It looks like the Moon administration is still pushing for Sunshine Policy 2.0 and a peace treaty with North Korea:
Moon Chung-in, special presidential adviser for unification, foreign and security affairs. (Yonhap)
South Korea may consult with the United States about scaling back joint military exercises and deployment of American strategic weapons if North Korea suspends nuclear and missile activities, an adviser to President Moon Jae-in said Friday.
Moon Chung-in, a foreign affairs scholar and special presidential adviser, made the remark during a Wilson Center seminar in Washington, saying President Moon has proposed the idea.
“He proposed two things. One, if North Korea suspends its nuclear and missile activities, then we may consult with the United States to (on) scaling down ROK-US joint exercises and training. I think what he has in mind is we may scale down deployment of American strategic weapons over the Korean Peninsula,” the adviser said.
“Another one is linking North Korea’s denuclearization to creation of a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula,” he said. (……..)
During the seminar, the adviser said that President Moon pursues “incremental, comprehensive and fundamental” denuclearization with North Korea, beginning with a freeze on its nuclear and missile programs and a verifiable dismantlement of its nuclear facilities and materials. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but here is my view on a freeze deal. Any freeze deal should not include a peace treaty and only include the scaling down of US-ROK military exercises. A peace treaty should only be offered in return for the complete dismantlement of their nuclear and ICBM programs which we know they will never do.
The freeze deal should then have strong language in it that any non-compliance by North Korea opens them to a kinetic strike to ensure compliance. Including language that includes the use of force to ensure compliance gives the US world opinion on its side if it needs to strike North Korea. It additionally puts pressure on China to ensure that Pyongyang is complying with the deal to avoid the use of force being used against North Korea.
If this report is true it will allow the Kim regime to increase its foreign revenue for giving up nothing in return:
In return for the dismantlement of the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Reactor and a nuclear freeze, the United States would offer the Kim regime a 12-18 month suspension on some U.N. Security Council sanctions. The North Koreans would again be permitted to export coal and textiles, two commodities which have served as Kim’s biggest moneymakers. If Pyongyang agrees to keep its end of the deal, Washington would also consider an end of war declaration and the establishment of liaison offices in one another’s capitals. And if the North cheats or violates the agreement, the Security Council would reimpose the sanctions through a snap-back mechanism.
The question becomes what is the Trump administration going to give up in return for a freeze deal?:
The United States would hope to see a freeze in the North Korean nuclear program as the start of a process of denuclearization, the State Department said on Tuesday, ahead of fresh talks with Pyongyang supposed to take place this month.
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had a surprise meeting at the end of June in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas and agreed to resume a working-level dialogue, stalled since a failed summit in Vietnam in February.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the talks would likely happen “sometime in July … probably in the next two or three weeks.”
The Trump administration has dismissed a New York Times report that said an idea was taking shape among U.S. officials to seek to negotiate a nuclear freeze by North Korea, rather than its complete denuclearization, thereby tacitly accepting it as a nuclear state.
“(A) freeze, you know, that would never be the resolution of a process. That would never be the end of a process,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told a regular news briefing. “That would (be) something that we would certainly hope to see at the beginning. But I don’t think that the administration has ever characterized a freeze as being the end goal. That would be at the beginning of the process.”
You can read more at the link, but if the Trump administration allows the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Kumgang Tours this would be a similar deal to what the Bush administration signed that the Kim regime later broke. However, that deal did cause North Korea to behave while the Bush administration was focused on the surge strategy in Iraq. The Trump administration could be thinking the same thing to get the Kim regime to behave during the upcoming reelection campaign and then get tough later on by pushing for real denuclearization.
There have been many North Korea experts arguing that President Trump should pursue a deal with North Korea to freeze their nuclear and ICBM programs. One US expert has now called any freeze deal with North Korea a “mirage”:
David Straub
Most proponents are more careful than Mr. Clapper and refer to a “freeze” rather than a “cap.” A cap suggests U.S. acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear weapons state for the indefinite future. Doing that would destroy U.S. credibility not only with its allies in Seoul and Tokyo but throughout the world as well. It would also undermine the global nuclear nonproliferation regime and signal to Iran that it could violate its own nuclear agreement with impunity.
Most cap proponents understand this and so talk publicly instead about a freeze, arguing that it would just be a steppingstone on the way to elimination. This is disingenuous because they themselves don’t believe Pyongyang will ever give up the nuclear weapons it already has or even fully stop its nuclear development activities under a freeze.
In truth, a freeze now would just be a cap in disguise. The entire international community would also regard it as such, unlike in earlier years when the North’s nuclear capabilities were not as advanced and their elimination was still considered possible.
A negotiated freeze is like a mirage, an illusion that recedes as quickly as one tries to approach it. That applies both to what we would need Pyongyang to do and what Pyongyang would demand of us in return for a freeze. [The Hill]
You can read more at the link, but the way I look at it is that any freeze deal should not include a peace treaty and only scaling down of US-ROK military exercises plus some lifting of sanctions. A peace treaty should only be offered in return for the complete dismantlement of their nuclear and ICBM programs which we know they will never do.
The freeze deal should then have strong language in it that any non-compliance by North Korea opens them to a bombing strike to ensure compliance. Including bombing strike wording then gives the US world opinion on its side if it needs to use force and makes it in the Chinese regime’s interest to ensure their benefactors in Pyongyang comply with the deal.
Foreign Policy has a good article published that tries to give perspective to the hysteria created by Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s speech which caused so many people in the US to get in a panic about an upcoming ICBM test:
Of course, it is an obvious inference that North Korea might test an ICBM in 2017. We should probably expect an ICBM test to come sooner or later. But Kim didn’t commit to an ICBM test in 2017. He indicated that one was possible. And he also restated North Korea’s long-standing demands for reducing tensions. You don’t have to think Kim’s offer is an appealing one or that he is sincere. Frankly, I have my doubts on both accounts. But he did make an offer.
That isn’t what got reported of course. “North Korea Will Test Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, Kim Says,” blared the New York Times. The headline was a heck of a lot less careful than the story, by Choe Sang-Hun. Eventually, the editors toned down the headline, but too late. By that time, the damage was done. Kim’s speech wound its way through the news and social media, cut up and condensed into 140-character snippets like a modern-day game of telephone. In the end, his bland speech had been transformed into a “grim promise” to test “a missile to reach U.S.” [Foreign Policy]
This is nothing new in regards to the media sensationalizing everything coming out of North Korea. The Foreign Policy article goes on to explain how in response to these news articles various US government officials have inflamed tensions with North Korea further. To calm things back down this is the recommendation given:
North Korea’s demand that the United States cancel all its exercises is a nonstarter, but Washington could offer further transparency and agree to some limits on their scale. There are lots of good reasons to do this, not least because the bomber appearances are losing their shock value. They have become a poor substitute for a strategy. We might as well get something for taking a break from them.
We don’t have to work out all the details in advance. But the basic framework for a potential compromise is clear: scaling back the exercises in 2017 that Kim complained about in his speech for his agreement to refrain from nuclear and missile testing during the same period. It is a timeout to reduce tensions while Trump and Kim figure each other out.
I recommend reading the whole article at the link, but I think the idea isn’t too bad depending on what scaling down of the military exercises means? The North Koreans want to take every opportunity to drive a wedge between the US and the ROK and the annual military exercises are a major component of readiness and team building between the two country’s militaries. They should not be canceled, but it may be worth determining what could be scaled back and see if there is any interest from the North Koreans in freezing their testing in return.
Scott Snyder from the Council on Foreign Relations has an article published that advocates what many in the think tank establishment have been saying that banks and companies doing business with the Kim regime have to be targeted for sanctions to work. Snyder also calls for a nuclear freeze strategy before negotiating for a denuclearization deal:
To show the North Koreans that nuclear development is indeed a dead-end option, the United States must work with its allies to expand sanctions to target businesses and banks that refuse to cease cooperation with North Korea. North Korea must bear a tangible cost for its defiance of repeated warnings from its neighbors to desist from further nuclear and missile tests. Such a course is a necessary self-defensive step short of regime change to contain North Korea’s continuing nuclear and missile development efforts and to impose a de facto freeze on its program.
China’s cooperation toward this end is an essential litmus test of Beijing’s willingness to work together on a clear and present common threat to regional and global security. Only if the international community can impose a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear and missile development will there be a prospect that Kim might move back to denuclearization. [Washington Examiner]
I have been saying this for years that North Korea is never going to denuclearize and it appears U.S. negotiators may finally be understanding this:
Mira Rapp-Hooper, the U.S. National Security Council senior director for East Asia and Oceania, speaks during a forum in Seoul co-hosted by South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper and the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on March 4, 2024.
The United States seeks dialogue with North Korea, including on mitigating the risk of an inadvertent conflict on the Korean Peninsula, a National Security Council (NSC) spokesperson said Monday, stressing its goal for the “complete” denuclearization of the peninsula remains unchanged.
The remarks came after Mira Rapp-Hooper, the NSC senior director for East Asia and Oceania, said this week that Washington will consider “interim steps” on the pathway toward the North’s denuclearization — a statement that raised speculation about a potential U.S. policy shift.
In the negotiation lexicon for the North, interim steps usually involve such measures as Pyongyang’s freeze of its nuclear weapons development in return for sanctions relief or other incentives to encourage the regime’s denuclearization efforts.
“Our position on the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula has not changed,” the spokesperson said in response to a question from Yonhap News Agency, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
You can read more at the link, but in my opinion the best that can be hoped for at this point is an agreement limiting the amount of nuclear weapons North Korea has, a ban on proliferation, and an end to their ICBM program.
North Korea needs a viable ICBM threat to pressure the US in any future negotiations. Is it far fetched to believe that the Biden administration could drop sanctions in return for a freeze on their ICBM program? If offered the Kim regime would probably likely take it because they get to keep their nukes and shorter and medium range missiles to target the ROK and Japan. The money from dropping sanctions can then be used to further modernize their nuclear and ballistic missile programs:
A Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is launched from Pyongyang International Airport on March 24, 2022, in this photo released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency. The North’s leader Kim Jong-un approved the launch, and the missile traveled up to a maximum altitude of 6,248.5 kilometers and flew a distance of 1,090 km before falling into the East Sea, the KCNA said.
North Korea said Friday that it successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), called the Hwasong-17, the previous day on the direct order of its leader Kim Jong-un.
Making an on-site inspection of the test, Kim stressed his country would be “fully ready for long-standing confrontation with the U.S. imperialists,” according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Kim was quoted as adding, “The new strategic weapon of the DPRK would make the whole world clearly aware of the power of our strategic armed forces once again.” DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
It will be interesting to see if the US government does anything to try and seize North Korean assets to pay this court settlement:
A federal court has awarded $2.3 billion to several crewmembers and families of the USS Pueblo, a Navy ship taken hostage by North Korea more than 50 years ago.
Split evenly for compensatory and punitive damages, the amount is among the largest ever awarded in a state-sponsored terrorism case, according to Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, the Washington-based law firm that filed the case three years ago on behalf of 61 crew members and 110 family members in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
You can read more at the link and learn more about the USS Pueblo Incident at this link. I doubt the surviving crew members and the family members will ever see any money from North Korea, but at least this ruling will make it harder for the engagement crowd to make their case that aid for little to nothing in return should be U.S. policy with the Kim regime.
The BBC has an article on North Korea’s slave labor system based on a report released recently by the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korea Human Rights:
Life of slaves, not human beings
Generations of South Korean prisoners of war are being used as slave labour in North Korean coal mines to generate money for the regime and its weapons programme, according to a report released by a human rights organisation. The BBC has taken a closer look at the allegations.
“When I see slaves shackled and dragged on TV, I see myself,” Choi Ki-sun told me. He was one of an estimated 50,000 prisoners seized by North Korea at the end of the Korean War in 1953.
“When we were dragged to labour camps, we were at gun point, lined up with armed guards around. What else could this be if not slave labour?”
Mr Choi (not his real name) said he continued to work in a mine in North Hamgyeong province alongside around 670 other prisoners of war (POWs) until his escape, 40 years later.
You can read the rest at the link, but the article goes on to discuss the songbun system and how someone’s class can sentence them to slave labor as well. For those that have closely followed this issue the fate of Korean War POWs, the songbun system, and North Korea’s slave labor camps is nothing new.
Clearly the NKHR is trying to remind people of the regime’s brutality likely because there is an effort by the engagement crowd to once again appease the Kim regime for little to nothing in return. If the engagers want to give Kim Jong-un his dream deal, than the American public should clearly understand the brutality of the regime they want to prop up.
