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Cartmann99

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Like a lot of you, I've spent a lot of time the last few days keeping an eye on the situation in North Korea. 

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Putting it bluntly, Jackson said, “The United States has no good options.”

The U.S. could launch a strike on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, but that is “very difficult and fraught with risk” and could lead to conflict, he added.

“A military strike is a dangerous option, given that North Korean artillery stands only seconds away from Seoul, where 10 million people live and 100,000 American expats and 27,500 U.S. troops,” said Cha.

The U.S. could temper its desire to see North Korea denuclearize in an attempt to get a deal with North Korea that modestly stabilizes relations in the region, Jackson said.

But “this has historically been unacceptable to South Korea and to most U.S. policy officials,” he explained.

Lee said that the U.S.’s best course of action is “to put unrelenting financial pressure” on the regime that would exclude it from the U.S. dollar system, the backbone of the global financial system.

“Such targeted sanctions have worked against Iran, Burma, Ukraine, Congo, etc., because the target is isolated from the international financial order and its partners are presented with the stark choice of either continuing to do business with the primary target or continuing to access the U.S. financial system,” he said. “Amazingly, such target financial sanctions have never been fully employed against North Korea, which is the world’s leading proliferator, money launderer and human rights abuser.”

But according to Kelly, China “has mixed feelings about really cutting North Korea off from the global economy.”

“If North Korea were to dramatically implode, most analysts expect a wave of refugees headed toward China,” South Korea or even Japan, explained Kelly.

Jackson agreed that refugees were a concern, saying, “This is one of China’s long-standing concerns that has incentivized it to urge caution and restraint in Korea.”

The refugee flow could be “on the same scale as Syria but perhaps with even greater desperation,” he added.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/International/whats-stake-north-korea/story?id=46831229

This would be a really good time for some friendly aliens from an advanced society to show up and save our bacon. :pray:

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22 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Like a lot of you, I've spent a lot of time the last few days keeping an eye on the situation in North Korea. 

http://abcnews.go.com/International/whats-stake-north-korea/story?id=46831229

This would be a really good time for some friendly aliens from an advanced society to show up and save our bacon. :pray:

Bacon.  Mmmmmmm....

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I know I have posted this elsewhere before, but the "normal" spring US military war games in SK typically bring a certain level of outcry from NK -  been concerned about this since #1Son moved to SK 4.5 years ago.  He assures me this is annual yammering.

THIS year, however, we have a new (politically inexperienced) administration with (IMHO) an itchy trigger finger ... coupled with an NK leader who would love a little mano a mano with the oompah loompah.

This is serious shit this year, peeps.  Again, just mho.

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I was reading earlier about how Vice-President Pence took his wife and his two adult daughters with him to South Korea. I guess the South Korean ladies are so incredibly beautiful, that he needed three family members with him to keep him from straying. :think:

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A good analysis: "The dangers of Trump’s strategic impatience with North Korea"

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On the heels of yet another North Korean missile test, Vice President Pence arrived in South Korea with a firm message. He declared an end to the “era of strategic patience” with the regime in Pyongyang, echoing the established line of a White House that's eager to show how different it is from its predecessor. The Trump administration's recent decisions to strike Syrian government forces and drop an attention-grabbing bomb in Afghanistan were evidence that the North Koreans “would do well not to test resolve or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region," Pence said.

In recent weeks, Trump has tweeted threats of unilateral action against North Korea. Tensions spiked this past weekend as Kim Jong Un's regime held a grand military spectacle in honor of Kim's grandfather on Saturday and conducted a botched missile test on Sunday. Pence indicated there would be no more tolerance for such tests, but Pyongyang met his tough talk by doing what it does best: issuing more threats.

“We'll be conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis,” said the country's vice foreign minister, Han Song Ryol, to the BBC on Monday. “If the U.S. is planning a military attack against us, we will react with a nuclear pre-emptive strike by our own style and method.”

...

Now North Korea watchers are now waiting to see what Trump's strategic impatience will bring.

In an interview with the New York Times, Robert Litwak of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars described what's unfolding as “the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion.” It's an alarming comparison, fueled by bellicose rhetoric on both sides and a nervy game of brinkmanship that could quickly turn volatile.

“While all historical analogies are necessarily imprecise … one parallel shines through,” the Times noted. “When national ambitions, personal ego and deadly weapons are all in the mix, the opportunities for miscalculation are many.”

Trump and his advisers have repeatedly called the “unpredictability” of their moves and policymaking a virtue. They have also consistently played up the role of American military might as a prime mover in international affairs. But there's a reason previous administrations have taken a careful, calibrated approach on North Korea — and one anchored in regional diplomacy, not the presence of an “armada” — as Trump put it — of American warships.

“The last thing needed in the fraught situation in Northeast Asia, where military action could spiral into catastrophe, is more macho posturing,” wrote Ian Buruma in the Atlantic.

...

The leadership in North Korea sees its nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles as its main ticket to survival. For years, it has asserted itself on the world stage through saber-rattling — and won real concessions from its neighbors by possessing a potential nuclear deterrent. But Pyongyang knows it's playing a risky game: Any American-led strike on North Korea would likely prove devastating. Thus most analysts imagine that the more cornered and vulnerable Kim feels, the more ready he may be to strike.

“Kim’s strategy depends on using nuclear weapons early — before the United States can kill him or special forces can find his missile units,” wrote arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis earlier this year. “He has to go first, if he is to go at all.”

That could mean millions of deaths in South Korea and Japan, a fear that should constantly be guiding Trump's decision-making when it comes to North Korea. But, as my colleagues report, Trump presents a new and potentially dangerous wild card, even to many South Koreans who have grown accustomed — even desensitized — to North Korean threats.

“There are members of the president’s inner circle who do indeed believe that the Trump administration is seriously contemplating a 'first strike' on North Korea,” wrote Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman. “But if Kim Jong Un has drawn the same conclusion — he may reach for the nuclear trigger first.”

...

Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Renmin University of China, told The Post that if the Trump administration continues its verbal threats and further boosts its naval presence in the area, it could prompt China to “shift from suppressing North Korea to opposing the United States.” That development would neither help the United States nor necessarily do much to rein in North Korea's nuclear threat.

“Empty threats from Washington are not just ineffectual; they play into the Korean dictator’s hands,” wrote Buruma in the Atlantic. “Whether most North Koreans really worship the Kim dynasty as much as they seem to is hard to know, since most of 'these gestures of idolatry' are coerced. But Korean nationalism can be very easily stirred up. One thing that holds North Koreans together is the fear, constantly stoked by the regime, of a wicked foreign attack.”

At the moment, Trump seems to be doing an excellent job stoking that fear.

This is terrifying: "...seriously contemplating a first strike..."

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3 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is terrifying: "...seriously contemplating a first strike..."

Well of course they are! There's nothing better to deflect from the many failings of this administration than starting a war. Preferably on a global scale with nukes involved.

Don't look there, look over here everyone, mushroom clouds... ooops...

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"Despite talk of a military strike, Trump’s ‘armada’ was a long way from Korea"

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BEIJING — As tensions mounted on the Korean Peninsula, Adm. Harry Harris made a dramatic announcement: An aircraft carrier had been ordered to sail north from Singapore on April 8 toward the Western Pacific.

A spokesman for the Pacific Command linked the deployment directly to the “number one threat in the region,” North Korea, and its “reckless, irresponsible and destabilizing program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.”

Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters on April 11 that the Carl Vinson was “on her way up there.” Asked about the deployment in an interview with Fox Business Network that aired April 12, President Trump said: “We are sending an armada, very powerful.”

The U.S. media went into overdrive and Fox reported on April 14 that the armada was “steaming” toward North Korea.

But pictures posted by the U.S. Navy suggest that’s not quite the case — or at least not yet.

...

A photograph released by the Navy showed the aircraft carrier sailing through the calm waters of Sunda Strait between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java on Saturday, April 15.

In other words, on the same day that the world nervously watched North Korea stage a massive military parade to celebrate the birthday of the nation’s founder Kim Il Sung, and the press speculated about a pre-emptive U.S. strike, the U.S. Navy put the the Carl Vinson, together with its escort of two guided-missile destroyers and a cruiser, more than 3,000 miles southwest of the Korean peninsula — and more than 500 miles southeast of Singapore.

Instead of steaming towards the Korea peninsula, the carrier strike group was actually headed in the opposite direction to take part in “scheduled exercises with Australian forces in the Indian Ocean,” according to Defense News, which broke the story.

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The presence of the U.S. carrier strike group, and the threat of a U.S. military strike on North Korea, had weighed heavily on Chinese minds and in the media here. Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned “storm clouds” were gathering and the risk of conflict rising.

The news that the ships weren’t where everyone assumed them to be was greeted with some glee in the Chinese media Tuesday.

“Tricked badly!” the Global Times exulted on its social media account. “None of the U.S. aircraft carriers that South Korea is desperately waiting for has come!”

Was it all a misunderstanding, or deliberate obfuscation?

Cai Jian, an expert from the Center for Korean Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the whole episode was part of an elaborate game of “psychological warfare or bluffing” by the United States, arguing that Washington never really intended to launch a military strike on North Korea right now.

“At the peak of the standoff, psychological warfare is very important,” he said.

Ross Babbage, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on the military, said the move may be “military signalling” from the U.S.

“It’s more than a bluff,” he said. “A bluff suggests you’re not serious. My understanding is that this U.S. administration is dead serious, it’s been 40 years of trying to get the North Koreans to back away from the nuclear weapons.”

Babbage said it was also possible the United States administration had decided to give China a little time to put its own pressure on North Korea before sending the carrier strike group north: Trump met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on April 6 and 7 and spoke by phone on April 11, and may have wanted to give the Chinese some breathing space to before “rattling the bars,” Babbage said.

Nor should the aircraft carrier’s presence, alone, be given too much weight, he added, since any early strikes on North Korea would likely have been carried out by long-range aircraft.

...

 

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We've been watching the tensions between NK and SK carefully. Dh lived in SK for 14 months and follows the politics there closely anyway but we currently live about a 4 hour flight from Seoul so it feels close to home. We have plans to visit Seoul next Feb (We had planned on middle of May this year but moved it back to catch some of the Olympics).

Anyway, I am worried. I can remember a few times when things were this tense in the past (1996 and 2002ish?) but this time it just feels different with two leaders that can be so unpredictable and who love to talk big. I hope in the end it is just talk.

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The US military is considering shooting down North Korean missile tests as a show of strength to Pyongyang, two sources briefed on the planning have told the Guardian.

Amid heightened tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, the Pentagon is looking for ways short of war to pressure the country into denuclearization, particularly if Pyongyang goes forward with a sixth nuclear test.

The defense secretary, James Mattis, has briefed Congress on the option, but the military has not yet decided to intercept a test missile.

One US official said the prospective shoot-down strategy would be aimed at occurring after a nuclear test, with the objective being to signal Pyongyang that the US can impose military consequences for a step Donald Trump has described as “unacceptable”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/18/us-military-shoot-down-north-korea-missile-tests

If the United States does shoot down North Korean missiles, won't North Korea just declare war on us??? :confusion-shrug:

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North Korea's idiot continues to goad our idiot. :doh:

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North Korea put on a musical show to mark the birthday of founding father Kim Il Sung, which ended with a mock-up video of missiles engulfing the United States in flames, prompting cheers from the audience and smiles from current leader Kim Jong Un.

North Korea's state television aired footage of a choral performance attended by Kim Jong Un, the elder Kim's grandson, on Sunday, a day after a huge military parade in Pyongyang, which also marked the 105th birth anniversary of Kim Il Sung.

The singing was followed by footage of its test-firing of a missile in February which, in the video, was joined by other missiles shooting into sky, passing over the Pacific and exploding in giant balls of flames in the United States.

The video ended with a picture of the American flag in flames, overlapping row after row of white crosses in a cemetery. 

"When the performance was over, all the performers and participants in the military parade broke into enthusiastic cheers of 'hurrah!'," state run KCNA news agency said.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-video-idUSKBN17L0BO

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Maybe we should put the two toddler's in time-out...

All kidding aside (see what I did there), this really isn't funny anymore. Two deranged dimwits dueling on the world stage with trigger-happy little fingers near the nuclear buttons is scary stuff. 

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"Dear Kim Jong Un: Watch out for Trump. He’s even crazier than you."

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Dear Mr. Kim:

I write to congratulate you on the occasion of your late grandfather’s 105th birthday. I heard about the difficulties you had with the missile this weekend, but be assured that the launch was cheered by thousands of Muslims in Jersey City.

Please forgive the impersonal nature of this correspondence, but a matter of this urgency cannot be left to the North Korean postal system. The world is the closest it has been to nuclear war in 55 years, and I wanted to caution you that the man with whom you are now eyeball to eyeball could be as mad as a March hare.

Jong (if I may, or do you prefer Little Un?), you yourself are known to be a bit nutty, or, as John McCain calls you, a “crazy fat kid.” That’s why we were so quick to believe that you fed your uncle to dogs a few years ago. For years, American presidents left you and your father in power because they didn’t want the bother of a war. But that was then.

President Trump has been practicing the “madman theory,” which your family has used well: If people think you are insane, they’ll give you a wide berth. But Trump does such a convincing job portraying a madman that he might actually be a madman. It may surprise you to hear me say that, but here in America we can criticize our leader without fear that our coffee will be poisoned and we will keel over onto our 8jmkiuh9tr5f44444444444444444444444444444444u

Kidding! The point is we don’t know if he’s bluffing or if he’s crazy. And neither do you. Surely it didn’t escape your notice that he arranged his response to one of your recent missile tests while dining in public at his Florida country club. He was also at Mar-a-Lago, eating “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, when he approved the missile attack on Syria, which he mistakenly called Iraq.

Little Un, if you think this American president is stable like his predecessors, I refer you to his Twitter account. He has sent 13,321 tweets with exclamation points, 864 tweets with two exclamation points, 432 with three, 146 with four and 57 with five (the last one, in August: “#WheresHillary? Sleeping!!!!!”). Trump’s single greatest exclamation in recent years — 15 points — was in 2014: “This cannot be the the [sic] Academy Awards #Oscars AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Now he’s turning his punctuation on you. Until the past couple of years, the extent of his public commentary on your country was to say he wouldn’t go. “Dennis Rodman was either drunk or on drugs (delusional) when he said I wanted to go to North Korea with him. Glad I fired him on Apprentice!” he tweeted in 2014.

But this time Trump is in a position to fire missiles, not the former Chicago Bulls forward. And he has been treating the crisis with the gravity we’ve come to expect from him. At the White House Easter Egg Roll, where he was joined by the Easter Bunny, Trump said North Korea “gotta behave” and, if not, “you’ll see.” There is still a chance that his advisers will talk him down. The most sensible one is Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. His nickname: “Mad Dog.”

Americans, though concerned about the nuclear standoff, have been paying more attention to an election in Georgia for one of 435 seats in Congress, and to a lawsuit filed by a white nationalist claiming Trump’s language incited him to violence. And this gives me an idea.

Jong, if you really want to go after Trump, do it the American way: File a lawsuit. True, he has been sued hundreds of times, but yours would be special, because you could claim that his words and actions incited you to build and test missiles and weapons capable of unspeakable violence. You would be following in the footsteps of a revered American, Paula Jones, whose lawsuit against President Bill Clinton won a substantial payout and helped pave the way for his impeachment.

You would, I’m afraid, have to give up your nuclear arsenal to pursue this course, but Trump could afford to settle with you for significantly more than Clinton paid Jones. Also, I know from Seth Rogen and James Franco that you admire Katy Perry and margaritas. I can’t promise, but it’s possible that if you renounced your nuclear weapons and sued Trump instead, Perry might perform for you. And I would share my secret margarita recipe.

Please consider this peaceful alternative. Should you stay your current course, nobody knows what Trump might do. Not even Trump.

I love Dana Milbank's writing.

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I thought this was a good wrap-up about how the tangerine toddler has upset the nations in eastern Asia, country-by-country.

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SEOUL, South Korea — Unpredictable. Unhinged. Dangerous.

Many South Koreans are using those words to describe the president of their most important ally, rather than the leader of their archrival to the North. They worry that President Donald Trump’s tough, unorthodox talk about North Korea’s nuclear program is boosting already-high animosity between the rival Koreas.

No matter whether Trump succeeds at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and missile programs, his actions, comments and tweets are changing how the region views the long-running conflict. Senior North Korean officials see their relations with Washington as even more volatile than before. China is appealing for calm, and possibly re-examining its role. Japan is weighing a retaliatory strike capability against the North.

...

 

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"Trump’s missing ‘armada’ finally heading to Korea — and may stay a while"

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BEIJING — It was supposed to be steaming towards North Korea more than a week ago, an “armada” signaling American resolve. Then it wasn’t.

Now, it seems the USS Carl Vinson may finally be heading north.

“Our deployment has been extended 30 days to provide a persistent presence in the waters off the Korean Peninsula,” Rear Admiral Jim Kilby, the commander of Carrier Strike Group One, said in a message posted on the Carl Vinson’s Facebook page addressed to “families and loved ones” of the personnel on board.

The Carl Vinson, accompanied by a carrier air wing, two guided-missile destroyers and a cruiser, was supposed to have been ordered to sail north after leaving Singapore on April 8. But a week later, the Navy published photos showing it was actually sailing the opposite direction through the Sunda Strait between the Indonesia islands of Sumatra and Java, more than 3,000 miles southwest of the Korean Peninsula — and more than 500 miles southeast of Singapore.

The White House is now facing questions about why it was not clear about the carrier group’s whereabouts. Several times over the the last two weeks, the Trump administration said the ships were heading north.

...

Both U.S. and South Korean media have reported that the Vinson is now expected to arrive in waters off the Korean peninsula by April 25, just as North Korea marks the anniversary of its army’s founding.

“Our mission is to reassure allies and our partners of our steadfast commitment to the Indo-Asia-Pacific region,” Rear Admiral Kilby wrote. “We will continue to be the centerpiece of visible maritime deterrence, providing our national command authority with flexible deterrent options, all domain access, and a visible forward presence.”

China, meanwhile, is feeling anything but reassured, warning recently that “a storm is about to break” over the divided Korean Peninsula.

Beijing, long considered North Korea’s last remaining ally, has stepped up its criticism of Pyongyang. At a daily Foreign Ministry briefing on Friday, minisry spokesman Lu Kang reiterated the Chinese side’s “serious concern” about “recent trends about North Korea's nuclear and missile development.”

He urged all parties to avoid “adding fuel to fire.”

 

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"Pence: The United States is not seeking negotiations with North Korea"

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TOKYO – When Vice President Pence spoke at the Korean demilitarized zone on Monday, he said that the United States sought to solve the North Korean crisis “through peaceable means and negotiations,” after increasing pressure on the Pyongyang regime. But in an interview with me on Wednesday afternoon, he adopted a harder line: The Trump administration, he said, demands that North Korea abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs without any promise of direct negotiations with the United States.

This change in message, if translated into a firm policy of not negotiating with North Korea, could have huge implications. If the United States is unwilling to negotiate with North Korea, and the regime is unwilling to abandon its nuclear and missile programs based on pressure alone, the prospect of the United States using military action to prevent North Korea from developing the capability to strike the continental United States becomes more likely. Also, the Trump administration could open a gap with its key allies as well as China, who all anticipate an eventual return to something akin to the previous multilateral negotiations with Pyongyang.

“I think the path of negotiations with North Korea has been a colossal failure now for more than 25 years,” Pence told me. “We believe that through discussions and negotiations among nations apart from North Korea that we may well be able to bring the kind of economic and diplomatic pressure that would result in North Korea finally abandoning its nuclear ambitions and its ballistic missile program.”

He pointed to North Korea’s violations of the 1994 Agreed Framework negotiated by the Clinton administration and the violations of the 2005 denuclearization agreement negotiated by the administration of George W. Bush.

“All of those negotiations and discussions failed, miserably,” Pence said. “The time has come for us to take a fresh approach. And the approach President Trump has taken is not engagement with North Korea but renewed and more vigorous engagement with North Korea’s principle economic partner [China].”

Pence acknowledged that if North Korea doesn’t abandon its programs on its own, and the United States is unwilling to negotiate with the regime, military action against the regime may be necessary.

“When the president says all options are on the table, all options are on the table,” said Pence. “We’re trying to make it very clear to people in this part of the world that we are going to achieve the end of a denuclearization of the Korean peninsula — one way or the other.”

Whether Pence’s hardened message will persist as U.S. policy in the long run remains to be seen. In several interviews and speeches this week, Pence has described the Trump administration’s North Korea strategy as a clean break from the Obama administration’s policy of “strategic patience.” In fact, there are some similarities. Like Trump, Obama sought Chinese help to place pressure on North Korea to make concessions.

But the new strategy Pence described does break from Obama’s in two key respects. First, the Trump administration is not seeking concessions as a means to return to negotiations, as Obama did. Per Pence’s explanation, the new administration wants North Korea to give up its programs in their entirety without direct talks of any kind.

Also, according to Pence, Trump is directly engaging the Chinese leadership on the issue in a manner Obama never did, and there is some evidence that the Chinese government is responding.

This new stance Pence described, if it becomes formal U.S. government policy, not only breaks from decades of Washington orthodoxy and conventional wisdom; it also may place the United States in a different position than its key Asian allies.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, sitting next to Pence at his official residence Tuesday, said that while Tokyo agrees new pressure on North Korea is needed and that there should not be dialogue for dialogue’s sake, “Japan also places paramount importance on the need to seek a diplomatic effort to achieve a peaceful resolution to the crisis.”

South Korean leaders expressed strong support for Pence’s approach in meetings this week in Seoul. But the South Korean people are choosing a new president next month and there’s a high likelihood the incoming government in Seoul will seek engagement and diplomacy with Pyongyang that would run counter to the strategy Pence is articulating.

...

I asked the vice president what he was thinking at that moment. Pence paused, collected his thoughts and then told me the story of when he was a 19-year-old traveler in Germany in 1978. He visited Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall and looked across to communist East Germany to see a country that had never recovered from the devastation of war, full of people who couldn’t enjoy basic rights.

“I’d always believed I’d walked from freedom into tyranny. And I hadn’t felt that way until I stood outside the Freedom House,” he said. “Just looking across [into North Korea], hearing the propaganda blaring, seeing the guards in the towers, it gave me the same feeling I had in 1978.”

I asked, if the United States successfully helped liberate East Germany from the oppression of communism then, couldn’t or shouldn’t the United States help liberate North Korea now?

Pence replied: “Well, I think that’s a discussion for another time.”

 

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North Korea is now threatening Australia:

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North Korea has bluntly warned Australia of a possible nuclear strike if Canberra persists in “blindly and zealously toeing the US line”.

North Korea’s state new agency (KCNA) quoted a foreign ministry spokesman castigating Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, after she said the rogue nation would be subject to further Australian sanctions and for “spouting a string of rubbish against the DPRK over its entirely just steps for self-defence”.

“If Australia persists in following the US moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK and remains a shock brigade of the US master, this will be a suicidal act of coming within the range of the nuclear strike of the strategic force of the DPRK,” the report said.

“The Australian foreign minister had better think twice about the consequences to be entailed by her reckless tongue-lashing before flattering the US.”

Bishop had said this week on the ABC’s AM program that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program posed a “serious threat” to Australia unless it was stopped by the international community.

She said the sanctions were to send “the clearest possible message to North Korea, that its behaviour will not be tolerated, that a nuclear-armed North Korea is not acceptable to our region”.

She also urged China to step up pressure on North Korea to stamp out its belligerent and illegal behaviour.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/23/north-korea-warns-australia-of--nuclear-strike-julie-bishop-mike-pence

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13 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

You know, I don't normally advocate harming or killing people, but I can't believe that someone hasn't arranged some sort of "accident" for KJU. I know it was referenced earlier, but the PBS Independent Lens documentary on NK indicated that a goodly number of people there revere age/wisdom, and KJU is seen unfavorably because of his youth.

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1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

You know, I don't normally advocate harming or killing people, but I can't believe that someone hasn't arranged some sort of "accident" for KJU. I know it was referenced earlier, but the PBS Independent Lens documentary on NK indicated that a goodly number of people there revere age/wisdom, and KJU is seen unfavorably because of his youth.

I always wonder what the individuals who make up his security and army actually feel about him.  It seems like one of them needs to have his gun go off accidentally - this guy really needs to go.

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He's a tantrumming toddler with his threats - um - who does he remind me of?

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 North Korea has detained another American citizen:

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A U.S. citizen and academic was detained in North Korea while trying to leave the country with his wife on Saturday, a spokesperson for the university that employed him has confirmed.

Tony Kim, 58, who goes by jos Korean name Kim Sang-duk, was detained while trying to board a flight to China from Pyongyang's international airport, according to Colin McCulloch, director of external relations at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), where Kim taught accounting.

The university's executive leadership released a statement Sunday saying that it "has learned that Mr Sang Duk (Tony) Kim was detained" by North Korean authorities as he was about to leave the country, "after several weeks of service, teaching at PUST.

"We understand that this detention is related to an investigation into matters that are not connected in any way with the work of PUST."

 

http://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korea-detained-professor-us-citizen-3rd-american/story?id=46970360

Meanwhile, in the UK:

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The UK has frozen the assets of a North Korean company based in south-east London after claims it funnelled cash to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.

The Korea National Insurance Corporation (KNIC) is registered at a property in Blackheath. The EU has already imposed sanctions against the company, which it describes as “generating substantial foreign exchange revenue which is used to support the regime in North Korea”. The move by Brussels followed an UN resolution.

The EU warned: “Those resources could contribute to the DPRK’s nuclear-related, ballistic missile-related or other weapons of mass destruction-related programmes.”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/23/uk-freezes-assets-of-north-korean-company-in-south-london-insurance-nuclear-weapons

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The Pentagon tells North Korea to cut that shit out:

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With tensions rising between the US and North Korea, the Pentagon on Sunday called for the isolated communist nation to avoid destabilizing the situation further.

"We call on (North Korea) to refrain from provocative, destabilizing actions and rhetoric, and to make the strategic choice to fulfill its international obligations and commitments and return to serious talks," Pentagon spokesman Gary Ross said. "North Korea's unlawful weapons programs represent a clear, grave threat to US national security."

The statement came just hours after a North Korean newspaper said Pyongyang was ready to take out a US aircraft carrier conducting drills with Japanese destroyers near the Philippines.

Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North Korean government's Central Committee, said in an editorial the country is ready to illustrate its "military force" by sinking the "nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a single strike."

The newspaper claimed Pyongyang has weaponry that "can reach continental US and Asia Pacific region" and the "absolute weapon," a hydrogen bomb.

CNN cannot independently verify the claims.

[...]

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday that a North Korean nuclear missile capable of striking the US would be a "grave threat" and anticipated North Korea could achieve this capability before Trump would begin his second term.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/23/politics/pentagon-north-korea/index.html

 

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The USS Michigan being docked in South Korea the day before Trump's big meeting with the Senate makes me uneasy. I really hope it's just more posturing. :pray:

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The North Korean army conducted a live-fire drill with massed artillery hours after a US submarine armed with cruise missiles docked at a South Korean base for naval exercises, further raising tensions in a volatile battle of nerves in north-east Asia.

Between 300 and 400 long-range artillery pieces, capable of hitting Seoul, took part in the drill on Tuesday, according to the Yonhap news agency quoting government officials.

The exercise, on the anniversary of the founding of the North Korean army, was a clear reminder that North Korea could destroy large swaths of the South Korean capital.

However, the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, chose not to use the occasion to conduct the nation’s sixth nuclear test or launch a long-range missile – actions which the Trump administration would trigger an unspecified US response.

The North Korean salvos coincided with US and South Korean military exercises on land and sea. The naval drills will include the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and an accompanying flotilla which is predicted to arrive in the area towards the end of the month after exercises with the Japanese navy, and an Ohio-class submarine, the USS Michigan, which docked at the South Korean port of Busan on Tuesday.

The US Navy described the arrival of the Michigan, one of the world’s largest submarines armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, as a routine deployment, but the arrival of such significant firepower coincides with Trump administration attempts to present a tougher stance towards North Korea than its predecessors. It has declared an end to the Obama administration’s policy of “strategic patience” but has not specified what action it would take in response to another nuclear warhead or missile test.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/25/north-korea-live-fire-drill-us-submarine-south-korea

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"White House holds out prospect of diplomatic solution to North Korea crisis"

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TOKYO — As North Korea conducted live-fire drills Tuesday and South Korea, Japan and the United States carried out their own military exercises, the White House said there is still room for a diplomatic resolution.

“The more that we can solve this diplomatically and continue to apply pressure on China and other countries to use the political and economic tools that they have to achieve a goal in stabilization in the region, but also to tamp down the threat that North Korea faces, I think that that is something that we all share,” said White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

Spicer said the cordial meeting Trump had with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida this month was “paying off dividends.” He boasted that “this president’s relationships that he’s building with heads of government is clearly reestablishing America’s place in the world and getting results for the country.”

At the same time, one of the largest U.S. guided-missile submarines showed up in the South Korean port of Busan, presaging the imminent arrival in the region of a naval strike group led by an aircraft carrier.  And Kim Jong Un’s regime marked the 85th anniversary of the founding of North Korea’s army Tuesday with its typical bluster.

“If the enemies dare opt for the military adventure despite our repeated warnings, our armed forces­ will wipe the strongholds of aggression off the surface of the Earth through powerful preemptive nuclear attacks,” Defense Minister Pak Yong Sik said in a televised speech before a hall filled with the country’s top brass.  

Analysts had been concerned that North Korea might seek to mark important dates this month — the birthday of the state’s founder was celebrated with a huge military parade on April 15 — with a nuclear or ballistic missile test. North Korea did launch a missile on April 16, but it exploded within seconds. 

But on the latest anniversary Tuesday, the North instead conducted large-scale live-fire drills near Wonsan on its east coast, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said.  

The South’s Yonhap News Agency reported that the exercises were North Korea’s largest to date, involving some 300 or 400 pieces of artillery, but the joint chiefs did not confirm the number. 

Analysts warned against reading too much into the exercises with conventional weaponry, noting that North Korea’s annual winter training cycle culminates in big exercises every year around this time. 

Still, North Korea remains defiant despite mounting pressure from the Trump administration and, increasingly, China to stop its missile program. 

“China has a very, very important role to play” to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions, Joseph Yun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, told reporters in Tokyo. 

Yun met with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts Tuesday in Tokyo, and China’s main point man on North Korea was also in town, in a sign that diplomacy is not entirely dead.

“We agreed that we will strongly warn that North Korea should stop further strategic provocations,” said Kim Hong-kyun, South Korea’s representative. “But we will take strong punitive action that the North could not bear if it pushes ahead with one despite the warning.”

New York, the U.N. Security Council scheduled a special ministerial meeting Friday to discuss further sanctions on the regime in Pyongyang.

...

 

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