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.