Tag: Vietnam

This time the New York Times is piling on President Trump for not reaching a deal with Kim Jong-un during the Vietnam summit:

As President Trump settled into the dining room of a French-colonial hotel in Hanoi on Thursday morning, the conversation with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader with whom he had struck up the oddest of friendships, was already turning tense.
In a dinner at the Metropole Hotel the evening before, mere feet from the bomb shelter where guests took cover during the Vietnam War, Mr. Kim had resisted what Mr. Trump presented as a grand bargain: North Korea would trade all its nuclear weapons, material and facilities for an end to the American-led sanctions squeezing its economy.
An American official later described this as “a proposal to go big,” a bet by Mr. Trump that his force of personality, and view of himself as a consummate dealmaker, would succeed where three previous presidents had failed.
But Mr. Trump’s offer was essentially the same deal that the United States has pushed — and the North has rejected — for a quarter century. Intelligence agencies had warned him, publicly, Mr. Kim would not be willing to give up the arsenal completely. North Korea itself had said repeatedly that it would only move gradually.

Several of Mr. Trump’s own aides, led by national security adviser John R. Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, thought the chances of a grand bargain for total nuclear disarmament were virtually zero. Some questioned whether the summit meeting should go forward.

New York Times

You can read more at the link, but if President Trump had struck a deal to drop sanctions in return for dismantling Yongbyon these same critics would be saying it was a bad deal for the reasons listed in this article, which it would be. That is why the only option was to get them to agree to give up all their nuclear capabilities in return for dropping sanctions even if as Mr. Bolton believed the odds were close to zero of it happening.

I have not seen anyone in the media yet discuss how President Trump is setting up Kim Jong-un for stronger actions in the future if he restarts a provocation cycle strategy. If the US has a strong reaction to a North Korean provocation, the Trump administration would have a strong case that they have tried all diplomatic measures to include canceling military exercises, not putting out provocative statements, treating Kim Jong-un with respect, and even meeting with him, not once, but twice to hash out a deal. That is why I think the Vietnam summit went forward more than hoping an almost 0% chance of a deal would be struck.

The fact that President Trump kept expectations low before the summit, so readily offered up the grand bargain, and then left quickly afterwards shows this was the strategy going in to the summit. It has now been made very clear to Kim Jong-un what the price for dropping sanctions will be and now the ball is in his court on how he wants to respond.

So far nothing surprising by the President’s comments to Kim Jong-un:

Donald Trump has met Kim Jong-un for the second time at a summit in Vietnam, shaking hands and praising North Korea’s “unlimited” economic potential. 
The American and North Korean leaders greeted each other before a backdrop of their countries’ interwoven flags at a luxury hotel in Hanoi, the Vietnam capital. 
The pair shook hands for around 10 seconds, with Mr Trump patting Kim on the back before the men shared a laugh as they posed for photographs. 
In opening remarks before a one-on-one conversation due to last for 20 minutes, Mr Trump talked up the possibilities for growth and development in North Korea. 
“I think that your country has tremendous economic potential, unbelievable, unlimited,” Mr Trump told Kim. 
“And I think that you will have a tremendous future with your country, a great leader.”

He added: “I look forward to watching it happen and helping it to happen. And we will help it to happen.”
Asked by a reporter if the pair might formally end the Korean War during their two-day summit, Mr Trump responded: “We’ll see.”

The Telegraph

You can read more at the link, but those who closely follow North Korea know that it will never reach its full economic potential if the Kim regime remains in charge. Vietnam style economic development would lead to a challenge of the Cult of Kim. So isolated and highly regime controlled economic projects within North Korea such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the East Coast Tourism scheme is the type of economic development North Korea wants.

It also appears that the negotiators were not able to lock in whether a peace treaty would happen during the summit prior to the two leaders meeting. I guess we will see if anything big comes out of this summit over the next 24 hours.

I would not be surprised if he used the Chinese plane again just for safety purposes; a train journey from North Korea to Vietnam just seems too long of a trip to take though it would be a pretty awesome way to see China:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un flew to Singapore on a rented Air China plane, instead of his aged official jet, last June for his first summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. What he will use to travel to Vietnam’s Hanoi for a second meeting with Trump is a point of speculation that will likely remain a mystery until his arrival there.
Many say Kim is likely to fly on the state jet, codenamed “Chammae-1,” this time because the distance of travel, about 2,760 km, is only slightly more than half of the 4,700 km flown last June, and the Soviet-era jet, even if it’s aged, can sufficiently cover the flight.
But others say that Kim could rent a plane from China again if he places priority on safety. 
Some even suggest that he could use his special train to travel all the way to the Southeast Asian nation through China for the Feb. 27-28 summit, just as he traveled to the neighboring nation by train last month, noting that Vietnam also has the same rail specifications as North Korea.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Just like when people emphasize North Korea following the China model, they can’t follow the Vietnam model either because neither country had to maintain a personality cult like the Kim regime does:

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered North Korean leader Kim Jong-un the Vietnamese model of normalization of bilateral relations with Washington and economic prosperity, speaking in Hanoi on Sunday on the heels of a two-day trip to Pyongyang.

“In light of the once-unimaginable prosperity and partnership we have with Vietnam today, I have a message for [North Korean] Chairman Kim Jong-un,” said Pompeo at a business event at the Sofitel Metropole Hotel in Hanoi. “[U.S. President Donald] Trump believes your country can replicate this path. It’s yours if you’ll seize the moment … it can be your miracle in North Korea as well.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Maybe the Vietnamese should put statues up in front of the ROK embassy protesting South Korean killing of civilians during the Vietnam War like they Koreans have done with a comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese embassy:

Two Vietnamese victims of South Korea’s wartime misdeeds have called on the Seoul government to apologize and take steps to verify the truth behind the alleged mass killings during the 1960-75 war in their country.

They claimed that they are still haunted by the harrowing memories of their families being killed by South Korean troops deployed to fight in support of the United States during the Vietnam War.

They came here to testify before the “People’s Tribunal” slated to convene in Seoul on Saturday and Sunday. The tribunal, a mock trial designed to look into the incidents, is led by the local progressive civic group, called MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society.

“I want to ask … Why did South Korean troops fire guns and threw grenades at our family, then just women and children. Why did you set even our house on fire and bulldozed through dead bodies,” Nguyen Titan, a 58-year-old woman, said during a press conference at the National Assembly.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the Minbyun group of lawyers are hard core leftists.  In the past they have attacked the USFK base relocation, tried to bring back the US beef issue, and tried to have North Korean defectors forcibly returned to North Korea.  So why would hard core leftists be bringing up this issue now with a left wing government in power?  They are likely going to use this issue to attack and blame conservative ROK politicians for since former South Korean strongman Park Chung-hee was in power at the time.

South Korean first lady Kim Jung-sook (2nd from R) and Vietnamese first lady Nguyen Thi Hien (2nd from L) tour the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi on March 23, 2018. Kim is accompanying President Moon Jae-in on his three-day state visit to the Southeast Asian country, which began the previous day. (Yonhap)

U.S. aircraft carrier arrives in Vietnam on landmark visit https://t.co/rLfgPkINHO

— Vu Trong Khanh (@TrongKhanhVu) March 5, 2018