Korea Thread: Liberal Moon Jae In Elected

[Tamas]

So was war averted by brilliant diplomacy?

What war?

[crazy canuck]

So was war averted by brilliant diplomacy?

What war?

The US strike on N. Korea - and yes Mongers, N. Korea has played Trump brilliantly.

[The Minsky Moment]

WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has increased its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months — and that Kim Jong Un may try to hide those facilities as he seeks more concessions in nuclear talks with the Trump administration, U.S. officials told NBC News.[...]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/north-korea-has-increased-nuclear-production-secret-sites-say-u-n887926

Trump is a sucker and has been played.

Sadly that is not true.  The American people are the sucker and we have been played by Trump.  What does he care what NK is doing?  He can just deny it and keep declaring victory, or turn on a dime and start threatening again, and claim that was his policy all along.

Trump's goal is not to influence NK behavior.   He knows North Korea has no votes and that North Koreans aren't surveyed in polls of likely US voters.  Trump "won" the moment gangs of GOP ultrahawks who repeteadly condemned Obama for daring to suggest considering talks with Kim fell all over themselves to fawn obsequiously over his diplomatic "triumph" of abject weakness. Once again Trump demonstrated his ability to impose his will on his adopted political party, to renounce their own principles for personal loyalty to him.

[jimmy olsen]

Trump making a mix tape for his BFF Kim Jong Un

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2018/07/06/2018070600907.html

[The Minsky Moment]

North Korean officials did not attend a planned meeting with Americans to discuss the return of US soldiers' remains, officials have said.

Kim Jong Un had committed to returning the remains of the troops from the 1950-53 conflict during talks with US President Donald Trump on 12 June.

US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo did not acknowledge a question about the no-show when reporters asked him in Brussels on Thursday.

and

Donald J. Trump
‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump
24h24 hours ago

A very nice note from Chairman Kim of North Korea. Great progress being made!

[Syt]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44868727

Trump says no 'time limit' on North Korea denuclearisation

US President Donald Trump says there is "no time limit" for North Korea to denuclearise and that there is no need to rush the process.

It marks a shift in tone from Mr Trump who previously said nuclear disarmament would start "very quickly".

Last month, the US president and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held historic talks and pledged to denuclearise the Korean peninsula.

The accord did not have a timetable for the process or plan to carry it out.

Since the meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Kim on 12 June, there has been little reported progress towards denuclearisation.

Last week North Korea accused the US of making "gangster-like" demands for the process, and branded the US attitude at high-level talks as "extremely troubling".

Mr Trump said on Tuesday that talks with Pyongyang were going fine.

"We have no time limit. We have no speed limit," the US president told reporters.

"Discussions are ongoing, and they're going very, very well," he said.

"The sanctions are remaining. The hostages are back. There have been no tests. There have been no rockets going up for a period of nine months, and I think the relationships are very good, so we'll see how that goes."

The US president also said North Korea's nuclear threat had been a major topic during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week.

"President Putin is going to be involved in the sense that he is with us," Mr Trump said.

The president's latest comments on the timeline for denuclearisation appear to shift from his position ahead of the summit with Mr Kim, when he said denuclearisation should start "without delay." Following the meeting, he said the process would start "very quickly".

But since then, Mr Trump has suggested that dismantling North Korea's nuclear arsenal could be some way off.

Speaking at a press conference in the UK last week, the US president said negotiations with Pyongyang would be "probably a longer process than anybody would like".

Following the 12 June meeting, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he hoped to see "major disarmament" by North Korea by the end of 2020.

[The Brain]

No no. No no no no. No no no no. No no there's no limit!

[Zanza]

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/24/politics/trump-pompeo-north-korea/index.html

Citing insufficient progress on the issue of denuclearization, President Donald Trump nixed plans for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to make what would have been his fourth visit to North Korea Friday, canceling next week's trip just one day after it was announced by Pompeo.

[...]

Pompeo had said Thursday newly announced special representative to North Korea, Stephen Biegun, would be joining him on the trip to Pyongyang.

[...]

A senior diplomatic source told CNN that State Department officials were "briefing allies' embassies about their objectives for the trip like 10 minutes before" the trip was called off.

[...]

"The President's tendency to undercut his negotiating team has made it easy for Pyongyang officials to refuse their demands. Now, as the administration finally installs a negotiating team, the President signals publicly that he doubts their ability to make progress," Adam Mount, senior fellow and director of the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists told CNN.

"Washington has allowed talks to drift along, unstable, unproductive, and without a coordinated negotiating team. It appears the President is willing to allow this to continue into the fall," he said.

[...]

Trump was asked in an interview with Reuters on Monday if North Korea had done anything beyond dismantling a test site to show it was in the process of denuclearizing. "I do believe they have," he said, but did not provide further details.

[...]

Diplomatic sources said that the US has now presented North Korea with specific proposals for a path and timeline to denuclearization, all of which Kim has thus far rejected, believing the US's stance to be "gangster-like."

[...]

Spectacular deal making by the master deal maker.

That's the guy who cancelled the Iran deal without anything to replace it and China easily circumventing his new sanctions.

[garbon]

And now this. But it doesn't matter he already won and has moved onto other issues.

https://www.axios.com/pentagon-lifts-suspension-military-exercises-korean-peninsula-fac7403e-564a-4d90-a914-4eb226f88991.html

Defense Secretary James Mattis announced Tuesday at a wide-ranging press conference that the U.S. plans to resume military exercises on the Korean Peninsula which were suspended following President Trump's summit with Kim Jong-un.

Why it matters: Trump called the exercises "provocative" in June and said they would be halted "unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should." This is just the latest sign that the administration is getting frustrated by a lack of progress. Last Friday, Trump directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to cancel his upcoming trip to North Korea, saying the country was not "making sufficient progress with respect to denuclearization."

[mongers]

This podcast from a couple of months back is well worth a listen:

https://www.acast.com/warcollege/northkorea-slonggame

North Korea's Long Game
09 May 2018 00:54

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in have met. The Trump administration is on its way to talk denuclearization and the formal end of a war that's lasted 65 years. Is it peace in our time?


Here to help us cut through the noise and make sense of the news is B.R. Myers. Myers is a professor of international studies at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.

[Syt]

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/chukjibop-05222020173452.html

North Korean Founder Kim Il Sung Did Not Have the Ability to Teleport, State Media Admits

North Korean state media have issued a report denying that the country's leaders have mythical powers, a possible signal that current leader Kim Jong Un is attempting to undo the deification of his predecessors.

In North Korea, Kim Jong Un, his father Kim Jong Il and his grandfather Kim Il Sung enjoy god-like status built up by a state-driven cult of personality. Countless myths tell of their purported exploits, some of which are taught to children in school lessons. Some tales distort documented history about the eldest Kim's early history, and his son's birthplace.

South Korean officials who analyze North Korean media say, however, that since Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011, tales of the supernatural aimed at deifying his father and grandfather have seen a decline.

Some of the official Kim myths that have been popularized in international media include Kim Jong Un being able to drive at age three, and Kim Jong Il shooting a 38 under par round of golf with five holes-in-one in his first attempt at the sport.

One myth, however, is so widely believed in the reclusive country that North Korea's official newspaper, Rodong Shinmun, has had to step in and say it was not true:  Kim Il Sung, the founder of the country, did not have the ability to use the chukjibop technique, which is a type of "folding space" like teleporting fighters in Kung Fu movies.

Chukjibop, literally a "method of shrinking the earth," is described as the ability to quickly move towards the blind spot of an enemy at a speed so fast that the attacker seems to temporarily disappear. The mythical version of a concept in East Asian martial arts has been attributed to several figures in Chinese and Japanese mythology, and more recently depicted in Japanese animation, or through the use of special effects in Chinese Kung Fu movies.

According to myth, Kim Il Sung was able to use the chukjibop technique to win a battle against imperial Japanese soldiers during the time when Korea was a colony of Japan (1910-1945), when he was purportedly leading Korean guerillas in exile.

"In fact, people can't disappear and reappear by folding space," the Rodong Shinmun report said Wednesday.

The report marked the first time that state media flatly denied that a Kim family myth was true, South Korea's Unification Ministry said.

"We need to pay attention to the current leader's denial of the mythification of his predecessors, including his criticism of them in October, at Mt. Kumgang," a ministry official told reporters.

Kim Jong Un visited the now-shuttered inter-Korean tourist resort in October, ordering that poorly maintained South Korean-built facilities be torn down.

State media quoted Kim as saying the establishment of the zone was the "mistaken policy of the predecessors."

I don't believe in faeries

But while deification is still occurring in North Korea, the ministry official said Kim Jong Un is attempting to keep the myths grounded in reality.

"We need to look at deification cases since Kim Jong Un took power," the official said.

Several South Korean experts told RFA's Korean service Thursday that since Kim became leader in 2011, propaganda projects pushing the cult of personality tell more believable tales, because if myths are perpetuated in an unscientific and irrational manner, fewer people will believe the more realistic stories about the Kim family.

"Kim Jong Un has studied in Europe and has a European way of thinking," Yoo Dong-ryul of the Korea Institute of Liberal Democracy told RFA.

"If they continue using the same idolization and propaganda methods that they did in the past, [the rest of the world] will have a bad impression of North Korea, and the people won't believe [what they are saying]," he said.

"So I think the [Rodong Shinmun] report is a result of this shift toward realistic thinking in propaganda projects," he added.

"Idolization of the former leaders is important, but Chairman Kim showed his idea that everything should be based on reality," said Yoo.

The shift also has the secondary objective of boosting the morale of the average person in North Korea, according to Kwak Gil Sup, head of a nonprofit called the One Korea Center.

He told RFA that Kim Jong Un's propaganda strategy is, through its more realistic flavor, promoting the self esteem of the North Korean people.

The denial of chukjibeop was a signal that Kim Jong Un is making a clear break with past idolization efforts, a former South Korean vice unification minister told RFA.

"[Kim Jong Un] appears to be trying to break away from the established framework. [Everyone knows] chukjibeop is not realistic," said Kim Hyung-suk.

But the former vice minister stressed that the chukjibeop denial should not be over-interpreted as an indication that Kim Jong Un wants to erase the legacy of the country's former leaders.

"The report did not mean to draw a line with former supreme leaders. It merely showed that every problem should be approached from a practical standpoint," said Vice Minister Kim.

"The characteristic of the Kim Jong Un era is that modern problem-solving should not be done in the old-fashioned way," he added.

[The Brain]

Great, we are now further from colonizing the stars than we were before.

[The Larch]

Seoul mayor reported missing as police launch search

Seoul (CNN)The mayor of the South Korean capital Seoul has been reported missing and police have launched a search for him, an official told CNN on Thursday.

Park Won-soon was reported missing by his daughter, at around 5 p.m. Thursday (4 a.m. ET), according to a police official familiar with the case.

The 64-year-old longtime civic activist, who has been Seoul's mayor since 2011, is seen as a likely hopeful for the liberals in the 2022 presidential elections.

When Park was elected in a landslide victory against the ruling party nearly a decade ago -- with no political ties or experience -- it sparked a public frenzy. His unexpected rise to the second most powerful position in the country was seen as a sign that South Koreans were tired of traditional politics.

The former human rights lawyer, who ran independently but forged an alliance with opposition parties, championed city welfare projects and became a symbol of reform.

He was reelected as mayor in 2014 and again in 2018.

Apparently he left a voice message for his daughter, turned off his phone, didn't show up at the city hall today and cancelled all his appointments.

[Eddie Teach]

Tim is sleeping on the job again.

[Tonitrus]

Wikipedia indicates a report that he had been charged very recently with sexual harassment.  Honor suicide probably?