Image 01 Image 03

North Korea Tag

I woke up this morning to numerous news alerts that told me North Korea is open to talks with the US about denuclearization. I rolled my eyes because does anyone honestly believe this? Yeah, I don't especially after I dug deeper. North Korea said it is open to talks "and that it would suspend all nuclear and missile tests while it is engaged in such talks."

WAIT A SECOND. I thought Canada welcomed refugees and those seeking asylum with open arms? Haven't Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other officials mocked President Donald Trump and others here in America because they simply want people to follow our laws? It seems that loving Canada has deported 2,000 North Korean asylum seekers because they allegedly lied on refugee forms. The country is ready to deport up to 150 more.

Vice President Mike Pence told The Washington Post on his way home from the Olympics that the U.S. is ready to open talks with North Korea after a discussion with South Korean President Moon Jae-in:
The frame for the still-nascent diplomatic path forward is this: The United States and its allies will not stop imposing steep and escalating costs on the Kim Jong Un regime until it takes clear steps toward denuclearization. But the Trump administration is now willing to sit down and talk with the regime while that pressure campaign is ongoing.

The West has done everything they could to prevent an all out war with North Korea by slapping the communist kingdom with sanctions after sanctions. Now it appears that sanctions have started to work since the military happy country has cut back on its military exercises mainly due to the sanctions on oil imports.

North Korea and South Korea held high-level talks for the first time in two years. The outcome led to a major breakthrough: North Korea will send athletes to compete in the 2018 Winter Olympics next month located in South Korea. The two countries have also agreed to hold meetings to ease military tensions.

When I saw the tweeted outrage from the perpetually outraged about the Center for Disease Control (CDC)'s upcoming panel on the "Public Health Response to a Nuclear Detonation," I rolled my eyes and thought "here they go again." After all, earlier this week, North Korea's Kim Jong Un threatened the U. S. with a nuclear strike on our "entire" mainland.  No one really knows how crazy Un is.  Unlike his grandfather and father before him, he's never known a time when his family wasn't ruling over North Korea with an iron fist.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un threatened the U.S. with a nuclear strike, bragging that North Korean had the capability to deliver a nuclear warhead to the entire U.S. mainland. What's more, he suggested it could be done on a moment's notice, as the "button" was on his desk. It was posturing in the very present tense, as there is no indication North Korea has that capability today, even though it has the components: Nuclear bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Just before Christmas, Legal Insurrection noted reports that North Korea was loading potentially deadly anthrax bacteria onto intercontinental ballistic missiles as part of a biological weapons test program. The stated goal is to eventually deliver a payload of deadly pathogens to the United States. The challenge facing the North Koreans is that the heat generated from the missiles launch, flight, and strike is deadly to the lifeforms on board.

There have been some interesting developments related to North Korea this week. The U.S. military is conducting a series of drills with South Korea's military.  The training is intended to boost tunnel-warfare capabilities.
Hundreds of troops from the U.S. and South Korea conducted a joint training exercise dubbed “Warrior Strike” last week, South Korean military sources told the country’s Yonhap News Agency.

The United Nations Security Council unanimously has imposed new sanctions on North Korea. Yes, unanimously, which means North Korea's allies China and Russia even voted yes. From Bloomberg:
Specifically, the new resolution cuts deliveries of products including diesel and kerosene by almost 90 percent, to the equivalent of 500,000 barrels per year starting Jan. 1. In September, the council had already demanded imports to be cut to 2 million barrels from 4.5 million barrels. The new resolution would also cap crude imports at current levels of about 4 million barrels annually.

As we all know, it's hard to receive information from North Korea, which leads experts to view photos that include dictator Kim Jong Un's most inner circle. That circle once included Vice Marshall Hwang Pyong So, once viewed as the hermit kingdom's "second most powerful figure." Reuters reported Hwang as missing in November, as South Korea's National Intelligence Service said the dictator had him "'punished' for having an 'impure' attitude" about Kim.