Tag: North Korea

Over in Newsweek Rabbi Abraham Cooper and human rights activist Greg Scarlatoiu have a response to Pyongyang’s mouthpiece in America, Christine Ahn who is demanding the Biden administration give in to all of North Korea’s demands:

The truth is that no one has the answer to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula. But caving to tyrants’ demands isn’t an option. North Korea is ruled by a regime that joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty, then withdrew and developed nuclear weapons. The Kim regime commits crimes against its own people and citizens of other countries. By entering a peace treaty and normalizing relations with a criminal regime in possession of nuclear weapons, the U.S. would be creating a precedent and blueprint for other tyrants: brutalize your subjects, develop weapons of mass destruction and the U.S. and the world will blink.

Newsweek via a reader tip

You can read more at the link, but giving in to North Korea’s demands is more than setting a precedent. Giving in also means advancing North Korea’s strategy of ending the U.S.-ROK alliance and establishing their confederation policy with them in charge of the peninsula.

According to the article President Moon is only doing this to try and promote his North Korea engagement policies during the Summer Olympics like he did during the last Winter Olympics:

President Moon Jae-in’s rush to resolute serious issues with Japan before the Tokyo Olympic Games is not going as well as Cheong Wa Dae had hoped. 

Moon named former four-term ruling party lawmaker Kang Chang-il as the next ambassador to Japan last month. It was the first time he had named a politician to the post, after first appointing Lee Su-hoon, an international relations professor, and then Nam Kwan-pyo, a career diplomat and one of the foremost experts on Japan at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Nam has served as the Korean ambassador to Japan since May 2019. It is considered rare for the envoy to Japan to be replaced less than two years after being appointed. Cheong Wa Dae said that sending a politician to the post has a particular meaning amid the deadlock in bilateral relations. 
“With the launch of the new Cabinet in Japan, it reflects the President’s determination to find a resolution to the problems in bilateral relations,” a senior presidential aide said. “Kang served as head of the Korea-Japan Parliamentarians’ Union and has built an extensive network in Japan. Based on this, we determined it would be more suitable to send a politician rather than a career diplomat.”  (……..)

“One major factor in the Moon administration’s renewed push to improve relations with Japan is the possibility that doing so will allow the Tokyo Olympics to serve as a potential showplace for a breakthrough with North Korea,” Mason Richey, associate professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, told The Korea Times. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I don’t see the Japanese wanting to do the Moon administration any favors considering all the anti-Japanese policies and rhetoric they have pushed the past few years.

Pyongyang has mobilized their useful idiots in South Korea to condemn groups in the U.S. critical of South Korea’s decision to criminalize the human rights activists sending leaflets to North Korea. What is ironic is that many of these so called civic groups claim to be human rights organizations as well.

A group of 17 civic organizations on Friday issued a joint statement decrying criticism from some quarters of the United States of a recently legislated ban on sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets into North Korea as “interference in internal affairs.”

The group, including the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation, stressed that flying propaganda leaflets has nothing to do with freedom of expression but is an “act that foments conflict.”

“The interference in internal affairs by related U.S. organizations and politicians, which financially and politically sponsored the sending of leaflets to the North, is going too far, as they joined hands and criticized the passage of the bill,” the joint statement read.

“They should stop the interference that undermines the vision for peace on the Korean Peninsula and inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation,” it added.

On Monday, the National Assembly, controlled by the ruling Democratic Party, passed the bill penalizing the sending of propaganda leaflets despite strong objections by conservative opposition lawmakers.

The ruling party has defended the legislation as necessary to enhance the security of residents in border regions and prevent needless political tensions with the North.

U.S. politicians and others have rebuked the legislation, claiming it could erode freedom of expression and block one crucial avenue for sending free-world information into the reclusive country.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like North Koreans will be the guinea pigs for China’s coronavirus vaccine:

China has provided North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his family with an experimental coronavirus vaccine, a U.S. analyst said on Tuesday, citing two unidentified Japanese intelligence sources.

Harry Kazianis, a North Korea expert at the Center for the National Interest think tank in Washington, said the Kims and several senior North Korean officials had been vaccinated.

It was unclear which company had supplied its drug candidate to the Kims and whether it had proven to be safe, he added.

“Kim Jong Un and multiple other high-ranking officials within the Kim family and leadership network have been vaccinated for coronavirus within the last two to three weeks thanks to a vaccine candidate supplied by the Chinese government,” Kazianis wrote in an article for online outlet 19FortyFive.

Citing U.S. medical scientist Peter J. Hotez, he said at least three Chinese companies were developing a coronavirus vaccine, including Sinovac Biotech Ltd, CanSinoBio and China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), an unlisted Beijing-based company.

Sinopharm says its candidate has been used by nearly one million people in China, although none of the firms have unveiled results of Phase 3 clinical trial of their experimental COVID-19 vaccines, which are under way outside China.

Some experts doubted that Kim would use an experimental vaccine.

Reuters

You can read more at the link.

I still predict there will be a provocation period a few months after the inauguration followed by a deal to reduce tensions that will likely include the easing of sanctions the Kim regime has long wanted. I guess we will see what happens, but Antony Blinken looks like the person that will be dealing with it:

Given his past hardline stance against North Korea, many predict that nominee for U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, may favor putting more pressure and sanctions on Pyongyang to drive the country toward denuclearization under the upcoming Joe Biden administration.

But diplomatic experts believe that Blinken is unlikely to just pursue an approach of isolating the reclusive state ― a policy adopted by the Barack Obama administration, in which he served as deputy secretary of state ― considering his recent indications that he is prepared to sit down with the “rogue state.”

Biden appointed Blinken to be secretary of state, Monday, while Jake Sullivan, a former senior policy adviser to Hillary Clinton, was named as his new national security adviser.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The Moon administration must really think the Biden administration is going to reduce sanctions to let them restart these cross border projects to make tribute payments to economic cooperation with Kim Jong-un through:

The government is seeking to revive deadlocked inter-Korean economic projects, including the reopening of a joint factory park, expecting that cross-border cooperation could resume earlier than some forecast.

Unification Minister Lee In-young held a meeting with business leaders in Seoul, Monday, to gauge their opinions on the plan as part of the government’s re-launching of the Korean Peninsula peace process initiative. Representatives from local companies, including Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, SK and LG that accompanied President Moon Jae-in on his visit to Pyongyang in September 2018, participated.  (……)

“While building an environment for economic cooperation between the two Koreas, the government plans to reignite inter-Korean projects such as individual tours to the North by South Koreans, cross-border railway and road connections and the resumption of work at the Gaeseong Industrial Complex,” Lee said. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but does anyone really think the money the Kim regime will make from restarting these projects will go to improving the lives of North Koreans? As history has shown us the Kim regime uses these payments to make great advances in their military, nuclear, and missile capabilities. Why will this time be any different?

It is hard to believe that it has already been 10 years since this attack happened:

South Korea will memorialize a site on Yeonpyeong Island shelled by North Korean forces in an unprovoked attack a decade ago, according to Seoul’s military.  

A Marine Corps official told the JoongAng Ilbo Sunday that an area used to station field artillery on the island that was bombarded by North Korean artillery on Nov. 23, 2010, would be turned into a memorial.    

The memorial will stand at the “gun platform where, amid the flames of the North Korean military’s bombardment, we pulled out our K-9 [howitzers] and immediately returned fire,” the official said.  

Construction on a memorial that tourists can visit on Yeonpyeong Island, located around 120 kilometers (75 miles) off the western coast, will be complete around mid-December, the official added.  

Currently, the main reminder of the bombardment of the island is the rubble of a house torn apart by the North’s shelling.  

The North Koreans are believed to have fired around 170 rounds from a multiple-rocket launcher, hitting various spots on the larger of the two Yeonpyeong islands including a village and South Korean military installations.   

The shelling killed two South Korean civilians — both construction workers — as well as two Marines stationed on the island. Around 30 more people were injured, while most of the island’s 1,780 civilian residents were evacuated on government vessels to Incheon. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.