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On August 28th, the North Korea denuclearization deal appears to be at a standstill, with little progress on both sides, after statements from both the US and North Korea.
On the morning of August 28th, at a national security conference, Trump administration officials offered mixed messages on North Korea’s commitment to denuclearization and struggled to explain the president’s abrupt decision Friday to cancel a planned trip to Pyongyang this week by his top diplomat, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
At the same conference, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, suggested the North Korean regime may be having second thoughts about its promise to give up its nuclear arsenal. Despite that, Haley claimed that the US was making progress in its diplomatic pressure to force North Korea to denuclearize.
“Look, are they wishing or maybe changing their mind on denuclearization? It’s possible,” Haley said. “This is going to be a tough process, but this is still going in the right direction.”
In the afternoon on the same day, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert also claimed that “there is progress being made” on denuclearization, even as she repeated President Donald Trump’s August 24th twitter complaints the North Korean regime appeared to be dragging its feet.
On August 24th, Trump announced Friday via Twitter that he was nixing Pompeo’s plans to travel to North Korea “because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The US President’s announcement came one day after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced he plans on visiting North Korea, following the announcement of the appointment State Department negotiator, Stephen Biegun, to lead the talks.
Pompeo’s visit was aimed at pressuring North Korea further, after the Trump-Kim Jong-Un meeting on June 12th, during which they signed an agreement in which North Korea promised to work toward a “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The US on its part, had to stop all military drills with South Korea, as well as eventually lift the sanctions on Kim’s country. Although the trip was cancelled Pompeo stated that he remained committed to the diplomatic push: “Despite the decision to delay my trip to Pyongyang, America stands ready to engage when it is clear Chairman Kim stands ready to deliver on the commitments that he made at the Singapore,” the Secretary of State said. “The United States, like the rest of the world, is looking forward to North Korea’s compliance” with denuclearization.
Sputnik cited the Washington Report, which on August 27th reported that Pompeo’s visit had allegedly been cancelled due to a letter sent by top North Korean officials who indicated their wariness about the success of future talks. The Washington Post cited two unnamed US administration officials, who claimed that Pompeo received a letter from Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of the Korean Workers Party Central Committee, the ruling party that governs North Korea.
Sputnik also reported that the letter reportedly warned that denuclearization talks between the two countries were “again at stake and may fall apart” and that the process could not move forward, CNN reported August 28th, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The North Korean government’s position regarding the cancellation was expressed in state newspaper Rodong Sinmun. It accused he US of “double-dealing” and “hatching a criminal plot” against Pyongyang, as cited by Sputnik. The newspaper also claimed that Japan and the US were engaged in a military exercise, rehearsing an attack on the North Korean capital. “Such acts prove that the US is hatching a criminal plot to unleash a war against the DPRK and commit a crime which deserves merciless divine punishment in case the US fails in the scenario of the DPRK’s unjust and brigandish denuclearization first,” the newspaper said.
The North Korean government have made little progress since the deal, as reported by USA Today. However, Sputnik cited Dr. Christine Hong, associate professor of critical race and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz and a member of the Korea Policy Institute, who claims that North Korea has actually taken serious steps. She noted that so far North Korea “has not only capped its nuclear testing for something like 200 days, it’s basically suspended that, and that’s huge. It’s dismantled nuclear testing sites. The other thing that it’s done is it released three Korean-Americans who were in prison in North Korea for committing acts against the state. And then recently, it released the remains, for repatriation, of 55 American servicemen who were killed during the ‘hot fighting’ period of the Korean War. What the United States has done is suspend one war exercise. And so, if you’re looking at the balance sheet, it’s actually not the case that North Korea’s not keeping up its end of the bargain; it’s really the United States.”
Hong further claimed that the US is taking steps back, regarding the North Korea issue. “What we are witnessing now is a return to US policy as usual. Far from being a spectator to an inter-Korean peace process, the Trump administration, as its skewed portrayal of North Korea’s request for a peaceful resolution to the Korean War as ‘belligerent’ reveals, is playing an obstructionist role, all during a time of historic inter-Korean rapprochement,” she said.
North Korea has requested some easing up of the sanctions, as it wishes for Washington to provide some concessions, however their requests have seemingly all been rejected.
Further, Trump seemed to lay the responsibility for the stall in denuclearization at China’s feet. Trump has seen Chinese President Xi Jinping as key to putting pressure on North Korea leader Kim Jong Un to cooperate with US policy goals, Sputnik reported on August 24th.
On August 25th, China responded to Trump’s accusations, condemning his comments. “The claims made by the US contradict the facts; they are irresponsible. We express deep concern in this regard and have already made a submission to the US side,” Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said.
Earlier this month Sputnik reported that Trump similarly criticized Beijing, reportedly saying “China may be getting in our way” with regards to North Korea.
In response, on August 1st, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang had the following to say: “China’s position on the settlement of the situation on the Korean Peninsula is well known to everyone, from the very beginning we have made significant efforts to advance the settlement of the Korean Peninsula problem, and our efforts are recognized by the international community.”
Despite all of the mass media narratives that North Korea is not fulfilling any of its duties under the agreement, that may not exactly be the case, and it does appear that US may be the one failing to keep up its end of the deal.
Propaganda.
What Korea needs is to buy time to fully replenish their WMD arsenal.
Nuclear weapons, ICBMS, chemical weapons, biological weapons, you name it.
Did Kim dismantle nuclear weapons test site ? Yes, that is true.
But to be honest, he didn’t need it anymore because it collapsed and started leaking radioactive waste.
So Kim had to close it anyway.
And did Kim stopped testing delivery systems ?
Yes, that is true.
But to be honest, Kim was unable to create domestic reliable ICBMs for decades and the recent breakthrough was rather based on buying of old USSR technology blueprints stolen by rogue Ukraine then on domestic research.
So Kim needn’t any tests any more because all tests were already done.
So my conclusion is, that USA showed some “muscles” and Korea showed some “goodwill” and nothing changed. Except of the fact, that NK is quietly building their WMD arsenal and USA is bullying all the rest of the world (including NK regime).
They can’t built more of these due to sanctions going on. The good will they show is to have immediate loosening of sanctions even by little due to stifling of their economy and livelihood in general.
North Korea demand is always clear which is a permanent end to the Korean war with their government preserved already actually a lot of concession for them and their immediate strategic ally China that originally demand complete withdrawal of US military presence in Korea.
I’m afraid NK regime can produce WMD and they never stop doing it. As president Putin said, they will rather eat grass but they will not step up their nuclear program, especially when their safety is not guaranteed and USA, South Korea and Japan is
threatening them.
China is selling all necessary materials to NK military-industrial complex by the way
because USA is already in full scale trade war with China and China has not any “motivation” to obey any dictate from USA any more (regarding South China sea, Taiwan, NK …..).
From my perspective the main culprits are stupid neocons in the USA and their “America first” policy.
The second one is narcissistic Trump and his infamous speech in UN about extinction of NK people.
The third one is paranoid and rogue Kim.
All together – the risk of nuclear war increased and was never so high before.
They don’t have the material and perhaps the facilities currently to mass produced their warhead. No what they want is assurance that the US regime do not invade and stop any future plans of invasion to deposed their government.
Kim by no means being paranoid here with US consecutively invaded isolated country such as their own like Libya and Iraq despite their assurance of non proliferation agreement.
These problem is much easier to solve which is for china to get the NK into defense pacts and lend lease strong air defense units in exchange of their non proliferation treaty. But both Russia and China don’t have any faith to ‘Kim’ government dynasties.
North Korea have a defense treaty with China.
One declared and officially binding one. NK fears China would just step back in favor of S Korean government which is quite high in possibility.
Are you saying there are two treaties?
AFAIK, there is only one defense treaty which was made back in the 60s, and is up for renewal every 10 years. President Xi speech was just restating that there was one.
I see.
There are 2 problems:
1. Kim cant be trusted
2. USA want to overthrow Kim’s regime and make new US military bases on Russian and Chinese borders there
So the China is supplying NK regime to survive, but not to expand much.
But I’m pretty sure that NK is still producing new nukes and what is even worse, hydrogen bombs. They don’t need to have hundreds of them. Couple of them are enough to wipe out Japan and disrupt all electronic devices over North America…
What delivery means they have ? Terrorist smuggler ? Spare me the stupid far fetched idea that NK can deliver their wmd to US territory. Their ballistic missiles is just as far as guam and that is just a ballistic non sophisticated missile one.
Their weapons fully deterrent for SK and to lesser degree Japan. Whole Korean is taken hostage yet what the US action ? Not much consideration towards collateral damage.
US can’t be trusted. They do not have to resort to the WMD if the US regime did interested in keeping their words. Nope.
The best course of action is to sell missile interception systems to Japan whilst encouraging them do develop nuclear weapons of their own.
In fact, Japan have all nuke components ready, the only thing missing is assembly nuclear warheads an put them on missiles…
South Korea also have the knowledge to build them. It wouldn’t surprise anyone that they have the components hidden.
That means Japan, SK and USA could all have nuclear bombs ready and carpet bomb NK with nukes at the same time to secure victory and our freedom.
Free? Sure, free from existence when both China and Russia launches their own nukes.
Yes, I’m sure in an emergency they could assemble weaponized nuclear material in a flash, but in these scenarios that would still be a little too late. You can never be sure with both China and North Korea so close to you.
Except the damn things aren’t very popular in Japan on the account of two having gone off in that country.
As for the missile interceptors, the track record of the US system is kinda meh. It’s basically a money transferring scheme to funnel tax payer money to the shareholders of the company that builds them. That’s the only thing it does really well.
Volnurable countries must develop effective Nuclear weapons and global ICBM to protect their nation from massacre due to US, UK brutality.
Any “local” nuclear war (like US invasion in NK) will immediately escalate to global nuclear exchange.
For example. If USA invade NK and Kim decides to nuke Japan and USA, USA will retaliate on NK with their own nukes, but at the same moment Russia and China will retaliate on all NATO countries .
It may takes some twenty minutes from the first nuke drop and all hell loose.
When some drug abusers, losers and brutel head choppers like US, UK and their stooges present in our world then this could happened any time.
I am not rich but I do not want to be doxxed. is there a way to donate money.. without revealing anything more than a transfter of money?
I guess on the subject of N.Korea.
There is sound assurance of peace as long as things go as planned. it will not be perfect. but in comparison, things may as well look perfect.
God Bless.
US havent shifted agenda since the Sitting Bull days:
“When white man find land, Indians running it, no taxes, no debt,
plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, clean water. Women did all the work,
medicine man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing;
all night having sex.”
“Only white man dumb enough to think he could improve system like that.”
The US has never had any intention of making peace with North Korea, the US has always wanted a state of war, the USA cannot exist without war.