North Korea (Superthread)

[tomahawk6]

This will be the usual Nork rope a dope.They wont be giving up their nuke program.

 

[YZT580]

I can't recall their ever asking for a direct meeting the the U.S. president before though

 

[Loachman]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/north-korea-talks-trump-strategy-should-be-ambitious/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=180209_G-File&utm_term=GFile

Three Out-of-the-Box Options on North Korea

By Nicholas Grossman

March 9, 2018 6:30 AM

After the Olympics, South Korean envoys met directly with Kim Jong-un in North Korea - itself a small diplomatic breakthrough - to head off increasing tensions over joint American–South Korean military exercises scheduled for April. Kim surprised them by proposing talks with the United States and putting North Korea’s nuclear program on the table, backing this up with a promise to suspend nuclear and missile testing while the negotiations go on.

That’s big. Not that we should take Kim at his word - I doubt North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons - but his openness to diplomacy is a positive development, especially when accompanied by a voluntary testing freeze.

The United States should take this unexpected opportunity to think outside the box, perhaps making a grand proposal of its own.

Why would North Korea negotiate now? One possibility is that Trump’s version of Nixon’s “madman theory” yielded some success.

As many analysts have noted, the costs of attacking North Korea are prohibitively high: There would be thousands of South Korean fatalities within minutes, before U.S. air power could stop them, followed by a prolonged confrontation with potentially millions more casualties; at worst, a great power such as China might come to the North’s defense. The U.S. wouldn’t shy away if North Korea started a war, but these risks are sufficient to deter America from firing first. The Kim regime knows all this, which reduces its incentives to acquiesce to demands. It has been under sanction for years, but has managed to stay in power while advancing its missile and nuclear capabilities.

But if Trump could convince North Korea (and China) that he might be crazy enough to attack, Kim would be more willing to make concessions. Trump has issued a series of threats, on Twitter and elsewhere, that go far beyond what his predecessors did. He’s ordered additional forces to the region, such as three carrier groups conducting exercises in the waters between South Korea and Japan in November 2017, in a powerful show of force. And in January 2018, Trump interviewed North Korea expert Victor Cha for U.S. ambassador to South Korea - but the nomination fell through over Cha’s opposition to a pre-emptive strike.

This heightened risk of American attack gives Kim motivation to negotiate.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

One theory I saw is that they think that NK will get China to host to the meetings and then they can claim any success, furthering their diplomatic muscles.

 

[a_majoor]

Dilber creator Scott Adams should be putting up a post titled "I told you so". He has been blogging about the DPRK and seems to have been able to follow President Trump's thought process or game plan:

https://www.nysun.com/national/dilbert-scoops-them-all-on-inside-story-of-trump/90212/

‘Dilbert’ Scoops ’em All On the Inside Story Of Trump Korea Talks
By IRA STOLL, Special to the Sun | March 12, 2018

Give “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He deserves it for understanding and explaining all along what’s been going on with President Trump and North Korea, in a way that the coastal establishment elites missed because of their blinding contempt for Trump.

For those who haven’t been following the political commentary of Mr. Adams, it’s worth going back and reading.

In an April 12, 2017, blog post headlined “The North Korea Reframe,” Mr. Adams wrote about how Mr. Trump had reframed North Korea as a challenge to China.

“President Trump has said clearly and repeatedly that if China doesn’t fix the problem in its own backyard, the USA will step in to do what China couldn’t get done,” Mr. Adams wrote. “See the power in that framing? China doesn’t want a weak ‘brand.’...His reframing on North Korea is pitch-perfect. We’ve never seen anything like this.”

Mr. Adams followed up with an April 17, 2017, post headlined “How To Structure a Deal With North Korea.” He suggests giving North Korea “a story to save face.” He went on, “In persuasion language, you need to give North Korea a ‘fake because.’ They probably already want peace, but they don’t have a good public excuse for why they would cave to pressure and settle for it. Giving them something that has little value but can be exaggerated to seem like it has great value becomes the ‘fake because.’”

In a July 5, 2017, post, “Solving the North Korea Situation,” Mr. Adams wrote about the possibility of shifting from a win-lose framework on such a deal to a win-win framework, including a “100-year deal” leading to reunification.

In a July 31, 2017, post, headlined “People Keep Telling Me To Stop Blogging About North Korea,” Mr. Adams wrote, “My critics have been extra vocal lately in saying I should stop writing about North Korea because I have no expertise in that area. So I decided to talk about North Korea some more.”

In a September 5, 2017, post, Mr. Adams wrote, “in Kim Jong Un I suspect we have a negotiating partner who understands all dimensions.... we are also closer than we have ever been to a permanent solution.”

And in a January 3, 2018, post Mr. Adams rebutted critics who called President Trump’s tweet about having a bigger nuclear button than North Korea “crazy.”

Mr. Adams wrote, “what is missed in the hysterics over wording is that President Trump and Kim Jong Un are negotiating personally, albeit in public. And I think it is safe to say both players know they are being over-the-top with their trash-talk. The odds of a nuclear miscalculation based on anything said so far is effectively zero.”

He went on, “while it might look to many observers as two crazy leaders heading for a nuclear showdown, to me it looks like two colorful characters who probably have a weird kind of respect for each other.”

A January 17, 2018, Mr. Adams post headlined “How North Korea Can Become Switzerland of the East” noted, “Kim Jong Un went to school in Switzerland. He knows it as a country that gets just about everything right and does it without a traditional army.”

Mr. Adams hasn’t posted about North Korea on his blog, at least so far as I can tell, since President Trump earlier this month accepted a North Korean offer of direct talks. But if Mr. Adams does write something, an accurate headline might be, “I told you so.”

The Trump-North Korea talks could end inconclusively, or even dangerously, so the story isn’t over yet. On the basis of what’s happened so far, though, it certainly looks like Mr. Adams was correct. Mr. Trump’s tactics, rather than leading to war, have brought the North Koreans to the bargaining table.

Compare Mr. Adams’ take to elite opinion. As recently as February 1, in an editorial headlined, “Playing With Fire and Fury on North Korea,” the New York Times editorial board said, “It’s hard to come away from the State of the Union address without a heightened sense of foreboding about President Trump’s intentions toward North Korea. The signs increasingly point to unilateral American military action....

“Mr. Trump seemed to be building a case for war on emotional grounds... such words were in line with his history of bellicosity toward North Korea... Last year he threatened to answer North Korean provocations with fire and fury ‘the likes of which this world has never seen before.’... Mr. Trump’s preoccupation with military action and refusal to seriously pursue a diplomatic overture to North Korea are foolhardy.”

If anyone’s “foolhardy” here, it’s not Mr. Trump, but the Times editorial writers, who apparently hate Mr. Trump so much that they couldn’t see the truth of what Scott Adams had been writing for nearly a year. Part of the point of journalism is to explain to readers what’s really happening rather than stoking false, anxiety-provoking (if click-generating) fears or “foreboding.” By that standard, on the evidence so far, Mr. Adams has done a far better job on the North Korea story than the Times has.

Whatever power the Pulitzer committees have, individual readers have a power, too. That is to treat “elite” commentary with the skepticism it deserves, and to keep an eye out for outside-the-box thinkers such as Mr. Adams. If the fears about war with North Korea were unwarranted, maybe the fears about a Trump-tariff-provoked trade war are also phony, and there, too, presidential rhetoric and actions are being used in a fashion more calculated than reckless. At least it’s worth keeping an open mind about the possibility.

 

[a_majoor]

A longer article on President Trump's efforts to bring the DPRK to the table, by Austin Bay. The full article will be posted in the long article thread, but it is interesting to note that President Trump outlined a great deal of his strategy as far back as 1999. Obviously this has been thought through and refined in the nearly two decades between conception and execution, so while positive results cannot be guaranteed, it is still a great achievement to execute this much of the plan between January 2017 and now:

http://observer.com/2018/03/how-donald-trump-got-north-korea-open-to-giving-up-its-nuclear-weapons/

How Trump’s ‘Maximum Pressure’ Strategy Got North Korea to the Table
By Austin Bay • 03/13/18 6:00am

Donald Trump’s October 24, 1999 Meet the Press interview with Tim Russert is a historically illuminating flash forward to the most surprising, promising and history-altering opportunity since the Soviet Union collapsed: “denuclearizing” North Korea without the could-be belligerents waging a hideously destructive war that scars East Asia and seeds a global economic depression.

Yes, those are the stakes: millions of dead and trillions of debt.

In the interview, Russert says Trump once indicated if he were president he would attack North Korea preemptively in order to end its nuclear threat.

Despite Russert’s vapors and wailing, Trump’s grammatically-challenged beer and barbecue answer is a superb twofer. One: Trump answers Russert’s core question. Two: Trump accurately summarizes the American government’s spaghetti-spined responses to North Korea’s slow but insidious quest for nuclear weapons.

Trump says, “First I’d negotiate and be sure I could get the best deal possible… These people in three or four years are going to have nuclear weapons… The biggest problem this world has is nuclear proliferation. And we have a country out there in North Korea which is sort of whacko, which is not a bunch of dummies and they are developing nuclear weapons… If that negotiation doesn’t work then better solve the problem now than solve it later.”

Trump continues, “…Jimmy Carter, who I really like, he went over there. It was so soft these people are just laughing at us…. You know that this country went out and gave them nuclear reactors, free fuel for 10 years, we virtually tried to bribe them into stopping and they’re continuing to do what they are doing. And they are laughing at us… You want to do it in five years when they have warheads all over the place, every one of them pointed to New York City, to Washington… Is that when you want to do it? You’d better do it now. And if they think you’re serious… They’ll negotiate and it’ll never come to that.”

Trump is a man who intuitively seeks and finds leverage in business negotiations, and his reply to Russert reflects that. Since his election in November 2016, that skill is now applied to two entwined problems from Hell that for six decades have boggled U.S. foreign policy officials and the vain goblins at the Council on Foreign Relations: ending The Korean War and halting nuclear proliferation.

 

[pbi]

On most grounds I have little time for Trump, but in this case I wish wholeheartedly for his success. A successful reduction of tensions in that part of the world could have interesting second and third order effects.

The big question in my mind is the role of China. How will they view a course of action which might ultimately lead to a unified Korea on their border? And possibly a Western-leaning Korea (If the re-unification of Germany is a useful model here? Would they see it as restricting their strategic freedom of action? Or as an unwelcome US diplomatic coup on their doorstep?

 

[Journeyman]

...... possibly a Western-leaning Korea (If the re-unification of Germany is a useful model here...

I think any reference to Germany may be tenuous at best.

Trump is no Konrad Adenauer;  previewing border wall prototypes (kind of like Ikea Berlin Wall shopping) after replacing the Secretary of State with an unquestioning yes-man -- a very  Politburo-esque move -- Trump is on the opposite side of that history.

As for the dictatorships' leadership, Egon Krenz (GDR's General Secretary at the time of reunification), wanted Germany together under Western-style democratic governance.  One of his big, previous stumbling blocks, besides the Soviet Union of course, was his predecessor, Erich Honecker, who loved the power he had (and I suspect, feared what the East Germans would do to him if given the freedom).  Despite Kim Jong Un's recent calls for Korean unification, he is much  more of a Honecker than a Krenz.

 

[Edward Campbell]

My, personal, belief is that China wants the Koreas reunified under Seoul's hand ... North Korea is a drag on China ~ it is, from time to time, a handy tool to use against Japan and America but, on balance, it has far, Far, FAR, less "value" than does South Korea which is a major investor in China and a major source of technology.

I wonder: does Team Trump have any idea about what it wants to do in, for, about, with and to East Asia?

What is useful is that President Trump and Kim Jong-un are "talking," or, at least, exchanging rude Tweets. Churchill was, of course, right about "jaw jaw" being better than "war war."

I also wonder about the role and position and loyalties of Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of the North Korean loony dictator who made such a splash during the Winter Olympics and who may have extended the invitation for preliminary talks. I say "loyalties" because I suspect that many North Koreans have deeply divided loyalties including to Korea, period.

 

[a_majoor]

The ROK deploys an anti-artillery brigade with heavy, long range precision missiles to strike the DPRK's artillery parks. They have also recently announced the purchase of more "Taurus" long range bunker busting cruise missiles, capable of being launched by ROK F-15's. The ability to push back against the DPRK's forward deployment of artillery in hardened bunkers and shelters is increasing:

https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2018/03/19/south-korea-to-deploy-artillery-killer-to-destroy-north-korean-bunkers/

South Korea to deploy ‘artillery killer’ to destroy North Korean bunkers
By: Jeff Jeong     1 day ago

SEOUL, South Korea — The South Korean Army plans to deploy surface-to-surface missiles in a newly created counter-artillery brigade by October, with the aim of destroying North Korea’s hardened long-range artillery sites near the Demilitarized Zone, should conflict erupt on the Korean Peninsula.

The plan is part of South Korea‘s defense reform for developing an offensive operations scheme, a defense source said. The tactical missiles are developed locally.

“The Ministry of National Defense has approved a plan to create an artillery brigade under a ground forces operations command to be inaugurated in October. The plan is to be reported to President Moon Jae-in next month as part of the ‘Defense Reform 2.0’ policy,” the source said. “The brigade’s mission is fairly focused on destroying North Korea’s long-range guns more rapidly and effectively, should conflict arise”

The three-year development of the GPS-guided Korea Tactical Surface-to-Surface Missile was completed last year. Hanwha Corporation, a precision-guided missile maker, led the development in partnership with the state-funded Agency for Defense Development, or ADD.

The missile, dubbed “artillery killer,” has a range of more than 120 kilometers and can hit targets with a 2-meter accuracy, according to ADD and Hanwha officials.

Four missiles can be launched almost simultaneously from a fixed launch pad. The missiles can penetrate bunkers and hardened, dug-in targets several meters underground.

“North Korea’s long-range artillery systems deployed along the border pose significant threats to the security of the capital area of South Korea,” said retired Lt. Gen. Shin Won-sik, a former operational director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The counter-artillery brigade is expected to play a key role in neutralizing the North’s long-range artillery fire power, as the new surface-to-surface missile is capable of destroy the hideout of artillery forces.”

The artillery brigade is also to operate the Chunmoo Multiple Launch Rocket System, which can fire three types of ammunition: 130mm nonguided rockets; 227mm nonguided rockets; and 239mm guided rockets. The hitting range of the rockets are 36 kilometers, 80 kilometers and 160 kilometers, respectively.

According to the 2016 Defense White Paper, North Korea has some 8,600 towed and self-propelled artillery, as well as 5,500 multiple-launch rockets. Seventy percent of them were deployed near the border.

North Korea has forward-deployed 340 long-range guns that can fire 15,000 rounds per hour at Seoul and the surrounding metropolitan area.

 

[tomahawk6]

Kim isnt going to give away anything of value.he wont give up his nukes.That is a program with Iran also as a beneficiary.If Iran shows off it has a nuke then Saudi will buy one from Pakistan.Kim wants sanctions gone how he accomplishes that is gonna be very intriguing.He may offer to end his current program leaving his current weapons alone.Alot of ways to game the system.

 

[Loachman]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/north-korean-artillery-koksan-gun-could-be-inaccurate-unreliable/

The 170 mm Koksan, North Korea’s Not-So-Frightening Tool of Terror

By Mike Fredenburg

April 5, 2018 6:30 AM

The DPRK's long gun could become wildly inaccurate and unreliable if it is used to attack Seoul.

Even if you typically don’t read defense-related publications, there’s a good chance you have read about North Korea’s fearsome self-propelled Koksan guns, which are perched along its border with South Korea. These 170 mm guns are, it is said, poised to rain thousands of deadly rounds upon the heads of the helpless citizens of Seoul if the DPRK is provoked.

Driving home the threat, the North Korean regime has for years threatened to use its artillery to turn Seoul to into a “sea of fire.” The threat is taken seriously by Western journalists. In 2003, Tony Karon wrote in Time that North Korea has the capacity to “flatten Seoul in the first half-hour of any confrontation.” In 2009, David C. Kang and Victor D. Cha speculated in Foreign Policy that a war on the Korean peninsula would cost about a trillion dollars in property damage and 1 million casualties, including 52,000 U.S. military casualties. In 2017, an article by Franz-Stefan Gady ran in the Diplomat with the description: “The first 24 hours of war on the Korean peninsula could cost hundreds of thousands of lives.”

But these articles and their ilk are long on emotion and short on knowledgeable analysis. They are playing right into the hands of Kim’s propaganda campaign, a campaign designed to convince an uneducated Western public and appeasement-minded politicians that even a North Korea with deliverable nuclear weapons and a history of attacking and killing South Koreans is preferable to the devastation the dictatorial regime can unleash with its conventional weapons.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Is this (from the South China Morning Post) why Kim Jong-un offered to suspend nuclear tests? Does he have no choice? Did his test site (mountain) collapse?

 

[Journeyman]

Did his test site (mountain) collapse?

I wonder what the prevailing winds are, for anyone downrange.  Chernobyl? Fukushima? Semipalatinsk test site?  op:

 

[Edward Campbell]

I wonder what the prevailing winds are, for anyone downrange.  Chernobyl? Fukushima? Semipalatinsk test site?  op:

That appears to be the main Chinese concern.

The mountain is in the far North, very near the Chinese border and within "range" of a couple of smallish, i.e. one or two million people, Chinese cities.

 

[tomahawk6]

If he follows through and shuts down his missile program,the US will likely agree with pulling the US Army out of the ROK,but leave the USAF in place to hedge our bets.

 

[kkwd]

A meeting the likes of that hasn't been seen in a long time. But everybody knows you hope for the best and expect the worst when dealing with North Korea.

https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/north-korea-south-korea-summit-intl/

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Is this (from the South China Morning Post) why Kim Jong-un offered to suspend nuclear tests? Does he have no choice? Did his test site (mountain) collapse?

I think it played part of it, the site was problematic and was starting to piss off his main ally. NK as a regional thorn was useful, a nuke armed NK might get uppity towards China as well and was creating to much of a threat to Chinese plans. It was also clear that instead of the US backing down, they were going to ramp up the defenses of SK and emplace weapons and systems that would reach into China as well. NK can't compete at that level and it's once vaunted conventional artillery threat was quickly being targeted for destruction in event of a war. The USSR could not afford an arms race with the west, NK never stood a chance. I don't trust him one bit and expect him to stab everyone in the back the first chance he gets.

 

[George Wallace]

A friend of mine wrote this, and many Trump haters are not going to like it:

Trump probably deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for bring DPRK to the table. Here's why

First, he appeared unpredictable, radically different from the last 30 years of American leadership, and that alone was enough to scare North Korea. If you doubt this I challenge you to ask this question: Did you ever utter a phrase similar to “Trump as President is terrifying” or “Trump will lead us to World War III”?

Even if you didn't, plenty of others did.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-d-taylor/donald-trumps-recipe-for-_1_b_9527534.html

If leftist Americans were scared, we should know damn well that the hermit kingdom - that cannot match America’s power in any sense - would be terrified.

Second, Trump directly used harsh language, direct threats of FIRE & FURY, and directly lashed out at North Korea and KJU. Similar to the first point, this was so different and intimidating that it provoked North Korea into trying to display its strength on a regular basis. And eventually those shows-of-force failed. Failed to the point of the DPRK’s test site collapsing.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/31/collapse-north-korea-nuclear-test-site-leaves-200-dead/


Third, Trump closed sanction loopholes which made past sanctions hurt more.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-us-envoy/u-s-wants-to-see-north-korea-sanctions-bite-no-options-ruled-out-idUSKCN1BQ1NP


Fourth, Trump pressured China. China has long treated the DPRK like a bastard little brother, defending them reluctantly but ultimately only out of their own interests. China doesn’t rely on North Korea, in fact China’s trade with South Korea has been far more profitable, but China relies on there being a buffer zone between their borders and the United States (in addition to the previously stated fact China doesn’t want 25,000,000 refugees).

But who is China’s largest trading partner? The United States, of course.

https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/chn/

So Trump threatened China: put pressure on North Korea or we will put pressure on you. China started by rejecting a coal shipment from North Korea.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/11/china-rejects-north-korean-coal-shipments-after-missile-test-and-u-s-pressure/

When China wasn’t helping enough, Trump called them out.

https://edition.cnn.com/.../president-donald.../index.html



Fifth, Trump created new sanctions and got China to join in. That first time was in September 2017.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/21/trump-north-korea-executive-order-china

He issued another round in February 2018.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/us/politics/trump-north-korea-sanctions.html


Sixth, Trump demonstrated that having a superpower "big brother" as a patron would not deter him from military action against a rogue regime.

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/russia-threatens-retaliation-for-any-u-s-strike-on-syria-1208188995617

Trump set this example with his action against the Syrian regime, despite Russian patronage of Assad.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43769332



Seventh, Trump committed to a dramatic show of force with the deployment of carriers within striking range of DPRK.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4889670/north-korea-us-navy-aircraft-carrier-battle-latest-group-war-games-korean-peninsula/



Eighth, Trump's willingness to buck decades of US foreign policy consensus presented KJU the best opportunity for normalizing relations he'll ever have. The US Deep State (i.e. all the bureaucrats, academics, think tanks and corporate interests) who couldn't visualize NK coming to the table, constrained previous administrations through close-minded advice... Trump was arrogant enough to disregard this advice, knowing it was born from repetition and resignation.


President Trump did not single-handedly bring Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table, but he sure as hell was the primary motivator. President Xi and President Moon deserve credit too. Hell, even Kim Jong-Un, for the criminal he is, deserves credit for bringing his country to the table. We may not even get peace or denuclearization, as much as that sucks to acknowledge, but the fact we are even having this discussion outside of a thought experiment is something President Trump deserves credit for.

What's amazing is that leftist malcontents are furious that Trump may actually earn a Nobel Peace Prize when Obama got his just for showing up with the right skin colour.

So?  Is he crazy like a fox?

 

[SeaKingTacco]

I have no idea how this is all going to end up, but it sure is better right now in the Koreas than it has been for years.