Evidence mounts that North Korea wants to make a deal
Loudspeakers are removed, time zones are changed, and proposals for North Korean McDonalds are made.
In my last post on North Korea, I theorized that China had compelled North Korea to denuclearize after the mountain covering the rogue regime’s test area has collapsed and the border area between the two nations was threatened will fallout.
However, evidence continues to mount that North Korea’s promises may be good this time around and that the peace proposal is not a stall for weapon development time.
My report on the worm-infested, defecting soldier mentioned the South Korean loudspeaker system blaring pop music to its neighbor. The equipment is now being taken down.
Along the fortified border that divides the Korean Peninsula, soldiers in both North and South Korea began dismantling loudspeakers that for decades helped wage a war of words — blaring propaganda over the armistice line.
South Korean soldiers in helmets and gloves took down their country’s loudspeakers in front of journalists and snapping cameras on Tuesday. North Korea started to remove its speakers earlier in the day, a South Korean military officer told The Associated Press.
Both Koreas switched off their broadcasts in anticipation of last week’s historic summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. After the meeting last Friday, the two leaders announced that they had agreed to a peace treaty and the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea is also shifting its time 30 minutes to align with its southern neighbor.
North Korea will shift its time zone 30 minutes earlier to align with South Korea starting May 5 “as a first practical step for national reconciliation and unity,” the North’s state media said Monday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said it was “a painful wrench” to see two clocks showing different Pyongyang and Seoul times on a wall at the summit venue during the historic meeting Friday with President Moon Jae-in, KCNA said.
Finally, and the data point I think confirms the move to bond with South Korea and make peace with the United States is real: The North Koreans want McDonald’s to open a franchise in the capital.
As Kim Jong-un lifts the veil on his secretive regime and vows to shut down his nuclear test site, it has now emerged his regime is eager for former enemy the US to invest in North Korea and expand its economy.
Chung In Moon, special adviser to President Moon Jae-in, suggested American fast food giant McDonalds could even set up outlets in Pyongyang as tensions between North Korea and the West thaw.
He said: “They want American investment.”
“They want American investment coming to North Korea.
The North Koreans have even expressed a desire to have a Trump Tower in their country. While such investment is a long way off, it is far closer to being reality than it was before Nov. 2016. Among the many issues to be addressed in the upcoming weeks is the matter of the 3 Americans who are now being held in North Korea and offering restitution to the parents of Otto Warmbier, the young man who died after being tortured in a North Korean prison.
However, the speed of the changes reminds me of how swiftly Eastern Europe changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I will pray that North and South Korea stay on the fast track to peace.
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Comments
Pompeo must have done a heckava job!
Please reread your first sentence
Thanks.
I’m still cautious, but I’m coming increasingly closer to saying “Fsck me! He’s only gone and done it, hasn’t he?”
If Trump succeeds with this effort, it will be
interesting to see what the MSM does with it.
Will they use their talent for “tortion” (distortion and contortion)to try and steer credit elsewhere, or will they, finally, realize that all this time they’ve been barking up the wrong tree? (Those dogs!)
“Only Trump could go to North Korea.”
The usual communitariat is already trying to give most of the credit to the “policies that President Obama enacted”. What policies? They never say, really, but Obama deserves all the credit, donchaknow.
I’m very impressed with Trump on this one: the man who knows how to deal with mobsters, corrupt city and state officials, union hacks, and bankers to build a hotel/casino figured out how to manipulate Fat Boy, and it worked.
I foresee the MSM lobbying for a Nobel Prize to go to Dennis Rodman with honorable mention to Jimmy Carter for participation.
And a renewed focus on Stormy Daniels.
It’s not just Trump. Moon and Xi want a deal, too. Since Moon leads the anti-American faction in South Korean politics, any Kim/Moon agreement is likely to have a few secret clauses that will not promote American interests.
A real peace agreement would allow full cooperation and trade between the North and South and create a major regional power, on a par with Japan, and openly hostile to it.
The only important American interests there are to shut down the ICBM program that the Norks have been working on, and to shut down their development of effective nuclear weapons that could be carried on those ICBM’s.
If America can achieve those two goals, then I couldn’t care less if Kim runs the place for the next 50 years. Pull all our troops out of South Korea, that would be wonderful. The Norks no longer have the offensive strength to overrun the south, unless they have nukes behind them. Without those, it’s not a place we need to be concerned with.
The North Koreans want McDonald’s to open a franchise in the capital.
They could rename the Big Mac, and call it the Big Nuke. That way NorKo gets their nukes, and no one gets hurt.
Well, aside from an outbreak of obesity in people other than Kim Young-un.
It is still far too early to tell what the intentions of the players in this drama are.
Kim did not have an epiphany and see the benefits of becoming a responsible international leader. He is whatever the Chinese want him to be, as long as he maintains power. Xi did not suddenly have an epiphany and decide that a rogue North Korea was a danger to the world. After all, the DPRK is not a rogue, but a China controlled asset. And, the ROK did not suddenly decide that Kim is now a Korean brother.
This is all kabuki theater on an international scale. Kim’s 180 was done at the direction of the Chinese government and is designed to curry favor with the current US administration which is clobbering the Chinese in the realm of trade. The ROK will do just about anything to lessen the chances that the Chinese, or Kim unilaterally, will decide that attacking the South is advantageous.
We can be optimistic about this development, but I would wait for about 5 years before I held any parties over it.
I bet Little Rocket Man wants a McDonalds. Probably hasn’t eaten it since his elementary school days in Switzerland and he’s got the McMunchies.
You want to be optimistic, but these big foreign policy deals often are a long series of low hurdles ended by the final hurdle which is 100 times higher – confirming compliance.