I think we can take this as a good sign that the Trump administration will not drop sanctions prior to North Korea taking irreversible denuclearization measures:
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday extended sanctions on North Korea for a year, citing the “unusual and extraordinary” threat posed by its nuclear weapons program.
The extension comes 10 days after Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore, during which the North committed to “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula in exchange for U.S. security guarantees.
“The existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula and the actions and policies of the Government of North Korea continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” Trump wrote in a routine notice to Congress.
For this reason, Trump said, six executive orders that were issued under his and past administrations to sanction North Korea for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs must continue in effect beyond June 26.
“Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to North Korea declared in Executive Order 13466,” he wrote.
The action appears to underscore the Trump administration’s goal of keeping sanctions on North Korea until it takes concrete steps toward denuclearization. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime must have been expecting this considering how muted their reaction has been so far.
As usual Professor B.R. Myers has correctly predicted how the Korean left led by the Moon administration will push for a confederation with North Korea by touting the economic benefits:
A few months ago I predicted the ruling Minjoo Party would begin agitating for a league or confederation before the June 13 elections. I said that in doing so it would focus on the economic benefits.
Last week I received the various parties’ campaign materials in a big envelope. (As a permanent resident I am eligible to vote in local elections.) Sure enough, the Minjoo pamphlet has a slogan in big brushstroke font at the top of one page: “Peace Equals Economy!” Underneath, next to a photo of President Moon, is the somewhat coded but still urgent pledge to “construct a permanent peace system this year.”
Of course his base knows what this means. To quote an approving headline in the nationalist-left Hankyoreh on April 29:
The plan for unification via a North-South league is hidden in the Panmunjom Declaration.
Indeed it is, and in plain sight. But the Hankyoreh was quick to drop this talk, being mindful of the need to get the Americans to Singapore in as blissful a state of ignorance as possible. This is why street demonstrations for the “peace system” have so far been rather small and sedate affairs (though with a higher proportion of young participants than conservative rallies). [B.R. Myers]
I highly recommend reading the whole article at the link.
Besides constitutional reform, to make this confederation possible, President Moon and Kim Jong-un need President Trump to drop sanctions. This would allow the Moon administration to invest billions into North Korea, re-open the near-slave labor Kaesong Industrial Complex, and open the tourism projects on North Korea’s east coast. They would prefer President Trump to do this without the Kim regime having to give up their nuclear weapons. Trump pushing the Kim regime to completely give up their nuclear weapons before sanctions are dropped makes Moon’s plans for a confederation much more difficult. This is why Moon has been so complementary to President Trump and thrown around accolades such as “Nobel Peace Prize” in effort to win him over to drop sanctions.
Eventually, as B.R. Myers writes, both the Moon administration and the Kim regime hope this confederation will lead to their ultimate goal of the withdrawal of USFK. As I have written about before, I don’t expect the Moon administration to directly call for this because it will mobilize the conservative ROK political opposition against him. Instead he will use the cost sharing negotiations and anti-US groups to make life difficult for USFK to where the Trump administration decides on its own to withdraw USFK.
Once again I recommend reading B.R. Myers entire article at this link.
Forget all the talk about denuclearization on the Korean peninsula following the Trump-Kim Summit in Singapore, the biggest news for me is President Trump announcing the stopping of joint military exercises:
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in Singapore on June 12, 2018, in this photo captured from the website of The Straits Times. (Yonhap)
U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will stop “provocative and expensive” war games with South Korea in a surprise reference to the joint military exercises Pyongyang has criticized as a rehearsal of invasion.
Trump made the remarks during a press conference that followed his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on the Singaporean resort island of Sentosa.
“War games are very expensive,” he said, raising the issue of their cost.
“I think it is very provocative … You have a country that is right next door,” he added, referring to the communist state. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but President Moon has previously said that UFG would be scaled down and now President Trump has used to word stopped. I guess we will see what this all means, but for now it is pretty clear that the August UFG exercise will not happen the way it is normally executed.
If the joint exercises are stopped this is a big win for President Moon. His left wing base does not support the exercises while the political opposition conservative party does. So Moon’s base gets what it wants, for now and Moon can tell his political opposition that he was not the one that cancelled the joint exercises, President Trump did.
These joint exercise are important for USFK due to the high change over in personnel on the peninsula which these exercises help to keep personnel trained with their ROK military counterparts. However, just like everything that North Korea has committed to cancelling joint exercises are easily reversible from the US perspective. I don’t see President Trump committing to something non-reversible like troop withdrawals from the peninsula until the Kim regime does something non-reversible such as removing nuclear material to a third country for disposal.
It should continue to be an interesting year to see how this all plays out.
Below is the statement that President Trump and Kim Jong-un signed during their summit in Singapore with my comments below each point:
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un sign documents that acknowledge the progress of the talks and pledge to keep momentum going, after their summit at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore June 12. Reuters
Here is the first part of the statement:
1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
There has been a lot of talk about the US opening an embassy in North Korea. This line seems to open the door to this possibility if North Korea behaves of course. An opening of an embassy would symbolize the normalizing of relations between the DPRK and the US which is why I don’t think this will be something happening in the near term. Once the DPRK makes irreversible decisions to end their nuclear program than I think this will become a possibility.
U.S. President Donald Trump (R) gestures as he meets with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (L) at the start of their historic US-North Korea summit, at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore on June 12, 2018. AFP
2. The United States and the DPRK will join the efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
This is something that President Moon Jae-in and the Kim regime has been actively pushing for. Professor B.R. Myers has written extensively on this, but Moon wants to eventually establish a North-South Confederation. This is why him and the Korean left have been attempting to amend the ROK constitution to make this happen. One of the changes they have proposed was changing this passage in the ROK constitution:
“The Republic of Korea shall seek national unification, and shall formulate and carry out a peaceful unification policy based on the free and democratic basic order.”
In the proposed revision the word “free” would be removed which would open the door to the Kim regime maintaining power in North Korea after confederation with their own form of democracy. President Moon and his left wing supporters will never admit to this, but that is the only rational reason why they would want this change in the ROK constitution.
Should this matter to President Trump? It seems that from the US perspective if the DPRK ends its nuclear and ICBM programs then it should be left up to the ROK to decide their own future. If the ROK public wants a confederation that sees billions of their taxpayer dollars going up North to support the Kim regime that will continue to maintain a massive conventional military force to threaten them with, then so be it. Remember the Kim regime is only going to agree to a confederation on their terms.
3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panumunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclerarization of the Korean Peninsula.
Notice that the wording of this statement is “work toward” which makes no demands of the Kim regime to actually denuclearize. So far the North Koreans have only taken denuclearization actions that are easily reversible. I think that in response the US will only make concessions that are easily reversible. I don’t think the US will drop sanctions until concrete actions are taken by the Kim regime to eliminate their nuclear weapons such as shipping nuclear material to a third country. The DPRK and the ROK have long wanted a “freeze deal” that would allow the North Koreans to keep their nukes in return for dropping sanctions. I have so far seen no indication of an agreement of a “freeze deal” from this summit. If the US drops sanctions against North Korea for little to nothing in return than this will be a huge win for Kim Jong-un.
4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
It will be interesting to see how this is executed because in the past the US stopped the recovery work because of the ridiculous fees that North Korea demanded. The North Koreans know exactly where the bulk of the remains are because the US military buried a large number of casualties in marked cemeteries before evacuating North Korea after the Chinese intervened in the war.
Marines of the First Marine Division pay their respects to fallen buddies during memorial services at the division’s cemetery at Hamhung, Korea, following the break-out from Chosin Reservoir, December 13, 1950. Cpl. Uthe. (Marine Corps)
To be able to repatriate these remains to their family members the North Koreans have been demanding inflated prices which just shows how low the Kim regime is willing to go to make money. The work to recover the remains ended in 2005 with 220 remains recovered.
As recently as 2014 the Kim regime was trying to get the US to restart recovery of the remains threatening to let them get washed away. It looks like the Kim regime has now convinced the Trump administration to restart the remains recovery, but at what cost?
Final Analysis
My analysis on this is that the Trump administration would love to have North Korea completely denuclearize and give up their ICBMs in exchange for dropping of sanctions and being reintegrated into the world community. However, I am confident based on the people that President Trump has around him, that he is not naive to the past history of the Kim regime.
I think this is the one final chance for the Kim regime to make peace with the United States and if they try to play their old games again, that will be the excuse the President needs to take military action against them. This kind of reminds me of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks during the Clinton administration. Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader, Yasser Arafat was given the opportunity to make peace with the Israelis during the 2000 Camp David Summit and did not do it which led to the Second Intifada. This gave the Israelis the excuse they needed to crush the Palestinians which they did.
Does anyone see any similarities between these two photographs?
Kim Jong-un currently has the opportunity to seek peace with the United States just like Arafat did with the Israelis. Arafat could not bring himself to make peace with the Israelis despite the great deal that was offered to him that gave the Palestinians nearly everything they wanted. Arafat it was argued did not agree to the deal because it jeopardized his leadership status by being responsible for building a state along side Israel instead of a deadly, authoritarian opposition which is all he knew how to do.
Will Kim Jong-un accept denuclearization in return for building his state after the dropping of sanctions? Time will tell, but like the Israelis I would not be surprised if President Trump isn’t ready to take military action if the North Koreans return to a provocation cycle again. Just like with the Palestinians, I think things will end badly for the Kim regime if that is the course of action they choose to take.
Final Note: By the way did anyone else feel like Kim Jong-un looked like he was a contestant on the Celebrity Apprentice show during this summit? If they would have let Dennis Rodman into the summit it truly would have a been a Celebrity Apprentice episode.
The Butcher of the Cheonan recently met with President Trump and all indications are that the meeting went very well:
U.S. President Donald Trump has confirmed his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will take place in Singapore on June 12th.
His announcement came after he met with senior North Korean official Kim Yong-chol at the White House on Friday, local time.
He said the “big deal” will be on June 12th and that he believes the North Korean leader is committed to denuclearization.
Trump also said the issue of formally ending the Korean War will be on the table.
He explained he no longer wants to use the term “maximum pressure” on North Korea and looks forward to the day sanctions can be lifted.
Trump said there were “hundreds of new sanctions ready to go on” but they won’t be imposed “until such time as the talks break down.”
Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party’s central committee, visited the White House as Kim Jong-un’s special envoy and delivered Kim’s letter to Trump. [KBS World Radio]
You can read more at the link, but for those that don’t know Kim Yong-chol is the guy that Kim Jong-un trusts the most to do his dirty work. I actually listened to Trump’s press conference and wonder what was in Kim Jong-un’s letter that Kim Yong-chol delivered? I wonder because President Trump alluded to during the press conference how “the subject matter was very interesting” in the letter that he ended up having a two hour conversation with Kim Yong-chol about. You can see the press conference below:
This is super duper amazingly bad. Terrible combination of non sequitur and orientalism. It blows my mind that a publication like the New Yorker couldn't bother to find a writer who's been following K-pop for longer than, what, three days? https://t.co/M8NmhR5TKg
BREAKING: A team of U.S. officials led by Sung Kim crossed into North Korea today to hold summit preparation talks, despite uncertainty surrounding the June 12 Trump-Kim meeting. The North Korean delegation is led by vice foreign minister Choe Son Hui. https://t.co/eLPZiB68cCpic.twitter.com/XwRwNqYtxo
A protester holds a banner that says, “Trump jeopardizes peace on the Korean Peninsula,” during a rally in front of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul on May 25, 2018, to criticize the U.S. government and call for a summit with North Korea as scheduled. On May 24, U.S. President Donald Trump called off his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un scheduled for June 12, citing the North’s “tremendous anger and open hostility.” (Yonhap)
As I said yesterday, the cancellation of the Trump-Kim summit by President Trump was nothing more than part of the ongoing negotiations. Well it looks like the Kim regime got the message from the Trump administration that the usual games they played during past negotiations will not be tolerated:
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump cancelling the June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to discuss the regime’s denuclearization, it appears a meeting could take place not too far in the future, as both sides seem willing to engage in dialogue.
North Korea, unlike its usual hard-line stance, expressed regret over the cancellation and said it is open to talks at anytime, so the ball is again in the U.S.’s court.
After Trump’s announcement late Thursday, North Korea stated that it had a “willingness to resolve issues through dialogue, whenever and through whatever means.” The statement was made by North Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan, reported by the Korean Central News Agency the following morning. [Korea Times]
Who can remember a time when the Kim regime has been this conciliatory for talks? The only time that comes to mind was during the Banco Delta Asia incident where they were desperate to get the millions of dollars frozen by the US Treasury Department back. The Kim regime played nice until they got what they wanted and then eventually returned to conducting provocations.
It is pretty clear the Trump administration is trying to change this dynamic and the President today is signaling that the summit can still happen if North Korea changes its tone:
U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday his planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un could still take place June 12, after cancelling the summit a day earlier.
“We’re going to see what happens. We’re talking to them right now. It could even be the 12th,” Trump told reporters before departing the White House. (….)
“Very good news to receive the warm and productive statement from North Korea,” he wrote. “We will soon see where it will lead, hopefully to long and enduring prosperity and peace. Only time (and talent) will tell!” [Yonhap]
I guess we will see what happens, but it is good to see the Kim regime for once on the defensive when it comes to negotiations.
