More on the Three Tracks: Will Bibimbap Be Served in Singapore?

According to a South Korean analyst speaking on a broadcast May 30, Choi Seon Hee, North Korean diplomat meeting with Song Kim, the US Ambassador to the Philippines, at Panmumjeom, did discuss substantive denuclearization procedures, the first being removal of ICBMs, the second, timing of removal of warheads, and third being means of verification. Phased easing of sanctions was also raised by the North at the meeting. They are looking toward putting together a communique framing the procedures for future implementation. It is only, Kim Chang Seon, in Singapore, who is discussing the security, logistics, and "photo ops," involved.

The primary concern of Kim Jong Un with respect to travel to Singapore, is that of his personal security. Other reports have stated that he's confided to Pompeo that he is concerned about a "coup d'etat." With all the emphasis on so called decapitation exercises by the US in military exercises and war games, the problems with security planning in a relatively open environment like Singapore, and the vulnerability of unpopular leaders inflight, the reports of concern of a coup back home, seem exaggerated. One also might keep in mind the rather checkered history of commercial aviation in the Malaysian region. In light of Korean dynastic history, the age of his aircraft, and the many potential sites for snipers and other assassins in Singapore, the security concerns are valid.

Not surprisingly, there has been continuing misrepresentation of the North Korean position on denuclearization, even from those "experts," who ostensibly should know better. The view presented as of today, seems to be whatever the differences disclosed during the Panmunjeom meeting could be remedied to some extent during the meetings in New York, today, and Washington, D.C. tomorrow. The fundamental misrepresentation from pundits and a large number of "experts," is that North Korea isn't going to denuclearize. Further, that Trump is "being played," and other sophomoric critiques. Lately, the recent North Korean statements reflecting that attitude, are stated in the conditional, "if the US doesn't stop this or that..." The joint statement coming out of the Moon Kim summit at Panmunjeom clearly stated that denuclearization of the Korean peninsula was their policy objective. Of course, the cynical rejoinder is "well we've heard that before, if their lips are moving, they're lying..."

To his credit, even Pompeo gets that the real stumbling block is coming up with US guarantees of North Korean security, normalization of relations, replacing the armistice with a peace agreement, and how to stage these reciprocal moves, in addition to relaxation of sanctions. Pompeo calls it CVIS, complete, verifiable, irreversible, security for North Korea. Without CVIS you won't get CVID.

While there is a notion of bringing out ICBMs, or warheads, in a "bundle" in a relatively short period of time, a framework, (if you'll excuse the term) is going to have to be adopted which presents a structure for negotiations and the execution of any agreement reached, in terms of subject matter, scope and process. It will involve steps, definitions of the scope and timing of those steps, and how US reciprocal concessions will need to be integrated with those steps. The problems here are both political and practical. Various experts with experience have stated that a truly full blown "irreversible denuclearization" of unlimited scope could take "ten years" Some of this has the sound of advertising copy. One expert has said, in the existential sense, there is no such thing as irreversible denuclearization as long as there are scientists who know how to do it. The political side of the problem is that any phased structure with reciprocity will arguably appear similar in design to other agreements that both Trump and neocons have criticized. When making bibimbap, whatever the ingredients, and whoever the chef, it still looks like bibimbap when it's done.

By Sous Chef - https://www.flickr.com/photos/140536182@N03/40636664921/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67604999

Too Many Chefs?

US and North Korean diplomats are now engaged in three separate locations: Panmunjeom, New York, and Singapore.

A Channel graphic depicts players from the six party talks in 2008, Song Kim, US Ambassador, Christopher Hill (retired now, tv pundit), for the US, and Kim Gae Kwan (recent remarks about Bolton) and Choi Seon Hee, (recent remarks about Pence), both still in the ruling clique in North Korea. So it was Song Kim and Choi in Panmunjeom yesterday. No one seems to know what is happening there now. General Chol is on the way to New York, presumably for a meeting with Pompeo today. Kim Chang Seon, from the "Seoki shil" is flying to Singapore after his stopover in Beijing. Maybe things didn't go well in Panmunjeom yesterday. There are a lot of players here. Supposedly Song Kim was the US State department's best talent available for negotiations. But the graphic shows that the 2008 negotiations ended in acrimony, "Liar!"

The central issues are still the same. The core issue is still one bundle versus step by step, and the timing of reciprocal measures by the US. VOA conducted some kind of survey among unidentified experts who all agreed ostensibly that North Korea would not give up their nuclear weapons. What moron would give up all their weapons in fell swoop with no reciprocal steps toward peace, security, and lifting of sanctions? It doesn't seem that the negotiations have come off this central dispute. South Korean media are reporting that Song Kim, wants the North to give up all warheads, fissile materials, and ICBMs, first for a piece of paper after its done.

The main problem according to experts is getting this done all at once at a summit. It's just not realistic.

The derisive and sarcastic reports running in the press across the US right now say that a recent CIA estimate concludes that Kim has no intention to denuclearize but may open a burger franchise in Pyongyang to please Trump. This simply reflects the desperation of the militarists and empire builders in the US to preserve their far eastern fiefdoms in the face of a summit that presents a possibility of success.

Six Party Talks Veteran in Panmunjeom

Song Kim a career diplomat, former US Ambassador to S.Korea, current US Ambassador to the Philippines, and former US representative to the Six Party talks went to Panmunjeom, today, to talk to the North Korean delegation to get ready for the Singapore summit with Trump.

An interesting historical note: "Kim’s father was implicated in the abduction of Kim Dae-jung during the Park Chung-hee administration while serving as a minister to Japan." So it looks like the Trump administration has to go back to the democratic well at the State Department to find people competent enough to negotiate an agreement. He has prior experience with the North Korean diplomat Choi Seon Hwi, (a woman) who rose to international notoriety last week by calling Pence a stupid blockhead.

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/587486/who-is-sung-kim-new-us-ambassador-to-phl/story/

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/481417.html

Heard Gordon Chang claim on Fox News that Moon is pro-North Korean, (jong buk), and wants to unify the Korean peninsula under the North's leadership. Chang of course insisted that the Chinese are playing a negative role in the diplomatic maneuvering with North Korea, and that China and North Korea need to be "separated." His contentions are spurious and misleading. Kim could have never been brought to the table without the initiatives of Moon, a Korean nationalist, along with the major sanctions imposed by China. Chang is a self serving malevolent right wing fanatic, with an incurable bias against China. We are still waiting for the "coming collapse of China" predicted by Chang seventeen years ago. Don't hold your breath.

While the diplomatic maneuvering proceeds in the stop and go pattern it has demonstrated, in the relative rush to a June 12 summit, the North Koreans have been remarkably symmetrical in their recent statements, two officials from the US go on needlessly and provocatively with their inappropriate Libyan model threats, and the North responds with two officials from their foreign ministry who make disparaging remarks about those US officials and communicate their own threats. Trump expresses suspicion and displeasure about Kim's second meeting with Xi at Darien, and Kim dispatches a high level official to China again, perhaps to arrange further contact and discussions with Xi. Kim Chang Seon is the name of the mover in the Secretariat, who went to China. Kim is sometimes referred to as Kim Jong Un's "butler," and is regarded as a power behind the scenes at the secretariat. Late reports are that Kim Chang Seon is flying to Singapore after his stopover in Beijing.

Routine Defensive Exercises or Prelude to War?

Clearly the US forces deployed to the area before the "baffling turn around" in Kim's "attitude," are practicing for an attack on North Korea, whether it is called a "routine exercise" or not. The forces assembled are not regarded as "routine," even by South Korean analysts. The new catch phrase for US jingoism, replacing "all options on the table," is apparently "fight tonight," with the US State Department adopting the military slogan.

Kim has indicated he will wait until the current "exercise" is over before discussing the prospect of a new meeting. It is not whether the assembled forces associated with Max Thunder deployments will cease their exercise activity but whether those out of area US forces will actually leave the region. The next exercise providing a new opportunity for an attack on North Korea will be Ulchi Freedom Guardian in mid to late August. So the prospect for war before the US mid term election exists.

The situation has returned to the status of 2017, except perhaps that the north is not in a position to detonate any more nukes having just destroyed their test site. A test missile launch could trigger an attack by US forces, as this is exactly what the forces in the graphic published above are designed to do, detect and intercept such an act. If such a missile test fails to occur, what we could expect then is something along the lines of a Tonkin Gulf incident or another Chonan "incident," to provide the pretext for a massive US attack. The danger beyond that would be of nuclear war, if the North were to respond with ballistic missile launches. This is a more dangerous situation than in Syria, because this option, the "death note" if you will or "suicide note," has already been clearly laid down by North Korea as their intended response in the event of US attack. North Korean conventional forces are no match for the US and South Korea in the aerospace realm, so the ballistic missiles would be their response rather than submitting to being bombed at will by the US. There is no check or restraint of a cold war nature, as exerted by the Russians in Syria, to avoid a direct conflagration with the US and allied forces in the region. Tae Yong Ho, the high profile defector has described the mechanism in the north, in the event of a US attack, as a doomsday machine.

Trump Identifies China as the Source of Kim's "turnaround" in Attitude?

Yesterday a short clip from Arirang confirmed something heard on audio from A Channel a couple of days ago. That was that the Vice Speaker of the Korean National Assembly invited Thae Yong Ho, the defector, to speak to there. This is one of things that aggravated Kim Jong Un, because there was a lot of criticism of him, how the secretariat operates for his family's personal advantage, how they won't give up their nuclear program, etc. The defector Thae has an ax to grind. By appearing in a public government forum, this event was intended to cause trouble. Sim Jae Chol, the Vice Speaker of the National Assembly, invited him to speak. Sim is hostile to Moon, and Tae is hostile to North Korea. The ruling democratic party questions if Tae has even seen Kim Jong Un once.

In addition to this, activists are sending propaganda leaflets over the DMZ in balloons which is another encroachment on the reduction of tensions and "hostile acts" promised at the Panmumjeom summit.

Sim Jae Chol was the president of the Seoul U student council government in the period of the infamous Democracy Movement uprising in Kwangju. He caused the student uprising against the military dictatorship in Seoul, which had occupied the Seoul Train Station, to withdraw and disperse at a critical time in May 1980. He is currently an opposition party member of Jayoo Hanguk Dang, Liberty Korea Party. He scheduled this event in the assembly with Thae Yoeng Ho, about the time of 5.18, which is the commemoration day for the slaughter by military forces of Chun Do Hwan of democracy movement activists in Kwangju. He is portrayed in movies and elsewhere as enabling the massacre in Kwangju, by backing down in the student demonstration confrontation in Seoul at the time. In other words, he's criticized as an enabler at the time of crucial events. Lately, he's been fighting Moon's policies toward North Korea.

http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=082&aid=0000758717

So if we look at South Korean defector activities, egged on apparently by politicians on the scene, and forces behind the scenes, in addition to the US and Korean military efforts to avoid the common sense restraints put the on the joint military exercises, and the one sided, unreasonable demands from the US, this is what Kim has had his subordinates and press complain about. I bring all this up, because the latest A Channel report is saying that Trump had an unpleasant conversation with Moon, questioning him about Kim's turn around in attitude. Well, if he didn't know he could ask his own people in DOD or the CIA. Evidently, he has no idea what they doing. Maybe they won't tell him. He's obviously clueless about negotiating on the nuclear issue. It was always a pipe dream to think that it could be done any other way, than the way it was done before, or the way it was done with Iran. The main difficulty is realizing that prior difficulties and breakdowns in negotiations with the North were due to people on the US side who didn't want the agreement then, and never did. One of these people is the strident neocon Bolton. The others are the generals and other national security sector personnel who see their empire and arms markets in the far east in jeopardy if a deal goes through.

Trump has no idea what the "Libyan method" is and what the reference implies - lack of reciprocal and binding obligations on a step by step basis to build confidence. Trump seems to think that his vague promises, of rewards later, is going to reassure Kim. Senator Graham now calls it "win-win," or war. This isn't how negotiations work. The people who criticize Kim or the North Koreans as people who can't be trusted, who broke the agreement before, who are back to the their old tricks, etc., are simply the cheering section for the US, and don't understand the problem. They can't be taken seriously as analysts, because they are advocates for the war industry's business as usual.

They're going to try to get Adm. Harris approved as the US Ambassador to South Korea just before the summit with Kim, so that's another stick in the eye for the North Korea, which referred to Japan just within the last few days, as the "one hundred year enemy." Harris is regarded as a "hard liner," with respect to North Korea. In fact, I attribute the dancing around about Max Thunder to him and General Brooks, the USFK commander.

KIm Jong Un's "Baffling" About Face: 김정은 "美, 전략무기 빼는 등 성의 보여야"

There was something of political fire drill in official circles in the last 48 hours concerning the B-52 issue related to the Max Thunder joint US South Korea military exercise. The official statements were that they were never a part of Max Thunder. Then there was a public dispute between Professor Moon, the private national security adviser to the Blue House, and Defense Minister Song about whether B-52s were requested to be removed from Max Thunder plans or whether they were never a part of it. A Channel published a new youtube about strategic assets in the area. It's in Korean but you can see from the diagrams and charts that they are reporting at least one B-52 is deployed to Okinawa and is conducting anti North Korean radar network exercises in a region "south of Cheju island" described as "in the vicinity" of the Korean peninsula.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY-pdH4cnUs&t=322s

Ri Seon Gwan, North Korean Inter Korea Committee Chairman, continues the diplomatic criticism against South Korea in the wake of deputy foreign minister Kim Gae Kwan's criticisms earlier that cancelled the high level North South Military summit and placed the US North Korea summit in jeopardy. Also, the South Korean press groups application to attend the destruction of the nuclear test site has been rejected.

In addition to the one sided, umcompromising, and apparently never ending list of US demands from the likes of John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo, the triggering issue really is this Max Thunder exercise. I see this is a transparent attempt to achieve what Gen. Brooks wanted all along, to continue Foal Eagle in another guise. He objected at the outset to limitations in scope and duration on the Foal Eagle exercise including the removal of strategic assets.

"Despite the Pentagon’s claim that the drills will be on the “same scale, scope and duration as previous years,” Foal Eagle has been shortened to a month and will not involve U.S. military hardware considered by the North Korean regime to be especially threatening (so-called strategic assets) including nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, nuclear-powered submarines and U.S. strategic bombers such as the B-1, B-2 and B-52."
https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/us-south-korea-kick-off-annual-military-drill-without-us-strategic-assets/

Ri Seon Gwan accuses the South Koreans of incompetence, ignorance, lack of discrimination, having less than common sense, and so on. Some of the missteps giving rise to the North Korean concerns are described below:

In addition to the B52 operating out of Okinawa, in a mission role obviously related to the Max Thunder scenarios, why is a strategic Army pre-positioning ship, USNS Sonderman, doing in Pusan weeks after the termination of Foal Eagle?

We have the various attack plans discussed in the Korean public press (Channel A) concerning Max Thunder. And in addition there is public discussion (Channel A) of so called "real world" planning for attacks on North Korea taking place in South Korea with the CIA. Both of the prior activities allegedly involved so called "decapitation" scenarios. Decapitation refers to the destruction of the command and control function of the North Korean State and its leadership. In addition, there is the high profile defector, Tae Yeong Ho's propaganda campaign against North Korea, which is inescapable in media, and political circles in South Korea, describing Kim Joung Un as Jeo Pal Gae, a "piggy" cartoon character. Sim Jae Chol the Vice Speaker of the National Assembly invited him to speak at a press conference. Sim is hostile to Moon, and Tae is hostile to North Korea. The democratic party questions if Tae has even seen Kim Jong Un once.

All of this is in addition to John Bolton's thinly disguised and cynical promotion of the so called "Libyan method" to conduct denuclearization of North Korea.

Private Marshall Plan for North Korea as a result of the "Libyan method?" 의심 할 것?

I just watched an Channel A news piece that reported security experts say Singapore is a security headache. It has copious pedestrian and tourist traffic. It is an island city, open from every direction, and the tall buildings provide a security nightmare because they are advantageous for snipers. The large numbers of foreigners and crowds make it opportune for chemical attacks, etc. While no city is "secure," Singapore is less secure than some other choices. US press parroted the official line that Singapore was picked because of it's security.

Brian Hook, State Dept senior advisor at the policy planning office, is the one who said it would take until 2020 to irreversibly denuclearize North Korea. In other words, it would take the entire remainder of Trump's term in office.


http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/11/top-advisors-fate-serves-as-bellwether-for-state-department/

" 'While Hook has alienated rank-and-file foreign service officers, he also retains an almost exclusive knowledge of high-level diplomatic discussions on an array of issues, as Tillerson heavily relied on him while other senior diplomats were sometimes cut out of the loop.

'It’s kind of awkward. Brian is the only person who knows what happened for the last year and a half,' the former diplomat says."

An old Wash Post that I can't gain access to without paying, claimed there was still an excellent Korea team inside the State Dept, and suggested maybe they would get some play with Tillerson out.

It's been noted that the White House had already done an end around the State Dept, with Pompeo building his foreign policy network in preparation for the move to State, as long ago as last November.

I don't see evidence that people at State are involved in the current process, except maybe for Hook, who wasn't one to share the glory with the professional ranks of the state department. Who exactly is on Pompeo's team for the North Korean summit other than Andrew Kim, and his CIA team in Korea?

In my view, Hook let the cat out of the bag with the 2020 remarks.

Channel A says that Kim had gone to China to seek economic relief on the second trip to meet Xi.

We haven't heard a thing from Foreign Minister Kang, recently, or anyone else about the starving people right now in North Korea. I know China had shipped a substantial amount of food there in the spring, just before Xi's first meeting with Kim, but apparently, the North Korean soldiers are still starving and there are significant distribution problems due to the effects of sanctions. What happened to the South Korean promises of humanitarian aid?

One view has it that the missiles, warheads, nuclear materials like plutonium, and enriched uranium could be removed within months if it were properly planned and executed. It was also suggested that 4 to 5 hundred thousand tons of chemical weapons could be shipped out or destroyed during this same shorter term time frame. On the other hand, the longer term projection of Hook probably concerns the ability to permanently remove and assure that the regeneration of these weapons programs would not be possible. One of the latest concerns is what about the personnel who know how to make such weapons? I still have my doubts about how well planned or thought out either of these positions are. I guess anything could be accomplished by the end of 2020.

The high level diplomatic representative, Thae Yong-ho (Korean: 태영호) who defected from the N.Korean embassy in UK, has said, in the recent past, that the nuclear program was essential to Kim. The removal of the program therefore is going to harm any measure of legitimacy that his administration of North Korea has internally. The defector says the stuff about the parallel economic policy (byun jin) is just a pretense, that it doesn't exist. I don't entirely agree, but I agree that whatever economic advances there were are now destroyed. So if the sanctions will be kept on until CVID/ now PCVID+WMD, then his regime could collapse. China will have to make inroads on this front, or some bad things may happen in North Korea.

The longer term projection by Hook, shows how cynical the positions of Bolton, Pompeo, and Trump are. Would the US concede on softening the sanctions regime, after the shorter timetable for destruction of the immediate nuclear weapons threat? I don't think it's likely after all their tough talking pronouncements.

Will China come forward at risk to itself to compensate for the catastrophic failing of the North Korean economy under the sanctions before the ever increasing list of US demands to be satisfied are satisfied? Doesn't this appear to be a shifting of all the risks and costs of "CVID," to North Korea and China? Aren't the US promises of private investment in North Korea illusory promises unworthy of belief? This is the nature of what Kim discussed with Xi in Dalien according to JTBC. The source was a Japanese newspaper report.