It will be interesting to see if the Trump administration responds to President Moon’s advocacy for South Korea to break international sanctions on the North:
President Moon Jae-in stressed the need Tuesday to expand inter-Korean cooperation, saying it could be conducive to drumming up international support for sanctions relief for the communist neighbor.
Speaking at his New Year’s press conference, he made it clear that South Korea will not sit idle waiting for Pyongyang-Washington dialogue to bear fruit.
“If (we) broaden cooperative ties between South and North to the maximum, it would not only facilitate North Korea-U.S. dialogue but also help win international support in connection with some exemptions or exceptions to sanctions on North Korea,” the president said.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but the term “inter-Korean cooperation” is code for restarting the Kaesong Industrial Park and Gumgang Resort tours which were both cash cows for the Kim regime. Essentially what President Moon is advocating for is continuing to fund the North Korean military machine with no reciprocal denuclearization agreement in place. Agreements like this is what allowed North Korea to become a nuclear menace in the first place and Moon wants double down on this policy.
It will be interesting to see how this turns out, will the U.S. government give him a slap on the hand or send him to prison?:
Virgil Griffith, who has lately been working at the Ethereum Foundation, has been arrested for allegedly going to a conference in North Korea and sharing his expertise in using cryptocurrency.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced Friday that Griffith was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Thanksgiving Day.
“Despite receiving warnings not to go, Griffith allegedly traveled to one of the United States’ foremost adversaries, North Korea, where he taught his audience how to use blockchain technology to evade sanctions,” John Demers, an assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.
Yahoo
You can read more at the link.
This is all part of North Korea’s pressure campaign to get the Trump administration to fold on sanctions. They have made a big deal about the end of the year deadline to get a deal done and are now ratcheting up the pressure. From the Kim regime perspective they are probably calculating that with next year’s U.S. presidential election that the Trump administration will be eager for a foreign policy success and will eventually give in on sanctions:
North Korea is no longer interested in holding another summit with the United States that will “bring nothing,” a former chief nuclear envoy of the communist nation said Monday, urging Washington to drop its “hostile policy” against Pyongyang.
Kim Kye-gwan, currently an adviser to the North Korean foreign ministry, made the remarks in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, saying that he understood U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent tweet on leader Kim Jong-un to be a suggestion for another summit.
On Sunday, Trump urged the North’s leader to “act quickly” and reach a deal with him on dismantling the regime’s nuclear weapons program, adding, “See you soon!” at the end of his tweet.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Some how I doubt these North Korean hacking groups own any property in the U.S. which would make these sanctions more or less a PR effort:
The United States on Friday sanctioned three entities it accused of conducting cyber attacks on behalf of the North Korean government to generate revenue for the regime’s nuclear and missile programs.
The Department of the Treasury said the new measures target Lazarus Group, Bluenoroff, and Andariel, all of which are controlled by the Reconnaissance General Bureau, North Korea’s primary intelligence bureau.
Lazarus Group’s activities were widely reported after it was blamed for the 2014 cyber attack of Sony Pictures Entertainment and the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack on countries including the U.S. and Britain.
Bluenoroff and Andariel, the Treasury said, are sub-groups of Lazarus Group.
“Treasury is taking action against North Korean hacking groups that have been perpetrating cyber attacks to support illicit weapon and missile programs,” Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker said in a statement.
“We will continue to enforce existing U.S. and UN sanctions against North Korea and work with the international community to improve cybersecurity of financial networks,” she said.
The sanctions freeze all of the entities’ property and interests in the U.S., as well as those of other entities that are owned 50 percent or more by the three groups.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Sanctions, what sanctions? Chinese traders and investors on the border with North Korea are preparing for a boom. It's just a matter of time, they think. Our report from Dandong: https://t.co/LceVmqwEat
— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) August 9, 2019
NYT revealed Mercedes imported to N.Korea via Busan to Vladivostok then to Pyongyang by the ships. Ships once reached Vladivostok, they bring Coal to S.Korea.S.Korea became the route for N.Korea sending Mecedes and take Coal. No wonder why JPN sanction us.https://t.co/W5hUNTKoxx
— Dong Yon Kim/김동연 기자 (@dongyonews) July 16, 2019
