Tag: North Korea

I can’t understand why anyone is surprised by the synchronization of China and Russia’s North Korea strategy?  China and Russia have long had the common goal of weakening the United States’ commitment to alliances in Northeast Asia:

The proposal, and the strategic alignment between the two one-time rivals, raised some eyebrows amongst regional watchers. Russia has often backed China in U.N. Security Council negotiations, but during the Obama administration it was far less engaged on North Korea than China was. Xi’s government, meanwhile, had appeared prepared to begin taking a more assertive stance on the reclusive nation.

The recalibration serves a common goal that regional experts say is central to both Russian and Chinese foreign policy — loosening American alliances around the globe.

Former diplomats are split over the significance of the sudden chumminess. Robert Gallucci, the chief U.S. negotiator during the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1994, called it “unsettling” but “not catastrophic in any way.” He characterized the surprise sync as two nations seizing an opportunity to undercut the U.S.-Japan-South Korea alliance — not a herald of a new era of coordinated policy against the United States.

But some regional policy experts fear that a united Sino-Russian front on North Korea could make it more difficult for the U.S. to rein in Pyongyang’s burgeoning nuclear program.

“The fact that Moscow and Beijing are using virtually identical language and are very united at this time I think will provide great comfort to Kim Jong Un,” said David Pressman, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for political affairs who now works at the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm.  [The Hill]

You can read more at the link, but as I had previously mentioned this whole approach plays into the slow motion surrender of South Korea to North Korean hegemony and the end of the US-ROK alliance. Is it any wonder why China and Russia continue to enable the Kim regime?

Here is the typical response from the Pentagon to North Korean provocations:

Two U.S. long-range strategic bombers flew over the Korean Peninsula on Saturday in a stern warning to North Korea for its long-range missile launch last week.

The B-1B Lancers based in Guam practiced “attack capabilities,” accompanied by South Korea’s F-15K and the U.S. Air Force’s F-16 fighter jets, for several hours in the joint show of force, according to the allies.

In a rare move, they made public a photo and footage of the bombers dropping inert GBU-56 laser guided bombs onto a mock target at the Pilsung range in Gangwon Province.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but of interest is that the ROK Air Force escorted the B-1’s across the Korean peninsula and then handed off the escort to the Japanese Air Self Defense Force who escorted the bombers across the East China Sea back to Guam after the flight over the Korean peninsula.  That is actually great to see the cooperation between the ROK and Japan which I am sure the Kim regime took notice of.

Recent sat imagery shows #DPRK's Punggye-ri nuke test site is well-manicured, but little observable new activity https://t.co/2nQTm39iEh

— 38 North (@38NorthNK) July 7, 2017

Here is yet another example of the “expert class” advocating for a freeze deal with North Korea, this time it is coming from the New York Times:

William J. Perry, a former secretary of defense, said in January, “It is my strongly held view that we don’t have it in our power today to negotiate an end to the nuclear weapons program in North Korea.”

Rather, he said, the United States should aim to “lessen the danger” by seeking an end to missile tests.

Mark Fitzpatrick, a scholar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, this week advocated something known as “double suspension.” The United States would suspend its military exercises with the South while the North would suspend its nuclear and perhaps missile tests.

There has been a broader shift toward such thinking. The ambition is no longer to roll back North Korea’s programs, but to mitigate the risk they pose day to day.

This is a tacit acknowledgment that North Korea’s preferred negotiations model — in which the United States takes steps away from the Korean Peninsula in exchange for peace — is increasingly accepted.

Even if North Korea never achieves its vision of full victory, it has shifted the conversation to its terms.

Mr. Fitzpatrick and others say that the United States should pursue such steps only if they point toward North Korean disarmament, but some consider this optimistic.

Ankit Panda, a senior editor at The Diplomat, and Vipin Narang, a professor at M.I.T., wrote this week that there were “no good options” for the United States, “only bad ones and catastrophic ones.”

Any viable deal with the North Koreans, they suggested, “would require explicit acceptance of their nuclear state status and significant rollbacks to the U.S. conventional military presence in the Northeast Asian theater, both of which are nonstarters for the United States.”  [New York Times]

You can read more at the link.

Here is another example of the “expert class” advocating for more negotiations with North Korea in order to sign a freeze deal:

That leaves “the least of the bad options,” which means calling for negotiations, as Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in America, has said. Talks could be started to explore “a variation on China’s proposal, backed by Russia, that the United States and the Republic of Korea suspend joint military exercises in exchange for North Korean suspension of nuclear and missile tests,” he says. South Korea and Japan back this idea, as do many former officials including former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry. A Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Korea that included former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen and Senator Sam Nunn, recommended such an approach last year.

“Rather than halting joint exercises, they could be reduced in scale and length or moved, if military professionals judge that this can be done without undermining their readiness purpose or the affirmation of U.S. deterrence commitments that they represent,” says Fitzpatrick. “Drills practicing ‘decapitation’ might be omitted, for example, as well as overflights by nuclear-capable aircraft, which are only for show. Scaling back the exercises in other ways could be tied to military confidence-building measures that might also relieve North Korea of some of the expense of conducting large-scale exercises.”  [Defense One]

You can read more at the link, but if a freeze deal is struck the next thing you will here from the expert class is to have the US sign a peace treaty with North Korea.  This whole approach plays into the slow motion surrender of South Korea to North Korean hegemony and the end of the US-ROK alliance. Is it any wonder why China and Russia continue to enable the Kim regime?

North Korea is getting money and the parts to build their nuclear weapons and missiles from somewhere.  Going after the Kim regime’s money network and part suppliers is something that the US can unilaterally do, but has not aggressively pursued because many of the front companies assisting the Kim regime are based in China.  It appears the Trump administration has now lost patience with the Chinese government and may start aggressively targeting these Chinese companies and the banks assisting them:

U.S. authorities have tried to seize millions of dollars associated with several companies that deal with North Korea, including the country’s military, from eight large international banks, according to court filings made public on Thursday.

The effort was revealed two days after North Korea tested a long-range missile capable of reaching Alaska, ratcheting up tensions with the United States and adding to worries about North Korea leader Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons plans.

Thursday’s filings show that Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the federal court in Washington, D.C. on May 22 granted U.S. prosecutors’ applications for “damming” seizure warrants against Bank of America Corp, Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Citigroup Inc, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Standard Chartered Plc and Wells Fargo & Co.

Prosecutors believe the banks have processed more than $700 million of “prohibited” transactions on behalf of entities tied to North Korea since 2009, including the period after Donald Trump was elected U.S. president, the filings show.

Some of the transactions were processed for Dandong Zhicheng Metallic Material Co and four affiliated “front” companies that prosecutors said tried to evade sanctions through transactions that would benefit North Korean entities, “including the North Korea military and North Korea weapons programs,” according to the filings.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link, but for the Kim regime $700 million is a lot of money.  Long time ROK Heads may remember how much the Kim regime got worked up when $25 million was seized from the Macau Bank, Banco Delta Asia.  This seizure caused the Kim regime to actually come to the bargaining table and make some major concessions to get their money back.

I foresee this being the opening gesture by the Moon administration towards some kind of freeze deal with North Korea that has a growing chorus from experts and the media:

President Moon Jae-in said Thursday he will seek to pursue a peace treaty with North Korea, taking a step forward for inter-Korean reconciliation despite Pyongyang’s test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) two days earlier.

Moon’s pledge comes after North Korea and China have repeatedly called for the signing of a peace treaty with the United States to formally end the Korean War and settle the security crisis on the peninsula.

The President appeared to be seeking U.S. support in his push for a peace treaty as the U.S., on behalf of the United Nations, signed the 1953 armistice agreement with North Korea and China. South Korea was not among the signatories.

“We should make a peace treaty joined by all relevant parties at the end of the Korean War to settle a lasting peace on the peninsula,” Moon said during his Korean-language invitational speech at the Korber Foundation, a nonprofit think tank in Berlin. “I will take a comprehensive approach to North Koream nuclear issues to pursue the peace treaty along with complete denuclearization (in the region.)”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but remember North Korea does not want peace, it wants peace treaty negotiations.  There is a big difference.

besides anti-Americanism North Korean children are also indoctrinated at an early age in militarism to go along with their Kim regime propaganda teachings:

North Korean anti-American propaganda poster.

North Korea needs an enemy. The regime needs a villain for its people to hate. There is no indication that the regime will let go of that hatred anytime soon.

The museum in Sinchon is a prime example. Tucked down a street in south Hwanghae Province, the original museum was created to serve as a repository of alleged American atrocities. Plain and unassuming, the old building housing the relics was flanked by massive mosaics that hinted at the anger contained within: a grandmother in traditional dress, hair askew, shaking her fist at the “wily Americans” and calling on fellow North Koreans to seek “a thousandfold revenge.”

Inside, room after room catalogued the alleged war crimes committed by Americans, from the Presbyterian missionaries accused of seeking to brainwash Koreans with religion to the “Hitlerite” American soldiers they claim systematically tried to exterminate the townspeople in the early months of the Korean War.

Display cases offered what they called proof: some 3,000 artifacts dug up from the soil, including skulls, bones, ID cards, simple woven shoes. A 2009 book on the museum published by Pyongyang’s Foreign Languages Publishing House says that more than 35,000 people, a quarter of the county’s population, were killed during a 52-day rampage.

After a 2014 visit to Sinchon, Kim Jong Un called for an upgrade. The simple building on a grassy knoll was replaced by a palatial museum that is a veritable house of horrors, with room after room graphically bringing to life the gruesome atrocities attributed to the Americans.

The renovated museum opened in late July 2016, in time for the anniversary of the Korean War ceasefire (which the North Koreans call “Victory Day,” even though the fighting ended in a truce).

A visit there is like walking through the set of a horror movie; visitors can walk right up to the tableaus and can practically smell the blood and hear the screams.

In one tableau shown in photos published by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency in July 2016, a life-sized American soldier yanks the hair of a young Korean woman tied to a tree as another American sinks a knife into her heart. In another room, suffused in red light as though drenched with blood, American soldiers drive nails into a Korean woman’s head. Rabid glee distorts their faces.

The grisly scenes are meant to be lifelike. But are they accurate? Many in South Korea and the United States question the veracity of the claims that such killings were carried out by American troops. While the bones and personal artifacts appear genuine, on my own visits to the museum I did not see any items that directly proved or implicated American involvement.  [Newsweek]

You can read more at the link, but this is something that anyone negotiating with North Korea needs to realize, they can’t have peace because the regime needs an enemy to justify its rule.  However, just because the Kim regime cannot ever have peace does not mean they are not willing to have peace treaty negotiations in order to extract concessions.

One thing doesn't change with N Korea: WSJ opinion page wants regime change, NYT wants talks https://t.co/lizQcirEvUhttps://t.co/YeCkIZh6X8

— Alastair Gale (@AlastairGale) July 5, 2017

Here is the latest on President Trump’s reaction to the recent North Korean nuclear test: