As Sanctions on North Korea Remain, Kim’s Economic Development Goals May Recede

WASHINGTON, LELEMUKU.COM - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may not be able to achieve his economic development goals given the divergent ideas over denuclearization exhibited by Washington and Pyongyang after the Hanoi summit, said experts.

After the Hanoi summit broke down last month over discussions of Washington’s demand on denuclearization and Pyongyang’s demand on sanctions relief, Kim made a first public statement emphasizing economic development, a goal he set for this year during his New Year’s Day speech.

If the sanctions are not lifted, North Korea and its citizens will likely to face tougher economic conditions this year.

North Korea’s main state media outlet, Korea Central News Agency (KCNA), reported on Saturday that Kim stressed last week “the need to concentrate all efforts of information and motivation on accelerating socialist economic construction.” KCNA added that Kim emphasized the [North] Korean people should “further display their might in the spirit of self-reliance.”

Ahead of the report, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton told Fox Business Network last week the U.S. is looking to increase sanctions if Pyongyang is not willing to denuclearize.

“They’re not going to get relief from the crushing economic sanctions that have been imposed on them,” Bolton said. “We’ll look at ramping those sanctions up in fact.”

A State Department official said on Thursday that the U.S. is not looking to provide exemptions to South Korea to resume joint economic projects with North Korea, which Seoul has been pushing for since the first inter-Korean summit in April.

Missile sites

Based on commercial satellite imagery, North Korea appeared to be rebuilding the Sohae Satellite Launching Station at Tongchang-ri last week. Pyongyang began to dismantle the largest missile engine test site in the country after the first summit with the U.S.in Singapore in June.

Movements around the Samundong facility near Pyongyang were also detected last week, suggesting North Korea might be preparing for a missile launch.

Built in 2012, the Samundong facility's mission is the development of long-range missiles and space-launch vehicles, such as the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile, which analysts agree is capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

Experts said Kim will not be able to develop North Korea’s economy, one of the world’s most opaque, without a sanctions lift from the U.S.

According to South Korea’s central bank, North Korea’s economy shrank 3.5 percent in 2017, a year after the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions banning North Korea’s key exports including coal, textiles and fisheries and limited its imports of oil. Without the income derived from selling those export commodities, the North Korean economy is likely to face limits on its growth.

“Sanctions are really serious obstacles to the prospects for North Korea to fully develop its economy,” said Scott Snyder, director of the U.S.-Korea policy program at the Council of Foreign Relations.

Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the North Korean economy is likely to dwindle as the result of sanctions.

“Kim’s economy is in difficult shape, squeezed by sanctions,” Manning said. “Some think it is likely to contract in 2019.”

Snyder said North Korea will likely continue to look for ways to bypass sanctions, and turn to Russia and China, which have been willing partners in that effort in the past. But, he thinks that Pyongyang is unlikely to get very far with Moscow and Beijing.

Since the U.S.-North Korean summit process started in June, Snyder said China has eased off enforcing sanctions in the past two months.

"But I believe that China is willing to continue to apply sanctions up to a point, and that the level of relaxation on the part of China is not going to be sufficient to meet North Korea’s desire toward its needs," he added.

Joshua Stanton, a Washington-based attorney who helped draft the North Korea Sanctions Act in 2016, thinks the consequence of sanctions are not rigorous enough at the current level to deter evasions by North Korea.

“So far, they are not,” Stanton said. “You need to go out to Chinese banks that continue to launder money for North Korea. And although the Trump administration threatened that, it hasn’t followed through with that threat.”

US legislation

A day before the Hanoi summit that took place Feb. 27-28, Congressman Brendan Boyle, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, introduced a bill calling for the prohibition of lifting sanctions on North Korea.

Stanton said Congress will likely look for ways to make sanctions stronger now that North Korea has demonstrated its unwillingness at the Hanoi summit to agree to U.S. demands on denuclearization.

Ken Gause, director of the International Affairs Group at the Center for Naval Analyses, said North Korea is most likely to turn to South Korea for concessions and look to resume inter-Korean projects, such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Mount Kumgang tourism, which South Korea has been planning to discuss with the U.S. prior to beginning preparatory work because of potential sanctions violations.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex that opened in 2004 included factories where South Korean manufacturers could employ North Korean workers for low wages. It was shut down in 2016 following a North Korean nuclear test. South Korean tours to the venerated Mount Kumgangended in 2008 after a South Korean tourist was shot by a North Korean guard.

Gause said, “It will definitely make it more difficult for [South Korean President Moon Jae-in] to just provide concessions to North Korea with the United States taking a hardline following Hanoi.”

Snyder thinks “the inter-Korean projects cannot go ahead under current circumstance because they would pursue contrary to the sanctions efforts,” and if South Korea tries to resume the projects with North Korea, “it would definitely create tension.”

“So I believe South Korea is going to get essentially a red light on the idea of large-scale economic cooperation," he added.

Gause, on the other hand, thinks inter-Korean economic projects could help U.S. negotiate denuclearization with North Korea.

“If the South Koreans were able to get some sanctions relief and provide North Korea with some resources, maybe reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex or Mount Kumgang, that could actually lay the path for better negotiations with the United States down the line than if we just take a hard line against North Korea, and they go into a shell,” said Gause.

After the Hanoi summit, Snyder said North Korea is looking for a way to boost its leverage over the U.S. position by making a preparation to resume testing.

“One leverage that North Korea can use to push back on the U.S. position is the idea of making preparations for possible resumption of testing," he said. “It’s kind of logical move for North Korea to make as a means by which to send the signal that the North Koreans also have some leverage and they’re not just going to roll over.” (Christy Lee-VOA)

North Korea May Be Preparing Missile or Space Launch

SACRAMENTO, LELEMUKU.COM - There are indications North Korea may be preparing for a missile or space launch, National Public Radio is reporting. The U.S. news outlet said an analysis of satellite images of the Sanumdong facility near Pyongyang reveal the presence of trucks, cars, rail cars and cranes.

"When you put all that together, that's really what it looks like when the North Koreans are in the process of building a rocket," said Jeffrey Lewis, a researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.

Lewis has studied the images, which were provided by DigitalGlobe, a U.S. commercial provider of space and earth imagery.

This development comes on the heels of U.S. President Donald Trump saying he would be "very disappointed" if North Korea is resuming nuclear testing after his recent meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Trump made the comments to reporters Friday as he prepared to travel to Alabama to view tornado damage. He said he has greatly improved U.S. relations with North Korea during his time in office.

"Look, when I came in," he said, "under the Obama administration, North Korea was a disaster. You were going to war, folks, whether you know it or not. ... I inherited a mess."

He continued, "Right now you have no testing, you have no nothing. Let's see what happens, but I would be very disappointed if I saw testing."

Trump and Kim met last week in Vietnam in a summit meant to reach an agreement on North Korean denuclearization. But the meeting broke down over an impasse over how many sites North Korea would shut down.

Following the summit, South Korean newspapers reported there was evidence of new activity at the Sohae long-range rocket site, a site Kim agreed last year to shut down as part of confidence-building measures with the United States.

North Korean state media acknowledged the failed meeting for the first time Friday, saying the people of North Korea blame the United States for the collapse of the talks.(VOA)

Spy Chief, Dan Coats Contradicts Trump's Claims of Progress With North Korea

WASHINGTON, LELEMUKU.COM - North Korea is unlikely to give up all of its nuclear weapons and has continued activity inconsistent with pledges to denuclearize, U.S. national intelligence chief Dan Coats said on Tuesday, apparently contradicting President Donald Trump's claims of big progress with Pyongyang.

The director of national intelligence's downbeat assessment, in testimony before a Senate committee, came just weeks ahead of a planned second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The American president is hoping for a big foreign policy win from the meeting.

The annual Worldwide Threat Assessment from the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI), released by Coats, noted that North Korea had not conducted any nuclear or missile tests in over a year and had declared its support for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang had also "reversibly dismantled" parts of its infrastructure for weapons of mass destruction, the report said.

"However, we continue to assess that North Korea is unlikely to give up all of its nuclear weapons and production capabilities, even as it seeks to negotiate partial denuclearization steps to obtain key U.S. and international concessions," it said.

"Our assessment is bolstered by our observations of some activity that is inconsistent with full denuclearization," Coats told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, adding that North Korean leaders saw nuclear arms as critical to survival of the regime.

The DNI report said that in his 2019 New Year’s address, Kim pledged that North Korea would "go toward" complete denuclearization and promised not to make, test, use, or proliferate nuclear weapons.

However, it said Kim conditioned progress on "practical actions" by the United States and added that Pyongyang had in the past tied the idea of denuclearization to changes in diplomatic ties, economic sanctions, and military activities.

A landmark first summit between Trump and Kim in Singapore in June produced a promise by Kim to work toward the complete denuclearization of the divided Korean Peninsula. But progress has been scant.

Washington has demanded concrete action, such as a full disclosure of North Korea's nuclear and missile facilities.

Pyongyang is seeking a lifting of international sanctions and an official end to the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The White House has said Trump will hold a second summit with Kim around the end of February, but economic sanctions will be maintained.

On Jan. 19 Trump said he had had "an incredible" meeting with North Korea's nuclear envoy Kim Yong Chol in Washington and the two sides had made "a lot of progress" on denuclearization.

Earlier Tuesday, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Han Tae Song, said relations with the United States would develop "wonderfully at a fast pace" if Washington responded to Pyongyang's efforts on denuclearization with trustworthy measures and practical actions. (Reuters/VOA)

Could a Mass Sick Out End the U.S. Government Shutdown?

WASHINGTON, LELEMUKU.COM - Some labor advocates are urging the U.S. federal workforce to call in sick — en masse — to force an end to the ongoing government shutdown.

“It would be about getting public attention, and even more important, causing the government to focus on this problem. And hopefully, to delink the payment of wages to federal workers from the dispute that exists over the border,” said Professor Joseph McCartin, director of the Kalmanovitz Institute for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University in Washington.

Border dispute

Since December, about 25 percent of the federal government has been shut down because of a seemingly intractable budget dispute over President Donald Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion to build a wall along the Mexico border.

Congressional Democrats oppose the wall and have refused to negotiate this issue until the government is reopened. It is now the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

About half of the 800,000 federal workers affected by the shutdown have been designated “essential” and are required to perform vital government operations without pay. Included are thousands of federal law enforcement agents, prison guards, tax collection officials, Customs and Border security agents, firefighters, and the Coast Guard.

The other half has been furloughed, forced to stay home until a government funding bill is passed.

Trump has signed legislation promising back pay to all federal workers affected by the shutdown, but the ongoing delay is creating increasing financial hardship for many.

Labor strategy

Federal law prohibits government workers from participating in a mass work stoppage or labor strikes.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired thousands of air traffic controllers who walked off the job demanding better pay and working conditions.

Unable to strike, labor unions that represent many of the U.S. government’s 2.1 million employees, are organizing rallies across the country to generate public support and pressure lawmakers to end the shutdown or face retribution in the 2020 election.

“Voting really does matter, because in the upcoming election, we are going to remember who voted in our favor,” said Francis Nichols, vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees’ Local 1456 chapter in Washington.

Public sector unions are traditionally aligned with the Democratic Party, and it is unclear what influence these demonstrations will have on Republicans in Congress. Also, some union leaders representing the Border Patrol recently voiced support for Trump’s border wall demand to end the shutdown.

The unions have also sued the government on the grounds that unpaid work violates labor laws and the Constitution. So far, the courts have declined to insert themselves in what the Justice Department argues is a political dispute between Congress and the president.

Sickout

Unions have not endorsed a massive sickout strategy that might cripple government functions and put employees at risk of being fired.

However, at the Transportation Security Administration, the absentee rate among essential personnel, which include 50,000 airport security screeners, has risen to 10 percent.

The increased absenteeism is seen as driven mostly by financial needs, with many workers seeking alternative jobs to pay for their families’ basic needs. The reduced staffing has caused longer-than-usual delays at some airports and forced the closure of some security checkpoints.

“Sooner or later, you are not going to have to have a mass sickout. Sooner or later, people aren’t going to have money to put gas in their cars to literally drive to work,” said Matthew Biggs, secretary-treasurer of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents thousands of federal workers.

Some labor supporters like McCartin argue that as this shutdown continues, unions need to develop more disruptive strategies, such as a sudden mass sickout to force congressional action.

“They need to have mobilization plans of their members, short of a strike, which actually can bring some pressure to bear. Not just hoping that public opinion changes by showing workers suffering or having to visit food banks, but having some other mechanism to bring some pressure to bear to protect these workers,” McCartin said.

Barbara Ehrenreich, founder of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and Gary Stevenson, a former labor organizer, have gone even further and have called upon federal workers to go on strike, even if it puts their jobs at risk.

“The federal government has broken its contract with its employees, locking some of them out of their workplaces and expecting others to work for the mere promise of eventual pay,” they wrote recently in The New York Times. (VOA)

Sweden : Envoys' Talks 'Good Preparation' for Trump and Kim Summit

STOCKHOLM, LELEMUKU.COM - Sweden's foreign minister said Monday she hopes talks between American, South Korean and North Korean diplomats her country is hosting "will serve as a good preparation for an upcoming summit" between U.S President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom told Swedish news agency TT that experts in nuclear disarmament, economic development and regional security attended the diplomats' meeting in Sweden.
The first meeting ever to bring the leaders of North Korea and the United States face-to-face took place in June when Kim and Trump met in Singapore.

Trump said Saturday he is aiming to have a second summit in late February with the goal of producing a deal attractive enough to persuade Kim to give up North Korea's nuclear weapons.

Lee Do-hoon of South Korea and Steve Biegun, U.S. special envoy for North Korea negotiations, planned to attend "small format" talks with North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, the Swedish Foreign Ministry said Sunday

The Swedish government and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an independent think-thank focused on research on conflicts, armaments and arms control, were co-hosting the talks.

Wallstrom didn't disclose the venue or schedule for the talks. Swedish media said they were thought to be underway at Hackholmssund, a conference center northwest of Stockholm on Lake Malaren.

Sweden has had diplomatic relations with North Korea since 1973 and is one of only a few Western countries with an embassy there. It provides consular services for the United States. (VOA)

A Complicated Path to Denuclearization as Trump - Kim Summit Nears

WASHINGTON, LELEMUKU.COM - Despite the Trump administration asserting there’s been ongoing progress in talks with North Korea over its commitment to denuclearize, it is unclear what has been achieved ahead of the U.S. announced summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Bruce Klinger, Senior Research Fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation, says “that while some speculate that behind the scenes there had been quiet successes between the two sides, in reality, that really hasn't been the case.”

North Korea’s denuclearization process has been stalled for months with little signs of outward progress, despite a call by South Korean President Moon Jae-in for Washington and Pyongyang to meet again. That’s something that is likely to take place before the end of February, when U.S. President Donald Trump said he'd meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for a second summit.

“A few days ago Vice President Pence said that [the U.S. is still waiting for North Korea to commit to denuclearization. That’s been consistent with the divergence between the U.S. and North Korean position, not only since last year's summit but for decades,” said Klinger.

But, that may not be the case, says Rodger Baker, Vice President of Strategic Analysis for Stratfor.

“It seems that the North Koreans are the ones who have been driving the push for this second summit almost more so than the United States,” he said, referencing announcements in Kim Jong Un’s New Year's speech which “laid out that North Korea saw a need for some change in behavior of the United States or else they would restart their program.”

“[North Korea] reached out to China to make sure that everything was going okay there and that China had their back, and then they reached out to the United States,” Baker assessed.

However, Harry Kazianis, director for Defense Studies at the Center for the National Interest, told VOA that at this point both sides may have realized there needs to be concrete progress towards denuclearization.

Kazianis said the “trick” now is to construct an interim deal “where both sides can come across as being a winner.”

“That's a very hard thing to do at any sort of negotiation,” he said.

Trump met with North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Yong Chol for nearly two hours, saying the announcement of the location of the next summit would be made shortly and that Kim was looking forward to their meeting.

“We've made a lot of progress that has not been reported by the media but we have made a lot of progress as far as the new denuclearization is concerned,” he said.

Neither Trump nor the White House gave details about the talks.

Getting talks to move forward

When South Korean President Moon Jae-in met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this past September in Pyongyang, “the North expressed its willingness to continue to take additional measures, such as the permanent dismantlement of the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, as the United States takes corresponding measures in accordance with the spirit of the June 12 US-DPRK Joint Statement,” according to the joint declaration issued at the end of the summit.

Currently, what North Korea means by “corresponding measures” remains debatable among experts.

Kazianis suggests that one possible measure the United States could offer would be to make a formal peace declaration or begin the process to issue a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-1953 Korea War.

But Baker said that a peace declaration may not be sufficient.

“The United States has already made basically peace declarations or assertions of having no intent to attack North Korea, and that wasn’t enough,” said Baker.

Furthermore, Kazianis said, “The biggest thing that the North Koreans always talk about their propaganda media statements… is how afraid they are of America's nuclear assets.”

He suggested that if Washington were to scale the assets back, “I think the North Koreans would be really, really incentivized to do a lot.”

Both Kazianis and Baker added that Pyongyang is also looking for sanction relief.

Although Klinger said many underestimate the complexity involved with reducing or eliminating sanctions, noting the difference between sanctions imposed by the United Nations and those by the United States.

“The U.N. sanctions are,” he said, “is sort of behavior modification, and a lot of the sanctions are trade restrictions, either import or export. In a way, those are more negotiable.”

“The U.S. sanctions are far more difficult to remove because they're not just focused on the nuclear and missile programs. They are U.S. laws and they focus on human rights violations, criminal activities, such as money laundering, counterfeiting, as well as related to North Korea being on the state-sponsored terrorism list,” he said.

What needs to happen in February?

A criticism of previous summits between Kim and the leaders of South Korea and the United States has been the lack of concrete statements outlining how denuclearization will be achieved.

While Washington may still desire complete, verifiable denuclearization, Baker suggested that may not be “a viable and a realistic outcome anytime soon.”

“So the reality is that what the United States and North Korea and South Korea really are working towards is some way to manage North Korea and to find a way to ease a sense of imminent conflict,” he said.

Klinger said a key deliverable from the upcoming second U.S. - North Korean summit should be a commitment “to flesh out a comprehensive, integrated agreement which very clearly delineates everyone's responsibilities.”

The problem he said, is that past agreements have been “short and vague enough that everyone can claim their own interpretation, and it doesn't clearly identify what everyone has to do… and they all had very weak verification.”

Kazianis remains optimistic that the upcoming summit will make progress on the denuclearization front since both sides have a lot to offer in terms of concessions.

“For Trump to actually get a real concrete measurement on denuclearization would allow him to really get more buy-in to keep the process rolling in Washington and keep the people that are completely against this process on the left and the right, maybe to buy in a little bit more,” he said.

Neither Washington nor Pyongyang has yet to officially announce the date or location of the second U.S. - North Korean summit, although some speculate it may take place in Vietnam. (VOA)

North Korean Art Troupe to Visit China

BEIJING, LELEMUKU.COM - A North Korean art troupe will visit China starting on Wednesday, Chinese state media said on Sunday.

The troupe will be led by Ri Su Yong, a vice chairman of the ruling Workers' Party's Central Committee and director of its International Department, the official Xinhua news agency said, without providing other details.

China has sought to remain front and center in diplomatic efforts over Pyongyang. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the fourth time earlier this month, ahead of Kim's second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.

The White House said on Friday the summit between Trump and Kim will be held in late February.

An all-female North Korean pop band formed by Kim abruptly cancelled a Beijing concert and headed back home to Pyongyang without performing in late 2015. (VOA)

Donald Trump Says US 'Made a Lot of Progress' With North Korea

WASHINGTON, LELEMUKU.COM - U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday that he had an "incredible" meeting with North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Yong Chol and the two sides had made"a lot of progress" on denuclearization.

The White House announced after talks between Trump and Kim on Friday that the U.S. president would hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in late February, but would maintain economic sanctions on Pyongyang.

"That was an incredible meeting," Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, said of the talks."We've agreed to meet sometime, probably the end of February. We've picked a country but we'll be announcing it in the future. Kim Jong Un is looking very forward to it and so am I.

"We have made a lot of progress as far as denuclearizationis concerned and we are talking about a lot of different things.Things are going very well with North Korea."

Trump and the White House have given no details of the talks, and despite his upbeat comments there has been no indication of any narrowing of differences over U.S. demands that North Korea abandon a nuclear weapons program that threatens the United States and Pyongyang's demands for a lifting of punishing sanctions.

June summit

A summit in June in Singapore — the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader — produced a vague commitment by Kim Jong Un to work toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but he has yet to take what Washington sees as concrete steps in that direction.

Critics of U.S. efforts said the first summit did little more than boost Kim's international stature.

Trump did not elaborate on the country chosen to host the summit, but Vietnam has been considered a leading candidate.

Kim Yong Chol, regarded as a member of Kim Jong Un's inner circle, also had talks on Friday with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the U.S. special representative on North Korea, Stephen Biegun.

The State Department said the two sides had "a productive first meeting at the working level" and Biegun would travel to Sweden at the weekend to attend an international conference.

The conference is also being attended by North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui. Washington has been keen to setup talks between Biegun and Choe but North Korea has resisted, apparently wanting to keep exchanges high-level.

Asked if the two would meet in Stockholm, a State Department spokeswoman said: "We have no meetings to announce." (VOA)

Talks Between US and North Korea Take Place in Sweden

STOCKHOLM, LELEMUKU.COM - A North Korean diplomat has arrived in Sweden to take part in an unannounced meeting in Stockholm, officials said Friday.

Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman Vilhelm Rundquist said Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui has landed in Sweden “to take part in talks in a minor format where international experts take part.”

He declined to give further details. Sweden’s TT news agency said Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom would also attend the event.

It is possible that U.S. special envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun would join the meeting later, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“I have nothing to say presently. It’s up to the parties and the countries whether there will be a result,” Wallstrom told the TT news agency. “We are proud if we can contribute. If they want us to contribute, we do it.”

The location for the talks wasn’t immediately disclosed. Swedish officials have declined to confirm any further details about the meeting, including whether it is underway.

Sweden has had diplomatic relations with Pyongyang since 1973 and is one of only a few Western countries with an embassy there. It provides consular services for the United States.

In March, Wallstrom held talks with her North Korean counterpart, Ri Yong Ho, in Stockholm, leading to the first-ever meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in June in Singapore. (VOA)