North Korea and South Korea

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Good freaking grief: "Trump: ‘If not for me,’ United States would be at war with North Korea"

Spoiler

President Trump said Tuesday that the United States would be at war with North Korea without his efforts and that conversations with the nation’s leaders are “going well” — an assessment at odds with recent reports that North Korea is working to conceal key aspects of its nuclear weapons program.

The president’s comments in a morning tweet followed a report Saturday in The Washington Post that U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that North Korea does not intend to fully surrender its nuclear arms stockpile and instead is considering ways to conceal the number of weapons it has and its secret production facilities.

In his rosy assessment, Trump claimed that “only the Opposition Party” and the news media are presenting a different picture of his efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula in the wake of his June 12 summit with North Korea leader Jim Jong Un.

“Many good conversations with North Korea-it is going well!” Trump wrote on Twitter. “In the meantime, no Rocket Launches or Nuclear Testing in 8 months. All of Asia is thrilled. Only the Opposition Party, which includes the Fake News, is complaining. If not for me, we would now be at War with North Korea!”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to depart on July 5 for his third trip to North Korea to continue negotiations.

Evidence newly obtained by U.S. officials points to preparations to deceive the United States about the number of nuclear warheads in North Korea’s arsenal as well as the existence of undisclosed facilities used to make fissile material for nuclear bombs, officials told The Post.

The findings support a new, previously undisclosed Defense Intelligence Agency estimate that North Korea is unlikely to denuclearize.

Trump has offered exuberant assessments about progress with North Korea for weeks, declaring in a previous tweet that “there is no longer a nuclear threat” from North Korea. At a recent rally, he also said he had “great success’’ with Pyongyang.

The last North Korean missile test was a little more than seven months ago, on Nov. 28, 2017. The latest of six nuclear tests was 10 months ago, on Sept. 3, 2017. The nuclear tests have been relatively infrequent; the one before that was a year earlier, in September 2016.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Mike Pompeo: practically a NK citizen 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

7 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Mike Pompeo: practically a NK citizen 

They can have him.

[fraurosena]

Why is anyone even remotely surprised about this?

 

[fraurosena]

Bad Lipreading of the US - North Korea summit. Enjoy!

 

[AmazonGrace]

Here's a pretty bleak view of what went on during Pompeo's NK visit.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-08/one-night-in-pyongyang-inside-pompeo-s-fraught-north-korea-trip

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm sure the Orange Moron will say this is fake: "U.S. spy agencies: North Korea is working on new missiles"

Spoiler

U.S. spy agencies are seeing signs that North Korea is constructing new missiles at a factory that produced the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States, according to officials familiar with the intelligence.

Newly obtained evidence, including satellite photos taken in recent weeks, indicates that work is underway on at least one and possibly two liquid-fueled ICBMs at a large research facility in Sanumdong, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe classified intelligence.

The findings are the latest to show ongoing activity inside North Korea’s nuclear and missile facilities at a time when the country’s leaders are engaged in arms talks with the United States. The new intelligence does not suggest an expansion of North Korea’s capabilities but shows that work on advanced weapons is continuing weeks after President Trump declared in a Twitter posting that Pyongyang was “no longer a Nuclear Threat.”

The reports about new missile construction come after recent revelations about a suspected uranium enrichment facility, called Kangson, that North Korea is operating in secret. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged during Senate testimony last week that North Korean factories “continue to produce fissile material” used in making nuclear weapons. He declined to say whether Pyongyang is building new missiles.

During a summit with Trump in June, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to a vaguely worded pledge to “work toward” the “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. But since then, North Korea has made few tangible moves signaling an intention to disarm.

Instead, senior North Korean officials have discussed their intention to deceive Washington about the number of nuclear warheads and missiles they have, as well as the types and numbers of facilities, and to rebuff international inspectors, according to intelligence gathered by U.S. agencies. Their strategy includes potentially asserting that they have fully denuclearized by declaring and disposing of 20 warheads while retaining dozens more.

The Sanumdong factory has produced two of North Korea’s ICBMs, including the powerful Hwasong-15, the first with a proven range that could allow it to strike the U.S. East Coast. The newly obtained evidence points to ongoing work on at least one Hwasong-15 at the Sanumdong plant, according to imagery collected by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in recent weeks.

“We see them going to work, just as before,” said one U.S. official.

The exception, the officials said, is the Sohae Satellite Launching Station on North Korea’s west coast, where workers can be observed dismantling an engine test stand, honoring a promise made to Trump at the summit.

Many analysts and independent experts, however, see that dismantling as largely symbolic, since North Korea has successfully launched ICBMs that use the kind of liquid-fueled engines tested at Sohae. Moreover, the test stand could easily be rebuilt within months.

Buttressing the intelligence findings, independent missile experts this week also reported observing activity consistent with missile construction at the Sanumdong plant. The daily movement of supply trucks and other vehicles, as captured by commercial satellite photos, shows that the missile facility “is not dead, by any stretch of the imagination,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. The Monterey, Calif., nonprofit group analyzed commercial photos obtained from the satellite imagery firm Planet.

“It’s active. We see shipping containers and vehicles coming and going,” Lewis said of the Sanumdong plant. “This is a facility where they build ICBMs and space-launch vehicles.”

Intriguingly, one image, taken July 7, shows a bright-red covered trailer in a loading area. The trailer appears identical to those used by North Korea in the past to transport ICBMs. How the trailer was being used at the time of the photograph is unclear.

Lewis’s group also published images of a large industrial facility that some U.S. intelligence analysts believe to be the Kangson uranium enrichment plant. The images, first reported by the online publication the Diplomat, show a football-field-size building surrounded by a high wall, in North Korea’s Chollima-guyok district, southwest of the capital. The complex has a single, guarded entrance and features high-rise residential towers apparently used by workers.

Historical satellite photos show that the facility was externally complete by 2003. U.S. intelligence agencies believe that it has been operational for at least a decade. If so, North Korea’s stockpile of enriched uranium could be substantially larger than is commonly believed. U.S. intelligence agencies in recent months increased their estimates of the size of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, taking into account enriched uranium from at least one secret enrichment site.

The Kangson facility was first publicly identified in May in a Washington Post article that cited research by nuclear weapons expert David Albright. Some European intelligence officials are not convinced that the Kangson site is used for uranium enrichment. But there is a broad consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies that Kangson is one of at least two secret enrichment plants.

Several U.S. officials and private analysts said the continued activity inside North Korea’s weapons complex is not surprising, given that Kim made no public promise at the summit to halt work at the scores of nuclear and missile facilities scattered around the country.

The North Koreans “never agreed to give up their nuclear program,” said Ken Gause, a North Korea expert at the Center for Naval Analysis. And it is foolish to expect that they would do so at the outset of talks, he said.

“Regime survival and perpetuation of Kim family rule” are Kim’s guiding principles, he said. “The nuclear program provides them with a deterrent, in their mind, against regime change by the United States. Giving up the nuclear capability will violate the two fundamental centers of gravity in the North Korean regime.”

Pompeo, at the Senate hearing last week, sought to assure lawmakers that the disarmament talks with North Korea remained on track and that the effort to dismantle the country’s nuclear arsenal was just getting underway. He brushed aside suggestions that the administration had been deceived by Kim. “We have not been taken for a ride,” he said.

But some independent analysts think the Trump administration has misread Kim’s intentions, interpreting his commitment to eventual denuclearization as a promise to immediately surrender the country’s nuclear arsenal and dismantle its weapons factories.

“We have this backward. North Korea is not negotiating to give up their nuclear weapons,” Lewis said. “They are negotiating for recognition of their nuclear weapons. They’re willing to put up with certain limits, like no nuclear testing and no ICBM testing. What they’re offering is: They keep the bomb, but they stop talking about it.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

So far no guarantee they're really American soldiers. In the past they've produced animal bones as human remains.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Audrey2]

10 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Maybe it's just me, but that sounds like the type of letter you would send to your aunt Bertha thanking her for your ugly Christmas sweater, or to people thanking them for graduation gifts. For some reason the tone sounds off to me to go from one world leader to another.

[Alisamer]

1 hour ago, Audrey2 said:

Maybe it's just me, but that sounds like the type of letter you would send to your aunt Bertha thanking her for your ugly Christmas sweater, or to people thanking them for graduation gifts. For some reason the tone sounds off to me to go from one world leader to another.

When the president is at elementary school level, we get elementary school level thank you notes from him to other dictators.

It'll be ages before they've managed to test all the remains there, to see who and what they are. Are they animal bones? A mix of soldiers from several countries? Boxes of rocks? I do hope that they are repatriating human remains, for the sake of the families. But really, NK knows they can continue to do whatever the heck Kim wants, as long as they occasionally send a butt-pat or flattering word over to the orange dotard, and he'll write them kind childlike thank-you notes.

[AmazonGrace]

Things are going awesome with North Korea.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Mixed messages R US

[AmazonGrace]

I am starting to suspect that Trump is not such an awesome deal maker

[GreyhoundFan]

"North Korea issued $2 million bill for comatose Otto Warmbier’s care"

Spoiler

BEIJING —  North Korea issued a $2 million bill for the hospital care of comatose American Otto Warmbier, insisting that a U.S. official sign a pledge to pay it before being allowed to fly the University of Virginia student from Pyongyang in 2017.

The presentation of the invoice — not previously disclosed by U.S. or North Korean officials — was extraordinarily brazen even for a regime known for its aggressive tactics.

But the main U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions passed down from President Trump, according to two people familiar with the situation. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The bill went to the Treasury Department, where it remained — unpaid — throughout 2017, the people said. However, it is unclear whether the Trump administration later paid the bill, or whether it came up during preparations for Trump’s two summits with Kim Jong Un.

The White House declined to comment. “We do not comment on hostage negotiations, which is why they have been so successful during this administration,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders wrote in an email.

Trump, as recently as Sept. 30, asserted that his administration paid “nothing” to get American “hostages” out of North Korea.

Warmbier, who was 21, fell into a coma for unknown reasons the night he was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor in March 2016.

He was convicted on charges stemming from pulling down a propaganda sign in a Pyongyang hotel in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2016. Such an infraction would be minor in almost any other country, but in North Korea it was considered a “hostile act against the state.”

Fred Warmbier, Otto’s father, said he was never told about the hospital bill. He said it sounded like a “ransom” for his late son.

After his sentencing, the North Koreans held onto the comatose student for another 15 months, not even telling American officials until June 2017 that he had been unconscious all that time. News of his condition sparked a frantic effort led by Joseph Yun, the State Department’s point man on North Korea at the time, to get Warmbier home.

Yun and an emergency medicine doctor, Michael Flueckiger, traveled to Pyongyang on a medical evacuation plane. They were taken to the Friendship Hospital in the diplomatic district, a clinic where only foreigners are treated, and found Warmbier lying in a room marked “intensive care unit,” unresponsive and with a feeding tube in his nose.

Flueckiger examined Warmbier and asked the two North Korean doctors, who bore a thick pile of charts, questions about the lab work, scans and X-rays they had done.

Afterward, they went to a meeting room where the talks to free Warmbier began. 

“I didn’t realize what a negotiation it was going to be to secure his release,” said Flueckiger, who is medical director of Phoenix Air Group, an aviation company based in Cartersville, Ga., that specializes in medical evacuations.

North Korean officials asked the doctor to write a report about his findings. “It was my impression that if I did not give them a document that I could sign off on, that would cause problems,” Flueckiger said in an interview.

But the American said he did not have to lie in his report. Whatever had happened to put Warmbier into that state, it was “evident” that he had received “really good care” in the hospital, he said. The doctors had done “state-of-the-art resuscitation” to revive Warmbier after he suffered a catastrophic cardiovascular collapse, and it was “remarkable” that he had no bedsores, Flueckiger said.

“Would I have lied to get him out of there? Maybe I would have,” he said. “But I didn’t have to answer that question.”

Yun, however, was faced with a more difficult predicament.

The North Korean officials handed him a bill for $2 million, insisting he sign an agreement to pay it before they would allow him to take Warmbier home, according to the two people familiar with the situation.

Yun called then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and told him about the bill. Tillerson called Trump. They instructed their envoy to sign the piece of paper agreeing that he would pay the $2 million, the two people said.

Flueckiger discussed the medical aspects of Warmbier’s evacuation but said he was not authorized to discuss the diplomatic negotiations.

A State Department spokesman and Yun, who retired in early 2018, both declined to comment. Tillerson, the Treasury Department and North Korea’s envoy responsible for U.S. affairs, based at its U.N. mission in New York, did not respond to requests for comment.

Warmbier’s brain damage at North Korea’s hands and subsequent death caused widespread shock in the United States, but the news that North Korea expected the government to pay for his care has caused further backlash.

“This is outrageous. They killed a perfectly healthy and happy college student and then had the audacity to expect the U.S. government to pay for his care,” said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

Having signed the documentation and secured Warmbier’s release, Yun and Flueckiger flew to Cincinnati to return the young man to his parents. Otto Warmbier died six days later, but the cause of his severe brain damage has never been ascertained. 

Fred Warmbier accused North Korea of beating and torturing him in detention, although doctors who examined him at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center said there was no evidence of that. His parents requested that an autopsy not be performed.

North Korea insisted that Warmbier became sick after eating pork and spinach, but it also said he had a severe allergic reaction to the sedatives he was given.

The director of North Korea’s Friendship Hospital said the family’s accusations that Warmbier died as a result of torture were a “total distortion of the truth.”

“The American doctors who came . . . to help Warmbier’s repatriation acknowledged that his health indicators were all normal and submitted a letter of assurance to our hospital that they shared the diagnostic result of the doctors of our hospital,” state media quoted the unnamed hospital director as saying in October last year.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier sued North Korea over their son’s death and in December were awarded $501 million in damages — money that the Kim regime will never pay. But Judge Beryl A. Howell, of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, said it was “appropriate to punish and deter North Korea” for the “torture, hostage taking and extrajudicial killing of Otto Warmbier.” 

The Warmbiers have blamed Kim for their son’s death, but Trump has said he believes the North Korean leader’s claims that he did not know about the student’s treatment.

“I don’t believe he would have allowed that to happen,” Trump said in Hanoi in February after his second summit with Kim. Trump said he spoke to Kim about the death of Warmbier and that Kim “feels badly about it.”

“He tells me he didn’t know about it, and I take him at his word,” Trump said in February.

North Korea has taken Americans as hostages before, and this is not the first time Pyongyang has threatened huge hospital bills for detained American citizens.

Kenneth Bae, a Christian missionary and diabetic who was held in North Korea for almost two years, said he was told he would be charged 600 euros a day for his care at the Friendship Hospital. The bill for his first hospital stint while in detention came to 101,000 euros — about $120,000 at the time, Bae wrote in his memoir, “Not Forgotten.”

 By the end of his detention in November 2014, after another spell in the hospital, Bae calculated that the North Koreans would be charging him $300,000. In the end, he was released without paying any of it.

 

[fraurosena]

22 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"North Korea issued $2 million bill for comatose Otto Warmbier’s care"

  Hide contents

BEIJING —  North Korea issued a $2 million bill for the hospital care of comatose American Otto Warmbier, insisting that a U.S. official sign a pledge to pay it before being allowed to fly the University of Virginia student from Pyongyang in 2017.

The presentation of the invoice — not previously disclosed by U.S. or North Korean officials — was extraordinarily brazen even for a regime known for its aggressive tactics.

But the main U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions passed down from President Trump, according to two people familiar with the situation. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The bill went to the Treasury Department, where it remained — unpaid — throughout 2017, the people said. However, it is unclear whether the Trump administration later paid the bill, or whether it came up during preparations for Trump’s two summits with Kim Jong Un.

The White House declined to comment. “We do not comment on hostage negotiations, which is why they have been so successful during this administration,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders wrote in an email.

Trump, as recently as Sept. 30, asserted that his administration paid “nothing” to get American “hostages” out of North Korea.

Warmbier, who was 21, fell into a coma for unknown reasons the night he was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor in March 2016.

He was convicted on charges stemming from pulling down a propaganda sign in a Pyongyang hotel in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2016. Such an infraction would be minor in almost any other country, but in North Korea it was considered a “hostile act against the state.”

Fred Warmbier, Otto’s father, said he was never told about the hospital bill. He said it sounded like a “ransom” for his late son.

After his sentencing, the North Koreans held onto the comatose student for another 15 months, not even telling American officials until June 2017 that he had been unconscious all that time. News of his condition sparked a frantic effort led by Joseph Yun, the State Department’s point man on North Korea at the time, to get Warmbier home.

Yun and an emergency medicine doctor, Michael Flueckiger, traveled to Pyongyang on a medical evacuation plane. They were taken to the Friendship Hospital in the diplomatic district, a clinic where only foreigners are treated, and found Warmbier lying in a room marked “intensive care unit,” unresponsive and with a feeding tube in his nose.

Flueckiger examined Warmbier and asked the two North Korean doctors, who bore a thick pile of charts, questions about the lab work, scans and X-rays they had done.

Afterward, they went to a meeting room where the talks to free Warmbier began. 

“I didn’t realize what a negotiation it was going to be to secure his release,” said Flueckiger, who is medical director of Phoenix Air Group, an aviation company based in Cartersville, Ga., that specializes in medical evacuations.

North Korean officials asked the doctor to write a report about his findings. “It was my impression that if I did not give them a document that I could sign off on, that would cause problems,” Flueckiger said in an interview.

But the American said he did not have to lie in his report. Whatever had happened to put Warmbier into that state, it was “evident” that he had received “really good care” in the hospital, he said. The doctors had done “state-of-the-art resuscitation” to revive Warmbier after he suffered a catastrophic cardiovascular collapse, and it was “remarkable” that he had no bedsores, Flueckiger said.

“Would I have lied to get him out of there? Maybe I would have,” he said. “But I didn’t have to answer that question.”

Yun, however, was faced with a more difficult predicament.

The North Korean officials handed him a bill for $2 million, insisting he sign an agreement to pay it before they would allow him to take Warmbier home, according to the two people familiar with the situation.

Yun called then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and told him about the bill. Tillerson called Trump. They instructed their envoy to sign the piece of paper agreeing that he would pay the $2 million, the two people said.

Flueckiger discussed the medical aspects of Warmbier’s evacuation but said he was not authorized to discuss the diplomatic negotiations.

A State Department spokesman and Yun, who retired in early 2018, both declined to comment. Tillerson, the Treasury Department and North Korea’s envoy responsible for U.S. affairs, based at its U.N. mission in New York, did not respond to requests for comment.

Warmbier’s brain damage at North Korea’s hands and subsequent death caused widespread shock in the United States, but the news that North Korea expected the government to pay for his care has caused further backlash.

“This is outrageous. They killed a perfectly healthy and happy college student and then had the audacity to expect the U.S. government to pay for his care,” said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

Having signed the documentation and secured Warmbier’s release, Yun and Flueckiger flew to Cincinnati to return the young man to his parents. Otto Warmbier died six days later, but the cause of his severe brain damage has never been ascertained. 

Fred Warmbier accused North Korea of beating and torturing him in detention, although doctors who examined him at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center said there was no evidence of that. His parents requested that an autopsy not be performed.

North Korea insisted that Warmbier became sick after eating pork and spinach, but it also said he had a severe allergic reaction to the sedatives he was given.

The director of North Korea’s Friendship Hospital said the family’s accusations that Warmbier died as a result of torture were a “total distortion of the truth.”

“The American doctors who came . . . to help Warmbier’s repatriation acknowledged that his health indicators were all normal and submitted a letter of assurance to our hospital that they shared the diagnostic result of the doctors of our hospital,” state media quoted the unnamed hospital director as saying in October last year.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier sued North Korea over their son’s death and in December were awarded $501 million in damages — money that the Kim regime will never pay. But Judge Beryl A. Howell, of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, said it was “appropriate to punish and deter North Korea” for the “torture, hostage taking and extrajudicial killing of Otto Warmbier.” 

The Warmbiers have blamed Kim for their son’s death, but Trump has said he believes the North Korean leader’s claims that he did not know about the student’s treatment.

“I don’t believe he would have allowed that to happen,” Trump said in Hanoi in February after his second summit with Kim. Trump said he spoke to Kim about the death of Warmbier and that Kim “feels badly about it.”

“He tells me he didn’t know about it, and I take him at his word,” Trump said in February.

North Korea has taken Americans as hostages before, and this is not the first time Pyongyang has threatened huge hospital bills for detained American citizens.

Kenneth Bae, a Christian missionary and diabetic who was held in North Korea for almost two years, said he was told he would be charged 600 euros a day for his care at the Friendship Hospital. The bill for his first hospital stint while in detention came to 101,000 euros — about $120,000 at the time, Bae wrote in his memoir, “Not Forgotten.”

 By the end of his detention in November 2014, after another spell in the hospital, Bae calculated that the North Koreans would be charging him $300,000. In the end, he was released without paying any of it.

 

I never thought I would ever do this, but I'm giving the presidunce the benefit of the doubt in this instance. I believe he would have agreed to paying whatever amount, just to get Warmbier out of NK. He wanted that win, no matter the cost.

I also believe he never had any intention of ever paying the bill. Because that's his standard MO.

[GreyhoundFan]

Wow, just wow

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

On 5/6/2019 at 12:06 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

Wow, just wow

 

So if Kim Jong In has his negotiators executed it doesn't matter because Trump too can shake up his team? Cos it's totally the same.

[fraurosena]

Holy moly!

Did he really have surgery— or is it Covid19?

Does anyone know if Un has kids, or how the succession were to go if the worst happens and he were to die?

 

[Emma]

According to my favorite radio host, John rothmann (a normally reputable source) it was cardiovascular surgery and his successor will likely be his sister.

[IrishCarrie]

I don't think there's automatic succession in North Korea though - it'll be up for grabs for anyone who wants to make a power play for it. And those kids don't play nice at times like this..... 

[Pecansforeveryone]

His sister? Not a son? Interesting, very interesting.  If he does pass, his reign will have been significantly shorter than his father's if memory serves. 

Edited April 21, 2020 by Pecansforeveryone
Add a word