Category: Inter-Korean Issues

After the ROK completes this railway inspection they will know how much cash they will need to handover to Kim Jong-un to upgrade his railway lines while he does little to nothing in return.  The artillery along the DMZ is still there pointed at Seoul and the ballistic missiles and rockets are still there pointed at other cities in South Korea:

The train, made up of six cars and carrying dozens of South Korean officials and experts, left Dorasan Station, just south of the inter-Korean border, around 9:05 a.m. for Panmun Station, near the North’s border city of Kaesong.

The train will be used to inspect 1,200 kilometers of rail track in the North through Dec. 17.

The inspection is part of a summit agreement between the leaders of the Koreas, signed in April, to modernize and eventually reconnect rail systems across their border in a bid to foster reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula.

“The inter-Korean railway connection project is intended to overcome division and open a new future of the Korean Peninsula,” Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told a ceremony at Dorasan Station to mark the launch of the inspection.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if the South Korean officials on this train will get to see the North Korean child slave labor in action maintaining the rails?

Received a postcard on my way to office that I'm asked to fill out to welcome Kim Jong Un when he visits Seoul possibly later this year. I guess this is what they call surreal. pic.twitter.com/IPqWPu4IQY

— Sam Kim 김혜성 (@samkimasia) November 27, 2018

Considering this poll was done by the Blue House I would not give it much creditability until an outside agency does polling on this issue:

According to the survey of 1,000 adults here by the National Unification Advisory Council, a presidential consultative body mainly on long-term inter-Korean ties, 64 percent expressed support for easing sanctions on the North as denuclearization talks are underway.

Here is an update on the North Korean soldier defector who was shot while fleeing across the JSA to defect to the South.  His story is very similar to other defectors who are surprised how hard one has to work in South Korea to earn money:

North Korean defector Oh Chong-song, whose bold dash across the heavily armed border in November last year made global headlines, has been struggling in South Korea since he was released from hospital.

“I took a job as a construction worker to feed myself,” Oh (not his real name) told the Chosun Ilbo Wednesday. “I experienced how hard it is to make money in the South.” Oh left Hanawon, a halfway house that helps North Korean defectors adjust to life in South Korea, in June after a long hospital stay to treat his many gunshot wounds and clear him of a mass of parasites in his stomach.

He now lives in Seoul. “I couldn’t work too long on the construction site due to my bad back, and I now work part-time at a social enterprise,” he said.

Oh denied a media report that he bought two cars and ended up selling them after running out of money. “That’s not true,” he said. “What I was given when I left Hanawon was W4 million in settlement support money and am entitled to live in public rental housing,” he said. “I didn’t have much money left after I bought furniture and a refrigerator (US$1=W1,130).”

Oh now looks no different than many young South Korean men in their 20s. He is slender and around 177 cm tall. Dressed in a navy-blue suit and white shirt, he had also dyed his hair light brown. Because he was born and raised in Kaesong close to the inter-Korean border, he does not have a distinct North Korean accent.

Oh insisted he had been misquoted in an interview with Japan’s Sankei Shimbun last weekend. The right-wing Japanese newspaper stirred up controversy by quoting Oh as saying that the South Korean military is a joke.

“I was misquoted and what I said was lost in translation,” he claimed Wednesday. “I watched video footage of South Korean soldiers crawling to save me,” he added, raising his voice as his emotions ran high. “I served in the North Korean military and do not know much about South Korean military life. You serve 10 years in the North Korean military and two years in the South Korean military, and all I said was it must be easier in the South.”

“But what I was quoted as saying made it sound like I laughed at the South Korean military.” Oh claimed the Sankei sent him a message apologizing for mistakes by the interpreter.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but apparently there is a lot of disinformation being put out about him.  I would not be surprised if the disinformation campaign against him is a coordinated effort by ROK leftists to discredit him as much as possible.

NK's military went across the border to SK waters to kidnap SK citizens. Isn't it more appropriate for the Defense Min/prez to say/do something, rather than the Unification Min? And also something a tad bit stronger than "regret?" How about stop breaking down SK's defenses? https://t.co/k4bGVS4oH0

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) November 24, 2018

I don’t think anyone will be surprised to find out that former President Jimmy Carter tried to hold a peace conference with the North Koreans back in 1979:

The rift between the presidents of the allies at that time — Park Chung-hee and Jimmy Carter — about the size of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) was highlighted in a transcript of their talks in Seoul on June 30, 1979.

“I can’t promise that we will freeze forces levels,” Carter told Park, according to a White House document on their hourlong conversation.

Another UN sanctions exemption for little to nothing in return from North Korea:

The United Nations Security Council has granted a sanctions exemption that will allow North and South Korea to move forward with a joint railway project, according to a report.

Seoul had requested an exemption for the delivery of fuel and other material needed to conduct a survey in North Korea focused on reconnecting cross-border railways.

The request was approved Friday by the security council’s North Korea sanctions committee, a foreign ministry official said according to the Yonhap News Agency.

The decision comes days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the South that it should not improve ties with the North without marked progress in nuclear talks.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

When in history has "the right side of history" denied overwhelming evidence of concentration camps that hold 80,000 to 120,000 men, women & children? Or defended, in the name of feminism, a state that gives impunity to its officials who rape? This profanes history and peace. https://t.co/2ig4hR5Rrm

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) November 15, 2018

Like I said when this story initially broke, next someone is going to point out that the Kim regime still has artillery pointed at Seoul like it is some big revelation:

South Korea’s presidential office on Tuesday played down a new report on North Korea’s “undisclosed” missile sites, saying the state intelligence communities of South Korea and the United States earlier acquired relevant information.

Cheong Wa Dae added that it’s going too far to call the North’s continued activity a “great deception” given that it has no specific agreement to dismantle or disclose the facilities mentioned in the report issued by Beyond Parallel, a group at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The group said it has located 13 out of an estimated 20 missile operating bases undeclared by the secretive communist regime.

“The dispersed deployment of these bases and distinctive tactics employed by ballistic missile units are combined with decades of extensive camouflage, concealment and deception practices to maximize the survival of its missile units from pre-emptive strikes and during wartime operations,” the report said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more a the link, but the South Korean government has basically took a nothing to see here, this is just business as usual approach to the news.

Let’s not be cynical. Assemblyman Park Ji-Won, who, aftern having transferred $500M to Kim Jong Il in 2000 later said, “not a single dollar has been sent Kim,” said today “to raise suspicion is to deceive the public,” thus not categorically denying it. Maybe it was under $500M. https://t.co/FKLgeyh7Jl

— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) November 11, 2018