in return from North Korea.
Of course the Moon administration is going to continue to say USFK will stay after the signing of any North Korean peace treaty:
As the ongoing peace gestures from North Korea cast doubt on the future of the United States Forces Korea (USFK), a group of U.S.-allied countries ― such as South Korea and Japan ― are on track to underline the need to maintain U.S. troops here.
The controversy surrounding the USFK started making headlines here in June when U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his strong desire to withdraw or at least reduce the U.S. military presence here, saying South Korea does not properly pay for its maintenance cost.
For South Korea and Japan, however, the possible withdrawal of the USFK is a worst-case scenario to weaken their security readiness and generate a potential crack in their long-term defense posture.
The USFK here has for decades served as a war deterrent, preventing North Korea from staging large-scale military provocations against the South since 1953 when the Korean War ended in an armistice.
But starting this year, North Korea has urged the South and the U.S. to declare an end to the war as soon as possible, in what critics view is the regime’s apparent move to pull out the potentially threatening U.S. troops.
For this reason, there is a lingering concern that the ongoing peace mood and the possible declaration of the technical state of war here may result in the withdrawal of the USFK in the end.
South Korea is in a position that the USFK withdrawal will never turn into reality at least for the time being.
Park Han-ki, the nominee for the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), said last week the potential declaration of the end to the war has nothing to do with the existence of the United Nations Command (UNC) and the USFK.
“Even if the two Koreas declare an end to the war, the Korean Armistice Agreement (signed in 1953 between the North, China and the UNC) will remain in effect,” Park said in a National Assembly confirmation hearing, dispelling concerns over the possible withdrawal of the USFK.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in also recently called the USFK a peacekeeper here, saying the U.S. troops will continue to play a role for the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia. [Korea Times]
What the ROK government is saying now about USFK is intended to convince the Trump administration and US politicians to go along with signing the peace treaty. At a time to be determined in the future the South Korean leftist activists will then be unleashed on USFK to protest every car accident, oil spill, etc. in effort to make life difficult for the US military presence in South Korea. It will essentially be the 2002-2004 timeframe all over again.
In addition to the protests the ROK could also play hardball on funding the US-ROK alliance and make environmental compensation demands over the closing of Yongsan Garrison. The Moon administration’s goal will be to convince the Trump administration to withdraw US troops on its own accord and not at the request of the ROK government.
