It would probably be interesting to be a fly on the wall to over hear what President Trump and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping will discuss this weekend:
President Donald Trump listens to a question during a town hall with business leaders in the White House in Washington on Tuesday. [AP/YONHAP]Claiming North Korea is a “matter of urgent interest” for President Trump and his administration, the official added that Trump “has been pretty clear in messaging how important it is for China to coordinate with the United States, and for China to begin exerting its considerable economic leverage to bring about a peaceful resolution to that problem.”
Such issues will come up in their discussions, the official said. “Even though we hear sometimes that China’s political influence may have diminished with North Korea, clearly its economic leverage has not,” pointing out that nearly 90 percent of Pyongyang’s external trade is with its closest ally Beijing.
The Trump administration has been suggesting a paradigm shift from previous U.S. governments on policy toward the North Korea issue, putting the Pyongyang nuclear issue as a top priority for the first time.
Trump’s administration also isn’t shy about the pressure it intends to put on China over North Korea.
In a town hall meeting with business CEOs on Tuesday, Trump said on his upcoming summit with Xi, “I’m sure we’re going to have a fantastic meeting and we’re going to talk about a lot of things, including, of course, North Korea,” which he described as “really a humanity problem.”
“China has great influence over North Korea,” Trump declared in an interview with the Financial Times on Sunday.
“China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t. And if they do that will be very good for China, and if they don’t it won’t be good for anyone.”
He also said that he will solve the North Korea issue if China won’t do it – and without China’s help. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
With this missile test being a failure I would be surprised if the Kim regime doesn’t try something else as well to make their point before President Trump’s summit with Chinese premier Xi Jinping:
The Pentagon now assesses the North Korean missile launch Wednesday likely was a failure, Fox News has learned.
The missile did not go as far as intended, officials with knowledge of the latest intelligence reports said. It did not reach Japanese waters and may have “pinwheeled in flight,” according to one official.
What’s more, the missile was an older SCUD — not the advanced land version of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (KN-15), as first assessed by the U.S. Pacific Command last night, a U.S. defense official confirmed. North Korea launched a KN-15 missile in February — as President Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Florida.
A senior administration official told Fox News the launch didn’t represent much of a provocation on North Korea’s part.
In a 23-word statement, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made it clear the administration was moving in a new direction: “North Korea launched yet another intermediate range ballistic missile. The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.” [Fox News]
I saw this article in The Telegraph as well as posted on other sites and thought to myself it could not possibly be true:
A picture of the supposed corporate jet that mistakenly landed in Pyongyang.
A delegation of corporate sponsors of next year’s winter Olympics in the South Korean city of PyeongChang was flown to the North Korean capital Pyongyang by mistake, it has emerged.
According to the Around the Rings website the pilot of the corporate jet made a mistake when he entered the flight plan into the aircraft’s navigation system.
It steered the aircraft 250 miles further north than its intended destination.
The plane was carrying eight passengers from Beijing who were on a reconnaissance trip.
Bemused flight control staff at the North Korean capital allowed the Gulfstream and its passengers to land before the plane was ushered to a remote part of the airport.
“We stopped on the tarmac. The pilot announced the error. We were petrified about what might happen,” one of the delegation said later.
“He told us to stay seated, stay calm. A cabin steward popped the door open and we could see armed men in uniform facing the plane.”
With the aid of a translator, the pilot apologised profusely. The passengers were told to disembark while their luggage was inspected.
After inspecting the collection of Olympic badges, which were intended to be delivered to PyeongChang, the North Koreans were satisfied that the landing was completely inadvertent and the plane was allowed to carry on to South Korea. [The Telegraph]
This story just sounded to unbelievable to me so I checked out the source posting from the Around the Rings website. The article is from an anonymous source and posted on April 1st, which is April’s Fools Day. This leads me to believe this is a hoax posting.
What gets me about this is that major news outlets were passing this around because of the sensational headline and did not even bother to confirm its authenticity. This is the world of fake news journalism we now live in.
North Korea has jumped above Iran on America’s enemies list according to Secretary of Defense James Mattis:
Defense Secretary James Mattis, when he led the U.S. Central Command that oversees operations in the Middle East, repeatedly said that the three gravest threats to the United States were “Iran, Iran, Iran.”
But at a press conference in London on Friday, the retired Marine general suggested that North Korea, with its ballistic missile and nuclear programs, now holds the top spot.
Asked about his previous focus on Iran as the most serious threat, Mattis called Iran “the primary state sponsor of terrorism” but pivoted quickly to the secretive Stalinist regime in Pyongyang.
“In the larger scheme of things, obviously, in a global situation that’s dynamic, you’ve highlighted appropriately I think the North Korean threat,” Mattis said (the reporter had not mentioned North Korea). [Yahoo News]
Here is a good interview that NBC News’ Lester Holt did with prominent North Korean defector Thae Yong-ho who has to be number on Kim Jong-un’s kill list:
Lester Holt walks the streets of Seoul with Thae Yong-ho
A senior North Korean defector has told NBC News that the country’s “desperate” dictator is prepared to use nuclear weapons to strike the United States and its allies.
Thae Yong Ho is the most high profile North Korean defector in two decades, meaning he is able to give a rare insight into the secretive, authoritarian regime.
According to Thae, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is “desperate in maintaining his rule by relying on his [development of] nuclear weapons and ICBM.” He was using an acronym for intercontinental ballistic missiles — a long range rocket that in theory would be capable of hitting the U.S.
“Once he sees that there is any kind of sign of a tank or an imminent threat from America, then he would use his nuclear weapons with ICBM,” he added in an exclusive interview on Sunday.
Thae was living in London and serving as North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom when he and his family defected to South Korea and were announced to the world in August. [NBC News]
You can read more at the link as well as video from NBC News.
In the rest of the interview Thae confirms what many have suspected that Kim Jong-un is moving rapidly forward with his nuclear and missile programs because of what he saw happen with Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Thae also confirms my long held view that Kim Jong-un is not crazy, but instead what he is doing is rational from his perspective. Thae describes Kim as someone who will do whatever it takes to hold on to power to include purges and killing of family members.
Thae also advocates for fighting the information war within North Korea which is something I have been advocating for years. He believes that the more educated people within North Korea become the more likely it is that at some point they may rise up against the regime.
The more I listen to Thae the more I keep thinking that maybe he should become the leader of a North Korean government in exile to further challenge the legitimacy of the Kim regime.
A North Korean TV announcer reports on the arrest of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye on March 31, 2017. Most of the North’s state-run media outlets reported the news about 13 hours after Park’s arrest, calling it a stern punishment by history and popular sentiment. (KCNA-Yonhap)
Unfortunately there are plenty of people in South Korea that actually believe this nonsense, fortunately they are a small, but vocal minority:
South Korean and U.S. warships, including the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Carl Vinson (C), sail in waters off the South’s east coast during joint drills against North Korean provocations on March 22, 2017. (Yonhap)
North Korea on Friday urged South Korean political parties, organizations and people from all walks of life to rally against the U.S. and war via its nominal political party’s letter of plea sent to them in an apparent bid to defend its stance on tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
“All the parties and people from all walks of life in South Korea should rise up in the anti-U.S., anti-war struggle for peace, clearly seeing through the nature of the U.S., the chieftain of aggression and disturber of peace,” the letter, sent by the Central Committee of the Korean Social Democratic Party, said.
Inter-Korean relations remain so tense due to the ongoing South Korea-U.S. “rehearsals for a “nuclear war” which have gone beyond the critical phase, said the letter, carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency. The rehearsals refer to Foal Eagle and Key Resolve against North Korean provocations that began on March 1 for a two-month run in the South. [Yonhap]
