By not having their athletes at the Olympics this will more easily allow the North Koreans to make trouble this summer. What better time to start a provocation cycle that will get the world’s attention on you than the Olympics:
North Korea said Tuesday it will not participate in the upcoming Tokyo Summer Olympics to protect its athletes against the coronavirus pandemic, dashing South Korea’s hopes to use the games to kickstart the stalled peace process with Pyongyang.
The decision was made during a general assembly meeting of the North’s Olympic Committee held in Pyongyang on March 25, according to Sports in the DPRK Korea, a website on sports affairs in North Korea.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but will the U.S., ROK, and Japan cut a deal to end a provocation cycle before the Olympics just to get the Kim regime to behave? I guess we will see what happens.
You can see the slow building up towards a provocation cycle once again with North Korea:
The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Tuesday criticized South Korean President Moon Jae-in for his speech on the North’s recent missile launches, mocking him as a “parrot” that repeats the United States’ “gangster-like logic.”
Kim Yo-jong made the criticism in a statement after Moon said on Friday in a speech that any action that could undercut the mood for dialogue is “undesirable,” hours after Pyongyang confirmed its test-firing of short-range ballistic missiles.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The Nam Hyun-woo in the Korea Times writes that Trump was soft on North Korean missile launches and that the Biden administration will take a harder line:
This contrasts with the previous Donald Trump administration, which downplayed Pyongyang’s missile launches while attempting to achieve denuclearization through summit talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Korea Times
In contrast, the Biden administration has been signaling a hard-line approach to North Korea and diplomatic efforts simultaneously, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying both pressure and diplomatic options are on the table to deal with Pyongyang.
“During the Trump administration, the U.S. did not respond to short-range ballistic missiles, but now the Biden administration is mentioning Thursday’s launch violated U.N. resolutions,” said Go Myong-hyun, a senior fellow at Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “Although Biden also said the U.S. can also respond on its own, the bottom line is that it is returning to a rules-based international order based on liberalism.”
You can read more at the link, but Mr. Nam must have forgotten all the “rocket man” and “fire and fury” rhetoric from former President Trump on top of the pressure campaign that is widely believed to have brought Kim Jong-un into negotiations. The negotiations as we all know went no where, but it did stop the missile launches and nuclear tests.
It is too early to state whether the Biden administration is taking a hardline or not on North Korea, but to claim that the Trump administration was some how soft on North Korea is inaccurate.
It seems that North Korea is slowly working their way up towards another provocation cycle if they don’t get what they want:
North Korea fired two cruise missiles off the west coast Sunday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Wednesday, Pyongyang’s first missile test in about a year seen as aimed at testing the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden without being too provocative.
“We detected two projectiles presumed to be cruise missiles fired from the North’s western port county of Onchon early Sunday,” a JCS officer told reporters.
Yonhap
You can read more at the test, but firing cruise missiles is actually not part of the UN ballistic missile ban on North Korea.
It seems the U.S. can never consistently keep pressure on North Korea to ever get any results, but here is the latest administration to try:
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that Washington is looking at various ways to address the North Korean nuclear issue, including “pressure measures” and “diplomatic paths,” during its ongoing policy review.
During a press conference with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and their Japanese counterparts, Toshimitsu Motegi and Nobuo Kishi, in Tokyo, Blinken also pointed out the U.S.’ commitment to dealing with human rights abuses in the North.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
So much for Kim Yo-jong being sidelined by her brother because she is clearly back to playing a key role attacking South Korea and the U.S.:
The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un threatened Tuesday to scrap a military peace agreement with South Korea and break up a Workers’ Party organ tasked with inter-Korean dialogue as she lambasted the South for conducting military exercises with the United States.
Kim Yo-jong also warned the new U.S. administration of President Joe Biden not to engage in such hostile acts, saying it better not do things that would “keep it from getting a good night’s sleep” if it wants to sleep well for the next four years.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It will be interesting to see if the US government does anything to try and seize North Korean assets to pay this court settlement:
A federal court has awarded $2.3 billion to several crewmembers and families of the USS Pueblo, a Navy ship taken hostage by North Korea more than 50 years ago.
Split evenly for compensatory and punitive damages, the amount is among the largest ever awarded in a state-sponsored terrorism case, according to Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, the Washington-based law firm that filed the case three years ago on behalf of 61 crew members and 110 family members in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link and learn more about the USS Pueblo Incident at this link. I doubt the surviving crew members and the family members will ever see any money from North Korea, but at least this ruling will make it harder for the engagement crowd to make their case that aid for little to nothing in return should be U.S. policy with the Kim regime.
The BBC has an article on North Korea’s slave labor system based on a report released recently by the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korea Human Rights:
Generations of South Korean prisoners of war are being used as slave labour in North Korean coal mines to generate money for the regime and its weapons programme, according to a report released by a human rights organisation. The BBC has taken a closer look at the allegations.
“When I see slaves shackled and dragged on TV, I see myself,” Choi Ki-sun told me. He was one of an estimated 50,000 prisoners seized by North Korea at the end of the Korean War in 1953.
“When we were dragged to labour camps, we were at gun point, lined up with armed guards around. What else could this be if not slave labour?”
Mr Choi (not his real name) said he continued to work in a mine in North Hamgyeong province alongside around 670 other prisoners of war (POWs) until his escape, 40 years later.
BBC News
You can read the rest at the link, but the article goes on to discuss the songbun system and how someone’s class can sentence them to slave labor as well. For those that have closely followed this issue the fate of Korean War POWs, the songbun system, and North Korea’s slave labor camps is nothing new.
Clearly the NKHR is trying to remind people of the regime’s brutality likely because there is an effort by the engagement crowd to once again appease the Kim regime for little to nothing in return. If the engagers want to give Kim Jong-un his dream deal, than the American public should clearly understand the brutality of the regime they want to prop up.
