Found on my doorstep this morning, this flier calls for creating a new unified flag to greet Kim Jong Un when the "noble guest of unification" comes to Seoul. The zeal of nationalism is indeed palpable, and pervasive these days. pic.twitter.com/eYTE0MaTEH
Via a reader tip comes the below video of a conference held recently by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank. The conference featured a number of ROK Drop favorites such as Dr. Tara O, Joshua Stanton from One Free Korea, David Maxwell, and Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt.
A lot of great points were made by the speakers during the conference. For example Dr. O points out the jailing of conservative media figures and how the ROK media is suppressing coverage of anti-Moon administration protests. For example below is a picture of a protest that was not covered by the media. She even discussed an example of how Kim Jong-un could become the President of South Korea if a confederation is created.
Dr. Tara O discusses freedom of speech in the ROK.
Joshua Stanton also provided a lot of great examples of how Korean politicians have suppressed the media though it is in overdrive now.
The Moon administration in South Korea has decided to increase funding for North Korea spending next year:
President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands after signing a set of agreements at their summit in Pyongyang in September. / Korea Times file
The government has allocated 1.1 trillion won ($977 million) for inter-Korean affairs for next year, according to the unification ministry, Monday.
This is up 15 percent from the 959 billion won fund this year, reflecting the reconciliatory mood that developed between the Koreas, as the leaders held three summits and reached agreements to promote peace.
“The budget was drawn up to give an impetus to carrying out agreements reached between the South and North and develop sustainable inter-Korean ties,” a unification ministry official said.
The budget includes 5.9 billion won that was set up to enable video meetings between family members separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.
You can read more at the link, but what is interesting about this announcement of $977 million set aside for Kim Jong-un is that the cost sharing talks between the US and the ROK restart again this week. The US has been asking South Korea to increase their funding for USFK from the $850 million a year it currently pays. South Korean negotiators say that crossing the one trillion won mark is “psychologically important” to not cross. However it was clearly not important when they decided to budget over one trillion won for North Korea spending next year.
So as it stands now the ROK government is willing to pay Kim Jong-un more than USFK.
This shouldn’t come as any surprise because the former Roh Moo-hyun administration that current President Moon Jae-in was the Chief of Staff for also paid then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il more money than they were willing to fund the US-ROK alliance. I would hope US negotiators at the cost sharing talks this week would at least bring this fact up.
Why would a president, who's responsible for providing security & protect people/way of life, get rid of defenses & its surveillance (ability to monitor the adversary's threats & verify its adherence to military agreement)? Give up its border NLL? https://t.co/vIGMX8x1ga
I am sure that this is something that enough cash sent up North can make happen. His dad needed $500 million to host a summit in Pyongyang, so I am sure Kim Jong-un’s price to go to Seoul will be much higher:
Anchor: North Korea continues to remain silent about a prospective visit to South Korea by leader Kim Jong-un. If the visit is to take place before the end of the year, as the South Korean government hopes, there may only be a matter of days left to confirm a date and make arrangements. Kim Bum-soo has more.
Report: It was at September’s inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang about three months ago when leaders of the two Koreas first held out the possibility of meeting again in Seoul.
[Sound bite: N. Korean leader Kim Jong-un (Korean)]
“I promised to President Moon Jae-in that I will visit Seoul in the near future. We will put an end to the tragedy of division as soon as possible and hold our hands together to embark on a sacred journey to peace and prosperity.”
[Sound bite: President Moon Jae-in (Korean)]
“I requested Chairman Kim Jong-un to visit Seoul and he decided to come to Seoul in the near future. ‘Near future’ means ‘within this year’ unless there is a special circumstances. Chairman Kim’s visit to Seoul would be the first by a North Korean leader and it will provide a breakthrough to the inter-Korean relations.”
Now, in December, with just a few weeks remaining in the year, the South still hasn’t heard any confirmation date from the North. That’s according to Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, who told lawmakers Friday the South and North have been in talks to try to make the visit happen. [KBS World Radio]
You can read more at the link, but it is not surprising at all to me the hypocrisy of how the Moon administration wants to champion someone with a visit to Seoul who has killed many Koreans in recent years, launched a nerve agent attack in an international airport just two years ago, has active gulags, still has kidnapped South Koreans, among a host of other provocations while at the same time regularly bashing the Japanese for things that happened 75-100 years ago.
Is anyone in the Moon administration going to demand apologies from Kim Jong-un for his regime’s transgressions against South Korea like they regularly demand from Japan? Better yet what about demands for compensation for the victims of the Kim regime’s attacks?
The first part of the survey of North Korea’s railways has been completed:
This photo provided by the Joint Press Corps shows a group of South Korean officials and railway experts speaking to reporters after returning home on Dec. 5, 2018, following a six-day railway inspection in North Korea. (Yonhap)
A group of South Korean officials and railway experts returned home Wednesday after completing a joint inspection of the rail system in western North Korea.
The 28 South Koreans crossed into Dorasan Station, just south of the inter-Korean border, at around 5:11 p.m. following a six-day inspection that covered the rail line from Kaesong near the border with the South to Sinuiju near the border with China.
A train carrying six South Korean cars left for the North on Friday. It was taken over by a North Korean locomotive at Panmun Station, from which point five North Korean cars were connected to it for the joint work.
“The overall railway conditions have not been better or much worse compared with when we visited there before,” Lim Jong-il, a transportation ministry official who headed the team, told reporters. He was involved in a 2007 railway inspection in the North. [Yonhap]
Everyone needs to remember that Moon Chung-in is the trial balloon specialist for the Moon Jae-in administration. Because the US will not drop sanctions until North Korea denuclearizes it appears that the South Koreans are instead going to try and get around sanctions by throwing around the term “humanitarian assistance” and even more strangely “humanitarian businesses”:
In this file photo taken on Nov. 29, 2018, Moon Chung-in, a special presidential adviser for unification, foreign and security affairs, speaks during a seminar in Seoul. (Yonhap)
The United States can help break the impasse in denuclearization talks with North Korea without sanctions relief if it allows humanitarian businesses in the communist nation to go forward, a special adviser to President Moon Jae-in said Monday.
Moon Chung-in, a special presidential adviser for unification, foreign and security affairs, made the remark during a lecture in Seoul, reiterating President Moon’s earlier remark that rewards for the North’s denuclearization steps do not necessarily have to be a relaxation of sanctions.
“Many American citizens wish to conduct humanitarian businesses in North Korea, but cannot due to government restrictions,” the adviser said. “Relieving those restrictions could send a fairly positive message to North Korea.”
President Moon told reporters earlier that rewards for North Korea’s denuclearization steps could include a delay or reduction of a South Korea-U.S. military exercise, humanitarian assistance or even non-political exchanges, such as sports and cultural exchanges. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but of course Moon Chung-in did not specify what “humanitarian businesses” he was talking about. So is Samsung, who the Moon administration has been pressuring to invest in North Korea, suddenly going to become a “humanitarian business” to get around sanctions? Will the big railway improvement project in North Korea the Moon administration has been pushing become “humanitarian assistance” to avoid sanctions?
Hopefully the Trump administration squashes this latest sanctions busting trial balloon from the ROK government.
My guess would be is that the uncertainty is probably over the annual Key Resolve and UFG exercises held each spring and summer. It seems to me that keeping these exercises on schedule can be used to pressure the Kim regime to make progress on denuclearization. Why reward them with cancelling the exercises if they have not done nothing in return? The fate of these exercises I think will be closely tied to the much discussed Kim-Trump summit that is supposed to happen early next year.
South Korea and the United States have not yet made a decision on whether to continue suspending their joint military exercises next year despite an earlier pledge to finalize the schedules for the drills no later than Dec. 1.
The pledge was made on the sidelines of the annual Security Consultative Meeting in Washington in October. South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo said he would announce the 2019 joint exercise plans under close consultation with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, but no specific timelines or schedules have been confirmed.
“The announcement was expected to be made before the aforementioned deadline, but both defense leaders are still narrowing their differences on the agenda,” the South’s defense ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo said. “We will announce the details at the earliest possible date.”
This came at a time when the allies are scaling down their joint military drills in reflection of the ongoing peace momentum on the Korean Peninsula.
On Monday, South Korea started an independent air drill replacing the Vigilant Ace joint aerial exercise with the United States, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Monday. [Korea Times]
Helicopter in response to a fire at DMZ delayed due to new requirement for #SouthKorea to notify #NorthKorea first, per the 9/19 inter-Korea military agreement. Why did #MoonJaein give sovereignty to Kim Jong-un? Is it his to give?https://t.co/uUqqJgrbg7
