North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (C) attends a central committee meeting of the North’s Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) in Pyongyang on Oct. 7, 2017, ahead of the founding anniversary of the party which falls on Oct. 10. (Yonhap)
Over at the PBS Frontline website their latest program “North Korea’s Deadly Dictator” can be watched. The program focuses on the assassination of Kim Jong-nam and has a number of interviews with his friends that he went to school with in Europe. Former North Korean diplomat turned defector Thae Yong-ho and ex-CIA analyst Su Mi Terry also features heavily in the program.
It appears the reason for the assassination was Kim Jong-nam’s criticism of Kim Jong-un combined with the fact that based on his friends’ testimony he planned to move to Switzerland and defect to the West. For those that regularly read this site there is really nothing new in the program, however for those not familiar with the issue it is a great run down on who Kim Jong-nam was and why his half brother Kim Jong-un is doing the things he has done.
The CIA concurs with what I have been saying for a long time, that everything Kim Jong-un has been doing from his perspective make rational sense. He has been playing a delicate balancing act of consolidating power internally while conducting provocations and developing his ICBM and nuclear weapons programs to deter external foes:
President Donald Trump has depicted the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a “madman”—but U.S. intelligence officials do not agree.
According to Yong Suk Lee, the deputy assistant director of the CIA’s Korea Mission Center, the young North Korean ruler is actually a lot less erratic than he is often portrayed.
“Beyond the bluster, Kim Jong Un is a rational actor,” he said at a conference on the CIA at George Washington University on Wednesday, quoted by AFP.
Trump and Kim have reguarly traded insults but despite the latter’s threat to the American president last month, the North Korean ruler does not seek a military confrontation because he is more interested in ensuring his regime’s survival and stability.
“We have a tendency in this country and elsewhere to underestimate his conservatism” Lee said, adding “He wants to rule for a long time and die in his own bed.” [Newsweek]
Famous for using bombastic, derogatory and often-awkward English slams against enemies, North Korean state media sent people scrambling for dictionaries Friday with a dispatch that quotes leader Kim Jong Un calling President Donald Trump “the mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”
The what?
Dotard means a person in a feeble or childish state due to old age. It’s a translation of a Korean word, “neukdari,” which is a derogatory reference to an old person.
It was used in an unusual direct statement from Kim that the Korean Central News Agency transmitted verbatim in response to Trump’s speech at the U.N. this week, in which he mocked Kim as a “Rocket Man” on a “suicide mission,” and said that if the U.S. is “forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” [Associated Press]
You can read more at the link. Here is what President Trump had to say via Twitter in response:
Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!
Wouldn’t it be great if Kim Jong-un got his own Twitter account and him and President Trump could just have a Twitter war instead of going back in forth in the media like this?
Kim Jong-un may actually like the nickname Donald Trump has come up for him:
The “Rocket Man” Kim Jong-un.
Donald Trump has referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as “rocket man” in a tweet about a conversation with the South Korean President.
The US leader tweeted that he had been speaking with Moon Jae-in about the situation with the secretive communist state, which has launched a series of ballistic missiles in recent weeks and conducted its most powerful nuclear test to date.
“I spoke with President Moon of South Korea last night,” Mr Trump wrote. “Asked him how Rocket Man is doing.”
He added that long petrol lines has been forming in North Korea, which he said was “too bad”. [The Independent]
You can read more at the link, but I doubt whatever long gas lines there are, are effecting anyone in the regime elite.
I spoke with President Moon of South Korea last night. Asked him how Rocket Man is doing. Long gas lines forming in North Korea. Too bad!
I doubt Kim Jong-un is very concerned about this when he knows there is almost zero chance the ROK President is willing to execute such a preemptive strike. This report seems more for domestic consumption to show the ROK public the government is “doing something”:
South Korea’s defense minister is publicly boasting that it will create a new “decapitation unit” called the Spartan 3000 with the express intent of taking out North Korean leadership, The New York Times reports.
The brigade-sized unit of between 2,000 and 4,000 soldiers will be established by year’s end, The Times reported the defense minister, Song Young-moo, as saying, adding that the military was already “retooling” helicopters and transporting planes to be able to penetrate North Korean airspace at night.
It’s out of the ordinary for a senior government leader to publicly say they are working on a plan to assassinate a foreign head of state. But there’s an interesting reason behind it: The South is trying to freak out its northern neighbor and get it to the negotiating table instead of further developing nuclear weapons.
“The best deterrence we can have, next to having our own nukes, is to make Kim Jong Un fear for his life,” retired South Korean Lt. Gen. Shin Won-sik told The Times. [Business Insider]
Peace in our time with North Korea is just around the corner, US ambassador to North Korea former NBA basketball player Dennis Rodman is on the case:
With tensions brewing between the leaders of the United States and North Korea, one man believes he can help keep the peace.
Former NBA star Dennis Rodman hopes to “straighten things out” between President Donald Trump and supreme leader Kim Jong Un, two men Rodman calls friends.
He appeared on “Good Morning Britain” via satellite from Los Angeles on Wednesday and was asked about his relationship with Kim and the multiple trips to North Korea.
However, Rodman feels if Trump makes the first move, positive results could come of it. (………)
“I think if the president even tries to reach out for Kim, I think it would be a great possibility things can happen,” he said, adding that Trump and Kim don’t have to be friends, just start a dialogue. [Star-Telegram]
