Moon says #SouthKorea can trade rice for #NorthKorea's coal, raw material, rare earths. But coal, titanium, iron, gold, nickel, etc are all banned. But he already violated sanctions by importing #NK coal, providing oil to #NK, etc, w no consequences. So he'll press on. https://t.co/dCL5dzgK6x
This report makes me wonder if there is a arms for petroleum agreement going on between North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China?:
North Korea has reportedly sold arms and military equipment to Middle East countries in violation of the United Nations sanctions.
The Wall Street Journal issued the report on Saturday citing a secret report by experts monitoring UN sanctions against the regime.
The UN experts said in the report that they found new evidence of the North’s arms smuggling and illegal financial transactions.
The panel said that the evidence showed North Korea sold tanks, ballistic missiles and rocket-propelled grenades to Yemen’s Houthi insurgents and other entities via a Syrian arms smuggler.
The UN report said that North Korean arms experts had visited a munitions factory in Syria multiple times. It added that the North’s imports of petroleum products surged on the routes involving Russian and Chinese vessels. [KBS World Radio]
Just like President Trump is claimed in Woodward’s book to have been exploring the ordering of a preemptive strike on North Korea, what is the big deal if he was likewise exploring the option of removing dependents from South Korea?
Woodward writes that Trump even proposed sending a tweet declaring that he was ordering all U.S. military dependents out of South Korea, an act that would likely be read in North Korea as a signal that the United States was preparing for war.
The tweet never went out.
On Dec. 3, after another North Korean ICBM test, Sen. Lindsay Graham advocated removing U.S. troops’ families from South Korea in an interview. The book says that, the following day, McMaster was informed that Ri Su-yong, a vice chairman of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party Central Committee and director of the committee’s International Affairs Department, told intermediaries “that the North would take the evacuation of U.S. civilians as a sign of imminent attack.”
Hence, withdrawing the dependents of American troops should be “one of the last cards to play,” and the possible tweets were described by Woodward as having “scared the daylights out of the Pentagon leadership,” Defense Secretary James Mattis and Dunford.
Graham, in a change of heart, was said to have advised Trump in a phone call in January that a decision to withdraw U.S. troops’ families is “hard to go back” on, and that it would “rock the South Korean stock market and the Japanese economy.” When asked by Trump if he should delay such an evacuation, Graham, who has been a hard-liner on the North, was quoted as telling him, “I don’t think you should ever start this process unless you’re ready to go to war.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
If what is discussed in Woodward’s book is true, Trump like many people not familiar with the situation, may have thought removing dependents would be a good idea to make sure a preemptive strike option could be executed if needed. Clearly his aides and Senator Graham advised him otherwise of the difficulties and ramifications of removing dependents from South Korea and the President decided otherwise.
Valentina Ivanovna Matvienko, head of the Russian Federation Council, leaves Pyongyang on Sept. 10, 2018, after attending North Korea’s founding day celebration a day earlier in this photo from the North’s Korean Central News Agency. The media outlet released a series of photos showing foreign guests leaving after attending the ceremony. (Yonhap)
It will be interesting to see how many more requests General Brooks will be receiving from the Moon administration to send materials across the border:
Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, commander of United Nations Command and the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) at an event in Seoul on Wednesday / Yonhap
The U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) authorized South Korea vehicles and personnel to cross the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) to support construction of communication infrastructure that will be used in inter-Korean business projects.
“Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, Commander of United Nations Command, authorized vehicles and personnel from the Republic of Korea to cross the Military Demarcation Line today in the eastern transportation corridor to support construction of communication infrastructure to be used between the Republic of Korea and North Korea,” said the UNC press release, Thursday.
“The approval allows more material than what is needed to repair communication lines, and will result in the construction of a communication building.” [Korea Times]
While the Moon administration continues to play nice with North Korea, the Trump administration continues to add new sanctions over the Kim regime’s nuclear program:
This AP file photo shows U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. (Yonhap)
The United States on Thursday sanctioned two companies in China and Russia for allegedly facilitating North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
The Department of the Treasury also sanctioned a North Korean individual in the latest set of sanctions aimed at denuclearizing the regime.
Thursday’s action particularly targets the revenue earned for the Pyongyang government by North Korean IT workers overseas.
The Treasury said it is sanctioning China Silver Star, which is “nominally a Chinese IT company, but in reality … managed and controlled by North Koreans.”
Also being sanctioned is the firm’s CEO, Jong Song-hwa, and its Russia-based front company, Volasys Silver Star.
“These actions are intended to stop the flow of illicit revenue to North Korea from overseas information technology workers disguising their true identities and hiding behind front companies, aliases, and third-party nationals,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but it appears that the Trump administration is not ready to sign up for “pretend denuclearization“.
Here is the latest on the opening of the Inter-Korean office at Kaesong:
This photo provided by the unification ministry shows a four-story building that will be used for the liaison office in the North Korean border town of Kaesong. (Yonhap)
South and North Korea launched their joint liaison office on Friday, securing a platform for round-the-clock communication that is expected to help foster cross-border exchange and ease tensions.
The liaison office was launched in the North’s border town of Kaesong, with around 50 people each from the two Koreas attending the opening ceremony.
The move is a follow-up on an agreement that the leaders of the two Koreas reached in their April summit to run such an office on hopes that the office will serve as a communication channel to help facilitate inter-Korean cooperation on various fronts.
“The inter-Korean joint liaison office is a channel for round-the-clock communication in the new era of peace,” South Korea’s Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said in a congratulatory speech. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link but according to the article South Korea will have around 20 people working there.
Of course the Moon administration is going to downplay the cost of the money they plan to give to North Korea:
The Unification Ministry is rejecting suspicions it is downplaying the costs of implementing April’s inter-Korean Panmunjeom Declaration.
A ministry official told reporters Wednesday that the practice of submitting estimated next-year budget requests was established by the Roh Moo-hyun government in 2007, and that this government is simply following precedent. He was responding to the concerns raised by some opposition lawmakers that the total cost of implementing the Panmunjeom Declaration may be far higher than the Moon administration’s 471-billion estimate, and say that requesting funds in year-by-year amounts may be a way of minimizing perception of that total cost.
Earlier this week, the government told lawmakers that it will require an additional 298-point-six billion won next year to implement the agreement.
Estimated costs include operating the inter-Korean liaison office, holding family reunions, and a range of infrastructure projects to modernize North Koreas roads and rails. [KBS World Radio]
What is funny is that the Moon administration is claiming they are following precedent set during the Roh Moo-hyun administration. Current President Moon was the Chief of Staff for former President Roh, so essentially his administration is following a precedent of downplaying Inter-Korean cooperation costs he helped to create.
Assuming this claim is true in Woodward’s latest rumormongering book, I don’t see what the problem is with the US President weighing the options available to address the North Korean nuclear issue. Obviously after been given the information President Obama decided not to do it:
Former U.S. President Barack Obama mulled a preemptive attack on North Korea after its fifth nuclear test in 2016, according to a book released Tuesday.
Obama was deeply disturbed to learn that North Korea had conducted its biggest-yet nuclear detonation on Sept. 9, 2016, with the North claiming the new nuclear bomb could be mounted on a ballistic missile, journalist Bob Woodward wrote in “Fear: Trump in the White House.”
“Even with his intense desire to avoid a war, Obama decided the time had come to consider whether the North Korean nuclear threat could be eliminated in a surgical military strike,” the book claims.
“The North Korean threat had not been diminished, and in September 2016 Obama posed a sensitive question to his National Security Council: Was it possible to launch a preemptive military strike, supported by cyber attacks, on North Korea to take out their nuclear and missile programs?” it continues. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the closest the US came to a preemptive strike was during the Clinton Administration when the nuclear issue first came up. Strike planning was called off after Jimmy Carter’s unilateral intervention by traveling to Pyongyang. It does make me wonder how different things would be now if the Clinton administration did in fact launch this strike on North Korea’s nuclear program?
