North Korea’s Nuclear Test Suspension Claim Beginning to Draw Criticism

It looks like people are slowly catching on to what I said when Kim Jong-un’s nuclear test suspension remarks were hailed as some kind of major breakthrough when it isn’t:

North Korea’s announcement Friday that it will stop all nuclear and missile tests was welcomed by the South and the United States, but some critics say the statement didn’t actually indicate any interest in denuclearization from the recalcitrant state.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was quoted in a lengthy report released by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency Saturday as saying that no such tests were necessary anymore, “given that the work for mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets was finished as the whole processes of developing nuclear weapons were carried out in a scientific way and in regular sequence.”

Kim said North Korea, starting immediately, will never use nuclear weapons nor transfer nuclear weapons or nuclear technology under any circumstances unless the country faces a nuclear provocation or threat.

The North will also “facilitate close contact and active dialogue” with neighboring countries and international society in order to guarantee the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula and the world by creating an “international environment favorable for socialist economic construction,” Kim said.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but there has been nothing done so far by the Kim regime different from what they have done before.  Everything they are doing is from their standard playbook and the Korean left and international media is largely playing along with it.  I’ll start getting hopeful when international inspectors are allowed to go in and monitor their nuclear facilities and artillery and troops are withdrawn from the DMZ.  Until concrete actions like this are taken this is just more of the same.