.@USUN should block any Kaesong reopening before North Korea is fully disarmed. Any bank that handles its transactions should face the same fate as ZTE, Bank of Dandong & ABLV. Congress must make itself heard on this.https://t.co/4TPFH8M6q5
I believe that the Kim regime and the Moon administration had the timeline for the current Inter-Korean thaw planned out well in advance. The construction of these resort hotels in Wonsan are evidence of this because construction began well before the Winter Olympics when the current thaw began. The Kim regime knew that the Winter Olympics is when the Inter-Korean thaw would begin and have likely timed the completion of these resorts to when sanctions would be expected to be dropped to fill them with South Korean tourists:
This photo carried by North Korea’s daily Rodong Sinmun on its May 14, 2018, edition shows the Wonsan-Kalma tourist resort under construction. Mentioned by the country’s top leader Kim Jong-un in his New Year address, it sits on the North’s eastern coast and is described as an idea place to be linked with other tourist destinations. (Yonhap)
Kim Jong-un’s favorite lawyer group in South Korea continues its legal attack against the North Korean restaurant workers that defected back in 2016:
This image shows a North Korean group of defectors at the center of a controversy over their defection. (Yonhap)
A liberal lawyers’ group plans to lodge a complaint with prosecutors on Monday against former President Park Geun-hye and her top aides over allegations that Seoul’s intelligence agency engineered a 2016 mass defection by a dozen North Korean restaurant workers.
The Lawyers for a Democratic Society, or Minbyun, said it will lodge the complaint with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office seeking an investigation into Park, her chief of staff Lee Byung-kee, ex-spy chief Lee Byong-ho and the restaurant manager who allegedly took the workers to the South against the will of some of them.
In April 2016, the manager and 12 female North Korean restaurant workers defected to the South. Park’s government said they came of their own free will, while Pyongyang accused Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) of luring them for political purposes and demanded their repatriation.
Rumors have persisted that the defection, which occurred just before the parliamentary elections, may be the work of the NIS. Minbyun has demanded the government allow its lawyers a face-to-face meeting with the defectors to verify the allegation.
The story took a new turn last week when a cable TV network aired an interview with the restaurant manager. He said that he had planned to defect with his wife but threatened his employees to come with him at the instruction of NIS agents. [Yonhap]
Here is more from Newsweek:
But last night, on South Korean television, Heo himself admitted that the women were unaware they were being sent to South Korea and that the whole operation had been orchestrated by him and South Korea’s spy agency.
“It was luring and kidnapping, and I know because I took the lead,” Heo told TV channel JTBCon Thursday, as translated by The New York Times.
At least three of the women also appeared on the program with their names withheld and their faces blurred. One of the trio said “I want to go home because living like this is not the life I wanted,” adding, “I miss my parents.” [Newsweek]
If these restaurant workers in fact did not know they were going to South Korea this is a serious incident. However, what we don’t know is what pressure are these workers now under to make these allegations? Is the Moon administration putting them under intense pressure and allowing the North Koreans to contact them with threats against their families back in North Korea?
Remember these restaurant workers could have easily have made statements to the media that they were kidnapped before Moon became President or even over the past year that he was President, but did not. This is only coming out now after the charm offensive was launched by North Korea.
The closure of the nuclear test site is nothing, but a show that can be easily reversed; shipping nuclear materials out of the country is a real sign of denuclearization because this is cannot be reversed:
The United States has demanded that North Korea ship some of its nuclear weapons, fissile material and long-range missiles out of the country within months after next month’s summit between the two countries, sources said Sunday.
The U.S. made the demand during talks with the North to fine-tune the agenda of the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un set for June 12 summit in Singapore, saying sanctions won’t be relaxed unless the demand is met, the sources said.
The North’s response to the demand is not known, they said.
The demand suggests that the U.S. believes the North’s pledge to suspend nuclear and missile testing is not enough and the communist nation should do more to demonstrate its commitment to abandon its nuclear and missile programs. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but if the Kim regime agrees to begin shipping nuclear weapons and material out of their country than we know they are in fact serious about denuclearization.
Over at One Free Korea he has an interesting posting up that I recommend everyone read where he discusses whether US Forces Korea (USFK) should be withdrawn from the peninsula:
To save Korea’s democracy, withdraw its American security blanket
Most Korea-watchers will view the recent hints from both Seoul and Washington about a U.S. withdrawal with alarm, and as a grave risk to the security of both Korea and Japan. Indeed, it’s one more development that’s consistent with my hypothesis that Pyongyang means to coerce and cajole Seoul into submission, first by lowering the South’s defenses, and later by ruling it through an inter-Korean confederation that it will use to suppress dissent, neutralize it as a political and military threat, and loot its resources without the burdens of war, occupation, or cultural pollution. The Panmunjom agreement will fuel Pyongyang’s expectations of collaboration by a government in Seoul that prioritizes ethno-nationalism and appeasement over the protection (much less the propagation) of liberal democratic values. […….]
If the arc of Korean history bends toward capitulation, the continuing presence of American forces is less likely to bend it back than soothe into passivity those Koreans who still can. Our presence would only create a false sense of security and quell any sense of alarm that the Blue House is consenting to a quiet capitulation of the freedom and prosperity their parents and grandparents won at such a terrible cost. Maybe the U.S. presence is contributing to the clearest and most present danger to Koreans’ security by obstructing the concentration of their minds, by retarding their development of a confident sense of nationhood, and by excusing them from the grim burdens of sisu.
Can America do anything to bend that arc back? One answer might be to present Koreans with a stark choice and a referendum. So let President Trump go to his summit with His Porcine Majesty, and soon. Let him hear Kim Jong-un’s offer. Then, let him — and John Kelly, John Bolton, Jim Mattis, and Mike Pompeo — explain to us why those terms are tantamount to surrender, why Moon was a fool or worse[10] for agreeing to them, and that while South Korea is free to surrender itself, we would rather retrench ourselves in Japan than subsidize frivolous policies that undermine our own security. [One Free Korea]
I highly recommend reading the whole thing at the link, but I have long believed that there has been peace in Northeast Asia since the end of the Korean War because of the balancing influence that the US military provides to the region. However, that doesn’t mean we need all the troops currently in South Korea if real concessions are made by the North Koreans.
For example if the Kim regime removes the vast majority of their troops and artillery positions along the DMZ would USFK still need to have the 2nd Infantry Division forward deployed in Korea? Would the Air Force need as many aircraft stationed there to take out those artillery positions? That is why I think this argument needs to be influenced by real actions by North Korea not pretend ones, which is all we have seen so far from the Kim regime.
Here is what Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies says that President Trump must be prepared to do at his upcoming summit with Kim Jong-un:
Anthony Ruggiero
The Panmunjom Declaration, issued after the late April meeting between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae In, feels like a Hollywood movie remake with new actors but the same tired story. North Korea has pledged on multiple occasions to not to acquire nuclear weapons, beginning with the North’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985. In 1992, Kim’s grandfather committed to three no’s: no nuclear weapons, no nuclear reprocessing and no uranium enrichment. North Korea was caught red-handed cheating multiple times on all three nuclear no’s, but still received security assurances from the United States in 2005, when both sides pledged “to respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together” and normalize relations. All of these efforts ended in the same place, with a different Kim breaking his promises and enjoying tangible concessions from the United States and its allies.
To counter Kim’s smile diplomacy and avoid his trap, the Trump administration should take four lessons from prior negotiations with North Korea, Libya and Iran. [Politico]
You can read the rest at the link, but Ruggiero’s four lessons are:
Be prepared to walkaway from the table.
Nuclear only deal do not solve the strategic issues.
Remember the 12 North Korean restaurant workers that defected to South Korea that infuriated the Kim regime? Well it appears the Moon administration may be laying the ground work to send them back:
North Korea runs dozens of restaurants in other countries as a valuable source of income
South Korea says it will look closer into the circumstances surrounding the arrival of a dozen North Korean restaurant workers in 2016 after a television report suggested some of the women might have been brought to the South against their will.
Unification Ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun on Friday did not provide a clear answer on whether the women could be sent back to the North if it’s confirmed they didn’t want to come to South Korea.
Seoul had previously said it sufficiently confirmed the women’s free will in escaping from the North and resettling in the South. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I am not sure what else there is to examine on this issue. The 12 defectors have been resettled in South Korea and nothing is stopping them from going to a local television station and claim they were kidnapped. The Kim regime has been using their leftist lawyer allies in South Korea, the group call Minbyun, to claim that the the 12 restaurant workers were kidnapped by the ROK National Intelligence Service (NIS). Since their defection Minbyun has been making life very hard for the refugees anyway they can.
Now it appears that the Moon administration may be putting pressure on these 12 restaurant workers to return to North Korea as well. I would not be surprised if the Moon administration is also putting pressure the other high profile defector Thae Yong-ho to keep silent during the Kim regime’s current charm offensive as well.
This is just another example of something that North Korea can do that makes it look like they are making a concession when in fact it is easily reversible at a time of their choosing:
This Reuters file photo shows an Air Koryo airplane arriving at Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport. (Yonhap)
North Korea has promised to not carry out unannounced missile tests and to abstain from other activities hazardous to commercial aviation in a recent meeting with officials of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), an American media report said Friday.
North Korean authorities recently delivered such promises to visiting officials of the international aviation body while disclosing they have completed their nuclear weapons program, Voice of America (VOA) reported, citing ICAO spokesman William Raillant-Clark.
The spokesman told VOA that high-ranking officials of ICAO visited Pyongyang from May 7-9 for a meeting with officials at the North’s General Administration of Civil Aviation.
The meeting came after the Pyongyang regime decided to halt additional nuclear and intercontinental missile experiments at a plenary session of the ruling Workers’ Party on April 20. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I guess we will see what the North Koreans get in return for doing something they can reverse at any time.
