Korea

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blindpig
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Korea

Post by blindpig » Sat Sep 16, 2017 12:09 pm

Previous postings about Korea here:

http://www.thebellforum.net/Bell2/www.t ... l?t=153981

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Serbian tourists debunk myths on North Korea
By Gorazd Velkovski - September 15, 20170

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North Koreans are people just like everyone else. They live within an existing system and, like all Asians, they work to achieve a certain goal, Philip Milosavljevic, a Serbian traveler and tour guide, who led the first group of Balkan tourists to ever visit North Korea, told local media upon return.

Milosavljevic said that North Korea differs from the way it is portrayed by mainstream media.

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A group of Serbian tourists in North Korea

“We went there filled with prejudices about people there eating grass and wearing shabby clothes. Many of them serve in the army or work as farmers as part of working groups comprising several villages, each named after the fruit or vegetable they grow,” he said.

Milosavljevic added that they visited people’s homes to see how they live and what they eat.

“We were in Sariwon – a nice, clean town with the houses painted in different colors, just like in Pyongyang. The boulevards are very clean and the villages are nice and well managed. The fields look ideal, just like elsewhere in Asia,” he recounted.

The Serbian tourists were accompanied by Comrade Kim – a local guide with an excellent command of English, who carefully avoided any questions about the political situation in the country.

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Philip Milosavljevic said that North Koreans do not divide the peninsula into North and South Korea.

“All they know is the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and this applies to the entire peninsula. They say that it is one country of 80 million, 30 million of whom live in the north, 40 million in the south and another 10 million live abroad. They can’t wait until their country becomes one again peacefully and without any foreign meddling,” he noted.

The Serbian tourists were very much impressed by Pyongyang, an ideally clean city with expansive boulevards and a wealth of huge monuments.

They also debunked the myth about the North Korean capital having no subway and that the photos that occasionally appear in the media are fake.

“The metro is there all right. We spent a whole hour or more riding the trains and changing lines. The trains date back to the 1990s, built in East Berlin, but they also showed up domestically built ones, designed in 2010 and 2011. There are many cars, mostly white-colored Volkswagens and Japanese ones, trolleybuses and buses. They also build their own cars, but they are still few and far between,” Milosavljevic continued.

He also mentioned the so-called “Sun Palaces” children come to after school to draw, sing, dance and learn foreign languages.

The male part of the group debunked another myth about shabbily dressed and poorly made-up North Korean women who rarely catch the men’s eyes.

“The women love to spruce up, put on a nice dress and wear high heels. We saw many young women with earrings even, though wearing them is not really encouraged,” he noted.

“People get together, but we didn’t see any nightclubs there. The restaurants close at 9 p.m. and people go home. City lights go out and the country falls asleep,” he noted.

Another tall story is about North Koreans never telling jokes.

“As we walked past a local beerhouse the men there invited us to come in and join them. Kim – our guide – kept telling us jokes about President Bush.

The people there smile, they look absolutely normal and live within the existing system of values. They live just like the majority of Asians do – they have a goal and they work to achieve it,” Philip Milosavljevic concluded.

http://www.minareport.com/2017/09/15/se ... rth-korea/
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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 28, 2017 5:59 pm

PHOTO-REPORT: THE NORTH KOREA NEITHER TRUMP NOR WESTERN MEDIA WANTS THE WORLD TO SEE

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Photo © Eva Bartlett. A group of schoolgirls pause for a portrait photo at Pyongyang’s zoo. Watch a clip from the zoo.

October 20th, 2017, Mint Press News

By Eva Bartlett

*all photos/videos by Eva Bartlett

PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA — North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK) is one of the least understood and most lied about countries on Earth. In Western corporate media renditions, most news about the country is alarmist (of “the North Koreans want to kill you” type), fake (“all men have to have the same haircut,” a story originating from Washington itself), or about the North’s military.

Accounts of the nation’s military prowess and threat generally ignore (as noted here) the presence of the 28,500 U.S. troops occupying South Korea, their 38 military installations, and more recently their Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea — “a U.S. radar system opposed by the Korean people, in the North and South, as well as China.”

On September 19, 2017, in the forum of the United Nations General Assembly, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to “totally destroy” North Korea.

This is not the first time threats against the DPRK have been issued. Colin Powell in 1995 threatened to turn North Korea into “a charcoal briquette” and in 2013 reiterated that threat to “destroy” the country.

Not broadcast in corporate media is the fact that America had already annihilated North Korea, destroying the capital city, Pyongyang, and cities around the country, with 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of Napalm — indeed turning the North into a ‘charcoal briquette’.

Retired U.S. General Curtis E. LeMay, who headed the Strategic Air Command during that earlier war, said that they had “burned down every town in North Korea.” In LeMay’s words, “Over a period of three years or so we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population of Korea, as direct casualties of war or from starvation and exposure?”

Also omitted in news on North Korea are the criminal sanctions against the North, enforced since 1950, making even more difficult the efforts to rebuild following decimation. The sanctions are against the people, affecting all sectors of life (as humorously noted in this clip). Yet, in spite of all odds, the country maintains an enviable health system. As Professor Michel Chossudovsky noted: “North Korea’s health system is the envy of the developing world.” And, according to World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan, North Korea has “no lack of doctors and nurses.”

Further obfuscated in Western reporting are the simulated attacks (what America euphemistically calls ‘war games’) on North Korea twice a year. Involving “hundreds of thousands of troops.” As researcher and author Stephen Gowans noted, “It is never clear to the North Korean military whether the U.S.–directed maneuvers are defensive exercises or preparations for an invasion.”

A purposeful and familiar crime against reality

The absurdly cartoonish “news” one hears in Western media about North Korea is meant to detract from America’s past and current crimes against the Korean people, and to garner support for yet another American-led slaughter of innocent people.

The stories are designed to vilify the leadership and provide no context, while completely ignoring the North Korean perspective. This is standard operating procedure with respect to countries like Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, and wherever America and its allies have set their sights on establishing control (and military bases). As historian Bruce Cumings wrote:

The demonization of North Korea transcends party lines, drawing on a host of subliminal racist and Orientalist imagery; no one is willing to accept that North Koreans may have valid reasons for not accepting the American definition of reality.”

We are meant to believe that the North Korean leader is a maniac, inexplicably hell-bent on bombing America. Utterly deleted from the story is the fact that North Koreans have a different perspective: the right to a deterrent against yet another U.S. annihilation of their country. The right to self-defense.

In response to Trump’s threats of annihilation, DPRK Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ri Yong Ho, on September 23, stated:

The United States is the country that first produced nuclear weapons and the only country that actually used them, massacring hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. It is the U.S. that threatened to use nuclear weapons against the DPRK during the Korean war in the 1950s, and first introduced nuclear weapons into the Korean peninsula after the war.

…The very reason the DPRK had to possess nuclear weapons is because of the U.S. and it had to strengthen and develop its nuclear force to the current level to cope with the U.S.”

North Koreans as seen through a visitor’s lens

Propaganda and history aside, what we hardly ever see in articles on North Korea is the human side, some of the faces among the 25 million people at risk of being murdered or maimed by an American-led attack.

From August 24 to 31, 2017, I was part of a three-person delegation that independently visited the DPRK, with the intent of hearing from Koreans themselves about their country and history.

As it turned out, we heard also about their wishes for reunification with the South, their past efforts towards that goal, their desire for peace, but their refusal to be destroyed again. Following are snapshots and videos from my week in the country, with an effort to show the people and some of the impressive infrastructure and developments that corporate media almost certainly will never show.

Impact of U.S. travel ban on unfiltered views of North Korea

My visit coincided with the impending U.S. travel ban to the DPRK, which came into effect one day after I left the country.

As a dual citizen holding Canadian and U.S. citizenship, I can still choose to return to the DPRK after September 2017 on my Canadian passport. However, for Americans, the ban means they will only in limited instances be permitted to travel to the DPRK. The U.S. State Department advisory notes:

“Persons who wish to travel to North Korea on a U.S. passport after that time must obtain a special passport validation under 22 C.F.R. 51.64, and such validations will be granted only under very limited circumstances.”

While the U.S. pretends that the travel ban is for the safety of U.S. citizens, the same advisory contains this threat:

Using a U.S. passport in violation of these restrictions could result in criminal penalties. In addition, the Department may revoke a passport used in violation of these restrictions.”

This wording reveals that the intent of the ban is far more likely to prevent the American public from seeing the human face, and positive aspects, of the DPRK.

Indeed, in an August 2017 Forbes essay on North Korea, amid the predictable Western rhetoric were surprising admissions of truths:

Pyongyang looks much more like a normal city than 25 years ago. Then there were no private cars and few government ones. I wondered why they bothered with traffic lights. Today there is traffic. It’s not much by U.S. (or Chinese!) standards. But there’s no longer the ghostly sense of empty boulevards. …Visitors on longer tours with more guides often have more meaningful informal interaction with “real” North Koreans. It’s one of the reasons I believe banning travel to the North is foolish and counterproductive.”

For more photos and videos from the DPRK, please see my Facebook album and my Youtube playlist, and watch my conversation with the creators of the satirical documentary, “The Haircut, a North Korean Adventure.”

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The Mangyongdae Children’s Palace in Pyongyang is a sprawling extra-curricular facility offering children lessons in sports, dance and music (Korean and non), foreign languages, science, computers, calligraphy and embroidery, and more. Around 5,000 children daily attend this facility. They may indeed be the most talented children in Pyongyang and surroundings, but encouraging the growth of talent is something done worldwide. Unlike in many Western nations, in the DPRK lessons are free of charge.

https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2017/10/28 ... ld-to-see/

Much, much more, just don't have the time at the moment
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Re: Korea

Post by chlamor » Mon Nov 06, 2017 4:51 pm

Indeed, to a world hegemon like the United States, any renitent foreign government that refuses to place itself in the role of vassal becomes “a dangerous regime,” which must be eliminated. Accordingly, allowing pro-independence North Korea to develop the means to more effectively defend itself against US imperialist ambitions has no place in Washington’s playbook. The United States has spent the past 70 years trying to integrate the tiny, plucky, country into its undeclared empire. Now, with North Korea’s having acquired the capability to retaliate against US military aggression in a manner that would cause considerable harm to the US homeland, the prospects of those seven-decades of investment bearing fruit appear dim.

US hostility to North Korean independence has been expressed in multifarious ways over the seven decades of North Korea’s existence.

A three-year US-led war of aggression, from 1950 to 1953, exterminated 20 percent of North Korea’s population and burned to the ground every town in the country [3], driving the survivors into subterranean shelters, in which they lived and worked. US General Douglas MacArthur said of the destruction the United States visited upon North Korea that “I have never seen such devastation…After I looked at the wreckage and those thousands of women and children and everything, I vomited.” [4]

A vicious seven-decades-long campaign of economic warfare, aimed at crippling the country’s economy, and engendering attendant miseries among its people, has conferred upon North Korea the unhappy distinction of being the most heavily sanctioned nation on earth. Nestled among the tranches of US sanctions are those that have been imposed because North Korea has chosen “a Marxist-Leninist economy,” [5] revealing what lies at the root of US hostility to the country.

...

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2017/07/05 ... icbm-test/

Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Fight for Freedom

When the Japanese Empire collapsed in 1945, Koreans erupted in joy, quickly organizing an independent state, the Korean People’s Republic, to usher in the freedom they had long struggled for. But their joy quickly turned to bitterness as the United States refused to recognize the new republic, and soon declared war on it.

Koreans hungered for self-determination, land reform, and an economy directed to local needs, and they turned to communists as leaders, who had established great moral authority in the anti-colonial struggle for freedom, and looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration.

But a communist Korea failed to comport with the aspirations of US policy planners, mainly Wall Street lawyers and bankers, who sought a world in which US corporations and investors would be free to scour the globe in search of lucrative trade and investment opportunities. A Korea which handed control of the country’s land, resources, and factories to farmers, cooperatives and state-owned enterprises clashed sharply with the planners’ agenda.

...

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2017/09/15 ... r-freedom/

And here:

With around eighty percent of its land comprising mountainous terrain, North Korea has a limited amount of arable land, and the nation typically fills its food gap through imports. Sharply reduced rainfall during the April-June planting season this year reduced the amount of water available for irrigation and hampered sowing activities. Satellite monitoring indicates that crop yields are likely to fall well below the norm. [4] To make up for the shortfall, the DPRK has significantly boosted imports. [5] How much longer it can continue to do so remains to be seen, in the face of dwindling reserves of foreign exchange. In effect, by blocking North Korea’s ability to engage in international trade, the United States has succeeded in weaponizing food by denying North Korea the means of providing an adequate supply to its people.

.....

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/19 ... an-people/

Punishing a Nation: How the Trump Administration is waging a merciless economic war on North Korea

http://www.zoominkorea.org/punishing-a- ... rth-korea/

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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 28, 2017 8:28 pm

The Importance of International Solidarity: DPRK’s Support for Hezbollah
Posted by KOREAN FRIENDSHIP ASSOCIATION IRELAND onJANUARY 16, 2017

The relationship between Hezbollah and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) range back to the 1980’s Israeli occupation of Lebanon. As a militant anti-imperialist organisation, Hezbollah is feared by the likes of Israel and the US. Now recently, they have fought alongside the Syrian Arab Army against terrorists who have received immense support from the imperialist bloc – US, UK, Israel, Qatar and Saudiarabia in particular. Like the DPRK, Hezbollah have been demonized by the West for its firm stand against imperialism, and for justice. Hezbollah have been accused of anti-semitism because of its anti-zionism that has been growing in relation to Israel’s hold of Lebanon. Worth noting is that the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, have stated on behalf of his organisation that Hezbollah is not seeking to build an Islamic state in Lebanon due to its multicultural environment and that it is not the wish of the vast majority at the moment, and probably never will. Nasrallah also meant that not only a democratic majority of 51% is enough to build an Islamic state, but the support of the vast majority is needed. Hezbollah representatives in the Lebanese parliament have also stated that “Hezbollah has never been against religions. Hezbollah supports all religions, it supports interfaith dialogue, and it has no problem with any religion. Hezbollah considers Zionism to be the enemy, not the Jews as a people or a religion.” Hezbollah have defended freedoms of minorities, both at home and abroad, like in Syria. To call Hezbollah anti-semite is nothing but vile and vicious lies.31iht-ednisman31-jumbo
According to a survey released by the “Beirut Center for Research and Information” on July 26 during the 2006 Lebanon War, 87% of Lebanese support Hezbollah’s “retaliatory attacks on northern Israel”, a rise of 29% points from a similar poll conducted in February the same year. Hezbollah have been portrayed as a Shia nationalist organisation, however, the level of support for Hezbollah’s resistance from non-Shiite communities was huge. 80% of Christians polled supported Hezbollah, along with 80% of Druze and 89% of Sunnis. Also from the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and in Jordan, a vast majority consider Hezbollah a legitimate resistance organisation. This might give an idea why a popular group like Hezbollah is under constant attack by the West.
The relationship between Hezbollah and the DPRK started when Israel invaded Lebanon and with the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon when Israel set up a “buffer zone” in the occupied area, and created Israeli loyal militias, made up from segments of the Christian population. The Christian militias – among them the notorious South Lebanon army – carried out ethnic cleansings, mainly against the Druze and Palestinian minorities. The Korean People’s Army (KPA) have provided support to their brothers-in-arms ever since. General-Secretary Nasrallah himself visited the DPRK for training purposes during this time. Among other noted Hezbollah members who underwent training in the DPRK was Mustafa Badreddine, who served as the movement’s counter-espionage chief in 2006, when Israel attacked Lebanon once again, and Ibrahim Akil, head of Hezbollah’s security and intelligence service. It has also been said that about 100 commandos from Hezbollah have received training by the KPA during the same period. It is even claimed that Korean instructors travelled to Lebanon in 2004 and provided Hezbollah with critical assistance in building an extensive and sophisticated fortified tunnel network in the area south of the Litani River and bordering Israel.
After the Israeli aggression of 2006 against Lebanon, the Zionists have started to fear the training of Hezbollah fighters that is taking place in the DPRK with KPA special forces, as well as counter espionage and intelligence training. The post-2006 training of Hezbollah fighters have proven to be very important for the defense of the Lebanese people. The KPA have continuously assisted Hezbollah, and today they are one of the most efficient non-state actors, not only in the Middle East, but in the world. The imperialists just hate it.
Since 2007, Israel went great lengths to stop the development of nuclear power plants in Iran and Syria and to spread fear among the respective populations. Iranian nuclear engineer Majid Shahriari, was most likely assassinated by Mossad agents… On 29 November 2010, unidentified assailants riding motorcycles launched separate bomb attacks, killing Shahriari and injuring nuclear scientist Fereydoon Abbasi, a professor at Shahid Beheshti University, where Shahriari also taught. Dr. Abbasi’s wife was also wounded. The killers had attached bombs to the professors’ cars and detonated them from a distance. According to The Guardian, Shahriari “had no known links to banned nuclear work” and according to Al Jazeera he “was a quantum physicist and was not a political figure at all” and he “was not involved in Iran’s nuclear programme”. The Zionist regime only objective is to spread terror and fear. Dozens of DPRK citizens have also been killed by the Zionist regime while working on sites in Syria. For example, in March 2007, Mossad agents broke into the Vienna home of Syria’s Atomic Agency director, where they found pictures taken inside a nuclear reactor in Syria. On September 6 the same year, eight Israeli fighter jets dropped 17 tons of explosives on the Syrian site, destroying it. Only some countries are allowed to possess nuclear weapons, while others are not even allowed to have nuclear energy.
More DPRK citizens have also been killed by Israel while working in Syria, like in 1982, during the Lebanese civil war, the DPRK government dispatched special operations forces to Syria to provide training for guerrilla operations, some killed by the Israeli military. It was also claimed by the “moderate” islamist Assad al-Zoubi, that in June 2013, the terrorist held town of Qusair was shelled at dawn with a massive rocket, artillery and mortar fire barrage, and overrun by Syrian armed forces backed by Hezbollah militants. Arab-speaking KPA advisors were integral to the operational planning of the surprise attack and artillery campaign execution during the battle for Qusair, and allied Hezbollah fighters, changing the dynamics of the war in Syria. The victory in Qusair represents a significant military and symbolic victory for the Syrian government and a humiliating defeat for the terrorists.
It is worth mentioning that during the islamist rule of Qusair, that was backed by the West against the legitimate government of Syria, that the military chief of the “armed opposition”, general Abdel Salam Harba, ordered the remaining thousand of the prior ten thousand Christians to leave Qusair after they carried out an ethnic cleansing in the town.
Mother Agnes Miriam of the Cross, Mother Superior of the Monastery of St. James at Qara in the Diocese of Homs, was interviewed on Irish Radio back in June 2012, where she confirmed that the Western backed rebels in Syria were terrorizing Syria’s Christian community. Asked whether it was the Free Syrian Army that was telling Christians to get out, Mother Agnes Miriam answered “yes…it was commander on the ground Abdel Salam Harba who decided that there was to be no more negotiations with Christians.” She said that Christians are being targeted because they are refusing to back the rebels and instead prefer to keep out of either side of the conflict. She said that the rebels are specifically targeting government troops in Christian areas and are taking Christians as human shields. Read the full story
Reactionaries claims that the DPRK is an isolated country and have lost most of its friends since the end of the Cold War, but nothing could be further from the truth. The anti-imperialist connection between the DPRK and other states, and in some cases, like Hezbollah’s, non-state actors, is unbreakable and grow stronger every day. It is not the last time that the US-Israeli pact will try to ruin a peaceful country and encourage sectarian violence in the region. Just like the British imperialists have been using divide and conquer tactics to rule over the people of the occupied six counties, so have Israel done in Lebanon and that is what the imperialists are doing right now in Syria. Today is religion a tool in the hands of the imperialists. We know how the US have been using Christian missionaries in the DPRK to smuggle equipment such as radios, weapons and other illegal things along with their bibles. Religious minorities can live in peace and enjoy religious freedoms and practice their religion in the DPRK as well as Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Civil liberties is something that is unthinkable of though under US-occupation.
Hezbollah is a consequent and advancing organisation that will keep the imperialist hands of the independent states of the Middle East and safeguard the rights of minorities.
In 2012, the Lebanese TV channel Al-Manar aired a television special praising an 8-year-old boy who raised money for Hezbollah and said: “When I grow up, I will be a communist resistance warrior with Hezbollah, fighting the United States and Israel, I will tear them to pieces and drive them out of Lebanon, the Golan and Palestine, which I love very dearly.”
The friendship and solidarity between the DPRK and Hezbollah will forever flourish.

https://jucheireland.wordpress.com/2017 ... hezbollah/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 14, 2017 1:28 pm

US Ready to Talk With North Korea ‘Without Preconditions’ – Secretary of State

https://sputniknews.com/us/201712131059 ... onditions/

In this Aug. 10, 2017, file photo, a man watches a television screen showing U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during a news program at the Seoul Train Station in Seoul, South Korea.

The US is ready to begin negotiations and work on a roadmap with North Korea without preconditions, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday.

"We are ready to talk any time North Korea would like to talk. And we are ready to have a first meeting without preconditions. Let's just meet," Tillerson said on Tuesday at an 2017 Atlantic Council-Korea Foundation Forum meeting in Washington. "And then we can begin lay out a road map of what we might be willing to work towards."

The statement would seem to represent a change of approach for the US, which had demanded that Pyongyang halt its nuclear program before any negotiations could occur.


‘Trump is Merely Bluffing' About Launching Strike Against North Korea

"We need DPRK [North Korea] to come to the table for talks. We are ready to talk any time they'd like to talk," Tillerson said. "But they have to come to the table with the view that they do want to make a different choice. Let's just meet and let's talk about the weather if you want. We can talk about whether it's going to be a square table or a round table."

"Then we can begin to lay out a map, a road map, of what we might be willing to work towards," Tillerson said, suggesting that initial contacts could revolve around establishing ground rules for any formal negotiations.

'Without preconditions' shouldn't be taken as carte blanche, however, Tillerson noted. "It's going to be tough to talk if in the middle of our talks you decide to test another device. I think they clearly understand that if we are going to talk, we have to have a period of quiet," he said. North Korea has conducted 23 missile tests since February and tested a nuclear device in September.

But Tillerson is, apparently, espousing a less demanding position. In August, he told reporters, "We don't think having a dialogue where the North Koreans come to the table assuming they're going to maintain their nuclear weapons is productive."

The secretary of state's comments come a few days after the UN envoy to North Korea, Jeffrey Feltman, returned from visiting Pyongyang. Feltman is expected to brief the UN Security Council on his trip later on Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism regarding negotiating with North Korea. Washington and Pyongyang haven't sat down for formal negotiations since 2009.

One of the most important talks between Washington and Pyongyang occurred in 1994 when former US President Jimmy Carter visited Pyongyang to negotiate a deal with Kim II-sung, the grandfather of current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Carter's trip halted the first North Korean crisis and helped pave the way for the 1994 Agreed Framework, in which Pyongyang agreed to freeze operation and construction of nuclear reactors believed to be part of a secret nuclear weapons program in exchange for two proliferation-resistant nuclear power reactors. The agreement also stated that the US would supply North Korea with fuel oil until the reactors were constructed.

At the Atlantic Council-Korea Foundation Forum, Tillerson also revealed that the US and China have discussed how they would secure nuclear weapons in North Korea if the country suffered some kind of "instability."

"We also have had conversations about in the event that something happened, could happen internal to North Korea — might be nothing that we from the outside initiate — that if that unleashed some instability, the most important thing to us would be securing those nuclear weapons they've already developed," he commented. "We've had conversations with the Chinese about how that might be done."

Last week, a Cathay Pacific flight crew announced that they saw North Korea's latest missile test last Wednesday as they were flying over Japan.

Analysts agree that the latest test, of an intercontinental ballistic missile, shows that North Korea has improved its potential range, but doubts remain as to the country's actual missile power. A Manila Times report speculates that a light dummy warhead was used for the test; a missile carrying a significantly heavier nuclear warhead would most likely not have been able to travel as far. In addition, analysts are skeptical that Pyongyang has mastered the technology needed to shield the warhead from extreme temperatures and stresses as the missile barrels back to Earth.

On Tuesday, armed forces from the US, Japan and South Korea combined to conduct an air power drill intended to assess their combat capabilities.

The operation took place in the East China Sea and consisted of Japanese F-15 fighters participating in joint exercises with US B1-B bombers, F-35 joint strike fighters and F-18 multirole jets, Reuters reported.

"The drill was meant to bolster joint operations and raise combat skills," Japan's Air Self Defense Force said in a statement.

The trilateral air drill is one of the largest in a series of drills to pressure North Korea to denuclearize and comes after a two-day exercise where the same nations launched missile-detecting operations.

*************************

I think Tillerson is trying to get his ass fired.
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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 18, 2017 5:58 pm

Defector to South Korea Who Became a Celebrity Resurfaces in the North
By CHOE SANG-HUNJULY 18, 2017

Image
A still from a videotaped interview of Lim Ji-hyun after she returned to the North. The interview was uploaded to a North Korean government-run propaganda website.
SEOUL, South Korea — Until April, Lim Ji-hyun had been a modest television celebrity in South Korea, talking to the audience about the country she knew best: North Korea. She even had her own online fan club, indicating that she was among the relatively few North Korean defectors who had successfully adjusted to life in the capitalist South.

This week, Ms. Lim resurfaced in North Korea, tearfully recalling a terrible life in the South.

“Every single day of my life in the South was a hell,” Ms. Lim, 26, said in a videotaped interview uploaded on the North Korean government-run propaganda website Uriminzokkiri. “When I was alone in a dark, cold room, I was heartbroken and I wept every day, missing my fatherland and my parents back home.”

Ms. Lim — or Jeon Hye-sung, as she was called in the North — said she returned to “the bosom of the fatherland” last month and was now living with her parents in her hometown.

She did not reveal how she traveled back to the North. The Unification Ministry, the South Korean government agency that handles issues related to defectors, said it was investigating Ms. Lim’s case. Since there is no press freedom in the North, what Ms. Lim told the propaganda website cannot be independently verified.

“I was lured to the South by a delusion that I would eat well and make a lot of money there,” she said. “It was not the place I had imagined. I had wandered around everywhere there to make money, working in drinking bars, but nothing had worked out.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/worl ... -hyun.html

Defectors are lured with promises of big bucks but those are reserved for the big fish, government, military. She probably got a few grand and some fleeting fame but the landlord is insatiable.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 21, 2017 3:13 pm

DPRK Will Never Flinch from Road of Bolstering Nuclear Force



U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson said at a forum co-sponsored by the U.S. Atlantic Council and international exchange foundation on Dec. 12 that the U.S. could be open to peace talks with the DPRK without preconditions.

We are only going to talk if the DPRK comes to the table ready to give up its program, and the DPRK needs to earn its way back to the discussion table by refraining from further military provocations, he added.

What the U.S. seeks in proposing talks with or without preconditions is the nuclear dismantlement of the DPRK and there is nothing changed.

The DPRK has no interest in the dialogue intermittently put up by the U.S. which is sneered by the international community for failing to mind its internal affairs.

As the DPRK has consistently insisted, the way to solve the issue between the DPRK and the U.S. is for the U.S. to drop at an early date its heinous hostile policy, which defines the DPRK as an enemy, and co-exist peacefully with the DPRK possessed of nukes.

As long as the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat toward the DPRK are not fundamentally removed, the DPRK will never put its nukes and ballistic missiles on the table of negotiations nor flinch even an inch from the already chosen road of bolstering up the nuclear force. This is the fixed stand of the DPRK.

Ri Hyon Do

http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?s ... 12-20-0009
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

chlamor
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Re: Korea

Post by chlamor » Tue Dec 26, 2017 2:21 pm

North Korea – UN Security Council’s “Killer Resolution”,15 to 0: Choking a Country into Submission

Pyonyang’s urban skyline, competing with Manhattan and the Trump Tower?

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is being choked into submission if not starvation by the UN Security Council, by a vote of 15 : 0; i.e. unanimously. None of the 15 UNSC states, let alone the five permanent members, have had the guts to say no to a killer Resolution, drafted and proposed by the United States of America, a name that increasingly stands for international rogue and crime nation.

The New York Times reports on 22 December 2017:

“President Trump has used just about every lever you can use, short of starving the people of North Korea to death, to change their behavior,” the White House homeland security adviser, Thomas P. Bossert, said Tuesday. “And so, we don’t have a lot of room left here to apply pressure to change their behavior.”

Two immediate questions come to mind – first, who is Trump to blackmail the UNSC into punishing nations which do not bend to the empire’s wishes?

Yes, blackmailing, because that’s exactly what is categorically part of the chief rogue’s international behavior. Case in point is the recent UN Resolution to nullify Trump’s unilateral decision to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, when he, the Donald, threatening he would watch closely who would vote against the US, in view of punishing those nations monetarily or with other sanctions; and second, how come Russia and China went along with this literally genocidal program of sanctions contained in this UNSC Resolution?

Both Russia and China know that Washington’s arguments against the DPRK are based on a web of lies. That everything coming out of Washington is a lie, or untruth, or omission of facts – is well known around the globe. But in this case, where two ascending super-powers, Russia and China have the veto right to say NO to these illegal sanctions, it begs the question, why’ didn’t they use their veto?

Even more so, since Russia and China are both also ‘sanctioned’ by Washington for not ‘behaving’, and because Russia and China are natural allies of North Korea. – Why were they going along with Washington’s blackmail? – A veto could have sent a clear message to the sort of preposterous Nikki Haleys and Donald Trumps of this world, that there is no more fear of the devil, but that the power plates are clearly shifting away from Washington.

Was it out of fear that the madman could possibly press the red bottom, if provoked? – Voting with the madman is certainly no reason to believe that the Mad Man will not press the nuclear bottom. – Then, what kind of diplomacy is it? – The fear of more sanctions directed at Russia and China?

This would be outright ridiculous, as both countries, founders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), are almost fully detached from the western dollar economy and are heading a new economy that already comprises about half of the world’s population and one third of the globe’s economic output. Hence, they can function fully independently from the west. There are no fears of sanctions either.

Then why?

Maybe because they, Russia and China, want to show the world that no matter how they vote, they will do what they deem correct, like in this case not adhering to the sanction, as they will not let North Korea’s people, their friends and allies, suffocate to death. This would tell those nations who still do not dare contradicting the US of A – “Don’t be afraid, we are on your side.”

Already a month ago, Reuters reported that according to the North Korean representative at the UN Geneva, those who most suffer from the sanctions are women and children. This is a classic. It applies almost everywhere when sanctions are dished out. For example, in Iraq where under the Clinton sanctions program, following a 1995 UN report,

“576,000 Iraqi children may have died since the end of the Persian Gulf war because of economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council, according to two scientists who surveyed the country for the Food and Agriculture Organization.”

In addition, the study found “steeply rising malnutrition among the young, suggesting that more children will be at risk in the coming years.” – Indeed, close to a million Iraqis have died as the result of a decade long US-imposed UN sanctions scheme.

Will the world allow similar numbers – or higher – of people to die in North Korea, just because the DPRK has opted to defend herself against the self-proclaimed exceptional nation that has for over 60 years refused to sign a peace agreement and instead constantly threatened North Korea with annual high-powered military war games along the Korean Peninsula?

North Korea has done no harm to any other nation. Indeed, North Korea does not intend to start a war with anyone. North Korea has had the courage and strength to rebuild as a socialist nation in almost full isolation from a 1953 US-devastated country with the loss from then 30% of the population, about 3 million people. Does anyone wonder why North Korea has opted to defend herself – come what may?

And does anybody realize, including the 15 UNSC countries having condemned the DPRK to starve, that North Korea has declared numerous times that she wants nothing more than Peace, that she is willing to sign a nuclear weapons disarmament program along with all the other nuclear powers; and she is ready to negotiate, as long as Washington stops its high-handed and dangerous military maneuvers and jet fighter territorial overflights?


Why would North Korea, or any nation for that matter – not have the same right as the US, UK, Russia, China, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and the NATO member nuclear weapons sharing states of Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey – all of which have allegedly acquired B61 tactical nuclear weapons (Made in America) targeted at Russia, Iran and other countries in the Middle East allegedly for “defense purposes”?

Turkey has five times more nuclear weapons than North Korea at its Incirlik base, Belgium and the Netherlands have together four times m0re nuclear weapons than the DPRK.

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/north-kor ... on/5623891

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blindpig
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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 15, 2018 12:46 pm

“Vancouver Group Summit”: Escalating imperialist threats of sanctions & war
worker | January 14, 2018 | 6:11 pm | Announcements, Communist Party Canada, Donald Trump, DPRK

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The so-called “Vancouver Group” Summit on January 16 will bring together the 14 countries which waged war against Korea in 1950, plus South Korea and Japan – invited by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, allegedly to seek “a diplomatic solution to the Korean crisis.” The Communist Party of Canada condemns this reunion of warmakers as a further step towards new imperialist military aggression against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The North American media has portrayed the Vancouver Group Summit as a “reasonable alternative” to Donald Trump’s threat to annihilate the entire population of the DPRK. Such a US attack would be the most shocking war crime in history, violating every international law which bans military aggression against other countries. It would mean the deaths of millions of people across the region, and could easily spark a nuclear exchange threatening the entire planet. Trump’s latest boasts about his “bigger nuclear button” are a warning that the possibility of such a devastating catastrophe is quite real.

But the Tillerson-Freeland “good cop-bad cop” scenario is not a path away from war. Rather, it is a cover for the ongoing imperialist strategy to bring the people of the DPRK to their knees, by escalating economic and diplomatic sanctions with the aim of forcing their government to end to its nuclear programme. Both approaches are based on the premise that the US has the right to “punish” any country which refuses to accept the dictates of imperialism. Both Trump’s threats of mass murder, and the Tillerson-Freeland strategy, include the continued presence of tens of thousands of US troops at bases and vessels in and around the Korean peninsula, and regular war exercises to remind the DPRK that a new imperialist aggression could be launched at any moment.

The US is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in war, and possesses the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world. The US continues to develop and promote nuclear weapons technology and is poised to spend an additional $1 trillion on its nuclear arsenal, through its current Nuclear Posture Review. The DPRK, on the other hand, was almost totally destroyed and impoverished by the “Korean War” waged by the US and its allies, a war which artificially divided the peninsula along the 1953 ceasefire demarcation line – for the crime of defending itself against threats of foreign invasion and coup d’état. While the US and NATO maintain a policy of “first use” for nuclear weapons, the DPRK committed to no first use in 2016.

We demand: the US must end its provocations, withdraw its massive military forces in South Korea and east Asia, sign a peace agreement, and allow reunification to proceed on the Korean Peninsula according to the right of the Korean people to self-determination and sovereignty free of external threats and provocations. This remains the only road to long-term peace and security.

As the Vancouver Group Summit nears, we call on the labour and democratic movements, and the peace movement in the first place, to say NO to sanctions and war against the DPRK – and YES to peace, peaceful coexistence, mutual security and to global nuclear disarmament, beginning with the arsenals of the United States and NATO.

Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada

http://houstoncommunistparty.com/vancou ... tions-war/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 16, 2018 9:02 pm

jfc

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some people ain't gonna make it thru re-education
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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