Hopefully “progress” with North Korea’s denuclearization doesn’t reach a point where Secretary Mattis has to become the one to make it happen:
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said there is progress on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, although it remains a difficult issue.
Mattis told reporters traveling with him to Vietnam Monday that the efforts to denuclearize North Korea continue to be diplomatically-led.
He cited U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent trip to Pyongyang, where the top American diplomat met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to push progress on denuclearization and plan a second summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump.
“There is progress,” Mattis said. “We know it’s going to be difficult as they deal with this difficult issue. No surprise there.” [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but this was a pretty vanilla statement about the “progress” being made.
Seriously? South Korea agreed to enforce the North's writ against defections? Isn't that essentially China's refugee policy & an agreement to tear up the 1951 Refugee Convention? https://t.co/LMeHeXmuKT
It will be interesting to see how the US reacts to this:
The two Koreas and the United Nations Command (UNC) discussed disarmament of the Joint Security Area (JSA) Tuesday amid expectations for unarmed soldiers to “guard” the inter-Korean border area in a near future.
“The three-way consultation body had negotiation on measures on having a weapons-free JSA, including the withdrawal of firearms and guard posts,” according to the Ministry of National Defense.
Army Colonel Cho Yong-geun headed the South’s three-member delegation, with the North led by Colonel Om Chang-nam, according to the ministry. United States Army Colonel Burke Hamilton also represented the UNC for the hours-long discussions.
The trilateral meeting is aimed at finalizing details to realize complete disarmament at the JSA. The two Koreas reached a consensus over the plan by signing a joint military agreement during an inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang last month. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if this just gets slow rolled because who wants to put faith in the North Koreans complying with this agreement?
One way the US could respond is that they will disarm the JSA if the North Koreans agree to withdraw their artillery 50 kilometers north of the DMZ.
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.
