The former deputy North Korean ambassador to the United Kingdom who defected from the Kim regime had this to say about Kim Jong-un’s recent New Year’s speech:
Thae Yong-ho
Thae Yong-ho, one of the highest-ranking North Korean defectors in the South, told reporters in Seoul on Tuesday that Kim’s speech had two strategic purposes. These are to drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States in regards to economic cooperation with the North, and to complicate the verification process of North Korea’s denuclearization by initiating multilateral negotiations over a formal peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War.
“If summarized in a single sentence, Kim Jong-un’s address shows he wants to narrow down the scope of the nuclear negotiations between the United States and North Korea to arms reduction and push off international sanctions, while retaining the status of a nuclear-armed country,” Thae said.
According to Thae, who used to be North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, the “new path” Kim mentioned the North would take if the United States does not respond with corresponding measures to its denuclearization efforts would be a return to its old pattern of making nuclear provocations. In the speech, Kim said the North would not “make and test nuclear weapons any longer nor use and proliferate them.” Thae said “a new path” would mean reneging on this pledge.
You can read more views at the link, but the consensus seems to be building that Kim Jong-un does not plan to denuclearize and instead inspects the Trump administration to drop sanctions first.
This is all in line with the “pretend denuclearization” strategy that I believe the North Korean’s are hoping to achieve. Once sanctions are dropped the regime will be flushed with cash that it can then funnel back into its weapons programs. While doing this they can do superficial things to give the appearance of heading towards denuclearization without actually fully denuclearizing.
They will drag this out as long as possible and then by the time someone calls them out on their duplicity, they will make up reason to blame the US for the breakdown in the agreement. By the time this happens they hope to have an agreement to end the Korean War in place and US troops withdrawn from the peninsula.
The regime is betting that by this time the US and the international community will just want to treat them like Pakistan and let them keep their nukes because it isn’t worth the trouble to forcefully make them denuclearize. By keeping the nukes this then allows them over time to coerce the ROK into the confederation agreement they have been demanding to implement.
In a city filled with riot police, why can't (or won't) the South Korean government protect the safety & freedom to speak of its most prominent dissident in exile? https://t.co/znChDnwAzT
Prominent North Korean defector Thae Yong-ho who is also a candidate for the most hated person by South Korean leftists who they haven’t put in jail yet, has started his own English language blog. In his recent posting he discusses how Kim Jong-un has no intention to denuclearize and is strengthening the Anti-Imperialist Education within North Korea against South Korea:
Thae Yong-ho
The reality is that when North Korea’s Kim Jong-un came out to the inter-Korean Summit and US-North Korean Summit, he had no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons. It was simply a way to earn time to hold onto his survival by putting on a ‘show’ of pretending to be interested in denuclearization.
While Kim Jong-un thinks that as long as he is in possession of nuclear weapons he will be able to continue the hereditary rule of the Kim family, in actuality, as long as North Korea has nuclear weapons it will not be treated as a ‘normal state.’ In fact the nuclear weapons will be the malignant tumour that leads to the collapse of the North Korean system.
At this moment in time, South Korean citizens are delighted at the start to an era of forgiveness and cooperation between the two Koreas and think that through these inter-Korean exchanges, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un will change.
However, while Kim Jong-un is pretending to be interested in inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation on the outside; internally, he is intensifying the ‘Anti-Imperialist Education’ and warning his people about getting swept away with the exchange and cooperations with South Korea. [Thae Yong-ho]
Great interview with former North Korean official Thae Yong-ho. One big takeaway relevant for US summit: Kim can’t reform NK into a benign state without risking collapse https://t.co/zQ0IenCKQ0
I hope Thae Yong Ho has protection from stopping two women approaching him from behind with VX while walking around streets of Seoul pic.twitter.com/7VPC67zLee
— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) April 3, 2017
Here is a good interview that NBC News’ Lester Holt did with prominent North Korean defector Thae Yong-ho who has to be number on Kim Jong-un’s kill list:
Lester Holt walks the streets of Seoul with Thae Yong-ho
A senior North Korean defector has told NBC News that the country’s “desperate” dictator is prepared to use nuclear weapons to strike the United States and its allies.
Thae Yong Ho is the most high profile North Korean defector in two decades, meaning he is able to give a rare insight into the secretive, authoritarian regime.
According to Thae, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is “desperate in maintaining his rule by relying on his [development of] nuclear weapons and ICBM.” He was using an acronym for intercontinental ballistic missiles — a long range rocket that in theory would be capable of hitting the U.S.
“Once he sees that there is any kind of sign of a tank or an imminent threat from America, then he would use his nuclear weapons with ICBM,” he added in an exclusive interview on Sunday.
Thae was living in London and serving as North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom when he and his family defected to South Korea and were announced to the world in August. [NBC News]
You can read more at the link as well as video from NBC News.
In the rest of the interview Thae confirms what many have suspected that Kim Jong-un is moving rapidly forward with his nuclear and missile programs because of what he saw happen with Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Thae also confirms my long held view that Kim Jong-un is not crazy, but instead what he is doing is rational from his perspective. Thae describes Kim as someone who will do whatever it takes to hold on to power to include purges and killing of family members.
Thae also advocates for fighting the information war within North Korea which is something I have been advocating for years. He believes that the more educated people within North Korea become the more likely it is that at some point they may rise up against the regime.
The more I listen to Thae the more I keep thinking that maybe he should become the leader of a North Korean government in exile to further challenge the legitimacy of the Kim regime.
Does anyone else see the irony of a prominent North Korean defector elected to the National Assembly questioning the Unification Minister on his past communist background?:
Rep. Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat and current lawmaker of the conservative United Future Party, at Lee’s confirmation hearing shows off a photograph of himself at a press conference following his defection to the South, arguing it proves he has renounced North Korea’s Communist ideology in contrast to Unification Minister nominee Lee In-young. [YONHAP]
Opposition lawmakers on Thursday bombarded Unification Minister nominee Lee In-young with questions about his ideological leanings during a National Assembly confirmation hearing that was largely devoid of policy discussions over the deteriorating state of inter-Korean relations.
The fiercest attacks came from Rep. Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat and defector elected as a South Korean district representative in April. Thae led the conservative United Future Party’s (UFP) charge against Lee, accusing him of not renouncing his supposed former Communist beliefs.
Lee was a founding member and first chair of Jeondaehyup, or the National Council of Student Representatives, an influential left-wing student union active in the struggle against South Korea’s military junta throughout the 1980s.
The group’s prominent pro-unification activities, like its dispatch of a student delegation to Pyongyang in violation of domestic law in 1989, led many on the right to accuse Jeondaehyup of being a pro-North organization, though many of the group’s leaders, including Lee and former Blue House Chief of Staff Im Jong-seok, have since entered the mainstream of South Korea’s liberal establishment.
After stating that he officially renounced North Korea’s Juche state ideology after defecting to the South, Thae argued, without evidence, that he was taught in the North that members of Jeondaehyup recited anti-American slogans in front of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung’s portrait every morning.
Lee denied that he ever harbored a belief in Juche, responding that such attempts to vet a candidate’s ideology belonged to the playbook of North Korea or South Korea’s past authoritarian governments, and were not appropriate in modern South Korean democracy.
“In the North such things like ideological defection may be forced upon [people] but in the South, ideology and morality are not imposed,” Lee said. “That [Thae] has asked me about my ideological beliefs shows [Thae] still lacks an understanding of democracy in the South.”
A positive from the North Korean perspective that has come out of Kim Jong-un’s extended time out of the spotlight was that these recently elected defector lawmakers have been greatly discredited:
Ji Seong-ho
The ruling party on Monday urged two North Korean defectors-turned-lawmakers-elect of the conservative opposition parties to stay away from the National Assembly committees that handle top-secret security information.
Rep. Kim Boo-kyum of the Democratic Party (DP) made the request to Thae Yong-ho, elected as a lawmaker in last month’s general elections for the main opposition United Future Party (UFP), and Ji Seong-ho, a proportional lawmaker-elect of the satellite Future Korea Party (FKP) affiliated with UFP.
Thae and Ji are the first North Korean defectors to be elected to the National Assembly by South Korean voters.
“You must never again mix your wishful thinking with false information and spread it to the media,” Kim said in a Facebook message, criticizing Thae and Ji for claiming that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was in a critical health condition.
As the young dictator of the reclusive communist state conspicuously remained out of the public eye for nearly three weeks, Thae and Ji fueled media speculation by saying Kim was gravely ill. Ji even claimed that he was “99 percent certain” that Kim was dead and predicted that the North would formally announce his death in the coming weekend. Thae also said Kim “could not stand up by himself or walk properly.”
![Rep. Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat and current lawmaker of the conservative United Future Party, at Lee's confirmation hearing shows off a photograph of himself at a press conference following his defection to the South, arguing it proves he has renounced North Korea's Communist ideology in contrast to Unification Minister nominee Lee In-young. [YONHAP]](https://i0.wp.com/koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2020/07/23/93cbea85-2dbb-46bb-a1c4-03667aa36e0e.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
