Tag: North Korea

Here is what Senior Colonel Zhou Bo from China’s Ministry of National Defense had to say about the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) contact with North Korea:

What sort of relations does the Chinese military have with its North Korean counterparts? Are you in regular contact with them?

No not at all. We have zero contact with them right now.

Why is that the case when China – at least some officials – refer to North Korea as neighbours, sometimes even as a good neighbour? So you have no contact with the military of a close neighbour?

No, currently we do not have any contact or ties with the DPRK militarily. In the past we did, we had a lot of contact and exchanges. I think this reflect a kind of change in our relationship for the reasons known to all.

China and DPRK are definitely neighbors, and we fought a war on Korean soil a long, long time ago. But what I would say is China is right now united with the international community to seriously honour UN resolutions, and we hope we eventually may find a solution to these problems.  [Channel News Asia]

I find it hard to believe they have no contact with North Korea.  So there is no PLA defense attache at the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang?

Only North Korea would feel that a nuclear attack is the correct response to joint military exercise https://t.co/V2ts5jC0qf

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) July 9, 2017

Courtesy the Wall Street Journal… pic.twitter.com/Diauhi7EV1

— Jodi (@jodi_katherine) July 8, 2017

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.