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?
By this yardstick, not displaying ICBMs in public or not testing nukes for a full year, India, Pakistan, Israel must have denuclearized decades ago. https://t.co/lgf7a1ben4
This undated file photo, released by the Cultural Heritage Administration on Sept. 11, 2018, shows the site of Manwoldae, which was the palace of the 918-1392 Goryeo Dynasty, in the North Korean city of Kaesong. The administration said that it has agreed during a working-level meeting with the North’s National Reconciliation Council in Kaesong on Sept. 6 to conduct a joint survey and preservation of the Manwoldae site for three months from Sept. 27 to Dec. 27. (Yonhap)
The Moon administration is trying to get South Korean conservatives to attend the Inter-Korean Summit later this month in Pyongyang:
The presidential office Cheong Wa Dae on Monday asked the parliamentary speaker and heads of all five political parties in South Korea to accompany President Moon Jae-in on his upcoming trip to the North.
The invitation came from Moon’s chief of staff Im Jong-seok, who currently heads a summit preparation committee.
The Moon-Kim summit is set to be held in Pyongyang from Sept. 18-20.
“The preparation committee for the 2018 Pyongyang summit seeks to invite National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang and vice speakers … as special parliamentary delegates,” Im told a press briefing.
The heads of all five major political parties, including Lee Hae-chan of the ruling Democratic Party and Kim Byong-jun of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP), have also been invited.
Those invited also include Rep. Kang Seok-ho of the main opposition party, who currently serves as the chairman of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and unification. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the South Korean conservatives have declined the invitation calling it a political stunt:
The LKP criticized the government’s proposal as a “political tactic.” The party’s interim chief Kim Byung-joon refused to accept the invitation. The National Assembly speaker’s office said the speaker would also not be part of the delegation.
Only the minor liberal party for Democracy and Peace and the most-progressive Justice Party accepted the invitation, alongside the DPK. [Korea Times]
This is all part of the effort to get the Trump administration to believe that Kim Jong-un is serious about denuclearization by not displaying his ballistic missiles especially ones capable of reaching the US:
This photo provided by the Associated Press shows a military parade underway at Kim Il-sung Square in central Pyongyang on Sept. 9, 2018, staged to celebrate the 70th anniversary of North Korea’s founding. (Yonhap)
North Korea did not showcase intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States during a military parade staged Sunday to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its founding, media reports showed.
North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un presided over the event at Kim Il-sung Square in central Pyongyang but did not give an address, according to the reports.
The North appeared to tone down the parade, which was previously used to show its latest military might, amid stalled nuclear talks with the United States.
“The largest missiles shown in the parade were short-range battlefield devices,” the AFP reported from Pyongyang. [Yonhap]
It is pretty clear that President Moon and Kim Jong-un are going to be putting a full court press on President Trump to declare an end to the Korean War this year:
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said his goal is to make “irreversible progress by the end of the year” toward denuclearization and a permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula in an interview on Friday.
A tangible step in that direction would be a formal declaration to end the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice agreement, not a peace treaty, Moon told Indonesia’s Kompas newspaper in a written interview published two days after his special envoy returned from a trip to Pyongyang and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The interview came ahead of Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s three-day state visit to Seoul kicking off Monday. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I expect a lot of flattery and pretend denuclearization concessions from the North Koreans to get him to agree to end the Korean War. Kim is probably hoping that Trump will go along with the pretend denuclearization strategy as way to boost poll numbers prior to the mid-term elections in the US. We should see over the next couple of months if pretend denuclearization will be what Trump decides to do.
So why are President Moon and Kim Jong-un so intent on end the Korean War? That is because once the war is officially ended this then challenges the legitimacy of the US-ROK alliance. If there is no longer hostilities between the two Koreas then why does the US military need to be there?
I believe that President Moon is too smart to advocate against keeping USFK in Korea post-peace treaty because that will mobilize the conservative opposition against him. However, Moon can use his surrogates to make life difficult for USFK to where the Trump administration could decide to withdraw on its own. This gets Moon and his left wing base in South Korea what they ultimately want, USFK withdrawal without getting blamed for it.
