Tag: North Korea

What I will find the most interesting about the final cost sharing number that the ROK agrees to is whether or not they will exceed that number with the aid they plan to give to the Kim regime?:

Seoul and Washington will begin the first round of negotiations for the renewal of a cost-sharing agreement for American troops in Korea on Wednesday in Honolulu, Hawaii, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday.

Korea’s delegation to the three-day talks on the 10th Special Measures Agreement (SMA) will be headed by its top negotiator, Chang Won-sam, while Timothy Betts, acting deputy assistant secretary for plans, programs and operations at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, will lead the U.S. side. Both delegations will include defense officials.

The SMA, a multi-year cost-sharing deal under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), establishes what Korea will contribute to the non-personnel costs associated with keeping U.S. troops in the country.

Since 1991, the two countries have conducted routine negotiations to decide what Korea’s financial contribution should be, and the current five-year agreement, the ninth of its kind, is set to expire on Dec. 31.  (……..)

Negotiations for the latest burden-sharing deal, set to come into force in 2019, come at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump has indicated that he may demand Korea to pay a greater contribution.

Seoul currently pays about half of the cost of the stationing of some 28,500 U.S. troops on the peninsula, and its contribution has consistently increased over the years and reached over 950 billion won ($878 million) currently compared to some 150 billion won in 1991.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but the original Sunshine Policy was bought and paid for initially with a huge $500 million bribe to the Kim regime.  Follow on bribes described as humanitarian and economic aid continued under the Sunshine Policy.  The aid would total to about a $1 billion a year.  To put this into context the South Koreans were paying more money to the Kim regime annually then what they were contributing to the US-ROK alliance at the time.  Will history repeat itself?  We will likely find out this year.

"Lost his mind" is correct. If the U.S. were to launch an unprovoked preventive war against Son'gun Korea, the U.S. would be relegated to the status of a pariah state. https://t.co/FuxzIgCG5y

— Daniel Pinkston (@dpinkston) March 3, 2018

This is all laying the groundwork for when the Inter-Korean Summit will eventually happen:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un hosted a welcome dinner for South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s special envoys on Monday, Seoul’s presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said.

“Chairman Kim Jong-un is currently hosting a dinner for the special envoys,” Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told a press briefing.

It is the first time the reclusive North Korean leader has met South Korean officials. The dinner began at 6 p.m.

Kim’s meeting with the South Korean envoys apparently reflected his willingness to improve his country’s ties with the South.

Moon and his aides have repeatedly highlighted the importance of talks between the U.S. and North Korea for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and have also noted that the trip by Moon’s special envoys was partly aimed at arranging such dialogue.

“I plan to hold in-depth discussions on various ways to continue talks between not only the South and the North, but also the North and the United States and the international community,” Chung Eui-yong, Moon’s chief envoy and head of the presidential National Security Office, said shortly before his departure for Pyongyang.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but who is Chung Eui-yong?  He is a career diplomat that from 2001-2004 during the liberal Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations served as South Korea’s UN ambassador.  He would then get elected as a legislator for the same party that President Moon is in.  So obviously Choi and Moon and been around each other a long time and Choi is someone that Moon trusts to represent his interests with the North Koreans.

Talks with NK will achieve nothing. They even made advances whilst they attending the stupid term 'Peace Olympics'. NK will never give up nukes without a war. https://t.co/7zVempdnSC

— Asia-Pacific News (@AsiaPacificN3ws) March 3, 2018

Here is some more reporting that North Korea ballistic missile technology jump apparently came from Ukraine:

When North Korea launched a series of increasingly potent missiles last year, analysts were left scratching their heads. How had the renegade regime’s weapons program advanced so quickly?

The answer may lie more than 4,000 miles away, in eastern Ukraine, according to one nuclear expert.

Michael Elleman is convinced that North Korea’s recent missiles were powered by engines made at a once-buzzing factory in the former Soviet Union.

Elleman, a senior fellow for missile defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank, believes that Pyongyang acquired the 1960s Soviet-era missile engine known as the RD-250 within the past two years.

With some slight adjustments, Kim Jong Un’s government used that engine to successfully launch a medium-range missile and two intercontinental ballistic missiles, he says.

In a report published late last year, Elleman suggested that North Korea had procured the high-powered Soviet engines through a network of arms smugglers. He said it was unlikely that the transfer had been sanctioned by the Russian government or even those operating the warehouses and factories.

“These facilities have what we call ‘bone yards’ where you have old engines that are no longer in service that are just stored,” he said. “It’s not surprising that there are dozens that would be available for transfer.”

At about 6.5 feet tall and 3 feet wide, and weighing 800 or 900 pounds, the engines could be boxed and transported like a big motorcycle, Elleman suggested.  [NBC News]

You can read more at the link, but this arguably another unintended consequence of the war and instability allowed to happen in Ukraine.

DC Comics´ New Aquaman Is N.Korean Defector https://t.co/qkSD2OIiQa

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) February 27, 2018

That is what a professor from Hankuk University believes:

Professor Kim Jang-ho from Hankuk University believes that for this reason, the detente won’t last. He is also sceptical of President Moon’s motives and doesn’t believe there has been any breakthrough with North Korea.

“President Moon is trying to buy some time so that he can achieve a summit meeting with Kim Jong-un.

“Our president wants to meet him to symbolically say that North Korea is a normal nation and they are capable of talking. It automatically propels him to the list for the Nobel Peace Prize. But the US and Japan will pressure us to go ahead with military exercises as soon as possible, late April maybe.

“I think certainly with those exercises continuing, and they will go ahead definitely before May, we will go from the thaw to tension all over again.”

Many doubt North Korea’s willingness to discuss getting rid of its nuclear weapons with the US. Kim Jong-un has tried to reassure Seoul by saying his missiles are not pointing at South Koreans, they’re pointing instead at the “US aggressors”, and that they could be used to protect all of Korea.

I put it to Professor Bong Young-shik that North Korea would never give up its missiles. The research fellow at Yonsei University disagreed.

“The North Korean regime’s ultimate goal is survival and security,” the expert in North Korea said.  [BBC]

You can read more at the link, but before anyone considers President Moon for a Nobel Peace Prize they should realize that when he was the Chief of Staff for former President Roh Moo-hyun, they helped to funnel billions of dollars in aid that allowed the Kim regime to build their nuclear weapons and ICBMs.

You would think though that after the embarrassment of awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to former ROK President Kim Dae-jung the Nobel committee would be weary of awarding one to another ROK president.  This is because it was later discovered that the Inter-Korean Summit between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il was only possible after North Korea received a $500 million dollar bribe.

US serious about attacking North Korea: CNN https://t.co/2WWR3k5FHq

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) March 2, 2018

It just seems to me that someone who is a failed nuclear negotiator with North Korea partly responsible for the current mess the United States is in; probably should not be the lecturing the current Trump administration on how to handle this issue:

A former senior U.S. diplomat slammed the Donald Trump administration Wednesday for what he called a lack of recognition of the South Korea-U.S. alliance in the face of North Korea’s growing nuclear threat.

Christopher Hill, who served in the 2000s as Washington’s chief envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, said he would like to see a greater commitment from the administration toward the alliance.

“This is not about a series of transactions. This is about a relationship that has served us well, and served the Republic of Korea well,” he said during a forum on the North Korean threat, referring to South Korea by its official name.

If Washington can provide such reassurances to Seoul, “that gives us more scope to really go after the North Koreans,” Hill said.

Trump has often linked security cooperation with trade issues. He has pressured South Korea to address its trade surplus with the U.S. and shoulder a larger burden of the cost of stationing American troops there.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but Mr. Hill’s also wants the Trump administration to do more to get China to denuclearize North Korea.

Members from the conservative Liberty Korea Party, including LKP leader Hong Joon-pyo (4th from L, front row), hold a rally to criticize a visit by Kim Yong-chol, the chief of the eight-member North Korean delegation, at Cheonggye Plaza in Seoul on Feb. 26, 2018. Kim is an alleged mastermind of a 2010 North Korean torpedo attack on the South Korean corvette Cheonan that killed 46 sailors. (Yonhap)