North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pays tribute to the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro at the Cuban Embassy in Pyongyang on Nov. 28, 2016, in this photo released by the North’s ruling party organ Rodong Sinmun the next day. (Yonhap)
Here is the latest on the North Korea sanctions front:
The U.N. Security Council (UNSC) has passed a new resolution aimed at preventing North Korea from exploiting loopholes in past sanctions to pursue its nuclear ambitions.
The latest sanctions, which were approved at a meeting in New York City, Wednesday, mainly target Pyongyang’s coal earnings.
Starting Jan. 1, they will restrict North Korea’s annual exports of coal, a major source of hard currency and its single largest export item, to $400 million or 7.5 million tons, whichever is lower in value.
They also newly blacklisted 10 entities and 11 individuals, many of who are suspected of helping the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation (KOMID).
The KOMID sells coal and other natural resources to raise cash for the Kim Jong-un regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
The 11 individuals include two former ambassadors _ Park Chul-il and Kim Sok-chol who served in Egypt and Myanmar, respectively.
Among the 10 entities are banks and trading companies, such as the Korea United Development Bank, Ilsim International Bank, Korea Daesong Bank, Korea Foreign Technical Trade Center and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link which includes a number of other sanctions the regime is hit by.
I am just wondering who from the United Nations is going to be sitting at the Chinese border to make sure the proper tonnage of coal is being imported into China? We have already seen how China does not enforce sanctions with their continuing oil imports into North Korea. From what I have read I have seen nothing in these latest sanctions that will change regime behavior.
Over at One Free Korea he has a very good rundown on the sanctions and explains why they are largely unenforceable and feature a number of loopholes the North Koreans are sure to exploit.
This combined image, provided by North Korea’s ruling party organ Rodong Sinmun on Nov. 28, 2016, shows its leader Kim Jong-un and other senior officials paying tribute to the statue of his later father Kim Jong-il during a visit to Samjiyon County at the southeastern foot of the 2,750-meter-high Mount Paektu, the highest peak on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea publicizes the county as the birthplace of the late leader. (Yonhap)
I am sure the priority for North Korea’s Longevity Institute is to keep Kim alive, but I would think all these scientists are also responsible for keeping other regime officials as healthy as possible as well:
Hyeong-soo Kim said the mysterious Longevity Institute where he worked had the sole purpose of pushing back the leader’s death.
And with the lifestyle of North Korea’s leaders being notorious for its huge meals, that meant a constant fight with cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
It left researchers desperate to study other obese people, but with North Korea unable to feed its population, they were forced to spy on overweight foreigners instead. (……..)
He continued: “They developed food products because Kim Jong-il had cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
“The two Kims were rather obese, so they monitored and researched people that were obese, which is hard in North Korea.
“Because most of the people are going through malnutrition, they had to study and research the obese superiors or the political leaders.
“Even foreign diplomats or correspondents that come to North Korea were actually researched. These people didn’t even know they were being studied.” [Daily Star]
You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime should have just sent a spy into America and spied on how the people who frequent Wal-Mart keep themselves alive.
North Korean officials pay tribute to the bier of Ryu Mi-yong, former member of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of North Korea and chairwoman of the Central Committee of the Chondoist Chongu Party, in Pyongyang on Nov. 24, 2016, in this photo released by the (North) Korean Central News Agency. Ryu died of lung cancer at the age of 95 the previous day, the agency said. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
It looks like more people are beginning to realize that the North Korean problem is really a Chinese problem. Here is what journalist Gordon Chang thinks should be done by the incoming Trump administration to address the Chinese backing of North Korea:
North Korea looks impossible to solve, and it is if we see China as on our side. It is not. But if we treat China as part of the problem, which it most certainly is, then we can begin to craft solutions, like secondary sanctions. Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, will stop supporting North Korea only when the costs of doing so are too high. So far, his country has suffered almost no penalty.
To impose costs, Trump’s administration could, among other things, cut offending Chinese banks off from the global financial system, sanction every Chinese proliferator, and impose his threatened 45% across-the-board tariff on China’s goods. He could end negotiations on the Bilateral Investment Treaty and treat Chinese businesses like Beijing treats American ones.
And Mr. Trump, starting January 20, will have the tools to raise the costs on Beijing. The Chinese will surely retaliate, but they have few effective options for a long-term struggle. After all, last year they ran a $334.1 billion trade surplus in goods and services against the United States. Trade-surplus countries are vulnerable in trade wars, and that is especially true of a China with an already fragile economy that is dependent on the American market. [Forbes]
It still amazes me that despite all the evidence to the contrary people still think North Korea will denuclearize if the US just makes the right deal:
Joel Wit, editor of the website 38 North, enters a Geneva hotel for talks with North Korean officials on Nov. 17, 2016. (Yonhap)
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump should use his seasoned negotiating skills to cut a deal with North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs, a U.S. expert Tuesday said after rare talks with a group of senior diplomats from the communist nation.
Joel Wit, a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s US-Korea Institute and founder of the website 38 North, made the suggestion in an article to the Atlantic magazine after returning from three days of meetings with North Korean diplomats in Geneva last week.
Wit called for opening negotiations with Pyongyang, saying that the North Korean nuclear issue, one of the biggest problems facing the incoming administration, might also be his biggest opportunity.
“Donald Trump could have an opportunity early in his presidency, if he follows his instincts instead of all the wrong advice he is likely to get on how to deal with North Korea, to prove his Promethean negotiating skills on one of the most serious national-security challenges the United States will confront over the next four years,” he said in the article written jointly with Richard Sokolsky, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
During campaigning, Trump expressed a willingness to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, saying there is nothing wrong with talking, Wit said. However, the incoming leader appears, like his predecessors, appears to “want to dump the North Korean problem into China’s lap,” he said. (…….)
“No one believes that the North will agree to give up all its nuclear weapons and related infrastructure and abandon its development of ICBMs and missiles,” Wit said. “But there is a great deal that can be done to freeze and then maybe eventually reverse these programs, bringing the world closer to that ultimate objective.” [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but Mr. Wit can count me as one of the people who are non-believers in North Korea ever denuclearizing. Considering what Kim Jong-un has seen happened to other leaders (i.e.: Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi) in recent years that did not have nuclear weapons why would he ever consider giving up his? The best the US could hope for is a nuclear development freeze which would only last until the North Koreans found some reason to break the deal long after they received whatever benefits they negotiated for. This is historically what they have done and blamed the US each time they broke the deal.
What in the nature of the Kim regime has changed to think that they will act in any other way this time?
