US failed North Korean policy since 2019 bears bitter fruit

This is when Choi Son-hui rose to pre-eminence in the DPRK Foreign Ministry. Kim Jong-un was humiliated in Hanoi in February 2019. Trump and Bolton in a dramatic stunt scripted for media walked out from the negotiation. Trump rebuffed Choi, in the hallway, at the Hanoi Summit, when she chased after him, pleading with him to come back to the table with Kim. Trump curtly remarked, "Sometimes ya gotta walk," totally capitulating to the neo-cons. Clearly Choi is the most gifted and experienced negotiator in North Korean ruling circles, she served as Kim's mentor.

Not long after Kim and Choi Son-hui traveled to Vladivostok to explore options with Putin and Lavrov.

(Source- Channel A News 4.26.2019) (title- the real reason for Kim Yong Chol's absence?) Why did Chairman Kim bring along Choi Son Hui, First Vice Foreign Minister? To dispel his image as dictator? Choe sits to the right of Sergei Lavrov. Ri Yong Ho, DPRK Foreign Minister sits to Putin's left.

The major import of the summit seems to be having Kim recover momentum after the debacle at the Hanoi summit with the US. Everyone noticed that Kim Yong Chol wasn't with the North Korean delegation in Vladivostok. It looks like Choe Son Hui has been elevated to a primary position as nuclear negotiator. This would be in her new position as First Vice Minister of Foreign Policy, and as the new and solitary female member of the powerful State Affairs Committee.

The visit to Vladivostok brought Trump to Korea for the photo-op at Panmunjom in the summer of 2019, imitating an earlier meeting there between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un that was a media sensation during the "Spring is coming" thaw in North and South relations in 2018. Trump completely under the thumb of the neocons overplaying their hand, did nothing with the second chance he was given to resolve the tension with North Korea. By December 2019, the North indicated they were done dealing with the US. Then the covid epidemic conveniently enough put everything on hold as the North locked down for years. The Biden administration adopted the neo-con "maximum pressure" approach to negotiations. Then as the war in Ukraine spun up, the idiot far right authoritarian Yoon took power in South Korea providing new opportunities, incentives and benefits for North Korean Russian cooperation. When Kim and Putin met at the Russian Space Center in the Far East, in Sept 2023, the possibilities envisioned by Choi and Lavrov in April 2019 came to fruition.

It is obvious that the agreements worked out and signed this week by Putin and Kim had been worked on for months at least. The national security advisors in the US and the so called far east czar Kurt Campbell are incompetent. Blinken, Sullivan, the whole lot of them don't know what they are doing. Siegfried Hecker and Robert Carlin the leading experts on North Korea have been saying this publicly for some time now.

Here's a tweet yesterday from another astute North Korea watcher-

Perhaps walking away from a deal at Hanoi wasn't such a good idea after all. Now all we're left with is op-eds calling for "greater economic and diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang" and hoping that Beijing can be made to carry out US policy goals in Korea. https://t.co/zLsxnTNsBx

— Kevin Gray (@DrKevinGray) June 19, 2024

The Battle of Dagu Forts

This anniversay today got me thinking of how little has essentially changed in the far east alignments despite the sometimes opportunistic shifting alliances among the imperial powers and WWII.

Elder South Korean statesmen/scholar Jung Se-hyeon, once likened US diplomats to an "Indian killing long haired white general," alluding to US policy in the Far East as essentially an extension of its wars against indigenous Americans.

One of the great cowboys of the American imagination preserving the rules based order in Beijing in 1900- Charlton Heston 55 Days at Peking (1963)

The west's outlook really hasn't changed that much in more than a century and half since the Opium Wars. Their gunboats still cruise off the Chinese coast looking for confrontations to secure territorial concessions from both the subjected powers in the so called Indo-Pacific alliance and China itself. Hey can I use your airfields here for my military? Can I set my missile launchers here? Can we build new military bases over here to protect you from China? Let's put an ammo dump, and some leaky fuel tanks over here. Remember our agreement- we are not subject to your jurisdiction. We need to have Taiwan for our first island chain strategy against China. According to the US and its allies, Taiwan is already independent, Tibet is not part of China, and Xinjiang should be independent because "genocide."

Russia was never really a favored member of the de facto alliance. Britain and the US had no problem making agreements with Japan which allowed Japan to engage in a war with Russia to secure effective dominance and control of the Korean peninsula when they defeated Russia in 1905 in the Russo-Japanese War. The western powers were content with their holdings elsewhere in East Asia including their concessions inside China. (The de facto alliance with the western imperial states only ended when Japan got too greedy.) When hundreds of thousands of peaceful Koreans rose up spontaneously in March and April 1919 to obtain their independence from Japanese colonization, thousands were killed and imprisoned by Japanese troops. Wikipedia noted this about Reuters reporting at the time-

In 1919, a number of Reuters reports falsely described the anti-colonial March 1st Movement protests in Korea as violent Bolshevik uprisings. South Korean researchers found that a number of these reports were cited in a number of international newspapers and possibly negatively influenced international opinion on Korea.

Ya think? Not much has changed since. In fact, Reuters which has some nonsense claim about objectivity in its journalism had a report today implicitly lamenting the fact, that propaganda loudspeakers aimed at North Korea weren't as effective in terms of range as they should have been in accordance with the South Korean purchase contract. Too bad, so sad. The irony here is that the official US diplomatic and military presence in South Korea last week, totally out of character, basically asked the South Korean Defense Minister Sin Won-shik, a far right ideologue, to cool it with the loudspeakers and the "free speech" leaflet balloon campaign being conducted against North Korea along the DMZ. The South Koreans close to the DMZ or maritime Northern Limit Lines don't like it either. It's a dangerous and reckless military provocation. But the Reuters article goes on to laud the effectiveness of propaganda loudspeakers as a means to bring "free ideas" to North Korea.

The US official requests may have, in part, been motivated by Putin's upcoming visit to North Korea expected to be tomorrow in some reports. There are also 2+2 talks slated to occur in Seoul between China and South Korean officials about the same time.

South Korea's loudspeakers face questions over reach into North

Still, for North Koreans who hear the South Korean messages or catchy K-pop tunes that are banned in the North, the broadcasts can have a significant psychological impact, Kim Sung-min said.

"These broadcasts play a role in instilling a yearning for the outside world, or in making them realize that the textbooks they have been taught from are incorrect," he said.

...

The angry North Korean reaction to the broadcasts also suggests the loudspeakers strike a nerve with the authoritarian country, said Steve Tharp, a retired U.S. Army officer who spent years working along the border.

"We know that the North Koreans find them partly effective because they have spent a lot of time getting them turned off," he said.

This is all bs. In fact, the use of loud noise in this political and military context is a weapon, a psychological weapon. It can be a form of psychological torture. Right wing thugs in South Korea, allegedly with a contact in the Yoon presidential office set themselves up outside former president Moon Jae-in's home not too long after Yoon took power, blasting the former president's residence and community with unacceptably loud noise broadcast in the immediate vicinity at all hours of day and night. A bogus claim of free speech was made in court to protect the harmful nuisance but was rejected allowing time and distance restrictions to be placed on the practice. Go figure. The content of the sound is completely immaterial as those subjected to it seek to escape the noise by any means possible, and if not suffer substantial mental duress from the physical intrusion of the noise into their sensory perception. It is sometimes labeled as low impact, allegedly leaving no signs of physical damage, yet very effective in causing distress.

I left out the sentence in the excerpt above about the two North Korean defectors saying they defected because they were influenced by the loudspeakers. The contention is not worthy of serious consideration for two reasons. First, defectors to South Korea say what that are told to say, by their intelligence minders. Second, even it if were true, is that worth it? Is it justified to place the lives of hundreds or thousands of people who may be injured, killed, or displaced by a military skirmish near the DMZ because the benefit might be that two persons from North Korea may take the chance to get shot at the Military Demarkation Line in a desperate bid for freedom? The contention is ridiculous on its face.


*6.19.24 note-corrected second paragraph quote and corrected attribution to Jung Se-hyeon vice Moon Chung-in.

Unbelievable- Yoon provokes a crisis and then leaves town

Below is my comment concerning Nodutol's interview on Breakthrough News-

How the US Uses South Korea and Japan As Pawns Against China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcbQrt6y73s


I don't know how the current military tension between North and South Korea can be intelligently discussed without a discussion of the demise of the 9.19.2018 military agreement negotiated between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un. The US was opposed to the agreement and associated cooperative initiatives to reduce military tensions from the outset. It actively lobbied against the agreement. In the same vein, the US allowed neo-cons to sabotage the Trump-Kim summit at Hanoi. The 9.19 agreement created buffer zones where military exercises and operations were either excluded or limited north and south of the DMZ/military demarcation line and within defined distances from the Northern Limit Lines in the East and West Seas. This agreement limited the chances for accidental military confrontations that might lead to war. The Yoon administration along with the US was opposed to the agreement and intended to get rid of it from the outset. With the active cooperation of the Yoon administration, the allies resumed massive military exercises without restrictions including live fire exercises near the DMZ and in the West Sea region which is a tinderbox. They have thereby set up a situation where disastrous events may occur such as the sinking of the ROK vessel Cheonan and the bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010.

Another key element missing from this analysis is a discussion of the new so called trilateral partnership the "new right" administration of Yoon Seok-yeol joined with the US and Japan. That South Korean submission to Japan is the result of US overreach whereby the US has succeeded in maneuvering South Korea into a quasi-alliance with Japan, without having resolved existing disputes between South Korea and Japan. The current South Korean administration is a pro Japanese faction (친일파) that really has little support domestically now that its true character has been plainly revealed. The Yoon administration sold out South Korea on key issues, including the war time forced labor issue, the comfort women issue, and the territorial dispute over Dokdo islets in the East Sea. Further the Yoon administration has agreed to share greater amounts of military secrets with Japan, and participate in trilateral military exercises that include Japan. South Korea also appears receptive to the display of the Japanese Rising Sun flag (욱일기) in South Korea, while entertaining negotiation of a so called facilitation agreement with Japan, which would in effect, allow movement of Japanese active duty personnel into South Korea. Yoon has stated previously that he could foresee circumstances when Japanese forces might be present in South Korea. These concessions are anathema to the majority of the South Korean public. The US attitude has always been "when are they going to get over it? This shows absolutely no understanding of the history of the region or the prevailing South Korean perspective toward Japan based upon its bitter experience of Japanese colonial rule.

One final note it's not really accurate to characterize North Korea and China as "allies." China has security interests in the Korean peninsula, natural trade interests, and and shared historical experiences. North Korea is quite jealous of its need to remain independent of China's dominance. At this point its safe to say that North Korean military cooperation with Russia is greater, and trade relations with both China and Russia need to be maintained to offset sanctions restrictions which have been eroded in the current geopolitical context.

On to Yoon's diplomatic tour of central Asian states-

There is high tension along the DMZ in Korea, including an incident in which warning shots were fired by the South at some North Korean soldiers who appeared to be on a work detail that crossed the MDL by mistake. While balloons fly across the DMZ carrying trash, and propaganda loudspeakers blared from the south, Yoon goes on a diplomatic tour of central Asian states to sign some "Korean silk road" commercial agreements. This just after he incredibly claims oil and gas have been discovered in the South Korean EEZ of the East Sea, after an exploration company with a multiyear contract abandoned the project. He and the first lady also skip town after the Anti-corruption Commission finds that there is nothing amiss with the first lady's acceptance of a Dior designer bag, from a Korean-American pastor who appeared to be seeking to influence public policy. Isn't it marvelous how things just come together? It is incredible that Yoon took his two top National Security Advisors with him when he left on his trip.

South Koreans generally are very receptive to persons who assimilate their language and culture, or even try to, although it is well known, that in other respects they discriminate against foreigners, immigrants and so on. I saw a video on national defense yesterday where the analyst (I think it was Kim Jong-tae) said he didn't think war with North Korea was likely to be imminent because there were as many as 2 million foreigners in South Korea now and there was no indication of the enormous effort it would take to get them out of the country which would be a potential indicator. This he thinks acts as a restraint on South Korea acting too agressively. But the warning shots incident in the DMZ yesterday suggests, that the abandonment of the 5km buffer zone, and the reestablishment of more watch posts inside the DMZ definitely creates more opportunity for conflict by mistake.

The Anti-Corruption Commission administrative finding of no crime of graft by the first lady was announced at close of business, when no one was left at the office, and the presidential couple had left the country. How fortunate for them! Meanwhile the new 22nd National Assembly is being boycotted by the Yoon's conservative PPP party.

Well, we've taken care of everything honey, let's take another international tour. Maybe that will help our poll numbers.


Correction, 6.16.2024- National Assembly member Kim Byong-ju, former CFC deputy commander, and retired four star general, disclosed yesterday that the warning shots fired at North Korean troops on the DMZ took place last Sunday and wasn't disclosed till Wednesday. He observed this was highly unusual and felt the late release of the information was to facilitate better optics for Yoon's untimely departure on his diplomatic tour of central Asia.

Apres moi, le deluge

(Source: 뉴스TVCHOSUN yutube 6.06.2024) '9·19 효력 정지' 다음날 뜬 B-1B, 7년 만에 한반도서 JDAM 투하. 지하 벙커까지 뚫는다. B-1B, which took off the day after the '9/19 suspension', dropped JDAM on the Korean Peninsula for the first time in 7 years. It (JDAM) penetrates an underground bunker.

This "war porn" as I call it, has been running non-stop for a couple of days in South Korea media. On some live feeds ramping up the war fever is virtually 24-7 (KBS, SBS, Yonhap). No doubt it's an extreme effort to bolster President Yoon's faltering public support after the disastrous April 10, elections. He hasn't changed his arbitrary authoritarian ways and his popularity continues to drop. There are other aspects to his domestic political crisis, which I won't bother to go into here. This is my critique of the ramp up in military exercises in South Korea, the recent formal rejection of the 9.19.2018 military agreement between North and South Korea, and the reintroduction of so called strategic assets by the US inside and around North Korea. Military firing exercises inside the former agreed buffer zones on either side of the military demarcation line, and Northern Limit Lines in the West and East Seas, are poorly conceived and highly counter-productive. The value pf practice strategic bombing runs is particularly ill considered. The balloon poop episodes from North Korea, were provoked by the Yoon administration and defector groups supported by US NGO's when they resumed shortly after "new right" President Yoon Seok-yeol assumed the presidential office in May 2022. It was clear during Yoon's campaign that he intended to dispose of the 9.19 military agreement negotiated by the prior Moon Jae-in administration.

(Source: YTN youtube 6.05.2024) 끝내 뽑힌 안전핀...최전방 배치 軍 '만반의 준비' Safety pin finally pulled out... Troop deployed to the front line 'fully prepared' Actually, in this report it is clear that live artillery/tank firing exercises by ROK ground forces took place within the former buffer zones earlier in January of this year. Interesting that the rejection of the 9.19 military agreement provisions by South Korea is referred to as pulling the pin in a hand grenade.

What is generally not understood is that the US strategic bombing threat, whether a decapitation strategy, or otherwise, is the exact reason why the development of nuclear weapons occurred in North Korea. In fact, nothing could be more deliberately calculated to create the exact response from the North, the allies ostensibly seek to prevent, namely further production of more advanced nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Thae Yong-ho has pointed out that the North Korean command and control system is now a doomsday machine or dead hand nuclear deterrent. Even if the central command bunker were destroyed, other commanders would be authorized to launch nuclear weapons. The myth of the "decapitation" strategy is that there is one leader carrying around a suitcase with a "button" in it to launch nuclear war. As Daniel Ellsberg explains in his Doomsday Machine, in nuclear theory this has never been a practical reality. It may have been at one time, in the process of developing a nuclear deterrent in each nuclear armed state, but it is mostly a political myth. No nuclear power presents only one or a few nuclear command centers to make it easy for the prospective enemy to eliminate their deterrent force. This is why some even hard right analysts realize that "bloody nose" and "decapitation" strategies are delusional and dangerous. There is no tactic, technology or military strategy to resolve the North Korean crisis, aggravated by "maximum pressure" and the failure to pursue diplomatic solutions. Dr. Hecker observed, in his book Hinge Points, that the neo-cons who wrecked nuclear talks at critical "hinge points" with North Korea, don't even understand the technical aspects of the harm they've done and increased risks to world peace they themselves created with their obstruction of US negotiations with North Korea.