Tag: Asia

Yes, There Is A North Korea Update

There has been much said about the d”deal” struck with the Kim/Trump “summit” back in June…..and there has been reports that there may be a deal on the nukes but they, North Korea, are still building long range missiles….then the question is if we are being “nice” to each other why does the North need long range missiles (of course we could ask that of the US also)

I thought I might help my readers an update on the situation with North Korea…….

Our Dear Leader received a letter from BFF Kim…….

President Trump teased an upcoming meeting with Kim Jong Un on Thursday as the White House confirmed the North Korean leader sent him a letter “aimed at following up on their meeting in Singapore.” In a tweet, Trump thanked Kim for the “nice letter” and for keeping his promise of returning what’s believed to be the remains of US soldiers who fought in the Korean War, which arrived in Hawaii on Wednesday, per the AP. “I look forward to seeing you soon!” he added. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders didn’t comment on when the two leaders might meet again, but she said Kim’s letter spoke of “advancing the commitments made” at their June summit, spoofed in a K-pop artist’s latest music video, per CNN.

But how is this whole de-nukeing going?  SecState Pompeo can answwer that…..

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says North Korea is far from living up to its pledge to denuclearize and remains in violation of numerous UN Security Council resolutions. Speaking Friday before he attends an Asian security forum with North Korea’s foreign minister, Pompeo told reporters in Singapore there was “still a ways to go” before achieving the goal of ridding the North of its nuclear weapons. Pompeo’s comments came after the White House announced Thursday that President Trump received a new letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and responded quickly with a letter of his own.

The correspondence came amid fresh concerns over Pyongyang’s commitment to denuclearization despite a rosy picture of progress painted by Trump, the AP reports. “Chairman Kim made a commitment to denuclearize,” Pompeo told reporters accompanying him to Singapore. “The world demanded that (he) do so in the UN Security Council resolutions. To the extent they are behaving in a manner inconsistent with that, they are in violation of one or both the UN Security Council resolutions, we can see we still have a ways to go to achieve the ultimate outcome we’re looking for.” (Intelligence officials reportedly suspect that North Korea is continuing to build new missiles.)

The US has been criticized at the ASEAN meeting……

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says North Korea is far from living up to its pledge to denuclearize and remains in violation of numerous UN Security Council resolutions. Speaking Friday before he attends an Asian security forum with North Korea’s foreign minister, Pompeo told reporters in Singapore there was “still a ways to go” before achieving the goal of ridding the North of its nuclear weapons. Pompeo’s comments came after the White House announced Thursday that President Trump received a new letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and responded quickly with a letter of his own.

The correspondence came amid fresh concerns over Pyongyang’s commitment to denuclearization despite a rosy picture of progress painted by Trump, the AP reports. “Chairman Kim made a commitment to denuclearize,” Pompeo told reporters accompanying him to Singapore. “The world demanded that (he) do so in the UN Security Council resolutions. To the extent they are behaving in a manner inconsistent with that, they are in violation of one or both the UN Security Council resolutions, we can see we still have a ways to go to achieve the ultimate outcome we’re looking for.” (Intelligence officials reportedly suspect that North Korea is continuing to build new missiles.)

That is as up to date as I can get without being in the loop with Pompeo and that shall not happen because I think he is a slug…..was so when in Congress and has not changed since becoming SecState.

 

Unification Blues

There is much optimism around the Korean talks…..some are even looking forward to a possible unification of the two Koreas….they look toward the Vietnam of the 70’s and later the unification of Germany of the 90’s……

Yes the idea is very promising indeed….or is it?

The North and South have fundamentally diametric economic and political systems and national ideologies. They also have very large guns pointed at each other’s head. Neither side has much reason to trust the other to refrain from trying to exploit the chaos that would come with a transition and force reunification on their own terms. This trust gap is not going away, nor is the prisoner’s dilemma. True reunification would require breathtaking courage from leaders on both sides, who would need to ignore immediate incentives and assume enormous risk while going through the process.

This is, in part, why only two modern states have achieved negotiated, peaceful reunification. One was Yemen in 1990, and its experience ever since has been nothing anyone wants to replicate. The more instructive comparison is Germany, which reunified the same year. Prior to being sliced in two by outside powers, both Germany and Korea were cohesive cultural, linguistic and ethnic entities. Yet both became locked in a protracted zero-sum contest for supremacy between their competing halves. Both are surrounded by countries that, through the long-term lens of their own geopolitical imperatives, would rather see them stay divided. Both had U.S. troops stationed on half their home soil. And like the North, East Germany suffered greatly from the loss of Soviet aid and security.

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/korea-cant-replicate-germanys-reunification/

A fanciful thought…..but we must get past rigorous negotiations before anything can move forward.

I wish I could say that I see a way forward….but with this bunch it is highly unlikely.

The Joint Korean Declaration

Last week the two leaders of the Korean Peninsula met at the DMZ and the world was hopeful……the chance are that their negotiations could bring an end to many decades of animosities toward each other.

Below is the link to the text of the declaration which I offer for people to see that these are great proposals……the problem is it is short on  specifics.  If this turns out to be a good thing and peace is found it will not be this year or even next…..

The following is an unofficial translation of the full text of a joint declaration signed and issued by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the end of their bilateral summit held Friday at the Joint Security Area of Panmunjom inside the heavily-fortified Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas.

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2018/04/27/0200000000AEN20180427013900315.html

Please do not start handing out the Nobel before there is a reason to award the prize……the situation is promising but not permanent…..keep in mind nothing about this is new……in the past proposals similar to these have been made and never come about…..

Possibly good things could happen but do not bet the house on it…..going “all in” would be a mistake at this point.

Hands Across The DMZ

We have the possibility for a Nobel Prize in the making here….North and South Korea met at the DMZ and history was made……

With a single step over a weathered, cracked slab of concrete, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made history Friday by crossing over the world’s most heavily armed border to greet his rival, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, for talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Kim then invited Moon to cross briefly north with him before they returned to the southern side. Moon grasped Kim’s hand and led him along a blindingly red carpet into South Korean territory, where school children placed flowers around their necks and an honor guard stood at attention for inspection, per the AP. Beyond the surface, however, it’s still not clear whether the leaders can make any progress in closed-door talks on the nuclear issue, which has bedeviled US and South Korean officials for decades.

Kim’s news agency said that the leader would “open-heartedly” discuss with Moon “all the issues arising in improving inter-Korean relations and achieving peace, prosperity, and reunification of the Korean peninsula” in a “historic” summit. It’s the first time one of the ruling Kim leaders has crossed over to the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone since the Korean War ended (though not officially) in 1953. Nuclear weapons will top the agenda, and Friday’s summit will be the clearest sign yet of whether it’s possible to peacefully negotiate those weapons away from a country that has spent decades doggedly building its bombs despite crippling sanctions and near-constant international opprobrium.

After all the tough talk about nukes a proposal has bee-n made about those nukes…..

The leaders also pledged to work for “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula and to reunify families divided by the war. “I hope this will be an opportunity for the two Korean peoples to move freely from North to South,” Kim said. “We need to take responsibility for our own history.”

The leaders pledged to make the DMZ a “peace zone” and to cease the broadcasting of propaganda across the zone by May 1. Military talks will be held next month to discuss reducing tensions, reports the AP, which notes that the declaration did not outline any concrete steps toward denuclearization. A South Korean official tells Reuters that Kim jokingly apologized to Moon for waking him up with missile tests and issued an invitation to visit Pyongyang later this year, which the South Korean leader accepted. In a tweet early Friday, President Trump, who is expected to meet Kim by early June, praised the “historic meeting,” adding: “Good things are happening, but only time will tell!”

Amazing turn of events and I am waiting for the Trump mind to start taking credit for all this….so far the Twitter thumbs have not been active on this event….but it is early….if anyone could piss up this it would be Trump.

More On North Korea

First there was the insults and then as quick as falling out of a chair we were making nice with each other and now there is a possibility that there could be peace between the three partners in this deal.

Could there be a reason for the quick turn around of North Korea….other the good intentions that we are claiming as the reason…..

Kim Jong Un on Saturday said nuclear tests would no longer be conducted at the underground Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility; a new report from the Wall Street Journal suggests the move may not be as benevolent as it appears. It flags an about-to-be-published study by Chinese researchers who say that much of the facility below Mount Mantap is actually useless following the country’s last detonation, which the seismologists say caused a partial cavity collapse. This isn’t exactly new news: Satellite images taken before and after the country’s sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3 show the 7,200-foot-tall Mount Mantap actually lost elevation. Reports at the time suggested “tired mountain syndrome,” which has previously been observed at other nuclear test sites in the US and Soviet Union, was at play.

It essentially means a mountain is under such stress that the collapse of cavities or tunnels is possible. The Journal reports the upcoming study and another published this month provide more evidence that such a collapse did occur. Using data captured by Chinese seismic monitoring stations, they arrived at the same conclusion: that a 6.3-magnitude quake caused by the test led to a collapse inside the mountain that caused a 4.1-magnitude temblor 8.5 minutes later. The second study didn’t comment on whether the facility is still usable, and a commentary at 38 North asserts “there is no basis to conclude” it isn’t. Yes, the “North Portal” might be damaged, but there are two portals “located in more pristine competent rock” that the site believes would be appropriate for testing.
Could this be the reason for the warm and fuzzies that North Korea has for the US?

What The Hell Happened?

Do you remember the silly name calling by Trump and Lil Kim?  To many we were close of a nuke meltdown….I also thought there was a chance that all that rhetoric could be a chance for escalation.

After all the doom and gloom we have had a break through…….it appears as if all is coming up daisies and unicorns……

Nukes were the center of all the back and forth…..and now that has changed…..

North Korea’s official state media has announced that as of Saturday, all nuclear and long-range missile testing in the country are being suspended indefinitely. They also announced they will be closing their nuclear testing site.

The decisions were made at a meeting of the nation’s Central Committee, and officials say it marks a broad shift in national focus, toward trying to improve North Korea’s economy. It is also a very helpful move for the peace process.

Oh but wait there is so much more……

North Korea has expressed a desire for the “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean peninsula without attaching preconditions such as the withdrawal of US troops, the South Korean president has said.

The statement, unconfirmed by North Korea, comes before a summit between the leaders of the two countries on 27 April, to be followed in May or June by a meeting between Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, and Donald Trump

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/19/north-korea-wants-complete-denuclearisation-says-seoul

After all the chest thumping on both sides…..the “rhetoric” was the story in the past…..what would it be if that were eliminated?

a hotline between North and South Korea as turned on. The line connects North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in. The two are expected to talk over the phone ahead of next Friday’s summit.

Perhaps the biggest change is in rhetoric. North Korea in particular has dialed back anti-US rhetoric significantly. On Thursday, North Korea announced that they are okay giving up nuclear weapons even with the US leaving troops in South Korea. At no point in recent history has North Korea been so open to such a dramatic deal. South Korea and the US have similarly been a lot more optimistic about deals with North Korea over the past several months, as diplomatic efforts starting around the Winter Olympics have grown.

Who would have thought it?  After all the war baiting that the Korean Peninsula would become a more peaceful place.

What will the war Hawks do now?  Iran should prepare itself for new attacks on them by Israel which will make the case for US intervention.

Trade Wars Cometh

Just last month Pres. Trump let it be known that he would enforce tariffs on steel and aluminum……the first shots were fired in the new trade wars…..these will effect Americans in several ways….cost of cars and even their addictive sodas…..but what will Asia do in response?

The Bangkok Post had an op-ed on this situation……

Over the past five decades or so, Asia’s economies have relied largely on an export-oriented development model to support rapid economic transformation and growth. But with US President Donald Trump fulfilling…

In the past year, Mr Trump has withdrawn the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), renegotiated its free-trade agreement with South Korea, and raised “safeguard” tariffs on imported washing machines…

https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1439051/how-asia-can-tackle-us-trade-wars

China has made it official that it will respond…it has notified the WTO of its intentions…..

The notification came in a WTO document that was dated last Thursday but posted only after the Easter public holidays.

It came after China said late on Sunday that it has increased tariffs by up to 25 per cent on 128 US products, escalating a dispute between the world’s biggest economies.

China has now fulfilled its legal duty to notify the WTO and other member states of its retaliatory measures.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2140113/china-will-give-good-it-gets-trade-war-united-states

The great Trade Wars of the 21st Century have begun….

This is the warning shot of the end of the “Pax Americana” (a bit melodramatic)…..do not know what that means then stay tuned for I will cover the “Pax” in an upcoming post.

North Korea In The News

NK is making news because of their participation in the Winter Olympics this month…..but there is other aspects that have gone under-reported….

For awhile we were told that their missiles would be coming down Main Street very soon…..but then we were told that we had a state of the art missile defense system that would safeguard the homeland…..maybe not so much….

US officials have confirmed that a test of the advanced SM-3 Block IIA missile defense system in Hawaii on Wednesday has failed, proving unable to intercept test intermediate-range missiles out of the air.

The second straight failure of the system is particularly embarrassing as the US has been working hard to try to sell more such defensive systems abroad. That’s a tough sell for costly systems that have proven little success.

Even the success rate of such tests by the Pentagon is misleadingly high, as the interceptors are given all flight data on the targeted missiles, something they wouldn’t have in a real-life situation, making a square interception much harder.

Then there are those ICBMs from NK that Trump has said will bring death and destruction to the US….well maybe not so much right now…..

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul Selva echoed Defense Secretary James Mattis’ attempts to downplay North Korea’s ability to strike US sites with their ICBMs, saying that North Korea hasn’t directly demonstrated every single component of a functional ICBM, and thus the US can’t conclude that they necessarily have one.

This is true, of course, as North Korea hasn’t physically targeted anyplace with a nuclear warhead, which means we don’t know for sure they could reliably hit such a target, nor that the warhead would necessarily survive reentry.

Selva expressed confidence that the US can destroy “most” of North Korea’s infrastructure in a preemptive attack, though that clearly is distinct from “all,” and North Korea’s ability to retaliate against a US attack remains very much a substantial risk. Efforts by officials to downplay North Korea’s capabilities have been raising concerns the US is continuing to plot such an attack.

As usual most everything Trump has said is bullshit!  I am not saying that NK will never have the capability just that not right now….spreading fear does not solve a problem….something Trump would understand if had some foreign policy chops…..but he sold water and steaks and not very successfully.

‘Beyond Your Imagination’

We have heard what everybody involved thinks about the chances if there is a war after all the rhetoric….a war on the Korean Peninsula…..

Is The US preparing for a war?

Adding to reports in recent days of growing Pentagon training operations in the US aimed at preparing for an attack on North Korea, House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) has confirmed “very serious” training is indeed underway.

Rep. Thornberry says the administration is looking closely at what sort of preparedness they’ll need to engage in long-threatened “military options when it comes to North Korea.” This would be an attack, though recent reports have indicated the US believes they can get away with a limited attack that would lead to something short of full-scale nuclear war.

With reports suggesting that a sneak attack on North Korea is also being contemplated in the next couple of months, the shift in training seems to be away from very high-profile exercises right on the border, toward less publicized exercises within the US focusing on specific preparedness for the attack.

(antwar.com)

A retired South Korean general has his say…..

For anyone encouraged by North Korea’s slight softening toward the South, Chun In-bum essentially dumps a bucket of cold water it. The retired South Korean general, who the Financial Times reports led his country’s special forces, spoke to a London-based think tank Wednesday and outlined exactly what American forces would encounter should we decide to bloody the country’s nose—or something more significant. He doesn’t mince words: “I try to explain to the Americans—if we have to go into North Korea, … it’s not going to be like toppling [Saddam) Hussein]. This would be more like trying to get rid of Allah.” He describes the country as “one huge barracks” and the population as militarized far beyond the [West’s] imagination.

“A 14-year-old child in North Korea probably gets more than 100 hours of military training a year,” the Times of London quotes Chun as saying. “By age 14, a child knows how to fire an AK47, fire an RPG, throw a grenade, pitch a tent and march 24 hours.” And even things that may seem promising on their face—the North’s estimated 1,000 fighter jets are aged—aren’t, per Chun, who says those planes would be used kamikaze-style, USA Today reports. And there’s not just the physical battlefield to contend with, per the Brisbane Times: “North Korean cyber capability is right below nuclear capability in terms of threat,” says Chun. He also describes an extreme system designed to root out any dissent, whereby the country’s families are grouped in units, and if one person “misbehaves, the entire five or 10 families go to the gulag or are executed. So everybody spies on everybody else.”

Everybody has their opinions about the outcome of any armed conflict in the region…..and most all seldom take the South Korean population into consideration…..the thing to remember if there is a shooting war then the first causalities will be the people of SK….the US has little to worry about in the first hours of a conflict.  The people of SK will pay a hefty price for the conflict…..

Will There Be War With North Korea?

Lots of rhetoric between Fearless Fosdick and Li’l Kim…..I am sure that everyone reading IST is well aware of the situation between the US and North Korea…..but with all the rhetoric is there anyone that thinks this will spiral beyond the rhetoric?

Looks like the Chinese are taking all the threats as the possibility of a war……why?

With a conflict on the Korean Peninsula looking increasingly possible, China is reportedly preparing. The country is said to be laying the groundwork for refugee camps for thousands of prospective migrants along Jilin province’s border with North Korea, reports the New York Times, citing a document produced by a state-owned telecom company. The China Mobile document describes recent inspections of five planned refugee camps—in the cities of Tumen and Hunchun and three villages in Changbai County—for the purposes of verifying Internet access there. Though China’s government hasn’t confirmed the plan, a local businessman tells the Times that temporary housing is already under construction on state-owned land.

The camps were ordered “because the situation on the China-North Korea border has intensified lately,” according to the China Mobile document, which was shared last week on microblogging site Weibo before it was deleted, per the Telegraph. In an exchange erased from the official transcript of a press briefing on Monday, a rep for China’s Foreign Ministry said he was unaware of any such plan, per the Guardian. But analysts say China would be foolish not to anticipate such future needs, particularly in an area that lies just 60 miles from North Korea’s main nuclear test site. The Korean Peninsula is “on the brink of war,” a Beijing specialist on North Korea tells the Guardian. “As a major power and a neighboring country, China should make plans for all eventualities.”

But maybe there is a bright light in all this craziness…..what would that be?

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the US is ready to talk to North Korea at any time about any subject Pyongyang wants to talk about—without preconditions. “Let’s just meet and let’s talk about the weather if you want and talk about whether it’s going to be a square table or a round table, if that’s what you’re excited about,” Tillerson said in a speech at the Atlantic Council policy forum on Tuesday, per the BBC. “Then we can begin to lay out a map, a road map, of what we might be willing to work towards.” But the US has previously demanded that North Korea give up its nuclear weapons before talks begin, and it’s not clear whether that policy has officially changed, NPR reports.

President Trump’s “views on North Korea have not changed,” the White House said in a statement after Tillerson’s speech. “North Korea’s actions are not good for anyone and certainly not good for North Korea.” Tillerson said that before talks could begin, there would need to be a “period of quiet” without nuclear or ICBM tests. Reuters reports that United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman, whose trip to North Korea last week was the first of its kind since 2011, said Tuesday that Pyongyang did not commit to talks, but they “left the door ajar” for future negotiations.

Talking is good……but will this ever make it to reality?

With North Korea sending out feelers in recent days about the possibility of direct talks with the US, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson struck a conciliatory tone Tuesday, saying the US is now also ready for talks with North Korea with no preconditions.

The White House apparently wasn’t too happy with that, and today went to a very public point of issuing a correction to Tillerson’s statement, insisting that the US very much is not ready for talks with North Korea.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huakabee-Sanders insisted President Trump’s position on North Korea hasn’t changed,

Fearless Fosdick is a moron that will lead this country into the deep end of the pool.

To answer the question……who the Hell knows?  Since there is no direction from the State Department and a loud mouth president…….anything is possible.