The Chosun Ilbo oped page is letting everyone know what they think about President Moon’s handling of the murder and burning of the body of a South Korean civilian:
The president videotaped his speech on Sept. 15 and sent it to the UN on Sept. 18, so of course he could not have foreseen the murder. But why did Cheong Wa Dae allow the speech to be aired even when it was fully informed a whole day before the speech was to be broadcast? Could it not have asked the UN to cancel the speech or, if that was too much to bear for the president, to switch the order of speeches and record a fresh one? How hard is that? It is clear that Moon had no intention to do anything about it. When he presided over a ceremony promoting military officers on Wednesday morning, he acted as if nothing had happened and only reiterated his calls for “peace.” He clearly no longer has any grasp of reality.
The military also behaved appallingly. The Defense Ministry watched from the sidelines as a South Korean citizen was brutally murdered and incinerated and then lied to the press about it. Then some minor official was wheeled out to threaten dire consequences, two days after it had watched the incident through binoculars. North Korea must be laughing at these men who pose as soldiers but refuse to do anything to protect the life of their citizens. What is the point of having a military at all?
Now the government and military are claiming that the official wanted to defect to North Korea, though the public have only the word of some officers who have proven that they cannot be trusted. But even supposing the poor man had wanted to defect, that makes no difference to their duty to protect him until they can be absolutely sure.
After North Korea blew up the inter-Korean liaison office in the border town of Kaesong earlier this year, Moon said he felt “anger and frustration,” but he soon got over it. Now Cheong Wa Dae has warned of terrible consequences for the North, but already some people in the government are saying that the slaughter did not violate an inter-Korean military agreement to reduce tensions in the border area. There is no denying that Moon is in love with the fat Barbarian on the other side. What will he do for him next?
You can read more at the link, but what I have been wondering about in regards to this incident is that the North Koreans supposedly watch this guy float in the water for six hours before shooting him. Why didn’t the ROK military do anything to try and rescue him?
The Moon Jae-in admin says NKorea didn't violate 2018 SK-NK Military Agmt in its shooting of SK maritime police & burning his body, because NK didn't use artillery & the agmt doesn't mention killing individuals. Wow. But sending leaflets is a violation?https://t.co/cwR685TWYh
Not the best apology, but I guess it is something:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presides over an enlarged meeting of the political bureau of the Workers’ Party’s central committee in Pyongyang on Aug. 25, 2020, to discuss issues involving COVID-19 and the approaching Typhoon Bavi, in this photo released by the Korean Central News Agency.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has offered an apology to the South Korean people for the killing of a fellow citizen by its military earlier this week, Cheong Wa Dae announced Friday.
In a formal notice sent to the South, the North conveyed Kim’s message that he feels “very sorry” for greatly “disappointing” President Moon Jae-in and other South Koreans with the occurrence of the “unsavory” case in its waters, instead of helping them amid their suffering from the new coronavirus, according to Suh Hoon, director of national security at Cheong Wa Dae.
Notice how he still takes a shot at South Korea as being some kind of coronavirus hotbed. What makes this apology even worse is that they are apparently lying about what happened if you believe what the South Korean military is saying:
South Korean authorities have said the 47-year-old official surnamed Lee went missing at 11:30 a.m., Monday, while on duty on a patrol ship off the west coast, and was found by North Korean military personnel in the sea off Yeonpyeong Island near the maritime border at around 3:30 p.m., Tuesday.
According to the South Korean version of the story, Lee was on an unidentified floating item and expressed his willingness to defect to the North Koreans, who questioned him from a distance while leaving him in the water. About six hours later, the North Koreans shot him to death, then doused the body with oil and burned it.
Pyongyang’s account, however, differed in many crucial parts of the story.
In a notice it sent to the South, Friday, the North said an “unidentified man” who illegally intruded into its territorial waters on a floating item failed to properly respond to their verbal security checks when he was about 80 meters away. Approaching the man, the North Koreans shot two blanks, and he was seen as attempting to flee. They then fired more than 10 gunshots at a distance of 40 to 50 meters as allowed under the related rules of maritime border security.
When they approached for closer inspection, they were unable to find any trace of the body other than a large pool of blood, which led them to believe he had died from bullet wounds and sunk into the water. They subsequently set the floating item ― not the body ― on fire following the quarantine rules, according to the North’s account.
According to the notice, Lee did not express his willingness to defect.
Ruling party's rep Shin Hyun-young introduced a "forced sending" of doctors & nurses to North Korea upon prez Moon Jae-in's order. South Korea is not Cuba. The govt can't force private citizens to North Korea. Docs say to Shin, "why don't you go?"https://t.co/WxxAQev404
The faces in the Unification Ministry may change but the goal remains the same, find a way to avoid sanctions to send bulk cash transfers to North Korea:
Unification Minister Lee In-young (L) speaks at Jejin Station in the border town of Goseong on July 31, 2020, in this photo provided by the Goseong county government.
“I’ll actively look for ways to restart the Mount Kumgang tour project,” he said while visiting Jejin Station in Goseong, northeast of Seoul, near the Demilitarized Zone that separates two Koreas. “The resumption of the tour program will send a message of peace on the Korean Peninsula and revive the economy of border regions.”
The minister also said he will go ahead with plans to reconnect the rail network to North Korea in a bid to create a new economic order on the Korean Peninsula.
During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Lee said he would look for a “creative solution” to restart the tour program to North Korea’s scenic mountains in the form of individual tours as a way to improve inter-Korean relations without violating international sanctions imposed on Pyongyang.
Started in 2003, the project was suspended after a South Korean tourist was shot dead near the mountain resort in 2008. The program’s formal resumption requires a sanctions waiver, as it involves bulk cash transfer to the North.
Here is what the Moon administration is claiming in response to the UFP providing a document showing that new National Security Advisor Park Jie-won signed a secret agreement before the 2000 Intra-Korean summit to offer the Kim regime a $3 billion payday:
President Moon Jae-in (R) presents a letter of appointment to Park Jie-won, head of the National Intelligence Service, at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on July 29, 2020. (Yonhap)
Cheong Wa Dae said Wednesday the government has no document related to an alleged under-the-table agreement with North Korea in 2000 signed by Park Jie-won, newly appointed head of South Korea’s state spy agency.
It was countering political attacks made by the main opposition United Future Party (UFP) that Park had signed the accord, ahead of the inter-Korean summit talks, to offer US$3 billion in financial support to Pyongyang. Park was one of the closest aides to then President Kim Dae-jung, who had a historic meeting with the North’s leader Kim Jong-il.
The UFP made public a copy of what it claims to be a secret agreement. Park has flatly denied that he had signed such a document.
South Korea’s Unification Minister nominee has essentially said that he plans to find ways to work around sanctions to pay off North Korea:
Unification Minister nominee Lee In-young speaks to reporters after arriving at the Office of Inter-Korean Dialogue in Seoul, Monday, to prepare for his parliamentary confirmation hearing. / Yonhap
The government has hinted that it will seek to revamp the beleaguered South Korea-U.S. working group, a forum to coordinate North Korea-related issues, as part of its plan to push for more inter-Korean cooperation.
The organization, set up in November 2018, has taken flak for allegedly hindering progress in inter-Korean ties due to its excessively harsh standards adopted on Pyongyang, and there have been growing calls here for restructuring its operation or even dismantling it.
Lee In-young, the unification minister nominee, said Monday that he plans to distinguish what the government can do on its own with the North from what it can do under the format of the working group.
“If I take office, I will review what the working group has done so far and take additional measures (to promote inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation), based on my ideas regarding inter-Korean affairs,” Lee told reporters upon arriving at the Office of Inter-Korean Dialogue to prepare for his National Assembly confirmation hearing.
You can read more at the link, but as I have been saying this is why the Kim regime blew up the Inter-Korean Liaison Office; to force North Korea to separate from the U.S.’s North Korea policy and violate sanctions. If South Korea finds ways to violate sanctions that will be a green light to other nations to do so as well.
Dr. Tara O has another nugget on the appeasement of North Korea by the Moon administration:
At the 70th Anniversary of the Korean War commemoration event in South Korea, the North Korean anthem was played prior to the South Korean national anthem. The annual event, which is usually held during the day, was held late at night for the first time on June 25, 2020, with Korean War veterans and foreign guests. The U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accountability Agency (DPAA) sent the remains of 147 Republic of Korea (ROK) soldiers who died during the Korean War; the remains were initially returned from North Korea. South Korean president Moon Jae-in, after skipping the event for the first three years of his presidency, attended the commemoration event for the first time.
You can read much more at the link, but this is like playing verses from Horst-Wessel-Lied as part of the Star Spangled Banner during a Normandy Commemoration.
The Russians are alleging that the human rights activists sending of balloons with vulgar pictures of Kim Jong-un’s wife is what caused the recent uproar:
A Russian diplomat on Monday suggested that North Korea likely retaliated against defector-led anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaigns in South Korea after recent leaflets contained obscenely edited photos of first lady Ri Sol-ju.
Speaking to TASS Russian News Agency, Russian Ambassador to Pyongyang Alexandre Machegora said the North Korean leadership and citizens were furious over leaflets sent on May 31 containing content that was deemed vulgar and insulting.
Days before demolishing the Gaeseong liaison office, the North’s ruling party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun said plotting to harm the regime’s supreme dignity is more threatening than Seoul and Washington’s joint military drills.
Pyongyang’s retaliation is also believed to have been triggered by posts in the online communities of some defector groups in which individuals claimed to be buying items used by COVID-19 patients to send to North Korea to spark a pandemic that would cause Kim Jong-un’s regime to collapse.
I doubt this because the defector groups have been sending unflattering material of the Kim regime for a long time without this reaction. My theory is that the Kim regime was just looking for a convenient excuse to start a provocation cycle to pressure the Moon administration. The Kim regime behaved and did what it could to help the Korean left win April’s parliamentary elections and now wants to cash in by pressuring the Moon administration to unilaterally drop sanctions.
It seems the South Korean public understands the reality of the Kim regime better than many elites in South Korea and the U.S.:
Nine out of 10 South Koreans think North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons, but nearly half think the South should still seek dialogue with the North, according to a recent poll.
In an annual face-to-face survey of 1,003 adults conducted from May 20 through June 10 by the Korea Institute for National Unification, 89.5 percent said Pyongyang will not denuclearize, the highest since 2016.
Only 15.6 percent said they think dialogue and compromise are possible with the North’s Kim Jong-un administration.
Nevertheless, 45.7 percent think Seoul should keep trying — up from the previous survey in November 2019, when 38.1 percent thought so, but down from April 2019, when 51.4 percent did.
