It appears that Kim Jong-un’s plane may have crashed near Wonsan, but Kim was not on the plane which makes me wonder who was?
Cessna 172 Skyhawk, the type of plane that flies Kim Jong-un around North Korea.
A small North Korean plane, the same type of plane used by leader Kim Jong-un, has crashed, an official said Thursday.
The Cessna went down near the eastern port city of Wonsan, home to Kim’s special villa, on July 15, said the South Korean official familiar with the issue.
The crash was confirmed with intelligence assets of South Korea and the U.S., she said, without elaborating on the assets or the Cessna model.
She did not provide any further details of whether there were any casualties of those who were on board the doomed flight.
Kim was apparently not on board the ill-fated plane. On July 15, North Korea’s state television aired footage of Kim taking photos with participants of an ambassadors meeting in Pyongyang.
On Sunday, Kim cast a ballot in the elections to select deputies to local assemblies, which were held for the first time in four years, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea’s state media remained silent on the accident. [Yonhap]
It seems to me that until the Treasury Department sanctions financial institutions who are doing business with North Korea, these warnings mean little:
Voice of America (VOA) reported on Tuesday that the U.S. government has warned U.S. financial institutions not to get involved in North Korean illicit activities.
VOA said that an advisory from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network urged financial institutions to follow guidelines that limit their direct exposure to transactions related to the North’s proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The measure comes after the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reaffirmed its earlier decision to put North Korea on its watch list.
The U.S. issued similar advisories in March and November of last year and in March of this year. [KBS World Radio]
When the Treasury Department sanctioned the Macao based Banco Delta Asia bank, this was the only time in recent years when the US got the Kim regime’s attention. The then Bush administration of course squandered the leverage on a nuclear deal that saw the Treasury Department return all of North Korea’s frozen money. Once the money was returned they proceeded to begin cheating on the nuclear deal.
The North Koreans have just confirmed what I have been saying they have no intention of giving up their nuclear weapons:
North Korea said Tuesday that it’s not interested in an Iran-type nuclear disarmament deal, saying it won’t abandon its atomic weapons as long as the United States maintains hostile policies toward the country.
The North’s nuclear deterrent is “not a plaything to be put on the negotiating table,” an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. It was the country’s first official response to the Iran nuclear accord reached earlier this month.[Associated Press]
DMZ Flashpoints is my ongoing series of articles chronicling the various incidents over the years that have occurred along the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). A popular saying is that there is no “D” in DMZ and these decades of deadly incidents long the DMZ is proof of that. Using newspaper archives I have been able to reconstruct the events of what happened in these incidents all those years ago. You can learn more about these incidents and the brave servicemembers who gave their lives in defense of South Korea at the below links:
In a interview in the Diplomat, writer Robert Kaplan seems pretty sure that it is only a matter of time before the collapse of the Kim Jong-un regime happens:
Right. That’s the opportunity, the moment of surprise. Another element and not even a surprise is the moment the North Korean regime collapses. When Kim Jong-un is assassinated by somebody in his inner circle or something. That would be like a wreck; like implosion and chaos. That’s not a surprise but a Chinese nightmare for years already. They have almost resigned to have in such moment two million or so refugees on the North Korean border. I think North Korea, ethnic unrest, continued unexpected turbulence in their own economy, and Japan or Vietnam actually starting a conflict which I don’t think they will do. Because when you start a conflict with China you have to know how you are going to finish it. Or you have to at least have a plan. If you start a conflict with China, it gets really messy how it’s going to end. [The Diplomat]
Regime collapse is always possible with the North Koreans, but you have to figure that conditions in the country right now are no where near as bad as the famine years of the mid-90s and the then Kim Jong-il regime was able to survive that. That is why I am not considering the collapse of the Kim Jong-un regime in the near term inevitable, but over the long term I don’t see it lasting. I think if anything causes it to collapse would be an outside event not an internal event. Possibly the economic collapse of China or internal conflict with in China years from now that spreads to North Korea. Or North Korea gets caught in a war between China and the rest of Asia. Considering Kim Jong-un’s young age I don’t see him living out his elderly years as the ruler of North Korea with all the change that could possibly happen in the coming decades in Asia that will undoubtedly affect North Korea as well. .
Instead of trying to use claims of setting up a Social Security system for the Kaesong workers, the North Korean negotiators now appear to be trying to make use of the minimum wage fight in the US and claim it is their sovereign right to wage the minimum wage for Kaesong workers:
The two Koreas are holding talks to settle the dispute over the wages of North Korean workers employed at the Gaeseong Industrial Complex in the North.
The sixth round of talks of a joint inter-Korean committee in charge of running the complex is under way at the complex in the North Korean border city.
During a plenary session Thursday morning, the two Koreas exchanged opinions on the wage dispute, issues concerning border passage, customs and communications as well as improving working conditions at the factory zone.
In the afternoon, Lee Sang-min from the Unification Ministry, heading the talks, and his North Korean counterpart Pak Chol-su, a vice director of the North’s special economic zone development department, held two chief delegates’ meetings and discussed the wage concern.
A Unification Ministry official in Seoul said the mood in the talks was not bad, but results of the meeting are not yet known.
Before the morning session began Thursday, Lee welcomed news of Pak expressing hope that the day’s meeting would serve as “welcome rain” for cross-border relations.
The North Korean official went on to metaphorically say that recent downpours have in fact considerably helped harvest conditions in the North.
He said that he believes the latest talks can produce good results just like a long awaited rain after a drought for business people hoping for the success of the complex and all Koreans longing to see inter-Korean relations improve.
The Thursday talks are known to have particularly focused on the contentious issue of revising labor regulations including a five percent cap on minimum wage growth.
North Korea contends setting the minimum wage is a sovereign right while the South calls for an inter-Korean agreement on the issue per the previous rule. [KBS World Radio]
