North Korea Continues Demands for US to End the Korean War

The Kim regime continues to advocate for the Trump administration to end the Korean War:

North Korea repeatedly called for the U.S. to declare an end to the Korean War, as a means to protect its regime from hostilities. However, the U.S. has required North Korea to take tangible and verifiable denuclearization measures first.

So far, North Korea has shut down its Punggye-ri nuclear testing site and dismantled parts of its Tongchang-ri missile testing site, but these measures have yet to be verified.

The North has now pledged to shutdown the Tongchang-ri facility completely in a verifiable manner.

There had been expectations for the North to pledge to submit a list of its nuclear weapons in exchange for the U.S. declaring an end to the Korean War.

However, the North made clear that it would not take any further measures until the U.S. declares the end of the war.  [Korea Times]

This rhetoric of ending the Korean War has been going on for months because the Kim regime wants the peace treaty because it then challenges the legitimacy of the military presence in South Korea.  If there is peace why is USFK needed?

President Moon is saying all the right things that USFK will remain after any peace treaty is signed.  Despite claims in the media that Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in want US troops to stay after any peace deal is reached, this is just all rhetoric to prevent energizing South Korean conservatives against Moon.

Remember Moon is a very skilled politician that needs to keep the Korean right at bay and public anxiety down.  If he advocated openly for a USFK withdrawal that would give the South Korean right an issue to strongly attack him with and cause much public anxiety after decades of security guarantees provided by US forces.  That is why I think the Moon administration will publicly say they support USFK staying, but will then have their surrogates do things to make life difficult for USFK.

Possibly the future of USFK after a peace treaty could look a lot like the current THAAD site in Seongju.  President Moon will say all the right things that he supports USFK, just like he supposedly supports the THAAD site, but will set conditions to make it difficult for its continued existence and cause the US to withdraw troops on its own accord.