ROK President Moon to Visit Russia This week

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Yonhap News Agency reported, citing an anonymous presidential administration official, that ROK President Moon Jae-in will pay a three-day state visit to Russia later this week to meet President Putin. The two presidents will meet on Thursday, shortly after the ROK leader’s arrival in Moscow. This’ll be Moon’s first visit to the Russian capital since his election in May 2017 and the first state visit by a ROK President to Russia since 1999. Most expect Moon and Putin to pay special attention to the DPRK nuclear issue during the summit. Yonhap quoted the anonymous official:

Russia made significant contributions to efforts to denuclearise the DPRK, it also played a significant role in pressuring it, considering its economic relationship with the DPRK. In addition, the visit should help promote strategic cooperation between the two countries to establish peace in Northeast Asia amidst positive developments in security conditions and efforts to denuclearise the Korean peninsula.

Whilst in Moscow, Moon will also meet with Chairman of the RF Government D A Medvedev and other high-ranking officials. He’ll also be the first ROK President to address the RF Gosduma (lower house of the RF Federal Assembly). Later on, Moon will travel to Rostov-on-Don to attend the FIFA World Cup match between the ROK and Mexico before returning home on Saturday.

18 June 2018

TASS

http://tass.com/world/1009968

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10 June 2018. Why Is It Important That Kim Jong-un Flew In a Chinese Aeroplane to Singapore?

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Kim Jong-un flew in a Chinese Boeing 747 to Singapore. Moreover, PLA fighters escorted it all the way. China told the whole world:

We have the DPRK’s back. We’re behind it 100 percent. We’ll intervene like in 1950 if the Americans attack it. We’re the local power and you’d best adjust to that.

The USA doesn’t have the oomph to take on the PRC. The PLA is much larger than the American ground forces are and the ROK forces wouldn’t hold against the Chinese (Korea, historically, has been a Chinese client-state). If the Yanks were to involve the Japanese, it’d cause an explosion in both Korea and China. Both countries have a Number One White-Hot hatred of Japan. In other words, the USA is fucked… royally. Trump doesn’t have anything to negotiate over. China wants it done its way; the DPRK will repeat verbatim whatever Beijing tells it to do. That is, Trump can’t threaten an invasion, for Chinese forces are in Manchuria waiting to intervene in the case of such a scenario. The USA has nothing in the store-cupboard, militarily. It has no conventional forces to send, for all its forces are engaged in colonial wars in Southwest Asia and Africa. What reserve units exist in CONUS aren’t up to strength and need at least a year to get ready for the big time.

That’s what scary in this impasse. Trump could decide to go nuke because he has no other options. The USN can’t interdict the Chinese and Russian land-based transportation networks and the USAF would face world-class air defences. The Army simply has no troops to send. Trump is an impulsive and juvenile character. The Chinese will do their best to save his face (they aren’t like Anglo Americans, who like humiliating people), but Trump may resent it. Parenthetically, Russia is involved in this, but only as an ally of China. China is the major actor in the Anti-Empire Coalition, and all know this, including the Russians. They find being Number Two to China preferable to being the Victim of the USA (it’s much like St Aleksandr Nevsky making tribute to the Tatars whilst resisting the West… it’s the same historical situation, with the same result, no doubt).

This scene isn’t encouraging at all. God willing that we’ll get through it. China, Russia, and the DPRK are the grownups in the room… unfortunately, an adolescent US President holds the nuclear football. Let’s all hope for the best.

BMD

Kim Jong-un Departs for Singapore Summit

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According to the Yonhap News Agency, an Air China flight departed from Pyongyang airport at 0830 local time. Kim Jong-un boarded a Chinese Boeing 747 commonly used by high-ranking Chinese officials. However, the popular tracking online source Flightradar24 reportedly didn’t specify the destination of the aircraft. The website also didn’t detect any other flights departing from the DPRK. According to Yonhap, many government-chartered planes keep their routes secret due to security issues. According to Reuters, one more plane, an Il-76 cargo jet, departed early on Sunday from the DPRK for Singapore. According to media reports, the cargo plane carried food items as well as several cars to escort Kim Jong-un. The flight tracking service also reportedly showed that the Il-76 landed in Guangzhou in southern China before being airborne again, likely heading for Singapore. Reportedly, Kim Jong-un took only one known overseas trip by air since becoming DPRK leader in 2011. An Il-76 cargo plane accompanied his personal Il-62M jet to China in May.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, the White House said that US President Donald Trump also departed for Singapore, where he should meet with Kim on Tuesday. Trump took off from Canada on Saturday after participating in the Group of Seven (G7) summit, and shall arrive in Singapore on Sunday. According to Japan’s Kyodo News agency, citing a diplomatic source, the DPRK leader will arrive in Singapore on Sunday. Earlier, a ROK Air Force official told the South China Morning Post that Chinese fighter jets would secure Kim’s flight route to the historic meeting.

The USA-DPRK summit will mark the first-ever meeting of the leaders of the two countries. The highly-anticipated talks were at risk following Trump’s 24 May declaration that he was cancelling the meeting with Kim over Pyongyang’s hostile rhetoric. Last week, however, Trump reinstated the summit after meeting with Kim’s top aide, Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea Vice Chairman Kim Yong Chol, at the White House.

10 June 2018

Sputnik International

https://sputniknews.com/asia/201806101065275784-singapore-trump-kim-summit-departure/

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According to ROK military sources, the PLA Air Force is preparing to send fighter aircraft to escort DPRK leader Kim Jong-un to an upcoming summit in Singapore where he’ll meet US President Donald Trump after years of hostile relations. A ROK Air Force official told the South China Morning Post that Chinese aircraft will secure Kim’s flight to the meeting… and perhaps remind the US side that Beijing will support Pyongyang. the ROK source told SCMP Thursday:

Escorting [a head of state] with jets is one of the highest security protocols that the air force can provide. If China sends air assets to conduct the escort, then, it may be a message directed to the USA-ROK alliance that China is strongly backing up Kim.

The Hong Kong-based newspaper, acquired by Alibaba Group in December 2015, also reported that Beijing is seeking to broaden its influence over Pyongyang ahead of the summit. In recent months, the USA, the ROK, and the DPRK engaged in unprecedented meetings that sparked hopes that the 68-year Korean War will finally be brought to an end, reducing the risk of nuclear conflict in the Korean peninsula.

Trump is also seeking to reduce the US trade deficit with its many trading partners, and China is America’s second-largest such partner, 2018 US Census Bureau data shows. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported:

Trump got fed up with hearing he was weak on China, calling on advisers at a 22 May meeting to get moving on imposing more tariffs against Beijing as a weapon to force trade concessions.

Sceptics of Trump’s approach to relations with China said Beijing is aware of Trump’s two-prong approach and, therefore, unlikely to allow major US victories on both trade and Korean Peninsula denuclearisation.

7 June 2018

Sputnik International

https://sputniknews.com/asia/201806071065208322-chinese-jets-escort-kim-jong-un/

Trump Should Keep the Promise He Made To the DPRK

The DPRK maintains large armed forces because the USA tried to destroy it in 1950 and the Americans refuse to leave the Korean peninsula. That’s the long and the short of it all. 

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While there are some in the USA saying it’d win their leader a Nobel Peace Prize, doubts were cast on whether the planned summit in Singapore between US President Donald Trump and DPRK leader Kim Jong-un will actually take place. The on-off-on roller-coaster exposed a shocking lack of seriousness and preparedness on the US side, particularly on Trump’s part, as to how to seize such a rare opportunity to ease the tensions on the Korean peninsula. It’s true that for the two countries to agree to the historic meeting is in itself a major breakthrough, especially if we recall the sabre-rattling and war of words just months ago. However, while the DPRK made goodwill gestures in the past weeks toward improving relations and denuclearisation, by blowing up its nuclear test site and releasing three US detainees, it’s unclear what concessions the USA is willing or able to make going to the summit and subsequent talks.

Pyongyang made it clear that it’d cancel the summit if Washington forces it to surrender its nuclear weapons programme unilaterally or continues to float the Libya model. The DPRK long cited security concerns to justify its nuclear programme. After all, the relevant parties haven’t signed a peace treaty to end the Korean War, which started in 1950. The US security guarantee must be in a formal document so that the Trump Administration and future US leaders will have to abide by it. It’s a lesson learned from the Libya disarmament in 2003. The Obama Administration and its NATO allies pursued régime change in Libya in 2011; eight years after Muammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear weapons programme.

In this sense, the USA has much to do to make its security guarantee credible this time around. The USA likes to blame the DPRK for all the past failures on denuclearisation. But certain US government actions… such as when the US government stopped shipping oil to the DPRK as agreed upon and former president George W Bush calling Pyongyang part of an “axis of evil”… were much to blame for past setbacks. Key in the security assurance is the DPRK’s long-standing opposition to the US troops stationed in the ROK and their frequent joint drills on and in the waters off the peninsula. If the parties involved sign a peace treaty to end the Korean War, it doesn’t make sense for the USA to continue to deploy those troops on the peninsula. Holding regular military exercises aimed at the DPRK would become unnecessary provocations.

Many US politicians and the military-industrial complex don’t want to see a de-escalation of tensions on the peninsula, let alone a unified Korea, because that’d take away the justification for such a US military presence there. The phasing out of UN sanctions and US unilateral economic sanctions on the DPRK, whilst a reasonable expectation for the DPRK, will, unfortunately, be extremely challenging politically for Trump at home. China has long advocated direct contact between the DPRK and the USA to ease tensions. China doesn’t oppose Korean reunification because no one else in today’s world better understands the term “reunification” than Koreans and Chinese. Chinese would applaud a reunified Korea as a peaceful, prosperous, and friendly neighbour. However, China wouldn’t like to see a reunified Korea that was a US puppet, used as a geopolitical tool by the USA against China. The ball is now in Trump’s court.

1 June 2018

Chen Weihua

China Daily

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201806/01/WS5b1083bba31001b82571d8d7.html