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In March of this year, he sent a letter of condolences to South Korean President Moon Jae-in for the coronavirus pandemic, and last week North Korea erupted 15 million. the headquarters of the Dollar-South Liaison Office, which Seoul has specifically built to exchange such information.
Kim Jong Un continued to surprise on Wednesday by announcing the end of the recently announced “military action plans” against South Korea. A few hours later, Seoul noted that the North Koreans had begun removing speakers at the border, which they had recently set up to broadcast propaganda against Seoul, the Yonhap News Agency reported, citing unidentified government officials.
While North Korean leaders are using their reputation for volatility to pressure their foreign rivals, recent political twists and turns are likely to reveal a deeper problem for Kim Jong Un: He has found himself at a dead end.
After more than two years of unprecedented waves of meetings with Moon Jae-in, US President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Unui has failed to secure the guarantees of relaxation and security he was seeking in exchange for proposals to limit its nuclear weapons program.
To break the impasse, Kim Jung Un must click D. Brief in order to return to the negotiating table and await support for a struggling economy. But North Korea must be careful and avoid any action that fuels a much more influential military confrontation with the United States, or, more likely, leads Washington and Beijing to impose even more sanctions.
“It is a twisted game, and Pyongyang currently has little influence to really influence Washington,” said former US diplomat Mintaro Oba, who specializes in the Korean peninsula. – I think it will continue to increase tensions as much as it can, but at the same time it will avoid some provocations that could finally close the door to an agreement with Trump.
Stretching time
Kim Jong Un has attempted various tactics since his last official meeting with Trump in February 2019 collapsed without reaching any agreement. First, it intensified weapons testing, tightened rhetoric about the United States, while effectively ignoring Moon Jae-in’s proposals to initiate dialogue. In recent days, he has entrusted his younger sister Kim Yo Jong to lead a campaign of provocations and threats against South Korea, including the de facto destruction of the embassy on the north side of the border on June 16.
Unexpectedly, just as the peninsula was preparing to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Korean War on Thursday, state media reported that Kim Jong Un had instructed military leaders to postpone their plans for South Korea should the situation arise. Kim Yong Chol, a senior North Korean official, later warned that the “suspension” of military action plans could be reconsidered if South Korean officials were not “careful”.
While such a withdrawal makes the world speculate, it also shows that Kim Jong Un is simply avoiding more drastic decisions for now. Much more serious actions, such as an attack on a South Korean military target or the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could attack the United States, could have more dangerous consequences if Trump viewed the crisis as a threat to his chances of winning. the elections. A statement by former US national security adviser John Bolton in recent memoirs that Trump called his decision to meet Kim in Singapore in 2018 a “campaign” can only confirm such speculation.
“If Kim Jong Un continues the provocative testing of ICMB ICBs, President Trump will be quick to emphasize that he has already gone further than his predecessors to build peace on the Korean Peninsula,” said John Sitilides, geopolitical consultant for Trilogy. Advisors. Strategists added that this would mean “the end of the easing of sanctions” and that “any diplomatic failure is determined solely by the Kim regime.”
Kim Jong Unas, Kim Yo Jong
Strategic advantage
Waiting for Kim Jong Un can be helpful. His regime could continue to produce fissile material and bombs en masse, increasing its arsenal to 100 nuclear warheads by the end of the year, the Arms Control Association said.
All of this would increase the threat to the future president, whoever he becomes, and increase Kim Jong Un’s weight in the negotiations. North Korea has already shown how skillfully it is able to evade sanctions by smuggling goods on the high seas, often by water between its own coast and that of China.
However, Kim Jong Un is unlikely to find more acceptable leaders in Washington and Seoul than D. Trump and Moon Jae-in. The latter, who has devoted most of his career to efforts to restore peace with North Korea, cannot seek a second term under the country’s Constitution when his current term ends in 2022.
Meanwhile, Trump leaped from pompous “love” for Kim Jong Un to threats to “completely destroy” North Korea in the early years of his tenure. The likely Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, is announcing a much more contentious policy, vowing to pay special attention to human rights, support US alliances, and “not appease the dictator.”
Those criticisms complicate Trump’s efforts to hold another summit with Kim Jong Un and strengthen his incentives to punish North Korea if he violates the condition of freezing ICBM and nuclear bomb tests for more than two years. The US President has yet to put his hand on Kim Jong Un’s short-range missile tests, even if such weapons violate United Nations (UN) resolutions and appear to be aimed at harming US troops. and to American allies in the region.
Kim Jong Un is likely to face a more serious provocation, with the electoral environment increasingly distracted towards Trump. Nonproliferation experts have been predicting for several months that North Korea will soon demonstrate the capabilities of a new missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead from a submarine, thus undermining the US’s potential to avoid counterattacks in the event of conflict. .
“In fact, by continuing to push, you are looking to anger Washington and Seoul,” Sue C Terry, a former CIA analyst who currently works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Bloomberg Television. “I really believe that they will increase the pressure, on South Korea and, ultimately, on the United States, to ease sanctions and, later, to provide more influence for future negotiations.”
Kim Jong Unas
Preparing for missile launch.
South Korean defense officials recently announced that North Korea was preparing for a military parade to mark the 75th anniversary of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party in October. US authorities have also noted tests conducted by North Korea’s ICBM rocket launchers, DongA Ilbo wrote in June, assuming the regime is preparing for its first such launch in November 2017.
Such a move could cost support from China and Russia to ease sanctions, which have cut trade with North Korea after a previous wave of Nordic testing. In March and April this year, North Korea’s exports to China fell by more than 90 percent compared to the same period last year, the Chinese Customs Administration said.
Kim Jong Un is likely to exert the most pressure on South Korea, which is more sympathetic to North Korea’s demands to ease sanctions. Moon Jae-in hinted at the desire to maintain ties to Kim Jong Un, even after North Korea destroyed the true symbol of the convergence strategy last week.
According to Soo Kim, a policy analyst at Rand Corproation, the recent suspension of North Korea’s military plans against South Korea does not indicate any significant change in strategy.
“They drilled the last juices from Seoul endless times,” he said. “And suddenly they decide to sympathize with him. Don’t these tactics raise even stronger suspicions about North Korea’s intentions?”
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