Tag: State Department

I wonder if we will ever hear the back story on this resignation?:

The top U.S. official for North Korea policy resigned last week, multiple sources said Tuesday, adding to uncertainty over Washington’s diplomatic efforts to reengage with a recalcitrant Pyongyang.

Jung Pak left the post as the U.S. senior official for North Korea and a process is under way to select her replacement, according to the sources. 

Pak, a scholar-turned-diplomat, took over the post for North Korea policy at the State Department after Sung Kim, a veteran diplomat, retired late last year. She also served as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs.

In a press briefing later, Matthew Miller, the State Department’s spokesperson, said that Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, will oversee North Korea policy for the department. Park left office on Friday, according to the department.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Retired General David Stilwell speaks Korean and has very close ties to US Ambassador Harry Harris because of their prior work together at US Indo-Pacific Command:

U.S. President Donald Trump has nominated Air Force veteran David Stilwell as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, according to the White House on Wednesday.

The position covers diplomacy with the Korean Peninsula, China, and Japan. His predecessor Susan Thornton stepped down in July amid rumors that she was too moderate, whereas Stilwell is thought to be a hardliner.

It can be hard to tell why people come and go in the frantically revolving doors of the Trump administration, but Stilwell’s appointment may reflect the fact that hardliners are increasingly gaining the upper hand. Trump only recently described Defense Secretary James Mattis, who is thought to have been a steadying force, as “sort of a Democrat.”

The White House described Stilwell as “an Air Force veteran with more than 35 years of experience as a pilot, commander, and Korean linguist.”

He retired in 2015 with the rank of brigadier general and is currently the director of the China Strategic Focus Group at the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Headquarters in Hawaii.

He learned Korean in a military language school in California and served as a fighter pilot in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province, from 1993 to 1995. He also speaks Chinese and some Japanese.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest from the State Department on North Korean denuclearization efforts:

The U.S. State Department on Tuesday declined to specify a deadline for North Korea’s denuclearization ahead of negotiations to be led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later this week.

Pompeo is slated to travel to Pyongyang Thursday to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and flesh out a denuclearization agreement signed by Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump at their historic summit last month.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said Sunday that he expects Pompeo to discuss with the North Koreans a plan to dismantle the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in a year.

“I know some individuals have given timelines. We’re not going to provide a timeline for that,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said at a regular press briefing.

“The secretary’s looking forward to having these meetings. A lot of work is left to be done, certainly. We go into this eyes wide open, with a very clear view of these conversations,” she added.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

The State Department’s travel warning seems pretty pointless to me.  Anyone willing to go to North Korea has to have knowledge of all the Americans detained over the past decade and still people keep going there:

The U.S. State Department on Tuesday issued a new warning against traveling to North Korea.

“The Department of State strongly urges U.S. citizens to avoid all travel to North Korea/the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) due to the serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Korea’s system of law enforcement,” the department said.

“This system imposes unduly harsh sentences for actions that would not be considered crimes in the United States and threatens U.S. citizen detainees with being treated in accordance with ‘wartime law of the DPRK,'” it said.

At least 14 U.S. citizens have been detained in North Korea in the past 10 years, it said.  [Yonhap]

Of those 14 citizens detained all of them did something stupid to get detained on top of being stupid enough to travel to North Korea in the first place.

I always thought the Hillary Clinton email scandal was just the tip of the iceberg because of how many emails she was sending out and no one was questioning it.  That made me think it must be accepted practice in the State Department to use private email to get around Freedom of Information Act laws.  Well now we know Caroline Kennedy the US Ambassador to Japan was doing the same thing.  Reading all this just makes me wonder what people would say if a US military Brigade Commander was sending out official emails from a Yahoo account.  It would raise eyebrows immediately and definitely cause a JAG to get involved:

Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and senior staff at the U.S. embassy in Japan used personal email accounts for official business, an internal watchdog report said Tuesday — making Kennedy the latest Obama administration official to run afoul of email security guidelines.

The State Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) report said it received reports concerning the use of private email accounts for official business, and identified instances where emails labeled “sensitive but unclassified” were sent from or received by personal email accounts.

“On the basis of these reports, OIG’s Office of Evaluations and Special Projects conducted a review and confirmed that senior embassy staff, including the Ambassador, used personal email accounts to send and receive messages containing official business. In addition, OIG identified instances where emails labeled Sensitive but Unclassified were sent from, or received by, personal email accounts,” the report said.  [Fox News via reader tip]

You can read more at the link.

The findings of bullying in the military is not surprising, but criticizing South Korea for limiting the political activity in the classrooms by their teachers?  Does the State Department believe that South Korean teachers should have the right to teach pro-North Korean and anti-US propaganda to their students?:

An annual human rights report released on June 25 by the US State Department cited violence in the military and restrictions on political involvement by government employees and teachers as problem areas for South Korea. The department’s Human Rights Report for South Korea rated it as a country that generally respects human rights, but included the two new areas in addition to previous concerns about the National Security Law. “The primary human rights problems reported were government interpretation of the National Security Law, libel laws, and other laws to limit freedom of speech and expression and restrict access to the internet; the continued jailing of conscientious objectors to military service; and bullying and hazing [of new recruits] in the military,” the executive summary read. The mention of bullying and hazing in the military appears to be a reference to incidences such as the death of a private first class surnamed Yun in Apr. 2014.

“During the first half of the year, the Ministry of National Defense reported 37 suicides among military personnel, generally attributed to bullying, hazing, or inability to adjust to military life,” the report said. In regard to punishment in libel cases, the report mentioned the indictment of former New Politics Alliance for Democracy floor leader Park Jie-won after allegations that President Park Geun-hye used a “non-official system” to choose appointees. In terms of press freedoms, the report mentions the indictment of the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun’s Seoul bureau chief for defamation over allegations about President Park’s whereabouts during the Apr. 2014 Sewol ferry sinking. While the State Department’s 2013 report had only mentioned restrictions on labor rights and interference with striking rights as problem areas, the latest report notes that “[r]estrictions on workers’ rights, including freedom of association and assembly and limitations on political engagement of public servants and teachers, were also problematic.”  [Hankyoreh]

You can read the rest at the link.