Tag: Emmanuel Macron

It looks like the Yoon administration has France on its side if they need to have the UN send Kim Jong-un any sternly worded letters:

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (L) and French President Emmanuel Macron give a joint press statement ahead of their summit at Elysee Palace in Paris on June 20, 2023. (Yonhap)

President Yoon Suk Yeol said Tuesday that South Korea and France will cooperate closely to deal with North Korea’s unlawful provocations as fellow members of the U.N. Security Council.

Yoon made the remark before going into a summit with French President Emmanuel Macron at Elysee Palace, the presidential office and residence.

Yoon arrived in Paris the previous day to attend a general assembly of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), the international body in charge of overseeing the World Expo, to promote South Korea’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo in its southeastern city of Busan.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

So what do people think of France’s new mandatory service law?:

The French government has introduced a plan to bring back national service for all 16-year-olds.

It was an idea put forward by Emmanuel Macron in his presidential campaign, to promote a sense of civic duty and national unity among French youth.

But some remain unconvinced of the benefits.

The new national service will cover all 16-year-olds, girls as well as boys, and will be divided into two distinct phases.

National service in two parts

The first phase is a mandatory one-month placement with a focus on civic culture, which the government says will “enable young people to create new relationships and develop their role in society”.

Voluntary teaching and working with charities are among the options being looked at, alongside traditional military preparation with the police, fire service or army.

The second phase is a voluntary placement of at least three months and up to a year, in which young people will be encouraged to serve “in an area linked to defence and security” – but again, they could opt to carry out volunteer work linked to heritage, the environment or social care.  [BBC]

You can read more at the link, but it seems this more like a long summer camp than national service.  I guess it is better than nothing.  It will be interesting to see how this turns out because I assume there will be legal challenges to it.

It looks like President Moon’s attempt to lobby European governments to drop North Korean sanctions is not working:

President Moon Jae-in has told French President Emmanuel Macron that North Korea’s denuclearization needs to be stimulated further by easing UN sanctions if the North’s measures to scrap its nuclear program are believed to have reached an irreversible level.

But North Korea has not remotely reached a point where denuclearization is irreversible. It has not even started. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un flatly refused to give the U.S. even a partial inventory of its nuclear facilities and stockpiles when visiting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pleaded with him, and instead demanded that the U.S. officially declare an end to the Korean War to “build trust.”

The first step to denuclearization must be reporting all nuclear facilities and fissile materials, because how else will anyone know whether North Korea is scrapping anything? This is a no-brainer. Yet the North is vehemently protesting before taking even the first step, claiming that the demand is tantamount to “mafia-like tactics.”

Yet the South Korean president labors under the delusion that North Korea’s denuclearization has progressed significantly. During his summit last month with U.S. President Donald Trump, Moon even said the North’s denuclearization had almost reached an “irreversible” level already. U.S. nuclear experts, by contrast, say Pyongyang’s gestures so far — dismantling a moribund nuclear test site in Punggye-ri and a static missile launch pad it no longer needs — do not qualify as denuclearization at all.

Moon hopes that North Korea’s denuclearization can reach an irreversible level in a few months and is going around the world asking global leaders to stimulate the process by easing sanctions. Macron quite rightly brushed him off, saying sanctions must continue until “concrete denuclearization steps are taken.”  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Dudes under 40 with nukes: pic.twitter.com/3jOrygkApk

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) May 8, 2017