Nordkorea - bisarrt, fascinerande, sjukt

1. Kim knappast kan hållas skyldig för vad som har hänt före 2012.
2. han de facto tagit landet framåt sedan dess.
3. dessa frågor löser sig av sig självt om avtalet håller.

South Korea aims to formally end the Korean War within this year but will be flexible on the specific timing and format, as the process requires consultations with Pyongyang and Washington, Seoul's top diplomat said Monday.

Speaking to reporters shortly after a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said the Trump administration is willing to declare a formal end to the 1950-53 conflict, which was agreed between the leaders of the two Koreas in April.

"I think (we) need to produce a result through consultations with the US, and North Korea. But (South Korea) plans to handle the issue of timing and format with flexibility," she said at a press conference.

She quoted Pompeo as saying that his talks with the North to follow up on the Singapore summit deal between President Donald Trump and the communist nation's leader Kim Jong-un will proceed speedily.

On the proposed "hotline" between Trump and Kim, Kang said its establishment does not seem imminent.

Pompeo told Kang that there's no concrete action on the matter, according to the minister.

Trump publicly said last week that he gave his "very direct number" to Kim.

"I can now call him," he said. "I gave him a very direct number. He can now call me if he has any difficulty. We have communication."

Kang expressed hope that she will hold separate talks with her North Korean counterpart, Ri Yong-ho, on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum, which will take place in Singapore in early August. (Yonhap)

Poll after poll shows that the 51 million residents of South Korea overwhelmingly want an end to the 68-year Korean War—which the United States is still officially involved in. A recent survey found that 88.4 percent of South Koreans support the April 27 joint peace declaration by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in. And 81 percent of South Koreans expressed optimism about the Trump-Kim summit.
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Yet, there is a yawning gap between the optimistic mood in South Korea and the response among liberal media circles in the United States, where many are reacting with a mix of sanctimony and scorn. On June 12, Kevin Drum published a piece in Mother Jones in which he accused Trump of “abandoning” South Korea and agreeing to a weak deal. Vox echoed this line with rebukes of a “shockingly weak” agreement that includes “huge concessions to Kim for little in return.” MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson accused Trump of complicity in the public relations makeover of a dictator. And popular host Rachel Maddow released an episode on June 12 arguing that Trump's pledge to halt war games in South Korea is a “giveaway to N. Korea” that “suits Putin's goals”—disregarding that robust social movements in South Korea have protested the U.S. military presence for decades.
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Sarah Lazare: Can you tell me why you are frustrated with the response among liberals and the left in the United States to the Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore on June 12?

Christine Ahn: I was just in Washington, D.C. to help organize the Korea Peace Network Advocacy Day—about 100 activists from around the country came together to advocate for changing U.S. policy. It just happened to coincide with the June 12 summit in Singapore. We were so thrilled with the outcome of the meeting, even though it was thin on concrete action. This was the first time a North Korean and American leader sat down and shook hands and declared a new era for U.S.-DPRK relations.
I was incredibly frustrated by going around the capitol yesterday talking to the offices of members of Congress and also the quick knee-jerk reaction from liberals and left. People said, “How could we support engagement and diplomacy—this amounts to approving Donald Trump.” I was on the Joy-Ann Reid show, and the whole framing was about how Trump just met with the G7 and trashed France and other allies, and now he was going to North Korea to meet with a dictator.
Can we stay focused on how this is an incredible moment for the Korean people? This is about ending a seven-decade war with a country the United States has been at war with. The United States has been an obstacle to peace for Korea and was responsible for dividing the peninsula. That people in the United States don’t understand this is a sign that the Korean-American progressive community has failed to get nuanced perspective out there that ties the situation on the Korean peninsula with U.S. complicity. It’s so frustrating.
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We also have to consider the impact of U.S. sanctions and U.S.-led UN sanctions. I want to make sure the U.S. left understands that the United States has had a huge role on this state of conditions in both North and South Korea, from the historic division of the peninsula to the military and economic policy against North Korea. The United States is complicit in the conditions on the peninsula that have created an ongoing state of war that has enabled the growth of a repressive garrison state in North Korea. We can't divorce that from the reality on the ground in North Korea. This line, “How dare our democratic president sit down and meet with a dictator who is starving his own people,” is perpetuating narratives and myths about North Korea from the right wing. This line comes straight from the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation.

Did you know that 13.1 million children in the United States face food insecurity? Did you know we have mass surveillance of the population, systematic discrimination against people of color and a massive prison population? U.S. exceptionalism is not willing to put a mirror on this country, but trains the imperial gaze on other countries.

As counterproliferation experts and seasoned North Korea watchers have concluded in parsing the joint communique to Tuesday’s summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, no significant or tangible steps were actually taken toward denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. The joint statement released after the meeting, most of which had been agreed to beforehand, committed North Korea to nothing. The two sides essentially agreed to do what they have already decided to do — continue negotiating.

North Korea, which made only vague rehashed pledges, gained significant concessions, including a halt to joint US-South Korea war games. Meanwhile, China, which helped broker and leaven the summit, has relaxed its recently stepped-up enforcement of the UN sanctions, an important piece of leverage on Kim.

One leading counterproliferation expert, Jeffrey Lewis, called the agreement “a joke.” Eliot Cohen, a senior official in George W. Bush’s State Department, said Trump was essentially conning the US media market for political purposes: “He’s a huckster and a fantasist. This is all the fast talk of a New York grifter. You can’t believe any of it.”

Since everything in North Korea had been destroyed, the air force was then sent to destroy North Korea’s dams, huge dams that controlled the nation’s water supply—a war crime for which people had been hanged in Nuremberg. And these official journals … talk[ed] excitedly about how wonderful it was to see the water pouring down, digging out the valleys and the ‘Asians’ scurrying around trying to survive. The journals exulted in what this meant to those Asians—horrors beyond our imagination. It meant the destruction of their rice crop, which in turn meant starvation. How magnificent!