Search Results for: thae yong-ho

Here is what one expert thinks of President-Elect Trump’s North Korea strategy:

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump appears to lack a plan on how to deal with North Korea even though his administration is set to take off in less than a month, a U.S. expert said Sunday.

Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), also said in an interview with CBS television that the Trump foreign policy team doesn’t seem to have a full strategy yet on China.

North Korea is “not an issue that Trump knows a lot about,” Glaser said, adding that the concern for the United States is that the North Koreans could pose an existential threat to the homeland if they can make a nuclear warhead that can potentially reach U.S. territory.

“Do we have a strategy that focuses on defense? Do we take a much more aggressive posture against North Korea?” Glaser said, wondering about Trump’s plan. “Some people are raising the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on a missile, if it’s on a launch pad, because we don’t know what’s atop that missile, whether it’s a satellite or a nuclear warhead.

“There may be some discussions about whether we really need to try to cut off trade and harm North Korea’s economy, go beyond sanctions that are really focused on depriving North Korea of weapons of mass destruction,” she said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but North Korea is not an “existential threat to the homeland”.  The Kim regime would need a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons along with the transport erector launchers (TELs) to launch them to be able to destroy a country the size of the United States.  Plus the DPRK’s warhead technology would have to be advanced enough to defeat the US’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system.  The Kim regime’s nukes are at best a deterrent that puts a handful of US cities at possible risk if military action is taken to remove the Kim regime.

As far as sanctions they obviously are not working to stop the Kim regime’s WMD programs because of China.  As North Korean diplomat turned defector Thae Yong-ho has already said, the Kim regime understands it can get away with nuclear development because the Chinese will do nothing to stop them.

It is pretty clear that the incoming Trump administration does have a plan, it is just that it is one that is going to focus on China instead of North Korea which Glaser has already pointed out:

“It looks to me like Trump is trying to keep China off balance, to try and signal that he’s not necessarily going to conduct business as usual in the same way that it has been conducted over the last eight years under Obama and that he thinks it can appear that he can gain some leverage by signaling a willingness to confront China,” Glaser said.

The North Korean diplomat turned defector Thae Yong-ho wasn’t kidding when he said he would become an outspoken critic of the Kim Jong-un regime after defecting from the DPRK embassy in London:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is determined to complete development of nuclear weapons by the end of 2017 and has no plans to give up the country’s nukes even if he is offered huge sums of money, a high-profile North Korean diplomat who recently defected to South Korea said Tuesday.

Kim is “racing ahead with nuclear development after setting up a plan to develop it (nuclear weapons) at all costs by the end of 2017,” Thae Yong-ho, formerly No. 2 at the North Korean Embassy in London, said in a press briefing. It was his first media appearance since he escaped his post in London in July to take refuge in South Korea with his wife and two sons.

“As long as Kim Jong-un is (in power), North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons … the North will not give them up even if the country is offered $1 trillion or $10 trillion in return,” Thae said at the press briefing. “It’s not a matter of (economic) incentives.”

For North Korea, the year 2017 is “an opportune time” when South Korea and the United States will have new presidents, he said. “Due to domestic political procedures, North Korea calculates that South Korea and the U.S. will not be able to take physical or military actions to deter North Korea’s nuclear development.”

In the meantime, Pyongyang will try to open dialogue with Seoul and Washington’s new administrations as a nuclear-possessing state, Thae said of the North’s strategy to secure nuclear power status.

Until then, North Korea will continue to launch military provocations and conduct nuclear tests in a bid to frustrate Seoul and Washington’s sanctions-concentrated policy towards Pyongyang, Thae said. “North Korea believes that relentless provocations must shift new (South Korean and U.S.) governments’ policy lines into more stability-focused ones.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but Thae is just confirming what many of us have been saying for years, North Korea has no intention of giving up their nuclear weapons.  In the article Thae also confirms that the North Koreans can continue to get away with their nuclear and provocation strategies because they know that the Chinese will do nothing to stop them.

Via a reader tip, Thae Yong-ho the North Korean diplomat who defected with his family from the North Korean embassy in the United Kingdom, has spoken out for the first time:

Mr Thae spoke to the committee behind closed doors, but Lee Cheol-woo, the committee chairman, told newswire Yonhap that he had become increasingly aware of the “gruesome realities” of the authoritarian regime.

Mr Thae promised to devote his life to “freeing the North Korean people from repression and persecution,” said Mr Lee.

“There are many ranking North Korean officials suffering from depression over concerns they will have to live like slaves for a long time if the North’s young leader rules the country for decades,” he quoted Mr Thae as saying.

“Thae said that he had come to grasp South Korea’s democracy and (economic) development by watching South Korean dramas and movies during his long stay in foreign countries,” added Mr Lee.

Mr Thae, who fled with his wife and two sons, will begin his resettlement process on Friday. He has vowed to work for Korean unification, but he will likely continue to live under tight security.

“I will engage in public activities even if it threatens my own safety,” he is reported as saying.  [The Telegraph]

You can read more at the link, but you would think this guy would want to keep a low profile because he is definitely going to be a target of North Korean reprisals.  He likely has a poison needle with his name on it right next to the one for fellow outspoken defector Park Sang-hak.  It will also be interesting to see how outspoken the ROK government will allow him to be if a Korean left wing politician likely takes power after the impeachment of Park Geun-hye.

I can only imagine the fate that awaits the prior ambassador that was recalled from the UK back to North Korea due to the embarrassing defection:

North Korea has named Choe Il as its new ambassador to Britain, Pyongyang’s state media said Thursday, following the latest defection to South Korea by a top diplomat stationed in London.

Choe has been appointed Pyongyang’s envoy to Britain, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a short dispatch, replacing his predecessor Hyon Hak-bong.

Choe’s background remains largely murky, but a handful of reports and documents that contain his name indicate that his work was associated with the U.S. and the United Nations.

In reports by Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA) in 2009, his name appeared on the list of visitors to the U.S. as vice chairman of the Korea-America Private Exchange Society (KAPES), an organization that liaises with US-based non-governmental groups.

In 2006, he participated in the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) as a researcher of the Institute of Disarmament and Peace. NEACE is a multilateral forum involving high-level policymakers, defense ministry officials, military officers and researchers from the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia.

In March 2013, his name again appeared in the list of U.N. diplomats as a councilor of the North Korean mission.

The report came amid speculation that North Korea recalled Hyon to hold him responsible for the defection to Seoul of Thae Yong-ho, a former minister at its embassy in the British capital.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It would be interesting to know if the recent defection of a North Korean diplomat also included the confiscation of regime funds:

Defection by North Korean diplomats who have access to foreign currency holdings would make it harder for North Korea to bring in money from abroad which can eventually hasten the communist regime’s collapse in the event of a financial crisis, a renowned U.S. scholar said Monday.

The analysis by Stephen Haggard, professor at the University of California San Diego, reflects the speculation of growing instability in North Korea, as seen by recent defections of North Korean overseas workers who had played a part in repatriating hard currency to the cash-strapped regime.

Last week, the South Korean government confirmed that a London-based senior North Korean diplomat defected to the South with his family, which can be viewed as another sign of cracks in the North’s ability to keep its key people in check.

Seoul did not confirm whether the diplomat, Thae Yong-ho, brought foreign currency with him, but news reports said his escape may have dealt a blow to North Korea’s overseas earnings because he reportedly may have had knowledge of the foreign exchange operations of the Kim Jong-un regime in Europe.

In April, a group of 13 North Korean employees working at a North Korean state-run restaurant in China defected to South Korea en mass, spawning speculations that the sanctions-squeezed North Korean elite were feeling the pinch of United Nations’ sanctions on the communist country and opting to bolt.

“Historically, I’ve never thought of the collapse of North Korea in terms of political collapse, but I believe in the scenario … with respect to the possibility of financial crisis,” the professor said in a seminar arranged by the East Asia Foundation in Seoul.

North Korea’s thinning foreign currency income, caused by UN-imposed trade bans and the shutdown of its inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex, left the country vulnerable to the possibility of a “sudden” financial crisis that can lead to a subsequent regime collapse, he said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but as Mr. Haggard points out in the article as long as China continues to not impose UN sanctions on North Korea the Kim regime will likely continue to survive.

Here are some more details about the defection of North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho:

According to multiple sources who spoke under the condition of anonymity, Thae physically met an official from the South Korean government in mid-July at a tennis court in Britain and said he wished to defect with his wife and two sons. The family realized that plan late last month, traveling directly from the United Kingdom to South Korea.

That rendezvous at the tennis court was the first time Thae had ever opened up to a South Korean official about his desire to defect, the sources said.

Steve Evans, a South Korean correspondent for BBC, wrote in an article published Tuesday that he has pleasant memories” with Thae and that “the signs were there” that the diplomat thought about defecting to South Korea.

“I recall he asked me about life in Seoul,” wrote Evans. “I told him it was a mega-bustling city, a world away from Pyongyang.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but the North Koreans are blaming the defection on coercion by the ROK with money, women and possibly even kidnapping his kids.

The President’s newest pen pal has sent him another letter:

U.S. President Donald Trump said that he is ready to help North Korea reach its “tremendous economic potential” after revealing Wednesday at the White House that he received a letter from the North’s leader Kim Jong-un. 

“I just got a great letter from Kim Jong-un,” Trump told reporters at his first Cabinet meeting of the new year. He displayed what appeared to be a three-page letter without elaborating its content, which he said he has shown to only a “few people.”

In his New Year’s address Tuesday, Kim said he is ready to meet with Trump again “anytime.” Kim reiterated his commitment to “complete denuclearization” and pledged that North Korea will not make, test, use or proliferate nuclear weapons. 

“We had our meeting six months [ago] in Singapore,” said Trump, recalling his first summit with Kim on June 12. “We’ll probably now have another meeting. He’d like to meet, I’d like to meet.”

“I look forward to our meeting with Chairman Kim,” said Trump. “We’ll be setting it up in the not-too-distant future.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

The contents of the letter were not released, but I am willing to bet it is just more of the same empty promises that are part of the Kim regime’s “pretend denuclearization” strategy.