So why would North Korea care about removing a purely defensive weapon system that is of no threat to them? The only reason they would want the THAAD battery gone is so they can more easily target South Korean cities with their ballistic missiles. That seems contrary to supposedly seeking peace on the peninsula:
THAAD launcher at Seongju, South Korea.
North Korea on Thursday urged South Korea and the U.S. to lift sanctions, withdraw the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery in southwestern Korea, and stop mentioning human rights abuses in the North.
The demands came after the recent inter-Korean summit and ahead of a summit with the U.S.
“The American plot against human rights practices is a provocative racket that poses an obstacle to the trend towards dialogue and peace,” the official Rodong Sinmun daily said. “We’re doubtful of America’s sincerity whether it really has the intention to have dialogue.”
The Uriminzokkiri propaganda website complained about remarks by U.S. officials in favor of keeping up maximum pressure on the North, calling them “an affront and insult to our sincere efforts towards peace.”
State media also said there is “no longer is any justification or excuse” for the presence of the THAAD battery. Propaganda outlet Meari said, “The THAAD battery is an ill-intentioned act running counter to the inter-Korean relations. The battery should be withdrawn immediately.” [Chosun Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but here is where things are getting even more interesting; the White House and Beijing are supposedly negotiating a withdrawal of THAAD from Korea if North Korea denuclearizes:
The U.S. and China are discussing a possible withdrawal of a U.S. missile defense system from South Korea as part of a grand bargain over North Korea’s nuclear program, multiple sources familiar with the talks said.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, deployed in South Korea last year, has been a bone of contention with China. China has doubted U.S. claims that the system has the sole purpose of destroying missiles from North Korea, insisting its covert mission is to spy on Chinese airspace. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the White House denies this report, but this could be another one of these trial balloons put out by the Trump administration to judge Chinese reactions.
This would explain why Kim Jong-un made the unusual public appearance of sorrow after the tragic bus accident in North Korea that killed 32 Chinese tourists:
Mao Xinyu, left, became the youngest Major General of the People’s Liberation Army of China, according to Chinese newspaper Ming Pao in Hong Kong, August 2010. / Korea Times file
Chinese communist revolutionary Mao Zedong’s only grandson Mao Xinyu was possibly killed in a bus crash in North Korea in April that killed over 30 Chinese, according to a report from French radio.
Xinyu, the son of Mao Zedong’s second son Anqing who died fighting in the Korean War, was possibly one of 32 Chinese tourists who died when a bus fell from a bridge in North Hwanghae Province, Radio France Internationale’s Chinese version reported on April 30, citing a Chinese source.
The report said Xinyu, a Major General in the People’s Liberation Army of China, and most of the other Chinese tourists were the children of Chinese soldiers who fought in the Korean War.
The accident also killed four North Koreans.
The tourists died reportedly on their way back from a cemetery in Hoechang County in South Pyongan Province that was for Chinese soldiers who died during the Korean War. Mao Zedong’s eldest son Anying was buried there, which leads to the supposition Xinyu could have visited the cemetery to pay tribute to his uncle.
If it is true that Xinyu was among the dead, two direct descendants of Mao Zedong have perished on the Korean Peninsula. [Korea Times]
With all the developments happening on the Korean peninsula the Chinese have decided to show the South Koreans who is still boss in the region:
Seoul called in China’s ambassador on Saturday after a Chinese military plane violated South Korea’s air defense identification zone (KADIZ), officials said.
South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Yoon Soon-gu summoned Chinese Ambassador Qiu Guohong and called for Beijing to come up with measures to prevent such a violation from happening again, ministry officials said.
Separately, the Defense Ministry said it called in Du Nongyi, military attache of the Chinese embassy in Seoul, and lodged a stern protest against the Chinese military plane’s violation of the KADIZ.
According to Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the Chinese aircraft, believed to be a reconnaissance plane, entered the air defense zone in the northwest in the morning and stayed for about four hours.
“At 10:44 a.m., one Chinese military plane entered the KADIZ from northwest of Ieo Island,” the JCS said in a statement, referring to the submerged rock south of Jeju Island.
It then changed direction near the southeastern port city of Pohang toward the eastern island of Ulleung before steering south and exiting the KADIZ on its entry route at 2:33 p.m., the JCS said. [Korea Times]
For those that don’t know Ieodo continues to be a territorial dispute between South Korea and the Chinese. The Chinese regularly violates the South Korean ADIZ at key times of their choosing to send a message to South Korea.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s televised summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Friday was spectacularly effective as pageantry aimed at South Koreans fearful of a U.S. attack on North Korea — and spectacularly empty in terms of meaningful commitment by the North to denuclearization. In fact, everything Kim put on the table was designed to reaffirm North Korea’s status as a nuclear weapons state and dilute Chinese and South Korean support for sanctions. Many veterans of negotiations with North Korea worry that Kim is now getting ready to play the United States. While the Trump administration’s tough sanctions no doubt had some role in pushing the North toward this summitry, one can also imagine exactly how this was a scenario the North itself sought from the beginning. [Foreign Policy]
Green then goes on to write a satire email from Vice Marshall Kim Jong Gak, director of the Political Bureau, Korean People’s Army to Kim Jong-un on their peace strategy. Here is an excerpt from the email:
You will pledge seemingly historic commitments that are all unverifiable and easily reversed, many of which we have deployed successfully in past negotiations. These include your commitment (like your father’s and grandfather’s) to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, your pledge to join the global quest for denuclearization as the other nuclear weapons states have pledged to do under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, a promise not to transfer nuclear weapons to third parties, a no-first use pledge, and a promise to halt testing and to shut down our nuclear test site at Punggye-ri (for added drama, you might invite inspectors to the facility).
These commitments all parrot the aspirations of the current members of the nuclear weapons club and will thus confirm our membership in that club as we negotiate arms control with the Americans as a fellow nuclear weapons state. We, of course, made no commitment to cease production and deployment of our deterrent. We can easily reverse all these steps later, at the time of our choosing, yet already many in the imperialist and puppet media are proclaiming these meaningless declarations on your part to be a historic breakthrough.
I recommend reading the whole thing at the link, but as I have been saying since this whole peace initiative began, the Kim regime was conducting a facade. The North Koreans are very good at executing facades and Kim Jong-un has shown a particularly great talent for it, so much so that he has most in the international media believing every word he is saying.
The short term goal of this facade is to create a perception of progress towards peace and denuclearization on the peninsula to justify South Korea reopening the Kaesong Industrial Park, restarting joint tourism projects, and other inter-Korean cooperation initiatives that will be huge cash cows for the Kim regime. In return the Kim regime will pretend to denuclearize and make other commitments that can easily be reversed at a time of their choosing.
The Kim regime’s long term goal backed by China is to get the United States out of South Korea. That is why there has been such a strategic messaging emphasis on a peace treaty to end the Korean War. If there is a peace treaty South Korean leftists could argue why US forces are still needed in South Korea? The Kim regime’s even longer term goal is to separate the US from Japan as well with their surrogates in the media already pushing ideas of removing the US nuclear umbrella for Japan as part of any denuclearization agreement.
The wild card in all of this is President Donald Trump. South Korea, China, Russia, and most in the international community are willing to pretend denuclearization and a lasting peace is happening. Will the United States? For all we know President Trump could be conducting his own facade. For the US to get international consensus to conduct any strike against North Korea all options will have to be exhausted. Since this supposed peace process has began President Trump has been saying all the right things and being very reasonable even agreeing to meet with Kim Jong-un.
Going into the negotiations President Trump could be very solid about stringent inspections to ensure denuclearization compliance. If the Kim regime does not agree to stringent inspections or agrees and then plays their old tricks against inspectors than President Trump could have his rationale to strike North Korea. Or maybe President Trump is willing to go along with the facade to get a Nobel Peace Prize like his rival Barack Obama did and then let some other future US president deal with the consequences when Pyongyang ultimately reneges on the deal. Time will tell but the next 1-2 years should continue to be interesting times on the peninsula as everyone involved continues to play their role in this great facade.
This photo captured from North Korea’s Central TV on April 26, 2018, shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (R) talking with Chinese Ambassador to Pyongyang Li Jinjun while seeing off a special train carrying the bodies of Chinese killed in a deadly bus crash and those wounded at a station in Pyongyang the previous day. The April 22 accident left 32 Chinese tourists dead and two seriously injured. Four North Koreans also died. (Yonhap)
It looks like Kim Jong-un is highly concerned about losing Chinese tourists and their money after this horrible bus accident in North Korea:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited survivors in hospital, calling the bus crash his people’s “own misfortune”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has expressed his “bitter sorrow” after dozens of Chinese tourists were killed when a bus they were travelling in plunged off a bridge.
Thirty-two Chinese tourists and four North Koreans perished in the accident south of Pyongyang Sunday night, Chinese officials and state media said. Two other Chinese nationals were injured.
In a rare admission of negative news from North Korea’s tightly controlled propaganda network, the KCNA news agency on Tuesday said Kim met personally with the Chinese ambassador in Pyongyang and later visited survivors in hospital.
The Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling party, carried a front-page on Kim’s actions, including pictures of him in a doctor’s white coat, holding the two survivors’ hands as they lay in their hospital beds. [AFP via a reader tip]
You can read more at the link, but such a high profile appearance by Kim Jong-un probably means that the North Korean driver was at fault for the accident as well.
The islands of Vanuatu may appear as relative specks in the South Pacific Ocean, but for China’s military strategists, they could provide a significant boost in Beijing’s ability to project naval power.
The prospect of a Chinese military base in the heart of the South Pacific, reported by Australia’s Fairfax Media on Tuesday, will also complicate the strategic dominance of Western powers in an ocean area they have long effectively controlled, according to diplomats and experts monitoring developments.
Fairfax Media reported China has approached Vanuatu about establishing a permanent military presence there, saying the possibility of such a facility has already alarmed high level officials in Canberra and Washington.
Vanuatu’s foreign minister denied there had been any such discussion of a Chinese military base in the country. China’s defence ministry said the Fairfax report “completely did not accord with the facts” while a foreign ministry spokesman said the report was “fake news”. (…….)
While far from key shipping lanes and not as important as Indian Ocean ports, Vanuatu would put China close to the coast of Australia, a major U.S. ally, and give it a presence nearer the U.S. base of Guam beyond the Asian island chains that hem in Beijing.
Graeme Smith, a Pacific Affairs expert at the Australian National University, said a Chinese base on Vanuatu would send a strong message to Australia, the United States and their allies.
“It would be an incredibly aggressive signal to both the U.S. and Australia that ‘We’re here, get used to it’,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. [Reuters]
You can read more at the link, but how long will it be before some Chinese scholar says Vanuatu was historically part of China?
.@benjaminkatzeff looks into Dandong and finds that laborers are returning to the city, a sign that the Chinese may be relaxing sanctions enforcement there. Read the latest from our affiliate site North Korean Economy Watchhttps://t.co/pcixJL5Ccwpic.twitter.com/yxhCuCeq2W
It looks like some apartment complexes in South Korea are having mountains of recyclable waste building up around them as private companies are having a harder time making money from recycling the waste:
A worker at a recycling company examines piles of compressed plastic bottles in a yard in Chuncheon, Gangwon, on Thursday. [YONHAP]As the confusion over recyclables continues in apartment complexes in Seoul and Gyeonggi, the Ministry of Environment on Thursday began an emergency round of checkups to find out which private companies are refusing to retrieve plastic and Styrofoam waste.
Forty-eight private recycling companies announced last week they would no longer retrieve plastic and foam waste because they could no longer make a profit from it. Paper collection was not affected.
The announcement threw people into confusion over how to discard their recyclables until Monday, when the Environment Ministry said in a statement that after negotiations, all 48 waste disposal companies agreed to resume regular services.
But the agreement may not have been as final as the ministry thought.
According to the Gyeonggi provincial government on Wednesday, 20 out of 31 local governments in the province said the companies were collecting recyclables the same way as before.
The rest are “in the process of negotiating.”
“We are in the process of negotiating to resume regular services, but some apartment complexes may experience inconveniences for a while,” said an official from the Resource Recirculation Division of the Gyeonggi provincial government. “We will try to reach agreement as soon as possible, and if we cannot, then we will have the city governments and county offices provide the services instead.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link, but the main issue appears to be the decision by China to cut the import of many types of recyclable waste. China had been taking the waste and making solid fuel pellets for it to burn in factories or heat homes, but to decrease air pollution they have cut the import of the recyclables.
This photo capture from the North’s Central TV on April 1, 2018, shows a clip from a movie filmed jointly by North Korea and China, whose title roughly translates to “Promise Made in Pyongyang.” The movie had not been run since it first aired in February 2014, but it was rerun on the day following North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s visit to Beijing the previous week. The movie is about a Chinese dancer building a friendship with North Korean dancers during her travels through the North. (Yonhap)
