Expert Believes that President Trump will Offer North Korea Sanctions Relief Before Denuclearization
I have been saying that the Trump administration must be offering something the Kim regime wants in order to agree to a second summit, sanctions relief or a Korean War peace treaty would do it:
U.S. President Donald Trump will most likely offer North Korea some kind of relief from international sanctions or a peace treaty in the near future, a prominent DPRK watcher and legal scholar told NK News last week.
NK News
Speaking in Washington DC ahead of a conference hosted by NK News’s parent organization the Korea Risk Group, Tufts University’s Sung-Yoon Lee said the international community’s growing lack of political will to enforce sanctions will likely allow the U.S. to reward Pyongyang for what he described as its “fake concessions” on the nuclear issue.
“Trump will be willing to lift sanctions formally, I believe, not all sanctions, but he might say, ‘okay the poor starving North Korean people, they are suffering, so let’s lift sanctions on the ban of export of seafood and textiles,’” Lee, Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor in Korean Studies and Assistant Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said.
“If the U.S. takes the lead in bending the rules – U.S. rules as well as UN Security Council resolutions – who will object? China? No. South Korea? No. Russia? No. Britain and France which really don’t have a bone in this fight? No,” he added. “So it’s all up to Trump and I think Trump is more than willing to offer premature sanctions relaxation.”
In a wide-ranging interview, Lee also discussed why he believes it’s “too late” to bridge the gap between the U.S. and North Korea on denuclearization definitions, ROK President Moon Jae-in’s role in promoting dialogue with the DPRK, and what he sees as Pyongyang’s long-term goal: forcing U.S. withdrawal from the peninsula and the region.
You can read the whole interview at the link, but Professor Lee believes that sanctions relief and a peace treaty will in the near future be offered by the US.
However, squabbles over the definition of denuclearization could cause North Korea in the next few years to detonate a hydrogen bomb in the atmosphere over the Pacific to make the point their nuclear program is now complete. I don’t see them doing that due to the affect such a detonation would have on satellites. Taking out satellites with an EMP blast I think would lead to a call for regime removal; just imagine the global financial and economic impacts of losing satellites in low Earth orbit. The outrage I believe would be huge.
I don’t think the Kim regime would risk the blowback which would leave them with an above ground test option. If they were going to do an above ground test they would have to do it over the surface of a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. Seems pretty challenging logistically for the North Koreans to pull off such a test, but if they get billions of dollars in cash from the South Koreans and sanctions relief may be they can pull it off.
