This satellite image, captured from the website 38 North on Jan. 23, 2017, shows a series of improvements at the Kalma missile test site near North Korea’s eastern coastal city of Wonsan that the North has made. Joseph Bermudez, a North Korea military expert, said the satellite imagery raises the possibility of the regime carrying out a threatened test of an intercontinental ballistic missile from there. (Yonhap)
I have always thought that any deal signed with the North Koreans should first include the return of the USS Pueblo for this very reason:
This photo, captured from the North’s Central TV on April 6, 2012, shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspecting the captured U.S. spy ship Pueblo. (Yonhap)
North Korea boastfully threatened to strongly confront future U.S. hostility Monday, when it marked the 49th anniversary of its seizure of the U.S. intelligence boat Pueblo.
The 906-ton U.S. Navy ship was captured by the North in January 1968. The North claimed the ship violated its territorial waters, while the U.S. argued it was in international waters at the time of the attack. One crew member was killed in the attack, and 80 others and two civilian oceanographers were seized. All of them were freed from an 11-month captivity after the U.S. signed a letter of apology. Since then, Pueblo, named after a city in Colorado, has been on display at the War Victory Hall along the Taedong River in Pyongyang for propaganda purposes.
The U.S. should remember the shameful lesson from the Pueblo case, the North’s propaganda website Uriminjokkiri said.
“Our republic has the mighty military power to counter any kind of war that the U.S. chooses,” it said.
The North has the power to completely eliminate U.S. imperialism from the Earth, which has inflicted immeasurable misfortune and sufferings on the Korean people, it added.
“The U.S. will face a position more miserable than that in the Pueblo case if it forgets that lesson and frantically pursues new ways to provoke war against the North,” the North’s Central TV station said. [Yonhap]
This is the same thing I have been saying for years that the North Koreans want a peace treaty in order to separate the US from the ROK. As long as the US-ROK alliance is solid Kim knows he has no chance of reunification with the ROK on his terms:
“What does Kim Jong-un want?” Cha said repeating the question. “I think he wants to … he wants a peace treaty with the United States as a nuclear weapons state. I think that’s what he wants.”
“I would add to that, that the North Koreans clearly would like to loosen, if not fracture, US alliances with Seoul and Tokyo, beginning with Seoul, certainly,” said Ambassador Robert Gallucci, the lead negotiator with North Korea in the 1990s in the Agreed Framework process.
“And they will do a lot to achieve that, and including, perhaps, enter negotiations,” Gallucci noted. [Business Insider]
I think the Kim regime is taking a wait and see approach with the incoming Trump administration because of the high possibility of a left wing government being elected in the ROK. As many long time readers know a left wing ROK government means a lot of free cash going North with little to nothing in return. Causing trouble now could cause ROK voters to rally around an anti-North Korean candidate. Plus I think the Kim regime is betting on that President Trump’s demands for more funding for US forces in South Korea will lead to increased tensions between the ROK and US governments that they can later capitalize on:
North Korea’s state media issued a short report on the inauguration of U.S. President Trump on Sunday but refrained from making significant comments.
“Donald Trump of the Republican Party was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States on Jan. 20,” reported the Rodong Sinmun, a daily of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party. “The inauguration ceremony took place in Washington.”
The newspaper, however, did not deliver a separate commentary or statements on Trump. North Korean media outlets have not been making significant statements on the new administration in Washington since Trump’s victory in the election last year.
Political pundits said Pyongyang is apparently taking a wait-and-see stance until the new administration comes up with details on its polices against North Korea. [Yonhap]
Foreign Policy has a good article published that tries to give perspective to the hysteria created by Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s speech which caused so many people in the US to get in a panic about an upcoming ICBM test:
Of course, it is an obvious inference that North Korea might test an ICBM in 2017. We should probably expect an ICBM test to come sooner or later. But Kim didn’t commit to an ICBM test in 2017. He indicated that one was possible. And he also restated North Korea’s long-standing demands for reducing tensions. You don’t have to think Kim’s offer is an appealing one or that he is sincere. Frankly, I have my doubts on both accounts. But he did make an offer.
That isn’t what got reported of course. “North Korea Will Test Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, Kim Says,” blared the New York Times. The headline was a heck of a lot less careful than the story, by Choe Sang-Hun. Eventually, the editors toned down the headline, but too late. By that time, the damage was done. Kim’s speech wound its way through the news and social media, cut up and condensed into 140-character snippets like a modern-day game of telephone. In the end, his bland speech had been transformed into a “grim promise” to test “a missile to reach U.S.” [Foreign Policy]
This is nothing new in regards to the media sensationalizing everything coming out of North Korea. The Foreign Policy article goes on to explain how in response to these news articles various US government officials have inflamed tensions with North Korea further. To calm things back down this is the recommendation given:
North Korea’s demand that the United States cancel all its exercises is a nonstarter, but Washington could offer further transparency and agree to some limits on their scale. There are lots of good reasons to do this, not least because the bomber appearances are losing their shock value. They have become a poor substitute for a strategy. We might as well get something for taking a break from them.
We don’t have to work out all the details in advance. But the basic framework for a potential compromise is clear: scaling back the exercises in 2017 that Kim complained about in his speech for his agreement to refrain from nuclear and missile testing during the same period. It is a timeout to reduce tensions while Trump and Kim figure each other out.
I recommend reading the whole article at the link, but I think the idea isn’t too bad depending on what scaling down of the military exercises means? The North Koreans want to take every opportunity to drive a wedge between the US and the ROK and the annual military exercises are a major component of readiness and team building between the two country’s militaries. They should not be canceled, but it may be worth determining what could be scaled back and see if there is any interest from the North Koreans in freezing their testing in return.
A horrible mass shooting has allegedly occurred at a North Korean town along the Chinese border:
A young North Korean man conscripted to guard a customs post on his country’s border with China in under arrest for shooting dead seven platoon members who had angered him with bullying treatment, RFA’s Korean Service has learned.
After the shootings at dawn on Jan. 7 at Hyesan, a city in North Korea’s northern Yanggang province, the young conscript was arrested and taken to Pyongyang, sources familiar with the shooting told RFA.
“The suspect and one platoon member who survived the shooting were transported to State Security headquarters in Pyongyang. There is no way to find out the exact cause of this incident, since the Yanggang authorities are trying to keep everyone’s mouth shut,” one source said on Jan. 14.
A second source, however, said the shooter apparently snapped after suffering bullying from his colleagues. [Radio Free Asia]
Choe Ryong-hae, North Korea’s virtual No. 2 man and vice chairman of the State Affairs Commission, arrives at an airport in Pyongyang after attending the inaugural ceremony of the Nicaraguan president as a special envoy of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in this photo captured from the North’s Central TV Broadcasting Station on Jan. 16, 2017. (Yonhap)
