"Why sanctions still in place? I shook Trump's hand!"
Posted on 11/02/2019 11:24:03 PM PDT by AmericanInTokyo
“All of the sanctions against the Norks are still in place and Kim has gotten no money from America. Now Kim is begging to resume negotiations because he has gotten nothing that he really wants. “
Kim got a lot more valuable commodity in North Korea, to him, than money. He got the massive North Korean public prestige of for the first time in North Korean history its leader was meeting face-to-face, in global recognition, with the American president. To the North Korean people it not only raised his prestige among his people, but it was being done because “American HAD to do that”.
Kim can survive the sanctions. His people starving is not the problem that is being a nobody in world affairs. Kim is now the most legitimately recognized ruler the regime has ever had.
With internal prestige strengthening his regime internally, he can now go back the bellicose belligerence that to him and his people MADE the U.S. negotiate with him.
He is still doing everything he was doing before, and more, with respect to his nuclear arms and missile programs.
Nothing has changed, particularly not the very nature, purpose and world view of the regime.
This is delusionary. Objectively speaking, it doesn’t matter if your a Dem or a GOP (I’m Republican) but your assertions with ample evidence can be torn apart into a million pieces. We are in fact now dangerously behind the game and KJU is actually laughing his ass off as he continues to launch TEL MLR SRBMs and upgraded SLBM toward our direction here in Japan and continue HEU production in a number of locations. What is your source of news if I might ask?
Correct. This is all well known and understood throughout here in Asia, the senior leadership in Japan (ruling conservative LDP) has just about had enough of it
You have a totally American POLITICAL perspective, but North Korean leadership cares not a twit about it and will not respond in a way to support it. “FACE” is much more important to them, not dollars and not even their own economy. Their public FACE got the biggest boost in the entire lifetime of the regime, from Trump, and Trump knows it. He mistakenly thought that and making it personal with Kim changed things. It didn’t, and Kim’s return to bellicose behavior is confirmation that to Kim there is nothing more to get from it’s pause.
Nothing we can do diplomatically or economically could compel the Norks to give up their nukes and missiles. They either have to want to voluntarily give them up or we take them away using military force. Those are the ONLY two options. The only way to disarm them short of WWIII is exploring the very remote chance that Kim will have a change of heart and decide to take his country in a new direction. Hence, Trump’s attempt to reach Kim on a personal level. This approach will likely not be successful but it’s worth a try. My point is everything is being done to disarm the Norks(more than any other past administration) short of initiating WWIII and, just as importantly, no counter productive deals have been entered into. The sanctions and all other inducements available will not cause them to disarm. They have to choose to disarm. The meetings with Kim are actually a tactic not a concession. I hope that clears things up for you.
So you take issue with the President’s approach he took between Inauguration Day (when Obama briefed him in the limo about NK being his biggest headache) until a little time after the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, and which for all intents and purposes was working?
I hope that clears up matters for you.
PS Your arguments for kicking the can down the road, and that our hands are tied are the same given by Obama and his supporters during his own failed North Korean efforts. This is a disaster regardless of the administration in power, but at the very least I will say the President had it “right” for about 17 months there are least.
Wuli, you have been here on this FR thing, and NK threads, for nearly 14 years now, I think about six years less than me, and I would take your advice and reality checks on FR over anyone else, who shows up and pretends to be able to offer something insightful about North Korea but which is really just a rehash of failure and defeatism.
It has been a failure. It is widely known as a failure here in all circles from left to extreme right/ultra conservative in (ally) Japan. They know about the North better than anybody in the states, having to deal directly with their threat, why cannnot you take it from Japanese conservatives for example that this template has not been working and will not work, hence Kim returning to bellicosity and trying another shakedown of the US which he and his predecessors have been doing incesssantly for decades.
I guess this is where I am supposed to ask what would you propose.
Everything POTUS was brilliantly doing in the first 18 months of his administration, before he totally reversed course 180 degrees and now here we are in a big mess. I give credit when credit is due.
I was in Korea briefly in the 1960s.
In addition to my military duties I made friends with Koreans. Korean soldiers serving with the U.S., Koreans working at U.S. military HQ in Seoul, Koreans working at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, Christian Korean civilians, and I taught conversational English two nights a week at a pharmaceutical factory in the town of Anyang, about 16 miles south of Seoul. I spent two weeks leave with my English class hiking cross country, from village to village in the interior where often there were no paved roads. I learned to speak a small amount of Korean. I traveled across a lot of South Korea.
Since that time I have never stopped intently watching, reading, analyzing and listening about the Korean situtaiion, as it relates to South Korean domestic politics, the never ended confrontation with North Korea, the doings of the regime in the North and every bit of U.S.-North Korean diplomacy.
You cannot insert a razor blade between the bricks of the North Korean positions past and present.
While in South Korea I felt I really got to know the people and all my instincts from my observations of the society then, in the 1960s, told me they would be where they are today economically. I am not now mystified by their success.
The base cultural roots in the South Koreans was present in the people of North Korea, yet anyone can look at it today and see 100% of what is wrong is the dictatorship. Nothing is so blind as those who cannot see.
I am glad FreeRepublic has another member who gets the true Korean situation from the East Asian perspective. If I were the U.S. dictator (LOL / Sarc) you’d be on the East Asian Affairs desk at my State Department.
Let’s not forget “TigerLikesRooster”, another great Freeper of 20 years, actually in Korea—wow what a resource for this forum— who was horribly mistreated and insulted by brainless idiots who left FR over the ascendancy of Trumpism and the evaporation of truth about the Korean situation and this mistaken policy that is making things worse not better. He, like everyone else, supported DJT in the 2016 election.
Yes, TigerLikesRooster has been a great source I have always appreciated. There are no listings, no posts left in any FreeRepublic threads by TigerLikesRooster, of any date whatsoever. I think if he knows, privacy would prevent the moderator from telling us when Tiger left the forum. Too bad.
I do seem to remember that TigerLikesRooster was, at one time, getting some flames from some Freepers who, in ignorance, took his intimate understanding of Korea as sympathy to either North Korea or “unAmerican” Korean sources; when what he was really always trying to do was provide what sources in Korea and Japan were saying on many subjects. Given how horrible the American media is I never understand the blanket objections to any foreign sources.
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