Tag: Donald Trump

I think President Trump is signaling to the Kim regime it will not be business as usual if they restart a provocation cycle:

President Donald Trump said he’d be very disappointed in Kim Jong Un if reports are accurate that North Korea has begun rebuilding a missile test site it dismantled last year.
“I would be very disappointed if that were happening,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “It is a very early report — we are the ones who put it out — but I would be very, very disappointed in Chairman Kim.” (……)

In a separate report, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service spotted “special activities” with transport vehicles at a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) research and production site called Sanumdong located in the Pyongyang area, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper of South Korea reported, citing an unidentified member of parliament’s intelligence committee.
U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton warned North Korea that it must be willing to completely give up its nuclear weapons program or it may face even tougher sanctions.
“If they’re not willing to do it, President Trump has been very clear they’re not getting relief from the crushing economic sanctions that have been imposed on them,” Bolton told the Fox Business Network on Tuesday evening. “And we’ll look at ramping those sanctions up, in fact.”

Bloomberg

You can read more at the link.

It looks like President Trump is not interested in the “pretend denuclearization” that the North Koreans want and instead is committed to pressuring them to really denuclearize by walking away from the summit:

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un failed to reach an agreement on denuclearization at their summit here in the Vietnamese capital, Thursday.

Ultimately, the breakdown of the summit “was about sanctions,” Trump said in a press conference after the meeting with Kim. 

“It wasn’t a thing to be signing anything today. He (Kim Jong-un) is quite a guy, quite a character. We had some options but at this time, we decided not to do any of the options,” Trump told reporters in a hurriedly arranged press conference after holding extended talks with the North Korean leader.

“Sometimes, you have to walk. This was just of those items. Basically, they (North Korea) wanted the sanctions lifted, and we couldn’t do that. We haven’t given up anything. He wants denuclearization. He just wants to do areas that are less important than what we want.”

Ahead of the conference, the White House said in a statement that dialogue on nuclear disarmament would continue. “Their respective teams look forward to meeting in the future.” But top U.S. officials went on to say that the negotiations will take time.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I have to wonder if the North Koreans misread the Trump administration based off of media coverage? Maybe they thought that with all the negative media and analysts saying Trump was desperate for a deal that they actually believed it; thus they kept pressuring him on sanctions thinking he would fold. If this what the North Koreans were thinking they obviously don’t know President Trump very well.

It seems the one good thing that came out of this summit is that Kim Jong-un has heard for himself from President Trump instead of from surrogates and the media that he is serious about sanctions remaining in place until they commit to real denuclearization.

Donald Trump's 'greed' for Nobel prize fuels fears in South Korea of risky concessions https://t.co/CESuw4Xd29

— David Maxwell (@DavidMaxwell161) February 21, 2019

It is looking more and more like not much is going to come out of the Trump-Kim II Summit:

Anchor: U.S. President Donald Trump said sanctions will remain on North Korea and he is not in a rush to remove the regimes’ nuclear arsenal. Instead, ahead of his planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump tried to highlight what the North can achieve through denuclearization. 
Kim Bum-soo has more on Trump’s latest news conference.

Report: Ahead of his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un later this month, U.S. President Donald Trump has again highlighted the economic potential of the reclusive state.

[Sound bite: US President Donald Trump] 
“… we think that North Korea and Chairman Kim have a tremendous potential as an economic force, economic power.  Their location between South Korea and then Russia and China — right smack in the middle — is phenomenal.”

Speaking during a White House news conference on Friday, the American president addressed a wide range of issues, including the denuclearization of North Korea. 

[Sound bite: US President Donald Trump] 
“But we hope we’re going to be very much equally as successful.  I’m in no rush for speed.  We just don’t want testing.  The sanctions, as you know, remain.  Everything is remaining.” 

Just a day earlier, U.S. State Secretary Mike Pompeo hinted that at the upcoming meeting Washington may be more focused on further easing the military tension on the peninsula rather than immediately lifting sanctions.

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link.

I wonder if President Trump is given briefing notes to review before he talks because this is a big difference in numbers he misstated:

U.S. President Donald Trump said South Korea’s payment for the U.S. troop presence will increase further only days after both sides signed a one-year deal for the defense cost sharing. 

“Working with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, they (South Korea) agreed to pay, yesterday, $500 million (560 billion) more toward their defense,” Trump said in a Cabinet meeting, Tuesday (local time).

On Sunday, Seoul and Washington signed the one-year provisional deal on defense cost sharing, called the Special Measures Agreement (SMA) for the upkeep of United States Forces Korea (USFK).

Under the 2019 SMA, the South will pay 1.04 trillion won toward the upkeep of stationing 28,500 U.S. troops here, up 8.2 percent from the previous year. This is an increase of 78.7 billion won, compared with last year, not the amount stated by Trump.

It remains unclear why the U.S. president made the remark with such an obviously factual error. But it is highly likely that he overstated the amount to score a political point there and raise his approval rating.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The long speculated on second Trump-Kim summit is set:

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be held in Vietnam Feb. 27-28 with the talks to center on dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.
The date and venue had been shrouded in secrecy as the two countries negotiated the next steps following a vague denuclearization deal reached at their first summit in Singapore in June.
“Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong-un is a good one,” Trump said during his State of the Union address.

Yonhap

I wonder what the Chinese government thinks of the summit being in Vietnam considering their past brief military war and current territorial disputes in the South China Sea? This is a growing indication of how much the US-Vietnam relationship continues to positively develop which I would think the Chinese government would not be happy about.

"Art" display in Seoul–#KimJongUn
with a gun pointed at Trump, who is on the floor. Is this "artist" Lim Young-sun on #MoonJaein admin's "white list," receiving #SouthKorean tax payers money? https://t.co/88G8uowoC3

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) December 22, 2018

This probably should be considered a good thing that the Trump administration is not in a hurry to cut a deal with North Korea for little to nothing in return:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. is “in no hurry” to negotiate with North Korea.

On Twitter, Trump wrote that “many people have asked how we are doing in our negotiations with North Korea” and that he “always reply by saying we are in no hurry.”

Trump added there is “wonderful potential for great economic success” for North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un “sees it better than anyone and will fully take advantage of it for his people.”

He maintained an optimistic outlook, saying “we are doing just fine.”

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link.

The only problem with this is that Kim Jong-un’s wish is to keep his nukes and have sanctions dropped:

US President Donald Trump will grant North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un his wishes if he delivers on denuclearisation, the South Korean president said Sunday, following talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

As officials work to arrange a second meeting between Trump and Kim, South Korea’s Moon Jae-in relayed a message to reporters given to him by the US president to pass on to the North’s leader.

“And the message was that President Trump has a very friendly view of Chairman Kim and that he likes him, and so he wishes Chairman Kim would implement the rest of their agreement and that he would make what Chairman Kim wants come true,” Moon told the Yonhap news agency while en route to New Zealand.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link.