Quote of the Month
"Sanctions will not bring North Korea to its knees or cause it to give up nuclear weapons"
Robert Gallucci: Thinking Through a New North Korea Strategy for Joe Biden.
Sanctions will not bring North Korea to its knees or cause it to give up nuclear weapons,“How do we get peace in Korea? We get it by the people taking over from the generals."
"America should allow South Korea to take the lead in dealing with North Korea" 6 June 2020
While "dialogue is better than nothing," Wang said Washington and Pyongyang need to take action in order to promote "mutual trust" and "overcome the deadlock."
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/05/25/China-proposes-lifting-North-Korea-sanctions/8901590389041/?sl=1&ur3=1
"American troops should begin coming home and sanctions should be loosened to allow Seoul more opportunities to build economic ties with the North...................
The Cold War is over. Pyongyang simply doesn’t matter much to America—certainly not as much as to South Korea and
other nations in Northeast Asia. It is time for Washington to disclaim responsibility for solving the North Korea problem."
"North Korea’s entire annual output is generated by South Korea in slightly over nine days."
Method to the madness of Chairman Kim: The instrumental rationalityof North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Youngwon Cho Department of Political Science, St Francis Xavier University,Antigonish, NS, Canada.
days."we have a tendency to approach engagement with the North Koreans with a strange combination of ignorance and arrogance about what they are really about."
ROBERT L. GALLUCCI SEPTEMBER 17, 2019
"the USA has conducted an unremitting propaganda campaign against Korean independence for over 70 years, so it probably
provides the best example of the awesome power of sustained propaganda to distort the perceptions of people, not merely
Americans,about imperialism and its criminal ways."
Tim Beal. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_92-1
"President Trump has surrounded himself with an NSC Advisor, Secretary of State and senior ministers who are more ideologically extreme, less bureaucratically capable, and less trustworthy than the George W Bush team that scuttled the AF. At the same time President Trump is unschooled in policy or process. He appears ready to make a deal, but also unable to make it happen with the people he has hired."
Stephen Costello 17 july 2019
https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/07/17/time-to-internationalise-diplomacy-with-north-korea/
"What we should be talking about is not how to make North Korea disarm, but how to ensure the unconditional security of North Korea and how to make any country, including North Korea feel safe and protected by international law that is strictly honoured by all members of the international community. This is what we should be thinking about,"
President Vladimir Putin. June 28th 2019
https://www.koreareaders.com/2019/06/ensure-unconditional-security-of-dprk.html
“Trump’s instincts on engaging the North Koreans have been sound,” said Robert Carlin, a longtime Korea scholar at Stanford University and a former State Department official. “The reemergence of Bolton’s all-or-nothing approach put us back in the hole.”
"By advancing and institutionalizing inter-Korean relations, we should lay the firm foundation toward our people's aspiration for peaceful unification. We should put an end to the unfortunate history of inter-Korean relations that have moved and stopped over and over again."
Kim Yeon-chul, ROK Unification Minister 8 April 2019
"Amid closed-door talks between Washington and Pyongyang officials, observers had anticipated that an agreement was in the works for their sit-down in the Vietnamese capital. Trump and Kim exchanged warm greetings, ate dinner together and appeared cordial, but experts have said the mood changed when White House national security adviser John Bolton, an avowed hard-liner who has advocated military action against North Korea in the past, took a seat at the negotiating table."
https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-rather-starve-trump-kim-1371355?piano_t=1 March 2019
"Success can only be assured if both sides make concessions that are realistic, verifiable, and not perceived as a loss to the one granting them."
HARRY J. KAZIANIS • February 11, 2019
"The hostility of the US media to the Korea peace process is stunning. This is 2019, folks, not 1950, and North and South are moving to reconcile and end the war. You refuse to acknowledge reality, to the detriment of truth. Take off your Cold War glasses for once in your lives." 22 January 2019
Tim Shorrock https://twitter.com/TimothyS/status/1087761398594224129
"if there is one takeaway from this history of verification in North Korea, it is that cooperation begets cooperation. "
Leon V Segal. December 2018
"ASEAN leaders, at best, see a lot of mixed signals and little clarity coming out of the Trump Administration"
Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest in Washington,
“We have lived together for 5,000 years and been separated for 70 years. We must live together as one people.”
President Monn Jae In. 19 September 2018
Trump’s desire to finally end this ancient and lucrative conflict, which keeps the money flowing to the Pentagon and its attendant military contractors, is part of what his enemies in the national security bureaucracy find deeply offensive. Their gravy train is about to come to an end! This is nothing less than “treason”!
From:
The North Koreans Get It: Trump's Quest For Peace Is Being Sabotaged By His Own Advisors
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-31/north-koreans-get-it-trumps-quest-peace-being-sabotaged-his-own-advisors 31 Aug 2018.
Trump deserves more latitude and less attitude
Mr. Trump’s critics need to back off. He inherited this mess. Every other approach by his predecessors to stopping Pyongyang’s nuclear drive has failed. So, the president and his team are trying something new; they deserve some latitude to see if this new approach can succeed. 16 June 2018. MARC A. THIESSEN Washington Post columnist
The military-industrial complex’s lust for war profiteering motivates it to maintain a hostile posture to designated enemies like North Korea.
Japan and the U.S. are in agreement that they have no intention of seriously pursuing diplomacy with North Korea..............................
If North Korea has to make major concessions as a condition for beginning a “meaningful dialogue,” that guarantees that there will be no dialogue of any kind.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-u-s-and-japan-close-the-door-on-north-korean-diplomacy/ Daniel Larison 19 February 2018
Unfortunately, the president is as much a product as he is a driver of America’s political and media zeitgeist, which has inflated the threat from Iran and North Korea to pathological proportions.
In reality, neither regime poses a clear and present danger to the security of the United States, certainly not one requiring military action. John Glaser is director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. 5 February 2018
Both Iran and North Korea have served primarily as a pretext for missile defense, rather than a reason, as the deployment of the THAAD component in South Korea, aimed primarily at China, reminds us. Tim Beal January 2018
North Korea responds to carrots, not sticks. Newly imposed sanctions won’t curtail efforts to further develop its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. Stephen Lendman
Getting to grips with North Korea in 15 graphics
Washington Post 19 December 2017
On the brink of conflict, you never know just where the edge of the cliff may be.
Scott D. Dagan.
The North Korean nuclear arsenal is not a bargaining chip. It is a potent deterrent designed to prevent a U.S. attack
Joseph Essertier
Guess which country has engaged in the most overseas wars and invaded the most countries since the Korean War ended: the United States. Guess how many overseas military bases North Korea has: Zero. Guess how many the United States has: Hundreds. Guess how many aircraft carriers North Korea has: Zero. Guess how many nuclear weapons the United States has: Thousands.
http://worldbeyondwar.org/lets-put-rest-myths-u-s-north-korea-relations/
Mike Whitney September 8th 2017
The US refuses to provide the North with any written guarantees that it won’t resume hostilities, kill its people and blow their cities to smithereens. So, naturally, the North has taken steps to defend itself.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/08/why-trump-wont-start-a-war-with-north-korea/
Diana Johnstone. 28 July 2017
"U.S. politicians view the rest of the world as America’s hinterland, to be exploited, abused and ignored with impunity."
Moon Jae-in, President South Korea 1 June 2017
"We will take the lead in dealing with Korean Peninsula issues without relying on the role of foreign countries. We will launch an entirely renewed initiative and boldly implement it for lasting peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula."
We will work with the international community. In cooperation with relevant countries, including the U.S. and China, we will bring North Korea out to dialogue through persuasion and pressure, and achieve the resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue, as well as improvements in inter-Korean relations and U.S.-North Korea relations,"
DPRK Vice-Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol May 2017
"North Korea needs such weapons in order to protect our government and system from threat and provocation from the United States".
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39626011
President Xi Jinping
China "hopes that all relevant sides exercise restraint, and avoid doing anything to worsen the tense situation on the peninsula"
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11844390 April 2017
U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Feb. 1st 2017
"We’ve tried isolation in the past and it hasn’t worked. We need to be engaged with other countries. And that’s particularly true with North Korea."
http://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/ranking/release/cardin-statement-at-north-korea-hearing
SIEGFRIED S. HECKERJAN. 12, 2017
"Mr. Trump should send a presidential envoy to North Korea. Talking is not a reward or a concession to Pyongyang and should not be construed as signaling acceptance of a nuclear-armed North Korea. Talking is a necessary step to re-establishing critical links of communication to avoid a nuclear catastrophe."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/opinion/the-us-must-talk-to-north-korea.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
"North Korea has been sanctioned in every possible way since the Korean War, and there is no evidence that this changed their behavior in a positive way."
Of the four major methods, including sanctions that have been implemented to make the North give up its nuclear ambitions, direct talks have proven to be the only way to help defuse tensions on the Korean Peninsula, said Bruce Cumings, chair professor at the University of Chicago, during a seminar held in Seoul.
"In the quarter century... American policy toward North Korea has added up to a stew of patent absurdities and one clear outcome: North Korea is now a nuclear weapons state," he said.
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/search1/2603000000.html?cid=AEN20161208006600315
"There is no sense in going to war. There is no sense fighting over a body of water," he said. "It is better to talk than war. We want to talk about friendship, we want to talk about co-operation, and most of all, we want to talk about business. War would lead us to nowhere."
In a recent interview with Xinhua, China's state news agency,Philippines President Duterte stressing he prefers negotiation to confrontation. October 2016
"The latest nuclear test by North Korea proves that economic sanctions against the regime have failed utterly. "
Simon Jenkins.
"Every year wasted means North Korea develops more and better weapons and proliferation risks increase."
Andrei Lankov August 15 2016
http://thebulletin.org/north-koreas-nuclear-weapons-what-now/korean-compromise-come
"Ultimately, North Korea threatens America only because America threatens North
Korea"
Doug Bandow July 31, 2016